11-15 July 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:

• Zenithal Sun -- Residents of Honolulu will experience a noontime sun that would be directly overhead during this week (15-17 Jul). This occurrence of a zenithal sun is one of the two times during the year when the noontime sun is directly overhead to residents of Honolulu and the Hawaiian Island of Oahu. The other time when the Oahu experienced a zenithal sun was in late May. [US Naval Observatory, Data Services]

Ocean in the News:

• Eye on the tropics -- In the eastern North Pacific basin, a tropical depression strengthened to Tropical Storm Calvin late last week over the waters of the Pacific approximately 350 miles southeast of Manzanillo, Mexico. By the end of the week, this tropical storm had intensified to the third hurricane of the 2011 eastern North Pacific hurricane season. Over the weekend, this hurricane weakened to a tropical storm as it traveled westward away from the Mexican coast. Additional information on Hurricane Calvin including satellite images appears on the NASA Hurricane Page.
• Major earthquake off Japan raised fear of tsunami -- A major magnitude 7.1 earthquake was reported approximately 130 miles off the northern coast of Japan on Sunday morning (local time). Tsunami advisories were issued following the earthquake, but these were canceled as small tsunamis, measuring between 10 and 20 centimeters were observed along the coast according to the Japan Meteorological Agency. [CNN]

• Survey of protected marine species along East Coast is underway -- Officials from NOAA, the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement and the US Fish and Wildlife Service recently announced that the nation's largest survey of protected marine species is now underway for its second year along the East Coast as part of the Atlantic Marine Assessment Program for Protected Species. [NOAA News]
• NOAA's new survey vessel heads for Arctic waters -- Late last week, the NOAA Ship Fairweather, a 231-foot survey vessel with state-of-the-art echo sounding technology, departed from Kodiak, AK on a mission to conduct hydrographic surveys of Alaska waters in the Arctic. [NOAA News]

• Studying pesticides over Chesapeake Bay -- Chemists with the US Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service collected and analyzed air and rain samples in Maryland and Delaware over three years to identify the factors that influence the persistence of pesticide levels in the Chesapeake Bay "airshed," a region across the nation's largest estuary sharing a common flow of air. They found traces of "legacy" pesticides that still linger even though they are no longer being used. [USDA Agricultural Research Service]
• An ice island floats off Labrador -- An image obtained in late June from the MODIS sensor on NASA's Aqua satellite shows a 97-square mile ice island floating in the Labrador Sea between Labrador and Greenland. This ice island had broken off the Petermann Glacier along the northwestern coast of Greenland last August. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• Seasonal changes in carbon storage by plants seen from space -- Images generated from data obtained by the MODIS instrument onboard NASA's Terra satellite show the net primary productivity of land and marine plants. The net primary productivity represents the difference in the amount of carbon that plants absorb due to photosynthesis and what they release because of respiration. The images were made in August 2010 during the height of the growing season in the Northern Hemisphere and in December 2010 during the Southern Hemisphere's growing season. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• Faster Arctic ice melt due to less snow and more rain -- A scientist from Australia's University of Melbourne reported that increased temperatures across the Arctic basin throughout the year has resulted in less formation of snow, which would decrease the protection of the ice cover and accelerate the rate of Arctic ice melt. [The Melbourne Newsroom]
• Warm ocean layers are undermining polar ice sheets -- Researchers from the University of Arizona, NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory and the National Center for Atmospheric Research have found that the warming of the ocean's subsurface layers should melt underwater portions of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets during this century at a rate faster than previously thought. They base their outlook upon the results generated from 19 state-of-the-art climate models. The researchers feel that this melting would increase the sea level more than already projected. [University of Arizona News]
• Gray whales may have changed their diets to survive the Ice Ages -- Paleontologists at the University of California, Berkeley, and Smithsonian Institution claim that gray whales may have survived numerous episodes of global warming and cooling over the last several million years by exploiting a diet that was more varied than what they have today. These researchers also found evidence that the populations of California gray whales along the Pacific Coast may have been between two to four times larger prior to arrival of humans. [UC Berkley News Center]
• 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.

• 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)
• 12 July 1844...Captain J.N. Taylor of the Royal Navy first demonstrated the fog horn. At the time, it was called a telephone - to mean far-signaling, thus an instrument like a fog-horn, used on ships, railway trains, etc., for signaling by loud sounds or notes. The 19 July 1844 Times (London) reported, "Yesterday week was a levee day at the Admiralty, and amongst the numerous models...was Captain J. N. Tayler's telephone instrument... The chief object of this powerful wind instrument is to convey signals during foggy weather. Also the Illustrated London News on 24 Aug. 1844 referred to "The Telephone; a Telegraphic Alarum. Amongst the many valuable inventions...that of the 'Telephone, or Marine Alarum and Signal Trumpet', by Captain J. N. Taylor." (Today in Science History)
• 12 July 1920...The Panama Canal was formally dedicated, having taken more than 30 years to overcome the enormous engineering challenges and complete at a cost of $347 million. The first ship had traveled through six years earlier when the Panama Canal opened to shipping on 15 Aug 1914. At that time, the world scarcely noticed the event since German troops were driving across Belgium toward Paris and the newspapers relegated the Panama story to their back pages; the greatest engineering project in the history of the world had been dwarfed by the totality of World War I. (Today in Science History)
• 12 July 1993...A magnitude 7.8 earthquake that was situated offshore of Hokkaido, Japan produced a tsunami that killed 202 people on the island of Okushiri. (Wikipedia)
• 13 July 1996...Heavy rains from the remnants of Hurricane Bertha caused roads to washout in the Camden, ME area. Two people were hurt when they drove into a 600-pound boulder that had fallen onto the roadway due to the heavy rain. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
• 15-16 July 1916...A dying South Atlantic Coast storm produced torrential rains in the southern Appalachian Mountains. Altapass, NC was drenched with 22.22 inches of rain, a 24-hour rainfall record for the Tarheel State, and at the time, a 24-hour record for the U.S. (The current 24-hour rainfall record for the US is 43 inches set 25-25 July 1979 at Alvin, TX). Flooding resulted in considerable damage, particularly to railroads. (David Ludlum) (Intellicast) (NCDC)
• 17 July 1858...The U.S. sloop Niagara departed Queenstown, Ireland to assist in laying the first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable. (Naval Historical Center)
• 17 July 1994...The Polar Sea departed from Victoria, BC on operation Arctic Ocean Section 1994 and became the first U.S. surface vessel to reach the North Pole. She then transited the Arctic Ocean back to her homeport in Seattle, WA. (USCG Historian's Office)
• 17 July 1998...A tsunami triggered by an undersea earthquake destroyed 10 villages in Papua, New Guinea killing an estimated 1500 people, leaving 2000 more unaccounted for and thousands more homeless. (Wikipedia)

Return to DataStreme Ocean Web page

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.