Weekly Ocean News

WEEKLY OCEAN NEWS

WEEK SIX: 6-10 March 2017

For Your Information

Worldwide GLOBE at Night 2018 Campaign for March commences -- The third in a series of GLOBE at Night citizen-science campaigns for 2018 will commence this Thursday (8 March) and continue through Saturday, 17 March. 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 with the seven magnitude/star charts of progressively fainter stars. These constellations are Leo for latitudes equatorward of 30 degrees latitude in the Northern Hemisphere and Canis Major for all latitudes in the Southern Hemisphere. Activity guides are also available. The GLOBE at night program is intended to raise public awareness of the impact of light pollution. The fourth series in the 2018 campaign is scheduled for 6-15 April 2018. [GLOBE at Night]
Time change -- Daylight Saving Time will go into effect next Sunday morning (11 March 2018) for essentially the entire nation -- the exceptions include Arizona, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and about 18 counties in Indiana. These changes have been mandated by the U.S. Congress in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which extended Daylight Saving Time across the nation, with the start on the second Sunday in March and end on the first Sunday in November (4 November 2018). In other words, following the old adage of "spring ahead, fall behind", you will need to turn your clocks ahead by one hour to conform with the local time observance. Most of Canada also observes Daylight Saving Time changes at the same time [National Research Council Canada].
What does this time change mean to you (other than later sunsets)? Contrary to a popular belief that has surfaced at times, the change from Standard to Daylight Saving Time does not add an extra hour of daylight to the day nor does it affect weather patterns. While the weather will not change because of the time change, the times when you will be able to obtain weather charts will now be one hour later. The reason is that the National Weather Service operates on "Z time" (variously called Greenwich Mean Time or Universal Coordinated Time) which does not observe Daylight Saving Time, and the charts are still produced and transmitted at the same Z time.
While many people want additional daylight after work, some health experts say that the change to Daylight Saving Time is hard on human health, as it affects the natural sleep cycle and circadian rhythms. Increases in sleep disorders, traffic accidents and heart attacks have been seen during the first several days after the time change.
A Reminder -- Next week (beginning Monday, 12 March 2018) is Spring vacation week for this course. All the familiar products will be available throughout the week. The Investigation and Supplemental Information files from this week will remain on the RealTime Ocean Portal for those who are on spring break.
Biomixing in ocean motion -- If you would like information on recent findings that indicate marine organisms contribute to motion in the ocean, please read this week's Supplemental Information…In Greater Depth.

Ocean in the News

Future GOES-West satellite launched -- On last Thursday afternoon (1 March 2018), the new Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-S (GOES-S) satellite was launched from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket and was successfully placed into a highly elliptical geosynchronous transfer orbit. The solar panel arrays were deployed to allow the spacecraft to operate on its own power. The spacecraft should reach a geosynchronous orbit at 22,300 miles above Earth in approximately two weeks. Once in this orbit, GOES-S will be renamed GOES-17 and later this year, should become GOES-West when it takes over for GOES-15 currently monitoring the western US and the Pacific Ocean. [NOAA News] or [NASA Press Release]
The sensors on GOES-S will bring new information to forecasters in a timelier manner and should therefore improve forecasting for some areas, especially related to fog formation and formation of tropical cyclones in the eastern Pacific. It will also be capable of detecting wildfires across western North America and volcanic eruptions in Alaska. [NOAA NESDIS News]
Eye on the tropics -- Tropical cyclone activity was limited to the western South Indian Ocean basin during the last week as meteorological summer in the Southern Hemisphere (December, January and February) drew to a close. A tropical storm formed over 500 miles to the north of La Reunion Island last Saturday morning. This system, which initially had tropical-storm force winds (maximum sustained surface winds of 39 to 74 mph), was named Tropical Cyclone 11S, but it was subsequently renamed Tropical Cyclone Dumazile as maximum sustained surface winds reached 75 mph, the threshold for a category 1 tropical cyclone on the Saffir-Simpson Scale. Over the weekend, Cyclone Dumazile was traveling toward the south-southwest. As of Sunday night (local time), Cyclone Dumazile was approximately 315 miles to the west-northwest of St. Denis, the capital city of La Reunion Island. Current forecasts indicate that Dumazile should slowly curve to the south and then to the south-southeast, taking a projected track that would cause it to pass close to the eastern coast of Madagascar on Monday and Tuesday. Intensification to a category 3 tropical cyclone was a possibility. The NASA Hurricane Page has additional information and a satellite image on Tropical Cyclone Dumazile (11S).
Storm-tide sensors deployed along Northeast coast in advance of recent Nor'easter -- Near the end of last week, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) field crews were deploying over 50 storm-tide and wave sensors along the Atlantic coast from Maine to Delaware to track and study a Nor'easter that had been forecasted to develop offshore of the Middle Atlantic starting last Friday. (A Nor'easter is a powerful storm that tends to travel toward the northeast and affect the Northeastern U.S. Winds from the northeast typically precede the approach of the storm, often resulting storm surge, high surf and coastal flooding.) These sensors will continuously measure wave height and tide levels, to provide information on the timing, duration and extent of flooding. Following the storm, the sensors will be retrieved next week, followed by data analysis. These data will be available via the USGS Flood Event Viewer. [USGS News]
Honors given for tracking hurricanes with unmanned aircraft -- NOAA and the Raytheon Company received Aviation Week magazine's prestigious Laureate award for Defense Dual Use last week at Aviation Week's 61st Annual Laureate Awards in recognition of the team's use of the Raytheon Coyote® Unmanned Aircraft System to track and model hurricane behavior. NOAA researchers deployed six Coyotes from a NOAA WP-3D Orion hurricane hunter aircraft to track and model Hurricane Maria in 2017. The Coyotes, small and expendable unmanned aerial vehicles, flew directly into the storm, giving researchers an unprecedented view of Maria. [NOAA Office of Oceanic & Atmospheric Research News]
High Tide Bulletin for the Spring of 2018 is released -- NOAA's National Ocean Service has recently released its High Tide Bulletin for the Spring of 2018. Ocean tides are expected to be higher than normal between 15 and 18 May along the US Atlantic Coast extending from Maine southward to the eastern coast of Florida because of the occurrence of a perigean spring tide due to a new moon following lunar perigee. This perigean spring tide was not expected to produce significantly high tides along the Pacific and Gulf of Mexico coasts. [NOAA National Ocean Service News]
Findings from socioeconomic monitoring of Hawaii's coastal reefs are published -- NOAA's National Ocean Service, along with the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS), recently published a technical memorandum as part of the Socioeconomic Component of the National Coral Reef Monitoring Program (NCRMP) that contains summary findings outlining human dimensions information relevant to coral reef resources in the state of Hawaii. Data are included on human population demographics, human use of coral reef resources, and resident knowledge and perceptions of coral reefs and coral reef management, obtained from household surveys in November 2014. [NOAA National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science News]
Large "king" Chinook salmon are disappearing from Pacific Coast -- Researchers from the University of Washington, NOAA's Northwest Fisheries Science Center and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game recently reported on their analysis of nearly 40 years of Chinook population data that had been collected from off the Pacific Coast extending from California to Alaska. They found that the largest and oldest Chinook salmon known as "kings" because of their exceptional size have mostly disappeared along the West Coast. The Chinook salmon populations from Alaska showed the biggest reductions in age and size, followed closely by those from Washington waters. While the changes in size and age could be due to many reasons, the researchers think that fishing pressure and marine mammal predation are two of the bigger drivers of the decline. [University of Washington News]
Employing seismic records to detect long-term trends in hurricane strength and frequency -- A team of scientists including those from Princeton and Columbia Universities have employed a method for estimating tropical cyclone strength from seismic records alone, which could provide more information on tropical cyclone activity over many decades. During the life of a tropical cyclone, large and powerful ocean waves swirl and collide as the winds spiral in different directions, creating seismic signals on seismometers that rise just enough above the ambient noise normally found on seismometer traces. The seismic signals can be analyzed to determine tropical cyclone strength. This method may reveal previously hidden trends that would help predict how hurricane seasons may change in the future. [NOAA Climate.gov News]
Dying reefs appear to pose bigger threats to coasts than rising sea water -- An international team of scientists recently reported that tropical coastlines are at a greater immediate risk of erosion from increases in wave heights due to the loss of live corals than from rising sea levels associated with a changing climate. Wave processes at coral reefs in Moorea and Tahiti in French Polynesia were examined and future wave heights near the coastline were modeled by changing variables such as coral reef health and sea level. [Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory 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: Abyssal Storms

Until recently, ocean scientists thought of the deep ocean abyss as a dark and cold, but serene place where small particles rained gently onto the ocean floor. However, instruments lowered to the sea floor to measure ocean motion or currents and resulting mobilization of bottom sediments detected a much more active environment. Scientists found that bottom currents and abyssal storms occasionally scour the ocean bottom, generating moving clouds of suspended sediment. A surface current of 5 knots (250 cm/sec) is considered relatively strong. A bottom current of 1 knot (50 cm/sec) is ripping. Although this may be called an abyssal storm, the water motion pales by comparison to wind speeds in atmospheric storms.

Abyssal currents and storms apparently derive their energy from surface ocean currents. Wind-driven surface ocean currents flow about the margins of the ocean basins as gyres centered near 30 degrees latitude. (Refer to Figure 6.6 in your textbook.) Viewed from above, these subtropical gyres rotate clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and counterclockwise in the Southern Hemisphere. For reasons given in Chapter 6 of your textbook and this week's Supplemental Information, surface currents flow faster, are narrower, and extend to greater depths on the western arm of the gyres. These are known as western boundary currents and include, for example, the Gulf Stream of the North Atlantic basin. Abyssal currents are also most vigorous on the western side of the ocean basins, moving along the base of the continental rise, which is on the order of several kilometers deep.

Abyssal storms may be linked to or may actually be eddies (rings) that occasionally break off from the main current of the Gulf Stream (and other western boundary currents). During an abyssal storm, the eddy or ring may actually reach to the bottom of the ocean where the velocity of a bottom current increases ten-fold to about 1.5 km (1 mi) per hr. While that is an unimpressive wind speed, water is much denser than air so that its erosive and sediment-transport capacity is significant even at 1.5 km per hr. At this higher speed, the suspended sediment load in the bottom current increases by a factor of ten. Abyssal storms scour the sea floor leaving behind long furrows in the sediment. After a few days to a few weeks, the current weakens or the eddy (ring) is reabsorbed into the main surface circulation and the suspended load settles to the ocean floor. In this way, abyssal storms can transport tons of sediment long distances, disrupting the orderly sequence of layers of deep-sea sediments. Scientists must take this disruption into account when interpreting the environmental significance of deep-sea sediment cores.

Historical Events

5 March 1916...The Spanish ship Principe de Asturias enroute from Barcelona to Buenos Aires sank with the loss of 445 of the 588 passengers and crew members when it struck the jagged reefs along the Brazilian coast at Ponta Boi in dense fog.
5-6 March 1962...The Great Atlantic Coast Storm of 1962 caused more than $200 million in property damage from Florida to New England. Winds along the Middle Atlantic Coast reached 70 mph raising 40-ft waves, and 42 inches of snow fell at Big Meadows, in the mountains of Virginia--a state record. The storm caused greater alteration of the coastline from Cape Hatteras, NC to Long Island than any previous storm, including hurricanes. A new inlet was cut through Hatteras Island and more than 10 miles of Outer Banks barrier dunes were obliterated. The Virginia shoreline was rearranged by historic tidal flooding caused by the combination of the long stretch of strong onshore winds and the spring tides. A 3-mile long boardwalk in Ocean City, MD was wiped out. (David Ludlum) (Intellicast)
6 March 1521...The Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan reached Guam in his around the world voyage. (Wikipedia)
6 March 1987...The British ferry Herald of Free Enterprise capsized in the English Channel off the coast of Belgium with the loss of 189 people.
6 March 1962...The strongest nor'easter of the 20th century struck the Mid-Atlantic Region between the 5th and 9th. It is known as the "Ash Wednesday Storm" and caused over $200 million (1962 dollars) in property damage and major coastal erosion from North Carolina to Long Island, New York. In New Jersey alone, it was estimated to have destroyed or greatly damaged 45,000 homes. The Red Cross recorded that the storm killed 40 people. It hit during "Spring Tide." When the sun and moon are in phase, they produce a higher than normal astronomical tide. Water reached nine feet at Norfolk (flooding begins around five feet). Houses were toppled into the ocean and boardwalks were broken and twisted. The islands of Chincoteague and Assateague, Maryland were completely underwater. Ocean City, Maryland sustained major damage especially to the south end of the island. Winds up to 70 mph built 40-foot waves at sea. Heavy snow fell in the Appalachian Mountains. (National Weather Service files)
6 March 2014... The Great Lakes saw some of their worst ice cover in nearly four decades because of a frigid winter with months of below-freezing temperatures in large sections of the northern United States, the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration said. As of 6 March 2014, 92.2 percent of the five lakes were under ice, breaking a record set in 1973 but still short of the 94.7 percent set in 1979, the federal agency said. (National Weather Service files)
7 March 1778...Captain James Cook first sighted the Oregon coast, at Yaquina Bay near present-day Newport.
7 March 1932...A severe coastal storm set barometric pressure records from Virginia to New England. Block Island, RI reported a barometric pressure reading of 955.0 millibars (28.20 inches of mercury). (David Ludlum)
7 March 1962... A powerful nor'easter lingered just off the mid-Atlantic coast for three days, resulting in severe damage along the ocean shore of the Delmarva Peninsula. Forty people were killed, and the few homesteads that were on the outer islands were destroyed. (National Weather Service files)
9 March 1454...Amerigo Vespucci, the Italian navigator, was born in Florence, Italy. The North and South American continents were named in his honor by Matthias Ringmann, a German mapmaker.
9 March 1995...The Canadian Navy arrested a Spanish trawler for illegally fishing off Newfoundland.
10 March 1496...Christopher Columbus concluded his second visit to the Western Hemisphere when he left Hispaniola for Spain. (Wikipedia)
9 March 1957...An earthquake measuring a magnitude 8.6 struck the Aleutian Islands of Alaska. A Pacific-wide tsunami was generated that caused $5 million dollars of damage in Hawaii, but fortunately, no lives were lost. Hardest hit was the island of Kauai, where houses were damaged and roads washed away. Waves reached 52.5 feet high at Haena, HI. (National Weather Service files)
10 March 1849...Abraham Lincoln applied for a patent for a device to lift vessels over shoals by means of inflated cylinders.
11 March 2002...The National Ice Center reported that satellite images indicated that an iceberg with an area larger than the state of Delaware had calved from the Thwaites Ice Tongue, a region of snow and glacial ice extending from the Antarctic mainland into the South Amundsen Sea. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)