The National Geospatial Intelligence Agency launched a public website Sept. 2 to provide unclassified information about the Arctic.
The public website supports efforts to strengthen international cooperation, better understand and manage resources responsibly, enhance quality of life in the Arctic and maintain valuable and vulnerable ecosystems.
The public site, accessible through www.nga.mil and located at nga.maps.arcgis.com, includes Digital Elevation Models that provide 3D representations of the Arctic's surface.
The models, derived from NGA-sponsored DigitalGlobe commercial imagery sources, support land management, sustainable development, safe recreation, scientific studies, and domain-specific challenges inherent to aviation, transportation and defense.
The DEM is the standard against which landscape changes such as erosion will be measured.
NGA’s Arctic website also includes NGA nautical charts, sailing directions, shape files and infographics.
A large, downloadable Pan-Arctic map includes multiple layers allows users to focus on specific issues and information.
Layers include search and rescue zones, ice extents, economic exclusion zones, bathymetric data, navigational and meteorological warnings, and potential energy sources.
NGA is working with the National Science Foundation and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to support the Arctic initiative by producing and contributing publicly-available products and data layers as they become available.
NGA’s work also supports the Department of Defense Arctic Strategy and the safety of navigation in the air and on the seas.
Satellite Movie Shows Two Hurricanes and a Depression This animation of images captured August 29 to September 1 from NOAA's GOES-West satellite shows Hurricane Ignacio near Hawaii, followed by Hurricane Jimena and Tropical Depression 14E Credit: NASA/NOAA GOES Project
Last week, the nation focused its attention on the 10-year
anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the most destructive hurricane in U.S.
history.
As bad as the storm was, though, it wasn’t the worst storm that could have possibly hit New Orleans.
That’s true of many, many other places, too.
And now, in a new study
in Nature Climate Change, Princeton’s Ning Lin and MIT’s Kerry Emanuel
demonstrate that when it comes to three global cities in particular —
Tampa, Fla., Cairns, Australia, and Dubai, United Arab Emirates — there
could come a storm that is much worse than anything in recent memory (or
in any memory).
Granted, these theoretical storms are also
highly unlikely to occur — in some cases, they are 1-in-10,000-year
events, or even rarer.
The researchers refer to these possible storms as
“gray swans,” riffing on the concept of a “black swan” event, an
unpredictable catastrophe, or highly impactful event.
A “gray swan,” by
contrast, can indeed be predicted, even if it is extremely rare.
The
purpose of the study is “to raise awareness of what a very low
probability, very high impact hurricane event might look like,” said
Emanuel.
The gray swan storms were generated by a computer model that
“coupled” together, in the researchers’ parlance, a very high-resolution
hurricane model with a global climate model.
That allowed the
researchers to populate the simulated world with oodles of different
storms.
“When
you do hundreds and hundreds of thousands of events, you’re going to
see hurricanes that are unlike anything you’ve seen in history,” said
Emanuel, a key theoretician behind the equations determining the “maximum potential intensity” of a hurricane in a given climate.
Indeed, he has published in the past
that a theoretical “hypercane” with winds approaching 500 miles per
hour is possible in scenarios where an asteroid hits the Earth and
radically heats up ocean waters, far beyond their normal temperature.
So what did the researchers see?
Let’s take Tampa Bay, first.
It
hasn’t been hit by a major hurricane since 1921 — but that storm drove a
3- to 3.5-meter (10- to 11-foot) storm surge and caused dramatic
damage.
Earlier, in 1848, another storm produced a 4.6-meter surge
(about 15 feet).
Why is Tampa Bay so vulnerable?
Check out any
good map that shows the water depth (the bathymetry) around the Florida
peninsula. It’s deep off the east coast.
But there’s an extraordinarily
broad continental shelf off the west coast.
And although the city of
Tampa, proper, sits at the head of Tampa Bay, relatively far from the
mouth and well removed from the barrier islands that get battered by the
waves from the Gulf of Mexico, that’s a more vulnerable spot than you’d
think.
“One
can get much larger surges where the offshore waters are shallow, as is
true along the west, but not the east coast of Florida.
Also, surges
can amplify by being funneled into bays,” Emanuel said Monday in an
e-mail.
The new method allows the researchers to show that a
worse storm than these historical examples is possible, especially with
sea level rise and global warming.
They simulated 2,100 possible Tampa
Bay hurricanes in the current climate, and then 3,100 each for three
time periods (2006 through 2036, 2037 through 2067, and 2068 through
2098) in an unchecked global warming scenario.
In the current
climate, the study found that a 5.9-meter (19-foot) storm surge is
possible, in a strong Category 3 hurricane following a similar track to
Tampa’s classic 1921 and 1848 storms.
Moreover, in a late 21st century
climate with global warming run amok, the worst-case scenario generated
by the model included a very different storm track, moving north along
Florida’s Gulf Coast and then swerving inland at Tampa, that generated
an 11.1-meter (nearly 37-foot) surge.
Granted, the study said
that these two “gray swans” are exceedingly unlikely — less than 1 in
10,000 years for the 5.9-meter surge in the current climate.
But it also
said that global warming shifts the odds toward the worse surges.
“The more publicity of the hurricane risk in Tampa, the better,” Emanuel said.
Cairns with the GeoGarage platform (AHS nautical chart)
The
study also shows that for Cairns, Australia, a 5.7-meter (18-foot)
storm surge is possible in the current climate, but that would happen
less than once in 10,000 years.
Dubaï with the GeoGarage platform (UKHO nautical chart)
And perhaps most strikingly, it also
suggests that an extremely powerful hurricane is theoretically possible
where we’ve never yet seen them occur — the Persian Gulf.
The
waters in the Persian Gulf are very hot and so contain considerable
potential hurricane energy, but the atmosphere is normally too dry for
hurricanes, Emanuel explained.
Nonetheless, “physics says that you can
have one,” he said.
“‘It’s not likely, but it’s not impossible.”
Indeed,
there have been several hurricanes or tropical storms that have entered
the Arabian Sea, though none have made it into the Persian Gulf.
But
the study showed that in extraordinarily rare circumstances, it’s also
possible for a hurricane to be generated there.
Indeed,
it found that with 3,100 simulated events in today’s climate, it is
theoretically possible to get a hurricane with winds of over 250 miles
per hour — stronger than anything we’ve seen on Earth — and a storm
surge of 7.4 meters (24 feet) affecting Dubai.
Granted, it is hard to
emphasize enough that this is a rare phenomenon — storms like this have
“return periods of the order of 30,000–200,000 years,” the study said.
So,
is all of this just a mathematical exercise — or something more?
In the
end, it’s kind of in the eye of the beholder, as it’s up to us to
decide how much to worry, if at all, about an extraordinarily rare
event.
But you could make the case that a study like this helps us think
a lot better about what risk is all about.
“You go out on the
tail, the risk gets tinier and tinier and tinier, but the consequences
of that event get exponentially larger,” Emanuel said.
Links :
CSMonitor : Why researchers are concerned about 'grey swan' hurricanes
About 90% of seabirds have eaten plastic and are likely to retain some in their gut, a new analysis estimates.
The study concludes that matters will only get worse until action is taken to stem the flow of waste to the oceans.
Researcher
Erik Van Sebille says the oceans are now filled with plastic and it is
"virtually certain" that any dead seabird found in 2050 "will have a bit
of plastic in its stomach".
Dr Van Sebille and his colleagues report their work in the journal PNAS.
On one level, the analysis is shocking, but on another, its findings seem depressingly familiar.
Numerous
studies have now catalogued the rising mass of plastic debris being
dumped, blown or simply washed out to sea; and it is having a
deleterious impact on the marine environment.
To the foraging
bird, a discarded plastic cigarette lighter or a shiny bottle top can
look like a fish.
If ingested, this litter may simply stay in the gut,
unable to pass through, putting the animal's health at risk.
As more and more plastic waste finds its way into the oceans - about eight million tonnes a year in one recent estimate - so the hazards to wildlife increase.
Midway Island is an uninhabited island about 2000 km from any other coast line.
It lies roughly equidistant between North America and Asia, and almost halfway around the world from England.
In their PNAS paper, the Australian and UK scientists reviewed
decades of peer-reviewed literature to trace the evolution of seabirds'
exposure to plastic debris.
Back in 1960, the data showed that maybe fewer than 5% of birds would be found with waste fragments in their stomach.
Today,
this figure is roughly 90%.
And, on current trends, by 2050, the team
predicts that plastic ingestion will touch 99% of the world's seabird
species, with nearly every individual affected.
"Plastic in
seabirds is ubiquitous, and it's increasing," study leader Chris Wilcox
from CSIRO, Australia's federal research agency, told BBC News.
To
get to its 2050 extrapolation, the team had to understand the hotspots
of risk, by overlaying the known foraging behaviour of the world's 400
or so seabird species on to the known distribution of plastic waste at
sea.
This approach demonstrated that the regions of highest risk
are not where most floating plastic congregates, which is in the centres
of the great ocean gyres, sometimes dubbed "garbage patches" or
"islands" for the way the debris just goes round and round.
Rather,
the zones of highest concern are where most seabirds are found, which
is in a band in the Southern Ocean, near Australia, South Africa and
South America.
Once thought of as having pristine waters, this
region is now sufficiently polluted to ensure a great array of species
encounters some waste.
"A pristine ocean doesn't exist anymore," said Dr Van Sebille, who is affiliated to Imperial College London.
"Every
ocean is now filled with plastic. Some have more than others, but what
we found is that even the oceans that are not known for their plastic -
they still have quite a bit of plastic and they can be where the harm is
really done just because that's where all the birds live."
Open up any dead bird, and most are likely to contain plastic fragments
Another key finding from the research is that the problem really is
solvable.
If only the stream of plastic waste getting into the oceans
can be shut off, then seabirds have the capacity to recover quite
quickly.
Dr Wilcox explained: "Because exposure to plastic turns
out to be a strong predictor of how much plastic the birds have in them;
that is, the more plastic they're exposed to, the more they ingest -
this implies that if we reduce the amount of plastic going into the
oceans, you would expect all these species to essentially respond.
"And this makes this problem different from something like climate change. It ought to be relatively easy to fix."
Jenna
Jambeck from the University of Georgia, US, is an expert on plastic
waste issues.
She was not involved in the study but said it had
eloquently made the link between solid waste management practices on
land, the plastic input into the oceans, and the impacts being felt by
seabirds globally.
"It illustrates that if we implement solutions
to reduce plastic input into the oceans, we can reduce impacts to
individual seabirds.
"Solutions include improving solid waste
management where it is lacking, and also working upstream on product
redesign and materials substitution moving towards a more circular
system," she told BBC News.
This is a solvable problem, say the scientists: Just shut off the waste stream
Monterey Canyon is one of the deepest submarine canyons on the west
coast of the United States.
The canyon head lies just offshore of Moss
Landing on the Central California coast.
From there, the main channel
meanders over 400 kilometers seaward to a depth of more than 4,000
meters on the abyssal plain.
Repeated mapping in certain areas of the
canyon have shown that the terrain changes substantially every few
months due to large sediment-transport events involving both debris
flows and turbidity currents.
If the water drained from Monterey Bay,
the newly revealed terrain would be stunning, with cliffs, gorges,
valleys, and spires matching the scenery found in some of our most
beautiful national parks.
Sonar has long been used to map the seafloor, usually with equipment
mounted on a ship's hull.
The ship travels back and forth, sending sound
waves toward the ocean floor.
When the sound waves hit the bottom, they
bounce back to the surface, where the sonar receivers use the returned
signals to indicate the depths of the seafloor.
Modern multibeam sonars
use numerous narrow beams covering wide swaths of the seafloor to create
maps like the bathymetric map shown here.
The more detailed maps
overlaid on the base map were created with the Monterey Bay Aquarium
Research Institute's mapping autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV).
Although the AUV uses the same technology, it flies closer to the
bottom, allowing higher resolution maps to be made.
The AUV bathymetric
maps show details as small as one meter (three feet) across, and are
among the most detailed maps ever made of the deep seafloor.
Researchers
use the detailed maps to understand seafloor morphology and the
movement of sediment within submarine canyons.
Cross-sections of the Monterey Canyon (left) and Grand Canyon (right)
shown at the same scale demonstrate that these features are similar in
size and shape.
Both canyons are conduits through which massive volumes
of sediment move.
While water flowing in the Colorado River carved the
Grand Canyon, a directly analogous process is not known to have occurred
within Monterey Canyon.
Canyon life
Monterey Canyon and the waters above it provide a wide array of
habitats, from rocky outcrops and the soft seafloor to the dark
midwater, where there is little or no sign of light from above nor of
the seafloor below.
MBARI researchers often encounter rarely seen
biological communities, observe novel behaviors of deep-sea organisms,
and discover new species in the deep sea.
28 to 35 knots of north-westerly breeze accompanied by a 2.5 to 3-metre swell… Fasten Seatbelts
Launched on 7 August in Vannes, after an eleven-month build at the
Multiplast yard, le Mono60 Edmond de Rothschild was able to put in her
first tacks just ten days later offshore of the team’s base in Lorient.
However, on Monday of this week, thanks to a boisterous low off the
north-west tip of Brittany, Sébastien Josse and Charles Caudrelier (his
co-skipper for the Transat Jacques Vabre) opted to trial the machine in
some blustery conditions.
It proved to be a rather bracing sail which
cameraman Christophe Castagne captured in full for Gitana Team.
The Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) and the TU Dresden’s Institute for Cartography (Germany) are presenting their joint three-dimensional map of the Antarctic continent and the seafloor of the Southern Ocean at this year’s International Cartographic Conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
For the first time, the map simultaneously shows viewers three geographic layers: the Antarctic ice sheet, the land masses it conceals and the surrounding underwater landscape.
The map covers a total depth range of over 12,000 metres: from the ice sheet, down to the depths of the surrounding Southern Ocean.
The so-called lenticular print is a novelty; the scientists portrayed Antarctic ice sheet, which is up to 4,800 metres thick, as a honeycombed grid structure, allowing viewers to see through it to the mountain ranges below.
Another new feature is that the scope of depth includes the entire z-axis.
In the past, it was only possible to show deeper areas or, in the case of world maps, the corresponding ocean regions but without any depth, according to Lars Radig.
2 sources combined
One major source of data for the new 3D visualisation was the International Bathymetric Chart of the Southern Ocean (IBCSO), a digital representation of the entire Antarctic seafloor south of the 60th parallel that was released in 2013 under the auspices of the Alfred Wegener Institute.
The second key source was provided by Bedmap2, a three-dimensional digital map of Antarctica that depicts the bedrock under the Antarctic ice sheet.
The new True-3D visualisation is the first of its kind to combine the two datasets.
The first scientific evidence that trawling in waters deeper than 600
metres is ecologically damaging and provides poor economic return is
reigniting debate about the controversial fishing practice.
For
years, European scientists, environmentalists, politicians and
commercial fishermen have debated whether or how to limit deep-sea
trawling, which critics say causes huge damage to ocean ecosystems.
The
latest findings, which use survey data to assess how the ratio of
undesired fish to commercially valuable ones changes with depth, are
published in Current Biology.
“I
think they’re pretty robust,” says Les Watling, a deep-sea biologist at
the University of Hawaii at Manoa, of the results.
“They are basically
saying you are wasting your time fishing below 600 metres.”
Watling, who has worked as a science adviser for environmental groups
pushing for a ban on trawling, adds, “This is the first really good set
of science data that essentially ratifies the idea that having some
kind of depth limit to deep-sea trawling would be worthwhile and would
not create an economic hardship."
photo of the Roundnose Grenadier, a deep water fish
credit : Marine Scotland Science
Debates and delays
After
much debate and several delays, in December 2013 the European
Parliament approved restrictions on deep-sea trawling in European Union
(EU) waters — a practice in which weighted nets are dragged along the
sea floor to harvest commercially valuable fish species — but stopped
short of an outright ban.
Moreover, these restrictions are not yet in
force, because they must still be approved by ministers from member
states.
Some fishers have subsequently agreed a voluntary 800 meters
limit for trawling.
Deep-sea trawling often
captures more undesired species than those actually being targeted for
sale, and it can destroy sea-floor habitat such as corals.
Although
trawling damage has been well documented, data were lacking on how to
set the most effective limits.
In the latest
study, researchers analyzed catches from experimental trawls conducted
in the 240–1,500-metre zone of the northeastern Atlantic Ocean.
They
found that the volume of unwanted species, or by-catch, increases
markedly relative to the volume of target commercial species in the
600–800-meters zone.
The increase was especially pronounced for sharks
and rays, including some threatened species.
The analysis also revealed that the economic value of catches decreases in the same zone.
“We
weren’t sure there were going to be any overarching trends and were
really surprised to see significant change,” says study co-author Jo
Clarke, a marine biologist at the University of Glasgow, UK.
“I think
it’s going to be an interesting, extra body of evidence to go into the
discussions.”
Clarke hopes that this work will
now inform similar analyses in other regions that have also debated
their deep-sea trawling practices, to see if similar patterns are found
in non-European waters. “Probably New Zealand is the place where the
ripple effects would be strongest,” says Watling.
End of the line?
European
debates over deep-sea trawling bans have been contentious, especially
in France and Spain, where the few EU boats that fish at depths more
than 600 meters are registered.
Trawling at such depths, which happens
mainly west of Scotland and Ireland, is limited.
France, for instance,
has just ten such fishing vessels, owned by three companies and
supported in part by government subsidies.
Watling
is among many who would like to see the EU ratify its ban, and bring in
a 600 meters depth limit. He says that a shallower limit would help to
prevent expansion of deeper trawling.
New
species are discovered all the time in well-traversed places such as the
Atlantic, says Watling. “Anything you can do to protect that
biodiversity I think is important.” Links :
Sea levels are 3 inches higher than they were in 1992. "It's very likely to get worse in the future."
A panel of NASA scientists said Wednesday that new data shows sea levels are, on average, three inches higher than they were in 1992 due to melting ice from both mountain glaciers and the polar ice caps, as well as warmer oceans.
Greenland Ice Mass Loss: Jan. 2004 - June 2014
GRACE consists of twin co-orbiting satellites that fly in a near polar orbit separated by a distance of 220 km. GRACE precisely measures the distance between the two spacecraft in order to make detailed measurements of the Earth's gravitational field.
Since its launch in 2002, GRACE has provided a continuous record of changes in the mass of the Earth's ice sheets. This animation shows the change in the Greenland Ice Sheet between January 2004 and June 2014.
The 1-arc-deg NASA GSFC mascon solution data was resampled to a 998 x 1800 data array using Kriging interpolation.
A color scale was applied in the range of +250 to -250 centimeters of equivalent water height, where blue values indicate an increase in the ice sheet mass while red shades indicate a decrease.
In addition, the running sum total of the accumulated mass change over the Greenland Ice Sheet is shown on a graph overlay in gigatons.
Global sea level has been measured accurately and continuously by satellites since 1993. Credit: Steve Nerem, University of Colorado
The changes are concerning and “it’s very likely to get worse in the future,” Steve Nerem, a University of Colorado geophysicist and a member of the panel, said in a conference call, Reuters reported.
In 2013, a United Nations panel reported sea levels were projected to rise between 1 and 3 feet by 2100; the NASA panel said data indicates the level rise would be on the higher end of that projection.
As measured by the TOPEX/Jason satellites, sea level change in the short-term (top) and longer-term (bottom) can be very different. Credit: Nerem
The sea level change is an average; in some areas, sea levels rose more than 9 inches, and in others—such as along the West Coast, sea levels are falling.
For over 20 years NASA has been tracking the global surface topography of the ocean in order to understand the important role it plays in our daily lives.
Climate change is causing our Ocean to warm and glaciers to melt, resulting in sea level rise.
Since 1880, the global sea level has risen 8 inches; by 2100, it is projected to rise another 1 to 4 feet.
Scientists warn that we haven’t seen the worst of it yet; ocean currents and weather cycles have actually offset some sea level changes in the Pacific, which means the West Coast could see a huge jump in sea levels in the next 20 years.
NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) twin satellites have measured the loss of ice mass from Earth’s polar ice sheets since 2002. Credit: Nerem/CU-Boulder
The panel warned that forecasting the melting rate of the polar ice caps is nearly impossible.
And even if the pattern were to stall and reverse, it would take centuries to return to original pre-climate change levels.
Before Tarzan was swimming his way to American gold medals, there was Duke.
Before fellow Olympian Jim Thorpe was similarly being cast as a tribal chief in Hollywood, there was Duke.
And
right before the current American president was born in Honolulu,
elected as that area’s sheriff for the final time was Duke.
Duke Kahanamoku, born on this day in 1890, is one of the greatest U.S.
athletes many Americans have never heard of.
And fortunately for his
legacy, today Duke — before even Thorpe and Olympic
swimmer-turned-“Tarzan the Ape Man” actor Johnny Weissmuller — is being
celebrated with a Google Doodle.
Which is a wonderful nod to (and
swell of recognition for) the great man, because had he been born a
century later, his name might well be as popularly known as that of
Michael Phelps, Kelly Slater or Laird Hamilton.
The farther you
get from the beach, the less likely, it seems, you hear the name Duke
Kahanamoku.
But when you move close to breaking waves (as my family did,
to San Diego, when I was a boy), the more often you surely will hear
references to “the Duke,” the father of modern surfing.
“Out of
the water, I am nothing,” the Duke resonantly said before he fully
became recognized as the “ambassador of Aloha” and Hawaiian culture.
Fortunately, Hawaii celebrates Duke as a favorite son who was indeed
quite something as a ceremonial envoy on land, as well.
But when you
have achieved such greatness in the pool and in the pipeline, it should also be underscored that, to invert that quote: In the water, he was everything.
Duke Kahanamoku is pictured with his surfboard. He is the subject of a Google Doodle today. (Bishop Museum Archives)
In
1912, for instance, Duke was the marine version of Thorpe, that master
on the field and track, at the Stockholm Olympics.
The two men, both of
whom were about 6 feet, stood particularly tall at those Games as
multiple medalists.
While Thorpe was winning the pentathlon and
decathlon, “the Big Kahuna” was winning swimming gold in the 100-meter
freestyle and silver in the 4×200 free.
Duke, who was called “the
king of all swimmers,” would go on to be a double gold medalist in
those two events at the 1920 Antwerp Games.
Four years later, Duke would
medal for a third time (silver) in the 100 free, beating his brother,
bronze medalist Samuel Kahanamoku, in the event won by his pal
Weissmuller (the future Hollywood Tarzan) at the Paris Games.
Duke ended
his Olympic career in his 40s, when he was an alternate for the U.S.
water polo team.
An article from the Salt Lake Tribune, in 1913.
Duke was the first athlete inducted into the Halls of Fame for both
swimming and surfing, and the swimming exhibitions he gave, buoyed by
his Olympic fame, provided him with opportunities to popularize surfing,
as well, from the California coast to the waters off Australia, where a
1914 trip helped the sport take hold Down Under. Wherever he paddled
his 16-foot wood longboard around the world, he was also proudly
peddling surfing’s greatness.
(Duke’s California fame also grew in 1925, when — in what the
Honolulu Star-Bulletin called a “superhuman” rescue — he used his
surfboard to help save a dozen stranded fishermen during the vessel
Thelma’s fatal wreck off the coast of Newport Beach.)
Duke Kahanamoku, Waikiki, 1930s.
Photo: Tom Blake/SHF
Shortly
after the Paris Games, Duke also became a Hollywood actor, sometimes
(like Thorpe) playing tribal characters; three decades later, in the
Oscar-nominated 1955 war film “Mister Roberts,” he played a “native
chief,” still fit of body and regal of bearing.
Duke himself was a
military police officer during World War II, and sheriff of Honolulu
till 1961 (the year that Obama was born, yes, there).
In the ’60s, after
having helped push for Hawaii’s 1959 statehood, he portrayed himself in
surfing documentaries, and had a stake in Duke’s, the Waikiki club that
was home to Don Ho and his band.
Duke Paoa Kahinu Mokoe
Hulikohola Kahanamoku was born on this day in 1890 in Hawaii, where he
would die 78 years later, as the island state’s ambassador the globe
over.
“Despite his charisma on the screen and two decades of
Olympic triumphs, it is perhaps for moments like these [his rescue
heroics off Newport Beach] — for his character, for his ease in the
water, his deep and unending love of Hawaii and her oceans — that Duke
Kahanamoku is remembered most,” writes Google, in celebrating the great man’s 125th birthday with artist Matt Cruickshank’s tropical, longboarding Doodle.
Long live the Duke, the ambassador of Aloha.
Links :
NYTimes : Duke Kahanamoku, Legendary Surfer and Swimmer, Gets Google Tribute
CSMonitor : Duke Kahanamoku and the one mile-long wave that made him a legend
Ah, the summertime sizzle of a shell-strewn beach, the bracing odour of the briny sea. There's nothing quite like it really.
If you happen to be on a beautiful beach, do take a good, deep, invigorating sniff!
What does it remind you of?
Amid the saltiness, a hint of sulphur perhaps?
A slight edge of boiled cabbage? Or something even more unpleasant?
Well, maybe that's just me...
Seaside odours are generally composed of dimethyl sulfide, a pongy gas produced by bacteria feasting on phytoplankton.
In the atmosphere, it is changed chemically to sulphate, which in turn becomes the seeds of clouds.
Solid organic matter from large collections of phytoplankton blooms can also help with cloud formation.
This blooming ocean can give rise to a specky scum, from which tiny bubbles get lofted into the air by the churn of the sea.
Water vapour condenses around them, tiny droplets form and the fluffy billows of the sky emerge.
Gobsmacked
So what does this ocean-coloured scene have to do with a warming planet?
Well, researchers say that the type of clouds produced from sea gas and plankton particles, especially in the Southern Ocean, are not your common or garden cumulus.
Scientists were surprised to discover that clouds in the Southern Ocean
were highly reflective in summer
Clouds reflect sunlight back into space depending on the size of the droplets and the amount of liquid suspended in them.
The more liquid that is suspended in the cloud, the brighter and more reflective they are - swotty philosophers of the skies!
The experts have long understood that in winter, when seas are stormy and the spray is flying, there will be more of these types of droplets and thus more sun bounced back into space.
In the balmy, calm of summer at sea they expected the clouds to be far less reflective.
They were astonished to discover that, in the Southern Ocean, this was not the case at all.
In fact they concluded that the plankton particle effect was strongest in the warmer months - on average they found that ocean life doubled the number of droplets in summer.
"The amount of sunlight that's reflected by those clouds in this region is about 125 watts per metre squared," said co-author Dr Susannah Burrows, from the US Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
"What we're finding is evidence for a change in that reflectivity of 10 watts per metre squared, that would be attributed to the phytoplankton - so about 8% of the reflection of sunlight on those clouds."
"It is quite a bit!" she said.
Brightening the clouds
So can this new understanding of the role of sea smells and clouds make a difference to global warming?
Well, yes, say the researchers but not necessarily in the ways you might think.
The scientists are excited about the findings because for the first time it gives them a clue about the total number of aerosols that are up in the air over the Southern Ocean.
But could this new understanding give a boost to ideas about geo-engineering our way out of warming hell?
Scientists have been studying the ability of clouds to reflect sunlight back into space
In recent years a number of researchers have suggested that brightening the clouds could be a low-impact way of cooling the planet.
Does this Southern Ocean research make this a more feasible prospect?
"In principle it is possible to strongly modify and brighten marine clouds by injecting particles into the marine atmosphere," says Dr Burrows.
"But I think whether or not that's a good idea is really a political question that needs to be discussed within society."
Something to mull over while lying on the beach with the sea air in your nostrils.
This 1994 Emmy award winning program traces the work and adventurous life of renowned oceanographer Walter Munk, from his explorations into the mysteries of waves to monitoring global warming.
In 1942, with World War II in full swing, a young military scientist learned of the Allies’ plans to invade northwestern Africa by sea to dislodge the nearby Axis forces.
The scientist, Walter Munk, who was in his mid-20s, hastily did some research and found that waves in the region were often too high for the boats carrying troops to reach the beaches safely.
Disaster could loom.
He mentioned it to his commanding officer, but was brushed off.
“ ‘They must have thought about that,’ ” Dr. Munk, now 97, recalled being told.
But the young scientist persisted, calling in his mentor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography near San Diego to help.
They devised a way to calculate the waves the boats could expect to face.
Their work helped the boats land in a window of relative calm, and the science of wave prediction took off, becoming part of the planning for the D-Day landings in 1944.
Such feats explain why Dr. Munk is sometimes called the “Einstein of the oceans.”
Longtime colleagues describe him as a courtly man of boundless curiosity, with an uncanny ability to search out important problems at just the right time.
In addition to wartime wave forecasting, Dr. Munk has done pioneering research in ocean sound transmission, deep-sea tides and even climate change, though some of his work in the field has been controversial.
Even today, well into his eighth decade of scientific work, his desk holds books and papers thick with geophysics formulas, and he continues to tackle projects ranging from using underwater sound signals to measure warming ocean temperatures to how winds cause the Gulf Stream.
Had he more time, Dr. Munk said, he would work on geoengineering.
“He has a real knack for picking problems that are ripe to really get new fields started,” said Peter Worcester, a research oceanographer at Scripps who has worked with Dr. Munk on a number of issues, including climate change.
Photos and video clips spanning the career of Scripps oceanographer Walter Munk.
Video courtesy of UC San Diego Creative Services and Publications.
Certain images used courtesy of Ansel Adams.
Born in 1917 to a banking family of Jewish heritage, Dr. Munk grew up in Vienna, with frequent trips to the Austrian countryside.
His father served occasionally as a chauffeur to Franz Joseph, the Austrian emperor, during World War I. “He had the only Rolls-Royce in Vienna,” Dr. Munk recalled.
His parents later divorced, and he was closer to his mother, who sent him to a school in upstate New York in 1932.
After taking night classes at Columbia University, he decided to leave the family business of banking and gained admission to the California Institute of Technology, where he studied applied physics. While spending the summer of 1939 near a girlfriend in the oceanside town of La Jolla, outside San Diego, he landed a job with Scripps (now part of the University of California, San Diego), where he has worked most of his career.
Colleagues say Dr. Munk took advantage of emerging computer analysis tools to help turn his direct observations of the ocean into sophisticated research projects.
But Dr. Munk says he is concerned that today’s young oceanographers rely too much on computers, and fail to ask fundamental questions or take enough risks.
“Computers are a lot cheaper than boats, and a lot more comfortable,” he said.
“And I’m a little worried about so many people doing computer experiments and losing their ability, the American leadership, in measurements at sea.”
His seafaring work includes some notable moments in world history.
Days before nuclear tests were performed at Bikini Atoll in 1946, Dr. Munk and a colleague dropped dye in the water to assess how quickly radioactive materials would flush out of the lagoon.
Near the test site of the far more powerful hydrogen bomb on Eniwetok Atoll in 1952, he monitored the ocean for a potential tsunami.
It didn’t happen, though Dr. Munk and his crew were doused by radioactive rain and had to toss their clothes overboard.
The high point of his career, as Dr. Munk calls it, came in 1991, when he traveled to Heard Island, a remote spot in the Southern Indian Ocean, to test long-range sound signals in the ocean.
Dr. Munk had worked extensively with colleagues on ocean acoustics, a useful field for detecting or concealing submarines.
The goal of the Heard Island experiment was to determine whether a sound generated from the South Indian Ocean could be heard in other corners of the world.
The speed at which the sound signals traveled could provide useful data on warming ocean temperatures, Dr. Munk reasoned, because the sound would travel slightly faster as the ocean warmed.
Hours before the experiment was to begin, Dr. Munk was awakened by a call from Bermuda.
From thousands of miles away, the listening post had already heard the sound before the experiment had begun.
As it turned out, the Bermuda post had heard the brief sound check that technicians had made while preparing for the full test.
“And that was the best news that I’ve ever heard,” Dr. Munk recalled.
The Heard Island broadcasts became known as the “sound heard around the world.”
But Dr. Munk’s zeal for using ocean sounds to measure climate change created trouble a few years later.
In 1994, as part of a Scripps project, he sought to install a sound transmitter in the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary off the coast of California to help measure ocean temperatures changing over time. (Another one was installed off Hawaii.)
But environmentalists feared that the broadcasts would hurt whales, which navigate and find food by means of their own sonar, and feed in the sanctuary.
The Natural Resources Defense Council asked for and received a public hearing in an effort to halt the Monterey Bay project.
“What happened here was a head-on collision between Walter Munk and whales. And that was the perception,” recalled Joel Reynolds, a senior lawyer for the defense council.
Dr. Munk and the military, which was largely funding the study, did not anticipate the level of public concern that the acoustics project would generate, he said.
After negotiations with the environmentalists, Dr. Munk and Scripps agreed to move the listening post farther off the California coast and prioritize a study of the sounds’ effects on marine mammals.
The clash over ocean acoustics, recounted in Joshua Horwitz’s 2014 book “War of the Whales,” illustrated a “chasm” between physical oceanographers and marine biologists, said Mr. Reynolds, who praised Dr. Munk as “one of the extraordinary oceanographers in history.”
Dr. Munk still yearns to use sound to measure the warming ocean.
“I am convinced that you can do good underwater acoustics without hurting the whales, with some sensible precautions,” he said.
For example, during Naval exercises, scientists must make sure there are no pods of whales nearby, and only gradually increase the sound.
He understood the concerns about whales, he said, and all sides “have to want to work together.”
His long career has also given Dr. Munk perspective on his earliest work on waves.
After their success in North Africa, he and his colleagues at Scripps opened a wave-prediction school for military officers, and some of the graduates went on to help forecast waves off Normandy ahead of the 1944 D-Day landings.
The curriculum changed constantly, Dr. Munk recalled, as the scientists learned more about the science of waves on the fly, essentially inventing the field.
“When we then look backwards, the fact that the landings took place during good weather was mostly luck, to some small extent skill,” Dr. Munk said of North Africa.
Nowadays, as he forges ahead on wind, waves and other projects, he occasionally forgets the times of meetings and gets around with the aid of a walker.
But he remains a frequent presence in Scripps, walking the halls of a building that now bears his name.
The secret to his longevity?
“I like my work and I like my life, and I enjoy doing it,” he said.
A short film describing the processes of bathymetric mapping and side scan sonar, used to gather data within the search area for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
About this video:
Geoscience Australia has been applying specialist marine geoscience knowledge and capability to assist in the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
With existing experience and capabilities supporting management of Australia’s vast marine jurisdiction, Geoscience Australia is providing ongoing expert advice to the international search team, led by the Joint Agency Coordination Centre and the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.
Specialist advice regarding bathymetry, the study and mapping of sea floor topography, has proved critical in understanding the environment in which the search is operating.
This video describes the key processes of bathymetric mapping and side scan sonar, which are used to gather data within the search area for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
Filmed over ten years throughout the Earth’s polar regions (filmed over 10-years in Antarctica, South Georgia, Falklands, New Zealand subantarctic, Svalbard, Greenland, Franz Josef Land, Canada and Iceland) by nature photographer Richard Sidey, Speechless – The Polar Realm is an award-winning non-verbal visual meditation of light, life, loss and wonder at the ends of the globe.
In search of an individual viewing experience aided by the absence of spoken narrative, this cinematic voyages is guided through both powerful imagery of the natural world and a poignant, original score from composer and sound artist, Miriama Young.
Physicists have found an explanation for rogue waves in the ocean and hope their theory will lead to devices to warn ships and save lives.
"A device on the mast of a ship analysing the surface of the sea could perhaps give a minute's warning that a rogue wave is developing," said Professor Nail Akhmediev, leader of the research at the Research School of Physics and Engineering.
"Even seconds could be enough to save lives."
Rogue ocean waves develop apparently out of nowhere over the course of about a minute and grow to as much as 40 metres in height before disappearing as quickly as they appeared.
Ships unlucky enough to be where rogue waves appear can capsize or be seriously damaged, as happened in the Mediterranean Sea to the Cypriot ship Louis Majesty, which was struck by a rogue wave in 2010 that left two passengers dead and fourteen injured.
The research by Professor Akhmediev and the team at the ANU Research School of Physics and Engineering, Dr Adrian Ankiewich and PhD student Amdad Chowdury, is published in Proceedings of Royal Society A.
Professor Akhmediev said that there are about 10 rogue waves in the world's oceans at any moment.
"Data from buoys and satellites around the world is already being collected and analysed. Combined with observations of the surrounding ocean from the ship this would give enough information to predict rogue waves," said Professor Akhmediev.
The physics team has been using mathematical models to predict rogue waves and where they will appear.
The theory may also explain freak waves that wash away people from beaches, as the rogue waves can sometimes transform into travelling waves known as solitons, that travel through the ocean like mini-tsunamis until they hit the coastline.
Professor Akhmediev's theory also applies to other chaotic phenomena such as light travelling in optical fibres, atoms trapped in a Bose-Einstein condensate and the ionosphere in the upper atmosphere.
The rogue wave is a special solution of the non-linear Schrodinger equation which is localised in time and space.
The solutions were derived by adding terms to cover dispersion to the non-linear Schrodinger equation, forming the Hirota equations.
Professor Akhmediev said that he next plans to add more terms to account for the influence of the wind on waves.
From July 10 to September 30, 2015, NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer will explore largely unknown deep-sea ecosystems in the Hawaiian Archipelago and offshore Johnston Atoll as part of the Hohonu Moana: Exploring the Deep Waters off Hawai’i expedition.
The project area to be explored: Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument and the Johnston Atoll Unit of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument.
Image courtesy of the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, created from a synthesis of existing multibeam mapping data by Dr. John R. Smith of the University of Hawaii
During four separate cruise legs, NOAA and partners will investigate deep waters in and around Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument (PMNM) in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument (PRIMNM), the Geologists Seamounts group, and the Main Hawaiian Islands.
NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer uses telepresence technology to transmit data in real-time to a shore-based hub where the video is then transmitted to a number of Exploration Command Centers located around the country as well as to any Internet-enabled device.
Access to the video combined with a suite of Internet-based collaboration tools allow scientists on shore to join the operation in real-time, and allows the general public to follow the expedition online. Image courtesy of the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, 2015 Hohonu Moana.
For three ice-free months a year, False Pass provides a shortcut for
fishermen making their way between the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering
Sea.
This easternmost passageway—via Ikatan Bay, Isanotski Straight, and
Bechevin Bay—is 70 km (37.8 nm) closer than the next crossing place at Unimak Pass.
But in the Arctic, near-shore changes occur rapidly and can lead to
maritime mishaps.
The location of sandbars and channels can shift
significantly because of the movement and melting of ice, seasonal
sedimentation, and erosion.
So each year, before vessels start to use
False Pass, the U.S. Coast Guard must send out buoy tenders to mark the
shifting channels.
New remote sensing techniques might make that job
easier and more accurate.
Shachak Pe’eri, a researcher at the University of New Hampshire, has
pioneered turbidity mapping as a proxy for bathymetric (depth)
measurements.
In enclosed water bodies with strong currents (such as
bays and sounds), turbid channels show up on Landsat imagery.
These
turbid areas illuminate where currents are carving deeper channels that
are safe for boat passage.
Pe’eri has been collaborating with colleagues
at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Coast
Guard to identify some of these areas from space.
False Pass with the GeoGarage platform
The field of satellite-derived bathymetry (SDB) was born with the launch of Landsat 1 in 1972.
But it took two changes—the opening of the free Landsat data archive in 2008 and the 2013 launch of the more-advanced Landsat 8 satellite—to reinvigorate the use of satellite data by NOAA and other agencies involved in ship navigation.
Different wavelengths of light penetrate water to differing degrees;
shorter wavelengths (such as blue and green light) penetrate water to
greater depths than longer wavelengths (near infrared, shortwave
infrared).
When water is clear and the sea bottom is bright, estimates
of depth can be made by measuring the amount of reflectance observed by
satellite and then modeling the how far the light penetrates.
In the past, water clarity has been a limiting factor for
satellite-derived bathymetry.
If waters are too turbid—full of sediments
that obscure light reflectance from the seafloor—then bathymetric
measurements are difficult to make.
But Pe’eri and his NOAA colleagues
are thinking outside of the SDB-box by turning turbidity into a tool
instead of an obstacle.
“Bathymetry estimated from Landsat turbidity maps can help guide NOAA
charting craft when they are mapping the channel each year. This saves
time and it makes the process safer,” Pe’eri said.
“With insufficient
knowledge of sandbar locations, the NOAA craft risk running aground, and
crew can be thrown overboard when that happens.”
With the help of Landsat SDB turbidity maps, the new locations of
sandbars can be better estimated.
Recently this has led to the discovery
of a new, straighter, and more geologically stable channel in Bechevin
Bay, which was imaged (above) in May 2014 by the Operational Land Imager
on Landsat 8.
The animation depicts the distribution and movement of man-made objects orbiting Earth. Image Credit: NASA Orbital Debris Program Office at JSC
From BBC by Dr Hugh Lewis
In 2014, the International Space Station had to move three times to avoid lethal chunks of space debris. The problem also threatens crucial and costly satellites in orbit. So what is the scale of the space junk problem, and what can we do about it?
Forty-five years ago the associate director of science at Nasa's Marshall Space Flight Center, Ernst Stuhlinger, an original member of Wernher von Braun's Operation Paperclip team, was asked by Sister Mary Jucunda, a Zambia-based nun, how he could suggest spending billions of dollars on spaceflight when many children were starving on Earth.
Today, Stuhlinger's response still provides a powerful justification for the costs associated with space research.
"It is certainly not by accident that we begin to see the tremendous tasks waiting for us at a time when the young space age has provided us the first good look at our own planet," he said.
Space Debris - How It Got There, What To Do About It?
Experts have estimated that there are 29,000 objects 10 cm or larger orbiting Earth.
Only 7 percent are working satellites.
The European Space Agency is looking at ways to mitigate the threat.
"Very fortunately though, the space age not only holds out a mirror in which we can see ourselves, it also provides us with the technologies, the challenge, the motivation, and even with the optimism to attack these tasks with confidence."
In the intervening years, the maturing space infrastructure has supported our new and ongoing efforts to tackle global health, hunger, poverty, education, disaster risk reduction, energy security and climate change.
Indeed, we have made great use of Stuhlinger's "mirror" to meet many of society's biggest challenges.
Sadly, the space environment has borne the brunt of our increasing reliance on satellites and our long-lived belief that "space is big".
More than 5,000 launches since the start of the space age, each carrying satellites for Earth observation, or communications, for example, have resulted in space becoming increasingly congested and contested.
The issue has been examined for a BBC Horizon documentary on BBC Two.
The US has a network of sensors, such as this 3.67m telescope in Hawaii, to track satellites and debris
Now, the US Space Surveillance Network is tracking tens of thousands of objects larger than a tennis ball orbiting above us, and we suspect that there are one hundred million objects larger than 1mm in the environment.
Due to their enormous orbital speed (17,000 mph), each one of these objects carries with it the potential to damage or destroy the satellites that we now depend on.
Red Conjunction
Perhaps the most visible symptoms of the space junk problem are the regular collision avoidance manoeuvres being performed by the International Space Station (ISS), and the increasingly frequent and alarming need for its occupants to "shelter-in-place" when a piece of junk is detected too late for a manoeuvre.
The systems on the ISS that provide vital life support are also responsible for its unique vulnerability to a debris impact - a pressurised module in a vacuum might behave like a balloon if punctured.
The recent "red conjunction" (where a piece of debris comes close enough to pose a threat to the space station) involving a fragment from a Russian satellite on 17 July this year was yet another demonstration of the growing threat from space junk.
Astronauts aboard the ISS shelter in the Soyuz capsule when a piece of junk is detected too late to manoeuvre
Thanks to the hit film "Gravity", and the Oscar-nominated performance of Sandra Bullock, we can now readily appreciate the anxiety that must be felt by the astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station whenever they receive such a "red conjunction" call.
In spite of these occurrences, the space station is actually orbiting at an altitude where the number of debris is relatively low.
At higher altitudes the amount of space junk is substantially greater, but only robotic spacecraft are exposed there.
Nevertheless, these satellites are some of the most valuable for understanding our planet.
Due to this congestion, there is an increasing chance that the space junk population could become self-sustaining.
That is, more junk could be created by collisions than is removed through the natural decay caused by atmospheric drag.
Indeed, we already have some experience of this: in February 2009 two relatively small satellites collided over Siberia creating about 2,000 new fragments that could be tracked, with many still orbiting today and regularly passing close to other satellites.
Space junk in numbers
In 2007, a chunk of space debris punched this hole in the radiator panel of space shuttle Endeavour
500,000 pieces of space debris between 1 and 10cm
More than 21,000 pieces larger than 10cm
More than 100 million pieces below 1cm
Most orbital debris is within 2,000km of the Earth's surface
The greatest concentrations of debris are found at 750-800km
Travel up to speeds of 28,163 km/h (17,500 mph)
Only 7% of space junk is functional
Source: Nasa, Esa
The Kessler Syndrome
Self-sustaining collision activity is something else that the film Gravity showed us. Dubbed the "Kessler Syndrome" after the Nasa scientist Don Kessler (now retired) who recognised and described this process with Burton Cour-Palais in 1978, such a scenario is a real - albeit often exaggerated - possibility.
Concerns of an uncontrollable growth of the space junk population and the loss of key satellites that enable us to address our society's problems have prompted scientists to look for ways to remove junk from space: If we can remove the problematic junk, then we can stall or even prevent the Kessler Syndrome.
More than 5,000 launches since the start of the space age have left Earth orbit increasingly congested and contested
This is no easy task, however, requiring new technologies, potentially new laws and - crucially - financial investment. The European Space Agency (Esa) is taking the lead, working on a mission it calls "e.Deorbit" that has the objective of removing a large European satellite from space.
The mission is ambitious; numerous technologies have been developed and assessed, including a solution based on a harpoon proposed by UK engineers from Airbus Defence and Space. It is also not without risk, but a successful outcome will surely show the space-faring world that a technical solution to the space junk problem exists, even if the political, legal and financial issues have yet to be solved.
The e.Deorbit mission will face key hurdles in 2016: its systems requirements review and the Esa Ministerial Council meeting, where approval (and funding) to proceed with the mission will be debated.
Tracking systems
Objects as small as 3mm can be detected by ground-based radars
Assessment of the particles smaller than 1mm is predicted by examining the impact surface of returned spacecraft - limited to those at altitudes below 600km
Air Force space junk surveillance currently tracks 21,000 pieces of space debris greater than 10cm
The US federal government has invested approx. $1bn on a new space tracking device - the Space Fence radar system, which can track up to 200,000 pieces of smaller debris
Small satellites: the future?
Against the background of an increasing space junk problem, a renaissance is now taking place in space; what was the principal domain of governments and space agencies, with their large, multi-billion dollar satellites, is becoming the province of an emerging industry that is revolutionizing the use of space.
Diminutive companies and start-ups, in particular, are showing how small budgets do not necessarily mean small ambitions.
For example, San Francisco's Planet Labs, are using "cubesats" to redefine the market for Earth imagery.
Their Dove satellites are smaller than a briefcase, yet have the capability to deliver high-resolution images of the Earth for a multitude of purposes.
There are concerns that the proliferation of small, low-cost satellites could exacerbate the problem
With plans by other companies, including SpaceX and OneWeb, to develop large constellations of small, low-cost satellites, there is some concern within space agencies about the long-term consequences of the ubiquitous and rapid commercialisation of space.
In particular, these concerns focus on the abrupt increase in the number of satellites orbiting the Earth, which could substantially increase the need for collision avoidance manoeuvres and hasten the onset of the Kessler Syndrome.
'Super wicked problem'
In 2014, Brian Weeden, a technical adviser for the Secure World Foundation, described space junk as a "super wicked problem."
Such problems, he explained, are particularly challenging to solve because time is running out, there is no central authority providing guidance or support, those seeking to solve the problem are also causing the problem, and the solutions are left for future generations to find.
The critical first step in tackling super wicked problems is to expand the group of people who support measures that reduce the risk.
Indeed, there are encouraging signs that both old and new space actors understand the need to mitigate negative impacts of their activities in space and to limit the consequences for other space users.
Several companies, including Planet Labs and OneWeb have affirmed their commitment to tackle the space junk problem in the public domain.
However, much work is still needed to fully understand the problem, develop technologies (such as e.Deorbit), remove legal and political barriers, and to increase awareness.
The Kessler Syndrome remains an ever-present threat.
The space age has enabled global solutions to some of society's biggest challenges, just as Ernst Stuhlinger described in his letter to Sister Mary Jucunda.
It has also held out a mirror and shown us that a continuing disregard for the space environment will surely affect our ability to deliver these solutions, with potential consequences for millions of people.
