WEEKLY OCEAN NEWS

8-12 December 2014

DataStreme Ocean will return for Spring 2015 with new Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 19 January 2015. All the current online website products, including updated issues of Weekly Ocean News, will continue to be available throughout the winter break period.

Items of Interest:

Public given 10 ways to help protect coral reefs -- NOAA's Ocean Service has recently provided a list of 10 recommended ways designed to assist the public in making choices that can have a positive impact on reef health and conservation. In addition, NOAA is working to increase understanding of the causes of reef decline that has been observed in recent decades. [NOAA Ocean Service]
Worldwide GLOBE at Night 2014 Campaign continues -- The series of GLOBE at Night citizen-science campaigns for 2014 will continue with a 10-night campaign that starts on 11 December and runs through 20 December. GLOBE at Night is a worldwide, hands-on science and education program designed to encourage citizen-scientists worldwide to record the brightness of their night sky by matching the appearance of a constellation (Perseus in the Northern Hemisphere and Cetus in the Southern Hemisphere) with the seven magnitude/star charts of progressively fainter stars. Activity guides are also available. The GLOBE at night program is intended to raise public awareness of the impact of light pollution. [GLOBE at Night]

Ocean in the News:

Eye on the tropics --- Tropical cyclone activity was limited to the western North Pacific Ocean basin last week. A tropical depression located several hundred miles south of the island of Chuuk in the Federated States of Micronesia strengthened to become a tropical storm at the start of last week. This tropical storm strengthened rapidly to become Typhoon Hagupit as it traveled to the west-northwest toward the Philippine Islands. By late in the week, Hagupit strengthened to become a Super Typhoon with a category 5 status on the Saffir-Simpson Scale, as maximum sustained surface winds reached at least 175 mph. These winds generated sea waves that reached 45 to 50 feet. Hagupit made landfall on Sunday (local time) in Dolores, a coastal town in the Philippine's Eastern Samar Province. Strong winds, heavy rain and high seas were battering sections of the Philippines across a region that had been devastated by Super Typhoon Haiyan in November 2013. Current forecasts indicate that after crossing the Philippine Islands, Hagupit should continue to the west across the South China Sea toward Vietnam.
NASA's 2014 hurricane mission reviewed -- During the recently concluded 2014 Atlantic hurricane season NASA's remotely piloted Global Hawk aircraft and a manned WB-57 aircraft were used to investigate four tropical cyclones as part of the agency's Hurricane and Severe Storms Sentinel, (HS3) mission. The four tropical cyclones that were investigated were Hurricanes Cristobal, Edouard and Gonzalo and Tropical Storm Dolly. They affected land areas in the Atlantic Ocean Basin and were at different stages during the HS3 mission investigations. [NASA Goddard Space Flight Center]
El Niño events may have a "remote control" upon hurricanes in Northeastern Pacific basin -- Scientists at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and the National Taiwan University have discovered a oceanic pathway that appears to transport the heat associated with an El Niño event from the equatorial Pacific to the Northeastern Pacific basin where the heat can fuel intense hurricanes in the basin that can affect western Mexico, the Southwest US and the Hawaiian Islands. This transfer, which involves the large accumulation of heat underneath the ocean surface, has a two or three season delay between the peaks in the El Niño and the hurricane activity. [University of Hawaii at Manoa News]
Atlantic tuna management measures announced -- At the start of last week, NOAA Fisheries officials announced implementation of final regulations for areas in the Gulf of Mexico and along the North Carolina coast designed to help protect the highly prized Atlantic blue fin tuna by reducing dead discards and providing measures to help ensure compliance with international quotas. This implementation is Amendment 7 to the 2006 Consolidated Atlantic Highly Migratory Species (HMS) Fishery Management Plan (FMP). [NOAA News] [NOAA Fisheries]
Public comment sought on proposed Arctic ringed seal critical habitat -- NOAA Fisheries is soliciting public comment on proposed designation of waters off the northern and western coasts of Alaska as critical habitat areas for Arctic ringed seals, one of the subspecies of ringed seals that have been declared as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act. The Beaufort and Chukchi Seas along the northern Alaskan coast and the northern Bering Sea along the western coast are under consideration. The public can make comments through February 2015. [NOAA Fisheries News]
Intense coral bleaching conditions observed by satellites in 2014 -- A map of the Earth's tropical and subtropical ocean basins displays the accumulated thermal stress that can lead to coral bleaching for 2014 generated from sea surface temperatures collected by NOAA's polar orbiting satellites. This thermal stress is identified in terms of the maximum coral degree heating weeks or the number of weeks that each location experienced sea surface temperatures that were a degree or more above normal. According to other NOAA sources, the coral reefs in the Florida Keys and around the Hawaiian Islands experienced record or near record bleaching in 2014. [NOAA Environmental Visualization Laboratory] In addition, scientists with NOAA's Coral Reef Watch warn that 2015 could be just as devastating for coral reefs, even if an anticipated El Niño event does not develop. [NOAA Climate.gov News]
Intact "ghost ship" discovered off coast of Hawaii -- Researchers from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries recently announced last year's discovery of the submerged, but intact USS Kailua at a depth of 2000 feet in waters nearly 20 miles off the coast of the Hawaiian Island of Oahu. This "ghost ship" was converted by the US Navy from a submarine cable laying vessel called the Dickenson to the USS Kailua, a ship that serviced the Navy's communication network during World War II. In 1946, the Kailua was torpedoed off Oahu as part of training exercise. Interestingly, the Dickenson had reached Pearl Harbor with refugees from the Fanning Island cable station on 7 December 1941 when Japanese warplanes attached the Navy's facilities on Oahu. [University of Hawaii at Manoa News]
Melt rate of West Antarctic ice has tripled over last decade -- Scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and from the University of California, Irvine recently reported that the melt rate of glaciers across West Antarctica has tripled within the last decade. They based their findings upon their comprehensive analysis of the mass budgets of glaciers flowing into the Amundsen Sea Embayment constructed from 21 years of observational data collected using four different measurement techniques, including those from NASA and European Space Agency satellites and from NASA's Operation IceBridge airborne campaign. The scientists warn that glaciers in this region appear to be experiencing the latest ice loss and are the most significant of the Antarctic contributors to sea level rise. [NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory]
Antarctic seawater temperatures are rising -- Using oceanographic records commencing in the 1960s, scientists from the United Kingdom's University of East Angelia and their colleagues from Germany, the United States and Japan report that the temperature of the seawater in the shallow shelf seas of West Antarctica has been increasing. Furthermore, the scientists claim that this warming trend in the seawater has accelerated the melting and sliding of glaciers in the area. In addition, the water around Antarctica has also become less salty, which is consistent with increased ice melting from the Antarctic continent. [University of East Anglia News]
Long-term monitoring of ice cover across the Great Lakes States updated -- The Great Lakes experienced near-record ice cover last winter, as 91 percent of the Lakes were covered with ice during the 2013-14 winter due to a prolonged winter with unseasonably cold air that persisted across eastern North America. [NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory] This near-record ice cover last year runs counter to the long term records of winter freeze-thaw cycles of freshwater lakes that have monitored across North America for as long as 160 years. The citizen scientists have recorded the dates of "ice-on" in autumn and "ice off" in spring, which provides the ice duration for that winter season. The resulting "ice phenology" provides an indication of changes in climate as well as changes in the freshwater ecosystems. The National Snow and Ice Data Center maintains a database with freeze and thaw observations from more than 700 lakes and rivers throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Charts of the dates of first-freeze for nine selected lakes in the Great Lakes States are available beginning in 1850 and running through 2012. [Earth Gauge] (Note: This reporter has been monitoring the ice cover on Lakes Mendota and Monona in Madison, WI for several decades and has been helping maintain one of the longer and nearly continuous ice phenology records in North America as the ice record for these lakes started at least 160 years ago. These records are available on the Wisconsin State Climatology Office website and last winter showed reversal in recent trends of ice duration. EJH).
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] Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Historical Events:

8 December 1777...Captain James Cook left the Society Islands (French Polynesia).
8 December 1866...The first transpacific side-wheeler steamship launched in the U.S. was the Celestial Empire (later named China) with capacity for 1,300 passengers. The builder, William H. Webb of New York, introduced many features of naval architecture in this liner, since in common use. (Today in Science History)
8 December 1993...The U.S. Secretary of Defense declared that the Global Positioning System (GPS), accurate within 100 meters, had 24 GPS satellites operating in their assigned orbits, available for navigation use at Standard Positioning Service (SPS) levels for civil users. This worldwide satellite-based radionavigation system used as the Defense Department's primary radionavigation system provided authorized users encrypted Precise Positioning Service accurate to at least 22 meters. (Today in Science History)
8 December 2002...Super-typhoon Pongsona hit Guam with sustained winds of 144 mph and gusts to 173 mph, along with a storm surge to 20 feet. The 40-mile wide diameter eye was over Anderson AFB for 2 hours. One indirect death and 193 injuries were attributed to the typhoon. Some bridge pavement was "scrapped off" by wind and wave action. Damage was estimated at $700 million. (Accord Weather Guide Calendar)
9 December1938...A prototype shipboard radar designed and built by the Naval Research Laboratory was installed on the battleship, USS New York (BB-34). (Naval Historian Center)
9 December 2003...A subtropical storm became Tropical Storm Peter approximately 700 miles west-northwest of the Cape Verde Islands. With Tropical Storm Odette having formed in the Caribbean on the 4th, the development of Peter marked the first time since 1887 that two tropical storms formed in the Atlantic Basin in December. (Accord Weather Guide Calendar)
10 December 1582...France began use of the Gregorian calendar.
10 December 1799...The metric system was made compulsory by law in France. (Today in Science History)
10 December 1922...Nobel Prize for Peace was awarded to Fridtjof Nansen, Norwegian oceanographer explorer, author, athlete and statesman in recognition of his work for refugees and the famine-stricken. Other prize winners that year were Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein.
10 December 1978 (date approximate)...A 90-foot research ship chartered by the University of Hawaii left Honolulu on the 9th, but failed to arrive in Kawaihae on the 11th. Except for an empty box, no trace of the ship, crew or scientists was found by an extensive air and sea search operation. Gusty trade winds prevailed over the area. (Accord Weather Guide Calendar)
11 December 1901...Italian physicist and radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi sent the first radio transmission across the Atlantic Ocean, covering over 2000 miles from Cornwall in England to Newfoundland, Canada. (The History Channel)
12 December 1966...A Greek passenger ferry foundered in heavy seas near Heraklion, Crete with the loss of 241 lives.
13 December 1577...Five ships and 164 men under the command of English seaman Francis Drake (later knighted) set sail from Plymouth, England, to embark on Drake's circumnavigation of the globe, the first by a British explorer. The journey took almost three years. (The History Channel)
13 December 1642...Dutch navigator Abel Janszoon Tasman became the first European explorer to sight the South Pacific island group now known as New Zealand. (The History Channel)
13 December 1816...The first US patent for a dry dock was issued to John Adamson of Boston, MA. (Today in Science History)
13 December 1879...The first federal fish-hatching steamer was launched at Wilmington, DE.
14 December 1287...Zuider Zee seawall in the Netherlands collapsed with the loss of over 50,000 lives. (Wikipedia)
14 December 1902...The British Cable Ship Silverton set sail from the San Francisco Bay Area to lay the first telephone cable between San Francisco and Honolulu. The project, which involved laying a cable across 2277 nautical miles, was completed by 1 January 1903 as the ship landed and the first test message sent the same day. (Today in Science History)
14 December 1988...The first transatlantic underwater fiber-optic cable went into service.
14 December 1991...A ferry, the Salem Express, carrying 569 passengers sank in the Red Sea off the coast of Safaga, Egypt, after hitting a coral reef. Over 460 people were believed drowned.