WEEKLY OCEAN NEWS

8-12 May 2017

DataStreme Ocean will return for Fall 2017 with new Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 21 August 2017. All the current online website products will continue to be available throughout the summer break period.

Item of Interest:

Hurricane preparedness activities planned for this week --

Hurricane Awareness Week -- NOAA has declared this week of 7-13 May 2017 to be Hurricane Awareness Week 2017 across the nation. Five states will also be observing their Hurricane Awareness Weeks during this week, including Delaware, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina and Texas. Several states will observe the following week (Alabama and Oklahoma), while five New England States (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island) will wait until late July.
East Coast Hurricane Awareness Trip -- NOAA hurricane experts will embark on a five-day, six-city tour along the Atlantic Coast of the United States and Canada in an US Air Force Reserve WC-130J hurricane hunter aircraft and the NOAA G-IV aircraft to raise public hurricane awareness; the NOAA WP-3D Orion research aircraft will also be at several stops. The schedule, which runs from Sunday 7 May through Friday 12 May, includes stops in Gander, Newfoundland; MacArthur Airport on Long Island, NY; Reagan National Airport at Washington, DC; Raleigh-Durham International Airport in North Carolina; and Orlando Executive Airport and Opa Locka Executive Airport in Florida. [NOAA News]
For those unable to attend the awareness tour, go to the #HurricaneStrong! link
Hurricane Webinar offered for Grades 4-6-- The Hurricanes: Science and Society (HSS) team at the University of Rhode Island in partnership with the NOAA National Hurricane Center (NHC) and the NOAA Aircraft Operations Center (AOC) is offering a free 45-minute Hurricane Webinar 2017 for 4th through 6th grade classes on Tuesday morning, 10 May 2017. This webinar will be broadcast live when the NOAA Hurricane Awareness Tour stops at Raleigh, NC. Registration for this webinar is required. [Hurricanes: Science and Society]

Land of the Midnight Sun -- Barring clouds, the sun should rise at Barrow, AK early next Wednesday morning (2:54 AM AKDT on 10 May 2017) after spending 62 minutes below the horizon. The sun should then remain above the local horizon for the next 12 weeks, before going below the horizon for 30 minutes on 2 August 2017 (at 1:56 AM AKDT). [US Naval Observatory]

Ocean in the News:

Eye on the tropics --- Tropical cyclone activity during the last week was found in the South Indian and western North Pacific basins:

In the Southern Indian Ocean basin, Cyclone Frances, a category 1 tropical cyclone on the Saffir-Simpson Scale (or a category 3 on the Australian scale), dissipated at the start of last week as it was located approximately 310 miles to the north of Broome a coastal community in Western Australia's Kimberley region. Additional information and satellite images on Cyclone Frances are available from the NASA Hurricane Page .
In western South Pacific basin, a tropical storm that was identified as Tropical Storm Donna formed early last week approximately 560 miles northwest of Suva, Fiji. Traveling to the west, Donna rapidly strengthened into a category 2 tropical cyclone on the Saffir-Simpson Scale. Near the end of last week, Cyclone Donna abruptly curved toward the south. As of early Monday, Cyclone Donna was traveling toward the south as it was located approximately 280 miles to the west-northwest of Port Vila, Vanuatu. Donna was expected to strengthen as it was projected to slowly curve toward the south-southeast over the next several days, passing just to the east of New Caledonia. Consult the NASA Hurricane Page for additional information and satellite images on Cyclone Donna.

"Sister sanctuary" agreement aimed to protect humpback whales in their migration in the western North Atlantic -- A new "sister sanctuary" agreement was recently signed between NOAA and the government of The Netherlands in which NOAA's Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary and the Yarari Marine Mammal and Shark Sanctuary of the Caribbean Netherlands would be added to the network of marine protected areas in order to provide more refuge for North Atlantic humpback whales during their 3000-mile annual migration stretching from New England to the Caribbean. Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, located at offshore of Massachusetts, is a summertime feeding area for humpback whales at the northern end of their migration, while the Yarari Marine Mammal and Shark Sanctuary of the Caribbean Netherlands is in the Dutch Lesser Antilles and is in the vicinity of where the whales mate and calve during the winter. [NOAA News]
Community investment being built in a marine sanctuary along the California coast -- The community involvement in California's Monterey National Marine Sanctuary is detailed in a recent news item from NOAA's National Marine Sanctuary Program. More than 450 active volunteers from the central California coast help monitor the health of this marine sanctuary, by monitoring water quality, restoring habitat, conducting beach surveys and educating the public at the sanctuary's visitor centers. [NOAA National Marine Sanctuaries News]
Annual report for 2016 issued by National Seabird Program -- NOAA Fisheries' National Seabird Program recently released its 12-page Annual Report for 2016 that summarizes the activities and accomplishments of the Program during the last year. The NOAA Fisheries' National Seabird Program, which consists of scientists and managers from several crosscutting disciplines, works to protect and conserve seabirds at both the national and international level. The goals of this program are to mitigate bycatch and to promote seabirds as ecosystem indicators.[NOAA Fisheries]
Spring bloom in Gulf of Alaska viewed from space -- An image produced from data collected by the MODIS sensor onboard NASA's Aqua satellite in mid April shows a massive phytoplankton bloom in the waters of the Gulf of Alaska. In addition to the phytoplankton bloom, which appears green, the image also detected "glacial flour," or nutrient-rich fine sediment that turned the coastal waters opaque turquoise. [NASA Earth Observatory]
Long-held tsunami formation theory is challenged -- New simulations of the 2004 Sumatra and 2011 Tohoku earthquakes conducted in an improved wave tank at Oregon State University along with data collected from NASA, Navy and European Space Agency satellites have led researchers to question a long-held theory concerning tsunami formation. This older theory suggests that tsunamis form and acquire their energy mostly from vertical movement of the seafloor. The new findings would suggest that horizontal seafloor movement creates kinetic energy, which is proportional to the depth of the ocean and the speed of the seafloor's movement. Therefore, both the vertical and horizontal movements of the seafloor need to be considered in the determination of the total energy transferred to the ocean, which is needed to predict a tsunami. [NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Feature]
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]

Historical Events:

8 May 1961...The first practical seawater conversion plant in the U.S. was opened in Freeport, TX by the Office of Saline Water, U.S. Dept. of the Interior. The plant was designed to produce about a million gallons of water a day at a cost of about $1.25 per thousand gallons. (Today in Science History)
8 May 1992...The source of a "red tide" in the Gulf of Mexico was suggested by scientists at a conference on the ecology of the Gulf. The red tide produced huge blooms of reddish algae in sufficient quantity to kill fish and cause severe respiratory problems for humans. A "green river" that started 60 miles inland of Florida was indicated as the source of the algae. The wind and water currents that bring nutrients from the floor of the ocean to the surface provided the food that caused the algae population to explode once it reached the Gulf. (Today in Science History)
9 May 1502...The explorer Christopher Columbus left Spain for his fourth and final journey to the "New World". (Wikipedia)
9 May 1926...The Baden-Baden, a ship propelled by two 50-ft high cylindrical rotors arrived in New York having left Hamburg on 2 April 1926, and completed a transatlantic crossing from Germany. Utilizing the aerodynamic power of the Magnus Effect (discovered in 1852), which builds air pressure behind a rotating cylinder, these rotors drove 45-hp electric motors that powered the ship. Although a theoretical success, it was not sufficiently effective for commercial application. (Today in Science)
9 May 1980...A blinding squall, followed by dense fog, reduced visibility to near zero at the Sunshine Skyway Bridge over Tampa Bay in Florida. The Liberian freighter SS Summit Venture hit the bridge piling, causing a 1200-foot section of the bridge to fall 150 feet into the bay. Several vehicles, including a bus, drove off the edge of the span, resulting in 35 deaths. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar) (Wikipedia).
9 May 1990...A category 4 tropical cyclone on the Saffir-Simpson scale hit the southeast coast of India, killing 1000 people, even though 400,000 people evacuated because of early warning of the storm. More than 100 miles of coast were devastated as winds reached 125 mph and a storm surge measured at 22 feet flooded inland as far as 22 miles. Over 100,000 animals also died in the cyclone with the total cost of damages to crops estimated at over $600 million (1990 USD). (National Weather Service files) (The Weather Doctor) (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
10 May 1497...The Italian cartographer Amerigo Vespucci allegedly left the Spanish coastal city of Cádiz for his first voyage to the New World. (Wikipedia)
10 May 1503...Christopher Columbus discovered the Cayman Islands and named them Las Tortugas after the numerous sea turtles that he found there. (Wikipedia)
10 May 1960...The submarine, USS Triton (SSRN-586), completed a submerged circumnavigation of world in 84 days following many of the routes taken by Magellan and cruising 46,000 miles. (Naval Historical Center)
11 May 1833...The ship Lady of the Lake struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic while bound from England to Quebec, resulting in the loss of 215 lives. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
11-12 May 1965...The first of two cyclones that struck East Pakistan (now called Bangladesh) during the year made landfall. This system, along with the one on 1-2 June, killed about 47,000 people.
12 May 1916...Plumb Point, Jamaica reported 17.80 inches of rain in 15 minutes, which set a world record. (The Weather Doctor)
12 May 1978...The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that they would no longer exclusively name hurricanes after women.
14 May 1836...U.S. Exploring Expedition authorized to conduct exploration of Pacific Ocean and South Seas, the first major scientific expedition overseas. LT Charles Wilkes USN would lead the expedition in surveying South America, Antarctica, Far East, and North Pacific. (Naval Historical Center)