WEEKLY OCEAN NEWS

6-10 May 2019

Item of Interest:

NOAA's 2019 Resilience Webinar Series continues -- NOAA’s Southeast and Caribbean Regional Collaboration Team (SECART) has announced the schedule for its 2019 Resilience Webinar Series, which focuses upon hurricanes and additional topics related to disaster resilience in the Southeast and Caribbean Region of the nation. The third in this seven-part webinar series is entitled “NOAA Hurricane Awareness Series: Hurricane Michael analysis and findings” will be held between 11:00 AM and noon Eastern Time on Tuesday 7 May 2019. Registration is needed. [NOAA Regional Collaboration]
NOAA's 2019 Resilience Webinar Series continues -- NOAA’s Southeast and Caribbean Regional Collaboration Team (SECART) has announced the schedule for its 2019 Resilience Webinar Series, which focuses upon hurricanes and additional topics related to disaster resilience in the Southeast and Caribbean Region of the nation. The third in this seven-part webinar series is entitled “NOAA Hurricane Awareness Series: Hurricane Michael analysis and findings” will be held between 11:00 AM and noon Eastern Time on Tuesday 7 May 2019. Registration is needed. [NOAA Regional Collaboration]
Hurricane preparedness activities planned for this week --

Hurricane Awareness Week -- NOAA has declared this week of 5-11 May 2019 to be Hurricane Awareness Week 2019 across the nation. Several states will also be observing their Hurricane Awareness Weeks during this week, including Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas and the Tri-State area of Connecticut, New Jersey and New York served by the New York (NY) National Weather Service Office. The New England States (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island) and the remainder of New York State will have their Hurricane Awareness Weeks in mid-July.
East Coast Hurricane Awareness Trip -- NOAA hurricane experts will embark on a five-day, five-city tour along the East Coast of the United States in an US Air Force Reserve WC-130J hurricane hunter aircraft and the NOAA P-3 aircraft to raise public hurricane awareness. The schedule, which runs from Monday (6 May) through Friday (10 May), includes stops in Quonset, RI; Harrisburg, PA; Roanoke, VA; Charlotte, NC; and Brunswick, GA. [NOAA News]
For those unable to attend the awareness tour, go to the list of Daily Themes and Hurricane Awareness Tour Stops on the Hurricane Preparedness Week page or 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 2019 for 4th through 6th grade classes only in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont at 10 AM EDT on Monday morning, 6 May 2019. A second webinar will be held on Thursday (9 May) at 10 AM EDT for shcools in any state. This webinar will be broadcast live when the NOAA Hurricane Awareness Tour stops at Baton Rouge, LA. Registration for this webinar is required. Students will hear from NHC scientists as well as NOAA AOC personnel who fly into hurricanes. [Hurricanes: Science and Society]
NOAA's 2019 Resilience Webinar Series continues -- NOAA’s Southeast and Caribbean Regional Collaboration Team (SECART) has announced the schedule for its 2019 Resilience Webinar Series, which focuses upon hurricanes and additional topics related to disaster resilience in the Southeast and Caribbean Region of the nation. The third in this seven-part webinar series is entitled “NOAA Hurricane Awareness Series: Hurricane Michael analysis and findings” will be held between 11:00 AM and noon Eastern Time on Tuesday 7 May 2019. Registration is needed. [NOAA Regional Collaboration]

Land of the Midnight Sun -- Barring clouds, the sun should rise at Barrow, AK early next Saturday morning (2:34 AM AKDT on 11 May 2019) after spending 22 minutes below the horizon. The sun should then remain above the local horizon for the next 12 weeks, before going below the horizon for 52 minutes on 2 August 2019 (at 2:08 AM AKDT). [US Naval Observatory]
National Marine Sanctuaries promote conservation and stewardship to diverse audiences -- NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries is taking steps to promote the outreach and education of underserved and diverse audiences. National marine sanctuary staff have reached underserved audiences and continue to support the next generation of ocean users and stewards through such programs as Ocean Guardian Schools, diversity and inclusion programs, marine technology workshops, and the Dr. Nancy Foster Scholarship. [NOAA National Marine Sanctuaries News]

Ocean in the News:

Eye on the tropics -- Tropical cyclone activity continued during the last week across the Indian Ocean basins of both the Southern and Northern Hemispheres:

In the South Indian Ocean, Tropical Cyclone Lorna was traveling southward at the start of last week as a tropical storm, approximately 715 miles to the southwest of Cocos Island. Late during the previous week and weekend, Lorna had strengthened to become a category 1 tropical cyclone on the Saffir-Simpson Scale before weakening by early last week. Continuing toward the south and the south-southwest last Monday, Lorna entered a hostile environment with strong vertical wind shear and the intrusion of dry air, causing it to become a remnant low that eventually dissipated early Tuesday approximately 850 miles to the southwest of Cocos Island. Satellite imagery and additional information on Cyclone Lorna can be found on the NASA Hurricane Blog.
In the North Indian Ocean, Tropical Storm Fani was tracking to the north-northwest across the Bay of Bengal at the start of last week. At the time, it was passing approximately 570 miles to the east of Colombo, Sri Lanka. As it continued generally northward offshore of the eastern coast of India, this tropical storm intensified, becoming a category 4 tropical cyclone (on the Saffir-Simpson Scale) by Thursday as maximum sustained surface winds reached 135 mph. On Friday, Cyclone Fani made landfall near the ciy of Puri, in the Indian state of Odisha. Shortly after making landfall, Fani weakened to a category 1 cyclone, then to a tropical storm and a tropical depression by early Saturday. Later in the day, Fani had become a remnant low. Fani, which was the biggest cyclone to strike India in 20 years, brought strong winds, storm surge and torrential rains across the low-lying areas of northeastern India and Bangladesh, where millions of people live. [World Meteorological Organization News] As of late this past weekend, the death toll for Cyclone Fani was approaching 60 people in India and Bangladesh.
Satellite imagery and additional information on Cyclone Fani is available on the NASA Hurricane Blog

Snapshot Day celebrates its 20th anniversary for monitoring water quality in California watersheds -- NOAA's Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuaries celebrated the 20th anniversary of Snapshot Day this past Saturday, 4 May 2019. Snapshot Day, which is held on the first Saturday in May, is billed as the largest single-day water monitoring event in California, where volunteers work with a network of water quality professionals to assess the water quality of the watersheds emptying into the Pacific Ocean. Each monitoring team collects a "bucket kit" packed with field sampling equipment including water collection bottles, data sheets, and water testing supplies. The volunteers venture out to one of 250 designated creek and river sampling sites along California's central coast that contains part of the Monterey Bay Marine Sanctuary, [NOAA National Marine Sanctuaries News]
Three new members are appointed to NOAA’s Marine Fisheries Advisory Committee -- Early last week the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce, Wilbur Ross, appointed three new advisors to the NOAA’s Marine Fisheries Advisory Committee (MAFAC), a committee of 21 members that advises the Secretary of Commerce and NOAA on all living marine resource matters within the responsibility of the Department of Commerce. The members are from around the nation and represent a wide spectrum of interests that include fishing, aquaculture, protected resources, environmental, academic, tribal, state, and consumer issues. [NOAA Fisheries News]
Assessment of nation's coastal resilience aided by reports and interactive mapping tool -- The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation recently released a series of multiple reports and an interactive online mapping tool that focus on assessing resilience along the coastline of the contiguous U.S. These products are the result of a partnership that the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation has with NOAA, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the National Environmental Modeling and Analysis Center at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and NatureServe, a non-profit conservation science organization. Assessment of the coastal resilience to coastal storms, sea-level rise and flooding events was conducted in five regions and eight watersheds along the Pacific, Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts. The interactive mapping tool called "Coastal Resilience Evaluation and Siting Tool" (CREST) allows planners, stakeholders, and the public to visualize the assessment results from each of the regions and watersheds. [NOAA Fisheries News]
Safeguarding Atlantic tunas -- NOAA Fisheries posted a feature story describing how this agency protects tuna populations in the North Atlantic Ocean from overfishing while supporting these economically important fisheries that include five tuna species: bluefin, bigeye, albacore, yellowfin, and skipjack. U.S. commercial fisheries generated an estimated $26.5 million in revenue during 2017, while recreational tuna fishers also produce tens of millions of dollars in economic value. [NOAA Fisheries Feature Story]
Comparisons made between polar sea ice extent in the Arctic and Antarctic -- A member of the staff at the National Snow & Ice Data Center wrote a feature article entitled "Understanding Climate: Antarctic Sea Ice Extent." She notes that the range between the smallest summer sea ice extent and the largest late winter ice extent is larger in the waters surrounding Antarctica than in the Arctic, due to geography. Furthermore, the fluctuations in the Arctic sea ice are less complicated than those of the Antarctic, which is a much bigger ice sheet. Antarctic trends are less apparent, ice extents swinging between record highs and record lows during the past decade. The reasons behind the complicated picture of sea ice in the Southern Hemisphere are explained. [NOAA Climate.gov News]
Tool is available to graph sea ice and snow cover extent -- NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information has made a tool available that generates bar graphs showing monthly extent of sea ice in the Northern or Southern Hemisphere, or bar graphs of snow cover by month for the entire Northern Hemisphere or subregions within it. The data used for construction of the sea ice extent graphs are obtained from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), while snow cover data are provided by the Rutgers University Global Snow Laboratory. Each graph includes the long-term average extent and the trend over the full period of record that runs from 1979 to present for sea ice extent and since 1967 for snow cover. Tabular data are also available. [NOAA Climate.gov News]
International conference on meteotsunamis to be held -- The First World Conference on Meteotsunamis is to be held in Split, Croatia, during this upcoming week (8-11 May 2019). Meteotsunamis are tsunami-like sea waves that are generated by atmospheric processes involving rapid changes in barometric pressure that cause the displacement of a body of water. These events have been observed along numerous coasts of the world oceans, marginal seas and the Great Lakes. This conference is aimed to share contemporary meteotsunami-related activities (from socio-economic impacts to research and construction of warning systems) and to establish a common platform for promoting future meteotsunami studies. [First World Conference on Meteotsunamis]
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:

6 May 1994...The rail tunnel under the English Channel, or "Chunnel," that connects Folkestone, England, with Sangatte, France was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and French President Mitterrand. (The History Channel)
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.