WEEKLY OCEAN NEWS

WEEKLY OCEAN NEWS

9-13 May 2011

DataStreme Ocean will return for Fall 2011 with new Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 29 August 2011. All the current online website products will continue to be available throughout the summer break period.

Item of Interest:

Hurricane season to begin in the eastern North Pacific -- The 2011 hurricane season in the eastern North Pacific Ocean basin begins on Sunday, 15 May 2011. 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 2011. NOAA has declared the week of 22-28 May 2011 to be Hurricane Awareness Week across the nation.

Former astronaut appointed to major post in NOAA -- Kathryn D. Sullivan, PhD, the first American woman to walk in space, recently was confirmed by the US Senate to become Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Environmental Observation and Prediction in NOAA. [NOAA News]

Ocean in the News:

Eye on the tropics -- One organized tropical cyclone was detected across the ocean basins last week, as Tropical Storm Aere formed over the waters of the Philippine Sea in the western North Pacific basin. This tropical storm formed on Friday and traveled initially to the west toward the Philippines over the past weekend before curving toward the northwest. The NASA Hurricane Page provides additional information and satellite images of "System 93W", which eventually became Tropical Storm Aere.

California's draft Bay Delta conservation plan found to be incomplete -- A new report prepared for the National Research Council warns that the November 2010 draft of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan designed to conserve habitat for endangered and threatened fishes in the California Bay-Delta has critical missing components and needs better integration to be more scientifically credible. [The National Academies]
The Deputy Secretary of the Interior David J. Hayes and NOAA Administrator Dr. Jane Lubchenco issued statements regarding the National Academy of Sciences report on the use of science and adaptive management in California's Bay Delta Conservation Plan. [NOAA News]

Milestones reached in Chesapeake Bay Program -- A report entitled " Achieving Nutrient and Sediment Reduction Goals in the Chesapeake Bay: An Evaluation of Program Strategies and Implementation" was recently released from the National Research Council that assesses the framework used by the Chesapeake Bay Program to track pollution control practices and their two-year milestone. The Chesapeake Bay Program represents a cooperative partnership between the US Environmental Protection Agency and local jurisdictions in the Bay's watershed to oversee its restoration, with a major focus on controlling the extent of incoming pollutants. [The National Academies]

Monitoring this past season's Arctic sea ice -- Two images made from microwave data collected by the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program and by the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E) on NASA’s Aqua satellite show the range in the areal extent of the sea ice covering the Arctic Ocean. One of the images was made last September at the minimum ice extent, while the other image was from March 2011 near the maximum extent of sea ice. Displays of the extent of median sea ice extent for September and March over the 1979-2000 interval were also included. [NASA Earth Observatory]

Studying life under the seafloor -- A team of more than 20 scientists from the US and Germany recently reported on the four years of observations that they made of life from under the ocean floor using an experimental in situ microbial observatory off the coast of Washington and British Columbia. The observations of the microbes and their environment were made from a sealed borehole below the flank of the submarine Juan de Fuca Ridge. [University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science]

A view of aspects of ocean life from a bucket of seawater -- Scientists from Rutgers University and the Bigelow Laboratory of Ocean Sciences using sophisticated techniques to analyze the genomes of picobilophytes or tiny single-celled marine animals obtained from a bucket of seawater have obtained information that could ultimately help in understanding the differences in marine organisms. [Rutgers University]

Long-term history of El Niño/La Niña events deciphered from tree rings -- Scientists from the University of Hawaii's International Pacific Research Center and their colleagues from the US, Japan, China have reconstructed a l100-year history of El Niño and La Niña events in the eastern half of the tropical Pacific, based upon annual tree-ring records obtained from North America. This reconstruction from trees in the Southwestern United States compared favorably with instrumental records of sea-surface temperatures and isotopic analysis of corals in the Pacific. The history shows that the El Niño activity has been highly variable, varying on time scales from decades to centuries. [University of Hawaii]

Battle scars on a marine reptile reveal a tough life in ancient polar oceans -- According to paleobiologists at Sweden's Uppsala University, a 120-million year old fossilized skeleton of a marine reptile that was found in Australia had scars that indicated a difficult life in the waters of the ancient polar oceans. [Uppsala University]

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:

9 May 1502...The explorer Christopher Columbus left Spain for his fourth and final journey to the "New World". (Wikipedia)
9 May 1926...The Baden-Baden, a ship propelled by two 50-ft high cylindrical rotors arrived in New York having left Hamburg on 2 Apr 1926, and completed a transatlantic crossing from Germany. Utilizing the aerodynamic power of the Magnus Effect (discovered in 1852), which builds air pressure behind a rotating cylinder, these rotors drove 45-hp electric motors that powered the ship. Although a theoretical success, it was not sufficiently effective for commercial application. (Today in Science)
9 May 1980...A blinding squall, followed by dense fog, reduced visibility to near zero at the Sunshine Skyway Bridge over Tampa Bay in Florida. The Liberian freighter SS Summit Venture hit the bridge piling, causing a 1200-foot section of the bridge to fall 150 feet into the bay. Several vehicles, including a bus, drove off the edge of the span, resulting in 35 deaths. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar) (Wikipedia).
9 May 1990...A tropical cyclone hit the southeast coast of India, killing 1000 people, even though 400,000 people evacuated because of early warning of the storm. More than 100 miles of coast were devastated as winds reached 125 mph and a storm surge measured at 22 feet flooded inland as far as 22 miles. (The Weather Doctor) (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
10 May 1497...The Italian cartographer Amerigo Vespucci allegedly left the Spanish coastal city of Cádiz for his first voyage to the New World. (Wikipedia)
10 May 1503...Christopher Columbus discovered the Cayman Islands and named them Las Tortugas after the numerous sea turtles that he found there. (Wikipedia)
10 May 1960...The submarine, USS Triton (SSRN-586), completed a submerged circumnavigation of world in 84 days following many of the routes taken by Magellan and cruising 46,000 miles. (Naval Historical Center)
11 May 1833...The ship Lady of the Lake struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic while bound from England to Quebec, resulting in the loss of 215 lives. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
11-12 May 1965...The first of two cyclones that struck East Pakistan (now called Bangladesh) during the year made landfall. This system, along with the one on 1-2 June, killed about 47,000 people.
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)