WEEKLY OCEAN NEWS

26-30 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.

Items of Interest:

A change in seasons -- Saturday, 31 August 2013, marks the end of Northern Hemisphere's meteorological summer, the three-month span of June, July and August that meteorologists frequently use for record keeping processes. Meteorological autumn (September, October and November) for the Northern Hemisphere starts the following day, 1 September 2013, Meteorologists frequently use these three-month meteorological seasons for record keeping processes. Additional information will be presented in the next several weeks concerning meteorological seasons and the astronomical seasons, such as the familiar autumn that begins on the autumnal equinox in three weeks on Sunday, 22 September 2013.
GOES-12 satellite retired after a decade of service -- Early last week, NOAA decommissioned its Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-12) spacecraft after 3,788 days (more than 12 years) in orbit, operating well longer than its original design lifespan. This satellite, which was also known as "GOES-East" due to its position in geosynchronous orbit over equatorial South America, provided surveillance of such notable events as the historic 2005 hurricane season in the North Atlantic basin and a Christmas blizzard in the central United States in 2009. A YouTube video compresses 10 years of "weather history" into a three-minute animation. [NOAA News] A 2-minute video is also available that shows a sequence of winter storms that moved across the nation during the first 16 days of February 2010. [NASA Goddard Space Flight Center]

Ocean in the News:

Eye on the tropics -- Some tropical cyclone activity was found across tropical ocean basins last week:

In the North Atlantic basin, remnants of Tropical Depression Erin dissipated at the start of last week over the waters west of the west of the Cape Verde Islands.
Over this just-concluded weekend, the sixth named tropical cyclone of the 2013 Atlantic hurricane season, Tropical Storm Fernand, formed from a tropical depression over the waters of the western sections of the Bay of Campeche. As of late Sunday afternoon, Tropical Storm Fernand was approximately 25 miles east of Veracruz, Mexico. Fernand was expected to make landfall along the Mexican coast early Monday.
In the eastern North Pacific, a tropical depression located several hundred miles off the western coast of Mexico organized and strengthened to become Tropical Storm Ivo by late last week. Ivo, the ninth named tropical cyclone of the 2013 eastern Pacific hurricane season, traveled in an erratic path to the northwest, remaining offshore of Mexico's Baja California Peninsula. By Sunday, Ivo had weakened to a tropical depression and then to a remnant low. Further information on Tropical Storm Ivo is available on the NASA Hurricane Page.
In the central North Pacific Tropical Storm Pewa developed at the end of previous week approximately 1250 miles to the southwest of the Hawaiian Island of Kauai. This tropical storm traveled to the west-northwest across the International Dateline, causing it to become part of the weather systems in the western North Pacific Basin.
A second tropical storm called Unala formed at the start of last week to the east of Wake Island and the International Dateline. Like Tropical Storm Pewa, this second system moved across the Dateline and into the western North Pacific where it dissipated.
In the western North Pacific, Typhoon Trami became a category 1 typhoon on the Saffir-Simpson Scale at the start of last week as it traveled to the west across the East China Sea, passing to the north of Taiwan. Trami made landfall along the coast of eastern China at midweek. See NASA Hurricane Page for more information on Typhoon Trami.
Tropical Storm Pewa, which had formed in the Central Pacific basin near Hawaii over the previous weekend, intensified as it traveled to the northwest across the western Pacific, intensifying to a category 1 typhoon early in the week. By this past weekend, Typhoon Pewa began weakening, becoming a tropical storm and then a tropical depression by early Monday (local time). The NASA Hurricane Page has further information on Typhoon Pewa.
At the start of last week, Tropical Storm Unala crossed the Dateline but was relatively short-lived in the western Pacific, as it weakened to a tropical disturbance after one day. The NASA Hurricane Page has information on Tropical Storm Unala.

Visualizing historical tropical cyclone tracks -- NOAA's National Climatic Data Center has assembled the "best track" data for 11,967 tropical cyclones into a single database, called IBTrACS (International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship). This data set incorporates information obtained from many international sources for the period extending from 1842 to 2012. Images of tropical cyclone tracks in each of the world's ocean basins were generated from IBTrACS to give estimates of wind speeds along the tracks of these tropical cyclones, which provide estimates of cyclone intensity [NOAA Environmental Visualization Laboratory]
Corresponding images show the frequency of track overlaps, which provide an indication of where tropical cyclones form. [NOAA Environmental Visualization Laboratory]
Coastal areas damaged by Hurricane Sandy are being remapped by Federal agencies -- At the start of last week the Obama administration released the Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force progress report, followed the next day by the announcement by NOAA, the US Geological Survey and the US Army Corps of Engineers of plans for remapping parts of the East Coast, where the landfall of Hurricane Sandy last October altered seafloors and shorelines, destroyed buildings, and disrupted millions of lives. These three federal agencies are using emergency supplemental funds provided by Congress to survey coastal waters and shorelines, acquiring data that will update East Coast land maps and nautical charts. [NOAA News] [USGS Newsroom]
Fisheries disaster declared for Florida oyster fishery -- Earlier this month, US Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker declared a commercial fishery failure for the oyster fishery along the west coast of Florida due to excessive drought conditions in Apalachicola Bay and elsewhere in the Florida Panhandle during the 2012-2013 winter fishing season. [NOAA News]
Final rule to improve process for critical habitat proposals issued -- During the last week, the two federal agencies are responsible for administering the Endangered Species Act, the US Fish and Wildlife Service and NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service, issued a final rule that improves the process governing critical habitat designations for endangered and threatened species. [NOAA Fisheries Newsroom]
Funds made available for habitat restoration in Alaska, Washington and Oregon -- During the last week officials with NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA Fisheries) announced that $3.73 million were being made available to fund the first year of a three-year anticipated program for seven fish habitat restoration projects in Alaska, Oregon and Washington. These projects are designed to restore more than 1,800 acres of habitat, benefiting threatened species including steelhead, Chinook and coho salmon. [NOAA Fisheries Newsroom]
Public comments sought on Atlantic bluefin tuna management proposals -- NOAA Fisheries is currently seeking public comment through late October 2013 on a proposed rule and associated draft environmental impact statement designed to reduce discards of Atlantic bluefin tuna. In addition, measures are outlined that are designed to help ensure compliance with international quotas. The draft environmental impact statement includes the ecological and socioeconomic analyses of the amendment. Several public informational meetings are also planned for September. [NOAA Fisheries Newsroom]
Satellite sees mix of sea ice and phytoplankton in the Northwest Passage --A visible image recently generated from data collected by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) onboard the NASA/NOAA Suomi NPP (National Polar-0rbiting Partnership) satellite shows a mix of colors that included the white and ice blue areas associated with remnants of sea ice and the blue-green areas from the phytoplankton in northern Canada's Northwest Passage. The Northwest Passage represents a sea route through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and the Arctic Ocean, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. [NOAA Environmental Visualization Laboratory]
July 2013 weather and climate for the globe reviewed -- Scientists at the NOAA National Climatic Data Center recently reported on their analysis of preliminary weather data collected globally during the month of July 2013. The combined global land and ocean surface temperature for July 2013 was 61.50 degrees Fahrenheit, which made this past month the sixth warmest July since 1880, when a sufficiently dense worldwide climate observing network was established. This combined land and ocean temperature was also 1.10 Fahrenheit degrees above the 20th-century (1901-2000) average. When treated separately, the global ocean temperature was 0.97 Fahrenheit degrees above the 20th century average, which was the fifth highest for July on record, while the global land surface temperature was the eighth highest on record, or 1.40 Fahrenheit degrees above the long-term average.
The researchers at the National Snow and Ice Data Center noted the areal extent of the Arctic sea ice for July 2013 was the fifth smallest July Arctic sea ice extent since satellite records began in 1979. On the other hand, the Antarctic sea ice during this past month represented the second largest July Antarctic sea ice extent on record. [NOAA/NCDC State of the Climate]
Tracking nitrate pulse in Mississippi River basin to Gulf of Mexico -- Scientists associated with the US Geological Survey have been using nearly three dozen new optical sensors to accurately track the nitrate pulse moving down the small streams and larger tributaries of the Mississippi River basin to the Gulf of Mexico. This excessive nitrate pulse in the runoff in the river basin contributes to the Gulf of Mexico hypoxic zone, an area with low oxygen known commonly as the "dead zone." [USGS Newsroom]
Australia had big role in recent drop of sea level rise -- Using data collected from the NASA/German Aerospace Center's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) spacecraft, researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Colorado at Boulder claim that an unique and complex set of circumstances converged over Australia in 2010 and 2011 that caused Earth's smallest continent to be the biggest contributor to the observed drop in global sea level during that time, counteracting the longer term sea level rise. They showed that the drop was caused by the very strong La Niña that began in late 2010, which changed rainfall patterns over the planet over a short time span, moving huge amounts of water from the ocean to the Australian continent in the form of rain. [NASA Global Climate Change 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:

26 August 1883... Krakatau (or Krakatoa) Volcano exploded in the East Indies. The explosion was heard more than 2500 miles away, and every barograph around the world recorded the passage of the air wave, up to seven times. Giant waves, 125 feet high and traveling 300 mph, devastated everything in their path, hurling ashore coral blocks weighing up to 900 tons, and killing more than 36,000 persons. Volcanic ash was carried around the globe in thirteen days producing blue and green suns in the tropics, and then vivid red sunsets in higher latitudes. The temperature of the Earth was lowered one degree for the next two years, finally recovering to normal by 1888. (David Ludlum)
26 August 1949...A hurricane made landfall at Delray Beach, FL. Winds reached 153 mph at the Jupiter Lighthouse before the anemometer failed. The hurricane caused $45 million damage to crops, and caught the Georgia and South Carolina coast resulting in another $2 million in damage. (David Ludlum)
26 August 1992...Hurricane Andrew made its second landfall along the Louisiana coast near Burns Point, as a category 3 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale. Morgan City recorded wind gusts of 108 mph. Hammond was deluged with nearly a foot of rain. Total additional damage was estimated at $1.8 billion. Andrew, which had made its initial US landfall in South Florida on the 24th, was the most costly natural disaster in US history, with total damage reaching up to $30 billion. Additionally, record hurricane evacuation of 2.4 million people took place in Florida and Louisiana. (Intellicast) (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
27 August 1881...As many as 335 people were lost in the Georgia Hurricane, especially severe at Savannah and Charleston, SC. (Intellicast)
27 August 1883...The after effects caused by the Krakatau explosion in Indonesia, including large tsunami waves of up to 300 feet, killed 36,000 people. The tsunami waves were powerful enough to cross the Indian Ocean and travel beyond Cape Horn. The most powerful blast was the most violent known in human history, was loud enough to be heard in Australia, and the shock wave was registered by barometers England. The huge amount of volcanic dust thrust high into the stratosphere eventually traveled around the world. The dust blocked sunlight causing temperature drops and chaotic weather patterns for several years afterward. (Wikipedia) (Today in Science History)
27 August 1893...The first of three great hurricanes that year struck South Carolina drowning more than 1000 persons in a storm surge at Charleston. Landfall was just south of Savannah, GA where sustained winds hit 120 mph. (David Ludlum)
27 August 1964...Hurricane Cleo battered Miami and the South Florida area, marking the first direct hit for Miami in fourteen years. Sustained winds of 100 mph gusted to 135 mph, and the hurricane caused $125 million in damage. (David Ludlum)
27 August 1995...Remains of Tropical Storm Jerry unloaded 12.32 inches of rain in 24 hours in Greer, SC, a record for 24 hours, for a rain event and for August. At Antreville, 17.00 inches fell in 24 hours, setting a 24-hour rainfall record for the Palmetto State. (Intellicast)
28 August 1965...CDR Scott Carpenter, USN, and nine aquanauts entered SeaLab II, 205 ft. below Southern California's waters to conduct underwater living and working tests. (Naval Historical Center)
28 August 1988...Tropical Storm Chris spawned a tornado near Manning, SC, which killed one person, and spawned three tornadoes in North Carolina. Chris produced one to two foot tides, and three to six inch rains, over coastal South Carolina. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
28-30 August 1839...A hurricane moved from Cape Hatteras, NC to offshore New England. An unusual feature of the hurricane was the snow it helped produce, which whitened the Catskill Mountains of New York State. Considerable snow was also reported at Salem, NY. (The Weather Channel)
28 August 1965...CDR Scott Carpenter, USN, and nine aquanauts entered SeaLab II, 205 ft. below Southern California's waters to conduct underwater living and working tests. (Naval Historical Center)
28 August 1988...Tropical Storm Chris spawned a tornado near Manning, SC, which killed one person, and spawned three tornadoes in North Carolina. Chris produced one to two foot tides, and three to six inch rains, over coastal South Carolina. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
29 August 1583...The Delight was wrecked on Sable Island, Nova Scotia during a heavy gale, blinding rain and thick fog. This was Canada's first recorded marine disaster, taking 85 lives. (The Weather Doctor)
29 August 1979...Winds associated with Hurricane David reached 145 mph as the hurricane crossed the island of Dominica. The capital city, Roseau, was devastated, with 56 fatalities and 60,000 out of a population of 80,000 left homeless. About three-quarters of the coconut and banana crops were destroyed. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
29 August 1988...The remnants of Tropical Storm Chris drenched eastern Pennsylvania with up to five and a half inches of rain, and produced high winds that gusted to 90 mph, severely damaging a hundred boats in Anne Arundel County, MD. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
29 August 2005...Hurricane Katrina, the costliest and one of the five deadliest hurricanes in US history, made landfall along the Louisiana Gulf Coast southeast of New Orleans as a category 3 on the Saffir-Simpson Scale after reaching category 5 status. Massive destruction was reported in coastal Mississippi and in New Orleans. As many as 1833 people reportedly died from Katrina in the US. (National Hurricane Center)
30 August 1913...The US Navy tested the Sperry gyroscopic stabilizer (automatic pilot). (Naval Historical Center)
30 August 1942...A hurricane weakened in moving 160 miles across south Texas from landfall at Matagorda to San Antonio, winds still gusting from 50 to 70 mph at San Antonio for more than five hours. Seventy of 75 planes were damaged at the city airport. Many trees were destroyed, but the famed Alamo's walls withstood the storm. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
31 August 1842...The U.S. Naval Observatory was authorized by an act of Congress. (Today in Science History)
1 September 1858...The first transatlantic cable failed after less than one month of service. (Today in Science History)
1-2 September 1935...Perhaps the most intense hurricane ever to hit the U.S. struck the Florida Keys with sustained winds of over 155 mph with gusts exceeding 200 mph. On the 1^st, the "Labor Day Hurricane" formed rapidly over the Bahama Islands and intensified into a Category 5 hurricane (on the Saffir Simpson Scale) with sustained winds of over 155 mph and gusts exceeding 200 mph. On the next day, this hurricane generated a 15-foot tide and waves 30-ft high, as it became the first known Category 5 hurricane to hit the U.S. Mainland. More than 400 persons perished in the storm on that Labor Day, including many World War I veterans building a bridge from the Keys to the mainland. The barometric pressure at Matecumbe Bay, FL hit a record low for the U.S. at 26.35 inches of mercury (or 892 millibars). (David Ludlum) (The Weather Doctor)
1 September 1974...Navy Lieutenant Judy Neuffer became the first woman to pilot a plane through the eye of a hurricane. (Northern Indiana NWSFO)
1 September 1985...A joint French-American expedition headed by the American explorer, Robert D. Ballard, located the wreck of the sunken liner RMS Titanic on the floor of the North Atlantic using an experimental and unmanned submersible craft Argo. The wreckage of the Titanic, which sank in April 1912 on its maiden voyage after colliding with an iceberg, was found at a depth of about 13,000 feet and approximately 400 miles west of Newfoundland. (The History Channel)