National Weather Service in Norman gauges readiness

National Weather Service in Norman gauges readiness

NORMAN — There were no black clouds rolling in from the southwest. No lightning strikes. No hail denting car hoods.

So why were all the emergency management vehicles in the parking lot of the National Weather Center on Tuesday?

Because more than 100 emergency managers, media, National Weather Service and other National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration personnel are preparing for the days the clouds, the lightning, the hail and possibly much more bully their way into Oklahoma.

Tuesday marked the opening day of the National Weather Service’s three-day "Next Generation Warning Services Workshop.”

"The idea is to make our warning services for hazardous weather better,” said Kevin Scharfenberg, the weather service’s severe storm services coordinator.

Tom Merrill is the Emergency Manager for Cordell in Washita County. He said the weather service is receptive to making changes to fit the needs of the end-users — emergency management and the citizens they protect.

Merrill said in January the Weather Service starts going to communities to train storm spotters. In March, a severe weather workshop is held.

"That prepares everyone for the storm season,” he said. "Plus, it’s great to be sitting in Cordell talking on a ham radio during severe weather and know who you are talking to at the National Weather Service. You have a feel for what he’s wanting.”

He praised the OK

FIRST program through the Oklahoma Climatological Survey that prepares personnel for severe weather.

Lloyd Colston also is attending this week’s "Next Generation Warning Services Workshop.” Colston is the director of emergency management for the city of Altus in Jackson County.

"We live in an age when the sirens are not enough,” Colston said.

In the last two months, Colston has set up AltusEm.Blogspot.com and Twitter.com/AltusEm.

WEATHER NOTE

Rogue wave drowns 3 people
2 others survive Mugu Rock waters

By Cheri Carlson
Originally published 10:54 p.m., November 27, 2008
Updated 10:11 a.m., November 28, 2008

Three young Oxnard men died Thursday after being swept off a rocky ledge and into the ocean near Point Mugu.

Shortly before 2 p.m., a wave knocked five people into the water beneath Mugu Rock, according to witnesses. The two survivors, a 17-year-old and a 27-year-old, made it to the shore and started calling for help, said Ventura County Sheriff's Sgt. Steve Sagely.

Three others were later pulled out of the water. All three were pronounced dead at the scene, Sagely said. On Friday, the Ventura County Medical Examiner's Office identified two of the dead as brothers, Catalino Ramos Vasquez, 19, and Marcelo Ramos Vasquez, 17. The other victim was identified as Pedro Avila Ramos. His age was not immediately known.

A woman at the popular ocean lookout responded to the calls for help before rescue crews arrived, jumping into the water and pulling one of the three victims onto shore, according to witnesses.

Sagely identified her as 24-year-old Kathryn Barrona of Camarillo. He called her actions heroic. She could not be reached for comment.

The two other men were pulled from the water by emergency responders, including rescue swimmers and a helicopter crew, by 2:30 p.m.

The victims' names were not released, pending notification of family members. It was unclear if they all were related.

Ana Savedra of Canyon Country was reading in her car parked on the turnout at Mugu Rock and watched as the five headed down the rocky hill closer to the water.

"They seemed like they were having fun," she said. Later, however, Savedra saw people running around, calling for help. Rescue crews and a helicopter came quickly, she said.

Previous drownings have been reported in the same area, including a 16-year-old boy who was swept into the water while fishing off a cliff below Mugu Rock in January.

For the past two years, Savedra has been going to the same spot to relax.

"It's a beautiful place," she said, but she's never gone down the hill where the tide crashes up against the rocky shoreline. "It's very dangerous."

MARITIME NOTE

Russian Register of Shipping - Guarantee for quality and safety

Russian Maritime Register of Shipping (RS) has been awarded a golden medal ‘Guarantee for quality and safety’. RS has become a laureate of National Safety awards and has received a golden medal in the nomination “For the development of technical standards aimed at ensuring safety of offshore oil and gas facilities”. The National Safety awards were held during the “Russian Industrial Exhibition – 2008”. More than 300 Russian and foreign companies participated in the event.

As a participant RS has submitted its Rules for the Classification, Construction and Equipment of Mobile Offshore Drilling Units (MODU) and Fixed Offshore Platforms (FOP). The Rules are based on the scientific research carried out by the leading scientific organizations of Russia (in total over 40 research works).

The Rules are systematically being improved and in the 2008 the third edition was published. The new edition is based upon the IMO and IACS recommendations and the latest research results as regards the advanced study of the external loads on the FOP hull structure, incorporating the requirements to the TLP and Spar installations in the Rules, further improvement of the formal safety assessment of MODU and FOP, continuous monitoring of the FOP subject to the heavy ice loads.

RS allocates considerable resources to perform scientific research aimed at enhancing safety and environment protection standards.

The requirements of the RS rules aimed at minimising the mankind impact on the marine environment are based upon scientifically based risk assessment and risk management procedures.

Source: Russian Maritime Register of Shipping

Mich. law restricting ballast dumping is upheld

A federal appeals court has upheld a Michigan law designed to prevent oceangoing freight ships from bringing invasive species to the Great Lakes.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday rejected a challenge to the law filed by shipping organizations.

The 2005 law requires saltwater ships calling at Michigan ports to get a permit from the state Department of Environmental Quality.

The permit certifies that the ship will not discharge ballast water in port or has technology to kill any live organisms in the water before it's dumped.

More than 180 invasive species are in the Great Lakes. Many of them are believed to have arrived in ship ballast.

RS

Computers Determine When To Stop Searches For Missing People At Sea

Computers Determine When To Stop Searches For Missing People At Sea

ScienceDaily (Nov. 27, 2008) — British researchers are developing a new computer model to predict how long someone will survive when lost at sea, which will in turn determine when a search and rescue operation may be stopped.

The Search and Rescue Survival Model is being developed by the University of Portsmouth’s Sports Science and Mathematics departments and the US Coast Guard.

It aims to support the US Coast Guard target of saving 93 per cent of victims annually - between 3000-6000 people - whose lives are in danger at sea.

“Using this new computer model will take pressure off humans making very emotional and sensitive decisions about when to end a search,” said Professor Mike Tipton, human and applied physiologist, from the University of Portsmouth.

“When the model predicts that a victim can no longer survive, the search and rescue team can stop or redeploy the search.

“It will ensure that Coast Guard personnel are not exposed to the high risks associated with search and rescue operations any longer than necessary and will also help to save time and resources,” he said.

The US Coast Guard currently uses a software system known as SAROPS (Search and Rescue Optimal Planning System) to calculate how far a person will have drifted and how large the search area should be.

Data such as wind speed, sea state and water temperature is entered into SAROPS along with information about the victim’s sex, height, weight and what they were wearing to determine exactly how the search should be conducted.

“Calculating survival time will add another layer to SAROPS; it will be able to predict not only where a search should be conducted but when it should be stopped,” said Professor Tipton.

Chris Turner, Ocean Engineer and Manager for the project for the US Coast Guard in Groton, Connecticut, sought the help of the university because of its international reputation for expertise in the area of survival in the sea.

“The University of Portsmouth has been able to tap into and analyze data held by the Institute of Naval Medicine and the Royal National Lifeboats Institution, both critical to the development of this survival model. To our knowledge no other similar repository of this information exists - even in the US.

“The development of this technology is very exciting. It will be trialled in American waters in late 2009 and once thoroughly tested, the aim is to roll it out to the whole of the US,” he said.

WEATHER NOTE

Weather disasters claimed 15,000 lives, report says

Stevie Emilia, The Jakarta Post, Poznan, Poland

More than 15,000 people across the world died last year from extreme weather, which also caused US$80 billion in damages, a report released Thursday at the ongoing UN climate change talks here revealed.

The Global Climate Risk Index 2009 by the environment and development group Germanwatch puts Bangladesh at the top of the list of countries most affected by weather-related disasters last year.

Bangladesh, which suffered heavily from cyclone Sidr that killed more than 4,000 people and caused $10 billion in damages, was followed by North Korea and Nicaragua.

Sven Harmeling, the group's senior advisor for climate and development, and author of the study, said many people had been severely affected by storms, floods and other weather extremes.

"People in less-developed countries have a far harder time coping with such events compared with their peers in industrialized countries," he said.

Hurricane Katrina caused $215 billion in damages when it devastated the U.S. Gulf Coast three years ago, making it the most expensive storm in history.

While no single weather disaster can be directly attributed to global warming, Harmeling warned the changing climate would most certainly lead to an increase in their frequency and intensity in many parts of the world.

The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change earlier warned that climate change this year was likely to make extreme weather events more frequent and possibly more intense too.

Germanwatch, which first calculated the global climate risk in 2006, derived data for the present study from a database compiled by German insurance giant Munich Re.

The report analyzes how severely countries were affected in 2007 and in the past decade, or from 1998-2007, by weather-related events, including floods, heat waves and storms. It excluded droughts or sea-level rises -- long-term events that are harder to evaluate.

In the latest report, a total of 1,066 disasters were registered last year, causing 15,240 fatalities and economic losses of over $70.1 billion.

Indonesia came in at seventh place on the Down 10 list of countries with the highest death tolls, recording 470 deaths last year, and was ranked eight in the list of Down 10 countries with highest absolute losses, with a total of $3.09 billion.

"We're witnessing a strong increase in disasters, particularly the climate-related ones, in terms of the number of disasters, economic damage and people affected," said Maarten van Aalst, associated director of the Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Center in The Hague.

"This is partly due to rising vulnerability, partly already reflecting global climate change, a trend which is bound to continue."

Apart from providing assistance when disaster strikes, van Aalst said the most effective response was disaster mitigation, stressing that "reducing the impact of the increasing hazards is crucial. Practical risk reduction options include better early warning, drought resistant crops or reforestation to prevent floods."

The report, which aims to give pointers about a country's vulnerability to climate change, proposes the inclusion of insurance instruments in the post-2012 regime.

In the Bali conference last December, the Bali Action Plan called for the "consideration of risk sharing and transfer mechanisms such as insurance" to deal with loss and damage in developing countries particularly vulnerable to climate change.

The ongoing Poznan conference serves as a bridge to the next conference, in Copenhagen, Denmark, to agree on a new deal to replace the climate treaty Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

"The Copenhagen treaty can introduce the necessary support mechanism with both prevention and insurance pillars," said Germanwatch executive director Christopher Bals.

"It is very positive that concrete proposals for risk management and insurance are today discussed in detail in Poznan."

Tornado confirmed in Palm Bay

BY KIMBERLY C. MOORE
FLORIDA TODAY

PALM BAY — National Weather Service meteorologists confirmed today that the windstorm that damaging more than a dozen homes in Palm Bay on Sunday was a tornado.

“It was kind of hopscotching,” National Weather Service meteorologist Scott Kelly said. “It did touch down, but it was very spotty. It was not a continuous track.”

Palm Bay residents spent Monday cleaning up their yards and dragging tree branches to the curb. Some homes had blue tarps on roofs. And contractors already were out, giving homeowners estimates to repair the damage.

Palm Bay officials did not yet have a dollar estimate of how much damage the tornado did.

No one was injured.

Keith Rittscher, 63, found the roof of his plastic shed near a neighbor’s home about 25 yards away from his Holiday Park house.

“That’s my roof,” he said, pointing to a tangled web of aluminum wedged into Australian pines behind his house.

Nearby, a collection of plastic pieces rested against his home’s back wall.

“This is my shed,” Rittscher said.

Rittscher estimated that damage to the home, which is uninsured for property damage, probably is about $20,000. He said he and his wife have enough to cover the cost.

“We’re OK,” he said.

The roof of one home on Emerson Drive at Consumer Street had several shingles ripped off.

Along Velvet and Ritter avenues on the east side of Interstate 95, residents picked up branches torn from trees and propped up trees knocked over by the powerful winds.

It was the same story east of Babcock Street, along Edith Street and Cambridge Avenue.

Kelly said Palm Bay got lucky. A stronger storm might have claimed lives.

“There could’ve been more chance for fatalities if trees had fallen on those homes,” he said.

In Holiday Park, a community of manufactured homes, Don Clark spent the morning with two contractors, getting bids for his roof.

A blue tarp now is tied in place to shield their home.

In the backyard, the doors of his shed remain, but the rest of the structured vanished in the whirlwind. In addition, the storm ripped off the slats of his hurricane shutters.

“They were all twisted up in knots,” he said.

But, he said, he is grateful.

“We’re doing good,” Clark said. “We’re just happy to be safe.”

MARITIME NOTE

Loading is first area to probe in ship sinking: experts

Updated Fri. Dec. 5 2008 1:50 PM ET

The Canadian Press

HALIFAX -- Experts say the loading of a cargo vessel that sank off Newfoundland, with the loss of four sailors, should be the first area investigators probe to unravel the mystery of its sudden capsizing.

The Cap Blanc stopped communicating with the coast guard at 8:30 p.m. local time on Monday as it crossed Placentia Bay.

Ten hours later, aircraft discovered a portion of the sinking hull of the vessel from the French islands of St-Pierre-Miquelon.

None of the four sailors on board was found, and the joint rescue co-ordination centre declared the active sea search over late Thursday.

In St-Pierre-Miquelon, the father-in-law of the captain says a full inquiry is needed into the sinking of the ship, which was carrying a load of road salt.

Eric Snow, who spent 30 years doing marine investigations for Canadian government agencies, says "the first thing you have to do" is go to the companies involved and ask how the vessel was loaded, and how the cargo was secured.

The lead investigator in the accident is a French transportation safety agency, which is being assisted by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada.

Floods knock out Port of Itajaí

The Brazilian port has been devastated by flash floods. Ironically, the controversial PortoNave container terminal, on the other side of the river, has been the least affected facility

Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has visited the flood stricken port of Itajaí to see for himself the damage caused by floods that have now taken the lives of 99 people in the state of Santa Catarina (and the numbers and extent of the damage are rising almost by the hour).

Reports suggest that 12 people have perished in the floods in the port city itself, and the raging torrent of the River Itajaí -Acu – flowing at more than 24 kmh when the average is normallya round 2 kmh – have destroyed much of the infrastructure of the country’s number two port for containers.

Lula has declared Itajaí and the state of Santa Catarina a disaster zone and met the president of Itajaí Port Authority (API) Arnaldo Schmitt to discuss rescue and various reconstruction plans, and how best to divert federal resources to the port.

Ports Minister Pedro Brito has sent a special task force of military and civilian engineers to Itaja to work out the best way to repair damages and get the port open as soon as possible. Latest news is that Lula has promised at least US$150M to reconstruct the port.

Two of the port’s three berths have been completely destroyed and the port is now shut to all commercial traffic. In the state of Santa Catarina some 76,000 people are homeless and 160,000 homes are still without power supplies, according to the state energy company Celesc.

API spokeswoman Patrícia Barcelos told WorldCargo News: “We had 90% of the city of Itajaí under 2m of water, it’s an absolute catastrophe. It has barely stopped raining for two months and we are supposed to be entering the summer period.

“The number one Berth has been washed away by the river, as has half of number three berth. We think number four berth is intact but cant get the divers down to inspect until the water flow reduces.”

The APM Terminals’ container terminal in Itajaí, Teconvi, has suffered very heavy damage with Pier One mostly disappearing into the river torrent. However, no personnel were hurt.

Teconvi’s commercial manager Patrício Júnior said: “The port of Itajaí will receive emergency funding for dredging and that will allow us to clear the river and hopefully start dredging berth zero. Dredging is of the utmost priority and works are expected to be finished only by mid December.” Berth zero is a new berth that had almost entered into service for Teconvi.

With many quay and paved back-up areas at the port seriously damaged, carriers such as Maersk Line, CMA CGM and Hamburg Süd are seeking alternative ports of call, including Santos, Rio Grande and Paranaguá. However, many of these “alternatives”are already seriously congested. The port of São Francisco do Sul – some 60 km away from Itajaí- has also been closed due to the weather but may open within the next few days, according to API officials.

Ironically, the controversial Portonave facility – just a short hop across the river from Itajaí in Navegantes – has escaped from the calamity relatively unscathed and could open for business within a week or two once the strong currents recede and a link road to the terminal is re-opened.

Henrik Simon, the director of reefer services for Hamburg Süd, ECSA trades, said: “The whole shipping community of Brazil is in a state of shock. Our 10 employees in Itajaí are safe but are homeless. I have never seen anything like this in 20 years of working in Brazil.

"With so much silting up, it will take at least three weeks to get dredging arranged. In the meantime we are diverting to Paranaguá.”

Bathometric tests carried out on 28th November show that the quantity of sand has reduced the depth of the channel from 10 metres down to just 7m.

RS

MARITIME ALERT - ACR GlobalFix iPRO EPIRB RECALL NOTICE

MARITIME ALERT NOTICE

ACR announces limited recall of GlobalFix iPRO EPIRB

ACR Electronics, Inc. is notifying dealers, distributors and customers that a small percentage of GlobalFix iPRO EPIRBs may not activate manually and is voluntarily issuing a limited recall notice.Through its ongoing quality assurance processes, ACR had discovered that some of the witness seal tabs used in the manual activation of the GlobalFix iPRO required the application of excessive force to put the switch into its correct position.

The water activation feature works separately and is not affected by the manual switch.

According to ACR, the manual switch assembly will require re-working on a very limited range of GlobalFix iPRO units shipped to market. No other ACR EPIRB units are affected.

This condition, according to ACR Electronics, could exist in a maximum of 400 units built within serial number range of 1,000 to 1,699.

The 400 units could be either the P/N #2846 Category I (automatic deploy) or P/N #2848 Category II (manual deploy) model. ( iPROs with serial numbers outside of this limited recall range are not affected by this notice).

The company has asked anyone owning a GlobalFix iPRO falling within the suspect serial number range contact ACR¹s Customer Service Department immediately.

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We cannot tell you how serious this recall notice is, nor how it effects the maritime community at large. But everyone with a ACR GlobalFix iPRO EPIRB immediately contact ACR. In the meantime we also recommend that all EPRIB owners make sure that their EPRIBs are properly registered and in working order.


RS

The Lightning Flash Before The Flood

The Lightning Flash Before The Flood

ScienceDaily (Nov. 24, 2008) — Flash floods are the most common natural disaster in the United States, and because of their unpredictability they’re the leading weather-related cause of death for Americans. They usually arrive with little or no warning, but a Tel Aviv University researcher is trying to predict where and when they will occur ― using lightning.

Prof. Colin Price, coordinator of the international “Flash Project” and head of the Geophysics and Planetary Physics Department at Tel Aviv University, is studying the link between lightning and subsequent flash floods. The three-year study includes scientists from five European countries, and its results are expected to be adopted by weather forecasting agencies around the world.

The goal is to develop an early warning system for people in the path of a flood. “Flash floods are different from normal floods, which are often the product of melting snow. Flash floods are short-lived and dump a lot of rain,” says Prof. Price, a climate change specialist. “Using the radiation emitted from lightning flashes, we’ve developed a system that can give adequate warning to the public ― and save lives.”

Eventually, the Flash system may be used to send messages to cell phones, RSS feeds, GPS units and other devices to warn people in the path of a flash flood and avert disaster.

“Nowcasting” for Flood Warnings

Unlike normal floods which arrive slowly and with more warning, flash floods are particularly dangerous because they happen so quickly, developing from thunderstorms that form in a matter of hours. By measuring the radiation emitted by lightning, researchers can pinpoint the most intense thunderstorms, and the resulting rainfall can be located and tracked.

This data has been used to predict both the path of a storm and where heavy rainfall will appear ― crucial predictions, since the impact of flash floods depends on ground topography, slope and vegetation cover. “Nowcasting,” which predicts what conditions will be in the next few hours, versus “forecasting” a day or two in advance of expected weather conditions, is critical.

Looking at real-time lightning data, Tel Aviv University researchers can see where storms will travel over a period of a few hours, and can warn people in the path of the flood of impending danger. Such a tool will become even more relevant as erratic weather patterns, predicted by climate-change scientists today, become a reality tomorrow.

A Flood of Warnings Delivered in a Flash

The research from the Flash program can be extrapolated for use anywhere in the world, including the flash flood-prone regions of the U.S. For example, the U.S. National Lightning Detection Network could easily apply the results of the Flash research.

“This is a tool for the future,” says Prof. Price. “And it will be even more exciting in the next decade, when we’ll have continuous real-time detection of lightning activity from satellites. That data will be used to predict floods anywhere.” The U.S. will also have geostationary satellites with lightning trackers that will take a picture every 15 minutes from 36,000 kilometers above the earth.

WEATHER NOTE

FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION ANNOUNCES AGENDA FOR SUMMIT ON LESSONS LEARNED: HURRICANE SEASON 2008

Washington, D.C. – The Federal Communications Commission’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau (Bureau) today announced that it will host a Summit on Lessons Learned: Hurricane Season 2008 to be held on Thursday, December 11, 2008, 9:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. in the Commission Meeting Room (TW-C305).

The Summit will focus on communications and coordination between state, local and federal governments, healthcare and industry in preparation for and response to the 2008 storms. The panel discussions will also highlight ways that communications may be expanded and enhanced in preparing for future storms or other disasters (see detailed agenda below).

The Summit will be open to the public; admittance however will be limited to the seating available. Those individuals who are interested in attending the summit may pre-register on-line at: http://www.fcc.gov/pshs/summits. Those who pre-register will be asked to provide their name, title, organization affiliation, and contact information. Individuals may also contact Stephanie Caccomo at 202-418-1812 regarding pre-registration. The deadline for pre-registration is Friday, December 5, 2008. Audio/Video coverage of the meeting will be broadcast live with open captioning over the Internet from the FCC's web page at www.fcc.gov/realaudio. The FCC’s web cast is free to the public and does not require pre-registration.

Reasonable accommodations for persons with disabilities are available upon request. Please include a description of the accommodation you will need. Individuals making such requests must include their contact information should FCC staff need to contact them for more information. Requests should be made as early as possible. Please send an e-mail to fcc504@fcc.gov or call the Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau: 202-418-0530 (voice), 202-418-0432 (TTY).

For additional information about the meeting, please contact Susan McLean at (202) 418-7868 or by email: susan.mclean@fcc.gov .

For full (agenda)

Mechanical problems hamper mock disaster exercise

2008-11-21 18:21:00.000

Mississauga's Pearson International Airport was supposed to be the launch point from where emergency personnel and resources would be deployed to a mock ice storm disaster today.

That plan wouldn't fly, though. Literally.

Originally, a C-17 Globemaster was to arrive at Pearson 11 a.m. as part of Trillium Response – a multi-jurisdictional disaster response effort developed by the Emergency Management Ontario, the Office of the Fire Marshal and the Canadian Forces. The C-17 – the military's newest aircraft which can carry a payload of 160,000 lbs. – was to be employed to transport personnel and resources to a mock emergency in Thunder Bay.

Due to mechanical problems, however, the plane was grounded. Instead, a C-130 was flown in at 2 p.m.

The mission was a response to a desperate plea for help from the Iain Angus the acting mayor of Thunder Bay, who had contacted the Provincial Emergency Operational Centre at about 8 p.m. last night. She was asking for help after a grain elevator had collapsed because of heavy snow and ice. The collapse injured 30 people and trapped another 80.

Still, members of Trillium Response refused to see the malfunctioning aircraft as a setback. Instead, they told the press that patrt of reacting to a disaster is dealing with the unpredictable.
.
"The only thing predictable in an emergency is the unpredictable," said Rick Bartolucci, Ontario's minister of community safety and correctional services. "The team had to strategize and come up with another alternative because the reality is this exercise has to go on because we're responding to an emergency."

By 8:30 p.m., the Heavy Urban Search and Rescue team (HUSAR) had been deployed. The team consists of 70 people from Toronto fire and police servives medical staff and specialists in structural engineering, hazardous materials, heavy rigging, search and logistics.

They flew out of Pearson to the disaster scene, albeit delayed by three hours until the replacement ride arrived.

"We will, at the end of the day, have learned from this exercise so that in the event of a real emergency here in the province of Ontario we will be equipped with not only the human not only the physical resources that are necessary but also having had the experience of reacting to a very serious situation," said Bartolucci.

The Thunder Bay mock disaster was one of several taking place simultaneously in other areas across northwestern Ontario, including in Kenora and Dryden.

The entire operation involved over 40 government and non-government organizations including 11 ministries of Ontario, four federal government departments and nine First Nations communities.

"This is going to be the largest exercise, peace-time joint exercise that has taken place in the province of Ontario," said Brigadier General Gary Stafford.

MARITIME NOTE

Reports released in November analyze three deaths at sea in ‘06

November saw the release of two separate incident reports in response to loss of life at sea. Both incidents occurred in heavy weather conditions. The first was investigated by the Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB), which investigates accidents involving UK ships and ships in UK territorial waters. The second was done by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada.

Both bodies investigate accidents to determine circumstances and causes with the mission of improving the safety of life at sea and to help avoid future accidents. Neither group is charged with assigning fault or determining civil or criminal liability.

In the first report, the training tall ship Picton Castle of Nova Scotia, Canada, lost a crew member while sailing in the North Atlantic Ocean.

"On the afternoon of 05 December 2006, the barque Picton Castle departed Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, bound for St. George’s, Grenada, in the eastern Caribbean Sea," a summary of the incident from the report states. "On board were 12 crew and 16 other persons who had signed on as trainees. On the evening of Dec. 8, shortly before 2235, while in heavy weather, a deckhand was swept overboard from the leeward side of the vessel. An air and sea search ensued, but it was unsuccessful."

The near 12,000-word report found seven "causes and contributing factors" and five "findings as to risk." These include that the safety of the vessel was adversely affected by the decision to sail, given the limited training of the crew in emergencies and the limited experience of the trainees. Issues regarding training, communications, fatigue, safety drills and record keeping were also addressed in the report as factors in the incident.

According to the ship’s Web site, Capt. Daniel Moreland accepts recommendations of the investigators and has responded to the report with an intense review and scrutiny of safety equipment and all practices and procedures aboard, including an in-depth independent Extraordinary Safety Audit and Transport Canada inspections.

For the full report see The Transportation Safety Board of Canada’s Web site, www.tsb.gc.ca.

In the other incident, in a 2006 incident that claimed the lives of two crew members, a MAIB report says the ship’s master with FR8 Ship Management PTE of Singapore, should have never left the harbor and should have delayed sailing.

"At about 1220 on 11 November 2006, while outbound from Scapa Flow and transiting the Pentland Firth, the 74,065 dwt Singaporean registered tanker, FR8 Venture, shipped two large waves over her bow," the report states. "This resulted in the death of two able seamen (ABs) and serious injuries to an ordinary seaman (OS), all of whom were working on the forward mooring deck. The waves also caused minor damage to the ship."

According to the UK Coast Guard, weather conditions were "horrendous" including strong winds, heavy seas and huge swells. Safety issues addressed by the report, say waves of the size that killed two men and injured a third should have been anticipated and the foredeck should have been secured.

It was recommended that the master should revise the securing schedule, depending on weather and if the vessel is arriving or leaving port to ensure crew are on deck, exposed to the elements, for the least amount of time. Also, the report stated it would be "prudent to concentrate the manpower in one locale rather than spreading them out and trying to secure all over as a concentrated effort will mean a quicker securing [sic]."

The company should have had effective safety measures in place with an effective plan of action. Named Navig8 Ship Management Pte, Ltd. since 2007, the shipping company has reviewed all recommendations and has now set policy for all its ships.

Also, the MCA issued a Safety Alert, which gives a brief outline of the accident and draws attention to the contents of Chapter 3 of the Admiralty Sailing Directions North Coast of Scotland Pilot that warns mariners of strong tides, with large waves that frequently occur in the area of Pentland Firth. In light of the actions taken as a result of this accident, the MAIB has issued no safety recommendations.

To see details of this report see MAIB’s Web site: www.maib.gov.uk.

On This Day, December 4 1872

Ghost Ship Mary Celeste Found Near Strait of Gibraltar

An engraving of the Mary Celeste as she was found.

DECEMBER 4 1872, ATLANTIC OCEAN - The Mary Celeste was sighted by the Dei Gratia, commanded by Captain David Reed Morehouse, who knew Captain Benjamin Briggs, the commander of the Mary Celeste. According to the account given by the crew of the Dei Gratia, the ship was observed for two hours, under full sail and heading toward the Strait of Gibraltar. They concluded that she was drifting, though she was flying no distress signals.

On November 5, 1872, the Mary Celeste picked up a cargo of commercial alcohol shipped by Meissner Ackermann & Co. and set sail from Staten Island, New York to Genoa, Italy. In addition to the captain and a crew of seven, she carried two passengers, the captain’s wife, Sarah E. Briggs (maiden name Cobb), and their two-year-old daughter, Sophia Matilda, making 10 people in total.

Oliver Deveau, the chief mate of the Dei Gratia, led a party in a small boat to board the Mary Celeste. He found the ship in generally good condition, though he reported that “the whole ship was a thoroughly wet mess”. There was only one operational pump, with a lot of water between decks and three and a half feet of water in the hold. The forehatch and the lazarette were both open, the clock was not functioning and the compass was destroyed. The sextant and marine chronometer were missing, and the only lifeboat appeared to have been intentionally launched rather than torn away, suggesting the ship had been deliberately abandoned. Popular stories of untouched breakfasts with cups of tea on the cabin table, washing hung out to dry, a cat found asleep on top of the gallery locker and a bowl of a half-eaten apple pie are wholly without substance.

The cargo of 1,701 barrels of alcohol was intact, although when it was eventually unloaded in Genoa, nine barrels were found to be empty. A six-month supply of food and water was aboard. All of the ship’s papers, except the captain’s logbook, were missing. The last log entry was dated November 24 and placed her 100 miles west of the Portuguese islands of the Azores. The last entry on the ship’s slate showed her as having reached the island of Santa Maria in the Azores on November 25.

Crewmen from the Dei Gratia sailed the Mary Celeste to Gibraltar where, during a sitting of the Vice Admiralty Court hearing a claim against the owners of the ship for salvage, the judge praised them for their courage and skill. However, the Attorney General of Gibraltar, Frederick Solly Flood QC in his role as Queen’s Proctor to the court, turned the hearing from a straightforward salvage claim into a de facto trial of the men of the Dei Gratia, whom Flood suspected of foul play. In the end, the court did award prize money to the crew, but the sum was much less than it should have been, as “punishment” for suspected, but unproved, wrongdoing. Captain Morehouse was awarded one fifth of the ship and cargo.

None of the Mary Celeste’s crew or passengers were found, and it is unlikely that the events leading to their disappearance will ever be known with certainty.

Many theories have been proposed to explain the mystery.

The first theory proposed during the admiralty court proceedings, was that the Mary Celeste was the victim of an act of piracy and the crew was murdered.

The crew of the Dei Gratia was suspected as culprits, who murdered those on board and then fabricated the story of the ghost ship with the aim of securing the salvage rights.

Of the theories consistent with the account given by the crew of the Dei Gratia, the most plausible are based on the barrels of alcohol. Briggs had never hauled such a dangerous cargo before and did not trust it. Nine leaking barrels would have caused a buildup of vapor in the hold. Historian Conrad Byers believed that Captain Briggs ordered the hold to be opened, resulting in a violent rush of fumes and then steam. Believing the ship was about to explode, Briggs ordered everyone into the lifeboat, failing, in his haste, to properly secure it to the ship with a strong towline. The wind picked up and blew the ship away from them. The occupants of the lifeboat either drowned or drifted out to sea to die of hunger, thirst and exposure.

During the admiralty court proceeding, Solly Flood proposed that the crew, after consuming the alcohol from the kegs that were recovered empty, murdered the Briggs’ in a drunken mutiny. The mutinous crew are then presumed to escaped in the missing lifeboat. However, the captain was a believer in abstinence and unlikely to tolerate drinking on board, or a crew inclined to drink alcohol on board.

Another theory has suggested there was a mutiny among the crew who murdered a tyrannical Briggs and his family, then escaped in the lifeboat. However, Briggs had no history to suggest he was the type of captain to provoke his crew to mutiny. First Mate Albert Richardson and the rest of the crew also had excellent reputations.

An alternate scenario has the ship encountering a waterspout, a tornado-like storm with a funnel cloud that occurs at sea. In such a case, it is suggested, the water surrounding the ship may, in being sucked upwards, have given the impression that the Mary Celeste was sinking. It would explain why the Mary Celeste was soaking wet when discovered by the crew of the Dei Gratia, and a mass panic among the crew during such an occasion would probably explain the scratched railing and the broken compass, as well as the missing lifeboat. A further theory offered by Captain David Williams is that a seaquake erupted below the ship and jarred open nine barrels of alcohol (~450 gallons), which leaked into the bilge. The earthquake also dislodged the flue for the hot stove on deck and caused embers from the fire to drift into the rigging. Smelling the alcohol in full view of the burning embers caused the crew to panic and abandon the ship. The ship sailed on without the crew. The crew then decided to try to catch the ship and sail off after her in the small sailing dingy, but they never caught up with the Mary Celeste and died at sea.

Yet another theory claims that ergotamine from contaminated flour aboard the ship which could have led all its occupants to throw themselves overboard. However, the sailors from the Dei Gratia were not affected.

19 days til Christmas!
Have one really great weekend!

RS

Missing radioactivity in ice cores bodes ill for part of Asia

Missing radioactivity in ice cores bodes ill for part of Asia

When Ohio State glaciologists failed to find the expected radioactive signals in the latest core they drilled from a Himalayan ice field, they knew it meant trouble for their research.

But those missing markers of radiation, remnants from atomic bomb tests a half-century ago, foretell much greater threat to the half-billion or more people living downstream of that vast mountain range.

It may mean that future water supplies could fall far short of what's needed to keep that population alive.

In a paper just published in Geophysical Research Letters, researchers from the Byrd Polar Research Center explain that levels of tritium, beta radioactivity emitters like strontium and cesium, and an isotope of chlorine are absent in all three cores taken from the Naimona'nyi glacier 19,849 feet (6,050 meters) high on the southern margin of the Tibetan Plateau.

"We've drilled 13 cores over the years from these high-mountain regions and found these signals in all but one - this one," explained Lonnie Thompson, University Distinguished Professor of Earth Sciences at Ohio State.

The absence of radioactive signals in the top portion of these cores is a critical problem for determining the age of the ice in the cores. The signals, remnants of the 1962-63 Soviet Arctic nuclear blasts and the 1952-58 nuclear tests in the South Pacific, provide well-dated benchmarks to calibrate the core time scales.

"We rely on these time markers to date the upper part of the ice cores and without them, extracting the climate history they preserve becomes more challenging," Thompson said.

"We drilled three cores through the ice to bedrock at Naimona'nyi in 2006," said Natalie Kehrwald, a doctoral student at Ohio State and lead author on the paper. "When we analyzed the top 50 feet (15 meters) of each core, we found that the beta radioactivity signal was barely above normal background levels."

Tritium, an isotope of hydrogen, and chlorine-36 were also both absent from the Naimona'nyi cores, she said. They were able, however, to find a small amount of a lead isotope, lead-210, which allowed them to date the top of the core.

"We were able to get a date of approximately 1944 A.D.," Kehrwald said, "and that, coupled with the other missing signals, means that no new ice has accumulated on the surface of the glacier since 1944," nearly a decade before the atomic tests.

While the loss of the radioactive horizons to calibrate the cores poses a challenge for Thompson's research, he worries more about the possibility that other high-altitude glaciers in the region, like Naimona'nyi, are no longer accumulating ice and the impact that could have on water resources for the people living in these regions.

"When you think about the millions of people over there who depend on the water locked in that ice, if they don't have it available in the future, that will be a serious problem," he said.

Seasonal runoff from glaciers like Naimona'nyi feeds the Indus, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers in that part of the Asian subcontinent. In some places, for some months each year, those rivers are severely depleted now, the researchers said. The absence of new ice accumulating on the glaciers will only worsen that problem.

"The current models that predict river flow in the region have taken recent glacial 'retreat' into account," said Kehrwald, "but they haven't considered that some of these glaciers are actually thinning until now.

"If the thinning isn't included, then whatever strategies people adopt in their efforts to adapt to reductions in river flow simply won't work."

Thompson fears that what's happening to the Naimona'nyi glacier may be happening to many other high-altitude glaciers around the world. "I think that this has tremendous implications for future water supplies in the Andes, as well as the Himalayas, and for people living in those regions."

The absence of the radioactive signals in the 2006 Naimona'nyi core also suggests that Thompson and his colleagues have been lucky with their previous expeditions to other ice fields.

"We have to wonder -- if we were to go back to previous drill sites, some drilled in the 1980s, and retrieved new cores -- would these radioactive signals be present today?" he asked.

"My guess is that they would be missing." The researchers' recent work has shown similar thinning on glaciers in Africa, South America and in Asia in the past few years.

WEATHER NOTE

Maritimes didn't escape hurricanes this year

The Maritime provinces were hit with the remnants from various tropical storms and hurricanes this year, even though there was a less than normal number of named storms moving up the Atlantic Coast in 2008.

In some cases, the effect was no more than light rain, but in others, it was heavy rainfall fanned by gale-force winds.

It was the remnants from hurricanes Hanna and Kyle, both of which occurred in September, that brought the most severe weather conditions for New Brunswick, said Alex Sosnowski of State College. Pa., a spokesman for the AccuWeather.com Hurricane Centre.

Sosnowski said not all of the tropical storms moved into the province from the Atlantic Coast. He said some of them made their way inland, were re-energized by the Great Lakes and then, proceeded to head eastward, entering New Brunswick from the west.

The hurricane season officially runs from June 1 to the end of November, although you can sometimes get them later, such as occurred in 2005.

To be designated a name, a disturbance has to make it at least to tropical storm status. A tropical storm represents the level of severity immediately below that of a hurricane.

Sosnowski said hurricanes are rated in terms of intensity from Category 1 to Category 5 on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale. Any of them ranking between Category 3 and 5 are considered to be major hurricanes with tremendous destructive capacity, he said.

Last year, he said there were 15 named storms, six of which reached hurricane status.

In the spring of this year, Sosnowski said the team of hurricane experts at Colorado State University predicted that there would also be 15 named storms this year, but that eight of them would graduate to hurricane status.

And they appear to have hit the nail just about on the head, said the AccuWeather.com meteorologist. To this point, he said there have been 16 named storms, eight of which became hurricanes.

Sosnowski said the last tropical storm this year was Paloma, which was a Category 4 hurricane. He said it strengthened rapidly and slammed into Cuba a few weeks ago, causing significant damage in much of that country.

The strength of high pressure over the Atlantic this year "pushed everything to the left," he said. As a result, he added, a lot of named storms ended up swinging into the Gulf of Mexico or south toward Central America.

Sosnowski anticipated there was little chance of another tropical storm developing the rest of this year.

This time of the year, he explained, there are significant wind shears that rip the tops off tropical disturbances before they can get a chance to develop into a storm or hurricane.

MARITIME NOTE

Rogue Waves: They're Real, & They're Spectacular

I recently learned I might serve this spring as a subject expert aboard a cruise ship crossing the Atlantic, as part of an "enrichment program" that provides passengers the opportunity to interact with experts in various fields. I've been identified as an individual who will address "Everything You Wanted to Know about the Weather, Sea and Sky - and Then Some!"

Sounds great. My only real concern was whether I might get sea sick, having never been on an ocean cruise. But then I began thinking about a recent presentation (ppt) on "rouge waves" given by Linwood Vincent, of the U.S. Office of Naval Research, at a meeting of the DC Chapter of the American Meteorological Society. As I thought about Vincent's nightmarish stories and pictures, I worried that sea sickness could be the least of my problems, even if the odds of encountering a rogue wave are extremely small.

Keep reading for more on these monstrous waves...

Technically, rogue waves, sometimes referred to as "freak waves," are defined as waves whose height from wave crest (highest point) to wave trough (lowest point) is more than twice the average height of the largest one-third of waves in a set of measured waves. More simply, as Vincent explained, they are essentially "big waves relative to what you expect to be there."

As described nicely by an article in the New York Times, the two most likely explanations for the occurrence of rogue waves are when smaller waves merge to form large waves, and when storm-generated waves crash into ocean currents coming from the opposite direction.

Vincent cites the example of an oil platform in the North Sea that was experiencing rough but reasonable waves of 13 to 26 feet during a storm on New Year's Day, 1995. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, the platform was hit and extensively damaged by a monstrous wave that instruments measured at more than 80 feet in height (the so-called "Draupner Wave").

Want to go even bigger? In February 2000, scientific instruments onboard a British research west of Scotland measured waves up to 95 feet. More recent (but perhaps somewhat less reliable) observations have recorded wave heights up to 110 feet, about the same height as the Statue of Liberty. Just as important as height is that rogue waves are usually extremely steep. Plowing into one is like hitting a nearly vertical wall of water. If a vessel is lucky enough to survive the initial impact, then coming over the crest is like riding down the steepest incline of the world's tallest roller coaster.

And, by the way, I've never been so scared as my first ride on a roller coaster not too many years ago -- and have not been on one since.

For centuries, these enormous waves had been dismissed as myths. But scientists now recognize these giant wallops of water are far more common and destructive than once imagined. According to Vincent, freak waves are suspected of sinking at least dozens of large ships, including supertankers, while taking hundreds of lives. Freak waves are known to occur in the Great Lakes as well as the oceans. It is believed that just such a wave contributed to the sinking of the freighter SS Edmund_Fitzgerald in May 1975 on Lake Superior. All 29 hands perished in this most famous of Great Lakes disasters.

Cruise liners, at least in recent times, have been more lucky -- if you can call it that -- in their close encounters with rogue waves. In February 1995, the Queen Elizabeth II was slammed by a 95-foot-high wave in the North Atlantic. Captain Ronald Warwick described it as "a great wall of water... it looked as if we were going into the White Cliffs of Dover." But the ship survived with some passengers suffering relatively minor injuries. In April 2005 off the coast of Georgia, the Norwegian Dawn, a 965-foot ocean liner, was struck by a rogue wave estimated at 70 feet high. The wave smashed windows, sent furniture flying, injured four passengers and, not surprisingly, instilled widespread fear and panic.

And the accounts above are only a sampling of the many that have been reported. For example, see: here and here.

The only video of an actual encounter with a rogue wave I'm aware of is the amazing encounter of a 100-foot fishing boat, which was shot for the Discovery Channel's program, "The Deadliest Catch."

As for that gig on the cruise ship, I'll take the advice of my 4-year-old granddaughter: "Don't be scared, Pop-Pop. I didn't get scared when we went sledding last year down the big hill." How could I not go after that kind pep talk? And besides, running into a rogue wave is even less likely than being swept up by a tornado or hit by lightning. But I'll be sure to pack the sea-sickness pills, and probably not mention rogue waves to the passengers.

French join Canadians in Atlantic search of French crew

HALIFAX - A French naval reserve vessel has joined Canadian crews searching for survivors of a French-owned vessel that capsized and sank near the south coast of Newfoundland on Tuesday.

There were four people on board the 30-metre Cap Blanc when it went down about 16 kilometres south of Marystown, N.L. on the Burin Peninsula.

But officials said Wednesday the chance of finding survivors was growing slim. It's not known whether the crew were wearing survival suits.

Meanwhile, another rescue centre spokeswoman denied a French media report that Canadian divers had heard noises inside the vessel before it sank in about 100 metres of water at 2 p.m. local time.

Jeri Grychowski said there was no truth to the report.

The vessel was reported overdue Tuesday after departing Argentia, N.L. for the 12-hour voyage to its home port on the French islands of St-Pierre-Miquelon, off Newfoundland's south coast.

Searchers have found an empty life-raft and a life preserver, but no sign of survivors or other wreckage on the surface. The Cap Blanc was known to have carried two life-rafts.

On Wednesday, a Cormorant helicopter from Gander, N.L. continued the search, along with two coast guard vessels and the French naval ship, Fulmar.

St-Pierre is 20 kilometres off the southern tip of the Burin Peninsula, and the drama unfolding nearby is riveting many on the island of 6,500.

Finding the boat overturned in the water delivered a strong blow to the community, wrote St-Pierre magazine Mathurin on its website.

"There is an immense sadness, of a kind felt by ocean communities struck to the heart by an implacable sea," wrote author Henri Lafitte. "The wait continues until the limits of hope."

RS

Can China's Future Earthquakes Be Predicted?

Can China's Future Earthquakes Be Predicted?

ScienceDaily (Nov. 24, 2008) — Ji ShaoCheng of the Université de Montréal's affiliated engineering school École Polytechnique is part of a team studying last May's devastating earthquake in China.

On May 12, 2008, at 2:28 p.m., China's Szechwan province changed forever. In the space of 90 seconds, an earthquake equivalent to 1,200 H-bombs pulverized the earth's crust for more than 280 kilometers. Entire cities disappeared and eight million homes were swallowed up. This resulted in 70,000 deaths and 20,000 missing.

Two months later, ShaoCheng arrived in Szechwan province to study the damage first hand. The extent of the damage was unimaginable: roads and bridges collapsed, schools turned into rubble, and bodies of men and women everywhere.

According to ShaoCheng this tragedy could have been avoided. "There hasn't been one earthquake in Szechwan province for 300 years. Chinese authorities thought the fault was dead," he says.

The problem is that China relied on GPS data, which showed movements of 2 mm per year in certain areas when in reality the shifts were much bigger. "GPS is high-tech, but do we really know how to interpret its data?," he questions.

ShaoCheng was recruited by one of his ex-colleagues with whom he completed his PhD in Montpellier and who now works for the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences. His mission is to dig three narrow wells, 3-kilometers deep, into the earth's crust for a whopping $75 million.

"The drilling will allow us to see the characteristics of the rocks before and after the earthquake. We will also measure their thermal properties and fluid pressure," says ShaoCheng. "One of these wells will have a seismometer and another will be equipped with a device similar to a stethoscope designed to listen to the earth's heartbeat."

It is expected to take five years of hard labour to rebuild the devastated region.

WEATHER NOTE

Local Meteorologist Wins Big Award

Meteorologist Mark W. Rose was awarded the 2008 National Weather Association Public Education Award at the Annual Conference in Louisville in October. Mark is a meteorologist at the NOAA/National Weather Service Forecast Office here in Birmingham.

Mark was chosen for the award for the design, development and marketing of a nationally recognized weather safety DVD called “Surviving the Storm.” The program is geared to elementary school children and focuses on severe weather safety as well as the role of the National Weather Service.

Speaking to school groups is a critical part of the weather community’s outreach to the public about weather safety. Our very own James Spann is a leader in this area, speaking in a different school almost every day. Mark was frequently asked to speak in schools about severe weather. Of course, there are lots of schools and little time, which is frustrating.

His answer was to develop “Surviving the Storm.” He secured sponsor dollars to produce the DVD. Knowing that quality would be a key concern, he hired a professional company to do the production.

Distribution would be key. Mark contacted the Alabama Department of Education to get the DVD into schools. The state Emergency Management Agency came up with the money to duplicate the 1,000 or so DVDs that would be required. As a result, every school administrator at every public and private school in Alabama has the video.

Other organizations have contacted Mark about the video, including the National Weather Service in Memphis. The team there sent it out to all of its emergency managers. Other state Emergency Management Agencies have expressed interest in using the DVD, including Oklahoma. They called this week.

Mark, like most of us, has held a fascination with weather since childhood. The most interesting weather phenomenon to him is the thunderstorm.

He is a 22 year veteran of NOAA’s National Weather Service. He started as an intern at the NWS in Mobile. He transferred to the NWS Birmingham in 1989. He and his family live in Vestavia Hills. His wife works as the Curator for the Beeson Divinity School at Samford University. Their son is a freshman at Samford and their daughter is a high school junior. He is the President of the local National Weather Association chapter.

MARITIME NOTE

Skippers responsible for safety checks

25/11/2008 9:18:38

Boaties are being reminded to carry out simple safety checks before heading out onto the water in the wake of the tragedy which saw two children drown last year.

Auckland father Lindsay Rowles has been sentenced to 250 hours of community service after pleading guilty to operating a vessel causing unnecessary risk or danger.

Rowles' two children, eight-year-old Erina and five-year-old Travis drowned near Shag Island in the Hauraki Gulf when the aluminium boat they were asleep in started taking on water because a bung was not in place. The adults on board were unable to get the children out of the cabin when the boat hit rocks and quickly sank.

Jim Lott from Maritime New Zealand says the agency will again be reinforcing its national safety strategy this summer. He is reminding boaties to always wear life jackets and inform others straight away when difficulty arises. Mr Lott believes about 70 percent of all fatalities on the water could be prevented if those points were adhered to.

Mr Lott says at the end of the day it is the skippers' responsibility to ensure the safety of passengers and crew.

RS

How Global Warming May Affect U.S. Beaches, Coastline

How Global Warming May Affect U.S. Beaches, Coastline

ScienceDaily (Nov. 24, 2008) — In “Dover Beach,” the 19th Century poet Matthew Arnold describes waves that “begin, and cease, and then again begin…and bring
the eternal note of sadness in.”

But in the warming world of the 21st Century, waves could be riding oceans that will rise anywhere from 0.5 meters (19 inches) to 1.4 meters (55 inches), and researchers believe there’s a good chance they will stir stronger feelings than melancholia.

Several scientists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego are finding that sea level rise will have different consequences in different places but that they will be profound on virtually all coastlines. Land in some areas of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States will simply be underwater.

On the West Coast, with its different topography and different climate regimes, problems will likely play out differently. The scientists’ most recent conclusions, even when conservative scenarios are involved, suggest that coastal development, popular beaches, vital estuaries, and even California’s supply of fresh water could be severely impacted by a combination of natural and human-made forces.

Scripps climate scientists often consider changes in average conditions over many years but, in this case, it’s the extremes that have them worried. A global sea level rise that makes gentle summer surf lap at a beachgoer’s knees rather than his or her ankles is one thing. But when coupled with energetic winter El Niño-fueled storms and high tides, elevated water levels would have dramatic consequences.

The result could transform the appearance of the beaches at the heart of California’s allure.

“As sea level goes up, some beaches are going to shrink,” said Scripps oceanographer Peter Bromirski. “Some will probably disappear.”

Sea level has been trending upward for millennia. For the last 6,000 years, it is estimated that global sea levels have rising an average of five centimeters (2 inches) per century. Before that, between 18,000 and 6,000 years ago, the seas rose a full 120 meters (400 feet). Step by step, they bit into rocky coastlines like California’s by smashing cliffs, creating beaches with the debris, rising a bit more, and repeating the process over and over again.

Humans are speeding up the pace of that assault. The United Nations-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported that sea level rose, on average, 1.7 millimeters (0.07 inches) per year over the entire 20th Century. But recent estimates from satellite observations find a marked increase, at 3.1 millimeters (0.12 inches) per year since 1993.

The oceans are rising because the warming ocean water increases in volume and because water is being added from melting glaciers and land-based ice sheets. The complex difficult-to-predict contribution of the latter is such a matter of controversy that the recent IPCC Fourth Assessment report didn’t factor glacial melt into its sea level rise estimates. Today there is quite broad-based opinion that the IPCC estimates are considerably lower than the higher range of possible sea level rise. Some individuals, pointing to the quantity of water frozen in Greenland and Antarctica and to ancient sea level evidence, have suggested that sea level rise could reach several meters by the end of the 21st Century. However, an August paper in the journal Science co-authored by former Scripps postdoctoral researcher Shad O’Neel suggests that some of the more exaggerated claims that water could rise upwards of 10 meters (33 feet) by century’s end are not in the realm of possibility. O’Neel and co-authors indicate that the realities of physics impose a cap of 2 meters (6.6 feet) for possible sea level rise by 2100.

“That’s fine,” said Scripps climate researcher Dan Cayan, who is leading an analysis of climate change scenarios for the state of California, “but two meters is still enough to do a lot of damage.”

Recent news footage of overtopped levees makes it easy to envision what two meters’ difference means to low-lying cities like New Orleans, especially when extreme events like hurricanes are factored in. Any flooding would be proportionately higher than it is now. Additionally Bromirski recently showed that sea level rise will amplify the power and frequency of hurricane-generated waves that reach shore, even if the storms themselves don’t make landfall.

In contrast to the beaches of the East Coast, many of which are covered with vast expanses of sand, California’s coastline is predominantly bedrock covered by a relatively thin veneer of sand. That sand can shift or disappear during storms. Thus, preserving the precious supply that keeps the tourists coming has for decades been a priority for state officials. Resource management, however, has required them to make trade-offs. They have constructed seawalls to protect houses built on ocean cliffs. They have dammed rivers to create supplies of water for drinking and to prevent floods and debris from damaging downstream developments.

In so doing, nature’s two primary sources of beach replenishment have been muted in a process known as passive erosion. Managers have compensated through artificial beach replenishment projects but at a costs that approach $10 per cubic yard. Since usually millions of cubic yards of sand need to be moved, there are monetary limits to what they can reasonably accomplish.

Reinhard Flick, who received his doctorate in oceanography from Scripps in 1978, needs only to look out his office window to watch the losing battle of beaches unfold. During his student days, he used to play volleyball on stretches of sand that are now underwater except during low tide. Rocks buried under several feet of sand four decades ago are now exposed for large parts of the year.

The staff oceanographer for the California Department of Boating and Waterways, Flick said that seawalls causing passive erosion will likely combine with sea level rise to doom some Southern California beaches. The change will become most apparent during El Niño events, when a pool of warm Pacific Ocean water settles off the coast for a year or two. El Niño has a dual effect on the West Coast. It not only feeds more intense storms but the warm ocean water itself causes a temporary spike in sea level that is above and beyond the rise that climate change is causing. During the 1997-98 El Niño, for instance, tide gauges off San Francisco recorded that sea level was 20 centimeters (8 inches) above normal for more than a year, including the winter storm season. That temporary rise is about equal to the rise observed for the entire 20th Century.

If sea levels rise substantially, when a large storm coincides with a high tide during an El Niño event, there could be widespread inundation along the California coast. Effects could range from a submersion of areas of San Diego’s Mission Beach to an inundation of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. There, an overtopping of the delta’s levees by brackish water could paralyze the main component of the state’s water delivery system. Cayan noted that repairs to the system could take months.

The threat resonates with state officials, who have tasked Scripps and other institutions with creating and updating sea level rise scenarios.

“There’s no clear path forward with sea level rise,” said Tony Brunello, deputy secretary for climate change and energy at the California Resources Agency, a key Scripps partner in developing the state’s response to manifestations of global warming. “You typically want to work with one number (but) what we want people to do is work with the whole range of estimates.”

Cayan and other Scripps researchers who are collaborating to study sea level rise emphasize that there remains a great deal of uncertainty in the creation of estimates for the coming century. The range of rise estimated by Cayan is based on scenarios of global air temperatures over the next 100 years, which range from about 2° C (3.6° F) to about 6° C (10° F). By 2100, global sea level rise reaching a half-meter seems likely, and if the higher rates of potential warming occur it could rise by more than one meter. The potential cost of any government project or policy change puts a high premium on narrowing this range. As O’Neel and his co-authors observed in their paper, the cost of raising Central Valley levees only 15 centimeters (6 inches) to prepare for higher sea levels has been estimated at more than $1 billion.

“These are very broad-brush preliminary kinds of studies right now, but you have to start somewhere,” said Scripps coastal oceanographer Bob Guza.

Flick said it will be essential for scientists to be able to study the effects of the next El Niño so they can begin to understand not just where damage will happen on the California coast but to what extent. He only had surveyor’s equipment and aerial photos available to him to measure beach changes after the 1982-83 El Niño, but Guza and his collaborators now have light detection and ranging (LIDAR) and GPS technologies to make precise surveys of beach and cliff damage. Guza and Flick hope that Scripps can not only enhance its use of such technology but to deploy it within hours of a major storm event.

“We need to be geared up to quantify what beach changes are,” said Flick. “We have to do an even better job of studying wave forces and wave climate.”

If there’s any good news for Southern California, Scripps climate scientist Nick Graham has estimated that ocean warming trends will drive storm tracks farther north, perhaps sparing the state’s lower half from the full brunt of buffeting El Niño waves the 21st Century will generate. Graham compared winds produced in three different simulations of climate change with those generated in the late 20th Century. The models showed that Southern California can expect a moderate decrease in wave size of about 0.25 meters (10 inches). But even there, Graham sees a problem.

“I’m a surfer. I think that’s horrible,” he said.

WEATHER NOTE

New comprehensive report on impact of earthquakes in the Central USA

DOWNLOAD THE REPORT HERE

The Mid-America Earthquake (MAE) Center at the University of Illinois announces the release of its report entitled "Impact of Earthquakes on the Central USA". The report is the outcome of one of the largest and most comprehensive earthquake consequence assessment projects funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

The report contains earthquake impact assessments for the 8 central US (CUSEC) states, and lists damage and other consequences to the built environment as well as social and economic impacts. The earthquake scenarios used represent the New Madrid, the Wabash Valley and the East Tennessee seismic zones. The analysis employs new and more reliable hazard and inventory data that has not been used before.

The project is managed by the US Army Corps of Engineers, Construction Engineering Research Laboratory, and the work was undertaken in partnership with the Institute for Crisis, Disaster and Risk Management at the George Washington University, with contributions for the 8 State Geological Surveys, IEM, FEMA, US Geological Survey and CUSEC. The report is available for download at IDEALS .

Bound paper and CD copies are available from Jessica Vlna, Program Coordinator, email: vlna@illinois.edu.

MARITIME NOTE

Ship's accidents of different kind.


Ship's Disasters Gallery 2007 - Click here for more blooper videos


RS

Scientists find evidence of tsunamis on Indian Ocean shores long before 2004

Scientists find evidence of tsunamis on Indian Ocean shores long before 2004

A quarter-million people were killed when a tsunami inundated Indian Ocean coastlines the day after Christmas in 2004. Now scientists have found evidence that the event was not a first-time occurrence.

A team working on Phra Thong, a barrier island along the hard-hit west coast of Thailand, unearthed evidence of at least three previous major tsunamis in the preceding 2,800 years, the most recent from about 550 to 700 years ago. That team, led by Kruawun Jankaew of Chulalongkorn University in Thailand, included Brian Atwater, a University of Washington affiliate professor of Earth and space sciences and a U.S. Geological Survey geologist.

A second team found similar evidence of previous tsunamis during the last 1,200 years in Aceh, a province at the northern tip of the Indonesian island of Sumatra where more than half the deaths from the 2004 tsunami occurred.

Findings from both teams are published in the Oct. 30 edition of Nature.

Sparse knowledge of the region's tsunami history contributed to the loss of life in 2004, the scientists believe. Few people living along the coasts knew to heed the natural tsunami warnings, such as the strong shaking felt in Aceh and the rapid retreat of ocean water from the shoreline that was observed in Thailand.

But on an island just off the coast of Aceh most people safely fled to higher ground in 2004 because the island's oral history includes information about a devastating tsunami in 1907.

"A region's tsunami history can serve as a long-term warning system," Atwater said.

The research will reinforce the importance of tsunami education as an essential part of early warning, said Jankaew, the lead author.

"Many people in Southeast Asia, especially in Thailand, believe, or would like to believe, that it will never happen again," Jankaew said. "This will be a big step towards mitigating the losses from future tsunami events."

The team found evidence for previous tsunamis by digging pits and auguring holes at more than 150 sites on an island about 75 miles north of Phuket, a Thai tourist resort area ravaged by the 2004 tsunami. That tsunami was generated 300 miles to the west when the seafloor was warped during a magnitude 9.2 earthquake.

At 20 sites in marshes, the researchers found layers of white sand about 4 inches thick alternating with layers of black peaty soil. Witnesses confirmed that the top sand layer, just below the surface, was laid down by the 2004 tsunami, which ran 20 to 30 feet deep across much of the island.

Radiocarbon dating of bark fragments in soil below the second sand layer led the scientists to estimate that the most recent predecessor to the 2004 tsunami probably occurred between A.D. 1300 and 1450. They also noted signs of two earlier tsunamis during the last 2,500 to 2,800 years.

There are no known written records describing an Indian Ocean tsunami between A.D. 1300 and 1450, including the accounts of noted Islamic traveler Ibn Battuta and records of the great Ming Dynasty armadas of China, both of which visited the area at different times during that period. Atwater hopes the new geologic evidence might prompt historians to check other Asian documents from that era.

"This research demonstrates that tsunami geology, both recent and past tsunamis, can help extend the tsunami catalogues far beyond historical records," Jankaew said.

The new findings also carry lessons for the northwest coast of North America, where scientists estimate that many centuries typically elapse between catastrophic tsunamis generated by the Cascadia subduction zone.

"Like Aceh, Cascadia has a history of tsunamis that are both infrequent and catastrophic, and that originate during earthquakes that provide a natural tsunami warning," Atwater said. "This history calls for sustained efforts in tsunami education."

WEATHER NOTE

FROM NWS CHICAGO

River Ice Spotters Wanted

The National Weather Service (NWS) in Chicago/Romeoville, IL is looking for individuals that live or work along rivers to become part of our river ice spotter network. The river ice spotter network was created last year and was a great success. It consisted of ice spotters living primarily along the Kankakee River that provided valuable data on ice cover and ice jam flooding to our office. We would like to expand our network this season to include ice spotters along other rivers in northern Illinois including the Fox and Rock rivers.

Ice jams can result in rapid and devastating flooding. Although the NWS does monitor automated river gages, they typically do not accurately reflect the current conditions upstream and downstream due to the isolated nature of ice jams. It is also important to know the extent of the current ice cover and other conditions. That kind of information can only be obtained from visual observations. Under no circumstances are river ice spotters to actually go out on the ice! Your safety is important to us. Observations should be made from a safe location only.

River ice spotters will receive basic training that will cover ice formation and ice reporting procedures.

If you are interested please contact Bill Morris, Hydrologist at the National Weather Service Chicago/Romeoville office. Please include your name, address, phone number, and email.

Thank you!

MARITIME NOTE

Maritime Transportation And Shipping Talk

Maritime Transportation In North Atlantic - Winter Time

North Atlantic Ocean can be an unforgiving place to be in the winter. Any seafarer that works in this area knows that firsthand. More than likely they have seen how ruffs this area can be. Nerves are stretched and senses are on high alert. Leaving port, a last check on all lashing, weather-doors and hatches. Forecast looks ok at the moment but things can change in a hurry up here in the North Atlantic wintertime.

Modern equipment for weather and navigation has made things easier for preparation but it should not make you complacent. I guess that a few hours of steaming should be enough time to see if all is ok with cargo lashings etc. Making rounds and verifying lashings and other security is routine on most cargo ships but the North Atlantic makes for heightened security inspections and attention to details become more important than ever. Your life might just depend on it. Stress on ship and men are extreme this time of the year.

So what are some of the factors involved?

From a safety point of view onboard the ship, nothing should really change but it does. Maximum safety precautions should be taken no matter what time of the year it is but wintertime a few is added and some of the others are simply strengthened. Winter brings with it freezing condition in addition to the bad weather so ice build up becomes a great concern. Any build up of ice on deck will change the stability of the ship and therefore has to be watched very carefully and removed before it becomes a problem.

One thing I have found is that a couple of good fan heaters mounted under the forecastle can be of great help in reducing the amount of ice build-up. Use of ice mallets by the crew in order to physically remove the ice is almost guaranteed this time of the year. I prefer the hardwood type myself, as I seem to get more of an impact with it. I have tried the rubber ones and also the plastic but they don’t give same effect on the ice. One positive thing about the rubber/plastic ones is that it doesn’t damage the paint as much as the hardwood ones.

Wintertime storms make the sea a bit ruff and the movements of the ship makes for possible movement of cargo onboard. One inch to start can become 1 foot in a hurry if it gets the room to play. This is one of the reasons for the inspection rounds as we talked bout earlier on. To verify and tighten lashings are a part of regular routine onboard.

Cargo lashing gears are strengthened and some are doubled up for maximum effect. A Container Ship is typical for this type of arrangement and also a very exposed type of ships as it usually carries a lot of containers on deck. A Tank Ship is somewhat less exposed as all cargo is liquid and below deck in tanks. However it can be rolling quiet a bit more than the container ship. It all depends on the cargo and how it’s loaded.

RS