USA NOAA update in the Marine GeoGarage

New York Harbor (12327)

13 charts have been updated in the Marine GeoGarage (NOAA update 11/30/2010)

50 : NORTH PACIFIC OCEAN EASTERN PART
11326 : GALVESTON BAY
11480 : CHARLESTON LIGHT TO CAPE CANAVERAL
11486 : ST AUGUSTINE LIGHT TO PONCE DE LEON INLET
11502 : DOBOY SOUND TO FERNANDINA
12214 : CAPE MAY TO FENWICK ISLAND
12327 : NEW YORK HARBOR
12332 : RARITAN RIVER RARITAN BAY TO NEW BRUNSWICK
16710 : ORCA BAY AND INLET CHANNEL ISLANDS TO CORDOVA
18456 : OLYMPIA HARBOR AND BUDD INLET
18764 : SAN CLEMENTE ISLAND PYRAMID COVE AND APPROACHES
18765 : APPROACHES TO SAN DIEGO BAY
19004 : HAWAIIAN ISLANDS

Today 1019 NOAA raster charts (2932 including sub-charts) are included in the Marine GeoGarage viewer.

Note : NOAA updates their nautical charts with corrections published in:
- U.S. Coast Guard Local Notices to Mariners (LNMs),
- National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency Notices to Mariners (NMs), and
- Canadian Coast Guard Notices to Mariners (CNMs)
While information provided by this Web site is intended to provide updated nautical charts, it must not be used as a substitute for the United States Coast Guard, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, or Canadian Coast Guard Notice to Mariner publications

Please visit the NOAA's chart update service for more info.

Climate change: Met Office halves 'worst case' sea level prediction

Global inundation analysis model (Credit : CReSIS)

From TheTelegraph

The Met Office has halved its "worst case" prediction for rising sea levels, in the latest instance of scientists being caught out for overstating the possible consequences of global warming.

Previously scientists had said oceans could rise by up to 13ft (4m) threatening cities like Shanghai, London and New York by 2100.
But it has been revised so that now the worse case scenario is just over 6ft 6in (2m).

This is still unlikely, but would mean the Maldives in the Indian Ocean and Tuvalu in the Pacific could be lost forever.
The most likely sea level rise this century remains between 8 and 23 inches (20-60cm), causing devastation in small island states and low lying countries like Bangladesh.

The report also found that the Atlantic Conveyor belt is not slowing down as much as previously thought.
The circulation of currents, also known as the Gulf Stream, keeps Britain warm and it was feared that if it slows down suddenly it could cause a ‘second ice age’.

The scenario was used in the Day After Tomorrow film and has even been blamed for the recent cold snaps, but it appears it is unlikely to affect Britain this century.
The revisions will be pounced on by sceptics as evidence that the Met Office has exaggerated climate change, especially after the debacle over last year's washout "barbecue summer"

However Vicky Pope, head of climate change advice, pointed out that overall the report found that most global warming predictions are the same or worse than previously thought.
“The evidence of the dangerous impacts of climate change is now clearer than ever,” she said.
The report looked at all the recent peer-reviewed papers on climate change on behalf of the UK Government.

The idea was to reassess the threats since the last major study on global warming was carried out by the United Nations science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in 2007.

It found that the melting of the Arctic is happening faster than thought, with ice free summers expected by the middle of this century.
Also deforestation could speed up as droughts in the Amazon cause massive forest fires.
It found that other dangerous ‘feed backs’ such as the methane released by thawing permafrost or wetlands is more likely as more evidence emerges.

“In most cases our new understanding has reinforced the last major study in 2007 – the degree of impact is about the same. In some cases our understanding leads us to conclude that the risks are greater,” added Dr Pope.

The report was launched at the UN Cancun Climate Change talks to highlight the threat of global warming.
More than 190 countries are gathered in the luxury resort in Mexico to decide the best way to stop global warming.

However the talks are at a deadlock at the moment as countries are failing to decide the best way to cut emissions.
Countries remain at loggerheads over whether to continue the Kyoto Protocol, which is the only existing agreement on global warming, or start again with a new legal treaty.

Chris Huhne, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, is flying out to try and find a middle ground.
He insisted the talks are on track to an eventual legal treaty to stop global warming.
“The mood has been cautiously positive. People are talking. The show is on the road,” he said.
“But it is not enough. If we are to meet our objectives and lay the groundwork for a binding deal, week two must bring more urgency, more compromise, and more commitment.”

Links :

• DailyMail : Alarmist Doomsday warning of rising seas 'was wrong', says Met Office study
  
• TheIndependent : Rising sea level threatens 'hundreds' of Caribbean resorts, says UN report
• TheGuardian : Don't consign us to history, plead island states at Cancún
  
• NYTimes : As glaciers melt, science seeks data on rising seas

“No fish left behind” approach leaves Earth with nowhere left to fish

Meet Rupert Howes.
Influenced by conservationists like David Attenborough, Rupert Howes was determined to make the world more sustainable.
His financial training and experience with nonprofit organizations convinced him "we must work with the grain of the market to shift our economic system to a more sustainable footing" to create a world that operates within ecological limits.
As CEO of Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), he focuses on reversing the decline in global fish stocks through MSC's marine certification and eco-labeling programs.

From University of British Columbia

A new study finds that Earth has run out of room to expand fisheries

The Earth has run out of room to expand fisheries, according to a new study led by University of British Columbia researchers that charts the systematic expansion of industrialized fisheries.

In collaboration with the National Geographic Society and published today in the online journal PLoS ONE, the study is the first to measure the spatial expansion of global fisheries.
It reveals that fisheries expanded at a rate of one million sq. kilometres per year from the 1950s to the end of the 1970s.
The rate of expansion more than tripled in the 1980s and early 1990s – to roughly the size of Brazil’s Amazon rain forest every year.

Between 1950 and 2005, the spatial expansion of fisheries started from the coastal waters off the North Atlantic and Northwest Pacific, reached into the high seas and southward into the Southern Hemisphere at a rate of almost one degree latitude per year.
It was accompanied by a nearly five-fold increase in catch, from 19 million tonnes in 1950, to a peak of 90 million tonnes in the late 1980s, and dropping to 87 million tonnes in 2005, according to the study.

“The decline of spatial expansion since the mid-1990s is not a reflection of successful conservation efforts but rather an indication that we’ve simply run out of room to expand fisheries,” says Wilf Swartz, a PhD student at UBC Fisheries Centre and lead author of the study.

Meanwhile, less than 0.1 per cent of the world’s oceans are designated as marine reserves that are closed to fishing.

“If people in Japan, Europe, and North America find themselves wondering how the markets are still filled with seafood, it’s in part because spatial expansion and trade makes up for overfishing and ‘fishing down the food chain’ in local waters,” says Swartz.

“While many people still view fisheries as a romantic, localized activity pursued by rugged individuals, the reality is that for decades now, numerous fisheries are corporate operations that take a mostly no-fish-left-behind approach to our oceans until there’s nowhere left to go,” says Daniel Pauly, co-author and principal investigator of the Sea Around Us Project at UBC Fisheries Centre.

The researchers used a newly created measurement for the ecological footprint of fisheries that allows them to determine the combined impact of all marine fisheries and their rate of expansion.
Known as SeafoodPrint, it quantifies the amount of “primary production” – the microscopic organisms and plants at the bottom of the marine food chain – required to produce any given amount of fish.

“This method allows us to truly gauge the impact of catching all types of fish, from large predators such as bluefin tuna to small fish such as sardines and anchovies,” says Pauly. “Because not all fish are created equal and neither is their impact on the sustainability of our ocean.”

“The era of great expansion has come to an end, and maintaining the current supply of wild fish sustainably is not possible,” says co-author and National Geographic Ocean Fellow Enric Sala. “The sooner we come to grips with it – similar to how society has recognized the effects of climate change – the sooner we can stop the downward spiral by creating stricter fisheries regulations and more marine reserves.”

Links :

• WashingtonPost : China has world's largest 'SeafoodPrint'; U.S. ranks third
• WashingtonPost : Supply of places to fishes is dwindling
• National Geographic : Seafood crisis / Who catches and who consumes
  
• Fishonline (MCS) : Fishing for our future
  
• Fishfight : Half of all fish in the North Sea is thrown back overboard dead
  

Submarine cables : how the net connected the world

In 1998, just a handful of countries had extensive internet usage.
Today, nearly two billion people have web access via submarine communication cables

Click on : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11864350
Then move the slider below to see how the cable network has spread and internet use has expanded.

From TheAtlantic

The Internet is where we live our digital lives. But it's also a physical network of cables that span the globe.

We've clearly come a long, long way since the first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable, which was laid in 1858 between the United States and Great Britain.
Last week, we were lucky enough to have Hal Wallace, the electricity curator at the National Museum of American History walk us through the story of that very first submarine line.

The line was the brainchild of the financier Cyrus Field.
He had a stunningly simple plan. Take one British warship and one American frigate, load them up with cable, and navigate them towards each other.
There was nothing fancy about the cable laying process: they just paid out the cable over the back and let it sink into the depths.
When the British and American vessels met up, they spliced the cable together and were in business. You can see the apparatus here, thanks to Atlantic-Cable's sleuthing.

Map of the 1858 trans-Atlantic cable route

Sadly, the first cable didn't last long.
After three weeks, it stopped working and was never reconnected.
"The operators didn't realize how to work a cable like this," Wallace said. "The signal was very weak, so the answer was, 'More Power Scotty' and they fried the cable."
By the time they laid the more permanent telegraph lines in the 1860s, operators had learned their lesson.

There's a fascinating coda to the story, too.
Contemporary interest in the submarine cable was huge.
In fact, there was a short-lived frenzy after the connection was initially made.
Field, ever the entrepreneur, entered into a deal with Tiffany's to sell chunks of the cable as souvenirs.
So, what you're looking at the top of this post is a Tiffany's branded chunk of submarine cable.
It even came with a certificate of authenticity from Field himself.
The moral of the story? Don't let anyone tell you that technological enthusiasm is something new.Links :

• TeleGeography : submarine cable map
• History of the Atlantic cable & submarine telegraphy : submarine cable route maps
  
• Cable map : fantastic interactive map of all the world's submarine cables. (spotted this past weekend by Wired)
  
• TheGuardian : how one clumsy ship cut off the web for 75 million people / Sea cable map
• Youtube : underwater cable laying
• Wired : mother earth mother board
• Wikipedia : list of international submarine communication cables

Oceans failing the acid test, U.N. says

Rob Dunbar hunts for data on our climate from 12,000 years ago, finding clues inside ancient seabeds and corals.
His work is vital in setting baselines for fixing our current climate -- and, scarily, in tracking the rise of deadly ocean acidification.

From CNN

The chemistry of the world's oceans is changing at a rate not seen for 65 million years, with far-reaching implications for marine biodiversity and food security, according to a new United Nations study released Thursday.

"Environmental Consequences of Ocean Acidification," published by the U.N. Environmental Program (UNEP)," warns that some sea organisms including coral and shellfish will find it increasingly difficult to survive, as acidification shrinks the minerals needed to form their skeletons.

Lead author of the report Carol Turley, from the UK's Plymouth Marine Laboratory said in a statement: "We are seeing an overall negative impact from ocean acidification directly on organisms and on some key ecosystems that help provide food for billions. We need to start thinking about the risk to food security." (video)

Tropical reefs provide shelter and food for around a quarter of all known marine fish species, according to the U.N. report, while over one billion people rely on fish as a key source of protein.
Ocean acidification is yet another red flag being raised, carrying planetary health warnings about the uncontrolled growth in greenhouse gas emissions

Increasing acidification is likely to affect the growth and structural integrity of coral reef, the study says, and coupled with ocean warming could limit the habitats of crabs, mussels and other shellfish with knock-on effects up and down the food chain.

The report, unveiled during the latest round of U.N. climate talks in Cancun, Mexico, says that around a quarter of the world's CO2 emissions are currently being absorbed by the oceans, where they are turned into carbonic acid.

Overall, pH levels in seas and oceans worldwide have fallen by an average of 30 percent since the Industrial Revolution. The report predicts that by the end of this century ocean acidity will have increased 150 percent, if emissions continue to rise at the current rate.

But scientists say there may well be winners and losers as acidification doesn't affect all sea creatures in the same way.
Adult lobsters, for example, may increase their shell-building as pH levels fall, as might brittle stars -- a close relation of the starfish -- but at the cost of muscle formation.
"The ability, or inability, to build calcium-based skeletons may not be the only impact of acidification on the health and viability of an organism: brittle stars perhaps being a case in point," Turley said in a statement.

"It is clearly not enough to look at a species. Scientists will need to study all parts of the life-cycle to see whether certain forms are more or less vulnerable."

Scientists are more certain about the fate of photosynthetic organisms such as seagrasses, saying they are likely to benefit from rising acidification and that some creatures will simply adapt to the changing chemistry of the oceans.

The authors identify a range of measures which policymakers need to consider to stop pH levels falling further, including "rapid and substantial cuts" to CO2 emissions as well as assessing the vulnerability of communities which rely on marine resources.

"Ocean acidification is yet another red flag being raised, carrying planetary health warnings about the uncontrolled growth in greenhouse gas emissions. It is a new and emerging piece in the scientific jigsaw puzzle, but one that is triggering rising concern," Achim Steiner, UNEP executive director, said in a statement.

Links :

• TheTelegraph : Cancun climate summit, Britain's salmon at risk from ocean acidification
• Reuters : Ocean acidification may threaten food security
• AFP : UN report highlights ocean acidification
• Wired : Ocean acidification gives young fish a death wish
  
• Blog GeoGarage : Ocean acidification, the other CO2 issue