Rogue waves captured

Wave gauges in a water tank spot the peak of a tiny rogue wave.

From ScienceNews

Re-creating monster swells in a tank helps explain their origin

Freak waves that swallow ships whole have been re-created in a tank of water.
Though these tiny terrors are only centimeters high, a devilishly difficult mathematical equation describing their shape may help to explain the origins of massive rogue waves at sea..

Sailors have long swapped stories about walls of water leaping up in the open ocean — even in calm water — without warning or obvious cause.
But for centuries, rogue waves were little more than talk; no one had ever measured one with scientific instruments.

Then on New Year’s Eve of 1995, a laser on an oil rig off Norway’s coast recorded one of these rare events: a wave 26 meters from bottom to top, flanked by deep troughs on either side.

This wave and others measured since look like breather waves, says Amin Chabchoub, a mathematician at the Hamburg University of Technology in Germany.
A breather wave is an anomaly in a series of waves that sucks in the energy of its neighbors and puffs itself up to a great height.

The nonlinear interactions that allow for this energy theft were described by mathematician Howell Peregrine in 1983.
His solutions of nonlinear Schrödinger equations showed that pulselike waves called Peregrine solitons can pop out of sine waves under certain conditions.

“For a long time, nobody really thought this mathematics would be applicable to the ocean,” says Al Osborne, a physicist at the University of Turin in Italy.
“Not only is it applicable, but we’re now undergoing a paradigm shift in understanding ocean waves.”

To make a Peregrine soliton, Chabchoub wobbled a paddle back and forth at the end of a long water tank.
Regularly spaced waves about a centimeter high emerged and rolled across the surface.
Then he gave the paddle a precise jerk – introducing an anomaly.

“It’s possible that the wind could generate a similar modulation or perturbation in the open sea,” says Chabchoub, who describes the experiment in a paper in the May 20 Physical Review Letters.

In the 15-meter tub, this spot grew to a height of about 3 centimeters before dying down — hardly enough to make a rubber ducky quack in fear.
Flanked by two deep troughs, the rising peak moved half as fast as the background waves.
It satisfied both Peregrine’s mathematics and a common statistical view that a rogue wave is something at least two to three times the size of the tallest one-third of the other waves averaged.

In theory, the toy waves in the water tank should scale up to oceanic proportions.
But oceans are much messier than water tanks.
Normal ocean waves come in a variety of sizes and speeds, and other nonlinear effects may play a role in creating rogue waves.

“You add an almost imperceptible amount of noise, and all sorts of wacky and unexpected things can happen,” says Daniel Solli, a physicist at UCLA who created the first Peregrine soliton in light waves.

Chabchoub and his colleagues are exploring ways to introduce a little more mess into their tank to see what other wacky conditions can give rise to freak waves.

Links :

• Marine GeoGarage blog : Science investigates freak waves / Rough seas for tough mariners / Studying and surfing the ocean's monster waves

How to rid the seas of ‘plastic soup’?

Google Earth Tour about Marine Debris
Marine debris is a global problem and affecting everything from the environment to the economy.
To help show the breadth of this problem, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has created a KML tour for Google Earth.

From NYTimes

Overfishing, oil slicks, acidification — the world’s oceans, which cover 71 percent of the planet’s surface, face plenty of environmental problems.
As I note in this Green Column, we’ve added another serious one to the list: the vast amount of trash, 80 percent of it plastic, that ends up in the seas from year to year.

Actually, scientists and environmental campaigners have been aware of the mounting volumes of plastic in the seas since the 1970s.
But over the last two or three years, the phenomenon has gained wider attention, stirring concern among policymakers in the United States and Europe.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, for one, says that marine debris ‘‘has become one of the most pervasive pollution problems facing the world’s oceans and waterways.’’ And the European Union’s commissioner for maritime affairs and fisheries, Maria Damanaki, recently said that the pollution of the Mediterranean had reached ‘‘alarming proportions.’’

Numerous projects have sprung up to combat the problem, including efforts to recycle trash recovered from the seas and campaigns to raise public awareness.

In the United States, NOAA initiated a Marine Debris Tracker mobile application in cooperation with the University of Georgia that enables users to report on trash spotted on coastlines and waterways.

A charity known as Plastic Oceans is working on a major documentary on the issue.
Endorsed by the environmental grandees David Attenborough and Sylvia Earle, it is expected to be released by early 2013.
And in Europe, Ms. Damanaki recently proposed paying fishermen to ‘‘fish for litter’’ to combat the pollution in the Mediterranean.

The problem is not just one of unsightliness, or of sea life getting caught up in plastic grocery bags or choking on plastic bottle tops or cigarette lighters.

There are also the tiny fragments formed by disintegrating items.
Plastic does not fully biodegrade like wood or cardboard, noted Peter Kershaw of the British marine science center Cefas, who advises the United Nations on marine environmental protection issues.
For plastic to biodegrade, you need conditions that are really found only in industrial composters and landfills, including high temperatures.

‘‘You don’t have those conditions in the middle of the sea,’’ he said.
Instead, the plastic trash eventually breaks up into billions of fragments that hover below the surface in vast, soupy patches in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans.

Easily swallowed by marine life and prone to absorbing contaminants in the water, this gunk is now a key focus of scientific concern, with some researchers worrying that it could end up in the food chain.
‘‘It is everywhere and in every water sample that we have collected since 1999,’’ said Marieta Francis, executive director of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation in California.

Because these ‘‘microplastics’’ are far harder to remove from the sea than chunks of packaging and containers, the main focus has to be preventing more plastic from reaching the oceans in the first place, experts say.

Global plastics production is expected to continue to rise inexorably from the estimated 250 million tons churned out annually now.
One critical solution advanced by experts is better recycling, more re-use of containers and packaging and less waste: do cookies and toilet rolls really need to come individually wrapped in plastic, as they are here in Hong Kong, where I live?

Links :

• YouTube : The Majestic Plastic Bag, highly entertaining and educational ‘‘mockumentary’’ on the life cycle of the plastic bag and its long trip to the oceans
• NYTimes : the peril of plastic
• TED : Captain Charles Moore on the seas of plastic

Conditions in Atlantic ripe for big 2011 hurricane season, US says

This Sept. 13, 2010 satellite image provided by NOAA shows hurricane Igor (l.) and tropical storm Julia (r.), off the coast of Africa.
Igor threatened to become a category 5 storm as it churned far out over the Atlantic Ocean.

From CSMonitor
2011 will be another above-average year for Atlantic hurricanes, says the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Plan your evacuation strategy now, warns FEMA.

The 2011 Atlantic hurricane season, which begins June 1, looks to be another above-average year, federal forecasters say, adding that residents along the Gulf and East Coast should make sure now that they know what to do if ordered to evacuate.

In an outlook released May 19, forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center are calling for a 70 percent chance of 12 to 18 storms with tropical-storm-force winds or higher.

Of these storms, which would receive names ranging from Arlene to Sean, six to 10 are expected to grow into hurricanes.
Three to six of these are likely to become major hurricanes, with winds in excess of 111 miles an hour.
The outlook brackets a similar forecast from Colorado State University's Tropical Meteorology Project.

In April, the most recent outlook, Philip Klotzbach and William Gray, who pioneered seasonal hurricane forecasts for the Atlantic, called for 16 named storms, of which nine are expected to become hurricanes.
Of those nine, five are expected to become major hurricanes.
In a typical season, the Atlantic basin might see 11 named storms, six hurricanes, and two major hurricanes.

Last year, conditions in the Atlantic and Caribbean spawned 19 named storms, the third-highest number on record, according to Jane Lubchenco, who heads NOAA.
Twelve of those storms became hurricanes, the second-highest number of hurricane ever recorded in one season.
"The US was lucky last year," she said during a May 19 press briefing.
Considering the number and severity of the storms, the US emerged with remarkably little damage.
Hurricane Earl, which for a time strengthened to a category 4 storm, the second-highest category, flirted with the US East Coast from North Carolina up to Maine.Hurricane Bonnie spun close to the ongoing efforts to control the Deepwater Horizon blowout, in the Gulf of Mexico near Louisiana.

But in the end, the US Gulf and East Coasts were spared significant damage from a named storm – unlike countries in the Caribbean and along the East Coast of Mexico and Central America.

"We cannot count on having the same luck this year," Dr. Lubchenco added.

SOUND OFF: Will this report keep you from an East Coast vacation?
If you own property there, how high are your insurance costs?

Several broad factors are contributing to the amped-up outlooks, researchers and forecasters say.
Surface waters in the tropical Atlantic, where many storms form, remain warmer than normal for this time of year – about 2 degrees Fahrenheit above normal now, compared with 4 degrees F. above normal last year.
Storms grow and feed on those warm waters.

In addition, the 2011 season falls within an active phase of a broader, multi-decade cycle of heavier and lighter hurricane activity.

And the Atlantic is still under the influence of the long arm of a waning La Niña, part of a cycle that includes El Niño.
This "El Niño/Southern Oscillation" is manifest in seesaw patterns in atmospheric pressure and ocean temperatures across the tropical Pacific.
These changes affect broader atmospheric circulation patterns, in ways that favor hurricane formation during La Niña episodes.

NOAA's seasonal outlook says nothing about whether or how many hurricanes will make landfall – an aspect of hurricane forecasting that, for the most part, is still a gleam in the eye of researchers.

Hence the importance of everyone living in low-lying areas along the Atlantic or Gulf Coasts being ready to leave, to avoid the flooding a hurricane's storm surge can bring.
"It takes only one hurricane to wreak devastation," Lubchenco said.

Individual preparedness is critical, emergency managers say.
For people who physically and financially can prepare, following through on those preparations when needed frees up limited resources to focus on people who can't help themselves.
And those preparations – which include keeping important financial documents in a family's "go kit" – can smooth the recovery process.

Unfortunately, people can experience "hurricane amnesia," adds Craig Fugate, who heads the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in Washington.
He is referring to the long time spans that can elapse between landfalling hurricanes in any one location, and the tendency of people to forget how serious the storms can be.
The amnesia problem is especially acute along the Northeast coast, he suggests, because relatively few hurricanes have made landfall there over the past few decades.

In other cases, he continues, people will say they've experienced a hurricane and say that the experience wasn't too bad, when they actually have experienced only a hurricane's outer, tropical-storm-force winds.
"If you live along the Gulf Coast, if you live along the Atlantic Coast, you have your notice – it's going to be an above average season," he says.

And it starts June 1.
Links :

• Next week, May 22-28, is national Hurricane Preparedness Week. To help prepare residents of hurricane-prone areas, NOAA is unveiling a new set of video and audio public service announcements featuring NOAA hurricane experts and the FEMA administrator that are available in both English and Spanish.
• The National Weather Service is the primary source of weather data, forecasts and warnings for the United States and its territories. It operates the most advanced weather and flood warning and forecast system in the world, helping to protect lives and property and enhance the national economy. (Facebook)
• NOAA’s mission is to understand and predict changes in the Earth's environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and to conserve and manage our coastal and marine resources. (Facebook)

Disappearing world: 100 places under threat from climate change

100 Places to Go Before They Disappear
by Patrick Drew, Archbishop Desmond Tutu

From TheGuardian

A new book highlights 100 areas of the planet that could vanish because of global warming – and encourages us to visit them before they do.
Leo Hickman reviews the book – and is mesmerised by some of the places

Horace, the Roman poet, was probably not foretelling the age of budget airlines when he remarked more than 2,000 years ago:
"They change their climate, not their soul, who rush across the sea."

Nonetheless, it is a poignant observation for our age; an age when the spectre of climate change casts a shadow over our carbon-intensive lifestyles, not least our voracious appetite to travel in fossil-fuelled planes.
A new book called 100 Places to Go Before They Disappear is, on one level, an awesome collection of photography beautiful and heavy enough to grace any coffee table.
But it also is a mournful tease: a mesmerising reminder of the places around the planet that are now gravely threatened by the impacts of climate change – rising sea levels, desertification, flooding, deep thaws – predicted to come to pass over the next century as greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise.

With 80% of the country less than one metre above sea level, the residents of the Maldives’ 1,200 tropical islands have long been aware of their vulnerability to rising sea levels.
In 2008, it was announced that the government would start diverting a percentage of the nation’s income from tourism into a fund to buy a new homeland.
The deep irony that the island nation’s economy relies heavily on tourists arriving in polluting aircraft has not been lost on the islanders.
Photograph: Baa Atoll in the Maldives, where rising sea levels pose a serious threat
(Getty/National Geographic)

The book originally started out as a photographic exhibition timed to coincide with the (failed) Copenhagen climate summit in late 2009.
The exhibition then went on tour.
The stated aim is to "convey a clear message: climate change is a threat to our way of life and to Earth as we know it".
It goes on to say that the "most important single challenge facing us is how to stop burning coal, oil, and natural gas, all of which contribute significantly to global warming".
It doesn't explain, however, how we square this challenge with going to see these places before they "disappear".

Niggles about the book's contradictory title aside, it's the photographs inside that count.
Their intention is to remind us what wonders we stand to lose through our inaction and disinterest.
As Desmond Tutu says in the foreword: "We have developed a temporal and physical disconnection from the resources that sustain us, and from our impact on them . . .
In short, the consequences of our actions are delayed or hidden, so we assume they are waived."

Is this the world’s best tidal bore wave ?

Witness the greatest river bore tubes ever surfed.
Caused by tides, these waves can travel for miles up rivers.

From AdventuresJournal

When the first pulses of the tidal bore showed, Bruno Santos (BRA), Dean Brady (AUS), Tyler Larronde (FRA), Oney Anwar (IND) and original Searcher Tom Curren (USA) were there to greet the chocolate barrels of the Seven Ghosts.

Tidal bores will never have the same elemental attractive power of an ocean wave, but from a pure motion standpoint it’s hard to argue with something that you can surf for six or seven miles.
Or that offers the peeling perfection of this absurdly idealized tidal bore in Northern Sumatra.

>>> geolocalization with the Marine GeoGarage <<<

Captured by Rip Curl on a season-long boat trip through Indonesia, Seven Ghosts appears in this teaser, which does just that: tease.
Most of the bores we’ve seen so far are little more than crumbling mushburgers, but this one has a mini-tube that looks pretty darn attractive, poopy-colored water and all.

Links :

• Uwong blog : Bono on the Kampar river, the longest surfing wave
  
• Tidal Bore Research Society : catalogues of places