WEEKLY OCEAN NEWS

18-22 June 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.

Items of Interest:

HAPPY SUMMER SOLSTICE! The summer solstice will occur early Wednesday evening (officially, 20 June 2012 at 2309 Z, or 7:09 PM EDT, 6:09 PM CDT, etc.). At that time, the earth's spin axis is oriented such that the sun appears to be the farthest north in the local sky of most earth-bound observers. While most of us consider this event to be the start of astronomical summer, the British call the day the "Midsummer Day", as the apparent sun will begin its southward descent again. For essentially all locations in the northern hemisphere, daylight today will be the longest and the night will be the shortest of the year. Starting Thursday, the length of darkness will begin to increase as we head toward the winter solstice on 21 December 2012 at 1112 Z. However, because the sun is not as perfect a time-keeper as a clock, the latest sunsets of the year at many mid-latitude locations will continue through about the first week of July -- a consequence of the earth being near aphelion (on 5 July 2012) and the apparent sun moving across the sky well to the north of the celestial equator.
World Hydrography Day celebration -- The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) will celebrate its annual World Hydrography Day on Thursday 21 June 2012, the 91st anniversary date on which the IHO was created in 1921. The theme for this year's celebration is "International Hydrographic Cooperation - Supporting safe navigation, " which is designed to provide member states with the opportunity to promote their involvement in international activities involving hydrography that promote cooperation between these states. [International Federation of Hydrographic Societies]
Fishing and photo contest launched to help reconnect youth to the "Great Outdoors" -- One week ago, NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries and the Sportfishing Conservancy have partnered to launch a free summer-long fishing and photo contest at all of NOAA's National Marine Sanctuaries. This contest is designed to encourage families and youth to experience the nation's "Great Outdoors." [NOAA News]
Hurricane expert approaches the century mark -- Dr. Robert H. Simpson, one of the first directors of NOAA's National Hurricane Center and a co-originator of the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale, was recently interviewed for an article in USA Today as his 100th birthday approaches this November. Dr. Simpson discussed the history of the hurricane scale that he developed with the late Herbert Saffir, a wind engineer, and how it has been used in hurricane forecasting. [USA Today]
NOAA administrator addresses National Climate Assessment meeting -- Dr. Jane Lubchenco addressed the meeting of lead authors and scientists for the National Climate Assessment early last week in Washington, DC. Her opening remarks are available. [NOAA News]
EPA climate change website overhauled -- The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently overhauled its climate change website, making it more user friendly. The site contains information of the science of climate change, what the public can do and what EPA is doing to adapt to the effects of changing climate. [http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/]

Ocean in the News:

Eye on the Tropics -- Tropical cyclone activity was limited to the tropical North Pacific this past week:
In the eastern North Pacific basin, a tropical depression intensified to become Tropical Storm Carlotta off the Central American coasts of Guatemala and El Salvador late in the week. By last Friday, Carlotta became the second hurricane of the 2012 hurricane season in the eastern North Pacific as it traveled toward the northwest over the waters off the southwestern coast of Mexico. During the late afternoon and early evening, this hurricane had intensified to become a category 2 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale as it approached the Mexican coast. Carlotta made landfall along the coast near Puerto Escondido, Mexico on Friday evening, weakening to a tropical storm and then a tropical depression on Saturday as it moved across western Mexico near Acapulco. At least two people were killed by the strong winds and the torrential rain. For additional information and satellite imagery concerning Hurricane Carlotta, see the NASA Hurricane Page
In the western North Pacific basin, a tropical depression that intensified to become Tropical Storm Guchol formed at the start of the week south of Guam. This system intensified to become a typhoon as it traveled westward toward the waters of the Philippine Sea east of the Philippines. Turning toward the north-northwest Guchol intensified to become a super typhoon, reaching category 4 typhoon status on the Saffir-Simpson Scale as maximum sustained surface winds reached 150 mph. The projected track would take the storm to the north during the weekend in a direction toward Okinawa and the Japanese Archipelago. Consult the NASA Hurricane Page for satellite images and additional information on Super Typhoon Guchol.
High-tech coastal mapping ship commissioned -- NOAA recently commissioned NOAA Ship Ferdinand R. Hassler, a 124-foot long state-of-the-art coastal mapping vessel that has a primary mission of detecting and monitoring changes to the sea floor, primarily along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, Caribbean Sea and Great Lakes in support of the NOAA Office of Coast Survey's nautical charting mission. [NOAA News]
Emergency beacon owners urged to check their registration -- Officials with NOAA's Search and Rescue Satellite-Aided Tracking System (COSPAS-SARSAT) are urging all boaters, campers and hikers who are owners of emergency beacons to check the registration and identification numbers of their devices before venturing out on their excursions this summer. All emergency locator beacons must be registered with NOAA by law. SARSAT is a high-tech system that uses a network of satellites, including those from NOAA, to quickly detect and locate distress signals from emergency beacons onboard aircraft, boats and from handheld personal locator beacons. [NOAA News]
Review of global weather and climate for May 2012 -- Scientists at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center report that the recently concluded month of May was the second warmest May since global climate records began in 1880. They based their report on preliminary calculations of the combined global land and ocean surface temperature for May 2012, which tied the temperature for May 2010. The worldwide average land surface temperature for this past May was the all-time highest for May since 1880, while the monthly global ocean surface temperature was the tenth highest on record, due to the onset of ENSO (El Niño-Southern Oscillation)-neutral conditions. Furthermore, the combined global land and ocean surface temperature was the seventh highest for the last three months (March through May 2012), considered meteorological spring in the Northern Hemisphere (fall in the Southern Hemisphere).
Snow cover extent across the Northern Hemisphere during May was the second smallest in the 46-year period of record. Arctic sea ice was also the 12th smallest for any May since satellite records began in 1979. On the other hand, the sea ice around Antarctica was above average, resulting in the fifteen largest extent for any May on record. [ NOAA/NCDC State of the Climate]
Aquarius, the salt monitoring satellite instrument, marks first anniversary -- During the last week, NASA scientists and engineers noted the first anniversary of the successful launch of the Aquarius instrument onboard the Argentine Space Agency's Satélite de Aplicaciones Científicas (SAC-D) observatory spacecraft. Aquarius, which is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, was designed to monitor changes in the salinity (or amount of saltiness) of the global ocean's top layer from space. Long-term monitoring of the global salinity patterns by this instrument should be able to increase understanding of the planetary water cycle and variations in climate. A new interactive feature http://climate.nasa.gov/Aquarius/index.cfm is available on NASA's Global Climate Change website that provides more information on the Aquarius mission and its measurements. [NASA JPL]
Sounds from undersea volcanic eruption could be used for prediction of future activity -- A geologist with Oregon State University and the NOAA Cooperative Institute for Marine Resource Studies along with his colleagues from other universities have found that they could correctly forecast an eruption of a recent underwater volcano off the Oregon coast from the seismic signals detected by hydrophones (underwater microphones) hours before the eruption. [NOAA Research]
Thin ice could signal ice-free North-East Passage -- Ice physicists at Germany's Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research are predicting that the North-East Passage, the sea route from the Atlantic to the Pacific running along the northern coast of Russia, should be relatively ice-free this summer. They made their prediction after analyzing ice thickness in the Laptev Sea off Siberia obtained from the European Space Agency's SMOS (Soil Moisture Ocean Salinity) satellite and from flights. Their analysis showed the presence of thin ice that would lead to early and large-scale summer melt. [Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research]
Current projections of sea level rise could underestimate habitat loss from climate change -- Researchers from Austria's University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna and Denmark's Aarhus University warn that secondary and hidden impacts on humans and global diversity can occur from projected sea level rises in this century that would be beyond the direct primary consequences due to flooding and inundation, resulting a serious underestimation of the consequences of global climate change. They base their warning upon their examination of the ecological consequences of projected sea level rise on habitat availability on at least 1200 islands in the Southeast Asian and Pacific region. [University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna]
Large uncertainties found in the global water budget -- Researchers from Germany's Karlsruhe Institute of Technology report finding large uncertainties in global water budget estimates from their analysis of several global climate models. They warn that the uncertainties are increasing as the number of measuring stations in the worldwide network is decreasing. [Karlsruhe 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.

Historical Events:

18 June 1903...Alaska's first coastal lighthouse, Scotch Cap Lighthouse, was lit. This light, which was also the first major lighthouse built by the U.S. outside the 48 coterminous states, was located near the west end of Unimak Island on the Pacific side of Unimak Pass, the main passage through the Aleutian Islands into the Bering Sea. This light in an octagonal wooden tower was replaced by a concrete lighthouse in 1940, which was destroyed by a tsunami in 1946, with the loss of the five crewmen stationed there. (USCG Historian's Office)
18 June 1875...A severe coastal storm (or possible hurricane) struck the Atlantic coast from Cape Cod to Nova Scotia. Eastport, ME reported wind gusts to 57 mph. (David Ludlum)
19 June 240 BC...On the summer solstice, Eratosthenes estimated the circumference of the Earth using two sticks.
19-26 June 1972...Hurricane Agnes (a category 1 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale) moved onshore along the Florida Panhandle near Cape San Blas and Apalachicola with wind gusts to 80 mph, and eventually exited Maine on the 26^th. This hurricane moved northeast and joined with an upper level disturbance, producing from 10 to 20 inches of rain along its path along the Eastern Seaboard. In the Middle Susquehanna Valley of Pennsylvania, 24 hour rainfall amounts were generally 8 to 12 inches, with up to 19 inches in extreme southwestern Schuylkill County. At Wilkes-Barre, PA the dike was breached destroying much of the town. Agnes was responsible for 125 deaths, mainly due to flooding from North Carolina to New York State, and total damage was estimated at more than $3 billion. Torrential rains from Hurricane Agnes resulted in one of the greatest natural disasters in U.S. history. Agnes caused more damage than all other tropical cyclones in the previous six years combined (which included Celia and Camille). (David Ludlum) (The Weather Channel)
20 June 1597...Willem Barents, the Dutch explorer who tried to search for the Northeast Passage, died in the Arctic off the archipelago of Novaya Zemlya when his ship became trapped in ice. (Wikipedia)
20 June 1819...The 320-ton paddle-wheel SS Savannah arrived in Liverpool, England to become the first steamship to cross the Atlantic, having left the port of Savannah, GA on 22 May. (InfoPlease Daily Almanac)
20 June 1940...The first successful west to east navigation of the Northwest Passage began at Vancouver, BC. (Wikipedia)
21 June 1791...A hurricane, called El Temporal de Barreto - the storm of Barreto, generated a monster ocean wave that carried off the coffin of a rich, but hated, count as he lay in state in his mansion near Havana, Cuba. (The Weather Doctor)
21 June 1886...A destructive hurricane hit the Apalachicola-Tallahassee area of Florida on the summer solstice. Extensive damage was done in Florida and throughout the southeast by this storm, which was the first hurricane of the year. Damage was due mainly to extremely high tides. (Intellicast)
21 June 1961...The first practical plant for the conversion of seawater to drinking water at Freeport, TX was dedicated when President John Kennedy pressed a switch installed in his Washington, DC office. The plant was capable of producing about a million gallons of water a day, supplying fresh water to Freeport at a cost of about $1.25 per thousand gallons. The large-scale evaporation method used then has now been replaced by reverse osmosis as special polymers are now used as filtering membranes. (Today in Science History)
22 June 1675...The Royal Greenwich Observatory was created by Royal Warrant in England by Charles II, with its practical astronomy serving as its primary mission, including navigation, timekeeping and the determination of star positions. In 1767 the observatory began publishing The Nautical Almanac, which established the longitude of Greenwich as a baseline for time calculations. The almanac's popularity among navigators led in part to the adoption (1884) of the Greenwich meridian as the Earth's prime meridian (0 degrees longitude) and the international time zones. (Today in Science History)
22 June 1948...Congress enacted Public Law 738, which authorized the operation of floating ocean stations for the purpose of providing search and rescue communication and air-navigation facilities, and meteorological services in such ocean areas as are regularly traversed by aircraft of the United States. (USCG Historian's Office)
23 June 1501...The Portuguese navigator, Pedro Alvares Cabral, returned to Portugal after a voyage during which he claimed Brazil for Portugal and then journeyed to India in search of pepper and spices. (Wikipedia)
23 June 1611...English navigator Henry Hudson was set adrift along with his son and seven loyal crew members in an open boat in Hudson Bay by mutineers on his ship Discovery; they were never seen again. He was on his fourth voyage and he had become famous for attempting to find a route from Europe to Asia via the Arctic Ocean. (Wikipedia)
23 June 1716...The Province of Massachusetts authorized erection of first lighthouse in America on Great Brewster Island, Boston Harbor. (USCG Historian's Office)
23 June 1938...The first "oceanarium" opened at Marineland in St. Augustine, FL. (Today in Science History)
24 June 1497...The Italian navigator and explorer Giovanni (John) Cabot, sailing in the service of England, landed in North America on what is now Newfoundland, claiming the continent for England. (Wikipedia)