WEEKLY OCEAN NEWS

12-16 May 2008

DataStreme Ocean will return for Fall 2008 with new Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 25 August 2008. All the current online website products will continue to be available throughout the summer break period.

Ocean in the News:

• North American Safe Boating Week -- Commencing this coming Saturday, the week of 17-23 May has been declared 2008 National Safe Boating Week, to help kick off the 2008 North American Safe Boating Campaign. Check the Safe Boating Week site maintained by the Safe Boating Council.
• Eye on the Tropics -- The western North Pacific was active last week with the development of three tropical cyclones. Typhoons Kadena and Misawa formed early in the week but both were short-lived. Typhoon Rammasun developed at midweek over the Philippine Sea and was moving northward, intensifying to become a category 4 typhoon on the Saffir-Simpson Scale. As of early Monday (local time), this typhoon was traveling to the north-northeast across the western North Pacific, passing approximately 400 miles to the southeast of Okinawa. An image obtained from the Japanese MTSAT satellite shows the clouds surrounding Tropical Storm Rammasun soon after it formed late last week, as it was a tropical storm [NOAA OSEI]
  The world has become aware of the suffering that is occurring in Myanmar (Burma) following the landfall of Tropical Cyclone Nargis; as of this past weekend, UN estimates that between 63,000 and 100,000 people lost their lives because of the flooding due to the cyclone's storm surge and torrential rain. [CNN] A variety of images from satellites that show the precipitation across the affected area is available from NASA. [NASA Hurricane Page] Additional satellite imagery is available from the European Space Agency. [ESA]
• Hurricane season begins in the eastern North Pacific -- The 2008 hurricane season in the eastern North Pacific Ocean basin begins Thursday, 15 May 2008. The hurricane season in the North Atlantic basin, including the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico will begin in two weeks on 1 June. The official hurricane seasons in both basins end on 30 November 2008. NOAA has declared the week of 25-31 May 2008 to be Hurricane Awareness Week across the nation.
• Public invited to comment on management plan for marine sanctuary -- NOAA officials invited the public to review on make comment on the recently-released draft management plan and environmental assessment for the NOAA Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary that is located in the coastal waters of Massachusetts. [NOAA News]
• Plans issued for protecting Northwest Salmon -- Early last week, NOAA’s Fisheries Service released a package of three opinions designed to provide comprehensive protection of the salmon species in the Pacific Northwest, that includes the Columbia River and its tributaries. [NOAA News]
• Campaign to gain ground truth -- Scientists from Denmark, the United Kingdom, Germany and Canada are on a three-week CryoSat Validation Experiment (CryoVEx) 2008 field experiment that is meant to provide surface data on the Arctic snow and ice cover for the European Space Agency's CryoSat satellite, which is designed to provide information on the planet's cryosphere. [ESA]
• Cleaner air seen as threat to Amazon rainforest -- Climate scientists from the United Kingdom and Brazil report that reducing sulfur dioxide emissions from coal burning to clean the air has resulted in increased sea surface temperatures in the tropical North Atlantic, resulting an increased risk of drought across the Amazon rainforest. [EurekAlert!]
• Seaweed could affect coastal clouds -- Scientists from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Switzerland and the United States claim that large colonies of brown seaweed release large quantities of inorganic iodine into the coastal atmosphere when the seaweed is under stress, resulting in increased cloud formation because of an increase in condensation nuclei. [EurekAlert!]
• Oceanic carbon cycle research aided by satellites -- The European Space Agency's GlobColour project is using collecting and merging ocean color data collected by sensors onboard the Agency's Envisat satellite and NASA's satellites to produce a 10-year data set of marine phytoplankton that can be used to study the marine portion of the global carbon cycle. [ESA]
• Global and US Hazards/Climate Extremes -- A review and analysis of the global impacts of various weather-related events, including drought, floods and storms during the current month. [NCDC]
• Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com] Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Historical Events:

• 12 May 1916...Plumb Point, Jamaica reported 17.80 inches of rain in 15 minutes, which set a world record. (The Weather Doctor)
• 12 May 1978...The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that they would no longer exclusively name hurricanes after women.
• 14 May 1836...U.S. Exploring Expedition authorized to conduct exploration of Pacific Ocean and South Seas, the first major scientific expedition overseas. LT Charles Wilkes USN, would lead the expedition in surveying South America, Antarctica, Far East, and North Pacific. (Naval Historical Center)
• 15 May 1934...Lightship No. 117, occupying the Nantucket Shoals Station, in a dense fog, was struck by the RMS Olympic and sank on station with the loss of seven crewmembers. (USCG Historian's Office)
• 15-24 May 1951...Hurricane Able did a "loop-the-loop" north of the Bahamas and reached Category 3 strength off Cape Hatteras, NC. (The Weather Doctor)
• 16 May 1917...Marquette, MI had its latest opening of navigation on Lake Superior in history. (Intellicast)
• 17-21 May 1887...An early season tropical storm raked Cuba and The Bahamas. (The Weather Doctor)
• 17 May 1970...The Norwegian ethnologist, Thor Heyerdahl, and a multinational crew set sail on a trans-Atlantic voyage from Morocco on Ra II, a papyrus sailing craft modeled after the ancient Egyptian vessels in an effort to prove his theory that Mediterranean sailors reached the Americas in ancient times. After 57 days, the Ra II reached Barbados. (The History Channel)

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Prepared by AMS DS Ocean Central Staff and Edward J. Hopkins, Ph.D., email hopkins@meteor.wisc.edu
ã Copyright, 2008, The American Meteorological Society.