WEEKLY OCEAN NEWS

3-7 June 2013

DataStreme Ocean will return for Fall 2013 with new Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 2 September 2013. All the current online website products will continue to be available throughout the summer break period.

Items of Interest:

"Break the Grip of the Rip®" -- NOAA, the United States Lifesaving Association and the National Park Service have designated this upcoming week of 2-8 June 2013 as national Rip Current Awareness Week. Using the theme, Break the Grip of the Rip®, efforts are meant to heighten public awareness of rip currents at surf beaches that claim the lives of as many as 100 people in the United States annually. [NWS Rip Current Safety]
World Environment Day -- This Wednesday, 5 June 2013, is World Environment Day, a day that has been created 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. This year's theme is " Think.Eat.Save," a campaign to reduce food waste and food loss that also encourages people to reduce their "foodprint." [World Environment Day]
World Ocean Day to be celebrated -- World Ocean Day or a "Celebration of the Sea" will be celebrated Saturday, 8 June 2013 in an effort to increase public awareness and to foster public involvement in the management of the ocean and its resources. Although this date was created at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, it had not been officially recognized by the United Nations until 2009. This year's theme is Together we have the power to protect the ocean! A partial listing is provided for events across the US and other nations that will celebrate World Ocean Day. [The Ocean Project]
Science teachers participate in NASA's Arctic research mission -- Three teachers were provided the opportunity to be a part of the research team that was conducting the 2013 Arctic campaign of NASA's Operation IceBridge. These science teachers were from Libertyville, IL near Chicago, from Aalborg, Denmark and from Sisimiut, Greenland and were selected by the efforts of PolarTREC (Teachers and Researchers Exploring and Collaborating) along with US Embassy in Copenhagen, Denmark and the education ministries in Denmark and Greenland. Operation IceBridge is a six-year NASA mission that is designed to produce a three-dimensional view of Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets, ice shelves and sea ice. Data collected by aircraft during IceBridge will help bridge the gap in polar observations between NASA's Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat), which stopped supplying data in 2009 and ICESat-2 planned for launch by early 2016. [NASA IceBridge-Arctic 2013]
Early Sunrise -- Within the next week, many locations in the continental United States will experienced the date of earliest sunrise. While the longest daylight at each locale in the Northern Hemisphere will occur in over two weeks on the summer solstice (early on Thursday, 20 June 2013), the occurrence of earliest local sunrise occurs before this date because the apparent sun now "leads" the clock time. This time discrepancy, which now amounts to approximately 2 minutes, occurs because of a combination of factors that result from the earth moving more slowly in its elliptical orbit because the earth presently is near its farthest point from the sun (aphelion on the morning of 5 July 2013) and the effect of the tilt of the earth's spin axis (near the summer solstice). For reference, the latest sunsets of the year will occur later in June as the apparent sun slows and by the first week of July "lags" clock time by about 4 minutes.

Ocean in the News:

Eye on the tropics-- Only one organized tropical cyclone was found across the tropical ocean basins last week. Hurricane Barbara, the second named tropical cyclone of the 2013 hurricane season in the eastern North Pacific basin, formed from a low pressure system that was located several hundred miles off the southwestern coast of Mexico. This low quickly became a tropical depression, then a tropical storm and finally a minimal hurricane by midweek. Moving to the northeast, Hurricane Barbara made landfall along the coast of southwestern Mexico as a weak category 1 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale. After making landfall, Barbara quickly weakened to a tropical storm and then a tropical depression as it traveled across the rugged terrain of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. The tropical depression that had been former Hurricane Barbara became a remnant low as it emerged over the Bay of Campeche, a part of the Gulf of Mexico in the North Atlantic Basin. Additional information and satellite imagery on Hurricane Barbara are available on the NASA Hurricane Page.
New maps to highlight risk of storm surge from tropical cyclones -- NOAA's National Hurricane Center will post color-coded maps that would highlight the highest risk of a storm surge along the nation's Atlantic and Gulf Coasts this hurricane season. These easy-to-understand maps would alert all interests along the section of the coast where a storm surge is possible from an impending tropical cyclone. The National Hurricane Center plans to have more detailed storm surge maps available for the Internet during the 2014 season. [AP ]
Another hurricane forecast released -- During the last week, scientists at Florida State University Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies (COAPS) released their Atlantic hurricane forecast for 2013. This forecast, which is the fifth annual hurricane forecast produced by COAPS, is base on a computer model based upon 50 individual seasonal forecasts using sea surface temperatures predicted by an upgraded NOAA climate model. This COAPS forecast calls for a 70 percent probability of 12 to 17 named tropical cyclones (tropical storms and hurricanes), with five to ten of these reaching hurricane strength. The mean forecast is for 15 named storms and eight hurricanes. They also calculated an average accumulated cyclone energy of 135, which represents a measure of the strength and duration of storms accumulated during the season. Their forecast is nearly identical to the 1995-2010 average of 14 named tropical cyclones and eight hurricanes, which reflects the recent 15-year increase in tropical cyclone activity in the North Atlantic Basin. Comparison is invited to the 2013 seasonal forecast made by the NOAA's Climate Prediction Center, which calls for 13 to 20 named tropical cyclones and seven to eleven hurricanes. [Florida State University]
Hurricane mission may target Cape Verde hurricanes this season -- Scientists involved with NASA's Hurricane & Severe Storm Sentinel (HS3) mission are planning to investigate tropical cyclones forming over the tropical North Atlantic in the vicinity of the Cape Verde Islands during this upcoming 2013 hurricane season. The plan is to use NASA's unmanned Global Hawk aircraft to gather data from the Cape Verde-type hurricanes that often form in the eastern tropical North Atlantic beginning in August. [NASA H3S Hurricane Mission]
The two Global Hawk aircraft have a variety of high-tech sensors that will measure temperature, water vapor and precipitation from the top of storms to the surface. [NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory]
Location is key to building an oyster reef -- The largest oyster restoration project in Chesapeake Bay is currently underway along Harris Creek, a tributary for the Bay on Maryland's Eastern Shore. This restoration project represents a collaborative effort involving NOAA Fisheries, the US Army Corps of Engineers, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, the University of Maryland and the Oyster Recovery Project. The parti pants are attempting to make the site along Harris Creek home to a self-sustaining population of Crassostrea virginica, a species of oyster that is currently at one percent of its historic population. They hope that the oysters would help improve the water quality of Chesapeake Bay, the nation's largest estuary that receives runoff from six states and the District of Columbia. [NOAA Fisheries]
The many colors of San Francisco Bay -- Three images made from data collected by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) onboard the newly renamed Landsat 8 spacecraft shows the waters of California's San Francisco Bay in different colors. These images were produced using different spectral bands of light and show where fresh water and sediment from rivers meet the Bay's salt water that came in from the ocean. The instruments onboard Landsat 8 have better spatial resolution than most ocean-sensing instruments.[NASA Earth Observatory]
GOES-13 may return to service -- Engineers who have been attempting to revive the malfunctioning GOES-13 satellite think that this NOAA geosynchronous satellite could return to operational status during this upcoming week. An unexplained malfunction caused the "attitude disturbance" in which the "GOES-East" spacecraft changed its orientation with respect to earth on 22 May 2013, which forcing an automatic shutdown in the spacecraft sensors used to collect environmental data from Earth. A backup satellite, GOES-14 is being used to monitor the weather across eastern sections of the Americas and the western Atlantic basin. [Climate Central]
Endangered sea turtle feeding grounds found along the Gulf Coast -- A recently released National Park Service and US Geological Survey study reports the discovery of feeding grounds along the Gulf Coast that are favored by the endangered Kemp's ridley sea turtles despite the perils associated with oil spills, oxygen depletion and extensive commercial fishing. The turtles were tracked using 13 years of satellite-tracking data. [USGS Newsroom]
Changing climate could threaten most of California's native fish -- Researchers from the University of California, Davis warn that approximately 82 percent of the fish found native in California waters would become extinct within the next century if changes in climate continue at current trends. These native fish, which would include salmon and other freshwater fish, would be replaced by other non-native species. [University of California, Davis News and Information]
Black Sea plankton bloom seen from space --A digital photograph taken in early May by an astronaut on the International Space Station shows the light colored swirls in the dark blue waters of Russia's Black Sea that represent a large bloom of phytoplankton being carried by near-surface currents. [NASA Earth Observatory]
Levels of Upper Great Lakes make rapid rise -- The levels of Lakes Superior, Michigan and Huron have increased dramatically during the just-concluded month of May 2013, much to the relief of the Great Lakes shipping industry and to those who live along these upper Lakes. During the month, the level of Lake Superior increased by nine inches, which was the second largest increase for any month since comprehensive lake level measurements began in 1918. After reaching near record low levels in late winter, the level of Lakes Huron and Michigan have risen five inches in May, compared with the normal three-inch rise in May. Several factors appear to have contributed to the rapid increases, including a cold spring with snow that resulted in a delayed runoff. A word of caution: The lake levels still remain below long-term normals at the start of June. [Duluth News Tribune]
"Arctic amplification" visualized -- A global map image portrays the changes in global surface temperature averaged over the ten-year interval for 2000 through 2009, revealing the largest temperature changes in the Arctic. The map, which was generated by observed surface temperature data supplied by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies depicts the world-wide distribution of surface temperature anomalies that represent the difference between the 2009-2009 temperatures and the corresponding long-term average temperatures taken over the 30-year span running from 1951 to 1980. Although globally averaged temperatures for the recent decade were 0.6 Celsius degrees higher than the earlier 30-year interval, the 2000-2009 temperatures across the Arctic were approximately 2 Celsius degrees above the earlier long-term average. These observed increases in Arctic temperatures that nearly doubled the changes in midlatitudes appear to confirm the term "Arctic amplification" used by climate scientists to describe the larger temperature changes in the Arctic than elsewhere because of a variety of feedback mechanisms and other factors. [NASA Earth Observatory]
Arctic ocean current found to continue flowing during last Ice Age -- Researchers from Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences claim that despite the thick ice covering the Arctic Ocean during the last Ice Age, deep ocean currents continued to feed the North Atlantic Ocean and help drive global ocean currents. These researchers reconstructed the Arctic Ocean circulation over the last 35,000 years from radioactive trace elements including the ratios of thorium and protactinium buried in sediment found on the Arctic seafloor. Flushing rates in the Arctic did not appear to diminish during the Ice Age as originally thought. [The Earth Institute Columbia University]
New rhythmic wind pattern found that affects El Niño events -- Researchers at the University of Hawaii at Manoa Meteorology Department and the International Pacific Research Center have discovered an unusual wind pattern straddling the equatorial Pacific basin that has a periodicity of 15 months. Using numerical atmospheric models, they found that this wind pattern originates from El Niño evenings and the seasonal cyclone of temperatures in the western tropical Pacific warm pool. They believe that this wind pattern is responsible for explaining why El Niño events appear to be tied to the annual cycle, with El Niño events typically appearing near Christmas in December and ending quickly between February and April. [Science Daily]
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:

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)
6 June 1882...More than 100,000 inhabitants of Bombay, India were killed as a tropical cyclone that developed over the Arabian Sea pushed huge waves into the harbor. (Wikipedia)
7 June 1914...The first vessel, the Alliance, passed through the Panama Canal. The 51-mile long canal, which links the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans across the isthmus of Panama, was officially opened on 15 August 1914. (Today in Science History) (Wikipedia)
7 June 1924...The Oil Pollution Act was passed. It was enforced by the Coast Guard.
Protection of halibut in the North Pacific Ocean was placed under Bureau of Fisheries (Coast Guard- enforced since 1926). (USCG Historian's Office)
7 June 1972...Richmond, VA experienced its worst flood of record as rains from Hurricane Agnes pushed the water level at the city locks to a height of 36.5 feet, easily topping the previous record of thirty feet set in 1771. (The Weather Channel)
7-10 June 2001...Tropical Storm Allison made landfall along the Texas Gulf Coast near Galveston early on the 6^th and drifted northward before becoming stationary as a depression later in the day near Lufkin. Later, it began to drift back southward, moving offshore over the Gulf late on the 9^th at nearly the same place as it had made landfall. Allison caused disastrous flooding across the Upper Texas Gulf Coast, especially in the Houston area where a storm total of 36.99 inches fell at Port Houston. Twenty-three people lost their lives in Texas. Damage in the region amounted to $5 billion, which included 45,000 homes, 70,000 vehicles and 2000 businesses. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
8 June 1937...Observation of the total eclipse of the sun was made by a U.S. Navy detachment commanded by Captain J. F. Hellweg, USN, which was participating in the National Geographic Society - United States Navy Eclipse Expedition at Canton Island in the Phoenix Islands, Pacific Ocean. USS Avocet was assigned to this expedition. (Naval Historical Center)
8-9 June 1990...The Norwegian tanker Mega Borg released 5.1 million gallons of oil some 60 nautical miles south-southeast of Galveston, TX, the result of an explosion and subsequent fire in the pump room. Two crew members were killed. Coast Guard units fought the resulting fires and recovered spilled oil. (Information Please) (USCG Historian's Office)
8 June 1992...The first World Ocean Day was celebrated, coinciding with the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. (Wikipedia)
8 June 1937...Observation of the total eclipse of the sun was made by a U.S. Navy detachment commanded by Captain J. F. Hellweg, USN, which was participating in the National Geographic Society - United States Navy Eclipse Expedition at Canton Island in the Phoenix Islands, Pacific Ocean. USS Avocet was assigned to this expedition. (Naval Historical Center)
8-9 June 1990...The Norwegian tanker Mega Borg released 5.1 million gallons of oil some 60 nautical miles south-southeast of Galveston, TX, the result of an explosion and subsequent fire in the pump room. Two crew members were killed. Coast Guard units fought the resulting fires and recovered spilled oil. (Information Please) (USCG Historian's Office)
8 June 1992...The first World Ocean Day was celebrated, coinciding with the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. (Wikipedia)
9 June 1534...The French navigator Jacques Cartier became the first European explorer to discover the river that he named the St. Lawrence in present-day Quebec, Canada. (The History Channel)
9 June 1966...Hurricane Alma made landfall over the eastern Florida Panhandle near Alligator Point during the evening-- the earliest land-falling hurricane on the U.S. mainland on record. Peak sustained winds were near 90 mph. Highest winds reached 125 mph and lowest pressure 970.2 millibars (28.65 inches) were reported at the Dry Tortugas on the 8th. (Intellicast) (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
9 June 1990...San Diego, CA set a new record rainfall amount on this date, as 0.38 inches of rain fell breaking the old record of 0.13 inches established in 1892. Moisture from the remains of Hurricane Boris was responsible for this rare rain event. (Intellicast)