WEEKLY OCEAN NEWS

5-9 August 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.

Item of Interest:

Celebrate Shark Week 2013 -- This recent Sunday, 2 August 2013, marked the start of Shark Week 2013, which marks a week-long series of feature television programs dedicated to sharks that will be run on the Discovery Channel and in over 72 countries. The week is also promoted on social media networks. Shark Week was first run in July 1987 in an effort to raise public awareness and respect for sharks. [The Discovery Channel]
Coast Guard Day is celebrated -- Sunday, 4 August 2013, was designated Coast Guard Day, as the day commemorating the founding of the United States Coast Guard as the Revenue Cutter Service on 4 August 1790, by then Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton. A fleet of the first ten Revenue Service cutters were authorized by Congress with the responsibility for enforcement of the first tariff laws enacted by Congress under the Constitution. The Coast Guard was given its current name in 1915 when the Revenue Cutter Service merged with the US Lifesaving Service. In 1939, the US Lighthouse Service was transferred to the Coast Guard. Since 2001, the US Coast Guard is has been part of the US Department of Homeland Security. [US Defense Department]
National Lighthouse Day is celebrated -- Wednesday, 7 August 2013, is designated National Lighthouse Day, which marks the anniversary of the signing of the Act of Congress on 7 August 1789 when the Federal Government assumed responsibility for building and operating the nation's lighthouses. [American Lighthouse Foundation]
A Nighttime Show -- The annual Perseid meteor shower should peak in the predawn hours of next Sunday (11 August 2013) and Monday mornings, but the display should continue through Tuesday morning. The Perseids, which are associated with the some bits of Comet Swift-Tuttle, are noted for being fast and bright, and often leave persistent trains. Typically, the Perseids are usually very active for several days before and after the peaks, often producing 30 to 60 meteors per hour. The illumination from a waxing crescent moon, which would set after local midnight, should not interfere with viewing the Perseids. If the skies are clear in your area, go to a region that has few lights and look up and to the northeast during the early morning hours.
Stay 'Up All Night' to watch the Perseids! -- Starting at 11 PM EDT on 11 August and running through 3AM EDT on the 12th, astronomer Bill Cooke and his team from Meteoroid Environment Office at NASA's Marchall Space Flight Center will answer your questions via an "Up All Night" live chat. [NASA Chat]
New NOAA & NASA "Scijinks" website helps teach school kids about weather, climate and space --NASA and NOAA have unveiled a new collaborative and interactive website called "Scijinks" that provides interesting items, games and teacher lesson plans from both agencies designed to help middle school students understand a variety of topics that involve the weather, oceans, climate, space and satellite technology. [NOAA News]
First "hurricane hunter" flight came on a bet -- Last week marked the 70th anniversary of the first "hurricane hunter" flight when US Army Air Corps Lt. Col. Joseph Duckworth intentionally flew his small trainer aircraft into the eye of a hurricane over the Gulf of Mexico near Galveston, TX. He made the successful but unauthorized flight on a bet with a group of British fighter pilots that involved a highball whiskey cocktail. [Stars and Stripes]
"Moby Dick" was not a real whale, but the novel was realistic -- Although "Moby Dick" was not a real albino sperm whale, Herman Melville, the author of this famous American novel, used his experiences as a whaler along with contemporary accounts to weave a realistic story involving a whale and the whaling industry in the pre-Civil War era. [NOAA National Ocean Service]

Ocean in the News:

Eye on the tropics --- During the last week:

In North Atlantic Basin, the remnants of former Tropical Storm Dorian regenerated into Tropical Depression Dorian early last Saturday morning approximately 85 miles to the east-northeast of Cape Canaveral, FL. This tropical depression continued the lineage of former Tropical Storm Dorian, which had initially formed during the previous week over the eastern tropical Atlantic near the Cape Verde Islands. During that week, Dorian, the fourth named tropical cyclone of the 2013 Atlantic hurricane season had traveled quickly to the west-northwest before weakening to a tropical wave just to the east of the northern Leeward Islands. However, the remnants of Dorian continued to travel to the northwest, passing to the east and north of the Bahamas. By early Saturday evening, Tropical Depression Dorian had weakened and had become a post-tropical cyclone. As of this past Sunday morning, post Tropical Cyclone Dorian was merging with a midlatitude cold front over the coastal waters of the western North Atlantic off of the Carolinas. For additional information on former Tropical Storm Dorian including satellite images, consult the NASA Hurricane Page.
In the central North Pacific basin, Tropical Storm Flossie passed just to the main Hawaiian Islands at the start of last week, approaching Kauai at the northwestern end of the island chain by early Tuesday. NOAA's Central Pacific Hurricane Center in Honolulu, HI has prepared a preliminary summary on Tropical Storm Flossie that reported rainfall totals of at least three inches on several of the islands, 31-mph sustained winds on Maui and some coastal inundation from six- to more than 15-foot high surf. Consult the NASA Hurricane Page for satellite images and additional information on Tropical Storm Flossie.
During the early part of the week, a tropical depression formed approximately 800 miles to the south-southwest of the southern tip of Mexico's Baja California Peninsula. Traveling generally westward, this tropical depression rapidly intensified to become Tropical Storm Gil, the seventh named tropical cyclone in the eastern North Pacific in 2013. By midweek, Gil became a category-1 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale. As the fifth hurricane of the season in the eastern Pacific, Gil continued westward before weakening to a tropical storm by late Friday and then to a tropical depression early Sunday as it was approximately 1300 miles to the east-southeast of Hilo, HI. Tropical depression Gil could continue to travel westward at the start of this week and pass into the central North Pacific basin before dissipating to the southeast of Hawaii's Big Island. Additional information along with a satellite image on Hurricane Gil can be found on the NASA Hurricane Page.
Over this past weekend, Tropical Storm Henriette intensified from a tropical depression that had formed over the waters of the eastern North Pacific approximately 1100 miles to the southwest of the southern tip of Baja California. This tropical storm was traveling westward and could strengthen as of the start of this current week. (Note: Tropical Storm Henriette formed from one of the tropical disturbances referenced in the NASA Hurricane Page on Hurricane Gil.)
In the western North Pacific, Tropical Storm Jebi formed by midweek over the waters of the South China Sea to the west of Luzon in the Philippines. This storm traveled west and then west-northwest passing across China's Hainan Island and the northern Gulf of Tonkin before making landfall in the northeastern provinces of Vietnam last Saturday. Satellite images and additional information on Tropical Storm Jebi can be found on the NASA Hurricane Page.

Hurricane season outlook is updated -- Last Friday, the hurricane forecasters at Colorado State University, including Philip Klotzbach and William Gray, issued their updated August forecast for the 2013 Atlantic hurricane season. Their "Forecast of Atlantic Seasonal Hurricane Activity and Landfall Strike Probability for 2013" calls for the remainder of the season to be above-average, although they have lowered their earlier forecasts slightly due to anomalous cooling in the eastern subtropical and tropical Atlantic. In addition, ENSO-neutral conditions were expected to continue through the hurricane season, meaning neither an El Niño nor La Niña event were expected. As of this most recent forecast, the forecasters call for 14 additional named tropical cyclones (maximum sustained surface winds exceeding 38 mph) to develop through the end of the season, including the four named storms that have formed before the end of July. Consequently, the total number of named tropical cyclones for the entire season would remain at 18. However, they have reduced the number of hurricanes (winds greater than 73 mph) that they foresee by one, leaving a seasonal total of eight; as of the end of July, no hurricane had formed in the Atlantic basin. The forecasters also reduced the number of major hurricanes (category 3 or higher on the Saffir-Simpson Scale) by one. Furthermore, they also anticipate an above-average probability of major hurricane landfalls along the coasts of the continental United States and the islands in the Caribbean. [The Tropical Storm Project]
Large African dust cloud over the Atlantic detected from space -- A collection of natural color images obtained from the VIIRS instrument on the polar-orbiting NOAA/NASA Suomi NPP satellite shows the Saharan Air Layer extending westward nearly 1900 miles out over the eastern Atlantic. This Saharan Air Layer, which contains dust from the Sahara Desert, has been found to affect Atlantic tropical cyclone activity. [NOAA Environmental Visualization Laboratory]
National Weather Service's computing capacity more than doubled --Recently, supercomputers in Reston, VA and in Orlando, FL used by NOAA's National Weather Service have been upgraded, resulting in nearly doubling the agency's computing capacity. The first in the series of upgrades includes an enhanced Hurricane Weather Research and Forecasting (HWRF) model that should improve hurricane track and intensity forecasts. Ultimately, these newer computer models will be able to process weather observations more than twice as fast as currently and generate more accurate weather forecasts that would extend farther out in time. Additional upgrades are anticipated that would permit the running of an enhanced version of the current primary forecast model called the "Global Forecast System." [NOAA News]
Large Gulf "dead zone" found that is smaller than predicted -- NOAA-supported scientists including those from the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium have recently found a large oxygen-free or hypoxic "dead" zone in the waters of the northern Gulf of Mexico in late July, which was smaller in areal extent than predicted. This 2013 dead zone in the shelf waters off the central Gulf Coast has an areal size equivalent to the size of Connecticut. Its size indicates the influence of the heavy rains across the nation's midsection that has sent a substantial nutrient pollution flow down Mississippi River and into the Gulf to affect the commercial and recreational marine resources in the Gulf. [NOAA News]
Additional information concerning the details of the 2013 summer groundfish survey across the northern Gulf that determined the size of the dead zone is provided. [NOAA Fisheries Service News]
Wind energy development sites identified offshore of New York City -- The "New York Department of State Offshore Atlantic Ocean Study" was recently released describing the physical, biological, wildlife, and geographic characteristics of the offshore Atlantic Ocean adjacent to the New York City metropolitan area in which the groundwork was laid for selecting suitable sites for offshore wind energy development. NOAA provided a significant contribution to this study, which included a biogeographic assessment designed to provide the state of New York with ecological information. [NOAA National Ocean Service News]
Grants made to states and tribes to support threatened and endangered marine species recovery -- During the last week officials with NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service announced that as part of the Species Recovery Grant Program, $3.6 million in grants were being awarded to assist ten coastal states and two federally recognized Native American tribes with conservation projects designed to recover marine mammals, sea turtles and fish species listed under the Endangered Species Act. [NOAA Fisheries News]
New ice island found on Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier -- A false-color image obtained from data collected by ASTER (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer) instrument on NASA's Terra satellite shows cracks in the ice on the Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica during the last month. These widening cracks suggest the formation of an ice island along the edge of the glacier. These cracks and the ice island were also detected by a synthetic aperture radar image obtained from Germany's TerraSAR-X satellite. [NASA Earth Observatory]
Key findings from 2012 State of the Climate report to be released this week -- This coming Tuesday (6 August 2013) scientists from the United States and the United Kingdom will announce via a teleconference some of the key findings that will appear in the upcoming State of the Climate in 2012. This peer-reviewed study compiled by 384 scientists from 52 countries examines temperature, precipitation and extreme weather and climate events experienced around the world in 2012. The study also will be published Tuesday in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. [NOAA News]
Investigating the start of Earth's primitive chemistry --A research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory recently coauthored three peer-reviewed papers investigating how life on Earth started. This scientist and his colleagues believe that Earth's first life began at alkaline hydrothermal vents at the bottom of oceans, where acetate would form from the product of methane and hydrogen from these vents and carbon dioxide dissolved in the surrounding ocean. The acetate could become the basis of other biological molecules. [NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory]
Loss of Arctic sea ice has widespread effects on wildlife -- An international team of scientists including a biologist from Penn State University report that their examination of the relationships between ecological communities of marine and terrestrial animals in the Arctic indicates widespread consequences in the future as Arctic sea-ice continues to be lost due to changing climate conditions. Critical habitat for many species is being lost at an increasing rate, as sea ice has reached its lowest extent in 1500 years. [Penn State 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]
Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com] Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Historical Events:

8 August 1585...The British navigator and polar explorer, John Davis, entered Cumberland Sound in quest for the North-West Passage. (Wikipedia)
8 August 2000...The Confederate submarine CSS H.L. Hunley was raised to the surface after 136 years on the ocean floor. This submarine sank in the Charleston (SC) Harbor after sinking the USS Housatonic on 17 February 1864. (Wikipedia)
9 August 1988...Tropical Storm Beryl deluged Biloxi with 6.32 inches of rain in 24 hours, and in three days drenched Pascagoula, MS with 15.85 inches of rain. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
10 August 1519...Five ships under the command of the Portuguese explorer, Ferdinand Magellan, set sail from the Spanish seaport Seville to Sanclucar be Barrameda, staying there until 21 September, when they departed to circumnavigate the globe. This expedition traveled westward and ultimately returned to Europe in September 1522. (Wikipedia)
10 August 1675...King Charles II laid the foundation stone of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. (Today in Science History)
10-11 August 1831...A violent hurricane devastated Barbados. Death toll was estimated to be from 1500 to 2500 people. (The Weather Doctor)
10 August 1856...The Isle Derniere (Last Island) disaster occurred off the coast of Louisiana. A storm tide drowned 140 vacationers as a five-foot wave swept over Low Island during a hurricane. (The Weather Channel) The hurricane completely devastated the fashionable hotel and pleasure resort on Last Island, 150 miles east of Cameron. Storm surge swept an estimated 400 people to their death. Today the island is just a haven for pelicans and other sea birds. (Intellicast)
10 August 1954...A ground-breaking ceremony was held at Massena, NY for the St. Lawrence Seaway. (Wikipedia)
10 August 1971...President Nixon signed the Federal Boat Safety Act of 1971 considered to be most significant legislation in the long history of federal action in this field. The new act, which repealed most of the Federal Boating Act of 1958 and amended the Motorboat Act of 1940, shifted responsibility from boat operator to manufacturer. (USCG Historian's Office)
10 August 1980...Hurricane Allen came ashore north of Brownsville, TX dropping fifteen inches of rain near San Antonio, and up to 20 inches in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, ending a summer long drought. Winds at Port Mansfield gusted to 140 mph with a storm surge of 12 feet. Tidal flooding occurred along the South Texas coast. Hurricane Allen packed winds to 150 mph, and also spawned twenty-nine tornadoes. Total damage from the storm was estimated at 750 million dollars. (David Ludlum) (Intellicast)
10 August 1993...Three ships -- the barge Bouchard B155, the freighter Balsa 37, and the barge Ocean 255 -- collided in Florida's Tampa Bay. The Bouchard spilled an estimated 336,000 gallons of No. 6 fuel oil into Tampa Bay. (InfoPlease)
11 August 1909...The liner S.S. Arapahoe was the first ship to use the S.O.S. radio distress call. Its wireless operator, T. D. Haubner, radioed for help after a propeller shaft snapped while off the coast at Cape Hatteras, NC. The call was heard by the United Wireless station "HA" at Hatteras. A few months later, Haubner on the S.S. Arapahoe received an SOS from the SS Iroquois, the second use of SOS in America. Previously, the distress code CQD had been in use as a maritime distress call, standardized by the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Co. in 1904. The second International Radio Telegraphic Convention (1906) proposed the alternative SOS for its distinctive sound, which was ratified as an international standard in 1908. (Today in Science History)
11 August 1940...A major hurricane struck Savannah, GA and Charleston, SC causing the worst inland flooding since 1607. (David Ludlum)
11 August 1988...Moisture from what remained of Tropical Storm Beryl resulted in torrential rains across eastern Texas. Twelve and a half inches of rain deluged Enterprise, TX, which was more than the amount received there during the previous eight months. (The National Weather Summary)