WEEKLY OCEAN NEWS

7-11 July 2014

DataStreme Ocean will return for Fall 2014 with new Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 25 August 2014. All the current online website products will continue to be available throughout the summer break period.

Items of Interest:

Space portraits of three tropical cyclones named Arthur --- Late last week, Hurricane Arthur made landfall along the North Carolina coast, marking the third time that a tropical cyclone named Arthur reached the coast of the Tar Heel State. In June 1996, Tropical Storm Arthur reached the state and in July 2002, Tropical Storm Arthur traveled along the North Carolina coast. Satellite images of these three named cyclones obtained from NOAA's GOES-8 and 13 satellites were made available for comparison. [NOAA Environmental Visualization Laboratory]
Plankton blooms detected in warm water current off western Australia -- Images obtained from the MODIS sensor onboard NASA's Aqua satellite in early June display the sea-surface temperature of the waters of the western coast of Australia and the amount of ocean chlorophyll in these waters. The two images show that a warm ocean current is flowing southward (or poleward in the Southern Hemisphere) as the world's longest coastal current and the large quantity of chlorophyll representing phytoplankton blooms. [NASA Earth Observatory]

Ocean in the News:

Eye on the Tropics -- Tropical cyclone activity increased across the ocean basins of the Northern Hemisphere during the last week:

In the North Atlantic basin, the first named tropical cyclone formed early last week from a tropical depression that was located nearly 100 miles off the Florida coast near Cape Canaveral. This system, identified as Arthur, strengthened from a tropical storm to a category 2 hurricane (on the Saffir-Simpson Scale) by Thursday evening as it traveled initially to the north and then to the north-northeast along the coasts of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. Hurricane Arthur made landfall along the North Carolina coast near Cape Lookout late Thursday night as a category 2 hurricane. After passing across several of the barrier islands that form the North Carolina's Outer Banks, Hurricane Arthur traveled to the northeast across the western North Atlantic over the 4th of July weekend (Friday and Saturday). Traveling well to the east of the Middle Atlantic coast, the eye of Hurricane Arthur passed within approximately 70 miles of Cape Cod along the Massachusetts coast by late Friday. On Saturday, Arthur weakened to a tropical storm off the New England coast. However Arthur was weakening to a tropical storm and loosing its tropical characteristics as it approached the coast of Nova Scotia by late Saturday. Remnants of this former hurricane continued to move across the Canadian Maritime Provinces and approach Newfoundland by early Sunday. Additional information and satellite images on Hurricane Arthur are available from the NASA Hurricane Page
In the eastern North Pacific basin, Tropical Storm Douglas formed from a tropical depression that was located off the coast of Mexico near Manzanillo late in the previous weekend. This fourth named tropical cyclone of the 2014 eastern Pacific hurricane season traveled toward the west-northwest well off the Mexican coast. By late in the week, Douglas weakened to a tropical depression and became a remnant low pressure center approximately 650 miles to the west of Cabo San Lucas at the southern tip of Mexico's Baja California Peninsula by early Saturday morning. The NASA Hurricane Page has additional information and satellite imagery on Tropical Storm Douglas.
A second tropical storm, identified as Elida, formed in the wake of Tropical Storm Douglas early last week off the southwestern coast of Mexico. However, this tropical storm was relatively short lived, as it weakened to a tropical depression approximately 36 hours after formation.
In the western North Pacific basin, Tropical Depression 8W, formed late last week approximately 270 miles to the south of Guam. This tropical depression strengthened to become Tropical Storm Neoguri, which intensified to a typhoon as it traveled toward the west-northwest. By the end of this past weekend, Typhoon Neoguri had become a major category 4 typhoon on the Saffir-Simpson Scale. Eventually, Neoguri became a super-typhoon as maximum sustained surface winds were estimated to have reached 150 mph as it approached to within approximately 470 miles to the south of Okinawa, Japan. Current forecasts indicate that Super typhoon Neoguri would curve toward the north and pass across Okinawa and other islands to the south of Japan during the first half of this upcoming week. Information concerning Tropical Depression 8W, the predecessor to Super Typhoon Neoguri appears in the NASA Hurricane Page.

Explaining reasons for a relatively weak 2013 Atlantic hurricane season -- Scientists from NOAA's Climate Prediction Center have offered reasons as to why last year's Atlantic hurricane season did not live up to expectations that the season would be relatively active. Only two hurricanes formed in the North Atlantic Basin in 2013, the fewest number in over 30 years. Two of the reasons offered are strong wind shear and an atmospheric flow pattern that favored widespread sinking, dry air. [NOAA Climate.gov News]
Recent whale entanglement shows need for management action -- The report of a recent injured North Atlantic right whale having been entangled by fishing gear in the western North Atlantic off the New England coast has prompted NOAA Fisheries to work on helping reduce the risk that the endangered right whale and other large whales encounter due to trap/pot fishing operations. [NOAA Fisheries Greater Atlantic Region]
Changes in abundance of forage fish affects the Atlantic cod fishery -- Researchers at the NOAA Fisheries' Northeast Fisheries Science Center recently report that changes in the abundance of fish species that were prey to Atlantic cod over the last decade appear to have altered the distribution of the cod, which ultimately affected the success of the cod fishery off the New England and Middle Atlantic coasts. [NOAA Fisheries Northeast Fisheries Science Center Newsroom]
Pacific island serves as laboratory for ocean acidification study -- A expedition that included scientists from NOAA's Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies at the University of Miami has traveled onboard the NOAA Ship Hi'ialakai to the Island of Maug in Pacific waters of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands in order to study coral reef ecosystems. One of the researchers is investigating underwater vents that seep carbon dioxide into the waters of the Pacific Ocean. The island of Maug is viewed as a unique laboratory environment in order to study how ocean acidification affects coral reef ecosystems. [NOAA Office of Oceanic & Atmospheric Research News]
Landsat 8 is a hit at the beach -- Researchers from various disciplines have been using high resolution data obtained by sensors onboard the NASA/USGS Landsat 8 satellite to assess the water quality of along the nation's coasts and beaches. These data help identify potential problem areas where algae, sediments and pollutants could create health issues for those going to the beach. [NASA Earth Science News Team]
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:

7 July 1901...First three-day weather forecast issued for the shipping lanes of the North Atlantic. (Northern Indiana NWSFO)
7 July 1952...The liner SS United States made the fastest-ever eastbound crossing of the Atlantic of 3 days, 17 hours and 48 minutes on her maiden voyage from Nantucket Light Ship off New York's Long Island to Bishop Rock Lighthouse in western England.
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)