Weekly Ocean News

Weekly Ocean News

26 February-2 March 2018

For Your Information

Celebrating African-American history in National Marine Sanctuaries -- The NOAA National Marine Sanctuaries program is Black History Month during the month of February with a feature with fifteen images showing the contributions made by African-Americans to our nation's maritime heritage. [NOAA National Marine Sanctuaries News]
A change in meteorological seasons -- Wednesday, 28 February 2018, marks the end of meteorological winter in the Northern Hemisphere, which by convention, is the three-month interval of December, January and February. The following day (1 March 2018) represents the beginning of boreal meteorological spring, the three-month interval of March, April and May. At the same time, summer in the Southern Hemisphere ends and autumn begins.
Leap years and calendars -- This year (2018) is considered a "normal" year with 365 days. Two years ago, 2016 was a leap year with 366 days, with one additional day inserted at the end of February. Since the Earth completes one orbit around the Sun in 365.2422 days, calendars based upon integer days must be adjusted every few years so that recognizable events, such as the occurrence of the vernal equinox, do not progress through the year. In the first century BC the Julian calendar was developed by Julius Caesar who decreed a calendrical reform with a 365-day year that involved the inclusion of an extra day to the end of February (the last month of the old Roman year). However, over several centuries, the timing of the vernal equinox (and the Christian celebration of Easter) crept earlier by roughly 10 days. To correct this inconsistency, an additional reform was instituted by Pope Gregory XIII in 1572 that included the requirement that only those centurial years divisible evenly by 400 would be leap years, while the other centurial years (e.g., 1800 and 1900) would not.
The National Centers for Environmental Information (formerly National Climatic Data Center) recommends that the climate normals for 28 February be used also for 29 February in a leap year.
Light in the oceans -- If you would like information on the distribution of sunlight in the upper levels of the ocean has an impact upon the distribution of marine life and various processes such as photosynthesis in these layers, please read this week's Supplemental Information...In Greater Depth.

Ocean in the News

Eye on the tropics --- Only one tropical cyclone was reported in any of the ocean basins during the last week. In the western South Pacific basin, Cyclone Gita, which had become a category 4 tropical cyclone (on the Saffir-Simpson Scale) late in the previous week, had weakened to a tropical storm at the start of this past week. At the time it had passed to the west and southwest of the Australian South Pacific Territory of Norfolk Island. Curving to the south and then southeast, Tropical Storm Gita slowly weakened before becoming torn apart as it was approximately 550 miles to the northwest of Wellington, New Zealand. by early Tuesday. However, the winds accompanying the remnant low pressure area that was Ex-Tropical Cyclone were felt on the northern coast of New Zealand into Wednesday. The NASA Hurricane Page has satellite images and additional information on Cyclone Gita.
NOAA's largest research ship to deploy instruments that collect ocean data for weather and climate prediction -- Two weeks ago the NOAA Ship Ronald H. Brown from its homeport of Charleston, SC on a round-the-world trip designed to improve the collection of ocean data that influence weather and climate prediction not only for the United States, but also the globe. The ship will first investigate ocean currents in the North Atlantic that influence global climate and then it will replace four instrumented observing moorings in the Prediction and Research Moored Array in the Atlantic (PIRATA). These PIRATA moorings are part of a larger tropical observing system of buoys that provides ocean and atmospheric data that helps the international scientific community predict droughts, floods, hurricanes and other weather affecting millions of people in the Americas and Africa. Rounding the Cape of Good Hope, the Ron Brown will conduct two major research campaigns to advance ocean observing, with the second campaign designed to launch three new moorings in the Arabian Sea as part of the Research Moored Array for African-Asian-Australian Monsoon Analysis and Prediction (RAMA). This moored array is designed to understand the role of the Indian Ocean in driving monsoons. [NOAA Office of Oceanic & Atmospheric Research News]
Monitoring Great Lakes ice cover from space -- False-color images of the North American Great Lakes were made from data acquired in mid-February by the MODIS sensor on NASA's Aqua satellite. These images showed that 57.9 percent of the surfaces of all Great Lakes were covered at that time, with the relatively shallow Lake Erie having the most ice cover with 93.3 percent. The cold air that has spread across eastern North America this winter has been responsible for the largest expanse of ice across the Great Lakes in three winters. [NASA Earth Observatory]
New version of "Sea Ice Concentration Climate Data Record" is available -- NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information recently made a new version of the "Sea Ice Concentration Climate Data Record" from its Climate Data Record (CDR) program. The Sea Ice Concentration CDR provides consistent daily and monthly time series of sea ice concentrations for both the north and south polar regions, with some other variables dating back to October 1978. The new version of the record provides users with the most current preliminary sea ice data in near-real time. [NOAA NCEI News]
Review of global weather and climate for January 2018 -- Using preliminary data collected from the global network of surface weather stations, scientists at NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information have determined that the combined global land and ocean surface temperature for January 2018 was 1.28 Fahrenheit degrees (or 0.71 Celsius degrees) above the 20th-century (1901-2000) average, which makes last month the fifth highest global temperature for any January since global climate records began in 1880. When considering land and ocean separately, the January 2018 ocean surface temperature tied January 1998 for the fifth highest in the 139-year record, while the global land surface temperature for January 2018 was eighth highest. [NOAA/NCEI State of the Climate] According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, the extent of Arctic sea ice was the smallest monthly extent for any January since satellite surveillance began in 1979. Antarctic sea ice extent in January was the second smallest on record in the Southern Hemisphere, following the record smallest in January 2017.
The extent of the Northern Hemisphere snow cover during January 2018 was the twenty-sixth smallest (or twenty-seventh largest) for the period of record that started in 1967. [NOAA/NCEI Global Snow & Ice]
NCEI also provides a map showing the Global Significant Weather and Climate Events map for January 2018.
The Madden Julian Oscillation has been active this winter and has influenced weather across the nation -- A scientist with the NOAA Climate Prediction Center wrote an ENSO blog for the ClimateWatch Magazine that describes the Madden Julian Oscillation (MJO), a major player in tropical weather patterns represented by a pulse of clouds and precipitation that travels eastward along the equator, making a circuit of the globe in 30 to 60 days. She shows how the MJO during this meteorological winter (December 2017 through February 2018) was relatively active and demonstrates how the MJO has caused dramatic changes in weather patterns across the midlatitudes, especially over the United States over the last three months. [NOAA Climate.gov News]
Citizen scientists are invited to submit their water level reports -- NOAA's Centers for Coastal Ocean Science is inviting the public to submit a citizen science application to report the height of water level at their locations. The application collects photographs and associated GPS locations of water levels from the person's mobile device. These submitted reports are summarized and placed upon a map of water levels, identified as flooded, normal and low. These contributions will be used by local, state, and national managers and scientists to learn more about high coastal water levels, their causes, and impacts. [NOAA Centers for Coastal Ocean Science News]
Commercial fishing can be tracked worldwide in near real-time -- A team of scientists from the University of California Santa Barbara, Global Fishing Watch, National Geographic Society's Pristine Sea project, Dalhousie University, SkyTruth, Google and Stanford University have used satellite tracking, machine learning and common ship-tracking technology to develop the ability to document the extent of global fishing down to single vessel movements and hourly activity. Currently, fishing activity covers at least 55 percent of the world's oceans. Furthermore, 70,000 vessels of the global fishing fleet using the automatic identification system traveled 460 million kilometers in 2016, equivalent to traveling to the moon and back 600 times. An interactive map has been made freely available to the public that shows a near real-time view of the fishing patterns of individual vessels and fleets. [University of California Santa Barbara News]
Assessing how ocean tides affect ice loss from large polar ice sheets -- Researchers from Earth & Space Research, a non-profit research institute in Oregon, and Stanford University recently reported how ocean tides affect the motion and loss of ice from the marine edges of both the Greenland Ice Sheet and Antarctica. Tides and their actions are in turn affected by climate change, as with changes in sea level and coastlines caused by climate change, which in turn affect the magnitude and timing of tides. [EOS Earth & Space Science News]
Potential exists to predict atmospheric river activity up to five weeks in advance -- A team of atmospheric scientists at Colorado State University have developed a model that centers on the relationship between the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) and the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO) to predict the behavior of atmospheric rivers several weeks in advance. The MJO is a recurring tropical rainfall pattern in the troposphere, while the QBO is an alternating pattern of winds high up in the stratosphere. The atmospheric rivers are long plumes of humid air along with clouds and precipitation that can stream thousands of miles across the Pacific Ocean from the tropics and provide water to the West Coast of North America. The researchers had developed their model based upon analysis of 37 years of historical weather data. [NOAA Office of Oceanic & Atmospheric Research 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]

Concept of the Week: The Ocean and the Global Radiation Budget

The ocean is an important player in the radiational heating and cooling of Planet Earth. For one, covering about 71% of Earth's surface, the ocean is a primary control of how much solar radiation is absorbed (converted to heat) at the Earth's surface. Also, the ocean is the main source of the most important greenhouse gas (water vapor) and is a major regulator of the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂), another greenhouse gas.

On an annual average, the ocean absorbs about 92% of the solar radiation striking its surface; the balance is reflected to space. Most of this absorption takes place within about 200 m (650 ft) of the surface with the depth of penetration of sunlight limited by the amount of suspended particles and discoloration caused by dissolved substances. On the other hand, at high latitudes multi-year pack ice greatly reduces the amount of solar radiation absorbed by the ocean. The snow-covered surface of sea ice absorbs only about 15% of incident solar radiation and reflects away the rest. At present, multi-year pack ice covers about 7% of the ocean surface with greater coverage in the Arctic Ocean than the Southern Ocean (mostly in Antarctica's Weddell Sea).

The atmosphere is nearly transparent to incoming solar radiation but much less transparent to outgoing infrared (heat) radiation. This differential transparency with wavelength is the basis of the greenhouse effect. Certain trace gases in the atmosphere absorb outgoing infrared and radiate some of this energy to Earth's surface, thereby significantly elevating the planet's surface temperature. Most water vapor, the principal greenhouse gas, enters the atmosphere via evaporation of seawater. Carbon dioxide, a lesser greenhouse gas, cycles into and out of the ocean depending on the sea surface temperature and photosynthesis/respiration by marine organisms in surface waters. Cold water can dissolve more carbon dioxide than warm water so that carbon dioxide is absorbed from the atmosphere where surface waters are chilled (at high latitudes and upwelling zones) and released to the atmosphere where surface waters are heated (at low latitudes). Photosynthetic organisms take up carbon dioxide and all organisms release carbon dioxide via cellular respiration.

Historical Events

26 February 1935...Robert Watson-Watt demonstrated RADAR (Radio Detection and Ranging) for the first time, using the BBC shortwave radio transmitter to successfully detect the distance and direction of a flying bomber during the so-called Daventry Experiment.
26 February 1938...The first passenger ship was equipped with radar.
27 February 1949...Aerial ice observation flights by long-range aircraft operated from Argentia, Newfoundland. An International Ice Patrol by vessels was neither required nor established during the 1949 season, and it was the first time that aircraft alone conducted the ice observation service. (USCG Historian's Office)
27 February 1988...A major rain event occurred across Saudi Arabia's Foroson Islands in the Red Sea and on the adjacent mainland around Jizon when 1.15 in. fell. The monthly average rainfall is only 0.02 in. On the following day, flash flooding south of Riyadh killed three children. (Accord's Weather Calendar)
27 February 2010...A magnitude 8.8 earthquake rocked Chile on this day. The earthquake triggered a tsunami, which devastated several coastal towns in south-central Chile. Tsunami warnings were issued in 53 countries. Waves caused minor damage in San Diego area and the Tohoku region of Japan. (National Weather Service files)
28 February 1849...Regular steamboat service to California from the East Coast via Cape Horn arrived in San Francisco for the first time. The SS California had left New York Harbor on 6 October 1848 on a trip that took 4 months and 21 days. (Wikipedia)
28 February 1964...A world 12-hour rainfall record was set at Belouve, La Reunion Island in the western Indian Ocean when 52.76 inches of rain fell. World records for 9 hours and 18.5 hours were also set with 42.79 and 66.49 inches, respectively. (Accord's Weather Calendar) (The Weather Doctor)
29 February 1504...Christopher Columbus used his knowledge of a lunar eclipse that night to convince Native Americans to provide him with supplies. (Wikipedia)
1 March 1498...The Portuguese explorer, Vasco de Gama, landed at what is now Mozambique on his way to India.
1 March 1854...The SS City of Glasgow left Liverpool harbor for Philadelphia and was never seen again with 480 people on board.
1 March 1902...The first regular light stations in Alaska were established at Southeast Five Finger Island and at Sentinel Island--both on the main Inside Passage between Wrangell Strait and Skagway. (USCG Historian's Office)
1 March 1905...The first regular light stations in Alaska were established. (USCG Historian's Office)
1 March 1927...A system of broadcasting weather reports by radio on four lightships on the Pacific Coast was put into effect. (USCG Historian's Office)
1 March 1970...US commercial whale hunting was ended.
1 March 1977...The United States extended its territorial waters to 200 miles.
1 March 1983...A ferocious storm battered the Pacific coast. The storm produced heavy rain and gale force winds resulting in flooding and beach erosion and in the mountains produced up to seven feet of snow in five days. An F2 tornado hit Los Angeles. Thirty people were injured and 100 homes were damaged. (The Weather Channel) (Intellicast)
2 March 1982...Half of Tonga in the South Pacific was rendered homeless by Tropical Cyclone Isaac after winds of 112 mph caused heavy damage. (National Weather Service files)
2 March 1990...Twenty two ships were trapped by ice in the worst ice jam in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in 10 years. The ice was 23 feet thick. (National Weather Service files)
3 March 1873...US Army Signal Corps established storm signal service for benefit of seafaring men, at several life-saving stations and constructed telegraph lines as original means of communication. (USCG Historian's Office)
3 March 1960...The submarine USS Sargo returned to Hawaii from an Arctic cruise of 11,000 miles, of which 6,003 miles were under the polar ice, reaching the North Pole on 9 February. This cruise marked the first time that a submarine explored the Arctic in winter. (Naval Historical Center)
4-5 March 1899...Tropical Cyclone Mahina (the Bathurst Bay Hurricane) crossed Australia's Great Barrier Reef and generated produced the highest storm surge ever recorded: 13-14.6 m (42.6-47.8 ft) surge in Bathurst Bay. The Australian pearling fleet was destroyed, over 100 shipwrecks reported and 307 people killed, making Mahina the largest death toll of any natural disaster in Australian history. Minimum central barometric pressure fell to an unofficial reading of estimated at 914 millibars (26.90 inches of mercury). (Accord's Weather Calendar) (The Weather Doctor) (National Weather Service files)