At 8 a.m. EDT on October 23, 2015, the National Hurricane Center reported Patricia became the strongest eastern north pacific hurricane on record with sustained winds near 200 mph. This animation of images captured from October 20 to 23 from NOAA's GOES-West satellite shows Hurricane Patricia near western Mexico. Credit: NASA/NOAA GOES Project
NASA created a visualization of the ocean garbage patches using data
from floating, scientific buoys that NOAA has been distributing in the
oceans for the last 35-years. From Greg Shirah from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio :
"We wanted
to see if we could visualize the so-called ocean garbage patches.
We
start with data from floating, scientific buoys that NOAA has been
distributing in the oceans for the last 35-years represented here as
white dots.
Let's speed up time to see where the buoys go...
Since new
buoys are continually released, it's hard to tell where older buoys move
to. Let's clear the map and add the starting locations of all the
buoys…
Interesting patterns appear all over the place.
Lines of buoys
are due to ships and planes that released buoys periodically.If we let
all of the buoys go at the same time, we can observe buoy migration
patterns.
The number of buoys decreases because some buoys don't last as
long as others.
The buoys migrate to 5 known gyres also called ocean
garbage patches.
We can also see this in a computational model of ocean
currents called ECCO-2.
We release particles evenly around the world and
let the modeled currents carry the particles.
The particles from the
model also migrate to the garbage patches.
Even though the retimed buoys
and modeled particles did not react to currents at the same times, the
fact that the data tend to accumulate in the same regions show how
robust the result is." see : NASA
Plastic is one of the most widely used petroleum-based consumer and industrial products, used in a wide variety of applications such as packaging, construction, automobiles, toys, furniture and piping.
In spite of its utility, the biggest limitation of plastic is that it is mostly non-biodegradable and the majority of the waste plastic ends up in the ocean gyres.
Due to the sheer size of the oceans, it is virtually impossible to clean them using the standard nets and vessels.
Even if a clean-up of such magnitude is envisaged using such a method, it would take around 79,000 years to complete and the costs would run into the tens of billions of dollars.
However, there is one company that has a solution to this seemingly impossible task.
Founded in 2013, The Ocean Cleanup is a firm that wants to introduce a new and innovative solution for cleaning the world’s oceans.
The “garbage patches” are not giant, floating islands of trash, but
rather, ocean gathering places for what are mainly tiny bits of plastic
dispersed throughout the water column, with some larger items as well.
(NOAA)
Initiating the ‘largest clean-up’ in the history
It is estimated that around 8 million metric tons of plastic ends up in world’s oceans every year.
According to a report by Trucost and Plastic Disclosure Project, our marine ecosystem suffers damages of around $13 billion each year due to plastic pollution.
Of all the plastic waste that is entering the oceans, a large part gets accumulated in 5 ocean gyres where the currents meet (figure below):
According to research conducted by
the company, a 100-kilometer array that is in use for ten years would
have the capability to remove close to 42 percent of waste from the
Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
With an average clean-up cost of $5.1 per
kg, the Cleanup Array technology is going to be deployed by the second
quarter of 2016.
The array would be close to 2000 meters in length and
will likely be deployed off an island called Tsushima which is located
between the waters of South Korea and Japan.
The new system would operate for two years (at least) and would try
to grab the plastic waste before it reaches the shores of Tsushima
Island.
The company also plans to deploy a 100-km long array for
cleaning up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the coming five years.
What to do with all the plastic waste?
According
to estimates from the Ocean Cleanup Group, a 100-km array in use for
ten years can collect close to 70,320,000 Kgs of garbage (which would be
mostly plastic waste).
So what should be done with such a vast trove of
leftover plastic?
There are several companies that could convert plastic waste into liquid fuels. Plastic2Oil
is one such clean energy company that is converting waste plastics into
low sulfur–ultra clean fuel that does not require any further refining.
However, the company currently accepts only industrial and
post-commercial plastics which are unwashed and found in industrial
waste streams.
There are also pyrolysis plants that recycle the waste plastics into
fuel, oil (pyrolysis oil), gas and other important materials through
catalytic conversion processes. Pyrolysis
is a process which can accept any kind of polymer or a mix of plastic
polymers, making it an effective solution for recycling all kinds of
plastic wastes.
In fact, techniques such as ‘Microwave Induced Pyrolysis
of Plastic wastes’ are now emerging, which are considered to be even
more effective and comprehensive than the standard pyrolysis technique.
Conclusion
Authorities
at Tsushima Island plan to utilize the plastic waste once it comes out
of its waters.
Japan has several pyrolysis plants which produce fuel
that is used for generating power with the help of diesel generators.
With these developments in place, The Ocean Cleanup Campaign can not
only help reduce the global plastic pollution but also help create
alternative forms of energy, which would reduce consumption of
conventional fossil fuels.
However, a lot depends on the success of its
upcoming pilot project in 2016.
NASA,
may be a multi-billion dollar space agency, but in some ways, it’s just
like you. It takes 12-megapixel photos just like you with your iPhone 6S and it likes to share them every day in real-time.
Of
course, it also has a few slight advantages you’re probably not going
to compete with.
For one, it’s latest camera is attached to a satellite 1
million miles away as opposed to your phone located a few feet above
the planet’s surface.
And while you might get a nice shot of latte art
that’s Instagram-ready, NASA has a killer view of the earth against the black void of space that’s evening news-ready (and probably doesn’t look so bad on Instagram either).
The dynamo of a camera even has an amazing name: EPIC, shorthand for Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera. It’s attached to the Deep Space Climate Observatory, a space-weather monitoring satellite launched earlier this year.
The
satellite’s main goal is to monitor space weather and warn of incoming
solar storms that could disrupt telecommunications.
But NASA and the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which manages the satellite, have also made sure the satellite can keep an eye directly on earth.
It’s
position allows it to see the whole planet. As earth spins, EPIC snaps a
picture of its sunny face. The pictures it takes are being made public
daily, in an effort to inspire maximum awe at our capabilities to
monitor our planet (or FOMO if you’re a glass half empty kind of person). Scientists
can use the images as well as a radiometer also aboard the satellite to
monitor the big picture of what’s happening at home. The data will help
scientists create dust and volcanic ash maps of the entire world as
well as monitor different aspects of the earth’s atmosphere including
aerosols and ozone and other aspects of the earth’s reflectivity, a key
component of the climate system. For example, global warming is causing
the planet’s ice to recede.
As that happens, the planet absorbs more sunlight and temperatures rise even more. The satellite has been nearly 20 years in the making.
Then-Vice President Al Gore initially conceived of the satellite in
1998 as a way to monitor the earth. At the time, it was named “Triana”
after the member of Christopher Columbus’s crew who first caught sight
of the New World.
It was built but later mothballed during the Bush Administration
before being brought out of storage by the Obama Administration in 2011.
It was launched into orbit earlier this year and sent back a blue
marble image that garnered headlines in July. The
satellite is the first deep space earth-monitoring satellite mission
the U.S. has ever undertaken, though the images it’s returning are
certainly not the first time NASA has upstaged you on Instagram.
showing the "Deeps,", according to Sir John Murray It was published by the Royal Geographical Society in 1899. Scale [ca. 1:100,000,000]. The image inside the map neatline is georeferenced to the surface of the earth and fit to the 'World Gall Stereographic' projection with the central meridian at 20.00000 degrees west. All map collar and inset information is also available as part of the raster image, including any inset maps, profiles, statistical tables, directories, text, illustrations, index maps, legends, or other information associated with the principal map. This map shows features such as drainage, shoreline features, and more. Relief shown by hypsometric tints. Depths shown by gradient tints. The only physiographic feature he named were deeps, defined as area of the seafloor believed to have depths greater than 3000 fathoms.
Ocean exploration was a key scientific objective in the late 1800s.
Any number of oceanographic, biological, chemical, geological and physical discoveries had been made and one of the preeminent scientists was John Murray.
The results of his voyages on H.M.S. Challenger led to this map, the first to make its focus the deeps, what occurs underneath the surface rather than previous voyages and explorations that were concerned with coastal and shallow waters.
Murray recognized that measurement at depth required correct and operational instrumentation because it was indirect measurement that was required.
Why was this necessary?
Accurate survey of the ocean floor was paramount to the correct siting of telecommunications cables across the ocean basins.
For that you needed an accurate map.
This map for the first time showed ‘the deeps’ according to Murray.
The mid-atlantic ridge is clearly shown as are areas of the Atlantic Ocean that are greater than 3,000 fathoms deep.
In many ways, Murray, the Challenger expeditions and this map were critical in the establishment of oceanography as a distinct branch of science.
Murray went beyond calculating bathymetry though, he estimated temperature of the ocean floor as distinct to the surface as well as the amount of light penetrating the darkness and the impact on flora and fauna and marine deposits.
The map uses subtle bathymetric tinting and is the first to officially name many of the deep ocean floor troughs.
It’s not a complex map but it’s apparent simplicity belies the efforts and science that went into making it.
Maps do not need to appear complex.
They can be used effectively to communicate scientific discovery, accuracy and new knowledge.
This map, for its time, was revolutionary and was the first to give us a sense of what lies beneath the surface of the vast expanse of seas and oceans.
Alexander Supan's world map of 1899 showing both deeps and bathymetric highs of the World Ocean. Note difference in names between Supan and Murray in previous map. upan's naming methodology prevailed in the Twentieth Century. Note also the Karolinen Graben running parallel to the Caroline Islands as opposed to the correct orientation of the Mariana Trench.
Links :
NOAA : 1899: The State of Ocean Science: An Essay by Sir John Murray
