Walter H. Munk, scientist-explorer who illuminated the deep, dies at 101

Walter Munk in 1963 with a tide capsule.

The capsule was dropped to the seafloor to measure deep-sea tides before such measurements became feasible by satellite.

Credit Ansel Adams, University of California

From NYTimes by William Dicke

Walter H. Munk, one of the foremost oceanographers of the 20th century, who sent pulses of sound through the vast oceans — probably startling a few whales — to measure changes in water temperatures, forecast waves and seek signs of global warming, died on Friday at his seaside home in the La Jolla section of San Diego.
He was 101.

The University of California, San Diego, reported his death on its website.
His home, named Seiche, is near the university campus, where he spent his career at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography after joining its faculty in 1947.

“We thought he would live forever,” his wife, Mary Munk, told The San Diego Union-Tribune.
She said the cause of death was pneumonia.

Dr. Munk, a scientist-explorer who would expound on his discoveries with exuberance, was sometimes called the “Einstein of the oceans” for his pioneering work in the study of waves, ocean circulation, tides and irregularities in the Earth’s rotation.
(He was also a geophysicist.)

This documentary showcases Walter Munk's research on waves generated by Antarctic storms.

The film documents Munk's collaboration as they track storm-driven waves from Antarctica across the Pacific Ocean to Alaska.

The film features scenes of early digital equipment in use in field experiments with Munk's commentary on how unsure they were about using such new technology in remote locations.

In one 1960s study — which did not have to look far for a subject — he discovered that the waves washing ashore in measured ranks in Southern California had originated thousands of miles away in storms sweeping across the southern Indian Ocean.
The discovery led to improved forecasting of the big waves coveted by surfers.

 From Bondi to Bundoran, Pipeline to Mavericks, surfers around the world depend on the surf forecast to catch the perfect wave.

Its inventor, Walter Munk, dies at 101– yet few surfers know his name, despite the debt of gratitude they owe him.

As a young scientist during World War II, he and Harald U. Sverdrup , the director of Scripps at the time, developed a method for predicting the size of the surf on beaches during amphibious landings so that landing craft could avoid being swamped.

Dr. Munk, left, observing an oceanographic instrument during the Capricorn Expedition (1952-1953), somewhere between Eniwetok and Tonga in the Pacific.

Credit UC San Diego/Scripps Institution of Oceanography

The method was first used in the American landings in North Africa in 1942.
It later predicted, correctly, that the waves would be high but manageable during the D-Day landings by the Allies in Normandy on June 6, 1944.
The technique, also used in amphibious landings in the Pacific, was credited with saving the lives of thousands of soldiers and Marines.

In his research on sound in the oceans starting in the 1970s, Dr. Munk and his colleagues transmitted low-frequency sounds, which at a certain depth can travel thousands of miles without weakening significantly.

Because sound moves faster in warm water than in cold, the technique can measure differences in average temperature over a long distance.
Dr. Munk and his colleagues demonstrated its feasibility by transmitting a pulse of sound from a loudspeaker lowered into the water near Heard Island in the Indian Ocean in 1991.
It was detected by listening stations thousands of miles away.

“And that was the best news that I’ve ever heard,” Dr. Munk told The New York Times in 2015.
The Heard Island broadcasts became known as the “sound heard around the world.”

Walter Munk from Andrew M. Cohen

Walter Heinrich Munk was born on Oct. 19, 1917, in Vienna into a wealthy banking family of Jewish heritage, a son of Dr. Hans Munk and Rega Brunner.
The couple divorced when Walter was a child.
His maternal grandfather, Lucian Brunner, was a prominent banker and Austrian politician.
His stepfather, Dr. Rudolf Engelsberg, was later briefly a member of the Austrian government of Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss, who was assassinated by Nazi agents in 1934.

Growing up in Vienna, Walter took frequent trips to the Austrian countryside, and 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 said.

At 14 he was sent to New York to attend an upstate boarding school with the idea that he would eventually work at a branch of a private New York bank connected to his family.
On graduating, he became a runner at the bank to learn the business from the bottom up.

But after three years, during which he took classes at Columbia University, he decided that he was not cut out for banking and left for California.
He turned up at the California Institute of Technology and asked to be admitted, although he had not filed an application.
The dean, no stickler for procedure, accepted him once he passed the entrance exam.

Walter Munk earned a bachelor’s degree at Caltech in 1939 (the same year be became an American citizen), a master’s degree there a year later and his Ph.D.
at the University of California, Los Angeles, for work done at Scripps.

He volunteered for the Army in 1939, but after 18 months in the ranks he was excused from military service to do research on anti-submarine warfare for the Navy.
His Army unit was subsequently sent to New Guinea to fight the Japanese and was nearly wiped out.

Dr. Munk’s first marriage, to Martha Chapin Munk, ended in divorce.
His second wife, Judith, died in 2006 after more than 50 years of marriage.
He married Mary Coakley in 2011.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by his daughters Edie and Kendall and three grandsons, U.C.
San Diego said.
Another daughter, Lucian, who had been born with a heart defect, died at age 7 in 1961.

After the war, Dr. Munk participated in studies of the atomic tests in the Pacific.
He and a colleague were given 10 days to measure the circulation of water in and out of the Bikini Lagoon before an atomic test there in 1946, and he witnessed it from a raft 10 miles from ground zero.
Because of concerns that an atomic blast might cause a tsunami, he developed a warning system.

Dr. Munk, standing with his right side facing the camera, with colleagues preparing an instrument raft in 1952 near Eniwetok Atoll, the hydrogen bomb test site, where he monitored the ocean for a potential tsunami

In the 1950s, he carried out research in geophysics, founding an institute for studies in that field at Scripps and explaining with a colleague why the Earth wobbles on its axis and why its spin varies slightly.

Dr. Munk was a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Among the awards he received were the National Medal of Science, the Crafoord Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences, which he received in 1999 for his work in physical oceanography and geophysics.
He was the first scientist in his field to win the award.

Dr. Munk also engaged in research on climate change, particularly how rising sea levels affect the Earth’s rotation (measured in millionths of a second per year).
He praised the 2015 Paris climate accords and called for a global effort to deal with the issue.

During a question-and-answer session at the University of Delaware in 2016, a reporter asked him what society should do about climate change.
Dr. Munk replied, “We should stop melting the ice sheets.”

In another interview, in 2009, he said: “I am very concerned that not much is being done about the heating of the oceans. Two-thirds of the heat that’s been added in the last 50 years has gone into the ocean, and only one-third in the atmosphere. If there wasn’t available ocean on this planet for heat storage, the warming of the atmosphere would have been three times as big.”

Trailer - Spirit of discovery from Eliana Alvarez Martinez

Throughout his career, Dr. Munk shifted into different areas of research as the spirit moved him.

“You’ll see that I’ve been a dabbler,” he said in an interview with Scientific American in 1995.
He added: “I’m not much of a scholar. I don’t like to read. I like to work in a field that has nothing published, where you have to figure it out for yourself.”

Self-effacingly, he never took to the sobriquet “Einstein of the oceans.”
“Einstein was a great man,” he once said to The Union-Tribune.
“I was never on that level.”

Links :

• Scripps : Obituary Notice: Walter Munk, World-Renowned Oceanographer, Revered Scientist
• NYTimes : Walter Munk, the ‘Einstein of the Oceans’
• TheConversation : Hang ten (decades): Walter Munk, inventor of the surf forecast, turns 100
• YouTube : Dr Walter Munk explains his role in Operation Overlord
• Walter Munk Foundation for the Oceans 
• GeoGarage blog : Walter Munk, 'Einstein of the Oceans,' at 97 

Fake or not

Photographer Tom Peschak was down to the last frames on his roll of film when he captured the photo he'd been waiting for: a great white surfacing behind researcher Trey Snow's kayak.

"Instead of the scientist tracking the shark the shark is tracking the scientist," Peschak says.

From Thomas Peschak website

When I began work ten years ago on a book about white sharks, I had no idea that this project would yield my most well-known image to date.
For more than ten months I worked together with Michael Scholl and scientists at the White Shark Trust to create novel images of white sharks in South Africa that would illustrate current scientific research.
The team observed large numbers of white sharks venturing into extremely shallow water during the summer months.
In order to figure out why, the researchers tracked and observed the sharks’ movements, but were regularly thwarted for two reasons.
First, the inshore realm was treacherous, humped by rocky reefs and sandbanks, which heaved the research boat precariously during an onslaught of large swells.
Secondly, the boat engine's electrical field seemed to affect the sharks' behavior.

I suggested using a kayak as less obtrusive photographic platform to track white sharks.
I was met withcautious enthusiasm, so I was voted to be the one to test the waters.
Even though we repeatedly tested the sharks’ reactions to an empty kayak, the first few attempts at a manned kayak were nerve-wracking.
As I sat in the “yum-yum” yellow sea kayak, a 15-foot (4.5m) great white shark ambled towards me.
However, white sharks are much more cautious and inquisitive than aggressive and unpredictable.
And this proved true with our experiment; at no time did the sharks show any aggression toward us or our little yellow craft.

The story of this particular photograph began on a perfectly calm and glassy sea.
I tied myself to the tower of the White Shark Trust research boat and leaned into the void, precariously hanging over the ocean while waiting patiently.
The first shark came across our sea kayak, dove to the seabed, and inspected it from below.
I trained my camera on the nebulous shadow as it slowly transformed into the sleek silhouette of a large great white.
When the shark’s dorsal fin emerged, I thought I had the shot but hesitated a fraction of a second.
In that moment, the research assistant in the kayak, Trey Snow, turned to look behind him, and I took the shot.
Throughout the day I shot many more similar images, but all lacked the connection of first image.

A developed roll of slide film shows the moments leading up to the picture photographer Tom Peschak refers to as "the ultimate shark scientist picture."

I knew the image was iconic, but I was not prepared for the public response.
When the photograph was first published, it attracted more than 100,000 visitors to my website in 24 hours.
Many thought the photo was a digital fake, and to date there are still hundreds of websites that debate its authenticity.
Not only is the image real, it was one of the last images I took using slide film before transitioning to digital.
All magazines and prints were taken from a high-resolution scan of the slide with no post-production work.
Over the years the image continued to sell and just when I thought it had run its course, the image resurfaced on April 1, 2006.

The French magazine, Le Magazine des Voyages de Peche (The Magazine of Fishing Voyages) published an April Fool’s Day article that told the story of professional fishermen Arnold Pointer from south Australia who accidentally caught a large female white shark in one of his fishing nets.
Instead of killing her, he set her free and named her Cindy.
From that day forward, the shark followed Arnold every time he set out to sea.
In the article, he states, “It’s been two years and she doesn’t leave me alone. She follows me everywhere I go, and her presence scares all the fishes.”
Two years later this hoax was immortalized in a YouTube slideshow, which used my photograph, purportedly showing Cindy the white shark following Arnold in his yellow kayak.
The video received nearly 1.6 million hits and introduced the white shark kayak to a new audience, albeit in an inaccurate if humorous context.

On August 21, 2011, Hurricane Irene battered the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico and flooded many streets.
I could never have imagined that my photograph would make an appearance in this context, except this time it was only the shark, minus the kayak.
On August 24 the shark appeared on a social news website in the form of a photograph taken from the open window of a car driving along a flooded street.
Next to the car was “my” white shark swimming through the flooded streets of Puerto Rico.
The image was then picked up and used in a TV bulletin on Channel 7 News Miami.
A closer examination of the shark revealed that it was identical to the shark following the kayak in my photograph.
It appears that a crafty Photoshop artist superimposed the shark into a scene of a flooded street.
The composite resurfaced again in June of 2012, when a shark tank supposedly burst in a popular mall in Kuwait.
The photo depicted two sharks (one of which was mine) swimming at the bottom of a submerged escalator.
The most recent incarnation appeared in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, which devastated the eastern coast of the U.S.
This time, the shark made the same appearance outside a car window in the flooded streets of New Jersey.
I always look forward to receiving e-mails from friends and family who have spotted the same white shark in a different context.
While I will probably never become a legend in my own right, at least my white shark is well on her way.

Links :

• HoaxSlayer : Shark Following Kayaker Photo
• National Geographic : How the ultimate shark photo went viral / Swimming with sharks
• T. Peschak's "Sharks and people" book : Exploring our relationship with the most feared fish in the sea
• HuffingtonPost : Underwater Photographer Thomas Peschak Shares His Favourite Images  

One breath around the world

Knowing how incredible our deep seas are, famous French freediver Guillaume Nery is showcasing not one but three Philippine dive sites in a 12-minute video that compiles the most jaw-dropping underwater locations around the world.
Some of the most amazing parts of the video include the limestone formations under Barracuda Lake in Coron, Palawan (2:16), an underwater shot in Coron filmed using an upside-down camera trick (5:50), and shots of Davao del Norte’s Sama-Bajau people, who can hunt underwater for as long as 13 minutes at depths of around 200 feet (6:14 mark).
Filming started in April 2017 when Nery, along with his wife-slash-videographer Julie Gautier and photographer Franck Seguin, flew to some of the world’s under-the-radar dive spots.

They also filmed the Yonaguni Monument off the coast of Japan (0:44); the frozen Sonnanen Lake in Finland (3:59); and Cenote Angelita in Yucatán, Mexico (4:41).
Freedivers hold their breath and go underwater for as long as they can without equipment.

Nery, who has broken the freediving world record four times, can dive to 125 meters (410 feet) below sea level.

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : Y40 jump: Guillaume Néry explores the deepest ... / Naughty Boy's Runnin (Lose It All) featuring ... / Ocean gravity / Narcose

Met Office: global warming could exceed 1.5C within five years

2018 was the fourth hottest year in the modern record, part of a decades-long trend of warming.

The record dates back to 1880, when it became possible to collect consistent, reliable temperatures around the planet.

NASA and NOAA work together to track the temperatures, part of ongoing research into our warming planet.

From The Guardian by Jonathan Watts

Lowest Paris agreement target may temporarily be surpassed for first time between now and 2023

Global warming could temporarily hit 1.5C above pre-industrial levels for the first time between now and 2023, according to a long-term forecast by the Met Office.

Meteorologists said there was a 10% chance of a year in which the average temperature rise exceeds 1.5C, which is the lowest of the two Paris agreement targets set for the end of the century.

Until now, the hottest year on record was 2016, when the planet warmed 1.11C above pre-industrial levels, but the long-term trend is upward.

Man-made greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are adding 0.2C of warming each decade but the incline of temperature charts is jagged due to natural variation: hotter El Niño years zig above the average, while cooler La Ninã years zag below.

In the five-year forecast released on Wednesday, the Met Office highlights the first possibility of a natural El Niño combining with global warming to exceed the 1.5C mark.

Dr Doug Smith, Met Office research fellow, said: “A run of temperatures of 1C or above would increase the risk of a temporary excursion above the threshold of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
Predictions now suggest around a 10% chance of at least one year between 2019 and 2023 temporarily exceeding 1.5C.”

Climatologists stressed this did not mean the world had broken the Paris agreement 80 years ahead of schedule because international temperature targets are based on 30-year averages.
“Exceeding 1.5C in one given year does not mean that the 1.5C goal has been breached and can be redirected towards the bin,” said Joeri Rogelj, a lecturer at the Grantham Institute.
“The noise in the annual temperatures should not distract from the long-term trend.”

Although it would be an outlier, scientists said the first appearance in their long-term forecasts of such a “temporary excursion” was worrying, particularly for regions that are usually hard hit by extreme weather related to El Niño.
This includes western Australia, South America, south and west Africa, and the Indian monsoon belt.

NASA: the Global temperature anomalies from 1880 to 2017

They also noted that the probability of 1.5C years would steadily increase unless emissions were rapidly scaled back.

“It’s a warning that we’re getting close to that level,” Prof Adam Scaife, the head of long-range prediction at the Met Office, told the Guardian.
“We’re not saying there is a current risk of breaching the Paris agreement.
What we are saying is that for the first time, we are seeing a chance of a temporary rise of 1.5C due to a combination of global warming and natural climate variation.”

The Met Office said previous results had demonstrated the accuracy of such “decadal reports”, which cover the ground between short-term weather forecasts and long-range climate models.

Since 2014, the world has experienced the four hottest years since records began in 1850, but these highs are likely to be exceeded soon.
From now until 2023, the Met has 90% confidence that mean annual temperatures will range between 1.03C and 1.57C above pre-industrial levels.

The recent United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on warming of 1.5C, highlighted the calamitous difference even a fraction of a degree above could make to coral reefs, Arctic ecosystems and hundreds of millions of lives.
Starting now, the report said emissions would have to be cut by 45% by 2030 to have any chance of holding to that level.

“Breaching 1.5C of global warming does indeed mean that we failed to limit warming to that ‘safe’ level, but not that our understanding of a safe level of climate change has suddenly changed and climate change should go unchecked,” said Rogelj, who was was a coordinating lead author on the UN report.
“Every tenth of a degree matters. So if 1.5C of global warming would be exceeded for whatever reason, this would be a call for steeper emissions reductions.”

Links :

• FT : Climate change pushes global temperatures to record highs
• BBC : Climate change: World heading for warmest decade, says Met Office
• Forbes : Australia Is Burning Up While The US Was Freezing To Death. Global ...
• Yale : Earth’s oceans are routinely breaking heat records
• Scientific America : Oceans Are Warming Faster Than Predicted
• WP : The oceans are warming faster than we thought, and scientists ...
• The Guardian : Warming oceans likely to raise sea levels 30cm by end of century ... / Global warming should be called global heating, says key scientist / Met Office warns of global temperature rise exceeding 1.5C limit
• ScienceMag : How fast are the oceans warming?
• GeoGarage blog : Berkeley Earth's global warming movie for 2018

NOAA announces change in channel depths on raster nautical chart products

From NOAA

NOAA’s Office of Coast Survey recently announced plans to change the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) maintained channel depth values on raster nautical chart products, which include paper nautical charts and the corresponding digital raster navigational charts (NOAA RNC®).
Minimum depths (also called controlling depths) are collected during periodic USACE sonar surveys of channels.
In the past, these depths were provided on raster charts, but controlling depths will now be replaced with the original channel design dredging depths used by the USACE (called project depths).
Standardizing depth presentation on these products will improve data consistency and overall safety.
Implementation begins in early 2019.

NOAA’s suite of electronic navigational charts (NOAA ENC®) are not affected by these changes.
Mariners are encouraged to use NOAA ENCs for critical safety information as these products are typically updated up to one month ahead of raster products.

Why the change?

The USACE makes the depth information from recent surveys publicly available on their website before NOAA nautical products are updated and published.
NOAA prioritizes making updates to ENC over RNC products.
This often results in RNC products not accurately reflecting the most current controlling depth values (as represented on NOAA ENC and the USACE website).
To eliminate inconsistencies among controlling depths, NOAA will only show project depths on raster chart products in the future.
The Initial implementation of this change will focus on deep draft shipping channels where the primary product used for navigation is the ENC.

How will mariners be notified?

NOAA first publicized the concept of charting project depths in the National Charting Plan released in February 2017.
As the changes are made on individual charts, NOAA will include a note on each chart directing mariners to review the USACE website and use NOAA ENC to access the latest controlling depths.
Additionally, a statement drafted jointly by Coast Survey and the U.S.
Coast Guard (shown below) is being published weekly in the Coast Guard’s Local Notice to Mariners

NOAA recommends that mariners take advantage of the most recent chart updates by using the NOAA Electronic Navigational Chart (ENC) for navigation in U.S. waters.
ENCs provide the most up to date information, whereas paper and raster nautical chart updates may
be up to one month behind the corresponding ENC coverage.
Over the next few years, mariners will see continued improvement in the extent and detail of ENC coverage, while there will be a reduction in RNC and paper chart coverage and service.
ENCs will include routine changes between editions that are not published through
notices to mariners.
One significant change to the RNC and paper charts will be the removal of controlling (minimum) depth information from many maintained channels.
Controlling channel depths will still be provided on ENCs. Comments or concerns can be addressed through ASSIST, NOAA’s
Nautical Inquiry and Comment System.
https://www.nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/customer-service/assist/

Project depths and controlling depths defined

Federally maintained channels are broken into a series of individually named sections called “reaches.” There are two different depths associated with each reach that are reported by the USACE, the project depth and the controlling depth.
Project depths are the original design dredging depths of a channel reach constructed by the USACE.
They may or may not be maintained by dredging after completion of the channel.
In other words, the actual depth of the channel may be shoaler than the project depth (for example, Reach B in image below).
Controlling depths, or minimum depths, are the least depths within the limits of a channel reach.
These depths are updated with each new USACE survey.
Minimum depths restrict the safe use of a channel to ships with drafts less than the minimum.

Example of a federally maintained channel with a project depth of 30 feet.

Reach A has a controlling depth of 32 feet and Reach B has a controlling depth of 28 feet.

Displaying project depths on raster charts

Controlling depths are depicted on raster chart products by channel tabulations, depth legends, and hydrography (individual depth soundings).
Here are a few examples of how depiction of channel depths will change on raster charts:

Channel tabulation to project depth legend:

Depth legend to project depth legend:

Hydrography to project depth legend:

Controlling depth channel tabulation to project tabulation:

Project Depth Note:

The following note will be added to raster charts as controlling depths are replaced with project depths:

PROJECT DEPTHS

Channel legends and tabulations, where indicated, reflect the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) project depths.
The channel may be significantly shoaler, particularly at the edges.
For detailed channel information and minimum depths as reported by USACE, use NOAA Electronic Navigational Charts.
USACE surveys and channel condition reports are available at
http://navigation.usace.army.mil/Survey/Hydro.

The change from showing – often outdated – controlling depths to showing channel project depths on raster nautical chart products, such as paper nautical charts and RNCs, will provide greater clarity and safety for mariners.
The project depths shown on raster charts will give users an idea of the original channel design dimensions.
The up-to-date controlling (minimum) depths provided on NOAA ENCs and on the USACE website (referenced on raster chart products) will give users the latest information on the safe depth in which ships may transit through federally maintained channels.
Comments or concerns about these changes can be addressed through NOAA ASSIST.