The granny grommets

There's no age limit on enjoying the ocean.

A grommet, in surf lexicon, stands for a surfing newbie, usually a younger person.

The Granny Grommets, however, are claiming the term for themselves, ignoring the looming threats of sharks and concerns of their worried offspring to embrace the waves, with bodyboards in tow.

The group, based in the coastal town of Albany in Western Australia, was formed in 1999 and has been growing from strength to strength ever since... to date there are nearly 90 members taking to the waves every Friday morning, come rain or shine!

Today, there are three rules to join the group:

 Be over the age of 50

 Take the introductory ocean awareness and bodyboarding course

 Have fun!

What a 5,000-mile-long marine heat wave means for summer in the U.S.

Bleached coral is visible in 2023 at the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary, off the coast of Galveston, Texas, in the Gulf of Mexico.
(LM Otero/AP)

From WP by Ben Noll

 

It could worsen heat and humidity in the West this summer, and also boost the risks of Pacific hurricanes as well as wildfires in the region.

 
A massive ocean hot spot is stretching across a 5,000-mile swath of the Pacific — from Micronesia to the coastal waters of California.
Across this zone, waters are as much as 6 to 8 degrees above average.

And it has the attention of climate scientists, who say it could boost temperatures, humidity and the threat for tropical storms in the West during the months ahead.
Climate scientist Daniel Swain described this increasingly extreme marine heat wave as an “exceptional event” that’s breaking records.

The unusual ocean anomaly — the largest on the planet — could expand and intensify to cover the entire Pacific coast of North America by late summer, he wrote.
The development of this ocean hot spot, which is linked to a forming El Niño, also follows record warmth and a historic lack of snow in parts of the West earlier this year.
Such conditions could worsen as the warm waters influence weather patterns in the coming months.

 

A marine heat wave grows and intensifies across the Pacific Ocean during March and April.

(Ben Noll/the Washington Post; NOAA)

How this marine heat wave could affect weather patterns

 
This marine heat wave is expected to be a key driver of conditions this spring and summer and it “could yield a summer quite different in California and the Southwest than we’ve seen in quite some time,” Swain said.

Its influence will vary — and it won’t immediately bring wall-to-wall heat and humidity to the region.

Over the coming weeks, the West will experience unsettled conditions and variable temperatures.
That’s due to an enhancement in the subtropical jet stream — partly because of the marine heat wave.
This will bring some beneficial moisture to the parched Intermountain West.
But these milder effects won’t last.
As summer approaches, the marine heat wave will probably contribute to elevated overnight temperatures, leading to reduced relief from hot daytime conditions.
There’s also increased potential for uncomfortable humidity levels — something that is unusual in the West.
Warmer ocean waters increase evaporation, which can raise atmospheric moisture levels, especially along the coast.

 

An extensive and strong marine heat wave in the Pacific is forecast to last for months and is expected to influence weather patterns in the West.
(Ben Noll/the Washington Post; ECMWF)

 

The marine heat wave and a developing El Niño are expected to increase the level of moisture availability, probably leading to more summer humidity and thunderstorms in the West.

(Ben Noll/the Washington Post; ECMWF)

Then, later in summer, the marine heat wave and a forming El Niño could join forces to boost monsoonal thunderstorm activity across the West.
This could enhance fire risks in the region — as dry lightning strikes can spark wildfires.

According to the National Interagency Fire Center, there’s above-average wildfire risk across several Western states during June and July.

The marine heat wave could also seriously boost the odds of an active eastern Pacific hurricane season — extending westward toward Hawaii.
It will also raise the chances for the remnants of a tropical storm reaching California, which could spread moisture far and wide across the West — like Hurricane Hilary did in 2023.

Concerns about impacts in the ocean

Dillon Amaya, a climate scientist researching marine heat waves with NOAA, said that oceanic impacts may occur in places such as Hawaii as well as Southern and Baja California.
“In Southern California, we are concerned about fish migration, kelp forest degradation, whale entanglements, harmful algal blooms and sea bird mortality,” Amaya said.
However, Amaya said that in the open ocean, migrating fish can “get out of the way” of the marine heat wave.

Where April ocean temperatures have been record or near-record high

Showing a low-resolution version of the map.
Make sure your browser supports WebGL to see the full version.

Considering data from April 5 to April 18
Source: NOAA OISST

What’s causing this hot spot

This year’s marine heat wave — a persistent and extensive area of well above-average sea temperatures — is being driven by the Pacific Meridional Mode (PMM).

In its positive phase, the PMM is marked by warmer than average seas that stretch southwest-to-northeast across the Pacific for thousands of miles.
It typically develops from winter into spring through a series of atmospheric patterns that cause winds to weaken, which reduce evaporation and cause ocean warming.
Once warm water from the PMM nears the equator, it can help feed a growing El Niño, with Amaya describing it as a precursor to that climate pattern, which can have much wider, global impacts.

This marine heat wave is the second big one in as many years to span the Pacific.
Last fall, a record-breaking marine heat wave extended from eastern Asia into the North Pacific — and it still hasn’t fully faded.
Its intensity was amplified by the planet’s long-term warming trend.
This year’s record-breaking marine heat wave is feeling that same tailwind of rising global temperatures.

How long was 'mummified' German sailor adrift?

Filipino fishermen recovering the drifting yacht off Barobo town.

Photograph: Barobo police/EPA

 

From The Guardian by Ian Sample

Mystery surrounds death of Manfred Fritz Bajorat, found slumped ‘like he was sleeping’ in yacht floating near Philippines

A German sailor found dead on a yacht drifting in the Philippine Sea may have become mummified within weeks of his sudden death on board the vessel, forensic scientists have said.

Local fishermen discovered the leathery corpse of Manfred Fritz Bajorat, 59, at the weekend after they boarded the battered yacht 60 miles off the coast of Barobo town in Surigeo del Sur province.

The dead mariner was still seated at the desk by the radio in the 12-metre (40ft) yacht, slumped over on his right arm, when the fishermen found him.

Investigators believe he died of a heart attack or stroke and was swiftly preserved in the warm, salty ocean air.

Police identified Bajorat, an experienced sailor, from photographs, letters and other documents strewn around the yacht’s cabin.

The vessel, which had a broken mast and was partly filled with water, was towed into Barobo for a formal investigation.

 

The mummified body of Manfred Fritz Bajorat, which was found slumped at a table in his yacht ‘like he was sleeping’.

Photograph: Barobo police

Inspector Mark Navales, deputy police chief in Barobo town, said that while the cause of Bajorat’s death was unclear, there were no signs of foul play

The weather conditions would have rapidly dried the dead body from the outside, turning the skin into a leathery protective barrier against bacteria and insects.

But under the fat and muscle, bacteria in the gut may have begun to decompose the body from the inside.

“The air, heat, and saltiness of sea are all very conducive to mummification,” said Peter Vanezis, professor of forensic pathology at Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry.
“It starts within two to three weeks. The fingers and other extremities – the nose, the face – dry quickly, and in a month or two they are well gone.”

A week after death, the skin could become yellow, hard and leathery, with complete mummification occurring after several weeks, Frank Wehner, a forensic pathologist at Tübingen University, told the Bild newspaper.

The light coating of grey that covers the mummified body is believed to be mould.

While Bajorat has been named through items on the yacht, investigators may yet restore his facial features and obtain fingerprints to confirm his identity.

Vanezis performed the same exercise on the mummified corpse of a man discovered in the funnel of a ship that arrived at Tilbury port from Mombasa in Kenya.
He used dilute sodium hydroxide – caustic soda – to soften up the mummy’s hardened skin.

“As a result, we got back his facial features and managed to get fingerprints off his fingers too,” Vanezis said.

Among the material found on the yacht was a letter from Bajorat to his former wife, Claudia, who died in 2010, reports claim.
According to the Mirror, the note read: “Thirty years we’ve been together on the same path. Then the power of the demons was stronger than the will to live. You’re gone. May your soul find its peace. Your Manfred.”

Links :

• The Independant : Mummified sailor Manfred Fritz Bajorat discovered on yacht missing for a year
• HuffPost : 'Mummified' German Sailor Manfred Fritz Bajorat Had Penned Tragic Letter To Dead Wife Claudia
• CBS news : Fishermen find mummy-like body sat in drifting yacht
• YBW : Video: Yacht carrying ‘mummified’ German sailor originally found by Clipper Round the World crew
• PBO : Mummified sailor: Clipper Race statement 

World's first subsea desalination facility will start running in 2026

Flocean’s subsea desalination pod

From New Scientist by Vanessa Bates Ramirez

Flocean, a Norwegian company, is set to open the world’s first commercial-scale subsea desalination plant, an approach that could cut the cost and energy used to make seawater drinkable

Turning seawater into drinking water is so costly and energy-intensive that it’s untenable in most parts of the world, but a Norwegian company is trialling a new approach that could change that.
Flocean will launch the world’s first commercial-scale subsea desalination plant in 2026, and says its system will cut the cost and energy consumption of the process dramatically.

Global demand for water is going up, driven by population growth, climate change and industrial uses like data centres and manufacturing.
Meanwhile, fresh water is becoming less abundant due to droughts, deforestation and over-irrigation.

Land-based desalination currently produces about 1 per cent of the world’s fresh water supply, with over 300 million people relying on this source for their daily water needs.
The biggest plants are in the Middle East, where cheap energy makes the technology more feasible and water scarcity makes it more necessary.

The leading technology for desalination today is reverse osmosis.
The method pumps seawater through a membrane with microscopic holes that only allow water molecules to pass through, while salt and other impurities get filtered out.
The water has to be pressurised to push it through the filters, a process that requires vast amounts of energy.

🚨RÉVOLUTIONNAIRE !

🌊 💧 La Norvège pourrait avoir mis au point une technologie qui pourrait fournir de l'eau potable à TOUTE la planète (8 milliards d'humains).

Le tout avec moins d'électricité qu'une seule centrale nucléaire française.

Flocean annonce le premier système de… pic.twitter.com/8JYumrNTi6

— Philippe T (@brain_stimulus) February 19, 2026

Flocean’s approach is to plunge water-filtering pods deep into the ocean, separate seawater from salt at depth, then pump the fresh water back up to land.
By putting reverse osmosis pods deep underwater, the technology leverages hydrostatic pressure – the weight of all the water pressing down from above – to push the seawater through filtering membranes.

Less pumping means less energy consumption, around a 40 to 50 per cent reduction compared with conventional desalination plants, according to the company.
Plus, seawater is cleaner once you get below the sunlight zone (which extends to 200 metres below the water’s surface), which means the water doesn’t require as much pre-treatment before it reaches membranes.

“It’s fundamentally quite boring down there from a process and engineering perspective,” says Alexander Fuglesang, Flocean’s founder and CEO.
“It’s the same salinity, temperature, pressure. It’s dark. There’s not a lot of bacteria that can cause biofouling.”

The same hydrostatic pressure that pushes water through the membranes also helps disperse the salty brine by-product, which Flocean says is free of chemicals that might harm marine life.

For the past year, Flocean has been desalinating water at a depth of 524 metres at its test site at Norway’s largest offshore supply base, Mongstad Industrial Park.
Its commercial facility, called Flocean One, is being built at the same location, and will initially produce 1000 cubic metres of fresh water daily when it launches next year.
The operation can then be scaled up modularly by adding more desalination pods.

“Our philosophy is to keep the subsea units the same and scale by multiplication rather than by building ever bigger machines,” says Fuglesang.
Scaling up will involve engineering trade-offs at the system level, however.
Since more modules will share the same power supply and controls, Flocean’s engineers need to organise power distribution and the permeate manifold – the mechanism that directs purified water from multiple membranes to a single output line – so that scaling up is as straightforward as possible.

“This solution could become viable in suitable locations, providing affordable water if costs decline, but it has yet to be proven at large scale,” says Nidal Hilal at New York University Abu Dhabi.
“Broad municipal deployment likely depends on overcoming technical and economic challenges over several years.”

Cost reductions will be crucial to scale up the technology further, says Hilal, as it is still much more expensive than obtaining fresh water through conventional methods like pulling from lakes or aquifers.

Cleaning and maintaining the membranes will be one of Flocean’s biggest costs.
Advances in membrane technology will help; Hilal’s research group is working on electrically conductive membranes that use electricity to repel salt ions and foulants, keeping themselves clean and boosting throughput.
The researchers are also exploring ways to recycle single-use plastics into membrane materials, increasing sustainability while further reducing costs.
“More durable membranes and high-efficiency pumps can further lower operational expenses, while renewable energy integration reduces power costs,” says Hilal.

Flocean One should start producing fresh water in the second quarter of 2026.
If the technology works as planned, it could help Flocean get the backing to build bigger plants elsewhere.
“The biggest challenge for us is having perfect alignment,” says Fuglesang.
“We need the client, we need government permissions and we need strong financial partners.”

From compass to cosmos: charting the World Magnetic Model

 

The World Magnetic Model is a large-scale representation of Earth’s magnetic field. The blue and red lines indicate the positive and negative difference between where a compass points the compass direction and geographic North. 

Green lines indicate zero degrees of declination.

[Image credit: NOAA]

 

From National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency

 

At the center of our planet, a core of conductive iron alloys swirl, radiating heat and electrical currents.
This effect generates a magnetic field that extends from the center of the Earth out into the reaches of space, powerful enough to prevent solar winds from stripping the atmosphere from the planet.

 

While the magnetic field deflects the hazards of space, its impacts are felt at the terrestrial level as well.
The field has proven particularly useful for navigation — from migrating birds to humans sailing the seven seas.
For centuries, however, this important navigational aid was a source of frustration.
Mariners quickly learned their compass needles pointed not to the geographic North Pole, but to a magnetic pole — and it was moving.

The angular difference between true north and magnetic north, known as declination, varied unpredictably across the globe and over time.
A chart that was true one year could lead a vessel to ruin the next.

This challenge spurred a centuries-long quest to map and understand the Earth’s shifting magnetism, an undertaking that would require generations of collective scientific knowledge and take geomagnetic observation from the seas into space.

Today, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency continues the pursuit of geomagnetic study, using data gathered from seabed to space to craft models that help billions safely navigate our world – building upon the legacy of the explorers and scientists that came before.

 

The November 2024 version of the World Magnetic Model.

Credit: NOAA/NCEI and CIRES.

Pioneers of the Unseen

One of the first major leaps in geomagnetic study came at the turn of the 18th century.
Famed astronomer Edmond Halley — years before the comet that bears his name would make its predicted return — took command of the HMS Paramour, departing on a series of voyages.
Backed by the British Crown, his mission was to chart the magnetic declination of the Atlantic Ocean.
The resulting charts were the first of their kind, providing scientific verification that the magnetic field was not static.
However, these charts did not solve the issue that a single survey, no matter how accurate, was only a fleeting snapshot.

While the practical applications and limitations of magnetic navigation were being explored, it ultimately took another century for German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss to unlock the science behind it.
He theorized that the magnetic field was primarily generated from within the planet and ultimately provided the fundamental theoretical tools and mathematical frameworks still used by scientists today to model its complex behavior.
While Halley had charted the problem and Gauss provided the theory, it was an American scientist who would fuse these concepts into a global, operational mission.

Louis A. Bauer, the first director of the United States’ Carnegie Institution’s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, made it his life’s work to elevate the study of geomagnetism, recognizing that a precise, unified model was essential for safe navigation and scientific progress.

In 1905, his department commissioned its first vessel, theGalilee.
However, the ship’s iron fastenings created too much magnetic interference.
To achieve the precision he required, Bauer convinced the Carnegie Institution to fund a vessel unlike any other: a ship built to be almost entirely non-magnetic.

Constructed from wood, copper and bronze, the Carnegieset sail in 1909.
On its maiden voyage, theCarnegieretraced Halley’s path from 200 years prior, determining that if they had followed Halley’s original compass headings, they would have landed in Scotland instead of their intended destination in England — a clear demonstration of the ever-shifting magnetic field.

TheCarnegie’s seven voyages produced an unprecedented volume of magnetic data, dramatically improving the accuracy of the world’s navigational charts.
However, Bauer’s grand endeavor came to a tragic halt in 1929 when theCarnegiewas sunk after a refueling explosion in Samoa, killing its captain and destroying its contents.
Though this ended the program, most of the gathered data had been copied and sent to Washington, preserving its scientific advancements.

The Final Frontier

Following the loss of the Carnegie, dedicated U.S. magnetic data collection paused for several decades before resuming in the 1950s with the military’s Project Magnet.
This survey program outfitted specialized aircraft with magnetometers, flying extensive missions across the globe to gather the vital data needed for military charts and navigation.

The dawn of the space age offered a revolutionary new vantage point, and by the turn of the millennia, the satellite era of geomagnetic research began in earnest.
Early missions, such as the Danish Ørsted satellite and the German CHAMP satellite, laid the foundation for modern satellites such as the European Space Agency’s Swarm constellation.
These orbital platforms could gather a continuous stream of precise, global data with a previously impossible speed, consistency and scale.

This satellite-derived data now fuels the modern World Magnetic Model.
The U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the U.K. Defence Geographic Centre sponsor the WMM, and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the British Geological Survey produce it.
Updated every five years to account for the planet’s shifting field, the WMM is one of the world’s premiere geomagnetic models.

Today, the U.S. Department of War, the U.K. Ministry of Defence, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Federal Aviation Administration, and many other major organizations and countries use the WMM.
It is also part of the dataset that makes up the World Geodetic System, which is used in countless navigation systems, including the GPS, in billions of smartphones and vehicles. 

Declination values for WMM2025 (dashed lines) and WMMHR2025 (solid lines) plotted together at 15 minute contours. 

Note larger deviations above tectonic features like the Appalachian Mountains. 

The Next Evolution

This widespread reliance on magnetic data creates a pressing need for an advanced and sustainable data source.
To meet this challenge, NGA looks to the future with MagQuest, a competition designed to stimulate innovation in geomagnetic data collection.
The initiative challenges solvers from industry and academia to develop new, independent and cost-effective methods for collecting the data needed to maintain and update the WMM.
By accelerating the development of novel solutions, such as constellations of small, highly accurate nanosatellites, MagQuest drives technological innovation, harnessing private-sector industry to deliver cutting-edge technologies.
Additionally, it is a vital national security imperative.
By fostering a domestic capability for geomagnetic data collection, NGA ensures that the U.S.
and its allies maintain their decisive navigational edge — receiving the most accurate and timely geomagnetic data available.

The tools may have evolved from canvas sails to satellites, but the fundamental mission remains unchanged: to precisely chart the Earth’s dynamic magnetic field and guarantee navigational accuracy for U.S. forces, allies and civilian users worldwide.

 Links :

• Air&SpaceForces : NGA Launches New Small Sats to Measure Earth’s Magnetic Field
• NOAA : WMM2025 and WMMHR2025 prove to be accurate models of Earth’s magnetic field 
• SpatialSource : Satellite will measure Earth’s magnetic field
• GeoGarage blog : Earth's magnetic North Pole moving closer to Russia