WEEKLY OCEAN NEWS

5-9 July 2010

DataStreme Ocean will return for Fall 2010 with new Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 30 August 2010. All the current online website products will continue to be available throughout the summer break period.

Items of Interest:

• Way out there!...The earth reaches aphelion, the point in its annual orbit when it is farthest from the sun early tomorrow morning (officially at 12Z on Tuesday, 6 July 2010, which is equivalent to 8 AM EDT or 7 AM CDT). At aphelion, the earth-sun distance is 152,089,000 km, or 3.4% greater than the distance at perihelion, the smallest earth-sun distance, which occurred earlier this year on the early evening of 2 January 2011.
• A new moon and solar eclipse -- A new moon will occur this coming Sunday (officially 1940Z on 11 July 2010 or 3:40 PM EDT and 2:40 PM CDT, etc.).
  This new moon will also be responsible for a total solar eclipse that can be seen by those across the South Pacific Ocean and sections of South America as the moon passes in front of the solar disk. The NASA Eclipse Web Site has more particulars and maps of this solar eclipse.

Ocean in the News:

• Eye on the Tropics -- During last week, Tropical Storm Alex intensified into the first hurricane of the 2010 North Atlantic season as it moved to the northwest and then west across the Gulf of Mexico after traveling across Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. Before making landfall along the northern Mexican coast at midweek, Hurricane Alex had intensified to a category 2 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. [USA Today] For additional information on Hurricane Alex and satellite images, please see the NASA Hurricane Page.
• Public comments invited on NOAA's future plan -- NOAA officials recently announced that they are seeking final public comments through 10 August 2010 on the draft of the agency's "Next Generation Strategic Plan" that identifies NOAA's mission statement, its vision for the future, long-term goals and five-year objectives. The mission of the agency, Science, Service, and Stewardship, includes the following: To understand and anticipate changes in climate, weather, oceans, and coasts; Share that knowledge and information with others, and To conserve and manage marine resources. [NOAA News]
• NOAA's fisheries enforcement system reviewed -- Last week, the Inspector General for the US Department of Commerce sent NOAA its review of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) Asset Forfeiture Fund. [NOAA News]
• Satellite detects oil slick along Mississippi barrier islands -- A high-resolution image made from the data collected early last week by the sensors on NASA's Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite shows the oil slick spreading over the Gulf waters along the barrier islands that line the coast of the state of Mississippi. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• Ships sent to study Loop Current and Florida's coastal waters -- In an attempt to monitor the effect that the Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill will have upon the ecosystems in the Gulf of Mexico, a pair of two-week survey cruises were begun last week by scientists from NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory and the NOAA Southeast Fisheries Science Center. The NOAA Ship Nancy Foster and the R/V Savannah operated by the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography in Savannah, GA will be heading for the Loop Current and the waters of the eastern Gulf off the coast of Florida. [NOAA News] The NOAA Ship Gordon Gunter also departed last week with a group of researchers from Cornell University, Oregon State and Scripps Institution of Oceanography to study how the oil spill is affecting marine mammals, such as the endangered whales and dolphins. [NOAA News]
• Underwater gliders and surface radar assist in Gulf water sampling -- A team of scientists from NOAA, the University of South Florida and several universities who are partners in NOAA's Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS®) have been using as many as ten Autonomous Underwater Vehicles or gliders equipped with fluorometers to detect oil at various levels in water columns in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. [NOAA News]
• A "larger than average" 2010 Gulf dead zone predicted -- A team of NOAA-supported scientists from Louisiana State University, the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium and the University of Michigan has predicted that the summer 2010 hypoxic zone in the northern Gulf of Mexico, often called the "dead zone", should be larger than the recent five-year average. Their forecast is based upon the annual US Geological Society's nutrient flow totals from the Mississippi River. What the effect that the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill will have upon the dead zone size is unclear at this time. [NOAA News] [USA Today]
• Expanding the areas of Gulf closed to fishing -- At the start of last week, NOAA expanded the area of the Gulf of Mexico that were closed to fishing because of the oil from the BP oil spill. [NOAA News]
• Intergovernmental agency steps taken to ensure safety of Gulf Coast seafood -- Last week, officials with NOAA, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)and the US Food and Drug Administration joined with those health and fisheries officials from Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas to coordinate their efforts at ensuring the safety of the seafood that is being taken from the waters of the Gulf of Mexico in light of the oil spill. A joint protocol for reopening closed waters will be implemented.[NOAA News]
• Long-term oil threat to US Gulf and Atlantic coastlines is modeled -- NOAA has run models of historical wind and ocean currents to project the spread of surface oil from the Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill and how it will affect the nation's Gulf and Atlantic coasts. As many as 500 distinct model results were generated using different assumptions. [NOAA News]
• Algae bloom seen off Iceland -- An image made within the last two weeks from data collected by the MODIS instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite shows a green and blue swirl in the surface waters of the North Atlantic Ocean indicating a large bloom of phytoplankton that usually occurs in the late spring. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• European ice satellite exceeding expectations -- Scientists with the European Space Agency have found that the ice-thickness data collected by their agency's CryoSat-2 satellite have far exceeded expectations in terms of the amount of high quality information. This satellite, launched earlier this year, has a radar altimeter that measures the polar ice caps and sea ice. [ESA]
• NASA Center for Climate Simulation introduced -- Officials at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center recently introduced the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS), a group that employs supercomputers along with visualization and data interaction technologies to support the climate modeling community in climate prediction research. [NASA GISS]
• An All-Hazards Monitor -- This Web portal provides the user information from NOAA on current environmental events that may pose as hazards such as tropical weather, drought, floods, marine weather, tsunamis, rip currents, Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) and coral bleaching. [NOAAWatch]
• Global and US Hazards/Climate Extremes -- A review and analysis of the global impacts of various weather-related events, to include drought, floods and storms during the current month. [NCDC]
• Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet
[earthweek.com] Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Historical Events:

• 5 July 1805...Robert FitzRoy, British naval officer, hydrographer and meteorologist, was born. He was also commanded the voyage of HMS Beagle aboard which Charles Darwin sailed around the world as the ship's naturalist. That voyage provided Darwin with much of the material on which he based his theory of evolution. FitzRoy retired from active duty in 1850 and from 1854 devoted himself to meteorology. He devised a storm warning system that was the prototype of the daily weather forecast, invented a barometer, and published The Weather Book (1863). His death on 30 April 1865 was by suicide, during a bout of depression. (Today in Science History)
• 5 July 1916...An early season hurricane produced 82-mph winds, an 11.6-foot tide, and a barometric pressure of 28.92 inches at Mobile, AL. (David Ludlum)
• 5 July 1989...Moisture from what once was Tropical Storm Allison triggered thunderstorms over the Middle Atlantic Coast Region, which deluged Wilmington, DE with a record 6.83 inches of rain in 24 hours, including 6.37 inches in just six hours. Up to ten inches of rain was reported at Claymont, northeast of Wilmington. July 1989 was thus the wettest month in seventy years for Wilmington, with a total of 12.63 inches of rain. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data) (Intellicast)
• 6 July 1484...Portuguese sea captain Diogo Cão located the mouth of the Congo River. (Wikipedia)
• 6 July 1988...The world's worst offshore accident occurred when 167 oil workers were killed by explosions and fires that destroyed the Piper Alpha drilling platform in the British sector of the North Sea.
• 7 July 1901...First three-day weather forecast issued for the shipping lanes of the North Atlantic. (Northern Indiana NWSFO)
• 7 July 1952...The liner SS United States made the fastest-ever eastbound crossing of the Atlantic of 3 days, 17 hours and 48 minutes on her maiden voyage from Nantucket Light Ship off New York's Long Island to Bishop Rock Lighthouse in western England.
• 8 July 1497...The Portuguese explorer, Vasco da Gama, set sail from Lisbon, Portugal with four ships on the first direct European voyage to India, first rounding Africa's Cape of Good Hope and reaching Calicut on India's southwest coast on 20 May 1498. (Wikipedia)
• 8 July 1879...The first ship to use electric lights departed from San Francisco, CA.
• 11 July 1576...The British seaman Martin Frobisher sighted Greenland during one of his attempts to find the Northwest Passage. (Wikipedia)
• 11 July 1776...The English explorer Captain James Cook began his third and final voyage, exploring the North Pacific, western North America to as far north as the Bering Strait and the Sandwich Islands (later renamed the Hawaiian Islands), where he was killed in February 1779. (Wikipedia)

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Prepared by AMS DS Ocean Central Staff and Edward J. Hopkins, Ph.D., email hopkins@meteor.wisc.edu
ã Copyright, 2010, The American Meteorological Society.