WEEKLY OCEAN NEWS

8-12 July 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:

A gallery of NASA's fleet of Earth Science satellites -- Last week, NASA released an artist's drawing of the fleet of 16 orbiting satellites that are monitoring planet Earth from space. This fleet includes the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), which is the oldest as it was launched in 1997, and Landsat 8, which was launched in 2013 and represents the newest spacecraft. Instruments onboard these spacecraft make a wide variety of Earth observations designed to monitor the planet's atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere and geosphere, providing scientists with important information on weather and climate patterns. Editor's Note This satellite fleet does not include the GOES series of geosynchronous satellites and the NOAA series of polar orbiting satellites that were launched by NASA but are operated by NOAA primarily for weather surveillance. EJH [NASA Earth Observatory]

Ocean in the News:

Eye on the Tropics -- During the last week, tropical cyclone activity continued in the eastern and western North Pacific basin:

In the eastern North Pacific basin, Tropical Storm Dalila intensified to become the third hurricane of 2013 in that basin early last week as it curved to take a westward track away from the Mexican coast southwest of Puerto Valarta. However, this minimal category 1 hurricane (on the Saffir-Simpson Scale) weakened and was reclassified a tropical storm by midweek. By this past weekend, Dalila had weakened to a tropical depression and as of early Sunday, it had become a remnant low approximately 465 miles to the south-southwest of Mexico's Baja California Peninsula. Additional information and satellite imagery on Hurricane Dalila can be found on the NASA Hurricane Page.
Another hurricane formed over the waters of the eastern North Pacific Ocean late last week. Hurricane Erick intensified into a hurricane on Saturday after initially forming as a tropical depression approximately 260 miles to the south-southeast of Acapulco, Mexico last Thursday. Over the weekend, Hurricane Erick traveled toward the northwest, passing close to the western coast of Mexico. However, by midday on Sunday, Erick had weakened to a tropical storm as it was approximately 250 miles to the southeast of the southern tip of Mexico's Baja California Peninsula. Continued weakening was anticipated.
In the western North Pacific basin, Tropical Storm Rumbia intensified to a category 1 typhoon (on the Saffir-Simpson Scale) early last week as it traveled to the northwest across the South China Sea just before making landfall along the southeastern coast of China just to the east of Hainan Island. Rumbia quickly dissipated after making landfall. See the NASA Hurricane Page for satellite images and additional information on Typhoon Rumbia.

Long-running ocean satellite is decommissioned -- During the last week, the Jason-1 ocean altimetry satellite, a spacecraft jointly operated by NASA and France's Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES), was decommissioned following the loss of its last remaining transmitter. This satellite was launched in December 2001 and extended the more than 20-year climate data record of global ocean surface topography that commenced in 1992 with the NASA/CNES Topex/Poseidon satellite. The Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason-2, launched in 2008, is continuing this unbroken record of global mean sea level change, an important climate indicator. [NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory]
Nine beach dangers identified -- NOAA's National Ocean Service recently identified nine dangers that could occur at the nation's beaches and the safety tips that the public should consider to prevent injury or death. The listed nine dangers are: rip currents, shorebreak, lightning, tsunamis, sharks, jellyfish, excessive heat and sunburn, harmful algal blooms and water quality. [NOAA National Ocean Service]
Forecasting sea nettle on Chesapeake Bay -- NOAA's Chesapeake Bay Office has unveiled a website that provides hourly forecasts of the probability of the presence of sea nettle (Chrysaora quinquecirrha ) in the waters of Chesapeake Bay, the nation's largest estuary located in Maryland and Virginia. The sea nettle, which is a biotic nuisance, is most abundant during the summer in the tributaries of the middle Bay. The forecast maps that appear on the website are generated by NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Prediction and the National Ocean Service. The probabilities are also available at each of the ten buoys in the NOAA Chesapeake Bay Interpretive Buoy System. [NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office]
Beach and water quality data for Lake St. Clair available on real-time basis -- Early last week NOAA announced that beach managers and the public can view NOAA water quality predictions for Lake St. Clair in eastern Michigan on essentially a real time basis from a newly developed interactive website. This site is part of the NOAA Great Lakes Beach, Tributary, and Nearshore Water Quality Project, which also includes real-time prediction data for Michigan's nearshore waters of Saginaw Bay and the city of Grand Haven, along with Indiana's waters offshore of Indiana Dunes. [NOAA Research News]
Significant harmful algal bloom predicted to occur this summer in western Lake Erie -- NOAA scientists and their research partners at Ohio State University, the University of Toledo and Heidelberg University predict that a significant bloom of the toxic blue-green algae called cyanobacteria will occur this summer in the western sections of Lake Erie. While this bloom was projected to be larger than last year, it would be less than 2011, which was the largest in decades. [NOAA News]
Assessing hurricane-induced coastal change -- The US Geological Survey (USGS) released two studies early last week that assessed the probability of hurricane-induced coast change on the beaches of the Atlantic Seaboard from Florida northward to New York; one of the reports covers the coast south of North Carolina, while the other runs to the north from Virginia. These reports are designed to serve as "virtual toolkits" to help emergency managers and community planners along the coast. An online mapping tool is provided along with the reports; these items are available online. [USGS Newsroom]
El Niño was unusually active in late 20th century -- An international team of scientists including those from the University of Hawaii at Manoa have reconstructed past climate indicating ENSO (El Niño-Southern Oscillation) behavior from more than 2200 tree-ring chronologies since 1300 AD from both the tropics and mid-latitudes in both hemispheres. The scientists have found that ENSO conditions appeared to have been unusually active in the late 20th century compared to the previous seven centuries, implying that this climate phenomenon may be responding to ongoing increased global temperatures. [University of Hawaii at Manoa]
Significant advances made in El Niño forecasting -- Researchers at Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the Justus-Liebig Universität Giessen have developed a new approach to forecasting upcoming El Niño events that employs advanced connectivity analysis using nearly six-decades of air temperature data collected from more than 200 measurement points in the Pacific. This method had outperformed existing methods. The forecast time was extended and the reliability was enhanced. [Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research]
Ocean food chain may be altered by greenhouse gas -- In a recent study conducted at the University of Southern California, researchers claim that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide levels not only result in a rise in global temperatures, but also control the biodiversity of organisms in the global oceans. The increased carbon dioxide may affect the base of the ocean's food chain by selectively weeding out certain strains of blue green algae or cyanobacteria that fix inert atmospheric nitrogen in biomass. [University of Southern California 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]
Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com] Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Historical Events:

8 July 1497...The Portuguese explorer, Vasco da Gama, set sail from Lisbon, Portugal with four ships on the first direct European voyage to India, first rounding Africa's Cape of Good Hope and reaching Calicut on India's southwest coast on 20 May 1498. (Wikipedia)
8 July 1879...The first ship to use electric lights departed from San Francisco, CA.
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)