Great Lakes Water Levels Sensitive To Climate Change

Great Lakes Water Levels Sensitive To Climate Change

ScienceDaily (Jan. 14, 2009) — The water level in the Great Lakes has varied by only about two meters during the last century, helping them to play a vital role in the region's shipping, fishing, recreation and power generation industries.

But new evidence by scientists from the University of Rhode Island and colleagues in the U.S. and Canada, published recently in the journal Eos, indicates that the water level in the lake system is highly sensitive to climate changes.

"In the distant past, there were great fluctuations in the water level of the Great Lakes, but it was thought to have been related entirely to the advance and retreat of the glaciers," said URI geological oceanographer John King, who led the study with URI visiting scientist Michael Lewis, emeritus scientist with the Geological Survey of Canada. "But the last time lake levels fell dramatically – down to 20 meters below the basin overflow outlets – it was due to dry climate conditions."

That event, which occurred between 7900 and 7500 years ago in the early Holocene period, caused the lakes to become disconnected as their overflow rivers, including the Niagara River, ran dry.

"People used to say that the oceans are so big, we can dump whatever we want in them and nothing will happen," said King. "They thought of the Great Lakes in the same way, that the system is too large to be sensitive to climate variations. But now we know that to be untrue. We've demonstrated that at least once in the last 10,000 years, climate drove the lake levels down pretty substantially."

Researchers had long assumed that the Great Lakes had been "hydrologically open" and connected since their formation 16,000 years ago during the retreat of the last ice sheet, but recent evidence has found this to be false. Ancient shorelines, submerged beaches, and tree stumps on the floor of some lakes indicate that the water line had been as much as 20 meters below the present lake level."We had a multi-proxy approach to this study, and through many lines of evidence we identified this as a dry interval with a climactic cause as opposed to a glacial-related cause," King said.

The climate and water levels in the Great Lakes region are determined by the interplay of three air masses: dry, cold Arctic air from the North, dry warm Pacific air from the West, and warm, moist tropical air from the Gulf of Mexico. The scientists found that during the period when lake levels receded significantly, the dry air from the Arctic and Pacific was dominant. Later, when precipitation from the tropical air mass became more frequent, the Great Lakes began to flow from one to another as they do today.

King worries about the economic impact to the Great Lakes region if the present climate changes lower water levels significantly. Navigation, water usage and hydropower would be severely affected.

"The climate interval that occurred back then is different from what we're going through now," King said. "It would take a pretty big change to close the basins again. But the sorts of temperatures and precipitation amounts that happened then are within the range of what is predicted for 2100. In the worst-case scenarios, a lot of things become possible.

"The range of lake-level changes that are likely to happen in the next 100 years is probably larger than the range of levels observed during the last century," he added.

WEATHER NOTE

Study links swings in North Atlantic oscillation variability to climate warming

Using a 218-year-long temperature record from a Bermuda brain coral, researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) have created the first marine-based reconstruction showing the long-term behavior of one of the most important drivers of climate fluctuations in the North Atlantic.

The North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) is a wide-ranging pressure seesaw that drives winter climate over much of North America, Europe and North Africa. Past reconstructions of the NAO have relied mainly on terrestrial, or land-based records, such as tree ring chronologies combined with ice cores and historical climate data. Those records do not fully capture oceanic processes linked to NAO variability, and short instrumental records from relatively few locations limit the understanding of ocean-atmosphere dynamics with regard to NAO behavior.

"By analyzing the coral, we were able to look at changes in the ocean relative to changes on land," said Nathalie Goodkin, lead author of the study published in the December issue of the journal Nature Geoscience. "Because they are slow growing and have long life-spans, corals can provide high resolution records that are well dated and centuries long."

As they grow, corals accrete seasonal and annual growth layers, similar to tree rings. The proportions of trace elements versus the major element (calcium) found in the layers of the skeleton largely depend on the temperature of the seawater in which it was formed. By analyzing the strontium to calcium ratio in the Bermuda brain coral, Goodkin and colleagues - WHOI scientists Konrad Hughen, Scott Doney and William Curry - were able to reconstruct monthly changes in ocean temperatures and evaluate variability of the NAO during both cold and warm periods from the Little Ice Age (1800�) to modern day.

The research team found the variability of the NAO decade-to-decade (multi-decadal scale) has been larger, swinging more wildly, during the late twentieth century than in the early 1800s, suggesting that variability is linked to the mean temperature of the Northern Hemisphere. This confirms variability previously reported in past terrestrial reconstructions.

"When the Industrial Revolution begins and atmospheric temperature becomes warmer, the NAO takes on a much stronger pattern in longer-term behavior," said Goodkin. "That was suspected before in the instrumental records, but this is the first time it has been documented in records from both the ocean and the atmosphere."

Safe driving in severe weather

The recent heavy frost will no doubt return again and again over the winter and early spring. Here is some advice for safer driving in severe weather:

* Drivers are reminded that rain and spray can reduce visibility and when the road is wet it can take up to twice as long to stop, so it makes sense to slow down when it's raining.

* Surface water may affect motorways and major A roads so we advise drivers to move slowly through any standing water and test their brakes once they're through before continuing to drive.

* High-sided vehicles are particularly affected by windy weather but strong gusts can also blow any vehicle, cyclist, motorcyclist, or horse rider off course. This can happen on open stretches of road exposed to strong crosswinds, or when passing bridges and high-sided vehicles.

* Plan journeys. Check the weather forecast, road conditions, and the route for delays before leaving home and delay travelling if the weather becomes severe.

* Drivers are also advised to carry warm clothing and an emergency pack, which includes food and water, boots, de-icer, a torch, a spade if snow is forecast, and to make sure they have plenty of fuel for the journey.

MARITIME NOTE

Time to reboot maritime’s image, retired New Orleans port exec says

Retired port executive Ron Brinson said the Charleston maritime community should take the rapt attention that Maersk’s decision to leave has thrust on the port and turn it into a better understanding of the industry.

“The public does not understand and does not appreciate the value of the port,” Brinson said Thursday to a crowded room at the Charleston Motor Carriers Association’s monthly luncheon at the Sheraton in North Charleston.

Because of that misunderstanding, Brinson said, “we have a port that has been competing with one hand tied behind its back.”

Brinson, now living in Charleston, retired from the business in 2003 after more than 15 years as president and CEO of the Port of New Orleans. A former newspaper editor and reporter in Charleston, Brinson also worked for the S.C. State Ports Authority before leaving for Louisiana.

Much of Brinson’s talk focused on the fallout caused by Maersk Line’s announcement that it would begin pulling services out of Charleston early this year and completely leave town when its contract expires at the end of 2010.

Although the Danish company’s business is extremely important to Charleston and the entire state, the community should not take the news personally, Brinson said.

“These are unemotional business decisions that we sometimes tend to make emotional,” Brinson said.

Charleston, he noted, isn’t the first community to deal with the loss of Maersk, the world’s largest steamship line and the S.C. State Ports Authority’s largest customer.

In 1999, Maersk left the Port of Long Beach in California because officials there could not or would not agree to concessions the shipping company said it needed.

It took about three years, but Long Beach recovered after losing 25% of its business to competitor Los Angeles.

Brinson also warned the group not to heap blame on the International Longshoremen’s Association. Anti-union sentiment seems to have grown stronger nationally in the wake of Detroit’s struggles, he said, and seems even more intense in Southern states, including South Carolina.

The Maersk decision also compounded those feelings because the company said it was moving because the ILA refused to let the company operate from the common-user yard at the Wando Welch Terminal, a move that would have eliminated several dozen union jobs.

People, especially in South Carolina, tend to perceive unions as a four-letter word, he said. “The reality is that unions are a four-letter word at our port, and that word is F-A-C-T.”

In Charleston, he said, union labor has a good reputation. The SPA has a good reputation also, he said, and offered this advice: “Ease up; give the ports authority a little breathing room.”

He had some advice for port executives as well. Brinson said they should be willing to try new operating models and not wait for changes — potentially misguided changes — to be forced upon the port by the General Assembly and governor.

And he suggested that the entire maritime community, including SPA staff members, spend time “rebooting” relationships with the public. If the state is giving off the perception that it does not support its port operations, steamship lines might take the cue and send their business elsewhere.

“Maybe we South Carolinians are sending the wrong message to the marketplace,” he said.

RS

New NASA Balloon Successfully Flight-Tested Over Antarctica

New NASA Balloon Successfully Flight-Tested Over Antarctica


ScienceDaily (Jan. 12, 2009) — NASA and the National Science Foundation have successfully launched and demonstrated a newly designed super pressure balloon prototype that may enable a new era of high-altitude scientific research. The super-pressure balloon ultimately will carry large scientific experiments to the brink of space for 100 days or more.

This seven-million-cubic-foot super-pressure balloon is the largest single-cell, super-pressure, fully-sealed balloon ever flown. When development ends, NASA will have a 22 million-cubic-foot balloon that can carry a one-ton instrument to an altitude of more than 110,000 feet, which is three to four times higher than passenger planes fly.

"This flight test is a very important step forward in building a new capability for scientific ballooning based on sound engineering and operational development," said W. Vernon Jones, senior scientist for suborbital research at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The team has further work to do to enable the super pressure balloon to lift a one-ton instrument to a float altitude of 110,000 feet, but the team has demonstrated they are on the right path."

Ultra-long duration missions using the super pressure balloon cost considerably less than a satellite and the scientific instruments flown can be retrieved and launched again, making them ideal very-high altitude research platforms.

The test flight was launched Dec. 28, 2008, from McMurdo Station, which is the National Science Foundation's logistics hub in Antarctica. The balloon reached a float altitude of more than 111,000 feet and continues to maintain it in its 11th day of flight. The flight tested the durability and functionality of the scientific balloon's unique pumpkin-shaped design and novel material. The material is a special lightweight polyethylene film, about the thickness of ordinary plastic food wrap.

"Our balloon development team is very proud of the tremendous success of the test flight and is focused on continued development of this new capability to fly balloons for months at a time in support of scientific investigations," said David Pierce, chief of the Balloon Program Office at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility at Wallops Island, Va. "The test flight has demonstrated that 100 day flights of large, heavy payloads is a realistic goal."

In addition to the super pressure test flight, two additional long-duration balloons have been launched from McMurdo during the 2008-2009 campaign. The University of Hawaii Manoa's Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna launched Dec. 21, 2008, and is still aloft. Its radio telescope is searching for indirect evidence of extremely high-energy neutrino particles possibly coming from outside our Milky Way galaxy.

The University of Maryland's Cosmic Ray Energetics and Mass, or CREAM IV, experiment launched Dec. 19, 2008, and landed Jan. 6, 2009. The CREAM investigation was used to directly measure high energy cosmic-ray particles arriving at Earth after originating from distant supernova explosions elsewhere in the Milky Way galaxy.

The super-pressure balloon was highlighted in the National Research Council's decadal survey "Astronomy and Astrophysics in the New Millennium," and will play an important role in providing inexpensive access to the near-space environment for science and technology.

NASA and the National Science Foundation conduct an annual scientific balloon campaign during the Antarctic summer. The National Science Foundation manages the U.S. Antarctic Program and provides logistic support for all U.S. scientific operations in Antarctica.

The Wallops Flight Facility is a division of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Wallops manages NASA's scientific balloon program for the Science Mission Directorate. Launch operations are conducted by the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility of Palestine, Texas, which is managed for NASA by the Physical Science Laboratory of New Mexico State University in Las Cruces.

Track the balloons online at: http://www.csbf.nasa.gov/antarctica/ice0809.htm
For information about the NASA balloon program visit: http://sites.wff.nasa.gov/code820

WEATHER NOTE

Tornado-proof dome under construction

A concrete dome capable of withstanding 300-mile-an-hour tornadoes is sure to become a landmark around the small Webster County town of Niangua, Webster County's emergency management director said of a project that will make major progress today.

A heavy plastic membrane that will act as a mold for concrete shot onto steel reinforcing bar will be inflated today, Emergency Management Director Bill Sexton said.

The dome will be the first monolithic dome approved for use by the Federal Emergency Management Agency for use as a tornado shelter, Sexton said.

The 61-foot-wide dome also can shelter students of the nearby Niangua School and other people, with a maximum capacity of 400.

Ninety percent of the structure's $311,000 cost is being financed by FEMA.

New emergency sirens going in rural areas

Rural Winona County residents will be better alerted in case of flood or tornado after county crews install 10 new sirens paid for by a $242,000 state grant.County commissioners earlier this month accepted the grant, which will pay to buy and install the sirens as early as this spring. The new sirens will alert residents to floods or tornadoes in areas that previously didn’t have sirens or are covered by aging sirens, County Emergency Management Director Bob Bilder said.

Officials in Stockton and Minnesota City said sirens there didn’t go off during a tornado warning in 2008, and Stockton leaders bought a new siren for their city last year.The new sirens won’t rely on electricity in an emergency: they’re solar-powered with battery backups, Bilder said.

New sirens are slated to be installed in the following locations:

Twin Bluffs near Pickwick on County Road 7
near the Gunderson subdivision in Goodview
Dresbach
Elba
Minnesota City
Green Terrace Mobile Estates near La Moille
In the mobile home park in Stockton
Near the Springbrook Addition on County Road 17,
And in the Hidden Valley Mobile Home Park.

County leaders still are trying to obtain funds to install six more new sirens, said Dave Belz, an emergency grants contractor for the county.Those locations are in Homer, Cedar Valley, Dakota, the Sunny Acres subdivision in Goodview, Minneiska and Whitewater State Park.

MARITIME NOTE

He serves hot soup in rough seas
By Mozart PastranoPhilippine Daily Inquirer

WHEN THE GOING GETS ROUGH, CHEF Choi goes beyond his comfort zone — he makes hot, steaming soup.

“It’s the most difficult thing to do in the galley of a ship caught up in big waves or some storm, and it’s SOP not to prepare soup during such times, but I have realized that it’s the best comfort food to whip up for my officers and crew,” confides the game 27-year-old chief cook of an international shipping lines.

His usual standbys are borsch, a traditional spicy Russian concoction made of beetroot, and eintofp, a German broth where all kinds of sausages and meats and beans broil in savory delectation.

And he makes these soups every now and then when his ship crosses, say, the Mediterranean Sea and the treacherous Indian Ocean. The video he took of one Indian Ocean crossing shows his ship heaving and dipping and facing head-on waves as impossibly tall as churches.

But Chef Choi—full name: Ian Jul Banghal, of Cagayan de Oro City—waves off these stomach-churning moments, saying, “What I keep in mind are our destinations.” He rattles off: Palma de Mallorca or Party Island in Spain; Marseilles, France; Salerno and Palermo, Italy; Rotterdam, the Netherlands; Hamburg, Germany; Swansea and Liverpool, UK; Istanbul, Turkey; Antwerp, Belgium, and even picturesque Chennai, the third largest city in India.“Once,” he chuckles, “we snaked through the Suez Canal in Egypt for the longest time. We also docked at the mythical island of Thessalonike in Greece, and I explored its nooks and crannies. For spooky kicks, nothing can beat our adventure at Constanza in Romania, home of Dracula. Then there were those memorable safari trips in Kenya and Tanzania. And the time I saw the breathtaking lay of the land from a mountaintop in the Croatian city of Split. But my favorite outing of all was our stop at the Seychelles Island. It’s paradise.

Paradise and hellish waves spice up Chef Choi’s thrilling ride through life.

When he graduated from the prestigious Liceo de Cagayan High School in Cagayan de Oro in 1998, he wanted to do three things in college: study architecture, major in voice and pursue stage acting. At the time, however, there were not many college opportunities for these artsy things in the city. So his parents, Juliano, a CPA, and Agustina, a businesswoman, sent him to the nearest possible school for such inclinations—the University of Mindanao in Davao City, where he took up BS Architecture.

Upon graduation, he worked for Comfac Corp., a multinational firm engaged in designing and producing furniture and fixtures. He was the interior designer and estimator. (“I designed the products and made the budget and production estimates.”)

Growing up in the kitchen

It paid well and allowed him to continue his involvement with Pasundayag, a community theater group in Cagayan de Oro. He got to do a successful Valentine’s concert with his sister Julie Ann in a hotel ballroom.

But he was also into cooking and baking. His mother ran a thriving restaurant and catering business, and he continued to help out when he could. He was known for treating his friends to wondrous culinary adventures.

One friend happened to mention to him that there was a scholarship for aspiring chefs. The successful applicants would be flown to a culinary school in Germany for a one-year course. Even better, the graduates of that course would be automatically offered jobs in an international shipping line —as chefs traveling around the world on the high seas.

He applied for the scholarship. During the interview, he was told, “You don’t belong here. You have no professional experience in the kitchen.”

Nonplussed by such putdowns—his theater background apparently prepared him for these dramatic moments—he replied, “While it’s true that I’m an architect by profession, I grew up in the kitchen. Food is my passion. It’s my life. All this I bring with me wherever you’ll take me. And I’m a very good student. Teach me.”

He got the scholarship.

Lessons in Germany

During the six-month preparatory training in General Santos City and in Manila, he surprised even himself by topping the class. “My classmates were professional chefs and they knew everything, but I was a newcomer and I wanted to learn everything,” he says now, leafing through his certificates and photographs.

In Germany, he had a grand time savoring the hands-on lessons in the kitchen. “Our teachers were European chefs, and they shared their professional secrets. They were very exacting. But they were also very helpful. My enthusiasm and diligence endeared me to them. I absorbed everything, not just the kitchen tricks, their ways of seeing and preparing and presenting—but also the culture, their way of thinking. I learned a lot.”

Chef Choi began his new career as a second cook in a freighter that carried container vans to ports all over Europe. It was a brave, new world for him. “It was not so much work as fun because I got to see the world for the first time,” he beams.

He had no trouble adjusting to life in the ship either. “In theater,” he says, “I learned how to deal with all sorts of personalities and egos in such a way that I could work with anyone well so the show could go on. I applied this mind set in the ship, and I was able to navigate through the various nationalities and their cultural quirks.”

In no time at all, he was promoted chief cook. It was then that he decided he was not going back to architecture.

“Food and travel—these are my life now,” Chef Choi declares.

World’s windiest ocean locale

With the whole world as his stage, guess what is Chef Choi’s most prized souvenir from all his travels. What would you know, but a certificate attesting that he has sailed across the Equator.

“This was not even in my dreams,” he lets out.

“This is like magic. Suddenly I’m doing all this. The world is no longer out there. It’s here. And I’m traipsing about it like crazy.”

Thar she blows: A weather report from the world’s windiest ocean locale

A buoy anchored southeast of Greenland dutifully gathered wave and weather data in one of the world’s most hostile environments for more than five months, until the really rough weather of winter arrived and the buoy snapped free — but not before it confirmed satellite data suggesting the region is the world’s windiest for oceans.

The seas east of Greenland’s southern tip, a desolate point called Cape Farewell, are notoriously storm-tossed, says Ian Renfrew, an atmospheric scientist at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England. As storm systems race eastward from northernmost Canada, their frigid winds either pass over Greenland’s kilometers-thick ice sheet and gain speed as they rush down its eastern slope, or they spill around the southern tip of the island. Waters in the area are likewise buffeted by storm systems that approach the island from the east and are then steered southward by Greenland’s icy blockade.

The region’s bad weather is what spurred Renfrew and his colleagues to tether a weather buoy to the 3-kilometer–deep seafloor there in the summer of 2004. At least 10 times that summer and fall, and sometimes for extended intervals, instruments on the floating platform measured winds exceeding speeds of 20 meters per second (about 45 miles per hour), the researchers reported January 13 at the annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society in Phoenix. Then on December 7, after less than six months in service, either high winds or huge waves — or both — pummeled the buoy and broke its tether.

Satellite-based sensors supplied data in recent years indicating that the ocean region east of Cape Farewell is the windiest in the world, says Renfrew. Furthermore, he notes, the buoy’s measurements suggest that the wind speeds inferred from the satellite data are accurate — a calibration that’s useful for analyzing similar data gathered for other parts of the ocean.
Renfrew and his colleagues estimate that 20 percent of the time winds at the site east of Cape Farewell blow even faster than 20 meters per second.

Rain machines: Tropical cyclones supply bulk of rain for some places

Tropical cyclones, the immense rotating storm systems that include hurricanes and their weaker cousins, typically last only a short time and cover a relatively small part of Earth’s surface. Nevertheless, at some latitudes these storms provide a substantial part of the region’s rainfall, a new study suggests.

For each year from 1998 through 2007, meteorologists tallied between 90 and 100 tropical cyclones that had peak wind speeds of at least 17.5 meters per second (about 39 miles per hour), says Christopher L. Williams, a recent graduate of Georgia Tech in Atlanta. Using satellite data, he and colleague Frank Marks Jr. of NOAA’s Hurricane Research Division in Miami estimated total worldwide rainfall for those years, as well as the amount of precipitation dumped only by the tropical cyclones.

Overall, tropical cyclones drop between 2 and 3 percent of the world’s rainfall, the researchers reported January 13 at the annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society in Phoenix. And that fraction is particularly small at latitudes near the equator, where rainfall is plentiful but the forces that drive large-scale atmospheric rotation and cause cyclones to develop are practically nonexistent, says Williams.

However, at latitudes between 15° and 30° — a swath that in the Northern Hemisphere stretches from central Honduras to just north of New Orleans — rainfall is less abundant, and tropical cyclones account for as much as 17 percent of annual rainfall.

Sea diamond sinking

HAVE A WONDERFUL WEEKEND!

RS

Sub to make deep Caribbean dive

Sub to make deep Caribbean dive

Scientists are set to explore the world's deepest undersea volcanoes, which lie 6km down in the Caribbean.

Delving into uncharted waters to hunt for volcanic vents will be Autosub6000, Britain's new autonomously controlled, robot submarine.

Once found, the life, gas and sediment around the vents - the world's hottest - will be sampled and catalogued.

The research will be carried out by a British team aboard the UK's latest research ship, the James Cook.

"We are heading out on two expeditions, each close to a month long, to map the full length of the Cayman Trough," said team leader, Dr Jon Copley of the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton (NOCS).

Dr Copley explained that the Cayman Trough, which lies between Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, is a product of the Caribbean tectonic plate pulling away from the American plate.

"It is the world's deepest volcanic ridge and totally unexplored," the Southampton-based researcher told BBC News.

Along with Autosub6000, the researchers will also rely on Isis, the UK's deepest-diving, remotely operated vehicle to scan the deep.

Double Sub

First overboard will be Autosub6000, an unmanned undersea vehicle that can go down to 6,000m and carry out a dive without being controlled from the surface.

It will be tasked with finding the volcanic vents on the ocean floor.

The second submarine to take the plunge will be the Isis.

Isis will sample fluids and sediments from around the lip of the vents to test their geochemistry, and also collect animal specimens.

Britain's new robot sub will map the entire length of the Cayman Trough

"We are hoping to find several different types of vents along the ridge," said Dr Copley.

"Some of the vents will be very similar in depth to the vents we already know about, and because the conditions will be alike, we might expect very similar animals," he explained.

The researchers will look to compare the animals around the Cayman vents with those in the Atlantic and Pacific, in the hope of better understanding the processes that affect how deep-sea creatures "get about".

If the organisms in the Cayman Trough look like those from other deep volcanic trenches, it will suggest that ocean currents must play a role in shaping the patterns of deep-sea life by transporting the animals' larvae around.

However, if the Cayman Trough animals are very different from those existing in other parts of the Earth's oceans then isolation will be considered more important.

"The deep ocean is our planet's largest ecosystem. If we are going to use its resources responsibly then we need understand what determines its patterns of life," the Southampton-based researcher said.

New vents

Dr Copley told BBC News that there was also another kind of venting that was driven by a very different geological process in which the Earth's mantle is directly exposed to the water.

The researchers will explore vents looking for deep-sea animals

This type of volcanism has only ever been seen once before, in the mid-Atlantic.

The temperatures around these hydrothermal vents were so hot because they were so deep, Dr Copley said.

"They could be hotter than 500C (930F), and if they are that hot, they will probably have quite different chemistry and life forms - we expect to find new species."

The researchers expect that, at depths greater than 3,000m, one in every two animals they come across will be a species new to science.

WEATHER NOTE

Ocean observations reap climate science rewards

Long-term observations of the oceans around Australia are providing the nation’s climate scientists with significant benchmarks for seasonal forecasts and monitoring future climate change.

15 December 2008

Initiated near the end of a two-year El Niño event in May 1983, the program involves the deployment of simple ‘expendable instruments’ (XBTs) from commercial shipping that measure temperature and currents to a depth of 800m along routes in the Indian, Pacific and Southern Oceans.

“There is so much ocean around Australia influencing our daily weather and longer term climate that it made sense to begin a record from which we could connect ocean change to shifts in rainfall patterns across southern Australia,” says Dr Gary Meyers who, with colleagues at CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) and the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in the US, established the ocean monitoring system.

“The 1982/83 El Niño came as a big surprise when we saw all kinds of changes around Australia but didn’t understand them. Now these ocean temperature data contribute to the BoM’s routine seasonal climate forecast.”

At 25 years the system stands as one of the longest sustained ocean observing networks in the world, and is a rare long-term record of ocean change in the huge and poorly monitored Southern Hemisphere ocean domain.

Based on the records, CSIRO’s Dr Susan Wijffels and co-authors will publish a landmark paper on the mean currents flowing between Australia and Indonesia in the Journal of Physical Oceanography. These currents form a critical ocean interconnection – the so-called Indonesian Throughflow – in the distribution of heat in the global climate system.

“Today, we have over 60,000 measurements of temperature around Australia that scientists regularly use to assess past long-term trends – test models used to predict future climate or forecast ocean behaviour,” says Dr Meyers, who leads Australia’s Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS). “More than 50 scientific publications and books have been published using the Australian data.”

MARITIME NOTE

USCG – Marine Safety Performance

The US Coast Guard released its Marine Safety Performance Plan for FY 2009-2014.

The plan addresses the goals of: (1) reducing the risk of marine casualties; (2) facilitating commerce; (3) improving program processes and management; and (4) improving human resource capabilities. The Marine Safety Program pursues these goals through a multi-faceted approach that includes standards development; mariner credentialing; compliance enforcement; investigations and casualty analysis; industry and public outreach; and international engagement.

The Plan is a living document and may be changed in the future to reflect the results of a currently-ongoing independent evaluation of the Marine Safety mission, scheduled for completion in March 2009. Comments on the Plan are also solicited from the regulated community and other stakeholders.

(Source: Holland & Knight)

Climate Clues In Southern Ocean: Ocean Currents Surprisingly Resistant To Intensifying Winds

Climate Clues In Southern Ocean: Ocean Currents Surprisingly Resistant To Intensifying Winds

ScienceDaily (Dec. 2, 2008) — The Antarctic Circumpolar Current is the current system with the largest volume transport in the world ocean. Between 40° and 60°S strong westerlies move about 140 million cubic meters of water per second around the Antarctic continent (this is about five times the transport of the Gulf Stream).

Vertical motions associated with this current have been responsible for transporting a substantial fraction of the anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere to the deep ocean, thereby effectively damping the rate of global warming.

Investigations in this key region of the world ocean have been hampered by a sparse database due to the logistical challenges for ship based expeditions in the high-latitude Southern Ocean.

“In our study we used data obtained by the international Argo Programme”, explains Prof. Claus Böning from the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM-GEOMAR) in Kiel, Germany. Argo is a system of currently 3000 autonomous free-floating robotic systems which are surveying the world ocean. Every 10 days these buoys measure temperature and salinity profiles over the upper 2000 meters. These measurements are transmitted to land stations via satellite. “For this study about 52,000 profiles of more than 600 Argo-drifters in the Southern Ocean were used and compared with historic ship measurements”, explains oceanographer Astrid Dispert from IFM-GEOMAR. For this analysis the extensive archives of the Australian marine research centre in Hobart, Tasmania were also used.

As expected, the observations in the subpolar ocean demonstrate an increase of water temperature and a decrease in salinity at the same time. Nevertheless, in contradiction to the simulations of various climate models the data show no significant changes in water transport. “Our results point to one important thing: Eddies which are currently not resolved in climate models might be the key process in controlling the transport of the ACC”, Prof. Böning explains. Hence, his conclusion is that investigations with high-resolution ocean models are required to test this hypothesis. “Of course, besides the simulations we also need further observations”, adds Prof. Martin Visbeck (IFM-GEOMAR). “Thanks to the international Argo observations programme we now have continuously access to data from a worldwide network of more than 3000 profiling-drifters. This is a quantum leap in the field of ocean observations, which, together with high resolution modelling gives us new insights about long-term changes in the ocean.“

Further investigations have to show whether the results are robust. If confirmed, this would in one way be good news: Until now the Southern Ocean is the biggest oceanic sink for anthropogenic carbon dioxide and therefore a crucial regulator for the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration. Climate models predicted a severe reduction in the southern ocean carbon dioxide uptake due to wind-forced changes in the current fields. Now high-resolution models are needed to assess the role of the hitherto unresolved ocean eddies in the Southern Ocean’s response to the progressive changes in the atmospheric conditions.

WEATHER NOTE

Venice under water

Duckboards and elevated walkways were set up throughout Venice today and elderly residents were carried to dry ground, as the city faced its worst flooding for two decades.

A woman wakls on Piazza San Marco yesterday. Nearly all the streets of the city were underwater. Pic: AFP

As sirens blared throughout the city, the Mayor Massimo Cacciari asked prospective tourists to not to visit - and advised those already there not to move around unless it was "unavoidable" because of the "exceptional" situation. "Anyone thinking of coming to Venice should think again," he said.

As the sea surged into St Mark's Square, arguably Venice's most famous landmark, it became completely submerged under eighty centimetres of water. In total, more than 95% of the rest of central Venice was flooded and some pontoon bridges began floating away in the rising tide, leaving residents stranded in their homes.

Driven by strong winds and heavy rain, the water rose to 156cm above sea level - the highest "acqua alta" since 158cm in 1986. Sirens sounded as the Venice tide monitoring centre warned that the water could rise to over 160 centimetres for the first time in thirty years.

The worst floods took place in 1966 when the waters reached a record 194 centimetres above sea level, causing devastation to homes, shops and historic monuments and art works. Flooding of 100-130cm above sea level is common in the lagoon city in autumn and winter.

As today's floods intensified, workers set up duckboards and elevated walkways as the sirens sounded, and text messages with warnings and updates were sent to those who have registered with the flood warning centre on their mobile phones. Elderly residents were carried to dry ground, and homes and shops activated their ground floor pumps.

The plight of Venetians and visitors was compounded by a national transport strike which affected the Venice "vaporetto" or water bus service.

Giancarlo Galan, head of the Veneto region, said the transport workers had chosen a bad time to strike. "I'd like to give them a medal for their sense of responsibility," Mr Galan said sarcastically.

A floating flood barrier is under construction at three entrances from the Adriatic into the lagoon, but is not due to go into operation until 2012 at the earliest. The authorities are also considering a scheme to raise the city's buildings by up to a metre using piston-supported-poles.

The growing severity and frequency of floods is attributed to silt deposits raising the floor of the lagoon and a rise in sea levels caused by global warming.

However Mr Cacciari played down alarm, saying flooding was part of everyday life in Venice. "We get sea levels of 140m, 160m every few years," the Mayor said. Italian meteorologists said the entire country was being affected by bad weather, with driving rain, snow, hail and high winds causing flooding "from the Alps to Palermo".

Many roads in Piedmont, Liguria and Lombardy were closed, and Rome was hit by hail and rainstorms, with fallen trees blocking roads and cars submerged in flooded road tunnels.

Researchers Use Sun Cycle to Predict Rainfall Fluctuations

(PhysOrg.com) -- The sun’s magnetic field may have a significant impact on weather and climatic parameters in Australia and other countries in the northern and southern hemispheres.

ccording to a study in Geographical Research published by Wiley-Blackwell, the droughts in eastern Australia are related to the solar magnetic phases and not the greenhouse effect.

The study titled “Exploratory Analysis of Similarities in Solar Cycle Magnetic Phases with Southern Oscillation Index Fluctuation in Eastern Australia” uses data from 1876 to the present to examine the correlation between solar cycles and the extreme rainfall in Australia.

It finds that the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) – the basic tool for forecasting variations in global and oceanic patterns – and rainfall fluctuations recorded over the last decade are similar to those in 1914 -1924.

Author Professor Robert G. V. Baker from the School of Environmental Studies, University of New England, Australia, says, “The interaction between the directionality in the Sun’s and Earth’s magnetic fields, the incidence of ultraviolet radiation over the tropical Pacific, and changes in sea surface temperatures with cloud cover, could contribute to an explanation of substantial changes in the SOI from solar cycle fluctuations. If solar cycles continue to show relational values to climate patterns, there is the potential for more accurate forecasting through to 2010 and possibly beyond.”

The SOI-solar association has been investigated recently due to increasing interest in the relationship between the sun’s cycles and the climate. The solar application offers the potential for the long-range prediction of SOI behavior and associated rainfall variations, since quasi-periodicity in solar activity results in an expected cycle of situations and phases that are not random events.

Professor Baker adds, “This discovery could substantially advance forecasting from months to decades. It should result in much better long-term management of agricultural production and water resources, in areas where rainfall is correlated to SOI and El Niño (ENSO) events.”

This paper is published in the December 2008 issue of Geographical Research Vol. 46 Issue 4. (Report)

MARITIME NOTE

Science Speaks: Rogue Waves are Real

'Rogue wave approaching on ship Nathaniel B Palmer' .

Every year sound sailing boats, well equipped with safety gear, with experienced crew on board, go missing. Their loved ones are forever left wondering: Was it a whale? a floating container? a rogue wave?

In the past, some scientists wrote off 'rogue waves' as rare or even mythology.

Rogue waves on NOAA ship Discoverer in the Bering Sea - .. .

However, satellite data collected by the European Space Agency's (ESA) ERS satellites has confirmed what too many ship captains have come to know (and occasionally captured photographs). Ocean waves that rise as tall as ten-story apartment buildings are a leading cause of large ship sinkings.

The Norwegian Dawn, a 965-foot ocean liner , was sailing back to New York from the Bahamas on April 16 2005 when it was struck by a rogue 70-foot wave. The wave smashed windows and sent furniture flying, but the ship survived and the crew lived to record the wave's arrival.

A sailing boat faced with such a wave would have little chance of survival, and if it came at night, maybe not even the chance to hit the EPIRB.

A giant wave can form when strong winds beat against an opposing ocean current, when waves from different storms join forces, or when swells interact in strange ways with a particular seafloor.

Wave Height Predictions off the coast of Massachusetts - .. . Click Here to view large photo

Since 2005, Vijay Panchang at the A&M University at Galveston in Texas and his associates say they can accurately predict the daily height of waves anywhere off the coast of the United States for the next 48 hours across spaces as close as 500 yards apart.

A buoy off the coast of Alabama recently recorded an average wave height of 16 meters before the gauge broke, Panchang said. Since that figure is just an average of measurement of a sea-state, the biggest wave at that location was probably twice that size--32 meters, or about 100 feet.

'There were oil platforms destroyed,' said Panchang, who requires his wave mechanics students to read The Perfect Storm. 'The sheer magnitude of these things amazes me.'

Severe weather has sunk more than 200 supertankers and container ships more than 200 yards long in the past two decades, an ESA analysis found.

Counting waves from space:

The two ERS satellites equipped with radar carry out a global rogue wave census and arrive at the truth.

Without aerial, cloud-penetrating radar, scientists could only go on radar data on waves collected from oil platforms.

The radar instruments on the satellites detected the height of individual waves at the surface in 3-mile by 6-mile patches of the sea. Three weeks of data, including 30,000 of these patches or 'imagettes' of the sea with their wave height information were analyzed and searched for extreme waves at the German Aerospace Center.

A scientific team counted more than ten individual giant waves around the globe more than 75 feet high during the three-week period.

What can the cruising sailor do?

Rogue wave approaching in the Bay of Biscay Fall 1993 - NOAA - .. .

There are a few things that long range cruisers can do when setting off, apart from the obvious ones like never travelling close to a cyclone season, taking particular note of existing currents, and watching the weather like your life depends on it - because it does.

If there are different swells meeting, the other most obvious rule is to stay away from underwater mountains and ranges, where rogue waves are likely to develop if other conditions accumulate. There are many examples of underwater disturbances on the world's charts, eg. between Madeira and the Canary Islands, between Sydney and Lord Howe Island, and between Palmerston Atoll and Tonga.

Another underwater feature to be avoided is the underwater cliff, which often occurs close to coastlines. One of the most notorious of these is in the Bay of Biscay, where the depth changes from thousands of meters to a few hundred in a short distance.

To find examples of Vijay Panchang's wave predictions, which do not exist for all parts of the world, click here


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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


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Astonishing Life In Ocean's Depths: Major Progress Made Towards Historic Census Of Marine Life

Astonishing Life In Ocean's Depths: Major Progress Made Towards Historic Census Of Marine Life

ScienceDaily (Nov. 10, 2008) — The 2,000-strong community of Census of Marine Life scientists from 82 nations has announced astonishing examples of recent new finds from the world’s ocean depths. Mollusk expert Patricia Miloslavich (Venezuela), Census co-senior scientist: “We are beginning to pull together a picture and clarify the complicated and interconnected global drivers of marine biodiversity patterns and changes, and we are starting to see the conservation-related implications and benefits, from the small coves of the near-shore to the vast abyss.”

Antarctic ancestry of many deep-sea octopuses worldwide

Within their mandate "to assess and explain the diversity, distribution, and abundance of marine life in the oceans – past, present, and future,” Census of Antarctic Marine Life scientists report the first molecular evidence that a large proportion of deep sea octopus species worldwide evolved from common ancestor species that still exist in the Southern Ocean.

Octopuses started migrating to new ocean basins more than 30 million years ago when, as Antarctica cooled and a large icesheet grew, nature created a “thermohaline expressway,” a northbound flow of tasty frigid water with high salt and oxygen content.

Isolated in new habitat conditions, many different species evolved; some octopuses, for example, losing their defensive ink sacs – pointless at perpetually dark depths.

This revelation into the global distribution and diversity of deep sea fauna, to be reported Nov. 11 in the journal Cladistics, was made possible by intensive sampling during Census International Polar Year expeditions.

Other findings are listed below.

Distribution of sea life

Scientists discover both a “White Shark Café” and a “sturgeon playground” in the Pacific, as others explore life on a “new continent” in the mid-Atlantic, in oceanic canyons, around Earth’s deepest hot vents, and in the world’s coldest, saltiest seawater;

Deep sea diversity

Deep sea explorers discover new forms of life, including behemoth bacteria, colossal sea stars, astonishing Antarctic amphipods and a mammoth mollusk, and find familiar species in many new places. Experts also estimate that, beyond the 16,000 marine fish species already known to science, another 4,000 await discovery, many of them in the tropics.

Abundance

Researchers find a sea floor carpet of bugs and a city of brittle stars, and document bluefin tuna abundance in the early 1900s by scouring fishery reports, fishing magazines and other records.

Meanwhile, the Ocean Biogeographic Information System has grown to include more than 120,000 species. And a rapidly-expanding reference library of DNA barcodes of marine species recently helped reveal inaccurate labeling of sushi in New York City and elsewhere.

As well, the national and regional networks expediting much of the Census work expanded from 10 to 12 since 2006. They and the field projects of the Census established precedent-setting ethical standards for marine research.

As more than 700 delegates gather for the World Conference on Marine Biodiversity (Valencia, Spain Nov. 11-15), organized by the Census’s European affiliate program on Marine Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning, the report details major progress towards the first ever marine life census, for release in October, 2010.

Other research highlights

1) Exploring a “new continent” in mid-Atlantic: MAR-ECO (http://www.coml.org/descrip/mareco.htm) scientists describe their work as “surveying a new continent half way between America and Europe.” Sampling along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge at depths down to 2,500 meters, they find many hundreds of species rare or unknown elsewhere in the world and collect environmental data to help explain their distribution and abundance.

2) World’s deepest known active hot vent: ChEss (http://www.coml.org/descrip/chess.htm) scientists in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge explore the world’s deepest known active hot vent, field named Ashadze, over 4,100 meters deep, dominated by anemones, polychaete worms and shrimp. They also discover marine environments with little or no oxygen harboring more life than expected.

3) Bacterial mats in Black Sea: ChEss scientists also find reefs deep in the Black Sea made of bacterial mats using methane (natural gas) as an energy source, the bacteria forming spectacular chimneys up to four meters high. Such reefs could contribute key insights into mechanisms controlling emissions of methane, an important greenhouse gas, from the ocean to the atmosphere.

4) Brittle Star City: Exploring off the coast of New Zealand, CenSeam (http://www.coml.org/descrip/censeam.htm) researchers capture images of a novel “Brittle Star City,” whose inhabitants colonize the peak of a seamount – an underwater summit taller than the world’s tallest building. In a swirling circumpolar current flowing at roughly four kilometers per hour, tens of millions of brittle stars live arm tip to arm tip. The current kept away would-be predators while delivering an ample supply of food that residents of Brittle Star City collected simply by raising their arms.

5) Surprisingly different twins: NaGISA (http://www.coml.org/descrip/nagisa.htm) nearshore scientists in the Alaskan Arctic find a site with a rocky seafloor, rare along the normally soft and silty Arctic coastline. The hard substrate hosts a highly diverse community compared to surrounding soft bottom habitat. Comparison of this new site to a similar site surveyed by Census researchers in 2002 shows surprisingly different communities. Census nearshore scientists collaborating with local agencies also discover new species in the Aleutian archipelago, including a kelp, sea anemones, chitons, snails, and sea stars.

6) Pacific hotspots: TOPP (http://www.coml.org/descrip/topp.htm) researchers discover eddies of warm water in the Pacific may meld, forming hotspots in the open sea that support elevated levels of tiny phytoplankton that form the base of the marine food web. These green meadows in the vast Pacific in turn concentrate species from all tiers of the food web – from shrimp to large predators like tuna, seabirds, and whales.

7) Seep mega-sites: COMARGE (http://www.coml.org/descrip/c-margins.htm) and ChEss scientists discover more lively communities flourishing off cold gases such as methane seeping out of the sea floor. Around New Zealand, they map the “Builder’s Pencil” site covering about 180,000 square meters, among Earth’s largest known seep sites. Sensitive to human activities despite their depth, the communities keep revealing unique features. Finding both potential new species and scars from deep-water trawls by fishing vessels on the scientific surveys suggests the urgency for further conservation of these fragile habitats.

8) Philippine firsts: In the first deep-sea work in the area, COMARGE researchers sample to a depth of 2,300 meters, collecting about 300 fish and 400 mollusc species for barcoding. Some 320 decapod crustaceans are photographed, displaying their beauty and aiding future identification of many unique and subtly distinct specimens.

In 2008, COMARGE investigators return to explore the Philippine margin of the South China Sea, between 100 and 2,200 meters depth. Discoveries include the first Philippine record of the deep-water stony coral Lophelia pertusa, the first living specimen of Acharax bartschi (a large bivalve living in symbiosis with bacteria), rare deep-water snails living on a dog’s skull that had washed out to sea, and a likely new species of shrimp belonging to a group only known from hydrothermal vents. The trawl also collected many plastic shopping bags.

9) Potential new marine protected area, Africa: While largely unexplored, the rich Western Indian Ocean, including the Mozambique channel, suffers destructive fishing practices, such as use of dynamite. Census-affiliated explorers with the Sub-Sahara African Committee chart a proposed marine protected area off Tanga, Tanzania. Using SCUBA and remotely operated vehicles, Tanzanian scientists and students join international researchers to survey life along transects that could be periodically revisited, collecting samples for identification and barcoding.

10) Life in coldest, saltiest seawater: ArcOD (http://www.coml.org/descrip/aobio.htm) researchers studying life in the Arctic find temperatures of –25°C in sea ice channels where brine is more than six times saltier than regular sea water. Representing the coldest conditions in the global ocean, researchers find sea ice algae, such as diatoms, and flagellates thriving in concentrations of thousands of individuals per liter.

11) 100 new species and records near Hawaii: CReefs (http://www.coml.org/descrip/c-reefs.htm) experts census biodiversity in the French Frigate Shoals, the world’s largest, fully protected marine area in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Using a variety of new and proven methods over a diverse range of habitats, the team logs more than 100 species and new records.

12) Carpet of bugs: COMARGE researchers describe a new species of amphipod, Ampelisca mississippiana, inhabiting the head of the Mississippi Canyon about 460 meters deep in the Gulf of Mexico. These small crustaceans (less than 6 millimeters in length) and living in tubes, carpet the seabed in densities up to 12,000 individuals per square meter. Based on its abundance and the stabilizing effects this “carpet of bugs” has on sediments, researchers believe this amphipod may have great ecological importance.

13) Deepest comb jelly: CMarZ (http://www.coml.org/descrip/cmarz.htm) explorers find a potential new species of comb jelly, or ctenophore, at the record depth of 7,217meters in the Ryukyu Trench near Japan – the deepest ever recorded siting of this unique species, that flies like a kite on the end of two long “strings” attached to the bottom. The discovery raises questions about the availability of food resources at such depths, which had not been thought capable of supporting predators like this one.

14) Evolutionary mollusk: In the Southern Ocean, CAML (http://www.coml.org/descrip/caml.htm) researchers find many potential new species including sea cucumbers, sponges and komokiaceans – little known protozoa living in the depths of the ocean resemble the organisms that form chalk. They also collect a rare mollusk, named Laevipilina antarctica, believed to play a role in how segmentation evolved in marine invertebrates.

15) Arctic jellies galore: In the Canada Basin of the Arctic Ocean, ArcOD researchers find several new species and more than 50 taxonomic categories of gelatinous zooplankton. Almost two-thirds are medusae, one-fifth siphonophores, and one-tenth larvaceans. The first new species formally described from the expedition was named Sigambra healyae, in honor of the research vessel, the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy.

16) 85 new zooplankton species: CMarZ scientists discover at least 85 new species of zooplankton, small drifting and swimming marine animals. Four genera and one family were officially deemed new to science, with many more expected to follow. In the Atlantic Ocean from Germany to South Africa, scientists collect zooplankton in a range from the surface to below 5,000 meters. Taxonomic experts and geneticists identify and barcode the DNA from hundreds of species. As expected, several new species of small crustaceans called ostracods or seed shrimp and other groups are found.

17) Antarctica’s big amphipod: CAML scientists exploring a 10,000 kilometer portion of the Antarctic Weddell Sea made suddenly accessible by the collapse of the Larsen A and B ice shelves sample an estimated 1,000 species. Of these, four presumed new species of cnidarians (organisms related to coral, jelly fish and sea anemones) are found, as well as 15 potentially new amphipod (shrimp-like) species, including one of Antarctica’s biggest-ever amphipod crustaceans, nearly 10 centimeters long.

18) Spectacular species in Celebes Sea: Zooplankton researchers with CMarZ travel to a biodiversity hot spot in the Celebes Sea in the southern Philippines, uncovering unexpected richness and diversity of marine life from the surface to the almost totally unexplored deep waters. Divers collect a remarkable variety of fragile and beautiful gelatinous species, while video cameras and collect images and organisms from depths beyond the divers' reach.

19) Surprising species richness: Recent advances in technology are opening up remote frontiers – deep-sea canyons. COMARGE researchers aboard the RRS James Cook off Portugal find that species richness was almost double in the more active Nazaré Canyon than in Lisbon Canyon. This is despite Lisbon Canyon receiving a substantial supply of river-borne organic matter that would foster large populations of filter-feeding organisms.

20) 11,130 known species in South African waters: Experts with the Census’ Sub-Sahara African Committee estimate 6,000 more species, primarily smaller marine animals, are yet to be discovered in South African waters, which are already known to feature some 11,130 species. A new shrimp (Hippolyte) and the first record of the enigmatic group Myzostomida from the region are discovered in False Bay, the most sampled site on the African coast.

21) 870+ squat lobster species: COMARGE scientists list 870 known species of squat lobsters and create an electronic library of relevant literature. Squat lobsters are colorful decapod crustaceans found in all oceans, at all depths, and in all marine habitats, but are especially abundant on continental margins.

22) Antarctic expressway: In the Southern Ocean, Census CAML explorers find evidence that deep sea octopuses ride the “Antarctic thermohaline expressway.” The northbound expressway is a mass of sea water with a high salt density caused by the ice that forms at the surface around the Antarctic, the water cascading like cream.

They find as well that sea birds feed on Antarctic zooplankton when the tiny organisms aggregate at a thermal front.

23) Animals in new places: ArcOD explorers make the first record of many marine animals in many areas of the Canada Basin. These include abundant and diverse ctenophore (comb jellies) under Arctic pack ice and a dense bed of sea cucumbers in what might be a pockmark. They also record more squid than ever before in the Arctic deep sea, and document the importance of sea ice ridges for marine life in the region.

24) White Shark Café: Satellite tagging by TOPP reveals a previously unknown behavior of white sharks (http://www.eol.org/taxa/17143484), travelling long distances each winter to concentrate in the Pacific for up to six months. During these months, both males and females make frequent, repetitive dives to depths of 300 meters, which researchers theorize may be significant in either feeding or reproduction.

25) Migration pathway: MAR-ECO researchers suggest the Mid-Atlantic Ridge may serve as an important pathway in colonization of North Atlantic continental slopes. Before their expeditions, scientists thought skates and rays, for example, migrated through the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, rather than taking up residence there.

26) New species in familiar waters: Systematically exploring two islands on the Great Barrier Reef and a reef off northwestern Australia, CReefs researchers find hundreds of new kinds of animals in waters were long familiar to divers. They also conduct the first scientific inventory of spectacular soft corals, named octocorals for the eight tentacles that fringe each polyp.

27) Australian expedition: One species in three new to science: The first results from the COMARGE “Voyages of Discovery” expeditions to the deep continental shelf and slope in Australia’s southwest region show 524 species of Decapoda—crabs, shrimps, prawns, lobsters, and the like. Some 33 percent of all species encountered are suspected to be new species, and 25 percent are new records in the region, eight percent are new records for Australia.

28) Sponge garden: COMARGE and ChEss researchers examining cold seeps in the Mediterranean Sea using remotely operated vehicles find surprisingly abundant marine life, including a garden of sponges around a brine lake. The sponge itself, likely Rhizaxinella pyrifera, harbours a multitude of small worms.

29) Behemoth bacteria: A diverse set of giant, filamentous, multi-cellular marine bacteria is discovered by ICOMM (http://www.coml.org/descrip/icomm.htm) researchers in the eastern South Pacific. These bacteria may be “living fossils” that developed in the earliest ocean when oxygen was either absent or much diminished, living on the toxic gas hydrogen sulfide. Scientists hypothesize that communities of bacteria may hold potential for bioremediation of organically polluted bottoms and, because of their ability to survive in anoxic conditions, may be an important clue in the search for extraterrestrial life.

30) Colossal sea stars: CAML expeditions to the Southern Ocean find frequent examples of gigantism common in Antarctic waters. The researchers collect huge scaly worms, giant crustaceans, starfish and sea spiders as big as dinner plates.

31) Largest mollusk in class: A giant aplacophoran mollusk, Chaetoderma felderi, is collected in deep waters off Louisiana by GoMex, a Census-affiliated project working in the Gulf of Mexico. Measuring over 407 mm in length and 10 mm in diameter, about the size of a AAA battery, it is more than twice the length and three times the diameter of the next largest known mollusk in the subclass.

32) Gigantic oysters: With the assistance of a remotely operated vehicle, COMARGE explorers find dense communities of giant oysters 20 cm (eight inches) long at a depth of 700 m on the La Chapelle continental slope. Genetic studies will confirm if this is a new species.

33) Barcoding zooplankton: An international CMarZ team from 25 cooperating projects is analyzing data from roughly 6,000 historical samples to help create a catalog of described species diversity and distribution. DNA barcodes will identify approximately 7,000 known species of zooplankton in 15 phyla. This growing database will help scientists identify specimens, describe their geographic distributions, and recognize when a species is in fact new. Scientists envision a day soon when quick, automated sample barcoding analysis will be a reality.

34) Following fishers to find vents: Stymied in their search for active methane seeps in the Chilean margin, COMARGE scientists take a novel approach: follow the fishers. They launch their search in known fishing grounds of the Patagonian toothfish (Dissostichus eleginoides), suspecting that these fish congregate near methane seeps. Their hunch proves correct: Most fishing grounds were associated with hard grounds, with some made of carbonates associated with methane seepages.

35) Coral reef colonization: To learn what new creatures colonize coral reefs, CReefs scientists develop and test Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structures (ARMS), to be colonized by fish and other creatures that inhabit coral reefs. The structures mimic the “nooks and crannies” of a natural reef. With this information, marine scientists can better understand the health of reefs and policy makers can develop scientifically-based management strategies.

36) Mapping microbes: To identify marine microbes and survey their distribution around the globe, ICoMM launches 40 separate projects using the same DNA sequencing technology, “454 tag-pyrosequencing.” The efficient identification by a standardized method allows scientists to inventory areas as diverse as polar biodiversity hotspots, coastal microbial mats, and sediments in tropical coral reefs. They can then create unprecedented global maps of the tiniest life in the ocean.

37) Arctic robots: Two new underwater robots give ChEss scientists a bird’s eye view of what lives on Gakkel Ridge in the Arctic Ocean. These exploration vehicles carry cameras and sophisticated arrays of instruments used by scientists to discover a new underwater volcanic chain covered by extensive microbial mats. Because the deep Arctic ridges are isolated from other ocean basins, the investigation of Gakkel Ridge provides clues about the evolution of fauna around underwater vents in isolated habitats.

38) Nearshore research expands worldwide: NaGISA expands nearshore research within the Caribbean, South America, and around the Indian Ocean through regional workshops aimed at standardizing protocols. Scientists use these protocols in monitoring and educational program to assess environmental impacts and to engage local communities in the process.

39) A highly detailed look at biodiversity in a well-documented bay: A unique collaboration of U.S. and Canadian GoMA (http://www.coml.org/descrip/gom.htm) researchers enhances knowledge of changing marine eco-systems by studying the nearshore zone of Cobscook Bay, Maine, from both historical and present-day perspectives. One of the most diverse coastal ecosystem on the North American east coast north of the tropics, this estuary features many different habitats, a tidal range of over eight  meters, two centuries of historical records dating back to 1842, and more than 800 species identified to date.

40) Engaging the public: NaGISA scientists studying the nearshore environment of the world ocean are present on six continents. Science education programs and training workshops aim to incorporate research protocols, which makes data gathered in the coastal environment comparable from place to place. The nearshore investigations engage the public in ocean and coastal issues and inspire the next generation of marine scientists.

41) International study of plankton bloom: In the Southern Ocean, collaborating CeDAMar (http://www.coml.org/descrip/cedamar.htm) researchers follow a plankton bloom from its onset until it changes to marine snow and finally sinks to the deep-sea floor. The scientists then examine the influence of the snow of fallen plankton on marine life on the floor itself. It is the first such collaboration undertaken since the Galathea expedition in the early 1950’s. In spite of bad weather and complicated logistics, the collaboration produces a trove of data.

42) Leading research for International Polar Year: Census projects play a key role in the International Polar Year 2007-2009. In the Arctic, the Census leads the marine biodiversity cluster of 13 projects from eight countries on more than 20 expeditions. They observe how mammals use diverse polar habitats, inventory life in a fjord, and explore seeps, pockmarks, and mud volcanoes on remote ocean floors. In the Southern Ocean, the Census coordinates the science on 10 major expeditions by vessels from nine different countries, the results reported live via the Internet. The Census also initiates a collaborative program focusing on Antarctic marine life in seven South American countries.

43) Race to protect sea turtles: The Great Turtle Race, an international race developed by TOPP to save a 100-million-year-old species from extinction moved to China in 2008. A Mandarin language version of an interactive webpage tracks the migration of endangered leatherback turtles, bringing the race to approximately 100 million Chinese citizens. Donations go to protection of leatherback turtle nesting areas in Indonesia, and raise awareness of the turtles plight.

44) Leatherback conservation: For more than 12,095 satellite-tracking days over three years, TOPP scientists track leatherback turtles and compile the largest, multi-year migration record ever. The data reveals that ocean currents shaped the migration corridor and turtle dispersal in the South Pacific.

45) Hydrothermal vents and seabed mining: ChEss scientists orchestrate a joint scientific and policy meeting for the spring of 2009 to discuss protection of the vent sites from the potential growth of deep sea mining. The meeting’s goal: set priorities for future research and balance the conservation of critical vent sites versus the value of ores.

46) Focusing fishery management: MAR-ECO research along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge strives to fill information gaps about the distribution and abundance of certain species of grenadier (http://www.eol.org/taxa/17063155), distant relatives of codfish in the North Atlantic. Amid the uncertainty, regional managers take precautionary measures to protect grenadier stocks and their habitats.

47) CSI in the sea: DNA barcoding shark fins: Demand for their fins and other organs impact global shark populations. The frequently inaccurate identification of sharks and rays confuses what fishermen are catching, what fins and organs markets are selling, and how populations are changing. Accordingly, researchers with the Marine Barcode of Life project (http://www.marinebarcoding.org/publications) develop DNA barcoding to identify species of sharks and their products, such as dried fins, essential to knowing how many sharks are being caught and to enforce prohibitions. (See also http://phe.rockefeller.edu/docs/pacificfishingsept2008.pdf)

48) Managing underwater mountains: CenSeam expeditions in the Southern Ocean and Antarctica expand knowledge of life on seamounts, providing a foundation for sustainable management of these ecosystems. Census researchers deliver a report to the United Nations General Assembly on the vulnerability of seamount corals to fishing and help develop guidelines for deep-sea fisheries.

49) Learning from the past: Rise and fall of tuna: Scouring fishery reports, fishing magazines, and other records, HMAP (http://www.coml.org/descrip/hmap.htm) researchers document the presence of bluefin tuna (http://www.eol.org/taxa/17050078) in northern European waters several decades before the onset of major fisheries in the early 1900s. After fishing increased and techniques became more powerful, the fishery collapsed in the mid-1960s. Documentation of the historical abundance of this especially popular seafood species, and its subsequent collapse, will be used to inform future decisions.

50) Assessing human impact: HMAP brings together a worldwide network of experts from multiple disciplines to figure out why populations of mollusc have declined. They report their work in a book, Early Human Impact on Megamolluscs (Oxford: Archaeopress).

51) High mortality for young salmon: Using acoustic tagging, POST (http://www.coml.org/descrip/post.htm) researchers track the progress of young Chinook salmon (http://www.eol.org/taxa/17154704) as they move from freshwater rivers in the Canadian and US northwest out to the ocean and eventually to the Alaska coast. The observations suggest that in just a few weeks, 40 percent of the tracked salmon perished in the ocean.

52) Sturgeon playground: POST researchers discover green sturgeon congregate at a “playground” off Vancouver Island before moving on to Alaska for the winter, contrary to scientists’ expectations. The reason for their layover is unknown, but it makes them susceptible to potential over-exploitation.

53) Conserving life in open ocean: MAR-ECO documentation of the quantity and patterns of diversity on the mid-Atlantic Ridge summit at 3,500 meters helps international management organizations protect habitats and assure sustainable resource use. Continued work by Census scientists and a variety of partners creates a better basis for conservation of marine life in the immense areas of the oceans that lie beyond national jurisdiction.

54) Tuna and Billfish distribution: FMAP (http://www.coml.org/descrip/fmap.htm) researchers investigate the global distribution patterns of two highly migratory predators, tuna and billfish, and relate the information to the temperature tolerances of these species, work that may help anticipate the effects of ocean warming on biodiversity.

55) OBIS reaches 16 million records: Census experts creating the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (http://www.coml.org/descrip/obis.htm), log 16 million biological records, with 17 million expected by year’s end, received from nodes around the world. Collaboration with the Encyclopedia of Life, among others, expedites information sharing, creating an integrated system containing geographical, biographical, evolutionary, and genetic information, as well as images.

56) Counting all creatures in the Gulf: Scientists complete a comprehensive inventory of all marine life in the Gulf of Mexico. Published in a 79-chapter book written by 140 authors from 15 countries, the inventory shows 15,625 species from 40 different phyla in the Gulf. A second phase of the project currently underway will make the information available in a searchable online database.

57) Listing all species, eliminating aliases: The list of known marine species surpasses 120,000, placing the Census halfway toward its goal of cataloging the estimated 230,000 known species by 2010. The Census-affiliated World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) identifies more than 56,000 aliases for ocean species, with one species, the “breadcrumb sponge,” alone having 56 scientific names.

58) 4,000 Marine Fish May Await Discovery: Employing a novel approach to count quantify global fish species, FMAP researchers estimate that almost 16,000 species of marine fish are recorded in publicly accessible databases. They suggest another 4,000 fish species await discovery and description, many of them in the tropics.

Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at Robin Sorm to all of you!

RS