WEEKLY OCEAN NEWS

7-11 May 2018

Item of Interest:

Hurricane preparedness activities planned for this week --

Hurricane Awareness Week -- NOAA has declared this week of 6-12 May 2018 to be Hurricane Awareness Week 2018 across the nation. Five states will also be observing their Hurricane Awareness Weeks during this week, including Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Texas, Virginia and the Tri-State area of Connecticut, New Jersey and New York served by the New York National Weather Service Office. Several states will observe the following week (North Carolina and Oklahoma), while five New England States (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island) and the remainder of New York State will wait until late July.
Gulf Coast Hurricane Awareness Trip -- NOAA hurricane experts will embark on a five-day, five-city tour along the Gulf Coast of the United States in an US Air Force Reserve WC-130J hurricane hunter aircraft and the NOAA G-IV aircraft to raise public hurricane awareness. The schedule, which runs from Monday 7 May through Friday 11 May, includes stops in McAllen, TX; Beaumont, TX; Baton Rouge, LA; Montgomery, AL; and Lakeland, FL. [NOAA News]
For those unable to attend the awareness tour, go to the list of Daily Themes and Hurricane Awareness Tour Stops on the Hurricane Preparedness Week page or to the #HurricaneStrong! link
Hurricane Webinar offered for Grades 4-6-- The Hurricanes: Science and Society (HSS) team at the University of Rhode Island in partnership with the NOAA National Hurricane Center (NHC) and the NOAA Aircraft Operations Center (AOC) is offering a free 45-minute Hurricane Webinar 2018 for 4th through 6th grade classes on Tuesday morning, 9 May 2018. This webinar will be broadcast live when the NOAA Hurricane Awareness Tour stops at Baton Rouge, LA. Registration for this webinar is required. Students will hear from NHC scientists as well as NOAA AOC personnel who fly into hurricanes. [Hurricanes: Science and Society]

Worldwide GLOBE at Night 2018 Campaign for May is underway -- The fifth in the series of GLOBE at Night citizen-science campaigns for 2018 will continue through Monday, 14 May. 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 Bootes in the Northern Hemisphere and Crux for 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 sixth series in the 2018 campaign is scheduled for 4-13 June 2018. [GLOBE at Night]
Land of the Midnight Sun -- Barring clouds, the sun should rise at Barrow, AK early next Thursday morning (2:59 AM AKDT on 10 May 2018) after spending 72 minutes below the horizon. The sun should then remain above the local horizon for the next 12 weeks, before going below the horizon for 64 minutes on 2 August 2018 (at 2:02 AM AKDT). [US Naval Observatory]
National Marine Sanctuaries promote conservation and stewardship to diverse audiences -- NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries is taking steps to promote the outreach and education of underserved and diverse audiences. National marine sanctuary staff have reached underserved audiences and continue to support the next generation of ocean users and stewards through such programs as Ocean Guardian Schools, diversity and inclusion programs, marine technology workshops, and the Dr. Nancy Foster Scholarship. [NOAA National Marine Sanctuaries News]

Ocean in the News:

Eye on the tropics --- During the last week, tropical cyclone activity was found in the South Indian basin. Tropical Storm Flamboyan intensified to a category 1 tropical cyclone on the Saffir-Simpson Scale at the start of last week as it traveled toward the southwest approximately 1000 miles to the southeast of Diego Garcia. However, Cyclone Flamboyan began weakening within 24 hours as it curved to take a track toward the south-southwest. By midweek, Flamboyan had become a subtropical cyclone and began dissipating due to strong vertical wind shear. At that time, this former tropical cyclone was located approximately 1130 miles to the southeast of Diego Garcia. Consult the NASA Hurricane Page for additional information and satellite images on Cyclone Flamboyan.
Hawaiian Island hurricane risk changes with discovery of little known 1871 major hurricane -- Until recently, little was known of a major hurricane that struck the Hawaiian Islands of Hawaii (the "Big Island") and Maui in August 1871 because little reference was made in English language sources, despite its coverage in Hawaiian language newspapers. Based upon detailed descriptions of the destruction at the time, the researchers suspect that this hurricane was a major hurricane, with a category 3 or 4 status on the Saffir-Simpson Scale. Since many current state residents had assumed that the Big Island and Maui were relatively immune to major hurricanes over the last century, government officials had considering removing a mandate for hurricane insurance until they came across this research. [Hawaii Public Radio]
North Pacific tropical cyclones can be intensified by La Niña-like cooling patterns -- Atmospheric scientists from the University of Hawaii recently reported finding a strong connection between sea surface temperature patterns in the Pacific Ocean associated with the "Global Warming Hiatus" phenomenon and changes in cyclone activity over the northwest Pacific Ocean. These changes involved increasing intensities and frequencies of strong tropical cyclones, especially those of category 4 and 5 status on the Saffir-Simpson Scale. The "Global Warming Hiatus," the period between 1998 and 2012 when the rate of global temperature increase apparently slowed, coincided with the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean experiencing a La Niña-like cooling. However, the Indian and tropical north Atlantic Oceans warmed during this time. During the hiatus, the dominant equatorial easterly winds caused a cyclonic (counter-clockwise) circulation in the northwestern region of the Pacific Ocean, favoring the formation and intensification of cyclones in that section of the basin, as well as pushing more tropical cyclones westward to make landfall in east Asia. [University of Hawaii News]
Sea ice is at historic low coverage in the Bering Sea -- Scientists from NOAA, the National Snow and Ice Data Center and the International Arctic Research Center at University of Alaska Fairbanks are continuing to monitor the record low sea ice coverage over the Bering Sea that began in late February 2018 and has continued through at least the end of April. Written sea ice records for the Bering Sea extend back to 1850. A series of maps along with a graph document the general lack of ice cover this year in the Bering Sea. As of the end of April 2018, sea ice was only ten percent of the 1981-2010 average. A scientist from the University of Alaska attributes the record low ice extent to three factors acting in concert: "above-normal air temperatures during autumn and early winter, warm water in the Bering Sea, and one of the stormiest winters in the past 70 years (although not the stormiest)." [NASA Earth Observatory]
Farther to the northeast, the ice pack covering the Beaufort Sea located north of Canada's Mackenzie Bay was undergoing an earlier than normal breakup. Images generated from data collected in April by several sensors onboard NASA's Landsat 8, Aqua and Terra satellites show the breakup and movement of sea ice over the Beaufort Sea. [NASA Earth Observatory]
New GRACE Follow-On satellite designed to study melting polar ice -- NASA and the German Research Centre for Geosciences are scheduled to launch their GRACE Follow-On (GRACE-FO) mission from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base in June as a replacement for their original Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission that was terminated last October after 15 years of operation. Like its predecessor, the GRACE-FO mission-consists of a pair of satellites in low altitude orbit that measure monthly changes in gravitational pull due primarily to changes in water mass distribution on Earth. Scientists are wanting to see how melting polar ice affects regional sea levels. [NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory News]
Assessing the economic worth of an inch of water -- NOAA's National Ocean Service has created an infographic that provides the public with information about the increased economic worth associated with an increase of the depth of a port by even one inch. With one additional inch of water, a cargo ship could carry about 50 more tractors, 5,000 televisions, 30,000 laptops, or 770,000 bushels of wheat, which would equate to approximately $28.7 million dollars. [NOAA National Ocean Service News]
Communication of coastal sea level rise risks improved by stakeholder focus groups -- Researchers at Louisiana State University and the University of Central Florida conducted a study that involved six face-to-face focus groups with stakeholders (coastal resource managers and environmental communications professionals) in Alabama, Florida, Mississippi along the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico. This study, which was part of a larger transdisciplinary sea level rise research project, was intended to collect input on development of the project's scientific research and models and gather future project outreach recommendations. [NOAA National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science News]
The Lake Champlain Sea Grant receives designation as a Sea Grant Institute -- NOAA and the National Sea Grant College Program recently announced that the Lake Champlain Sea Grant has been designated as a Sea Grant Institute, a cooperative effort of the University of Vermont and the State University of New York at Plattsburgh. The mission of Lake Champlain Sea Grant is to develop and share science-based knowledge to benefit the environment and economies of the Lake Champlain basin, which is located between Vermont and Upstate New York. [NOAA Sea Grant 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]

Historical Events:

8 May 1961...The first practical seawater conversion plant in the U.S. was opened in Freeport, TX by the Office of Saline Water, U.S. Dept. of the Interior. The plant was designed to produce about a million gallons of water a day at a cost of about $1.25 per thousand gallons. (Today in Science History)
8 May 1992...The source of a "red tide" in the Gulf of Mexico was suggested by scientists at a conference on the ecology of the Gulf. The red tide produced huge blooms of reddish algae in sufficient quantity to kill fish and cause severe respiratory problems for humans. A "green river" that started 60 miles inland of Florida was indicated as the source of the algae. The wind and water currents that bring nutrients from the floor of the ocean to the surface provided the food that caused the algae population to explode once it reached the Gulf. (Today in Science History)
9 May 1502...The explorer Christopher Columbus left Spain for his fourth and final journey to the "New World". (Wikipedia)
9 May 1926...The Baden-Baden, a ship propelled by two 50-ft high cylindrical rotors arrived in New York having left Hamburg on 2 April 1926, and completed a transatlantic crossing from Germany. Utilizing the aerodynamic power of the Magnus Effect (discovered in 1852), which builds air pressure behind a rotating cylinder, these rotors drove 45-hp electric motors that powered the ship. Although a theoretical success, it was not sufficiently effective for commercial application. (Today in Science)
9 May 1980...A blinding squall, followed by dense fog, reduced visibility to near zero at the Sunshine Skyway Bridge over Tampa Bay in Florida. The Liberian freighter SS Summit Venture hit the bridge piling, causing a 1200-foot section of the bridge to fall 150 feet into the bay. Several vehicles, including a bus, drove off the edge of the span, resulting in 35 deaths. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar) (Wikipedia).
9 May 1990...A category 4 tropical cyclone on the Saffir-Simpson scale hit the southeast coast of India, killing 1000 people, even though 400,000 people evacuated because of early warning of the storm. More than 100 miles of coast were devastated as winds reached 125 mph and a storm surge measured at 22 feet flooded inland as far as 22 miles. Over 100,000 animals also died in the cyclone with the total cost of damages to crops estimated at over $600 million (1990 USD). (National Weather Service files) (The Weather Doctor) (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
10 May 1497...The Italian cartographer Amerigo Vespucci allegedly left the Spanish coastal city of Cádiz for his first voyage to the New World. (Wikipedia)
10 May 1503...Christopher Columbus discovered the Cayman Islands and named them Las Tortugas after the numerous sea turtles that he found there. (Wikipedia)
10 May 1960...The submarine, USS Triton (SSRN-586), completed a submerged circumnavigation of world in 84 days following many of the routes taken by Magellan and cruising 46,000 miles. (Naval Historical Center)
11 May 1833...The ship Lady of the Lake struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic while bound from England to Quebec, resulting in the loss of 215 lives. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
11-12 May 1965...The first of two cyclones that struck East Pakistan (now called Bangladesh) during the year made landfall. This system, along with the one on 1-2 June, killed about 47,000 people.
12 May 1916...Plumb Point, Jamaica reported 17.80 inches of rain in 15 minutes, which set a world record. (The Weather Doctor)
12 May 1978...The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that they would no longer exclusively name hurricanes after women.