WEEKLY OCEAN NEWS

17-21 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:

HAPPY SUMMER SOLSTICE! The summer solstice will occur early Friday morning (officially, 21 June 2012 at 1051 Z, or 6:51 AM EDT, 5:51 AM 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 Saturday, the length of darkness will begin to increase as we head toward the winter solstice on 21 December 2013 at 2303 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 (during the evening of 3 July 2013) 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 Friday, 21 June 2013, the 92nd-anniversary date on which the IHO was created in 1921. The theme for this year's celebration is "Hydrography -- underpinning the Blue Economy." This year's theme was selected because hydrographic expertise, which involves numerous disciplines including the weather, ocean and climate sciences, is needed to help maintain the so-called "global blue economy." [International Federation of Hydrographic Societies]
GOES-13 returns to service after "micrometeoroid" strike -- During the last week NOAA, NASA, Boeing and Exelis engineers were able to return the GOES-13 satellite to service after it shut down on 22 May following an apparent hit by a "micrometeoroid" or possibly "space junk." The GOES-13 satellite has been identified as GOES-East as it provides primary satellite coverage of the eastern three-quarters of the North American continent and western North Atlantic. The GOES-West satellite and a backup satellite were used to provide nearly continuous supply of weather data and imagery over the eastern U.S. and the Atlantic Ocean. [NOAA Environmental Visualization Laboratory][Climate Central] [Editor's Note: The return of GOES-13 has meant the return of the familiar satellite images to the AMS Education websites. EJH]

Ocean in the News:

Eye on the Tropics -- Tropical cyclone activity was limited to the western tropical North Pacific this past week. Tropical Storm Yagi continued to travel to the northeast across the waters of the North Pacific to the south of Japan during the first several days of this week. By midweek, Tropical Storm Yagi turned to the east and weakened to a tropical depression as it was 250 miles south of Yokosuka, Japan. For additional information and satellite imagery concerning Tropical Storm Yagi, see the NASA Hurricane Page
Hurricane mission to study Saharan dust in 2013 -- Officials with NASA's 2013 Hurricane and Severe Storms Sentinel (HS3) mission announced that they will continue investigating the role of Saharan dust on the development of tropical cyclones over the Atlantic Ocean. This year's HS3 campaign is continue the efforts of collecting dust layer data in 2012 in an attempt to understand whether Saharan dust and its associated warm and dry air, known as the Saharan Air Layer (SAL) favors or suppresses development of Atlantic tropical cyclones. [NASA H3 Hurricane Mission]
Expansion of the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary proposed -- NOAA officials recently released a draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) and proposed rule for public comment that would expand the area of the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary in the waters of Lake Huron off Lower Michigan by an order of magnitude. [NOAA News]
Critical coastal habitat in Puerto Rico is purchased through grant -- A $1 million grant has allowed NOAA's Coastal and Estuarine Land Conservation Program helped acquire more than 87 acres of critical coastal habitat in Puerto Rico that expands the Commonwealth's Reserva Natural Corredor Ecológico del Noreste (Northeast Ecological Corridor Reserve). This acquisition will serve to protect a wetlands, mangroves and beaches that are also nesting grounds for endangered sea turtles. [NOAA News]
Critical Hudson River estuarine habitat gets protection -- NOAA's Coastal and Estuarine Land Conservation Program recently announced that a $800,000 grant was being made available to help protect over 300 acres of critical wetlands along New York State's Hudson River as a protected wildlife habitat, open to the public for passive recreational use. The acquisition of these wetlands will help conserve and permanently protect key spawning and nursery habitat for the Hudson River's migratory fish that include blueback herring, alewife, American shad, American eel, striped bass, and the federally endangered short-nosed sturgeon. In addition, 64 acres of globally rare freshwater tidal wetlands will be protected.[NOAA News]
Antarctic ice shelf loss appears driven mainly by warm ocean water -- In a study conducted by scientists at the University of California, Irvine and colleagues, relatively warm ocean waters melting the undersides of Antarctic ice shelves appear to be more effective at reducing the continent's ice than the calving of icebergs along the coast. [University of California, Irvine News]
Seeding for ocean carbon dioxide sequestration questioned -- A group of scientists conducted X-ray analysis of phytoplankton at the US Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory to study the feeding habits of ocean microbes. These researchers call into question the potential use of algal blooms to trap carbon dioxide in an attempt to offset rising global levels. They found that the diatom, a type of phytoplankton, uses more iron that it needs for photosynthesis, which reduces the amount of iron left over to support the carbon-eating plankton. [Argonne National Laboratory]
Long-term changes in global ocean chemistry are worrisome -- An international team of researchers have recently completed a global study of the ocean chemistry involving the nitrogen cycle since the end of the last Ice Age. These researchers raise concern that recent changes in climate have increased ocean temperatures, which harm marine food webs, and increased nitrogen runoff from fertilizer applications was creating coastal dead zones. Although the oceans appear to be balancing the nitrogen cycle on a global scale presently, changes in the ocean could occur over centuries. [McGill University 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:

17 June 1579...During his "Famous Voyage," Sir Francis Drake, the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe, claimed San Francisco Bay for England, calling the region along the northern California coast "Nova Albion" (meaning, New England). (Wikipedia)
16-18 June 1972...The greatest three-day rainfall in Hong Kong since 1889 produced 25.68 inches and resulted in disastrous landslides and building collapses. More than 100 people died, while thousands were made homeless. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
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)