WEEKLY OCEAN NEWS

2-6 July 2007

DataStreme Ocean will return for Fall 2007 with new Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 27 August 2007. All the current online website products will continue to be available throughout the summer break period.

Ocean in the News:

• WELCOME to the weather and ocean educators attending the 2007 DataStreme LIT Leader Workshop that is being held at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA from 1 to 4 July 2007.
• Way out there!...The earth reaches aphelion, the point in its annual orbit when it is farthest from the sun early Friday evening (officially at 00Z on Saturday, 7 July 2007, which is equivalent to 8 PM EDT or 7 PM CDT). At aphelion, the earth-sun distance is 152,089,000 km, or 3.4% greater than the distance at perihelion, the smallest earth-sun distance, which occurred earlier this year on the morning of 3 January.
• New research vessel will be very quiet -- Underwater acoustic tests performed by the US Navy on the new NOAA fishery survey vessel Henry B. Bigelow indicates that this ship is quiet, exceeding international standards as an acoustically quiet vessel. [NOAA News]
• New hurricane model unveiled -- A new and advanced coupled ocean-atmosphere model, identified as the "Hurricane Weather and Research Forecast Model" (HWRF) will be used by forecasters with NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Prediction and the National Hurricane Center during the current hurricane season to predict the track and strength of tropical cyclones (hurricanes and tropical storms). [NOAA News]
• Conservation group warns against a plan to combat climate change -- The World Wildlife Fund recently denounced the proposed plan by a for-profit eco-restoration company based in San Francisco that would spread up to 100 tons of iron dust across the open waters of the Pacific Ocean in an effort to stimulate phytoplankton blooms, which would ultimately absorb carbon dioxide and reduce the global-scale increase in air temperature. The conservationists warn of several unwanted impacts associated with this plan. [EurekAlert!]
• Are parking garages a safe haven? A professor at Kent State University has recently studied the safety of using parking garages as "refuges of last resort" during hurricanes. [EurekAlert!]
• New ideas advanced concerning the Antarctic Ice Sheet -- Researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara and other institutions have been studying echo-sounding images that they have made under the Antarctic Ice Sheet on the Ross Sea off the West Antarctica subcontinent in order to make a map of this region below the ocean floor. They have found that the subcontinent was involved in the widespread growth of the Antarctic Ice Sheet approximately 35 million years ago, earlier than previously thought. [University of California, Santa Barbara]
• A tool developed to determine tropical landslide risk -- Engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have devised a simple method for determining the landslide risk of an area in mountainous tropical regions often hit by typhoons or hurricanes that could aid planners improve zoning and building codes that would decrease property loss. [MIT News]
• Global and US Hazards/Climate Extremes-- A review and analysis of the global impacts of various weather-related events, including drought, floods and storms during the current month. [NCDC]
• Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com] Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Historical Events:

• 2 July 1578...The British seaman and explorer, Martin Frobisher sighted Baffin Island, one of Canada's Arctic islands. (Wikipedia)
• 2-6 July 1994... Heavy rains from the remains of Tropical Storm Alberto produced major flooding across northern and central Georgia. Three-day rains exceeded 15 inches at Atlanta. An impressive 21.10 inches of rain fell at Americus, GA on the 6^th to establish a 24-hour maximum precipitation record for the Peach State. Numerous road closures and bridge washouts. Thirty people were killed and 50,000 were forced from their homes, as 800,000 acres were flooded. Total damage exceeded $750 million.. (NCDC) (Intellicast)
• 3 July 1903...The first telegraph cable across the Pacific Ocean was spliced and completed between San Francisco on the US West Coast, Honolulu, Midway, Guam and Manila in the Philippines. After testing, the first official message was sent the next day. A cable between San Francisco and Hawaii had been established at the beginning of the same year, with its first official message sent on 1 Jan 1903. This technological event ended Hawaii's isolation by connecting it to the mainland U.S. and the rest of the world. The cable was a mainstay of communications into the early 1950s when newer technology rendered it obsolete. (The 1902 all-British telegraph line from Canada to Australia and New Zealand was the first line to cross the Pacific Ocean.) (Today in Science History)
• 3 July 1992...At 11 PM EDT, several waves to heights of 18 feet crashed ashore at Daytona Beach, FL. Sailboats were tossed onto cars, 200 vehicles damaged and 75 minor injuries reported. While the exact cause was unknown, morning storms were moving parallel to the coast approximately 430 miles to the east. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
• 4 July 1687...An early experience of a tropical revolving storm was made by Captain William Dampier, whose ship survived what he called a "tuffoon" off the coast of China. In New Voyage Round the World, (published in 1697) Dampier wrote that this violent whirlwind storm had a calm central eye, and its winds moved from opposite directions as the storm moved passed. This was one of the earliest known European descriptions of a typhoon, which also presented a new understanding that storms somehow move, rather than remain stationary. During his ocean travels, he kept a detailed journal, noting native cultures, and made careful descriptions of natural history which in effect made him an early contributor to scientific exploration. (Today in Science History)
• 4 July 1840...The Cunard Line's 700-ton wooden paddlewheel steamer, RMS Britannia, departed from Liverpool, England bound for Halifax, NS on its first transatlantic passenger cruise. (Wikipedia)
• 4 July 1903...President Theodore Roosevelt sent the first official message over the new cable across the Pacific Ocean between Honolulu, Midway, Guam and Manila. (Today in Science History)
• 5 July 1805...Robert FitzRoy, British naval officer, hydrographer, and meteorologist who commanded the voyage of HMS Beagle, aboard which Charles Darwin sailed around the world as the ship's naturalist. That voyage provided Darwin with much of the material on which he based his theory of evolution. FitzRoy retired from active duty in 1850 and from 1854 devoted himself to meteorology. He devised a storm warning system that was the prototype of the daily weather forecast, invented a barometer, and published The Weather Book (1863). His death on 30 April 1865 was by suicide, during a bout of depression. (Today in Science History)
• 5 July 1916...An early season hurricane produced 82 mph winds, an 11.6 foot tide, and a barometric pressure of 28.92 inches at Mobile, AL. (David Ludlum)
• 5 July 1989...Moisture from what once was Tropical Storm Allison triggered thunderstorms over the Middle Atlantic Coast Region, which deluged Wilmington, DE with a record 6.83 inches of rain in 24 hours, including 6.37 inches in just six hours. Up to ten inches of rain was reported at Claymont, northeast of Wilmington. July 1989 was thus the wettest month in seventy years for Wilmington, with a total of 12.63 inches of rain. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data) (Intellicast)
• 6 July 1484...Portuguese sea captain Diogo Cão located the mouth of the Congo River. (Wikipedia)
• 6 July 1988...The world's worst offshore accident occurred when 167 oil workers were killed by explosions and fires that destroyed the Piper Alpha drilling platform in the British sector of the North Sea.
• 7 July 1901...First three-day weather forecast issued for the shipping lanes of the North Atlantic. (Northern Indiana NWSFO)
• 7 July 1952...The liner SS United States made the fastest-ever eastbound crossing of the Atlantic of 3 days, 17 hours and 48 minutes on her maiden voyage from Nantucket Light Ship off New York's Long Island to Bishop Rock Lighthouse in western England.
• 8 July 1497...The Portuguese explorer, Vasco da Gama, set sail from Lisbon, Portugal with four ships on the first direct European voyage to India, first rounding Africa's Cape of Good Hope and reaching Calicut on India's southwest coast on 20 May 1498. (Wikipedia)
• 8 July 1879...The first ship to use electric lights departed from San Francisco, CA.

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Prepared by AMS DS Ocean Central Staff and Edward J. Hopkins, Ph.D., email hopkins@meteor.wisc.edu
ã Copyright, 2007, The American Meteorological Society.