WEEKLY OCEAN NEWS

30 April -4 May 2012

DataStreme Ocean will return for Fall 2012 with new Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 27 August 2012. All the current online website products will continue to be available throughout the summer break period.

Item of Interest:

Between equinox and solstice -- Next Tuesday (1 May 2012) will be May Day, which had its origins as a great Celtic festival Beltane. This date is close to the traditional "cross quarter" day, roughly halfway between the vernal equinox (20 March 2012) and the summer solstice (20 June 2012). (Note that Saturday 5 May 2012 is closer to the halfway point between the equinox and solstice. EJH)
Public comments invited for new National Weather Service webpage -- NOAA's National Weather Service is currently seeking public comments on the design and contents of its newly designed web site. Anyone may provide comments for the next three weeks using the "preview" web site at http://preview.weather.gov/.
"Walking the dog" video used to visualize trend and variation in long-term temperatures -- Dr. James Brey, Director of the American Meteorological Society's Education Program forwarded the following:
"An effective way to explain the relationships between shorter term temperature averages, which to go up and down, with global temperatures which are trending upward is with this little video. The dog walking in this little video wanders around, up and down in the frame but always trends in the direction of his owner moving to the upper right. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0vj-0imOLw&feature=player_embedded#!.
Richard Alley, at the Tri-Agency PI meeting last week had another illustration which showed the fallacy of the 'out of context' claim by climate change deniers that global temperatures are actually falling. He picked about a half dozen dates from the record and related them to events in his own life. 'When I started kindergarten the temperature was falling.' (A short segment of a temperature graph, with the temperature decreasing was placed on a large graph with an x-y axis showing time and temp.) When I was 10 years old, I lived in such and such city and the temperature was falling. (A short segment of a temperature graph, with the temperature decreasing was placed a little higher on large graph.) "When I was 15 and won a science fair competition, the temperature was falling." (A short segment of a temperature graph, with the temperature decreasing was placed a little higher on large graph.). We'll you get the picture. By the time he had earned tenure and become a best selling author the line segments were high on the graph but all were falling. Filling in the gaps showed times of rise, of course, and the overall trend was a dramatic increase in temperature with an unmistakable upward trend."

Ocean in the News:

Eye on the tropics -- Although the official hurricane season is about to begin in the Northern Hemisphere during this next month, no organized tropical cyclones were found across any of the globe's ocean basins during the last week.
Final management plan released for a Gulf of Mexico marine sanctuary -- Officials with NOAA's Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary recently released the final management plan, regulations and environmental assessment for this sanctuary that is located in the waters of the northwestern Gulf of Mexico off the coasts of Texas and Louisiana. This plan also includes a new rule prohibiting killing, injuring, touching or disturbing whale sharks and rays. [NOAA News]
Hawaiian students participate in the "Adopt a Drifter" Program -- At the start of last week, students from the Hawaiian island of Maui helped deploy a drifting instrumented buoy or “drifter” in the waters of the Pacific off Maui. This deployment was one of six “Adopt a Drifter Program” deployments of drifters that NOAA coordinated at several locations along the coasts of the Atlantic, Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico as part of its celebration of Earth Day. The ”Adopt a Drifter” program allows teachers and students at the middle school and high school level to help deploy the drifters and then track their adopted drifter through classroom activities. [NOAA News]
Increases in sighting of Asian tiger shrimp raise concerns of an invasion -- Motivated by the recent rise in the sighting of non-native Asian tiger shrimp in the nation's waters along the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts, researchers from NOAA and the US Geological Survey along with their colleagues from state agencies in coastal states from North Carolina to Texas have been investigating the cause of the rise in these Asian tiger shrimp. These shrimp were originally from Indo-Pacific, Asian and Australian waters, and the potential consequence for native fish in the nation's coastal waters. [NOAA News]
Research aircraft joins Operation IceBridge campaign --The NASA Langley Research Center's newly acquired HU-25C research airplane has recently joined the agency's P-3B aircraft in Greenland to help collect environmental data and survey the planet's polar ice as part of NASA's 2012 Operation IceBridge campaign. This year's campaign is part of a multi-year mission to study the rapidly changing features of the ice sheets, ice shelves and sea ice in the Arctic and in Antarctica. A scanning laser altimeter called LVIS (Land, Vegetation, and Ice Sensor) has been mounted on the HU-25C aircraft to collect data on Arctic surface topography. [NASA Langley Research Center]
Most of Antarctic ice loss due to warm ocean currents -- Using data collected by the sensors onboard NASA's Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) along with various numerical models, an international team of scientists have determined that warm ocean currents attacking the underside of ice shelves are the dominant cause of recent ice loss from Antarctica. [NASA]
Winds pushing plastic trash deeper into the ocean --An oceanographer at the University of Washington had determined that the plastic debris floating on the surface of the Pacific Ocean can be pushed several feet downward into the ocean by winds. Consequently, episodes with strong winds could provide an underestimate of the amount of plastic trash floating on the oceans by factors ranging from 2.5 to 27, depending upon wind speed. [University of Washington News]
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:

30 April 1492...Spain gave Christopher Columbus his commission of exploration. (Wikipedia)
30 April 1894...An Antarctic iceberg fragment was sighted at a latitude comparable to Rio de Janeiro. Reported by the ship Dochra, this sighting remains the nearest to the equator that an iceberg has been seen. (Today in Science History)
30 April 1991...Southeast Bangladesh was devastated by a tropical cyclone with sustained winds of approximately 150 mph during the early morning. A 20-foot storm surge inundated offshore islands south of Chittagong, taking water from the Bay of Bengal inland for miles. This cyclone resulted in up to 200,000 deaths and $1.4 billion damage. (Accord Weather Guide Calendar)
1 May 1683...A patent was awarded in England for the extraction of salt from seawater. (Today in Science History)
1 May 1883...At Cape Lookout, NC, a storm tide swept over the island drowning sheep and cattle. (Intellicast)
1 May 1921...The first radio fog signals in the United States were placed in commission on Ambrose Lightship, Fire Island Lightship, and Sea Girt Light Station, NJ. These signals installed by the US Lighthouse Service were meant to guide ships approaching New York Harbor. (USCG Historian's Office)
1 May 1936...The Whaling Treaty Act outlawed the taking of right whales or calves of any whale. This law was enforced by the Coast Guard. (USCG Historian's Office)
2 May 1775...Benjamin Franklin completed the first scientific study of the Gulf Stream. His observations began in 1769 when as deputy postmaster of the British Colonies he found ships took two weeks longer to bring mail from England than was required in the opposite direction. Thus, Franklin became the first to chart the Gulf Stream. (Today in Science History)
2 May 1880...The first U.S. steamboat to successfully employ electric lights was the Columbia, a 309-ft long vessel which operated between San Francisco, CA and Portland, OR. An "A" type dynamo was placed in operation to illuminate the passenger rooms and main salons. (Today in Science History)
2 May 1932...After a Convention with Canada, the Northern Pacific Halibut Act re-enacted the Act of 7 June 1924 and made it unlawful to catch halibut between 1 November and 15 February of each year in territorial waters of United States and Canada, as well as on the high seas, extending westerly from there, including the Bering Sea. The Coast Guard enforced this act. (USCG Historian's Office)
2-3 May 1998...Ocean swells from storms in the South Pacific caused surf heights of 7 to 9 feet, with sets to 12 feet along the southern California coast. A man fishing on rocks at Rancho Palos Verdes, CA was swept away. (Accord Weather Guide Calendar)
3 May 1494...The explorer Christopher Columbus sighted the island of Jamaica in the West Indies. He named the island Santa Gloria. On the following day, he landed on Jamaica. (Library of Congress)
3 May 1761...Large tornadoes swept the Charleston, SC harbor when a British Fleet of 40 sails was at anchor. It raised a wave 12 feet high, leaving many vessels on their beam-ends. Four people drowned. (Intellicast)
4 May 1869...The first U.S. patent for an offshore oil-drill rig was issued to T.F. Rowland for his "submarine drilling apparatus" (No. 89,794). (Today in Science History)
4 May 1904...Construction began on the Panama Canal. (Wikipedia)
4 May 1910...Congress required every passenger ship or other ship carrying 50 persons or more, leaving any port of United States to be equipped with radio (100-mi radius) and a qualified operator. (USCG Historian's Office)
5 May 1990...A strong Pacific cold front moving rapidly inland caused weather conditions at the east end of the Strait of Juan de Fuca in Washington State to quickly change from sunny and calm to westerly winds of 60 mph and ten-foot waves. Three recreational fishing boats capsized in heavy seas off Port Angeles resulting in five deaths. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
6 May 1994...The rail tunnel under the English Channel, or "Chunnel," that connects Folkestone, England, with Sangatte, France was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and French President Mitterrand. (The History Channel)