WEEKLY OCEAN NEWS

11-15 July 2016

DataStreme Ocean will return for Fall 2016 with new Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 22 August 2016. All the current online website products will continue to be available throughout the summer break period.

Items of Interest:

• Zenithal Sun -- Residents of Honolulu will experience a noontime sun that would be directly overhead late this upcoming weekend (15-17 July). This occurrence of a zenithal sun is one of the two times during the year when the noontime sun is directly overhead to residents of Honolulu and the Hawaiian Island of Oahu. The other time when Oahu experienced a zenithal sun was in late May. [US Naval Observatory, Data Services]
• Video describes seasonal variations of monsoon circulation regimes and how a new satellite monitors monsoonal precipitation -- In a 3:48 min video (with sound), scientists from the University of Maryland and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center describe the seasonal variations in the monsoon circulation regime across South Asia and other subtropical continents such as Africa and North America as well as how the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission helps track the water budget across the tropical regions affected by the monsoon circulation. [NASA GPM]

Ocean in the News:

• Eye on the Tropics -- Tropical cyclone activity was limited to the eastern and western sides of the North Pacific Ocean basin during the last week:
• In the eastern North Pacific basin, Tropical Storm Blas strengthened to become the first eastern Pacific hurricane of 2016 as it continued its travels toward the west-northwest away from the coast of Mexico. By late Wednesday afternoon, Hurricane Blas had become a major category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale as it was approximately 970 miles to the southwest of the southern tip of Mexico's Baja California Peninsula. During the remainder of the week, Blas slowly weakened as it traveled generally to the west-northwest. As of Sunday morning Blas became a remnant low approximately 1200 miles to the east of Hilo on Hawaii's Big Island. See additional information and satellite images on Hurricane Blas on the NASA Hurricane Page.
  The third named tropical cyclone of 2016 in the eastern Pacific basin, Tropical Storm Celia, developed from a tropical depression last Friday morning approximately 730 miles to the southwest of the tip of Baja California. Over this past weekend, Celia intensified as it traveled generally toward the west and west-northwest. As of Sunday afternoon, Celia became the second eastern Pacific hurricane of 2016. Hurricane Celia was forecast to strengthen by the start of this week before weakening. See the NASA Hurricane Page for satellite imagery and additional information on Hurricane Celia.
• In the western North Pacific Ocean basin, Tropical Storm Nepartak became the first typhoon of the 2016 North Pacific typhoon season during the early part of last week as it took aim on Taiwan. By the second half of the week, Nepartak became a super typhoon that would be classified as a category 5 typhoon on the Saffir-Simpson Scale as maximum sustained surface winds reached at least 170 mph. Typhoon Nepartak made landfall along the southeastern coast of Taiwan on Thursday and then traveled across this island nation, producing heavy rain and high winds, which resulted in at least two fatalities and 72 injuries. On Saturday (local time) Typhoon Nepartak came on shore along mainland China's Fujian province as a tropical storm. Rapid decay occurred on Sunday as the system moved inland. [Voice of America] For additional information on Super Typhoon Nepartak along with satellite imagery, consult the NASA Hurricane Page.
• Waters of equatorial Pacific continued cooling during June 2016 -- An article in the "ClimateWatch" magazine describes the cooling that has been occurring in the surface waters of the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean. This cooling has allowed NOAA forecasters to declare this past winter's El Niño event to be over in June. [NOAA Climate.gov News]
• Importance of fish habitats discussed with NOAA Fisheries Administrator -- Eileen Sobeck, the head of NOAA Fisheries, was recently interviewed about the importance of fish habitat and the Essential Fish Habitat provisions added 20 years ago to the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which represents the nation's main fisheries law, to protect the nation's fish habitats. [NOAA Fisheries Feature Stories]
• Historic agreement signed for white abalone recovery -- .... Last week the US Navy assigned an agreement with NOAA Fisheries in which more than $2.1 million in total funding will be used to support core research and survey needs for endangered white abalone at Tanner and Cortes Banks and other coastal waters off Southern California. [NOAA Fisheries Feature Stories]
• Assessing the degree to which coral bleaching is affecting national marine sanctuaries -- Although a recent NOAA Coral Reef Watch forecast anticipates many of the nation's coral reefs to be hit hard by bleaching because of above average sea temperatures for a third year in a row, some officials with several of the NOAA's National Marine Sanctuaries caution that not all of the nation's coral reefs are responding similarly to the bleaching events. [NOAA National Marine Sanctuaries News]
• Satellite sees a phytoplankton bloom explosion off New Jersey coast -- A natural-color image of the central and southern New Jersey coasts generated last week from data collected by the MODIS instrument onboard NASA's Aqua satellite shows a large phytoplankton bloom that appeared to explode in the coastal waters of the North Atlantic offshore of Atlantic City. A marine scientist at Rutgers University explained that this phytoplankton bloom was due to wind-driven upwelling that brought cold and nutrient-rich water to the surface. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• Algae bloom seen on Florida's Lake Okeechobee -- Natural-color images produced from data obtained by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on NASA's Landsat8 early this month shows the development of an algae bloom in the near-surface waters of South Florida's Lake Okeechobee. Water discharge flows through St. Lucie Canal could carry some of the algal bloom to the nearby Atlantic Ocean. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• Slightly below average Chesapeake Bay "dead zone" expected for this summer -- Scientists with NOAA Fisheries, the US Geological Survey, the University of Maryland and the University of Michigan recently announced that they are expecting this summer's hypoxic low-oxygen zone, or "dead zone" in Chesapeake Bay to be slightly below the long-term average as measured since 1950. The smaller areal extent may be due to this spring's low river flow and low nutrient loading from the Susquehanna and Potomac Rivers. [NOAA News]
• Smaller than normal harmful algal bloom predicted this summer for western Lake Erie -- Late last week scientists from NOAA and the partner institutions of Ohio Sea Grant, Ohio State University, Heidelberg University and University of Toledo predict a harmful algal bloom in western Lake Erie for summer 2016 that would be smaller than normal, as well as being much smaller than the record 2015 bloom. This 2016 seasonal forecast involves the generation of a severity index based upon numerical models that involve assessing and predicting the nutrient runoff. The anticipated smaller than normal algal bloom is due to less discharge that was projected from the Maumee River. [NOAA News]
• Expanding sea ice around Antarctica is linked to natural climate variability -- In a recently released study, researchers from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and their colleagues from other research institutions in the US and Australia report that the recent trend of increasing sea ice extent in the waters of the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica can be explained for the most part by natural climatic fluctuations. Using climate models, the researchers found evidence that the negative phase of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO), characterized by lower than-average sea surface temperatures in the tropical eastern Pacific, has created favorable conditions for additional Antarctic sea ice growth since 2000. [NCAR/UCAR AtmosNews]
• Exploring the global atmosphere -- A new NASA airborne campaign called Atmospheric Tomography, or ATom, mission is about ready to commence and it represents the first mission to survey the atmosphere over the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Scientists aboard NASA's DC-8 flying laboratory will travel from the North Pole south over the Pacific Ocean to New Zealand and then eastward across to Cape Horn at the tip of South America before returning northward over the Atlantic Ocean to Greenland. This mission will make measurements of atmospheric gases and aerosols with the goal of discovering how much pollution survives to the most remote regions of the planet and assess how the environment has changed as a result. [NASA Goddard Space Flight Center News]
• List of US billion-dollar disasters for 2016 is updated -- At the start of this month, which is also the halfway point of the calendar year of 2016, NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) issued its updated list of billion-dollar weather and climate related disasters across the nation so far this year. According to this list, eight weather and climate related disasters resulted in losses that exceeded $1 billion each, with two of these disasters being flood events and the other six being several storm events. Furthermore, these eight events claimed 30 lives. For comparison, the eight events for 2016 were more than the long-term (1980-2016) average of 2.8 billion-dollar disaster events for the first six months of a calendar year, but the number fell below the 10 events for the January to June interval in 2011. [NOAA NCEI News]
• Reconstruction of Antarctic Ocean temperatures at end of Cretaceous Period helps explain causes for mass extinction -- Researchers at the University of Florida and the University of Michigan used a new technique called the carbonate clumped isotope paleothermometer to analyze the chemical composition of fossil shells in the Antarctic Ocean and then to reconstruct a 3.5 million-year time series of ocean temperatures from the late Cretaceous and into the early Paleogene Period. This reconstructed ocean time series appears to support the theory that the combined impacts of volcanic eruptions in India and an asteroid impact on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula brought about one of Earth's largest mass extinctions at approximately 66 million years ago. [University of Florida News]
• An All-Hazards Monitor -- This Web portal provides the user information from NOAA's National Weather Service, FAA and FEMA on current environmental events that may pose as hazards such as tropical weather, fire weather, marine weather, severe weather, drought and floods. [NOAA/NWS Daily Briefing]
• Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com]

• 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)
• 15-16 July 1916...A dying South Atlantic Coast storm produced torrential rains in the southern Appalachian Mountains. Altapass, NC was drenched with 22.22 inches of rain, a 24-hour rainfall record for the Tarheel State, and at the time, a 24-hour record for the U.S. (The current 24-hour rainfall record for the US is 43 inches set 25-25 July 1979 at Alvin, TX). Flooding resulted in considerable damage, particularly to railroads. (David Ludlum) (Intellicast) (NCDC)
• 17 July 1858...The U.S. sloop Niagara departed Queenstown, Ireland to assist in laying the first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable. (Naval Historical Center)
• 17 July 1994...The Polar Sea departed from Victoria, BC on operation Arctic Ocean Section 1994 and became the first U.S. surface vessel to reach the North Pole. She then transited the Arctic Ocean back to her home port in Seattle, WA. (USCG Historian's Office)
• 17 July 1998...A tsunami triggered by an undersea earthquake destroyed 10 villages in Papua, New Guinea killing an estimated 1500 people, leaving 2000 more unaccounted for and thousands more homeless. (Wikipedia)

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Prepared by DS Ocean Central Staff and Edward J. Hopkins, Ph.D.,
email hopkins@aos.wisc.edu
© Copyright, 2016, The American Meteorological Society.