30 May-3 June 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.

• Change in season -- Meteorological spring in the Northern Hemisphere, the three-month span from March through May, concludes on Tuesday (31 May 2011), while meteorological summer (June, July and August) will commence on the following day.
• Atlantic Hurricane Season begins -- The official 2011 hurricane season for the North Atlantic Basin will begin on Wednesday, 1 June. The National Hurricane Center maintains a hurricane preparedness website that provides information and educational material for the various hurricane hazards including storm surge, high winds, tornadoes and flooding. (A Spanish version of this website is also available.) In the Eastern North Pacific basin, the hurricane season began on 15 May. The season will run until 30 November in both basins.
• World Environment Day -- This Sunday, 5 June 2011, has been declared World Environment Day by the United Nations in an effort to stimulate worldwide awareness of the environment and to enhance political attention and action. This observance was established initially by the UN General Assembly in 1972 to mark the opening of the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment. Various activities are being planned. [World Environment Day]

• Eye on the tropics --- Tropical cyclone activity across the world's ocean basins remained has been relatively light this past week. (Tropical cyclones are low-pressure systems over tropical waters.) However, in the western North Pacific basin, Tropical Storm Songda intensified early last week into a typhoon as it traveled west across the Philippine Sea toward the northern Philippine Islands. However, this typhoon curved to the north-northwest and then north, before reaching Luzon, the main northern island in the Philippines. By midweek, Typhoon Songda had intensified to become a super-typhoon, rated as a category-5 typhoon on the Saffir-Simpson Scale, as maximum sustained surface winds reached 150 mph, with gusts to over 170 mph. After passing to the east of Taiwan, Typhoon Songda curved toward the north-northeast and then to the northeast, along with a weakening in strength. By Sunday, Songda had been downgraded to a tropical storm and then a tropical depression as it approached the southern coast of the Japanese mainland. For satellite imagery and additional information on Super Typhoon Songda, see the NASA Hurricane Page.
• Increased coordination and collaboration designed to ensure offshore energy stewardship -- At the beginning of last week's International Oil Spill Conference, the US Department of Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) and NOAA signed a memorandum of understanding designed to increase interagency coordination and collaboration to ensure the environmentally sound offshore energy development. [NOAA News]
• Scallop fishing off Nantucket closed to protect fishery -- Officials with NOAA Fisheries Service recently issued an emergency action that would prevent opening of the scallop area in the Nantucket Lightship Access Area off the Massachusetts coast to fishing in mid-June. This action was prompted at the request of the New England Fishery Management Council and members of the scallop industry to protect this resource. [NOAA News]
• Live release of shortfin mako sharks encouraged -- During the last week NOAA Fisheries Service launched a voluntary program designed to encourage commercial and recreational fishermen to safely release Atlantic shortfin mako sharks alive so as to maintain the long-term sustainability of the population. The fishermen were also encouraged to report the releases to NOAA for posting on an online map. [NOAA News]
• Atlantic bluefin tuna will not be placed on endangered species list -- Late last week, NOAA announced that extensive scientific review indicated that Atlantic bluefin tuna currently do not warrant species protection under the Endangered Species Act. However, the agency formally designated both the western Atlantic and eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean stocks of bluefin tuna on a watch list as "species of concern." [NOAA News]
• Gourmet northern abalone appear doomed by ocean acidification -- Researchers at the University of British Columbia claim that the dwindling populations of the prized northern abalone, a large edible sea snail found in the waters off the western coast of North America, appear doomed by increasing levels of ocean acidity. Earlier, poaching of this species forced British Columbia's northern abalone commercial fisheries to close. [University of British Columbia]
• NASA's GRIP campaign reviewed -- Some of the aspects of NASA's Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes (GRIP) experiment have been recently highlighted. This six-week field campaign that was held last year was one of the agency's largest hurricane research efforts. [NASA Global Climate Change]
• Large West Coast radar network serves many purposes -- A radar network consisting of 78-high-frequency radar units operated by a consortium of oceanographers is being used to map ocean surface currents along the US West Coast and provide a detailed description of the coastal ocean dynamics. The radar network has also been used in search-and-rescue, oil spill response and maritime transportation operations. The researchers envision that this network will provide long-term, high-quality records of ocean climate signals. [Scripps News]
• Japanese tsunami got extra kick from unusual earthquake -- Geophysicists at Stanford University and Japan's University of Tokyo report that the magnitude 9 earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan on 11 March were generated on a fault that initially shot westward, followed by a rupture that traveled toward the east, resulting in a "one-two punch." [Stanford University News]
• Bacteria may not have consumed all Deepwater Horizon methane -- A researcher at the University of Georgia and colleagues recently refuted a January study that a bacterial bloom in the Gulf of Mexico consumed most of the methane discharged from the Deepwater Horizon well within 120 days following last April's oil spill. They warn that uncertainties in the hydrocarbon discharge from the blowout, oxygen depletion fueled by processes other than methane consumption, a problematic interpretation of genetic data and shortcomings of the model used by the authors of the January study challenge the attribution of low oxygen zones to the oxidation of methane gas. [University of Georgia News Service]
• Legal roadmap created to tackle ocean acidification "hotspots" -- A team of marine scientists and legal experts led by Stanford University's Center for Ocean Solutions recently provided the first roadmap for local communities designed to combat ocean acidification by applying federal and state laws and policies. [Stanford University News]
• Global analysis made of seagrass extinction risk -- A team of researchers from eleven nations recently completed a four-year study of the risk of extinction for individual seagrass species around the world, finding that ten of the 72 known seagrass species are at an elevated risk of extinction, while 3 species qualify as endangered. [Virginia Institute of Marine Science News]
• Determining effect of melting glaciers on ocean currents -- Sciences at the United Kingdom's University of Sheffield and Bangor University used a computer climate model to study how freshwater entering the oceans at the end of the previous Ice Age approximately 140,000 years ago affected the parts of the ocean currents that control climate. They found that freshwater entering the ocean from melting ice sheets could weaken the climate controlling part of the large-scale ocean circulation, resulting in a drop in global temperature by up to two Celsius degrees over a few centuries. [University of Sheffield]
• Oceans played major role in onset of ancient global cooling -- Researchers claim that their analysis of ocean cores indicates development of the oceanic Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) appears to have played a significant role in shifting the warm climate of the early Eocene (nearly 38 million years ago) to cooler glaciated climates by 30 million years ago. [RPI News] [National Science Foundation]
• Theory on end of "Snowball Earth" ice age debunked -- A team of scientists from Cal Tech and other research institutions claim that the abrupt end of the Marinoan or "Snowball Earth" ice age approximately 600 million years ago was not caused by the currently accepted theory where large quantities of the greenhouse gas methane escaped from ocean sediments and permafrost to heat the atmosphere. They based their conclusions on isotopic analysis on rocks obtained from south China. [California Institute of Technology]
• 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.

• 30 May 1767...The first stone of the tower for the Charleston Lighthouse on Morris Island, SC was laid on this date. (USCG Historian's Office)
• 30-31 May 1997...As many as 140 people had to be rescued from rip currents off Dayton Beach Shores, FL. One man died in a rip current while trying to save his wife. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
• 31 May 1911...The hull of the ill-fated Titanic was launched in Belfast, Northern Ireland. At the ceremony, a White Star Line employee claimed, "Not even God himself could sink this ship." (Information Please)
• 31 May 1997...The Confederation Bridge, also dubbed the "Fixed Link," was officially opened, linking Canada's Prince Edward Island with mainland New Brunswick. This 8-mile long bridge that crosses the Northumberland Strait is the longest bridge in the world that spans waters that freeze. (Wikipedia)
• 1-17 June 2001...The deadliest and costliest tropical storm in US history, Tropical Storm Allison, wandered westward across the tropical Atlantic and crossed over into the Pacific before reversing direction and moving back into the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. On 1 June the tropical wave, which eventually evolved into TS Allison, moved into the Gulf of Tehuantepec on the Pacific coast of Mexico after moving westward across the tropical Atlantic and the Caribbean from off the west coast of Africa on 21 May. On the 2^nd, a cyclonic (counterclockwise) circulation developed to the south-southeast of Salma Cruz, Mexico, but the low-level circulation became ill defined as the system moved inland on the 3^rd over southeastern Mexico and western Guatemala. This system intensified again and eventually moved northward to the Texas Gulf Coast and then eastward to the Atlantic before turning into an extratropical storm in mid-June. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
• 2-4 June 1986...A tropical disturbance brought flooding rains to parts of the Greater Antilles. The flooding caused 59 deaths in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica and Cuba. As many as 240,000 people lost their homes to this disturbance. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
• 3 June 1979...The world's worst oil spill occurred when an exploratory oil well, Ixtoc 1, blew out, spilling over 140 million gallons of crude oil into the Bay of Campeche off the coast of Mexico. Although it is the largest known oil spill, it had a relatively low environmental impact. The well was finally capped in March 1980. Booms were placed along the Texas coast to protect major inlets from the oil that was carried northward by prevailing surface currents in the Gulf of Mexico. (Information Please) (Wikipedia)
• 4 June 1825...A hurricane struck Long Island, NY leveling trees and causing damage to ships. The early season hurricane, which originated near Cuba, caused major damage along the Atlantic coast from Charleston, SC to New York City. Many were lost at sea. (David Ludlum)
• 4 June 1976...Forty-foot waves from a tropical cyclone smashed Gogha (port), India. Excellent warnings limited the death toll to approximately 70. Dredging of the harbor at Bhavnnagar ceased for several years as storm runoff from the Kansa River washed away accumulated sand and silt. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)

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Prepared by AMS DS Ocean Central Staff and Edward J. Hopkins, Ph.D., email hopkins@meteor.wisc.edu
ã Copyright, 2011, The American Meteorological Society.