WEEKLY OCEAN NEWS

15-19 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 invited to participate in "Climate Resilience Data Challenge" -- NASA and its partner, the US Geological Survey, are offering more than $35,000 in prizes to citizen scientists in what is called the "Climate Resilience Data Challenge" for ideas that would use climate data to address vulnerabilities faced by the nation in coping with climate change. This challenge, which commenced this Monday, will run through March 2015. [USGS Newsroom]
Student scholarships announced -- The NOAA Office of Education recently announced that scholarships are available to undergraduate and graduate students who are majoring in the atmospheric and oceanic sciences, along with several of the other scientific and technical disciplines that support NOAA's mission and programs. [NOAA Office of Education] These scholarships include:

Educational Partnership Program (EPP) Undergraduate Scholarship: http://www.epp.noaa.gov/ssp_undergrad_page.html. This program provides an opportunity for rising junior students to study disciplines relating to the NOAA's mission. Students attending Minority Serving Institutions are encouraged to apply. The application deadline for the 2015 EPP Undergraduate Scholarship Program is 31 January 2015.
Ernest F. Hollings Undergraduate Scholarship Program: http://www.oesd.noaa.gov/scholarships/hollings.html#page=timeline. This program is designed to: (1). increase undergraduate training in oceanic and atmospheric science, research, technology, and education and foster multidisciplinary training opportunities; (2) increase public understanding and support for stewardship of the ocean and atmosphere and improve environmental literacy; (3.) recruit and prepare students for public service careers with NOAA and other natural resource and science agencies at the federal, state and local levels of government; and (4.) recruit and prepare students for careers as teachers and educators in oceanic and atmospheric science and to improve scientific and environmental education in the United States. The application deadline for the 2015 Ernest F. Hollings Undergraduate Scholarship Program is 30 January 2015.

Happy Winter Solstice! The winter solstice will occur next Sunday, 21 December 2014 (officially, at 2302 Z, or 6:11 PM EST, 5:02 PM CST, etc.). At that time, the earth's spin axis will be oriented such that the sun appears to be the farthest south in the local sky of most earth-bound observers. While most of us consider this event to be the start of astronomical winter, the British call that day the "Midwinter Day", as the apparent sun will begin its northward climb again. For essentially all locations in the Northern Hemisphere, in two weeks, the night will be the longest and the daylight on the following day will be the shortest of the year. Starting Sunday, the length of darkness will begin to shrink as we head toward the summer solstice on 21 June 2015 at 1638Z.

Ocean in the News:

Eye on the tropics --- Tropical cyclone activity was limited to two ocean basins last week:

In the western North Pacific Ocean basin, Super Typhoon Hagupit weakened as it traveled westward across the Philippine Islands at the start of last week after making an initial landfall in the Philippine's Eastern Samar Province. Weakening to a tropical storm, Hagupit continued westward across the South China Sea toward the central coast of Vietnam. However, this once category 5 typhoon (on the Saffir-Simpson Scale) turned toward the south and weakened to a tropical depression at the end of last week before reaching the Vietnamese coast. The
NASA Hurricane Page has additional information and satellite imagery on Super Typhoon Hagupit.
In the South Indian Ocean basin, Tropical Storm Bakung formed at the end of last week nearly 1400 miles to the east of Diego Garcia. This weak tropical storm weakened to a tropical depression within 24 hours of formation. A satellite image and additional information on this short-lived tropical storm can be found on the NASA Hurricane Page.

Initial outlook for 2015 Atlantic hurricane season issued -- Last week Philip J. Klotzbach, his mentor Professor Bill Gray, and other colleagues at Colorado State University issued a qualitative discussion of what they foresee as factors that should determine next year's Atlantic basin hurricane activity. They note that one of the big uncertainties for the 2015 Atlantic basin hurricane season is if the current weak El Niño conditions that were currently developing would persist through next summer (in the Northern Hemisphere). The team has developed a new way of assessing next year's activity in terms of two primary physical parameters: (1.) the strength of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation and
(2.) the phase of ENSO (El Niño-Southern Oscillation). The team expects typical tropical cyclone activity conditions associated with a positive Atlantic Multi-Decadal Oscillation (AMO) and strong thermohaline circulation (THC) will return in 2015. The team plans on issuing their first quantitative forecast in early April 2015. Details of their initial qualitative assessment appear in the report issued by the Tropical Meteorology Project. [Colorado State University Report]
A decade of tsunami preparedness research reviewed -- As the tenth anniversary of the deadly Indian Ocean tsunami approaches, researchers at NOAA recently provided a summary of the efforts made by the agency following that disaster to better monitor, predict and help prepare for future tsunamis. Included in the list of accomplishments over the last decade include additional and more sophisticated tsunami sensors, along with a new generation of computer forecast models and improved tsunami warning system. [NOAA Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research News] [NOAA Weather-Ready Nation]
Tracking fish populations in a changing climate -- A biologist at Rutgers University, in collaboration with NOAA Fisheries, has developed a website called "OceanAdapt" that is designed to help the public along with fishery managers track fish populations. This site should be valuable for helping people who fish monitor changes in the movements of fish populations as oceans warm due to changing climate. "OceanAdapt" has data on more than 650 species of fish and invertebrates for more than four decades. [NOAA News]
Innovative approaches to reduce bycatch receive support -- Eileen Sobeck, the head of NOAA Fisheries, recently wrote a message that confirms the support that her agency has for the innovative approaches being proposed to reduce bycatch. [NOAA Fisheries News]
New members appointed to Marine Protected Areas Federal Advisory Committee -- NOAA and the US Department of Interior have appointed ten new members to the 20-member Marine Protected Areas Federal Advisory Committee that advises the US Departments of Commerce and Interior on was to strengthen and connect the nation's marine protected areas. The new members of the committee include scientists, resource managers, fishermen and members of conservation organizations from around the nation. [NOAA News]
First images of historic Golden Gate shipwreck released -- During the last week, NOAA and its partners released three-dimensional sonar maps and images of the submerged wreck of the SS City of Rio de Janeiro, an immigrant steamship that sank after striking rocks at the entrance to San Francisco Bay near the present site of the Golden Gate Bridge in February 1901. This ship sank rapidly, with 128 of the 210 passengers and crew losing their lives. [NOAA National Marine Sanctuaries News]
A return of the "Pineapple Express" seen from a satellite perspective -- An animation of satellite images obtained from sensors onboard NOAA's GOES-West satellite over a 4-day span (Tuesday through Friday) shows a plume of clouds associated with the "Pineapple Express," an atmospheric river of humid air running from the central North Pacific near the Hawaiian Islands to the West Coast of North America, that brought copious quantities of rain and snow to California. An image is also provided showing a map of near surface winds off the coast of California last Thursday evening obtained from data collected by the International Space Station-RapidScat instrument. This "Pineapple Express," which was the second one over the last several weeks, was compared to a similar storm in December 2010. Although this storm brought locally heavy rain and mountain snow to a state experiencing exceptional drought conditions, many areas in California experienced flooding and mudslides. [NASA Goddard Space Flight Center News]
Insights offered for predicting future California droughts -- Early last week an assessment report entitled "Causes and Predictability of the 2011-14 California Drought" was released as part of a NOAA-sponsored study that points to natural oceanic and atmospheric patterns as being the primary drivers behind California's ongoing drought. A large high pressure ridge has persisted over the eastern North Pacific for the last three winters, blocking wet season storms from bringing rain to California. This report confirmed an earlier report that found no conclusive evidence linking human-caused climate change and the California drought. The researchers offered new insights as to predicting future droughts in California, especially in terms of studying oceanic conditions. [NOAA News]
Recent surge in Great Lakes water levels documented -- Scientists at NOAA's Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, the US Army Corps of Engineers and Environment Canada recently documented a record-setting increase in water levels on Lakes Superior, Michigan-Huron that began in January 2013 and that has continued through the most recent month of November 2014. This recent increase or "surge" in lake levels of this time span exceeds any similar two-year interval over the last 100 years. Furthermore, all of the Great Lakes have been above their seasonal averages for the first time since the late 1990s. In addition, the researchers for these US and Canada federal agencies foresee lake levels remaining near or above average levels for all of the Great Lakes through this upcoming spring. [NOAA Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research News]
An update on the Argo float program and it impacts -- The Argo float program, an international program involving more than 3500 instrumented submersible floats deployed in the world's oceans, was recently highlighted. The impacts of this program, which began in 2000, upon the ocean and climate sciences are also discussed. Future plans for the program are mentioned. [NOAA Climate.gov News]
Extreme high temperatures around globe increase faster than mean temperatures in last three decades -- Researchers at Indiana University have found that spatial patterns of extreme temperature anomalies (or arithmetic differences between observed and long-term average temperatures) over a recent 30-year span (1984-2013) are increasing more than the increases in the mean temperatures for that same time interval. In the past 30 years warm anomalies are increasing at a faster rate than cold anomalies. [Indiana University Bloomington News]
Nitrous oxide gas concentrations rose at end of last Ice Age -- An international team of scientists who analyzed the composition of air bubbles embedded in the ancient glacial ice extracted from a glacier in Antarctica discovered that the nitrous oxide (N₂O) concentrations in the atmosphere increased by 30 percent near the end of the last Pleistocene Ice Age from approximately 16,000 to 10,000 years ago. Nitrous oxide, also known as "laughing gas" is an important greenhouse gas and may have risen rapidly due to changes in environmental conditions in both the ocean and on land as large ice sheets melted. [Oregon State University 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] Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Historical Events:

15 December 1488...Bartholomeus Diaz returned to Portugal after sailing round Cape of Good Hope.
15 December 1582...The Spanish Netherlands, Denmark and Norway adopted the Gregorian calendar.
15 December 1965...The third cyclone of the year killed another 10,000 people at the mouth of the Ganges River, Bangladesh.
15 December 1987...High seas to 12-foot heights caused in part by 30-mph winds associated with an arctic cold front capsized a fishing boat in the coastal waters near California's Channel Islands. The ship's cargo shifted in the high seas and strong winds. Three of the nine people onboard drowned. (Accord's Weather Calendar)
16 December 1897...The Argonaut, the first US submarine with an internal combustion engine, was demonstrated on the Patapsco River. Simon Lake invented and patented the engine. (Today in Science History)
16-17 December 1997...Torrential rain from Super Typhoon Paka fell on Guam with nearly 21 inches of rain observed at Tiyan before instrumentation failed two hours before Paka's eye passed to the south. Winds gusted to 171 mph before wind instruments failed. However, unofficial sources at Andersen Air Force Base believed that wind gusts may have reached 236.7 mph during the height of the storm. This super typhoon left major damage to 60 percent of the homes on Guam and caused 500 million dollars in damage. Fortunately, no one was killed and only two injuries were reported. (The Weather Doctor) (Accord's Weather Calendar)
16 December 2000...NASA announced that an ocean was most likely located beneath the icy surface of the Jovian moon Ganymede. (Wikipedia)
17-18 December 1832...The HMS Beagle with Charles Darwin onboard rounded Cape San Diego at Tierra del Fuego (the southern tip of South America) then sailed through the Strait of Le Maire, to anchor at Good Success Bay and visit Vurland.
17-18 December 1944...A typhoon with wind gusts to 142 mph in the Philippine Sea devastated Task Force 38 of Admiral Halsey's Third Fleet northeast of Samar. Approximately 800 men were lost, the destroyers USS Hull, USS Monaghan and USS Spence sank, while 21 other ships were damaged, along with loss of 147 aircraft. The wind and sea tore life vests from the backs of some survivors. (Naval Historical Center) (Accord's Weather Calendar)
19 December 1551...The Dutch west coast was hit by a hurricane.
19 December 1741...Vitus J Bering, Dutch navigator/explorer, died on this date.
19-21 December 1835...The HMS Beagle and Charles Darwin approached New Zealand and sailed into the Bay of Islands.
20 December 1987...Worst peacetime shipping disaster occurred as the Dona Paz, a Philippine ferry, sank after collision with oil tanker Vector off Mindoro island, setting off a double explosion. As many as 1749 confirmed deaths, but the death toll was probably closer to 3000.
21 December 1163...A hurricane hit villages in Holland/Friesland, causing floods.
21 December 1872...The HMS Challenger set sail from Portsmouth, England on the 4-year scientific expedition that would lay the foundation for the science of oceanography. (Wikipedia)
21 December 1936...Ice breaking operations in channels and harbors by the US Coast Guard was authorized by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Executive Order No. 7521. (USCG Historian's Office)