Searching for monsters : Nazaré - Big Sunday

Nazaré - Big Sunday: As Big as it Gets! (02/02/2014)

Nazaré, Portugal was the spot on February 2nd, 2014

Challenge to Titanic sinking theory

This iceberg, with a red streak of paint along its side, may have been the one that sank RMS Titanic

The risk of sailing into an iceberg is far higher now that when the Titanic sank, a team of Earth systems scientists have said.

And it's only going to get worse.

From BBC by Paul Rincon

UK scientists have challenged the idea that the Titanic was unlucky for sailing in a year when there were an exceptional number of icebergs in the North Atlantic.

 The White Star Liner RMS Titanic, built by Harland & Wolff in Belfast, 4th February 1912, aided by four tugs preparing to leave for Southampton for her maiden voyage to New York on April 10th 1912

photo R. Welch

The ocean liner sank on its maiden voyage 102 years ago, with the loss of more than 1,500 lives.
The new analysis found the iceberg risk was high in 1912, but not extreme, as has previously been suggested.
The work by a University of Sheffield team appears in the journal Weather.
The iceberg which sank the Titanic was spotted just before midnight on 14 April 1912, some 500m away. Despite quick action to slow the ship and turn to port, it wasn't enough.
About 100m of the hull buckled below the waterline and the liner sank in just two-and-a-half hours.
Reports of unusually bad ice in the North Atlantic started to emerge shortly after the disaster.
At the time, US officials told the New York Times that a warm winter had caused "an enormously large crop of icebergs".
In the days leading up to that fateful night, the prevailing winds and temperatures, assisted by ocean currents, had conspired to transport icebergs and sea-ice further south than was normal at that time of year.

 The iceberg which sank the Titanic was spotted just before midnight on 14 April 1912 and was 1,640ft (500m) away.

Pictured is one possible path taken by the iceberg that sank Titanic over 100 years ago

All this has led researchers to seek explanations for a supposedly awesome flotilla of ice in the North Atlantic.
One US group has proposed that an unusually close approach to Earth by the Moon caused abnormally high tides in the winter of 1912, which in turn encouraged a greater than usual amount of ice to break off Greenland's glaciers.

In the latest study, Grant Bigg and David Wilton from Sheffield University's department of geography studied data collected by the US Coast Guard and extending back to 1900.

Observational techniques have changed over the years, complicating comparisons.
But the researchers say that a good measure of the volume of icebergs is given by the number that passed the circle of latitude at 48 degrees North, across an area of ocean stretching from Newfoundland to about 40 degrees West.
They found that the record showed great variation in the volume of ice from year to year.
And although the iceberg flux from Greenland in 1912 was indeed high, with 1,038 icebergs observed crossing the 48th parallel, this number was neither unusual nor unprecedented.
In the surrounding decades, from 1901-1920, there were five years with at least 700 icebergs crossing 48 degrees North.
And the coast guard record shows there was a larger flux of icebergs in 1909 than in 1912.

Prof Bigg told BBC News the flux was at the "large end" but "not outstandingly large" for the first 60-70 years of the 20th Century.
Using the coast guard record and other data, the researchers also developed a computer simulation to examine the likely trajectories of icebergs in 1912.
Using this model, they were able to trace the likely origin of the iceberg that sank the Titanic to southwest Greenland.
They suggest that it broke off a glacier in that area in early autumn 1911 and started off as a floating hunk measuring roughly 500m long and 300m deep.
Its mass by mid-April 1912 - as predicted by the computer model - agrees very closely with the size of an iceberg bearing a streak of red paint that was photographed by Captain William Squares DeCarteret of the Minia, a ship that joined the search for bodies and wreckage at the site of the disaster.

Links :

• DailyMail : Titanic theory put on ice: Icebergs were not at dangerously high levels in 1912 - but they ARE today
• Forbes : Revealed: The Origin Of The Titanic's Iceberg
• GeoGraage blog : Titanic threat: why do ships still hit icebergs?

Hōkūle‘a: The dangers of sailing around the world

Over 1,000 years ago, the islands of Polynesia were explored and settled by navigators who used only the waves, the stars, and the flights of birds for guidance.

In hand-built, double-hulled canoes sixty feet long, the ancestors of today's Polynesians sailed across a vast ocean area, larger than Europe and North America combined.
To explore this ancient navigational heritage, anthropologist/filmmaker Sanford Low visited the tiny coral atoll of Satawal in Micronesia's remote Caroline Islands.

The Navigators reveals the subtleties of this sea science, transmitted in part through a ceremony known as "unfolding the mat," in which 32 lumps of coral are arranged in a circle to represent the points of the "star compass."

To master the lore of navigation was to attain great status in traditional Micronesian society. 

From National Geographic by Daniel Lin

For the past few months, I have been writing entries about the Polynesian Voyaging Society’s incredible Worldwide Voyage (WWV): a five-year journey to sail around the world aboard two Polynesian voyaging canoes, using non-instrument navigation.

The first year of the voyage was spent sailing around the Hawaiian Islands and in less than two months, the canoes will leave their home and begin the international portion of the voyage.

 Crewmember Attwood Makanani, or “Uncle Maka”,

handling some line at the edge of the bow while Hōkūleʻa passes through a squall in Kualoa.

(Photo by Kaipo Kīʻaha)

Why Take the Risk?

When people hear about the WWV, a question often arises around the risks involved with this 47,000-nautical-mile voyage.
Certainly, it goes without saying that a voyage of this nature is not always going to be idyllic or smooth.
But Pacific Island people have spearheaded these long-distance, open-ocean voyages of discovery for thousands of years.
Today, the Polynesian Voyaging Society believes that: “the Worldwide Voyage is a journey that charts a new course toward sustainability that Hawai’i and the world urgently need.”

 Sunshine after the rain.

Crewmember Haunani Kane holds on as Hōkūle‘a gets close to land.

(Photo by Daniel Lin)

For us, the opportunity to inspire current and future generations of leaders to care for the Earth–through outreach, education, science, and storytelling–far outweighs any risks.
Master Navigator and PVS President, Nainoa Thompson, puts it best when he says: “if you come from the lens of what the canoe is supposed to do … it will do nothing if we’re tied to the dock.”

Hōkūle‘a’s Worldwide Voyage: Island Wisdom, Ocean Connections, Global Lessons from Hōkūle‘a Crew

Safety Training

Like during any voyage–sea, land, or air–weather is always one of the major considerations for traditional captains and navigators.

For this reason, crewmembers undergo rigorous training around personal safety and foul weather situations.

Hōkūle’a has traveled over 140,000 miles in the Pacific Ocean over her forty-year history of voyaging, enough miles to circle the world over five times.

Thompson says that the crew preparations and safety training were carefully planned based on past experience.

“With the Worldwide Voyage, we are more prepared than we have ever been on any previous journey,” he adds.

 Micronesian Stick Chart of the Marshall Islands with island key

and overlaid on Google Earth for scale / context

Sail Planning

In addition to rigorous crew training, perhaps the best ways to prevent encounters with challenges during the voyage is through thorough research and meticulous planning.

For example, the sail plan for the WWV is dictated almost entirely by weather, specifically with regards to avoiding hurricane and cyclone seasons.

The leaders of PVS have put a great deal of effort into understanding the weather patterns of the world with guidance and input from scientists, meteorologists, and other sailors.

 Just because the crew doesn’t use a compass, that doesn’t mean they don’t take rain gear.

(Photo by Sam Low)

In addition the normal preparations for voyaging, PVS must now pay careful attention to new issues associated with new regions of the world.

Although Hōkūle‘a has logged an incredible amount of miles over her storied lifetime, all of her voyages have taken place in the familiar waters of the Pacific Ocean.

The opportunity to sail across new oceans is exciting, but it also makes the planning process even more critical.

By carefully planning and timing each leg of the voyage, Captains ensure that their crews and vessels have the best chance for a smooth sail.

Sailing On

Over the next three years of this monumental voyage, there will inevitably be challenges that test the physical and mental fortitude of the crew.

 Hōkūle‘a crew looking towards the western horizon.

We sail with the hope for a more sustainable future for our Island Earth.

(Photo by Daniel Lin)

However, the PVS family, or ‘Ohana wa’a, know from experience that even the roughest storms will pass.

What we must do is to continue to prepare, train, believe in the mission, trust in each other, and sail on.

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : Polynesian navigators revive a skill that was nearly lost

Earth observation enters next phase

From Nature

Europe has launched the first satellite of what is heralded as one of the most ambitious Earth-observation programmes ever.
On 3 April, a Soyuz rocket dispatched into orbit the Sentinel-1A probe, the first craft of a planned constellation of six Sentinel families set to be launched by the end of the decade.
Together, the satellites will offer unprecedented long-term monitoring of the planet’s land, water and atmosphere.

The Sentinels will be the core of the €8.4-billion (US$11.5-billion) Copernicus programme, which is managed by the European Commission.
Copernicus will also draw in data from about 30 other satellites, and from ocean buoys, weather stations and air-quality monitoring networks.
“The Sentinels and Copernicus have the potential to become the world’s most comprehensive Earth-monitoring system,” says Zbynek Malenovsky, who studies vegetation using remote sensing at the University of Wollongong in Australia.

This  video was produced by the SWIFT project in 2011, when Copernicus was named GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) : this is an overview of the Marine Environment Monitoring Service of GMES, the Earth Observation programme of the European Union. 
www.copernicus.eu/pages-principales/services/marine-monitoring/

Copernicus was designed by the European Union (EU) and the European Space Agency (ESA) to help the European Commission and EU member states to develop environmental policies and monitor the results.
Its data will be used to create services for myriad practical applications, including ice mapping, agriculture management, climate-change forecasting and disaster response.
The idea is to produce images, maps and models in near real time, much as is done with weather monitoring, but for many more variables.

Unlike most previous Earth-observation missions, the Sentinels will be replaced regularly as they age.
This will help to generate long-term cross-calibrated data sets of a variety of imagery and measurements, says Cathy Clerbaux, an atmospheric scientist at the LATMOS atmosphere and astro­physics research institute in Paris.
“It’s not easy to connect data series such as measurements of pollutants, ozone or greenhouse gases when you have different instruments, and gaps between missions,” she says.

The data will be free for anyone to access and use. (see myOcean interactive catalogue)
But researchers will enjoy formal user status alongside public authorities, and will thus have privileged access, including dedicated help desks and support.
“Scientists are now much more integrated into the user community, and not neglected as they have been in the past, when the focus was more on the operational side,” says Josef Aschbacher, head of ESA’s Copernicus office.
“I expect scientists to be the number-one user group.”

Accurate information about the environmental is crucial.
It helps to understand how our planet and climate are changing, the role human activity play in these changes and how this affects our daily lives.
Responding to these challenges, the EU and ESA have developed an Earth observation programme called Copernicus, formerly known as Global Monitoring for Environment and Security, - a programme that becomes operational with the launch of Sentinel-1A.

Sentinel-1A is the first of two identical satellites; 1B is set to be launched in the next 18 months.
Both contain a radar system that can see in darkness and through clouds, unlike the optical instruments on many satellites.
This will allow them to continuously image cloudy areas such as tropical forests.
They will operate in tandem, cutting down the time between flyovers of the same point on Earth (known as revisit time), and enabling quick-succession imaging to measure, for example, ground deformation from earthquakes.

Sentinel 1 - Episode 1 of the Copernicus programme

Sentinel 1 comprises two radar imaging satellites which will transmit unprecedented around-the-clock imagery of environmental events (forest fires, landslides, receding ice sheets, etc.). It will also be used to assist the emergency response services when disasters strike.

Sentinels 2 to 5 will have different goals.
Between them, they will use optical sensors, radiometers and spectrometers to measure everything from sea temperatures to air pollution.
In addition, a Sentinel-5 Precursor satellite will be launched in 2016 to minimize the shortfall in atmospheric data-gathering following the 2012 loss of the European Envisat satellite.
A sixth Sentinel, a radar altimeter that will measure sea-surface heights, is also under discussion (see ‘Watchers in the skies’).
These diverse measurements of the major components of Earth systems will make the Sentinels very valuable, says Richard Anthes, emeritus president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.
“A balanced suite of Earth observations is required for observing and understanding Earth as an interconnected system,” he says.

Sentinel-4, for example, will be one of the first satellites to monitor atmospheric pollutants from a geostationary orbit, notes Clerbaux — and the first to provide hourly measurements over a single area, in this case most of Europe and North Africa.

Sentinel-2, a pair of high-resolution imaging devices, is also causing excitement.
The satellites’ specifications are superior to those of Landsat-8, the flagship US Earth-observation satellite, with a spatial resolution down to 10 metres — three times finer than Landsat-8 — and shorter revisit times of just 2–3 days at mid-latitudes.
This opens up research into areas that update every few days, such as crop changes.

“Sentinel-2 should really change the face of Earth observing,” says Gregory Asner, an Earth scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, California.
“This is the satellite that could revolutionize land-cover and land-use change monitoring and analysis.”

Scientists from Sentinel-2 and Landsat-8 have been working together to make their data compatible and to develop joint archives.
It is a test of the concept of a virtual satellite constellation, says Mike Wulder, a scientist at the Canadian Forest Service in Victoria and a member of the Landsat science team.
“Satellite data products could be significantly improved if these were not limited to individual sensors but would combine complementary platforms across space agencies and sensor types.”

Compatibility, says Malenovsky, will be a key factor within the Sentinel fleet.
The fleet’s scientific value, he says, will be maximized if data from various crafts can be combined to create virtual, as well as practical, constellations.

Links :

• BBC : Sentinel satellites promise data explosion

China unfettered: Redefining the rules of the seas

Model ship of Chinese Junk (on exhibit in the Quanzhou Maritime Museum)

From Forbes by Lee Kuan Yew

A rising China is seeking to assert its sea-boundary claims.
It is naive to believe that a strong China will accept the conventional definition of what parts of the sea around it are under its jurisdiction.
This should come as no surprise, but it has been uncomfortable for some of China’s neighbors and other stakeholders, including the U.S.

China, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam are engaged in long-standing territorial and maritime disputes in the South China Sea.
The Philippines, under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), has initiated international arbitration.
The arbitral tribunal is proceeding, even though China has decided not to participate in the hearings.

If a negotiated agreement can’t be reached, the ideal solution would be to resolve the dispute based on international law and legal principles, including UNCLOS, that have been established in many other such cases.
Can this be done through a juridical platform, such as the International Court of Justice (ICJ)?
Keep in mind that major powers, including China and the U.S., don’t generally submit to the jurisdiction of the ICJ or other such forums.
A resurgent China isn’t going to allow its sea boundaries to once again be decided by external parties.
Therefore, I don’t believe the Chinese will submit their claims, which are based primarily on China’s historical presence in these waters, to be decided by rules that were defined at a time when China was weak.
And China has judged that the U.S. won’t risk its present good relations with China over a dispute between the Philippines and China.

Why this sudden interest in some outcroppings in the South China Sea?
What gas or oil can be drilled or fish caught around these rocks?
Much more is at stake than rocks and resources.
China sees the South China Sea as one of its key interests.
A rising China is asserting its position by claiming historical rights to these waters.
And the disputes, which arise from claims based on different principles, are unlikely to be resolved.

One-third of the world’s trade passes through the South China Sea, a vital sea line of communications.
Many other countries also have important interests there.
These include the freedom of navigation and overflight, as well as the peaceful management of disputes.
Quite apart from preventing mishaps and incidents, a framework to manage the different interests should be established.

Looking to the Past

China’s reliance on historical claims necessitates considering what its fleets did in the past, way before Christopher Columbus landed in the Americas and Vasco da Gama arrived in India.
More than six centuries ago Emperor Zhu Di of the Ming Dynasty sent out a large fleet of trading ships to explore and trade with the rest of the world.
His choice to command the expedition was Grand Eunuch Zheng He (1371–1433).
Zheng He was born and raised a Muslim in what is now Kunming City in Yunnan Province.
He was captured by Ming Dynasty forces around 1381 and taken to Nanjing, where he was castrated and subsequently sent to serve in the palace of Zhu Di, who was then the Prince of Yan and would later become Yongle Emperor.

The Ming Empire without its "vassal states" under the Yongle Emperor

History and Commercial Atlas of China, Harvard University Press 1905

Over the course of nearly three decades (1405–33) Zheng He led seven westward expeditions, which were unprecedented in size and range.
They spanned the South China Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, and reached as far as the east coast of Africa.
The ships used for these expeditions–more than 400 feet in length, based on archaeological evidence–were many times the size of those Columbus used to sail across the Atlantic.

Map of the routes of Zheng He

These expeditions amply demonstrated the power and wealth of the Ming Dynasty.
More important, they left a lasting impact on the countries visited: Numerous masjids (mosques) in the region are named after Zheng He, commemorating his contributions to the local communities.

Early 17th century Chinese woodblock print, thought to represent Zheng He's ships.

If historical claims can define jurisdiction over waters and oceans, the Chinese can point to the fact that 600 years ago they sailed these waters unchallenged.

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : China's line in the sea
• NYTimes : Risky Games in the South China Sea
• The Diplomat : South China Sea: Regional States Push Back Against China