Why Disasters Are Getting Worse

Why Disasters Are Getting Worse

In the space of two weeks, Hurricane Gustav has caused an estimated $3 billion in losses in the U.S. and killed about 110 people in the U.S. and the Caribbean, catastrophic floods in northern India have left a million people homeless, and a 6.2-magnitude earthquake has rocked China's southwest, smashing more than 400,000 homes.

If it seems like disasters are getting more common, it's because they are. But some disasters seem to be affecting us in worse ways — and not for the reasons you may think. Floods and storms have led to most of the excess damage. The number of flood and storm disasters has gone up 7.4% every year in recent decades, according to the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters. (Between 2000 and 2007, the growth was even faster, with an average annual rate of increase of 8.4%.) Of the total 197 million people affected by disasters in 2007, 164 million were affected by floods.

It is tempting to look at the lineup of storms in the Atlantic Ocean (Hanna, Ike, Josephine) and, in the name of everything green, blame climate change for this state of affairs. But there is another inconvenient truth out there: We are getting more vulnerable to weather mostly because of where we live, not just how we live.

In recent decades, people around the world have moved en masse to big cities near water. The population of Miami-Dade County in Florida was about 150,000 in the 1930s, a decade fraught with severe hurricanes. Since then, the population of Miami-Dade County has rocketed 1,600%, to 2,400,000.

So the same-intensity hurricane today wreaks all sorts of havoc that wouldn't have occurred had human beings not migrated. (To see how your own coastal county has changed in population, check out this cool graphing tool from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.)

If climate change is having an effect on the intensities of storms, it's not obvious in the historical weather data. And whatever effect it is having is much, much smaller than the effect of development along coastlines. In fact, if you look at all storms from 1900 to 2005 and imagine today's populations on the coasts, as Roger Pielke Jr., and his colleagues did in a 2008 [ITALIC "Natural Hazards Review"] paper, you would see that the worst hurricane would have actually happened in 1926.

If it happened today, the Great Miami storm would have caused from $140 billion to $157 billion in damages. (Hurricane Katrina, the costliest storm in U.S. history, caused $100 billion in losses.) "There has been no trend in the number or intensity of storms at landfall since 1900," says Pielke, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado. "The storms themselves haven't changed."

What's changed is what we've put in storms' way. Crowding together in coastal cities puts us at risk on a few levels. First, it is harder for us to evacuate before a storm because of gridlock. And in much of the developing world, people don't get the kinds of early warnings that Americans get. So large migrant populations — usually living in flimsy housing — get flooded out year after year. That helps explain why Asia has repeatedly been the hardest hit area by disasters in recent years.

Secondly, even if we get everyone to safety, we still have more stuff in harm's way than ever before. So each big hurricane costs more than the big one before it, even controlling for inflation.

But the most insidious effect of building condos and industry along water is that we are systematically stripping coasts of the protection that used to cushion the blow of extreme weather. Three years after Katrina, southern Louisiana is still losing a football field's worth of wetlands every 38 minutes.

Human beings have been clearing away our best protections all over the world, says Kathleen Tierney, director of the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder. "The natural protections are diminishing — whether you're talking about mangrove forests in areas affected by the Indian Ocean tsunami, wetlands in the Gulf Coast or forests, which offer protection against landslides and mudslides."

Before we become hopelessly lost in despair, however, there is good news: we can do something about this problem. We can enact meaningful building codes and stop keeping insurance premiums artificially low in flood zones.

But first we need to understand that disasters aren't just caused by FEMA and greenhouse gases. Says Tierney: "I don't think that people have an understanding of questions they should be asking — about where they live, about design and construction, about building inspection, fire protection. These just aren't things that are on people's minds."

Increasingly, climate change is on people's minds, and that is for the better. Even if climate change has not been the primary driver of disaster losses, it is likely to cause far deadlier disasters in the future if left unchecked.

But even if greenhouse gas emissions miraculously plummet next year, we would not expect to see a big change in disaster losses. So it's important to stay focused on the real cause of the problem, says Pielke. "Talking about land-use policies in coastal Mississippi may not be the sexiest topic, but that's what's going to make the most difference on this issue," he says.

WEATHER NOTE

After Hurricane Ike, Finding the Coastline Rearranged, Again

By CORNELIA DEAN

From the plane flying over the Gulf Islands National Seashore, scientists from the United States Geological Survey were scanning the ocean, trying to find Ship Island. Their maps and G.P.S. system told them they were over its eastern end, but there was no sign of it.

“I don’t see Ship anywhere,” said Asbury H. Sallenger, a oceanographer at the Geological Survey who was sitting in the co-pilot’s seat and had the best view. "On the map we see it, but all I see is breakers. There is just zip left of this thing."

Eventually, the scientists spotted the western part of Ship, but its eastern half had all but disappeared. A small patch of land and whitecaps breaking on underwater shoals were all that remained.

The damage was considerable, but it was the kind of land loss they would see often on their flight, which they made about 48 hours after Hurricane Ike struck the Gulf Coast, as part of the survey’s long-standing effort to track storm damage on the coast.

The geologists should not have been surprised. Scientists studying the way stormy weather erodes the coast have long been able to identify regions at risk for inundation if sea-level rise continues, an inevitability in a warming world.

For example, researchers have estimated that large stretches of another barrier chain, the Outer Banks of North Carolina, will vanish if seas rise more than two feet, which many scientists consider quite likely by 2100.

But on the Gulf Coast, “we are not talking 100 years,” Dr. Sallenger said, “we are talking three years,” the time since Hurricane Katrina and a parade of other storms, including Hurricanes Gustav and Ike this year, virtually destroyed several islands running west into Louisiana. Among them are the Chandeleur Islands, a barrier chain formed thousands of years ago in a now-defunct delta of the Mississippi River, and other islands in the Breton National Wildlife Refuge.

Storms and climate change are partly to blame. But the region as a whole is subsiding. And in some areas, some critics contend, federal dredging projects are robbing islands of sand.

The result is a chain of feeble island remnants. In many places, as Dr. Sallenger observed at one point, “there ain’t nothing here but white water.”

So Karen Morgan, a geologist at the Geological Survey making still photos of the landscape, at times found herself instructing the pilot, Rob Kent, to navigate not by a shoreline but by a line of white water breaking over the submerged shoals that are the islands’ remains. In some places, there were not even breakers to show where dry land had been.

These islands are uninhabited, but they are valuable nonetheless, and not just for storm protection. With their extensive dunes and vegetation, the islands were once an important nesting place for brown pelicans and a variety of other birds. In the last few years, Dr. Sallenger said, the Chandeleurs have lost about 85 percent of their land mass, and with this loss “the habitat for birds on the flyway has decreased by an enormous percentage.”

Of course, the islands have not vanished altogether. And the scientists, who fly this coast regularly, have many times seen islands in these chains erode in storms and then recover — at least somewhat. But that can happen only as long as their underlying platforms of marsh remain intact, providing a place for sand to collect. In many places today, those platforms are “frail and really beaten down,” Dr. Sallenger said.

Dr. Sallenger said the Geological Survey scientists would try to advise officials at the Fish and Wildlife Service, which administers the refuge, what they could expect in the next 5 to 10 years. The outlook is grim.

Storms have already lopped miles off each end of the largest island in the Chandeleur chain. Will the islands bounce back? “We are going to look at the data again,” Dr. Sallenger said. “It looks very tenuous.”

The outlook for Ship Island is similarly daunting, in large part because of the difficulty of finding the necessary sand. “This is a very big operation to put this back together,” Dr. Sallenger said. “It’s not a small deal.”

MARITIME NOTE

New Edition of International Maritime Dangerous Goods (IMDG) Code Available From Labelmaster

Publication is a must for anyone handling packaged dangerous goods and maritime pollutants by sea

Chicago, Illinois (Vocus/PRWEB ) October 2, 2008 -- Many maritime countries have taken steps to regulate the carriage of marine pollutants in packaged form. Shippers can turn to the International Maritime Dangerous Goods (IMDG) Code as the authoritative text on all aspects of handling packaged dangerous goods and marine pollutants by sea. The new edition of the IMDG Code will be available from Labelmaster®, a U.S.-based manufacturer of hazardous materials and regulatory compliance products, on October 27. You can start using the publication from January 1st 2009, but usage is mandatory as of January 1st 2010.

Included in the IMDG Code are detailed requirements for labeling, marking, and documentation, and training provisions for articles defined as dangerous. The Code also includes packaging requirements for each article, as well as testing procedures for large and small packages.

First published in 1965, the 34th edition of the IMDG Code includes the following new features:

• EmS numbers are added to Column 15 of the Dangerous Goods List
• Substantial changes to the Dangerous Goods List
• Revisions to the construction and testing of packages and IBCs
• New recommendations for the training needs of shore side personnel

The IMDG Code is available at $219.00 for a two-volume, perfect-bound set, or on a USB drive or CD at $495. The IMDG Code Supplement is also available for $109.00 each. Special pricing is available for five copies or more. To order, please call 1-800-621-5808 or email sales@labelmaster.com.

For additional information on IMDG Code products visit:

IMDG Code: www.labelmaster.com/IMDGCode

IMDG Code Supplement: www.labelmaster.com/IMDGCodeSupplement

IMDG Code USB Drive: www.labelmaster.com/IMDGRegstick

IMDG Code Software: www.labelmaster.com/IMDGCodeCD

Labelmaster, established in 1967, is a developer, manufacturer, distributor, and marketer of hazardous materials compliance products, including labels, forms, packaging, software, and publications. The company's 40 years of experience in providing regulatory information and products for all transportation modes make it especially qualified as a total compliance resource. For additional information visit www.labelmaster.com.

RS

Scientist Uncovers Miscalculation In Geological Undersea Record

Scientist Uncovers Miscalculation In Geological Undersea Record

ScienceDaily (Sep. 13, 2008)

The precise timing of the origin of life on Earth and the changes in life during the past 4.5 billion years has been a subject of great controversy for the past century.

The principal indicator of the amount of organic carbon produced by biological activity traditionally used is the ratio of the less abundant isotope of carbon, ¹³C, to the more abundant isotope, ¹²C. As plants preferentially incorporate ¹²C, during periods of high production of organic material the ¹³C/¹²C ratio of carbonate material becomes elevated. Using this principle, the history of organic material has been interpreted by geologists using the 13C/12C ratio of carbonates and organics, wherever these materials can be sampled and dated.

While this idea appears to be sound over the last 150 million years or so, prior to this time there are no open oceanic sediment records which record the ¹³C/¹²C ratio, and therefore, geologists are forced to use materials associated with carbonate platforms or epicontinental seas.

In order to test whether platform-associated sediments are related to the global carbon cycle, a paper by University of Miami Professor Dr. Peter K. Swart appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This paper examines changes over the past 10 million years at sites off the Bahamas (Atlantic Ocean), the Maldives (Indian Ocean), and Great Barrier Reef (Pacific Ocean). The variations in the ¹³C/¹²C ratio are synchronous at all of the sites studied, but are unrelated to the global change in the ¹³C/¹²C ratio.

It appears that records related to carbonate platforms which are often used throughout the early history of the Earth are not good recorders of the ¹³C/¹²C ratio in the open oceans. Hence, the work presented suggests that assumptions made previously about changes in the ¹³C/¹²C ratios of carbonate sediments in the geological record are incorrect.

"This study is a major step in terms of rethinking how geologists interpret variations in the ¹³C/¹²C ratio throughout Earth's history. If the approach does not work over the past 10 million years, then why would it work during older time periods?" said Swart. "As a consequence of our findings, changes in ¹³C/¹²C records need to be reevaluated, conclusions regarding changes in the reservoirs of carbon will have to be reassessed, and some of the widely-held ideas regarding the elevation of CO₂ during specific periods of the Earth's geological history will have to be adjusted."

The study is funded by the National Science Foundation and the Comparative Sedimentology Laboratory at the University of Miami.

WEATHER NOTE

Climate: New spin on ocean's role

New studies of the Southern Ocean are revealing previously unknown features of giant spinning eddies that have a profound influence on marine life and on the world's climate.

These massive swirling structures � the largest are known as gyres - can be thousands of kilometres across and can extend down as deep as 500 metres or more, a research team led by a UNSW mathematician, Dr Gary Froyland, has shown in the latest study published in Physical Review Letters.

"The water in the gyres does not mix well with the rest of the ocean, so for long periods these gyres can trap pollutants, nutrients, drifting plants and animals, and become physical barriers that divert even major ocean currents," Dr Froyland says.

"In effect, they provide a kind of skeleton for global ocean flows. We're only just beginning to get a grip on understanding their size, scale and functions, but we are sure that they have a major effect on marine biology and on the way that heat and carbon are distributed around the planet by the oceans."

One of the best known large-scale gyres in the world's oceans is that associated with the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic, notes fellow researcher Professor Matthew England, co-director of the UNSW Climate Change Research Centre.

MARITIME NOTE

Donjon responds to Ike

Hillside, N.J. headquartered Donjon Marine Co., Inc. has been playing its part in cleaning up after Hurricane Ike.

Donjon, whose services include marine salvage, heavy lift, dredging and related emergency response, was contracted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers through the company's salvage and related services contract with the U.S. Navy, Supervisor of Salvage of Diving, to remove and dispose of debris after Ike's trek through Texas.

To date, this debris has included vessels, containers and upland material, such as sections of houses and local storefronts, which accumulated in the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway just outside Galveston, Texas.

Donjon subcontracted this work to various area-based marine service providers for equipment and labor, while Donjon provided onsite project management, logistical and financial support.

Great Lakes – dry cargo residue discharge

The US Coast Guard issued a press release stating that, next Monday, it will formally propose regulations that will, if adopted, require operators of lake carriers to keep records of loading, unloading, and discharges of dry cargo residue. It will also encourage lake carriers to use control measures to reduce the amount of dry cargo residue entering waters of the Great Lakes. Discharges into certain protected and sensitive waters will be prohibited. Comments on the proposal should be submitted by January 15, 2009. (9/25/08).

Australia – report on ship-fishing vessel collision

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) issued the report of its investigation of a collision between a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) carrier and a fishing vessel on 30 November 2007 off Queensland. Neither vessel was maintaining a proper lookout and the LPG carrier failed to report the collision and made no attempt to contact the damaged fishing vessel. (9/25/08).

STAY SAFE!
RS

Research team proposes new link to tropical African climate

Research team proposes new link to tropical African climate

The Lake Tanganyika area, in southeast Africa, is home to nearly 130 million people living in four countries that bound the lake, the second deepest on Earth.

Scientists have known that the region experiences dramatic wet and dry spells, and that rainfall profoundly affects the area's people, who depend on it for agriculture, drinking water and hydroelectric power.

Scientists thought they knew what caused those rains: a season-following belt of clouds along the equator known as the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). Specifically, they believed the ITCZ and rainfall and temperature patterns in the Lake Tanganyika area marched more or less in lockstep. When the ITCZ moved north of the equator during the northern summer, the heat (and moisture) would follow, depriving southeast Africa of moisture and rainfall. When the ITCZ moved south of the equator during the northern winter, the moisture followed, and southeast Africa got rain.

Now a Brown-led research team has discovered the ITCZ may not be the key to southeast Africa's climate after all. Examining data from core sediments taken from Lake Tanganyika covering the last 60,000 years, the researchers report in this week's Science Express that the region's climate instead appears to be linked with ocean and atmospheric patterns in the Northern Hemisphere. The finding underscores the interconnectedness of the Earth's climate - how weather in one part of the planet can affect local conditions half a world away.

The discovery also could help scientists understand how tropical Africa will respond to global warming, said Jessica Tierney, a graduate student in Brown's Geological Sciences Department and the paper's lead author.

"It just implies the sensitivity of rainfall in eastern Africa is really high," Tierney said. "It doesn't really take much to tip it."

The researchers, including James Russell and Yongsong Huang of Brown's Department of Geological Sciences faculty and scientists at the University of Arizona and the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, identified several time periods in which rainfall and temperature in southeast Africa did not correspond with the ITCZ's location. One such period was the early Holocene, extending roughly from 11,000 years ago to 6,000 years ago, in which the ITCZ's location north of the equator would have meant that tropical Africa would have been relatively dry. Instead, the team's core samples showed the region had been wet.

Two other notable periods - about 34,000 years ago and about 58,000 years ago - showed similar discrepancies, the scientists reported.

In addition, the team found climatic changes that occurred during stadials (cold snaps that occur during glacial periods), such as during the Younger Dryas, suddenly swung rainfall patterns in southeast Africa. Some of those swings occurred in less than 300 years, the team reported.

"That's really fast," Tierney noted, adding it shows precipitation in the region is "jumpy" and could react abruptly to changes wrought by global warming.

While the scientists concluded the ITCZ is not the dominant player in shaping tropical African climate, they say more research is needed to determine what drives rainfall and temperature patterns there. They suspect that a combination of winter winds in northern Asia and sea surface temperatures in the Indian Ocean have something to do with it. Under this scenario, the winds emanating from Asia would pick up moisture from the Indian Ocean as they swept southward toward tropical Africa. The warmer the waters the winds passed over, the more moisture would be gathered, and thus, more rain would fall in southeast Africa. The theory would help explain the dry conditions in southeast Africa during the stadials, Tierney and Russell said, because Indian Ocean surface temperatures would be cooler, and less moisture would be picked up by the prevailing winds.

"What happens in southeast Africa appears to be really sensitive to the Indian Ocean's climate," Russell said.

The team examined past temperature in the region using a proxy called TEX86, developed by the Dutch contributing authors. To measure past precipitation, the researchers examined fatty acid compounds contained in plant leaf waxes stored in lakebed sediments - a relatively new proxy but considered by scientists to be a reliable gauge of charting past rainfall.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Brown University

WEATHER NOTE

The Al Gilkes column – Storm chasing in US
BY AL GILKES

TOWARDS THE END of last month, I packed my bags, got a ride to Grantley Adams International, boarded an aircraft and headed north to enjoy some much needed rest and relaxation.

It was the start of my annual holiday with my two sons up North. And as the plane climbed thousands of feet into the vast blue skies, I reclined my seat, stretched my feet out to their fullest extent, afforded by the extra leg room of an emergency exist, closed my eyes for a moment and allowed my mind and body to slowly drain themselves of all stresses.

I prayed that Barbados and the other countries in the region would be spared the ravage of tropical storms and hurricanes while I was away. The truth is I did not want a repeat of what happened three years ago when I broke my holiday to rush back home to prepare for the onset of a hurricane.

I vividly recalled how on that occasion every prediction and projection showed Barbados squarely in the direct path of the massive system that was churning its way westward across the Atlantic threatening death and destruction on an unknown scale.

I will never forget how after watching satellite imagery on TV, which showed the outer bands of clouds already in the vicinity of the island and hearing the American forecaster confidently predict that Barbados would start to feel the full fury by nightfall the next day, I called the airline and booked myself on the next direct flight home.

What mattered then was that my relatives, friends, and all of Barbados were under the threat of hurricane force winds and flooding rain and there was no way I could enjoy the party while that was happening.

Fortunately, as has been the case repeatedly since 1956 when many lives were lost and the island suffered millions of dollars in destruction of property, crops, and infrastructure, by the time I landed at Grantley Adams in the early evening, the hurricane watch had been discontinued after the system shifted gears and switched to another route.

But the saying goes that what ain't catch yuh ain't pass you; and so it was that while relaxing in Boston the second Thursday I was there, I clicked the Weather Channel icon on my laptop's desktop to see what was and what was not only to discover that a storm warning had been issued – not for Barbados but for Massachusetts where I was.

That's right. Hanna was about to blow ashore with 70 mph winds on the Carolina coast the next day, then race up the Atlantic Coast, reaching New England by Sunday morning.

By the Saturday night, the storm, which was blamed for disastrous flooding and more than 100 deaths in Haiti, was dumping tonnes of rain on Boston with some cruel thunder and lighting. However, the movement over land had robbed it of any meaningful wind speeds and apart from flooding in some areas there were no reports of roofs being blown off or of any other damage normally associated with strong storms.

Never would I have believed before then that a tropical storm would follow me from Barbados all the way up north to Boston.

Severe Storms Research Center Boosts Defenses Against Twisters

The tornado that ripped through downtown Atlanta on March 14, 2008, produced a death, psychological shock and some $150 million in damage. Yet it was hardly an isolated event.

Georgia ranks high among tornado-plagued areas of the United States. It was 18th among the most affected states between 1953 and 2004. And in 2007, Georgia experienced 42 twisters; only seven states suffered more hits.

Helping to protect Georgia residents against such violent weather is the job of the researchers of the Severe Storms Research Center (SSRC) at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI). One of their tasks: to explore and develop new technologies able to improve both the accuracy and the timeliness of tornado warnings.

Currently, NEXRAD Doppler radar technology is state-of-the-art in the U.S., which is ravaged by more tornadoes than anyplace else on Earth. NEXRAD offers about a 15-minute average advance warning that a tornado may hit.

"That’s a big improvement over the old days, when a funnel cloud on the horizon was often the first warning,” said John Trostel, deputy director of the SSRC. “Before NEXRAD was established in the 1990s, you would have been lucky to have gotten a 30-second warning.”

The GTRI center was founded after a tornado struck Gainesville, Ga., with no warning in March 1998, leaving 11 people dead in Hall County, recalls SSRC Director Gene Greneker. A task force formed by then-Georgia Gov. Zell Miller recommended a severe-storms center with several missions, including conducting cutting-edge research, collecting and archiving storm data and improving detection and warning. The center was initially funded through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and on-going support has come through the state of Georgia with the continuing involvement of the Georgia Emergency Management Agency (GEMA).

"Part of our goal is to explore what’s different about the severe storms of north Georgia,” Greneker said. “Tornadoes in Georgia are often short-lived events that take place over a few minutes, while those in Kansas or Oklahoma may last for an hour.”

NEXRAD continues to be the first line of tornado defense, Greneker explains. Earlier weather radars dating back to the 1950s could sometimes reveal the classic “hook” echo on some tornadoes, but NEXRAD is far more effective.

Today’s national network of NEXRAD stations uses three-dimensional Doppler technology to detect wind direction and other factors; the information shows up on-screen in brightly colored cells that resemble the pixels of a heavily magnified digital photo. When winds in a given area begin to twist in opposite directions - a tornadic phenomenon called wind shear - two cells form a distinctive on-screen “couplet” that alerts weather watchers a tornado may be forming.

SSRC uses several tools to amass and study NEXRAD data, including GR2Analyst software, developed in Georgia, and a WDSS-II analysis station.

"I’m seeing very interesting trends in the number of tornadoes that occur annually in Georgia,” Trostel said. “There was an average of about 15 to 25 events from 1950 through 1970, then a peak in the early 1970s to over 40 events, and then a return to 15 to 25. But since 2000, the trend in the number of annual events appears to be again increasing.”

New Insights into Tornadoes

NEXRAD is an important tool, Trostel acknowledges. Yet to increase the weather watcher’s arsenal, and potentially improve warning times and accuracy, GTRI researchers are developing additional approaches to tornado detection and monitoring.

Currently, SSRC studies North Georgia weather using 12 research systems that use a wide variety of instruments, sensors, computers and software, with two more systems under development. Researchers involved in the effort include Greneker, Trostel, Ed Reedy, Tom Perry and Jenny Matthews, as well as a number of students.

Among the SSRC’s top areas of study is the complex role that lightning and acoustics play in North Georgia’s severe storms and in the formation of tornadoes.

Lightning - Researchers based at GTRI’s Cobb County Research Facility are pursuing several approaches that could potentially correlate lightning’s behavior with tornado activity:

Lightning mapping arrays use multiple receiving stations to monitor severe storms as they move through an area. The SSRC and other Atlanta-area weather stations - such as the National Weather Service at Peachtree City - are developing a six-station array that will augment data already coming from an existing array in northern Alabama;

Electric field mills measure the enormous changes in electric fields between fair weather and severe storms, providing important data that can even correlate raindrop size and frequency with other storm parameters;

A lighting polarization ratio station monitors the horizontally and vertically polarized radio-frequency signals created by lightning strokes, providing data on the behavior of cloud- to-cloud and cloud-to-ground lightning. Greater understanding of lightning, especially the less-understood cloud-to-cloud variety, could shed light on tornado formation;

Gamma-ray detectors record the gamma- and X-rays that emanate from lightning strokes, and offer the potential to correlate the appearance of these powerful phenomena with tornado activity.

Acoustic signals - Severe storms emit very low-frequency sounds—in the range of 50 hertz and below, which is analogous to the sonic footprint of an earthquake. Tornado vortices appear to emit these “infra-sounds” in frequencies ranging from 1 hertz down to tenths of a hertz. At the Cobb Country Research Facility, GTRI researchers are building an array of low-frequency sensors that may allow them to identify sonic signatures unique to tornadoes.

Trostel notes that there are myriad ways to study severe storms, many of them surprisingly cost-efficient. He points to a field mill developed by a local high-school student; constructed from such materials as a coffee can, it can detect electrical fields associated with storms.

"This device does a very good job, and it cost $87,” Trostel said. “We want to get Georgia high-school science classes to construct and deploy these detectors - and then we could track storm-related electrical fields as they progress across the state.”

War over water a source of division

Limited water supplies due to a continuing drought and Israeli restrictions are making life even harder for Palestinian farmers For Palestinians the West Bank water crisis is ‘suffocating’ because it affects both families and businesses, ‘whereas Israel is talking about reducing water for recreational purposes, such as ... swimming pools and lawns’ Abdel-Rahman Tamimi

IN THE plains around the village of Bardala, the Israeli-Palestinian tug-of-war over land and water plays itself out in vivid colour. Largely brown Palestinian farms border green fields owned by Jewish settlers, reports Reuters.

Israel and the occupied West Bank have both been hit hard by drought, but Palestinian farmers say Israeli restrictions on their water supplies have made conditions far worse for them than for farmers in nearby Jewish settlements.

In many homes in the West Bank city of Jenin, water has been all but cut off since April. To cope, residents of Jenin and hundreds of villages get their water delivered by truck at sky-high prices.

In US-sponsored peace talks over Palestinian statehood, disputes over water may be overshadowed by more sensitive issues like the future of Jerusalem and refugees. But Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said an accord would be “unthinkable” without agreement on dividing up the region’s water resources. “If you want to have a state, you must have water,” said Palestinian Water Authority chief Shaddad Attili.

In Bardala in the northern Jordan Valley, Ziyad Sawafta says he gets only enough water to plant vegetables and other crops on half his 50ha plot.

To illustrate the disparity, Sawafta, a 60-year-old father of four, points to the thriving citrus grove next door, owned by the Jewish settlement of Mehola and fed with water through a network of irrigation pipes. Sawafta invokes a common Arab saying for illustration. “We get only the ear from the whole camel. The rest of the camel goes to the settlements”.

Israeli Water Authority spokesman Uri Shor said Palestinians get more water than called for under interim peace agreements. He attributed shortages to Palestinians who he said illegally tap into the water system.

Water has long been a scarce resource in the Middle East but the problem is more acute this year. Scant rainfall has further strained supplies already restricted by Israel, which largely controls the West Bank’s three main aquifers.

Water Authority Chief Attili estimated Palestinian farmers in West Bank and Gaza need 250m cu m of water per year purely for irrigation, but get only about 50m cu m a year. The total amount of water that Palestinians get from their own resources and from Israel is estimated at 200m cu m annually.

”People and land are thirsty and we can do little about it,” Attili said.

Palestinian officials say Israel controls some 50 West Bank wells, with a total capacity of 50m cu m per year, directing it mainly to Jewish settlements, which house some 250,000 people.

The Palestinians control about 200 shallow wells in the West Bank, many of them drilled before the 1967 Middle East war in which Israel captured the territory. Those wells produce about 105m cu m per year, but they are meant to supply water to 2.5m Palestinians.

Attili says West Bank Palestinians supplement their own well supplies by buying up to 45m cu m of water from Israel. Another 5m cu m bought from Israel goes to the Gaza Strip, supplementing 50m cu m from an aquifer.

A big part of the problem for Palestinians, officials and human rights groups say, is that the amount of water supplied by Israel, set by quotas in interim peace agreements in the 1990s, has not increased in line with Palestinian population growth.

”That is not fair,” Attili said, adding that the shortages could be alleviated if Israel allowed his authority to drill two or three new wells in the West Bank.

But the Israeli Water Authority believes permitting Palestinians to drill more wells could “ruin” the existing West Bank aquifers. Israeli officials say Palestinians are not the only ones facing water shortages. Underscoring its concerns, Israel’s government has launched a public campaign to discourage residents and businesses from wasting limited supplies.

Head of the Palestinian Hydrology Group Abdel-Rahman Tamimi said there was no comparison between the shortages facing Israelis and those facing Palestinians in the West Bank because some areas do not even have piped water and other areas suffer from irregular access to drinkable water.

He described the West Bank water crisis as ‘suffocating’ because it affects both families and businesses, ‘whereas Israel is talking about reducing water for recreational purposes, such as ... swimming pools and lawns’.

A recent report by the Israeli human rights group B’tselem said Israeli households consumed on average 3.5 times as much water as Palestinian households.

The group attributed the water shortage in Palestinian areas to what it called Israel’s ‘discriminatory’ policy in distributing water resources and restrictions on drilling new wells.

The shortages have translated into brisk business for water delivery trucks in several West Bank areas. Jenin is connected to the water system but dwindling supplies have forced many there to turn to water vendors, whose prices have soared due to heavy demand and limited supply.

A recent UN report found that Palestinians in some of the hardest-hit communities were spending as much as 30%-40% of their income on water delivered by truck. The Israeli Water Authority did not return several calls from Reuters to request similar information about Israeli consumers.

”I have never witnessed such shortage before,” said Hussein Rahhal, a 73-year-old Jenin water vendor, as he stood by his truck in a long queue of similar vehicles waiting to fill their tanks. He added that some Jenin wells have already dried up.

His colleague, Hashem Abdel-Hafith, who nodded in agreement with Rahhal, said he switched off his mobile phone because he could not keep up with callers demanding water.

In Bardala, home to nearly 2,000 Palestinians, farmers remember better days. Bardala had a surplus of water until the late 1970s when Israel drilled three deep wells next to the village’s four shallow wells, causing them to dry up, they said.

Since then, Israel has reduced the amount of water it pumps to Bardala’s farms, from 240 cu m per hour to 140, forcing many to slash production by up to 50% and to choose crops such as aubergine and beans that can survive on one watering per week.

Another Bardala farmer Yousef Sawafta said prices were falling because everyone in the village was planting the same drought-resistant crops. “In the past, one could find all kinds of vegetables throughout the year. It is not the same any more,” he said.

MARITIME NOTE

SALVORS TO PRODUCE BEST PRACTICE GUIDELINES

MARINE salvage companies meeting in Malta this week have decided move ahead rapidly to produce best practice guidelines for Marine Casualty Management. The guidelines will intended to assist governments, shipowners and managers, port authorities and other interests directly involved in ship salvage operations.

For several years the International Salvage Union (ISU) has proposed the production of best practice guidelines for Marine Casualty Management (MCM Guidelines). At its Annual General Meeting in Malta, ISU members endorsed the project to complete guidelines for circulation and use by salvors, shipowners and coastal states worldwide. The intention is to complete the guidelines during 2009.

ISU president Arnold Witte said: “There is existing International Maritime Organization (IMO) guidance on the issue of places of refuge. There is also very general IMO guidance on general issues relating to the control of ships in emergency situations. What is missing is specific, comprehensive guidance on best practice throughout the entire casualty management process. The MCM Guidelines will fill that gap and, in doing so, will sharpen and enhance marine emergency response capabilities worldwide. Our intention is to consult with our maritime industry partners when finalising the guidelines.”

The guidelines will include provisions on: Pre-event preparations for effective response Special considerations relating to specific casualty types (for example, collision, fire, grounding) First response actions (shore-side and salvor mobilisation, together with ship-board response) Preparing and implementing the Salvage Plan Progressing the salvage operation (including pollution prevention and public issues) Re-delivery of the casualty Key factors contributing to successful salvage and pollution prevention

ISU members have also decided to call for publication of Lloyds Form Salvage Awards, including the full text of the Arbitrator’s Reasons. Mr Witte said: “It is important that the Lloyds arbitration system is not only entirely fair to all sides but is also seen to be fair. An open policy on publication, should the parties involved in the particular case agree, would amount to a great advance in demonstrating the impartiality, validity and flexibility of the Lloyds Open Form (LOF) system

RS

1938: The 'wind that shook the world' kills 700 here

1938: The 'wind that shook the world' kills 700 here

70 years ago: The 1938 surprise hurricane.

New England's worst and America's 5th worst

By Walter Brooks

On this day 70 years ago, I was looking out the front window of my parent's home on Route 6 in Woodbury, Conn., as one by one the eight giant elm trees in front of our yard were blown over like twigs by the worst hurricane New England ever experienced. nd my home was 22 miles from the nearest salt water in Long Island Sound.

New England has had 24 hurricanes and 14 tropical storms since 1900, but this one was the worst.

Except for a junior forecaster in the U.S. Weather Bureau who predicted the storm but was overruled by the chief forecaster, the Weather Bureau experts and the general public never saw it coming.

Later that day, the greatest weather disaster ever to hit Long Island and New England struck in the form of a category 3 hurricane. Long Island, New York and New England were changed forever by the "Long Island Express."

Case studies have shown that the next time a storm like the Long Island Express roars through, it might be the greatest disaster in U.S. history.

Nobody saw it coming, and Hitler blew it off the front page

Cape Cod almost "got it" in the 1938 Hurricane
The hurricane of 1938 has been called, "the wind that shook the world". In 1938 the U.S. Weather Bureau wasn't what it is today . Meteorologists depended on the merchant ships and aircraft to forecast the weather. At 2:15 on Wednesday, September 21 1938 a Long Island fisherman saw what he thought was a huge fog bank, then, he realized it wasn't fog. It was a churning wall of water 50 feet high bearing down on the New England coast and thirteen million unsuspecting people, with 200 miles per hour winds. The eye of the hurricane came at 60 mph, the velocity of a tornado. It hit the Connecticut shore a little after 3p.m. and flooded downtown Providence and New Bedford.

Future Oracle reporter on the job
Barns sixty miles inland were white with salt spray the next morning. 700 died and 100,000 were homeless in an era when the population was a quarter of what it is today. Communications and roads to Cape Cod were cut off, but an enterprising young Orleans native and reporter, Mary Smith, at the Providence Journal contacted the French Cable Co. in Brest, France to find out what the conditions were in her hometown. A few years later she and her husband Ed started The Oracle newspaper.

The great New England hurricane of 1938 struck at high tide, which coincided with the highest astronomical tide of the year, pushing a storm surge of 12 to 15 feet across the south coast and up the many bays and inlets including Narragansett and Buzzards Bays. Winds of over 120 mph blew across the coastal regions. The Blue Hill observatory, in Milton MA, recorded a sustained 5-minute wind of 121 mph and a peak gust to 186 mph.

Parts of interior Connecticut and Massachusetts not only bore the brunt of high winds, but also experienced severe river flooding as rain from the hurricane combined with heavy rains earlier that week to produce rainfall totals of up to 17 inches. This resulted in some of the worst river flooding ever experienced in parts of Connecticut and Massachusetts.

This powerful storm caused 564 deaths and over 1,700 injuries. Nearly 9,000 homes and businesses were destroyed with over 15,000 damaged. The boating community was equally devastated with 2,600 boats destroyed and 3,300 damaged.

WHOI as the wave hit Cape Cod, and houses floated through the Cape Cod Canal.

Those who survived the hurricane have extraordinary stories to tell. Everett S. Allen titles one such book of vignettes "A Wind To Shake The World, The Story of the 1938 Hurricane".

The author, a Vineyarder who began his first newspaper job as waterfront reporter at the New Bedford Standard-Times on the day the hurricane hit, captures the essence of shock and despair and at times, humor and irony in the many stories from the three New England states that suffered this freak of nature. The book is available at your public library or be sure to check the Internet used-book sites for this gem of a book. In the preface he writes:

"For two years, I have forced myself -- and countless others -- to see again the sick color of sky and sea on that day, to hear the scream of the wind, which was everywhere.

"To confront anew the shocking, instant obliteration of what had always been assumed permanent and mile upon mile of man's work reduced to rubble.

"And I have forced myself and others to see man himself, face down and weaving like weed in the roiling shallows or open-mouthed and still, half-buried in the damp sand. I have made people weep by asking them to remember what for many of them remains their most terrible day."

"The Long Island Express" kills 700

September 10th, 1938 is the first day the weather disturbance was tracked as a tropical storm. The winds began to intensify to hurricane level on September 15th and within four more days, grew to a category 5 - the highest and most intense and deadly level.

One wonders if we should be thankful that on the day of landfall the storm was at category 4, and as it hit land was reducing to category 3? The death of this storm occurred on the 22nd of September after leaving in its wake close to 700 deaths from the tri-state area and beyond.

Diana Rosenberg, a well-known astrologer from New York, said that her family summer home on Long Island was destroyed and some of their documents were blown hundreds of miles north to the state of New Hampshire.

Then Germany invaded Czechoslovakia

Please note that many of our worst storms have companion events in the day-to-day world. On Sept. 21, 1938, Adolph Hitler gained his first foothold in the Sudentenland.

In addition to the extreme loss of life, the abundant stately elm trees and white church spires, the pillars of many New England communities fell and while the steeples could be replaced, the trees never returned to their original splendor.

A disease - the Dutch Elm disease - killed off the remaining elms.

The 1938 hurricane is the most intense tropical cyclone to strike the United States Atlantic coastline north of North Carolina. Along the Atlantic coast of the United States (north of Florida) - only Hurricanes Hugo (1989) and Hazel (1954) - were more intense at landfall. Every record for wind speed, tidal surge, and barometric pressure in New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island - can be traced to this single event.

Overall, a six-state area experienced economic difficulties for many years due to the record flooding and many mill towns in New England were inundated.

When the "big one" hit Cape Cod

Paul Gately in the Bourne Courier did a bang-up report on the storm this week:

A sailboat was tossed to the shoreline north of Chester Park in the hurricane of '38. Bourne Historical Commission.

The catastrophic Hurricane of 1938 hit Bourne on the afternoon of Sept. 21, killing seven townspeople. Selectmen in their report said the storm “tore through an unprepared community; the angry sea irritated by ceaseless winds, arose like one huge wave and approached helpless nearby villages.”

Buzzards Bay shopkeepers were forced to evacuate their businesses due to rising water, and townspeople boarded themselves up in their homes... Bourne Courier.

WEATHER NOTE

Life and death after Ike

The mixed political response to Hurricane Ike has reinforced the idea that Texans can't rely on the government for help

As with every storm, Hurricane Ike will be either a boom or bust for politicians. Some will reaffirm the trust that voters placed in them. Others will embarrass their constituents on a national stage. Some politicians shine in the spotlight. Others just crash and burn. Bill White, the mayor Houston, Texas, and Ed Emmit, a Harris County judge, have shone, going so far as to camp out and become dispatchers when relief supplies bottlenecked, leaving people waiting in line for hours for ice that was sitting in a parking lot at a sports arena.

To their south however, Lyda Ann Thomas, the mayor of Galveston, appears to be going through an emotional meltdown. On Tuesday, Thomas announced that Galveston residents would be allowed back on Galveston Island briefly. Predictably to everyone but Thomas and her city manager, thousands rushed back to the island, clogging the major highway with a 10-mile long traffic jam and burning already scarce gasoline. Thomas quickly reversed her decision, leaving thousands of her constituents parked on the highway waiting to enter, justifiably irate.

The next day she was reduced to tears during a meeting of the remnants of the Galveston city council when a council member accused Thomas of showing favouritism by allowing a selected few to return to the island and providing essential services such as tetanus shots to city employees while denying them to residents that remained on the island.

There are some things that have changed about hurricanes in recent years. Hurricane Katrina hangs over the head of every coastal area politician. Nobody wants to be the next Ray Nagin (the mayor of New Orleans), Kathleen Blanco (the former governor of Louisiana) or George Bush. Even Bush doesn't want to be Bush. He took to the airwaves last Saturday morning to send a message that he was aware that a hurricane had struck the fourth largest city in the country.

For his efforts, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) remains the whipping boy for everything that goes wrong in the aftermath of the storm. "Blame Fema" is the new post-hurricane mantra. I didn't even know Fema existed as a child. Prior to Katrina, most Americans likely didn't know what Fema did, and apparently some local officials still don't know.

Despite news reports to the contrary, most Texans aren't relying on Fema. They are relying instead on what we have always relied on in hurricane country: the FFEMA, the Family and Friends Emergency Management Agency.

Our family disaster response swung into action when I got the call from my mother at 7:00am a week ago. Jefferson County officials had ordered a mandatory evacuation of my hometown in southeast Texas. My parents and extended family hadn't bothered to unpack from their evacuation for Hurricane Gustav a little over a week earlier. My mother wanted to head west toward me, but ended up heading north.

After that initial call, as is typical, the cell phone circuits were jammed and calls could not go through. Text messages became the only reliable means of communication. My parents didn't know how to text message, however. My sister on the east coast sent me a text the following morning that, after travelling overnight, my parents and assorted extended relatives had finally reached Arlington, Texas, where they were near family.

My two sisters who live in Houston messaged that they had decided to ride the storm out. My sister in the suburbs north of Houston lost an oak tree, but they survived Ike with no major structural damage. After a day and a half without electricity however, the novelty of playing board games in the dark got old, and they messaged that they were coming to stay with me in Austin.

Like my family, most people aren't waiting around for the federal or state government. They are clearing their streets, creating their own rudimentary power grids by draping extension cords across streets and driveways to share electricity with neighbours. Family members in unaffected areas are driving into town with coolers full of ices and five-gallon gasoline canisters strapped to roofs of cars and SUVs. It was a bit disconcerting driving on I-35 watching an SUV with six full five-gallon gas canisters strapped on top. Is that safe?

People are doing what they have always done after major storms, they are adapting to the situation. Which is why I taught my 60-something-year-old mother how to text message on Sunday when I drove to check on them at their hotel in north Texas. Cell phone companies can provide GPS, internet service and picture mail, but they haven't quite figured out how to cope with all of the families and friends who clamour for contact with each other in times of disaster.

Mama figured it out in about three minutes. In her exuberance in sending and receiving messages I had to caution her that text messaging is not part of her cellular plan. Her newly discovered modern day Morse code was probably costing her $0.15 a message. She didn't appear to care. Contact with the outside world was more than worth it.

MARITIME NOTE

The New Maritime Arctic

A lecture given by Dr Lawson Brigham

At the Institute of Marine Engineering Science & Technology (IMarEST)

8 September 2008

The Arctic Ocean is about five times the size of the Mediterranean. It has a large continental shelf, possibly the largest in the world, yet is approximately 2 miles deep at the North Pole.

16 September 2007 marked the minimum extent of polar ice in recorded history. The North West Passage was open for 16 days in 2007. The North East Passage (also known the Northern Sea Route (‘NSR’)) was open but even then needed strengthened, ice-capable ships to navigate the ice that remained.

The last fifty years have seen a steady decrease of ice in all seasons both in extent and also in the thickness. The average depth of the pack ice from the Barents Sea to the Baring Sea is approximately 1.8 metres to 2 metres in mid-winter.

Paradoxically, there is actually more ice this year than there was in 2007 although Dr Brigham was at pains to stress that the overall trend is for less ice, both in extent and in thickness.

He also said that, for reasons that are not yet readily explained, the age of the ice is changing too. The older ice, which has had most of the salt leached out of it and is much harder to break up by ships, is disappearing and being replaced by much younger ice. This leads to an increase in the ability of ships to use the circumpolar waters.

Uses of the Arctic Region

Dr Brigham then went through the five main uses of the Arctic as follows:

Hard minerals

Zinc and coal in Alaska - The largest zinc mine in the world is in Alaska and in the ice-free periods of the year some of the largest ships in the world dock there to load zinc. In eastern Canada, in Baffin Bay, one of the largest warehouses in the world holds iron ore deposits from the very large fields in the hinterland. Again, when the ice clears, some of the largest ships in the world sail there in order to load the iron ore and there is a regular trade route between Eastern Canada and the North West region of Russia (Murmansk and Norilsk).

Nickel and Copper in North West Russia - The largest nickel mine in the world is just near Norilsk.

Marine Tourism

There is an increasing amount of tourist activity in the polar regions. There have been 77 trips by ice-breaking ships to the North Pole itself although tickets are steep at somewhere in the region of US$30,000-$40,000 for each passenger (although there seems to be no shortage of applicants).

There is a certain amount of activity in the North West Passage, too, but this is of the lighter impact variety, mainly eco-tourism.

The more worrying type of activity is the non-ice capable ships that are now beginning to cruise in Greenland waters, these being mainly vessels that can and do normally potter around the Mediterranean and the Caribbean and are simply not capable of withstanding the heavy weather and extreme conditions that can prevail in Arctic waters even in summer.

Fisheries

Especially in the Barents Sea and the Baring Sea – as stocks get over-fished in the other main fisheries of the world there are increasing signs that the large fleets are moving ever northwards.

Oil and gas

This is the big driver, especially in the Chukchi Sea and the Beaufort Sea, and there has also been a massive increase in developments in North West Russia. Dr Brigham said that the relationship between Russia and Norway over the area disputed between those two countries is going to be critical in the coming decades.

Offshore exploration by scientists

Again, although this is relatively minor compared to the oil and gas expansion, there has been a significant increase in the amount of work carried out by scientists in the Polar Region and this is only likely to expand.

Arctic activity

A major problem for the region is that most of those interested in the Arctic are non-Arctic nations.

Although some countries appear not to know how many ships they have in the Arctic at any one time, the general consensus is there are probably about 5,000 ships active in the area each year.

To get some idea of the increase in activity by non-Arctic entities, consider that in 2005 there were 53 cruises in Greenland waters, in 2006 150 and in 2007 there are estimated to be over 200. Almost all of these come from non-Arctic countries and many fly under flags of convenience.

Most traffic in the Russian area is confined to the North West of the country, between and around Norilsk, Dudinka and Murmansk. It is odd but probably not that surprising to note that traffic on the North Sea route (NSR) is down from three hundred and thirty-one thousand trips in 1984 (when Soviet power was at its height) to around about fifty-four thousand now.

In terms of trade consider that from Hamburg to Yokohama can be done in one of the following ways:

• Northern Sea Route — 7,000 miles
• Suez — 11,000 miles
• Panama — 12,500 miles
• Cape of Good Hope — 14,500 miles

The potential for significant cost and time benefits in opening up the NSR is plain. However, the corollary of that is that vessels would be much more expensive, being ice-strengthened and their speed would be generally lower than coventional ships on conventional routes as they have to go more slowly through pack icE.

Risk scenarios

Dr Brigham said that the Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment (AMSA) of which he is one of the Chairs, had engaged in some scenario planning and had come up with the following not entirely unlikely events that might happen:

1. a collision between a tanker and a trawler in the Norway/Russia disputed region;
2. a fire on an oil rig in the Canada/US region;
3. a barge laden with explosives running aground near an indigenous settlement in the Canadian North;
4. a giant ore carrier sinking at the North Pole, flying under a flag of convenience and uninsured; and
5. a large cruise ship grounding off Greenland carrying 2,000 passengers and 900 crew.

This last one Dr Brigham said he thought particularly realistic and worrying, and he referred to the sinking of the Antarctic cruise ship Explorer on 23 November 2007. That incident had involved no loss of life but it should be remembered that that was a smaller and more weatherly vessel than many of the ships cruising in Greenland waters, that the weather was unusually good at the time of the incident and that they had had great good luck in that a Danish vessel happened to have been nearby.

He said that the probable scenario with the passengers on such a vessel was that there would be sufficient life boats to get them off but that the 900 or so crew would be left to their fate aboard life rafts of which there might not even be enough. In those waters even without submersion hypothermia begins to set in after about six to eight hours even in high Summer and so one could be looking at potentially a very large casualty rate.

He also pointed to the fact that in these waters, which are well off the normal beaten track for these sorts of cruise ships, there is no infrastructure, no support, no nearby hospitals, no easily available search and rescue facilities, the nearest salvage being five to six days away. All you needed was to have a fire, such as could break out anywhere on a cruise ship, involving say twenty to fifty people being badly burned and you might find that they would all die and more that the ship might be left stranded there subject to even worse events.

Drivers of activity

Commodities and their prices will drive the future of the Arctic at least in the short term. A USGS survey report was published in July 2008 which gives figures about the amount of oil, natural gas and minerals that are expected to be found in the Arctic as percentages of the world’s known deposits. Some of these really are rather speculative (how can one have a “100% probability” of oil being discovered in a certain place?).

There are also ecological issues and recently the power of ethnic groups and ecologically interested parties to stop and slow down the exploration/exploitation of the Arctic has been seen in Alaska where exploration has been brought to a halt by a series of law suits. A choke-point in the Baring Straits in particular could be susceptible to direct action in certain circumstances.

Another issue is that of pollution and emissions. There is some evidence, apparently, that normal emissions by ships have a much more deleterious effect in the Arctic, i.e. the very fact of operating in that particular climate makes the effect of the pollution much worse than it would do at, say, the Equator.

There are also legal wrangles over the rival claims to Exclusive Economic Zones. UNCLOS Article 76 provides that 200 miles from each country into the sea is effectively a private zone for that country. However, the US did not sign UNCLOS and the later Ilulissat Declaration – which was agreed by Canada, Denmark/Greenland, Norway, Russia and the USA – held that there was “no need for any further specific Arctic Treaty”. This, said Dr Brigham, struck him as odd and not altogether desirable.

Another factor is the new ship technology and in particular a new breed of Finnish built ships which operate without rudders but with propulsion systems at each end, the idea being that they proceed ahead in open water but stern ahead in ice. One such vessel is already being run by the Russians in their Arctic waters and is both very fast and very efficient.

RS

Never Ending Voyage: Henk De Velde about when lightning strikes

Never Ending Voyage: Henk De Velde about when lightning strikes

(TheOceans.net) Lightning can indeed strike twice; and listening for thunder will make you miss up to 40 per cent of lightning strokes. In US, about 100 people are killed by lightning each year, more than by tornadoes or hurricanes!

Interestingly, in spite of all kinds of weird weather and many years out there - ExWeb's founders have never experienced lightning storms on the Arctic Ocean or at Antarctica. Neither on the Atlantic Ocean and only once high up on Everest!

Yet thunder storms happen often enough at sea (often close to shore) and also on lower mountains (such as the Alps and the Rockies). While bigger boats can have elaborate systems; ocean rowers, budget sailors, campers and climbers remain unprotected.

The other week, ExWeb made a call for simple solutions. Henk de Velde heard us but following 30 years at sea; his experience still comes down to - rubber boots.

A tractor

Writes Henk:

"The safest places for a person outdoors in a thunderstorm are inside a metal-bodied car or lying flat on the ground. I can give an example of both."

"My brother in law, a farmer, was in the middle of an open field. When a thunderstorm approached, he went under his tractor. Don't ask me why but I think he also wanted shelter from the rain."

"The tractor was struck. He told me that he was laying there under the tractor flat on the ground for several seconds surrounded by fire. I think he was lucky to have survived."

A steel boat

"Another example happened to me. In thunder, a steel boat is the safest. I was sailing Campina about 700 miles north of the Hawaii islands, on my way to the Aleoutian Islands when lightning struck."

"I still remember what the sky looked like. I saw lightning strike the water around me and reefed sails. I went inside for protection when suddenly I heard a big boom. I thought the mast had fallen. All electricity failed."

"For a minute or shorter, a ball of fire danced through the saloon. It was ball-lightning. I never felt any heat, but my muscles went stiff and ached for more than half an hour. After the fireball was gone, I checked on the boat."

"The mast was good. All electronics were saved, with fuses blown. But all battery chargers burned, and wiring from the wind generator in addition to two other battery chargers had melted. I had to return to Hawaii to have it fixed. The battery chargers were toast beyond repair."

Grounding

"Lightning is dangerous. You can protect your boat by means of grounding but whatever you do, you can never be sure about not getting struck or not getting damage."

"On my first boat, a plywood Wharram cat, I would at times use a cable from the rigging to the water. As the mast was wood and the rigging was attached to the mast by rope lashings, I was never sure of the efficiency and on my next three catamarans, all racing boats with aluminum or later carbon masts, a mast to water grounding system didn't exist. Campina was a steel vessel and the perfect Faraday cage."

"My current Juniper is a wood/epoxy trimaran with two wooden wingshaped rotating masts. The boat, including mast, is built by her designer Chris White (www.chriswhitedesigns.com) with a lightning protection included."

"A wire extention points like an antenna from the free-standing top of the masts. This steel wire is connected to a cable inside the mast running to aluminium hounds on which the wire rigging is attached, going to chain plates in the floats and from there a wire leads to a grounding plate on the outside of the underwater floats."

"All instruments are grounded to a grounding plate in the main hull, as is the SSB radio which has an antenna wire through the mizzen mast. This is the best grounded boat I ever had."

"But what will happen with the new carbon mast? Carbon is a conductor. If I get a synthetic rig, I'll have to run a heavy cable from the bottom of the mast through the beams to the floats for the same protection. I'm not so sure about this as it will lead the high voltage a long distance through the boat."

St Elmo's fire and Ball lightning

"In all my 30 years of sailing I have only been struck once, but there was another event that I will never forget."

"I sailed Wharram off the coast of Panama with huge thunderstorms mounting above land. A noice sounded from the masthead and the wooden mast looked as if it was on fire - the top burned like a Xmas sparkling-light."

"I was frightened at first but then I realized this was St Elmo's fire - a luminous electric discharge that may appear on pointed objects during heavy storms. It is usually seen on steeples (tips of aircraft wings), the mastheads of ships, and sometimes near the head of a person or the horns of cattle."

In the end: keep your fingers crossed and off the rigging

"After all, statistically the chance of getting struck is very small even when you see lightning hitting the water around you. Lightning does not always search the highest spot."

"In a steel boat, you are safest inside and I would say this goes for all boats. If you have to be on deck - wear heavy rubber boots. Don't walk barefoot and don't touch the mast or the rigging."

Earlier this year, Henk De Velde arrived Argentina without a mast and a broken propeller. Henk plans to stay in the area for the rest of the year, waiting for the new mast and a new sailing season. Currently in Colonia in Uruguay, 300 miles from Mar del Plata, Henk is painting his decks and writing booklets such as "God and Grace" and "Resistance, Hope and Beauty" (not about sailing) and a travelbook titled "Nowhere is a place." After fixing the boat, Henk plans to explore the country on the cheap and hike the Andes. After all, it is a A Never Ending Voyage.

Henk de Velde was born in Holland January 12, 1949. His childhood dream was to become a captain and explorer. From the age of 10 until 14, he read all the books he could find on the subject. Starting out as deckhand at age 15, Henk worked in the Merchant Navy for 13 years and made Captain in 1978, with a master license for all ships in the Amsterdam Nautical Collage. "But after becoming a Captain I had to become an explorer," he told ExWeb.

Henk married Gini who also took part of his first journey. Their son was born in 1981 on Easter Island; the couple divorced 1984 in South Africa. Henk wrote 7 books, all in Dutch. He made two documentaries for Dutch TV. Austrian TV also produced 'Fire and Ice - the Flying Dutchman'.

Henk's other hobbies include riding motorbikes; he started with a 440 cc chopper and ended with a ZZR 1100 road bike. He gives lectures and talk shows about voyaging and life, with the message "Choose your own goal."

Henk first made waves on ExplorersWeb September 3, 2004 when disaster struck his Campina: "Ice floes clashed against each other constantly with a power enough to crack my ship," He reported. "Around 4 hours before darkness fell, the ice berg that we had been anchored to broke. We maneuvered Campina to a larger ice berg, between the floes."

"Then the flow twisted and a heavy iceberg pressed the boat against the wall of ice. We were crooked 10 degrees. The iceberg pressed the boat onto underwater ice. I heard an enormous cracking. We tied her up with long lines to the ice." Henk and his ice lots Boris, 72, were stuck in the ice wall of the Laptev sea.

The Northwest Passage proved impossible indeed, but Henk De Velde's "Impossible Journey" won a special mention in the 2004 ExWeb awards for his battle to the bitter end.

Henk de Velde had previously sailed around the world four times, three times non-stop and solo. The first trip lasted between 1978 and 1985… so Henk is known to take his time when out exploring. "The reason for traveling like this is to experience new things and enjoy life to the fullest," Henk said already back then.

After returning home from his "Impossible Journey" in 2004 - a sail attempt around the world via the "impossible" Northern seaway along the North East Passage above and along Siberia, Alaska, Cape Horn and Antarctica - Henk has now decided to go back out there - and stay.

WEATHER NOTE

Exhilarating' phenomena

Waterspout forms over Lake Michigan.

Cherry Scott wasn't expecting to see a waterspout when she walked out of her kitchen door Sunday afternoon. But there it was, a funnel of water and spray over Lake Michigan

A PHOTO of a waterspout taken by Cherry Scott of Northport shows a funnel descending from clouds over Lake Michigan.

Marty and Cherry Scott enjoy rural life on their Black Sheep Crossing Farm on Kehl Road in northern Leelanau Township, which sits about three-quarters of a mile from Lake Michigan. She said it was it was an unusual circumstance that had her looking in the right direction to see the waterspout starting to form over Lake Michigan.

“I just happened to look at the right spot at the right time. If I had come out of the house a minute later, I would have missed it,” she said. Scott grabbed her new digital camera and hustled out the door in the stocking feet to capture the image.

“I ran out into the cow pasture, it was kind of exhilarating. There wasn’t any noise, except right before it happened there was a tremendously loud crack of thunder,” Scott said.

Scott wasn’t the only person who saw the waterspout. Susan Shively was at her home on Lighthouse Point Road, about a half-mile north of the entrance of Cherry Home Shores Subdivision, when she saw the fully-formed tunnel of water as it moved north along the shoreline.

“I wasn’t sure at first what we were seeing. I thought it was a small tornado, but we learned later on it was a waterspout,” Shively said. According to Shively, the waterspout traveled north along the shoreline though she wasn’t sure how far out on Lake Michigan it was located. “We watched it for 15 minutes and then it just disappeared,” she said.

Shively and her husband have lived in northern Leelanau Township for 10 years. It was the first time they saw a waterspout.

“It was very exciting,” she said.

Both Scott and Shively captured the natural phenomena in pictures, and contacted the Enterprise. Other waterspout witnesses called Greg McMaster, chief meteorologist for TV 7&4. He said he received four calls about waterspout sightings Sunday, and received pictures from Elk Rapids.

“It was not surprising we received so many photos. Conditions were good for waterspouts Sunday afternoon,” McMaster said.

Another view of the waterspout was
submitted by Barbara Robbins of
Leelanau Township.

Jeff Lutz with the National Weather Service’s Gaylord office said he received reports of waterspouts from three miles north of Elk Rapids, near Lake Charlevoix, and in Grand Traverse Bay. Lutz said waterspouts occur when relatively cool air moves over warm water and there is a low-pressure system nearby.

“It is similar conditions for producing lake effect snow or rain. With the clockwise spin of a low pressure system you get water spouts and cold-air funnels,” he said. The wind speed can’t be too fast, either, he said.

“Once it hits land, though, a waterspout will dissipate,” Lutz said.

Both Lutz and McMaster predicted an “interesting” time of year for weather is upcoming, especially on the Great Lakes.

“There are two seasons on the Great Lakes, the stable and unstable time of year. The stable time of year is when you have cold water and warm air, like winter going into spring. There is no cloud development and things are relatively stable,” Lutz said.

He said the instability begins when fall nears and land temperatures start dropping while water temperatures remain warm.

“The unstable time typically runs from late summer through most of winter. It’s an exciting time to be a meteorologist,” Lutz said.

MARITIME NOTE

Shippers, activists clash on Great Lakes

By JOHN FLESHER
AP Environmental Writer

September 14, 2008 12:00 am

TRAVERSE CITY -- Day after day, ships longer than three football fields depart Great Lakes ports after picking up or delivering loads of iron ore, coal and other cargo. Reaching open water, crews wash the decks with high-powered hoses.

It's called "cargo sweeping," because residues that spill onto decks during loading and unloading are swept overboard. The U.S. Coast Guard estimates that 1 million pounds of such debris is washed into the lakes every year.

The longstanding practice would appear to violate clean-water laws and regulations enacted in recent decades. But federal officials have given cargo residues a series of exemptions since the early 1990s. Now, the Coast Guard is deciding whether to continue them.

The agency is scheduled to issue a new rule by the end of this month. Several options are on the table, including a ban on cargo sweeping. But regulators also could let it continue, while requiring stepped-up record keeping so they can learn more about effects on the aquatic environment.

Canada's federal government altered its shipping law in 2007 to allow cargo sweeping and is considering amending a fishing law to do likewise, said Mark Mattson, a Toronto-based investigator for the Waterkeeper Alliance. His coalition is among conservation groups that want cargo sweeping halted, saying it's just another form of littering.

But shippers say requiring them to collect the residue, move it onshore for treatment and flush it into municipal wastewater systems would impose ruinous costs. A Coast Guard report last month estimated the price tag at $51.8 million up front, plus $35.7 million a year -- more than the annual profit for the entire industry.

"What some are proposing could mean the end of Great Lakes shipping and the movement of cargo by more expensive and less eco-friendly modes of transportation," said Glen Nekvasil, spokesman for the Lake Carriers Association, which represents U.S.-flagged freighters on the Great Lakes.

The Coast Guard report said cargo sweeping apparently does little if any ecological damage. Jim Weakley, president of the lake carriers group, likened it to "hosing down your driveway."

But environmental advocates say the jury is still out. More study is needed of potential long-term effects -- particularly on bottomlands that provide habitat for fish and macroinvertebrates at the base of the food web, said Joel Brammeier, vice president for policy with the Alliance for the Great Lakes in Chicago.

"It's just common sense that throwing garbage into the Great Lakes is wrong and will cause harm," Mattson added.

Cargo sweeping has been standard operating procedure since the earliest shipments of iron ore from Michigan's Upper Peninsula during the 1850s mineral rush, says the Great Lakes Maritime Task Force, an industry coalition.

Bulk dry cargo hauled across the lakes consists primarily of iron ore, coal and limestone, but also includes smaller quantities of cement, salt, sand and grain. In most ports, the freight is moved on conveyor belts between a ship's cargo hold and onshore storage facilities.

As that happens, bits and pieces spill onto the deck or tunnels beneath. Besides contaminating other types of cargo, the residues and dust create unsanitary conditions and slippery surfaces, Weakley said. So the material is flushed overboard from the deck or pumped from tunnels in the lower hull.

In its environmental impact report, the Coast Guard said ship residues can be found on lake bottoms, although in small concentrations.

"The effects of over a century of ... discharges on sediment quality or biological resources are barely detectable," it said. "Consequently, it would be difficult to project the effects of a single (cargo debris) discharge or even a full year of discharges."

Environmentalists contend some of the residues contain mercury and other metals that can harm fish habitat, but Weakley said mercury from coal is released only after it is burned and deposited in a gaseous form on waterways. The Coast Guard said it would not allow dumping of toxic or hazardous materials.

The study lists five policy alternatives, including prohibiting cargo sweeping or letting it continue under certain conditions. Shippers could be required to keep more extensive records, which would provide data for possible future regulation.

They also could be ordered to reduce the amount of debris swept into the water by making operational, mechanical or structural changes aboard ship or in port.

Weakley said shippers already have developed best-management practices to reduce the volume of cargo washed overboard. They observe no-discharge zones around spawning grounds, marine sanctuaries and other sensitive areas and wouldn't object if others were added, he said.

Brammeier, of the Alliance for the Great Lakes, wants a serious crackdown on cargo sweeping and bristles at the suggestion that it would destroy shippers. Many industries have mended their ways to protect the waterways on which the regional economy depends, he said.

"The future of the Great Lakes depends on protecting and restoring them, not on century-old assumptions that we can stress the system but never reach its breaking point," he said.

RS

New approach to warning siren activation unveiled

New approach to warning siren activation unveiled

Oakland County officials have announced and implemented a new countywide severe weather warning system that involves activating existing and future tornado sirens before a tornado is spotted in the field or indicated on radar.

County Executive L. Brooks Patterson and Emergency Response and Preparedness Director Mike Sturm detailed the sweeping change in the county's outdoor warning siren system on Wednesday, Sept. 10. Under the new approach, sirens will be activated when winds of 70 mph have been recorded in or around the immediate county borders.

"In the past, the sirens have only been activated when a tornado has been sighted or indicated on radar," Patterson said. "Henceforth, the outdoor warning system will be activated when severe thunderstorms with damaging winds at or near 70 mph are in Oakland County or within a 10-mile buffer around the county."

If a 70 mph standard had been in place, Oakland County would have activated warning sirens an additional half a dozen times since January 2006, rather than just the three times the sirens were sounded during the same period of time based on National Weather Service standards.

Sturm said it was felt that any severe weather condition that could result in widespread or severe damage, injury or loss of life or property should warrant activation of the outdoor warning system. He added that winds of 65 mph or more could do as much damage as a low-grade tornado.

The previous outdoor warning system began in 1977. There are 228 sirens in place across the county, with two more about to be installed. The total cost of siren installation is around $20,000, according to county officials.

Last October, three new tornado sirens were slated to be installed in three lakes area communities. Commerce, Highland, and Waterford townships netted the warning devices in the last year after the county received a $68,000 Urban Area Security Initiative Grant — federal money passed to the state and then passed on to the county — that made the purchase and installation of the sirens possible.

WEATHER NOTE

Response agencies scramble to keep up with storm season

For the fourth time in as many weeks federal disaster response officials found themselves shifting gears to address a storm.

As Hurricane Ike barreled toward the Gulf Coast of Texas, the Federal Emergency Management Agency was already moving its rapid response teams into southern Texas in advance of the storm, repeating preparations it made in recent weeks for Hurricane Fay in Florida, Hurricane Gustav in Louisiana, and Tropical Storm Hanna in North Carolina.

A new approach

“The lesson learned is we must plan for these events well in advance of the event,” said Glenn Cannon, assistant FEMA administrator for disaster operations. “We plan for different events and scenarios … so we have the same game plan and are on the same page.”

The ad hoc, independent response that marred FEMA’s response to Hurricane Katrina is a thing of the past, he said. “We don’t need to relearn that lesson.”

That’s why, since August, FEMA has conducted daily — and sometimes more frequent than daily — videoconference calls to coordinate state and federal response for tasks as diverse as medical evacuations, supply delivery and rescue teams staging, he said.

As the chief coordinator for disasters, FEMA makes sure all local and federal agencies come in with the necessary resources and staffing. FEMA has developed more than 220 prescriptive mission assignments for its partners. The plans contain everything from checklists to draft documents so nobody is starting the process from scratch, Cannon said. Before Katrina, there were fewer than 30 such plans, he said.

The General Services Administration, which supports FEMA’s supplies purchasing, is one of the agencies dialed in on the daily phone call. Its Office of Emergency Response and Recovery, set up after Katrina, is getting its first real test this year with the battery of storms slugging the Gulf Coast.

The daily video teleconferences have allowed agencies on the federal, state and local level to reach out to one another and discuss what is needed and who can provide it, said Joshua Sawislak, acting director of the Office of Emergency Response and Recovery at GSA. The briefings ensure that agencies like GSA, which is responsible for trucking supplies into disaster areas, coordinate with, say, the Transportation Department, which knows which roads are closed, or the National Hurricane Center, which knows where storms are heading.

Role of technology

Technology has also provided real-time situational awareness, Sawislak said. During the evacuation of New Orleans in advance of hurricane Gustav, Customs and Border Protection and military reconnaissance technology helped give responders real-time knowledge of where ambulances transporting patients were and whether additional aircraft were needed to evacuate them, he said.

“Cooperation and communication has made the biggest difference,” Sawislak said. “FEMA can roll in mobile command centers with full capability and show us video of what is going on. … We don’t have to rely on CNN.”

The centralized emergency management office has also helped GSA coordinate internally, Sawislak said. The office is in charge of mobilizing GSA’s regional emergency response teams and reservists to make sure the right people with the right skills are in the right place at the right time, he said.

A deep bench

Although Ike is the second major storm this season to hit areas within GSA’s Fort Worth, Texas region, the regional emergency staff is ready to respond in full force, he said.

GSA staff from California, working with FEMA at the time, had deployed in response to Hurricane Gustav, relieving some of the pressure on the region, he said.

But GSA has a plan in place to supplement people from regions outside of the storm zone in order to give those in the storm zone a break, he said.

“The hardest part is to make sure people understand we’re in it for the long haul, and they need rack time … so they don’t get burned out,” Sawislak said.

At the same time FEMA is planning for the response, it is also working with partner agencies to plan for recovery, Cannon said.

FEMA is already planning for mass feeding and sheltering should Ike wipe out homes in the affected area. The agency is also working to ensure temporary housing is available should anyone be left homeless from the storm, he said.

The Small Business Administration, which administers home and business recovery loans, is also planning for the day after.

The agency has 1,500 of its 3,500-plus reserve staff on call to respond to Ike within 24 hours, said James Rivera, deputy associate administrator for SBA’s Office of Disaster Assistance. SBA has trained 3,500 people for its disaster recovery reserve force, which is used to staff up regions during times of emergency.

The reservists process loans, inspect property damage and perform other recovery duties. That reserve staff is 18 times larger than the reserve available during Hurricane Katrina, he said.

Although SBA has been part of the responses to many of this year’s natural disasters, employee fatigue has not yet been an issue, said Sandy Baruah, acting SBA administrator.

“But if Ike packs a punch and we’re dealing with it for a long time, or if it is followed by another serious hurricane, we do have this 3,500-person team of active reservists to work through the system,” Baruah said.

In addition to people power, the agency is also prepared to respond with technology. The agency has beefed up its loan processing system now allows 12,000 users to run cases simultaneous, 10,000 more than were allowed in the system during Katrina, Baruah said. People seeking assistance can also apply for their loans online, a development made in response to the long-distance evacuations after Katrina where many loan seekers couldn’t go to disaster recovery offices in person.

24-hour hurricane center

Whether agencies are involved in the response or the recovery phase, they rely heavily on the forecasts from the National Hurricane Center, which is staffed around the clock, to determine where to stage its crews and when to begin evacuations.

The Hurricane Center has two specialists tracking Ike at any given hour, but while Ike was being tracked alongside Hurricane Gustav and Tropical Storm Hanna, each storm had its own team working overtime, said Bill Read, the center’s director. “It is a bit of a balancing act,” but because hurricanes are the agency’s business, there isn’t a lot of staff shuffling going on, Read said. The agency is always prepared to give officials briefings at any time of the day or night. “For some reason, the storms won’t take off on weekends, so we work weekends,” Read said. “Hurricanes don’t go to sleep at night

World is Now Committed to a Significant Warming

Even if greenhouse gas concentrations would remain constant at 2005 levels for the next century, which is a highly optimistic scenario, according to a group of researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the earth will still warm about 4.3 degrees F (2.4 C) above pre-industrial levels.

According to Climate Sciences professor V. Ramanathan and co-author Yan Feng, 90% of this warming will most likely be experienced in the 21st century.

Below are exerpts from the ScienceDaily article...............

"This paper demonstrates the major challenges society will have to face in dealing with a problem that now seems unavoidable," said Ramanathan. "We hope that governments will not be forced to consider trade-offs between air pollution abatement and mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions."

The authors point out that the real problem is not the reduction of air pollution, but it is the lack of comparable reductions in emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases to offset the reductions in the surface cooling effect of fog. The paper also offers potential solutions.

NASA Concocts Some Spooky Hurricane Science

There's a special room at the Marshall Space Flight Center. Researchers call it the "Anechoic Chamber" and they love to test their high-tech instruments there. Normal people think it's just plain spooky.

"In here, no one can hear you scream," says engineer Mark James as he opens the door on the surreal:

The door creaks shut behind James and suddenly it's like someone hit the mute button. Dead silence. Pyramids on the wall seem to be closing in. The urge to scream ... hard to resist.

James just gets on with the job. He's lead engineer on a research team using this cavernous facility to test a prototype hurricane sensor called HIRAD. Short for Hurricane Imaging Radiometer, HIRAD is designed to scan large areas of ocean for microwave signals that portend storm strength and dynamics. By collecting and transmitting these data to forecasters, HIRAD could reduce property damage and even save lives.

The Anechoic Chamber is the perfect place to check HIRAD's antenna.

Weird shapes lining the chamber's walls are made of a radio-frequency damping material arranged in a pattern akin to soundproof rooms. The shapes minimize microwave reflections and eliminate electromagnetic interference.

"The electromagnetic quiet allows us to test and fully characterize the HIRAD antenna," explains James. "Lack of sound is just a weird bonus."

A microwave source at one end of the chamber sends signals to the HIRAD antenna at the other end. In this way, engineers can explore the antenna's beam pattern to check that it meets the requirements of the mission ahead.

Using microwaves, "HIRAD will be able to map out wind speeds on the ocean's surface--in particular the hurricane strength within the eye wall and elsewhere," says Tim Miller, HIRAD principal investigator at the National Space Science and Technology Center in Huntsville, Alabama. "We can also determine how heavy the rain is and the temperature of the ocean surface, more indicators of hurricane characteristics."

Because of its design, HIRAD can make observations over a wider swath of area than instruments currently used by NOAA. And by using electronic rather than mechanical means to scan and create a two-dimensional image of the storm's dynamics, HIRAD can operate on less power than current wind measuring instruments. It's also smaller, lighter, and relatively inexpensive to build.

"HIRAD's observations will not only give weather officials more and better real-time information on storm strength, but it will also help them determine how the storm will develop and where it will go," says Miller. "All of this adds up to more advanced warnings to the public."

How is HIRAD doing so far in the "bat cave" testing?

"We're still reviewing our test data, but so far HIRAD is passing with flying colors," says Robbie Hood of the MSFC, former principle investigator for the project and still intimately involved in its development.

The next step, she says, "is to build the real thing. This is just a test unit – a laboratory prototype. Ultimately, HIRAD will be more compact and lighter weight than the unit we're testing now."

The team hopes to have HIRAD ready to fly checkout tests onboard an aircraft by fall 2009, and ready for its first hurricane experiment in 2010. HIRAD will have to compete with other candidate instruments for the hurricane experiment.

The whole team feels confident that their instrument is going to succeed. "We've got top-notch personnel working long hours to make it happen," says Miller. "We all know that HIRAD is a valuable instrument, and we want to place it in the hands of weather officials so it can do its work -- saving lives."

The trick, says James with a smile, "is not getting locked in the bat cave."

What?

MARITIME NOTE

Ship with 10 crew sinks off Black Sea coast

SOFIA (Reuters) - A North Korean-registered cargo ship with 10 Ukrainian and Russian crew on board sank in rough waters in the Black Sea early on Saturday, Bulgarian authorities said.

Rescuers have so far failed to find any survivors as stormy conditions hampered rescue operations, said Nikolay Apostolov head of Bulgaria's Maritime Administration Agency. Rescue workers have also not found any bodies.

Efforts to save the crew, which consisted of nine Ukrainian and one Russian seamen, will be halted for the night because of the bad weather, he said.

The Tolstoy, which carried 2,500 tonnes of metal scarp and was sailing from Russia to Turkey, sank at about 4 a.m. (0100 GMT) some 12 miles off Cape Emine on Bulgaria's Black Sea coast, officials said. It issued no SOS call, they said.

"We received the exact crew list from the authorities in Rostov (Russia). It shows the ship had 10 not 12 crew, which was the preliminary information," Apostolov said.

He said the vessel was owned by an Ukrainian company and sailed under the North Korean flag.

Nine dead after Indonesian ferry catches fire, sinks

AP, JAKARTA Rescuers were searching yesterday for a missing two-year-old boy after a packed ferry caught fire and sank in eastern Indonesia, killing at least nine people, an official said. The wooden boat, the Usaha Baru, was traveling between two coastal villages in Maluku province carrying 77 passengers and crew when a fire broke out in the engine, local search and rescue agency head Eddy Paays said.

Most of the passengers were Muslims traveling home to celebrate Id al-Fitr, marking the end of Ramadhan, Paays said.

Panicked passengers started jumping into the sea after the fire broke out in the engine as the boat traveled on Friday between two coastal villages in the Maluku islands, he said, adding that fisherman helped pluck many from the sea.

Rescuers continued to search for a missing toddler near the fishing village of Salahutu, he said.

At least nine people were killed in the accident and 35 others were being treated at a hospital for burn injuries, Paays said.

Ferries and passenger boats are a major form of transportation in Indonesia.

Maritime Expert Witness On Reconstruciton of Collision

Both Robert LaPointe and Terry Raye Trott apparently violated boating safety rules prior to a fatal boat crash on Long Lake, Maine, last summer, witnesses for the state testified at LaPointe's manslaughter trial Tuesday. Milford Daily News writes:

LaPointe, 39, of Medway, Mass., was going too fast at night and did not exercise care to avoid a collision when he came up on Trott's boat from behind, said Maine Warden Kevin Anderson and boat reconstruction expert William Chilcott.

Trott was in violation because his rear "all-around" light was not working, and he may not have had a sounding device on his motorboat, they said.But both witnesses agreed that under federal navigation rules, LaPointe was at fault for the Aug. 11, 2007, crash. His obligation as the boat coming up from behind superseded the obligation Trott had to maintain proper lighting, they said.

"Mr. LaPointe was driving too fast at night," said Anderson, who conducted a reconstruction of the collision using the salvaged boats. "He wasn't able to avoid the collision. He ran over a boat." Boaters on Maine's lakes are required to obey the navigation rules maintained by the U.S. Coast Guard, and any other state laws or local ordinances specific to each body of water.

Anderson said boaters must travel at speeds low enough to avoid a collision with another boat, a log, a loose dock, a swimmer or any other hazard that might present itself. Anderson estimated LaPointe was going between 40 and 50 mph at the time of the crash, and Trott was going between 10 and 20 mph.

RS