Watch 25 years of Arctic Sea ice disappear in 1 minute

References: Charctic Interactive Sea Ice Graph.
National Snow and Ice Data Center.
Animation by NOAA Climate.gov team, based on research data provided by Mark Tschudi, CCAR, University of Colorado.
Sea ice age is estimated by tracking of ice parcels using satellite imagery and drifting ocean buoys.

Since the 1980s, the amount of perennial ice in the Arctic has declined.
This animation tracks the relative amount of ice of different ages from 1987 through early November 2015.
The oldest ice is white; the youngest (seasonal) ice is dark blue.
Key patterns are the export of ice from the Arctic through Fram Strait and the melting of old ice as it passes through the warm waters of the Beaufort Sea.
In 1985, 20% of the Arctic ice pack was very old ice, but in March 2015, old ice only constituted 3% of the ice pack.

NASA-supported researchers have found that ice covering Greenland is melting faster than previously thought. The action is happening out of sight, below the surface.

Links :

• How is climate change affecting the Arctic ?

Pacific Ocean time lapse : Glittering blue, watch this hypnotic view of Earth from space over 24 hours

Clouds swirl across the Pacific Ocean in this time lapse. The data is from Himawari-8, a Japanese weather satellite in geostationary orbit over New Guinea. Every 10 minutes, it photographs the hemisphere below it. This animation is a loop of yesterday’s images. Strong winds head from East Asia, in the upper left, toward Alaska, hidden by clouds in the upper right. Australia is in the bottom center, with the edge of the Antarctic ice sheet below it and tropic storm Ula to its right. The reflection of the sun on smooth water, called sunglint, moves east to west across the Pacific just south of the Equator. At this time of year – the Southern Hemisphere’s summer – the North Pole is never sunlit, but the South Pole always is.

A video posted by mapbox (@mapbox) on Jan 6, 2016 at 1:39pm PST

From Mapbox’s Instagram account (via).

Always wanted to be an astronaut, but never quite made it to space?
A new site can at least make you feel like you went.
Glittering Blue is a beautiful, simple website that shows 24 hours of observations of Earth from the Japanese weather satellite Himawari-8 like you’ve never seen before.
It’s in stunning high-definition and gives a glimpse at what you might see if you were stationed 22,300 miles above the equator.

 The 12-second clip is a time-lapse of one section of the globe, constructed from a number of photos taken by the Japanese Himawari 8 satellite over a 24-hour period.

It shows the Earth as the sun rises over the western Pacific , travels past Australia (somewhere about here) and eventually sets on the other side.

The clip also shows a Category 5 typhoon captured in pictures that day -- August 3, 2015 -- called Typhoon Soudelor.

Sit back, relax, and watch from above : glittering.blue

Built by Charlie Loyd, who works on satellite imagery at Mapbox, the process used to create the beautiful animation is open source.
Loyd says that “Himawari-8 has the best sensor of its kind in space today” and that it’s how Earth “really looks” over 24 hours… except sped up.

Canada CHS update in the GeoGarage platform

20 nautical charts updated

see GeoGarage News

A new human-machine interface for the bridge

 CASCADe project

From Maritime Executive

Drawing directly from the experience of seafarers, the E.U.-funded project CASCADe has developed new adaptive bridge displays and design methodologies that treat humans and electronic equipment as parts of a cooperative system.

To date, the development of ship bridge systems is characterized by being non-harmonious and far from guaranteed to be of optimal design for the actual users of them. Existing regulations for system and procedure design are disconnected and defined on a level which is not informative for bridge design. Research has shown clearly, that in many cases, accidents and incidents were caused by human error due to non-optimal design of the human-machine interaction leading to degraded situation awareness.

CASCADe addressed the design of bridges as an integrated whole with holistic perspective that allowed the detection and solving of potential conflicts including human error and inconsistencies and redundancies in the information presented on screens.

Beside cognitive ergonomics, CASCADe also pays deep attention to physical ergonomics and to the interplay between physical postures, physical moves and cognitive behavior and communications on the bridge.

The three-year project, which is coming to a close this month, then developed a set of adaptive bridge displays including a touch screen “Shared Display” intended to aid communication and co-operation on the bridge. This tool is fully customizable and allows one screen to show multiple sources of information in whatever configuration is most suitable for a particular situation.

 Pilot with PPU - Adaptative perspective display, shared for cooperation and bridge layout 

seen as an integrated whole

"It offers functionality to graphically annotate maps, leave notes for other crew members or complete checklists electronically."

The “Shared Display” provides functionality to graphically annotate maps, leave notes for other crew members or complete checklists electronically.

The CASCADe console was integrated with tools used by pilots in their Portable Pilot Units (PPUs). Firstly, CASCADe developed a protocol to share pilotage routes between the PPU and the ship’s electronic charts. Secondly, a link was established between the PPU and the bridge screens to allow mirroring of information from the PPU screen, enabling crew members to see extra information normally only available to the pilot.

All of these CASCADe tools were tested on both a physical simulator (a ship simulator used for training) and a virtual simulator (a software-based simulation of a ship bridge). The virtual simulation platform made it possible to test new bridge designs at the earliest stages of development, based purely on computational models.

The final evaluation of the CASCADe results took place in Kiel, Germany, late last year. The new ship bridge (including the handover and annotation tools) was presented to a group of nine local pilots, officers and cadets. The feedback was generally positive.

Under the coordination of OFFIS (Oldenburg Research and Development Institute for Information Technology Tools and Systems), CASCADe included a consortium of seven project partners from five E.U. countries including BMT Group, Raytheon Anschuetz, Mastermind Shipmanagement, the University of Cardiff, Marimatech and Symbio Concepts & Products.

Four further associated partners including the Maritime Cluster Northern Germany, Nautilus International, NSB Niederelbe Schiffahrtsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG and the University of Tasmania also supported the project.

Remains of lost 1800s whaling fleet discovered off Alaska's Arctic coast

Scanned images from original Harper’s Weekly, Robert Schwemmer Maritime Library.

From NOAA

NOAA archaeologists have discovered the battered hulls of two 1800s whaling ships nearly 144 years after they and 31 others sank off the Arctic coast of Alaska in one of the planet's most unexplored ocean regions.

 Abandonment of the whalers in the Arctic Ocean, September 1871, including the George, Gayhead, and Concordia. 

Scanned from the original Harper’s Weekly 1871, courtesy of Robert Schwemmer Maritime Library.

The shipwrecks, and parts of other ships, that were found are most likely the remains of 33 ships trapped by pack ice close to the Alaskan Arctic shore in September 1871.
The whaling captains had counted on a wind shift from the east to drive the ice out to sea as it had always done in years past.
The ships were destroyed in a matter of weeks, leaving more than 1,200 whalers stranded at the top of the world until they could be rescued by seven ships of the fleet standing by about 80 miles to the south in open water off Icy Cape.
No one died in the incident but it is cited as one of the major causes of the demise of commercial whaling in the United States.

 This map shows the area that was surveyed during the Search for the Lost Whaling Fleets expedition. Image courtesy of M. Lawrence/NOAA.

With less ice in the Arctic as a result of climate change, archaeologists now have more access to potential shipwreck sites than ever before.
In September, a team of archaeologists from the Maritime Heritage Program in NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries scoured a 30-mile stretch of coastline in the nearshore waters of the Chukchi Sea, near Wainwright, Alaska.
Previous searches for the ships had found traces of gear salvaged from the wrecks by the local Inupiat people, as well as scattered timbers stranded high on the isolated beaches that stretch from Wainwright to Point Franklin.

 The shipwreck remains located off Point Franklin represent 19th century wooden ship construction. The wood frames are likely from the lower portion of the vessel near the turn of the bilge.

The wooden pegs, seen here on a section of ship hull, are known as treenails and were used to fasten pieces of wood together, and in this case they were used to attach the exterior hull planking or interior ceiling planks.

Image courtesy of Robert Schwemmer/NOAA .

Using state-of-the-art sonar and sensing technology, the NOAA team was able to plot the "magnetic signature" of the two wrecks, including the outline of their flattened hulls.
The wreck site also revealed anchors, fasteners, ballast and brick-lined pots used to render whale blubber into oil.
"Earlier research by a number of scholars suggested that some of the ships that were crushed and sunk might still be on the seabed," said Brad Barr, NOAA archaeologist and project co-director.
"But until now, no one had found definitive proof of any of the lost fleet beneath the water. This exploration provides an opportunity to write the last chapter of this important story of American maritime heritage and also bear witness to some of the impacts of a warming climate on the region's environmental and cultural landscape, including diminishing sea ice and melting permafrost."

 Seahorse islands with the GeoGarage nautical chart platform

James Delgado, maritime heritage director for NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, said he believes the wrecks were pressed against a submerged sand bar that rests about 100 yards from shore.
Working from first-hand accounts of the loss of the fleet, he said the ice opened the hulls to the sea and tore away the upper portions of the ships, scattering their timbers on the beach, while the lower hulls, weighted down with ballast, and in some cases still anchored, stayed in place against the sand bar.
"Usually, the Arctic does not destroy ships if there is a natural obstacle like a sand bar, large rocks or a sheltered cove to partially divert the force of tons of ice," Delgado said.

 Abandonment of the whalers in the Arctic Ocean, September 1871, including the Monticello, Kohoa, Eugenia, Julian, Awashonks Thom Dickason, Minerva, Wm. Rotch, Victoria, and Mary.

Wainwright Inlet is in the background.

Courtesy of Ted and Ellie Congdon, Huntington Library.

On Sept. 12, 1871, the captains of the 33 whaling ships caught in the ice convened aboard the Champion to consider their options for saving the 1,219 officers, crew, and in some cases, families, from their fate.
Although, their situation was dire, there was some small glimmer of hope for rescue by seven nearby ships.
However, to save such a large party, the rescuing whale ships had to jettison their precious cargoes of whale oil, bone and their expensive whaling gear to make room for the survivors.
The rescue ships were able to sail safely out of the Arctic and back to Honolulu, where hundreds of native Hawaiian whalers aboard the stranded vessels lived, while others sailed on to San Francisco, New Bedford and other cities.

Links :

• NOAA :  http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/15lostwhalingfleets/.

A still-growing El Niño set to bear down on U.S.

see also : El Niño evolution January – December 2015

From NASA

The current strong El Niño brewing in the Pacific Ocean shows no signs of waning, as seen in the latest satellite image from the U.S./European Ocean Surface Topography Mission (OSTM)/Jason-2 mission. 

El Niño 2015 has already created weather chaos around the world.

Over the next few months, forecasters expect the United States to feel its impacts as well.

The latest Jason-2 image bears a striking resemblance to one from December 1997, by Jason-2's predecessor, the NASA/Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) Topex/Poseidon mission, during the last large El Niño event.

Both reflect the classic pattern of a fully developed El Niño.

The images can be viewed at:

http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/elnino2015/index.html

The images show nearly identical, unusually high sea surface heights along the equator in the central and eastern Pacific: the signature of a big and powerful El Niño.

Higher-than-normal sea surface heights are an indication that a thick layer of warm water is present.

People the world over are feeling, or soon will feel, the effects of the strongest El Niño event since 1997-98, currently unfolding in the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean.

New satellite observations are beginning to show scientists its impact on the distribution of rain, tropospheric ozone and wildfires around the globe.

El Niños are triggered when the steady, westward-blowing trade winds in the Pacific weaken or even reverse direction, triggering a dramatic warming of the upper ocean in the central and eastern tropical Pacific.

Clouds and storms follow the warm water, pumping heat and moisture high into the overlying atmosphere.

These changes alter jet stream paths and affect storm tracks all over the world.

This year's El Niño has caused the warm water layer that is normally piled up around Australia and Indonesia to thin dramatically, while in the eastern tropical Pacific, the normally cool surface waters are blanketed with a thick layer of warm water.

This massive redistribution of heat causes ocean temperatures to rise from the central Pacific to the Americas.

It has sapped Southeast Asia's rain in the process, reducing rainfall over Indonesia and contributing to the growth of massive wildfires that have blanketed the region in choking smoke. 

El Niño is also implicated in Indian heat waves caused by delayed monsoon rains, as well as Pacific island sea level drops, widespread coral bleaching that is damaging coral reefs, droughts in South Africa, flooding in South America and a record-breaking hurricane season in the eastern tropical Pacific.

Around the world, production of rice, wheat, coffee and other crops has been hit hard by droughts and floods, leading to higher prices.

While El Niño may provide some drought relief locally, in other parts of the world, it wreaks havoc.

In the United States, many of El Niño's biggest impacts are expected in early 2016.

Forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration favor an El Niño-induced shift in weather patterns to begin in the near future, ushering in several months of relatively cool and wet conditions across the southern United States, and relatively warm and dry conditions over the northern United States.

The latest El Niño forecast from NOAA's Climate Prediction Center is at:

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/

While scientists still do not know precisely how the current El Niño will affect the United States, the last large El Niño in 1997-98 was a wild ride for most of the nation.

The "Great Ice Storm" of January 1998 crippled northern New England and southeastern Canada, but overall, the northern tier of the United States experienced long periods of mild weather and meager snowfall.

Meanwhile, across the southern United States, a steady convoy of storms slammed most of California, moved east into the Southwest, drenched Texas and -- pumped up by the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico -- wreaked havoc along the Gulf Coast, particularly in Florida.  

"In 2014, the current El Niño teased us -- wavering off and on," said Josh Willis, project scientist for the Jason missions at JPL.

"But in early 2015, atmospheric conditions changed, and El Niño steadily expanded in the central and eastern Pacific. Although the sea surface height signal in 1997 was more intense and peaked in November of that year, in 2015, the area of high sea levels is larger. This could mean we have not yet seen the peak of this El Niño."

Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, scientists on the history of El Niño research and what's being done to get ready for the biggest El Niño on record.

During normal, non-El Niño conditions, the amount of warm water in the western equatorial Pacific is so large that sea levels are about 20 inches (50 centimeters) higher in the western Pacific than in the eastern Pacific.

"You can see it in the latest Jason-2 image of the Pacific," said Willis.

"The 8-inch [20-centimeter] drop in the west, coupled with the 10-inch [25-centimeter] rise in the east, has completely wiped out the tilt in sea level we usually have along the equator."

The new Jason-2 image shows that the amount of extra-warm surface water from the current El Niño (depicted in red and white shades) has continuously increased, especially in the eastern Pacific within 10 degrees latitude north and south of the equator.

In the western Pacific, the area of low sea level (blue and purple) has decreased somewhat from late October.

The white and red areas indicate unusual patterns of heat storage.

In the white areas, the sea surface is between 6 and 10 inches (15 to 25 centimeters) above normal, while in the red areas, it is about 4 inches (10 centimeters) above normal.

The green areas indicate normal conditions.

The height of the ocean water relates, in part, to its temperature, and is an indicator of the amount of heat stored in the ocean below.

Within this area, surface temperatures are greater than 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius) in the central equatorial Pacific and near 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21 degrees Celsius) off the coast of the Americas.

This El Niño signal encompasses a surface area of 6 million square miles (16 million square kilometers) -- more than twice as big as the continental United States. 

While no one can predict the exact timing or intensity of U.S. El Niño impacts, for drought-stricken California and the U.S. West, it's expected to bring some relief.

"The water story for much of the American West over most of the past decade has been dominated by punishing drought," said JPL climatologist Bill Patzert.

"Reservoir levels have fallen to record or near-record lows, while groundwater tables have dropped dangerously in many areas. Now we're preparing to see the flip side of nature's water cycle -- the arrival of steady, heavy rains and snowfall." 

In 1982-83 and 1997-98, large El Niños delivered about twice the average amount of rainfall to Southern California, along with mudslides, floods, high winds, lightning strikes and high surf.

But Patzert cautioned that El Niño events are not drought busters.

"Over the long haul, big El Niños are infrequent and supply only seven percent of California's water," he said.

"Looking ahead to summer, we might not be celebrating the demise of this El Niño," cautioned Patzert.

"It could be followed by a La Niña, which could bring roughly opposite effects to the world's weather."

La Niñas are essentially the opposite of El Niño conditions.

During a La Niña episode, trade winds are stronger than normal, and the cold water that normally exists along the coast of South America extends to the central equatorial Pacific.

La Niña episodes change global weather patterns and are associated with less moisture in the air over cooler ocean waters.

This results in less rain along the coasts of North and South America and along the central and eastern equatorial Pacific, and more rain in the far Western Pacific.

El Niño events are part of the long-term, evolving state of global climate, for which measurements of sea surface height are a key indicator.

Links :

• HuffingtonPost : El Niño finally hits California, but worst is yet to come
• NYTimes : Thanks to El Niño, thirsty California is suddenly all wet
• Wired : Don't blame all these rains and floods on El Niño
• BBC : El Niño: What is it?
• GeoGarage blog :El Niño expected to strengthen further: High Impacts, unprecedented preparation / The strongest El Niño on record may be brewing in the Pacific / El Niño explained 

How satellite technology is helping to fight illegal fishing

From their control centre in Oxfordshire, analysts from Satellite Application Catapult can track vessels around the world and watch for abnormal or illegal behaviour.

Photograph: Satellite Applications Catapult

From BBC by Karl Mathiesen

A new initiative is arming coastguards with satellite intelligence that allows them to target their search for pirate fishing vessels in remote marine areas

Pirate fishing vessels plundering fish from the world’s marine reserves, such as the one around Ascension Island announced on the weekend, can now be watched, tracked and brought to justice using satellite technology.

Despite a proliferation of huge, publicly lauded marine reserves, actually stopping fishing in many remote areas has previously been almost impossible.
Fishing vessels are required to carry a transponder that tracks their movements and allows authorities to monitor their behaviour.
But illegal fishers simply switch off the machine, disappearing from the system.

 Take a deep dive into our groundbreaking satellite tool to combat pirate fishing. Project Eyes on the Seas uses the latest technology to track illegal fishing activity in real time, giving authorities the information they need to protect the world's oceans.

A UK-funded initiative, developed by Satellite Applications Catapult (SAC) and the Pew Charitable Trusts, uses satellite radars to track these “dark targets”.
Now, instead of blindly patrolling vast areas of ocean, coastguard vessels use the satellite intelligence to target their search.
“We don’t put a cop on every corner 24 hours a day. So let’s at least know what the situation out on the water is [before sending boats to investigate],” said Bradley Soule, senior fisheries analyst for SAC.

Satellite radar has traditionally been used by the military and law enforcement agencies.
But the cost has dropped dramatically, opening up the data for private companies to use.
“It is definitely a big deal,” he said. “[The global satellite tracking] gives you a sense of the scope ... It is a wide-ranging problem.”
Roughly one in every five fish landed around the world is caught illegally.
In the past, said Soule, the problem was not effectively shared between neighbouring governments. This meant “there are opportunities for bad actors to move swiftly across borders and use our borders against us”.
But even though the system is still effectively being trialled, having only been in development for two years, it has already been used during investigations.
The details of these are not yet public.
Soule said: “We have identified some abnormal behaviour and are working with the relevant authorities.”

 Fishing vessels tracked using transponders.

Illegal vessels will often switch off their transponders and “go dark”, making them impossible to track without the use of satellite radar.

Photograph: Satellite Applications Catapult 

Just five years after the global figurehead of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) ocean protection programme, Dan Laffoley, co-authored a report that said that most marine protected area’s “are ineffective or only partially effective” he now believes the reserves can now offer true sanctuary.

“The excuses that it’s far too large, it’s far too remote, it’s far too expensive are old excuses. The reality is that we do have the technology to be able to police these places,” said Laffoley.

“There really is a breakthrough in terms of remote sensing,” said Charles Clover, the chair of the Blue Marine Foundation who lobbied the UK government for the creation of the Ascension marine protected area (MPA).
However, he added that “the feasibility of actually taking a prosecution through the courts using remote sensing [on its own] is still questioned by the Foreign Office” and the technology would still require boats in the water.

 Ascension island in the GeoGarage platform (UKHO chart)

The Guardian understands that satellite technology will play a part in the enforcement of the 234,291km² Ascension MPA.
An initial study of Ascension waters using satellites found at least eight boats that had turned off their transponders and were possibly fishing illegally. 
SAC is already working with the UK government to track vessels in the world’s largest marine reserve around Pitcairn Island.
The announcement that the UK government would ban fishing in more than half of the island’s huge territorial waters (which are a British overseas dominion) was hailed as a “massive step” by Laffoley.
Ascension’s lonely volcanic peak juts from the heart of the Atlantic Ocean, almost midway between South America and Africa.
Laffoley said the waters around Ascension were one of the few remaining places where the marine environment had not been irreversibly damaged by overfishing.
But even here, recent years have seen a rapid decline.
“There’s a fairly disastrous Asian longline fishery going off in Ascension Island waters, which paid money into the Ascension Island government to make up the shortfall [of funding] from London,” he said.

When he visited last year, Laffoley spoke with locals who told him great natural events and creatures, such as “large tuna chasing fry up the beaches that they’d seen generation after generation were becoming more memories than reality”.
“When we were diving there we only saw one shark and there should have been plenty,” he said.
In 2015, a huge year for marine conservation, big reserves were designated in Palau, Easter Island, Pitcairn Island and New Zealand’s Kermadec islands.
The Ascension reserve brings the total proportion of the world’s oceans protected from fishing to 2%. In 2002, the World Summit on Sustainable Development and the Convention on Biological Diversity committed countries to reaching 10% by 2012.

Almost half of Ascension’s waters will remain open to the (mostly Taiwanese) tuna vessels that have caused so much damage in the past.
However, a $300,000 grant from the charitable foundation of US hedge fund manager Louis Bacon will fund a policing presence for the next two fishing seasons in order to “ensure best practice is observed”.

There is a good chance that one fish in five sold in a store or served in a restaurant has been caught illegally.

That would amount to 26m tonnes - the weight of nearly 500 Titanics - of fish a year.

The environmental cost of illegal fishing is huge: In the past fifty or so years one in four fisheries has collapsed, largely because of it.

And the economic cost is high too: 23 billion dollars according to the Pew Charitable Trusts.

But clever use of technology could help prevent this pillage.

How would it work?

A new satellite-based surveillance centre in Britain may be a game-changer.

Called a virtual watch room, it resembles the control centre for a space mission and can track fishing boats anywhere in the world with the results displayed on a giant video wall.

The watch room uses satellites to pull together data from multiple sources. including radar, photographic images and the signals emitted by radio transponders which are supposed to be fitted to fishing boats.

Automated alerts, such as when a vessel enters a prohibited area and slows to fishing speed, allow operators to zoom in on anything suspicious.

The watch room can also spot vessels working with another ship to which they transfer their catches for transport to market.

The virtual watch room has been developed by Pew Charitable Trusts and Satellite Applications Catapult.

But the success of the watch room’s technology will also depend on governments and the authorities responsible for fishing sharing information and enforcing international rules and regulations.

If, for example, radio transponders aren’t made mandatory on all fishing vessels, tracking them will be complicated.

Industry would also need to play its part by using the watch room’s technology to protect their supply chains.

The one-in-five illegal fish identified by Pew are often sold by otherwise law-abiding firms.

Now those firms have a way to reliably trace where their fish comes from.

If customers care enough about buying fish from sustainable sources, then retail pressure coupled with satellite technology should be a powerful weapon to combat pirate fishing.

But Laffoley said this left the job of protecting the area half done.
“I think we need to close that fishery still operating. After all, the marlin, the turtles, the sharks and others won’t know which bit is open and which bit is closed.”
“The reality is that if you want to have places in the ocean where you’ve got the really impressive wildlife spectacles, where you’ve got intact ecosystems, where you’ve got the big old individuals that we know are more resilient and have better quality of eggs to reseed areas [then you need no-take areas]. When you have a fishery, you lose them,” he said.

Clover said the fishery was kept open by necessity in order to fund the Ascension Island government.
UK government funding of public services on the island is severely limited and the community has had to open up licences to the fishing operators.
“It’s all about the [UK] Foreign Office not paying for this outfit,” said Clover.

Laffoley seconded Clover’s call for increasing the budget to make the Ascension community viable without fishing.
“We have to question why we are using the biodiversity and exploiting it, to then protect the biodiversity,” he said.
“Is that a really good strategy when we are seeing catastrophic declines where we’ve had fisheries?”

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : Catapult and Pew Charitable Trusts launch pioneering technology to help end illegal fishing / Google's global fishing watch is using 'manipulated data' / The plan to map illegal fishing from Space / Monitor illegal fishing weirs in the Persian Gulf / Smile! Satellites can see your illegal fishing from space / Can technology end pirate fishing? / How Google Earth is busting Persian Gulf nations for overfishing / West African fishing communities drive off 'pirate' fishing trawlers / Google can track ships at sea ; detailed maps planned of sea bottom / Concern over 'high seas security loophole' 
• National Geographic : Help Track Down Illegal Fishing Boats in Cocos Island, Costa Rica From Your Computer 
• BBC : Ascension island to become marine reserve

What happened to the Polar Vortex?

President Obama's Science and Technology Advisor, Dr. John Holdren, explains the polar vortex in 2 minutes—and why climate change makes extreme weather more likely going forward.

From Scientific American by Andrea Thompson

The polar vortex has strengthened this year, helping exacerbate current mild weather.

It has been ridiculously warm across the eastern half of the country this month, with many spots likely to see their warmest December on record. New York City may reach as high as 72°F on Christmas Eve.
Washington D.C. is forecast to reach the mid-70s, and Miami the mid-80s.

One of the factors behind this decidedly un-Christmas-like weather is a feature that came to be associated with the brutally cold winters of the past few years: the infamous polar vortex.
But if you like warm winter days, enjoy it while you can.
Because while the current state of the polar vortex is keeping dreams of a White Christmas at bay, a shift could soon be in the offing, one scientist says, potentially ushering in a more typical winter wonderland in January.

Over the past two years, the term polar vortex became synonymous with the bitter outbreaks of Arctic air that sent teeth chattering from Boston to Atlanta (after all, polar is right there in the name).
The polar vortex is a feature of the atmosphere defined as the fast moving current of air encircling the Arctic that forms during the cold months because of the increased temperature difference between the dark, frigid Arctic and the warm tropics.

There are actually two vortices, one in the layer of the upper atmosphere known as the stratosphere and one in the lower section, where our weather happens, called the troposphere.
These two features interact with each other and can affect the meteorological goings-on outside of the Arctic.
The polar vortex also interacts with other features and fluxes in the atmosphere, which causes it to vary in strength over time.

North pole could be 35C warmer than average this week, warn meteorologists

When the polar vortex is strong, as it is now, it keeps arctic air fenced in.
That is part of what is currently keeping the weather so mild in the eastern U.S..
But when the vortex is perturbed or weakened, the jet of air becomes more wobbly and can set up southward excursions of frigid air — what we saw plenty of times over the last couple winters.

The polar vortex is particularly susceptible to such weakening when it reaches its peak in mid-winter, Judah Cohen, an atmospheric scientist with the private firm Atmospheric and Environmental Research (AER), said in an email.
And that is what Cohen is forecasting will take place in January.
Cohen expects some pulses of energy working their way from the lower to upper atmosphere to perturb and weaken the polar vortex over the next few weeks.
That weakening would favor a dip in temperatures over the eastern U.S. and potentially an uptick in snowstorms, Cohen wrote in an AER blog post.

A map showing the difference between temperatures on Dec. 30 and averages shows how a potent storm carried extremely warm air over the North Pole.

Some research suggests that the rapid warming of the Arctic, which is happening at about twice the pace of the planet as a whole, could be impacting the polar vortex.
Cohen and others think that declining sea ice and increased snow cover in Siberia are two manifestations of this amplification that are exerting a weakening influence on the polar vortex, which could be fueling more outbreaks of Arctic air.
Cohen thinks that the pulses of energy he expects to perturb the vortex over the next few weeks are related to particular areas of low sea ice and high snow cover present this fall and winter.
But this research is hotly debated.
“There are many that argue that any influence of Arctic amplification cannot be detected above the noise of the intrinsic or natural variability of the atmosphere,” Cohen said.
If the Arctic chill from the weakening of the polar vortex blows in next month, Cohen, a self-avowed fan of winter weather, would welcome the switch.
At first he didn’t mind Boston having a break after last year’s epic snows, “but I have to admit I miss winter and this is just crazy,” he said.

Links :

• Forbes : So why isn't anyone talking about the strong Polar Vortex
• NJ : The Polar Vortex may be back, only this time it's making it warm?
• The Atlantic : The storm that will unfreeze the North Pole 
• ArcticDeeply : Unusual Warm Weather Spells Trouble for North
• NASA : What is a Polar Vortex
• GeoGarage blog :Warming Arctic may be causing Jet Stream to lose its way / Polar Vortex in summer? Not exactly, experts say 

From timber to tide

From Timber To Tide from Pixillion

Ben Harris is a traditional wooden boat builder based in Cornwall, UK.
This film documents Ben Harris’ love of wood work and boat building, how he acquired his skills, and how incredible it is to be able to take something that you’ve built with your own hands out onto the water and sail it across the sea.

Who is Ben Harris?
Ben has always loved wood.

His mother said that his first word was ‘log’.

He has been working with wood throughout the UK since the age of 15.

First as an assistant to a cabinet maker, where he started by sharpening the tools and clearing up.

He then developed his skills in furniture making and his passion for wood and forestry by working in broadleaf woodlands.

Later he tuned his skills in bespoke oak-framed carpentry and went on to establish a sawmill and oak framing business in Scotland, sourcing timber from the local estates.

In 2005 Ben moved to Cornwall to study boatbuilding.

He has been building boats and sailing them ever since. (benharrisboats.co.uk)

The longest night

Philips Presents: The Longest Night from T Brand Studio

Páll Pálsson has been a man of the sea for 36 years.

With a life of fishing, comes a life of little sleep. Research shows that nearly half of Icelandic fishermen suffer from sleep-related disorders such as chronic fatigue and apnea.

15 huge ocean conservation victories of 2015

Goodbye 2015. Welcome 2016.

From EcoWatch by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, Waitt Institute

Overfishing, climate change, habitat destruction and pollution remain major threats to the world’s ocean.
But amidst all that there is some seriously good ocean conservation news worth celebrating.
So, to continue the tradition started last year with listing 14 Ocean Conservation Wins of 2014, here’s a rundown for 2015 that will hopefully fill you with #OceanOptimism.
These wins represent the diligent efforts of organizations and individuals too numerous to list, so let’s just start with a blanket shoutout to all of #TeamOcean for a great year.

1. More than 2 million square kilometers of ocean was protected in big new marine reserves. Marine reserves are areas completely closed to fishing, and 2015 saw more ocean protected in a single year than ever before.
Chile created Desventuradas Marine Park (297,000 square kilometers) and Easter Island Marine Park (631,000 square kilometers).
New Zealand created Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary (620,000 square kilometers), Palau created Palau National Marine Sanctuary (500,000 square kilometers), the UK announced the Pitcairn Island Reserve (833,000 square kilometers), and protected areas are in the works for Patagonia.
However, there is a broad consensus that 30 percent of the ocean should be fully protected in reserves, and these new designations only get us up to 1 percent—but we’ll take it!

2. New technology is being developed to combat illegal fishing.
Designating all these new reserves means little without enforcement, and we can’t enforce unless we know what’s happening out on the water.
One big tech effort launched this year is Global Fishing Watch, a partnership between Skytruth, Google and Oceana to track fishing vessels and identify illegal fishing.
Another similar program is the Pew Charitable Trust’s Virtual Watch Room.
These technologies are in prototype phase and need significant improvement before they live up to expectations, but it’s a promising and exciting development.

3. Illegal fishing boats are being chased down and caught!
Sea Shepherd chased a pirate fishing boat on Interpol’s most wanted list for 10,000 miles, until the boat sank (potentially on purpose to drown the evidence of illegal fishing).
Another boat was chased for four days, caught, and fined $2 million for illegally fishing in the Phoenix Islands Protected Area.
The Black Fish and Environmental Justice Foundation have also been stepping up to make sure enforcement happens, but hopefully we can soon rely on law enforcement organizations, not environmental groups, to do this work.

4. Ocean conservation is one of the UN’s new sustainable development goals.
These goals set the UN’s agenda for the next 15 years, and it wasn’t clear the ocean would make the cut, but (voila!) Goal 14 is to “Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources.”
Specific targets include, by 2020, conserving 10 percent of the ocean (but see #1 above for how far we have to go and whether 10 percent is even enough), halting overfishing and illegal fishing, and ending the subsidies that encourage them.
Addressing marine pollution and ocean acidification, and supporting small island states and small-scale artisanal fisheries are also priorities.

5. The Port State Measures Agreement is close to being ratified.
Another one from the UN, this is an agreement aiming to “to prevent, deter and eliminate illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing through the implementation of robust port State measures.”
In other words, boats have to come into port eventually, so it’s important to have international cooperation in place to prosecute the bad guys when they come ashore.
IUU fishing is a major issue, representing ~$20 billion annually, and this measure will greatly increase enforcement capacity.
The agreement will enter into force after 25 countries ratify it—nine more ratifications to go, all expected in 2016.

6. The ocean is getting some good ink and screen time.
Racing Extinction premiered in theaters, bringing the issues of trade in endangered species, overfishing and ocean acidification to the big screen.
The Discovery Channel promised to stop with all the fear-mongering and straight up fake documentaries during Shark Week.
Richard Branson’s philanthropy launched Ocean Unite, to pull together and support the ocean conservation community on communications. And see #6 below.

7. Sustainable fishing became understood as a human rights issue.
Reporter Ian Urbina produced a slew of impressive investigative articles exposing the widespread human trafficking, slave labor and other horrors associated with major fisheries.
Upworthy produced a series of pieces to get this info to a broader audience.
Greenpeace has been fighting for fishers’ rights, teaming up with five of the largest labor unions.
The “Statement of Solidarity With Greenpeace Campaign to Reform the Tuna Industry” begins: “We know that environmental and social justice issues are absolutely intertwined and increasingly solutions that protect workers are the same solutions that safeguard the environment and natural resources.”
Hear, hear! And if you eat shrimp, unless you’re paying like $20 a pound, it’s totally unsustainable and slaves probably peeled it for you, so please find something else to dip in cocktail sauce.

8. Small island states are leading the way and getting support on ocean management.
Not only did small island states come together as a powerful voice at COP 21 in Paris, this year also saw the launch of Blue Guardians at the Clinton Global Initiative.
This new partnership that includes a broad collaboration of organizations (SIDS DOCK, Digital Globe, The Nature Conservancy, World Bank, Clinton Climate Initiative, Waitt Institute and others), and is focused on simultaneously protecting oceans and supporting coastal economies in the context of a changing climate.

9. A nonpartisan coalition is bringing ocean issues into the 2016 U.S. elections.
The Sea Party Coalition was launched by Blue Frontier, with tea party and liberal Congressmen, environmental NGOs, an evangelical minister, climate activists, ocean scientists and philanthropists participating.
The hope is to use the crosscutting sentiments for ocean conservation and against offshore drilling to get some traction for ocean issues in the 2016 elections.

 NASA releases new high-resolution image :

just  an unbelievable new image of the Earth rising over the Moon

10. Anonymous is hacking for ocean conservation.
The hacking collective claims credit for shutting down government websites of Japan and Iceland in retribution for their whaling.
Both countries continue to kill whales via a loophole in the International Whaling Commission agreement that allows whaling for “scientific research.”

11. Oil companies may be giving up on drilling in the Arctic.
 Greenpeace activists suspended themselves from a Portland bridge for two days attempting to block a Royal Dutch Shell icebreaker from heading to the Arctic.
This year also saw the rise of “kayaktivists” forming barriers to oil drilling equipment leaving port in Portland and Seattle.
Shell has at least temporarily ceased oil exploration in Alaska, and, though the fight isn’t over, the Obama administration has put a two-year ban on drilling there.
Greenpeace has shared the inside story of the #ShellNo protests in “People vs. Shell.”

12. Ocean zoning continues to gain traction as a key policy approach.
The Waitt Institute’s zoning-focused Blue Halo Initiative has been scaled up from the pilot project in Barbuda to launch two new partnerships, with the governments of Montserrat and Curaçao.
Perhaps more importantly, at least a dozen other island nations are interested in developing similar comprehensive, science-based, community-driven sustainable ocean management plans for their waters.

13. Plastic microbeads are getting banned.
New research shows that there are at least 15 trillion pieces of plastic in the ocean, at least three times more than previously thought.
Plastic microbeads, the sneakiest tiny bits of plastic, are in all sorts of toiletries (like face scrubs and toothpaste).
They end up in the ocean in droves, then in creatures’ bellies and gills, and cause all sorts of problems.
The good news is the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives have passed bills that will ban the use of microbeads.
Fear not!—there are plenty of non-plastic, non-toxic ways to exfoliate.

14. An end to subsidies for unsustainable fishing is gaining steam.
Much of the world’s overfishing and illegal fishing is financed by government subsidies.
But now, in a WTO Ministerial Statement, 27 countries have committed to ending subsidies “that negatively affect overfished fish stocks” or that support IUU fishing. This is also a target of the UN’s new ocean goal (see #2 above).

15. The COP 21 climate agreement mentioned the ocean.
 Given that the ocean is the majority of the planet and a lynchpin of the climate system and carbon cycle, it’s a bit nutty that just getting the ocean mentioned was something we needed to fight for.
However, the ocean was not originally included in the agreement’s text, and it is due to strong collective presence of the ocean community at COP 21 that the ocean got mentions in the final document.
Yet, note this analysis of how the agreement is not nearly as lovely, equitable, and transformative as most reporting would have you believe, and that it’s certainly insufficient for saving coral reefs.

Other good oceany things happened this year too.
The U.S. and Cuba agreed to collaborate on management of marine protected areas.
XPrize launched a $7 million ocean exploration prize competition.
Adidas and Parley teamed up to launch 3-D printed shoes made of plastic ocean trash.
World leaders gathered at the Our Ocean conference, which is becoming a key annual diplomatic event.
Citizen science is on the rise.
And Atlantic salmon just spawned in Connecticut for the first time since the 1700s.
There are invariably other wins I’ve missed—please shout them out in the comments!

If this trend of ocean wins from last year and this year continues, we may well avoid the most dire predictions of ocean ecosystem collapse.
To maintain this positive inertia, we must keep coming together and collaborating, and draw others into the fold to ensure (as we say at the Waitt Institute) sustainable, profitable and enjoyable use of the ocean for this and future generations.
Hopefully 2016 will be the year of really coming to grips with how to use the ocean without using it up.
Happy new year!

Links :

• QZ : The best thing to happen to oceans in 2015 was the rise of the citizen scientist
• Discovery : 10 reasons to be hopeful about the oceans

Seafloor features are revealed by the gravity field

From NASA

It has been said that we have more complete maps of the surface of Mars or the Moon than we do of Earth.
Close to 70 percent of our planet is covered by water, and that water refracts, absorbs, and reflects light so well that it can only penetrate a few tens to hundreds of meters.
To humans and most satellite eyes, the deep ocean is opaque

But there are ways to visualize what the planet looks like beneath that watery shroud.
Sonar-based (sounding) instruments mounted on ships can distinguish the shape (bathymetry) of the seafloor.
But such maps can only be made for places where ships and sonar pass frequently.
The majority of such measurements have been made along the major shipping routes of the world, interspersed with results from scientific expeditions over the past two centuries.
About 5 to 15 percent of the global ocean floor has been mapped in this way, depending on how you define “mapped.”

There is another way to see the depths of the ocean: by measuring the shape and gravity field of Earth, a discipline known as geodesy.
David Sandwell of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Walter Smith of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have spent much of the past 25 years negotiating with military agencies and satellite operators to allow them acquire or gain access to measurements of the Earth’s gravity field and sea surface heights.
The result of their collaborative efforts is a global data set that tells where the ridges and valleys are by showing where the planet’s gravity field varies.
The map above shows a global view of gravity anomalies, as measured and assembled by Sandwell, Smith, and colleagues.
Shades of orange and red represent areas where seafloor gravity is stronger (in milligals) than the global average, a phenomenon that mostly coincides with the location of underwater ridges, seamounts, and the edges of Earth’s tectonic plates.
Shades of blue represent areas of lower gravity, corresponding largely with the deepest troughs in the ocean.
The second map shows a tighter view of that data along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between Africa and South America.

The maps were created through computer analysis and modeling of new satellite altimetry data from the European Space Agency’s CryoSat-2 and from the NASA-CNES Jason-1, as well as older data from missions flown in the 1980s and 90s.
CryoSat-2 was designed to collect data over Earth’s polar regions, but it also collected measurements over the oceans.
Jason-1 was specifically designed to measure the height of the oceans, but it had to be adjusted to a slightly different orbit in order to acquire the data needed to see gravity anomalies.
But how does the height of the sea surface (which is what the altimeters measured) tell us something about gravity and the seafloor?
Mountains and other seafloor features have a lot of mass, so they exert a gravitational pull on the water above and around them; essentially, seamounts pull more water toward their center of mass. This causes water to pile up in small but measurable bumps on the sea surface.
(If you are wondering why a greater mass would not pull the water down, it is because water is incompressible; that is, it will not shrink into a smaller volume.)
The new measurements of these tiny bumps on the sea surface were compared and combined with previous gravity measurements to make a map that is two-to four times more detailed than before. Through their work, Sandwell, Smith, and the team have charted thousands of previously uncharted mountains and abyssal hills.
The new map gives an accurate picture of seafloor topography at a scale of 5 kilometers per pixel.

From these seafloor maps, scientists can further refine their understand of the evolution and motion of Earth’s tectonic plates and the continents they carry.
They can also improve estimates of the depth of the seafloor in various regions and target new sonar surveys to further refine the details, especially in areas where there is thick sediment.
This third map shows the gravity data as a cartographer would represent the seafloor, with darker blues representing deeper areas.

Links :

• Sandwell, D. et al. (2014) New global marine gravity model from CryoSat-2 and Jason-1 reveals buried tectonic structure. Science, 346 (6205), 65–67.
• Scripps Institution of Oceanography (2014, October 2) Marine Gravity from Satellite Altimetry. Accessed December 23, 2015.
• Scripps Institution of Oceanography (2014, October 2) New Map Exposes Previously Unseen Details of Seafloor. Accessed December 23, 2015.
• Carlowicz, M. (1995, October 31) New Map of Seafloor Mirrors Surface. EOS, Transactions, AGU, 441–442.
• University of Sydney (2014, October 5) Mapping the Seafloor from Space. Accessed December 23, 2015.
• Scientific American (2014, October 9) Just How Little Do We Know about the Ocean Floor? Accessed December 23, 2015.
• Schmidt Ocean Institute (2013, March 12) The Ocean: Haven’t We Already Mapped It? Accessed December 23, 2015.
• NOAA National Ocean Service (2015) What is geodesy? Accessed December 23, 2015.
• NOAA National Ocean Service (2015) How much of the ocean have we explored? Accessed December 23, 2015.
• DailyMail : The most accurate ocean floor map ever made: Scientists reveal the alien landscape beneath the sea in incredible detail
  

Why are sea levels dropping in places closest to the melting glaciers?

Global rebound rates as the world adjusts from the last ice age.

Image credit: A. Paulson/S. Zhong/J. Wahr

From io9 by Mika McKinnon

Our dynamic planet has an apparent paradox: the more ice melts from landlocked glaciers, the lower the sea level gets in nearby areas.
How does this happen?
Through the physics of isostatic rebound, when the surface of the planet acts as an elastic sheet dimpling and rebounding under changing loads.

Perito Moreno Glacier in Argentina is one of the few terrestrial glaciers advancing in modern times. Image credit: Frank Kehren

Rocks seem so very solid from our puny human perspective.
Things are rock hard, rock solid, and are reliable as the rock itself.
But from a geological perspective, rock is an elastic sheet that encompasses our planet in a thin, flexible membrane that responds to every disturbance.

Nowhere is this more evident than with isostatic rebound, a process of geological buoyancy by which the earth's crust, having sunk beneath the weight of glaciers from a preceding ice age, bounces up as ice sheets melt and the water runs back into the sea.
While this melting ice is filling the oceans, the land can rebound so quickly that it rises even faster than the climbing sea level.
The result is an apparent paradox: where continental glaciers are melting and exposing the land, the local sea levels are dropping.

The Thwaites ice shelf in Antartica as surveyed in October 2013 by Operation IceBridge. 

Image credit: James Yungel/NASA

During each ice age, massive glaciers crawl across the land.
These vast ice sheets contain an enormous quantity of water.
And water is very, very heavy.

The crust and mantle deform under the weight of ice sheets.

Image modified from NASA

During the last ice age 15,000 to 20,000 years ago, Canada and the United States were groaning under the weight of the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets while Scandinavia struggled under the Fennoscandian ice sheet.
The Earth's lithosphere, the rigid crust and uppermost mantle, buckled under the weight of up to 3 kilometers of ice.
Like an iceberg floating in water with a vast root hidden under the waves, the crust sank into the mantle until hitting a buoyant balance between the weight of ice and rock over hot mantle.
Kept under load for thousands of years, the lithosphere flowed and deformed to reach equilibrium under the new normal.

When the world shook off the ice age, the ice sheets melted quickly.
The land was bare in a geologic heartbeat, lifting the weight far, far faster than it built up millennia before.
The elastic crust rebounded nearly instantaneously, bouncing back like a balloon's surface freed from an aggressive squeeze.
But the more viscous mantle was slower to reach equilibrium in the new isostatic regime, driving slow uplift as the mantle flowed under the dented land.
The rebound is ongoing today, with the land recovering at centimetres per year.
With the rebound rates akin to the speed at which fingernails grow, it will take another 10,000 years before the land recovers from the last ice age.

The same story is happening everywhere that was covered in ice: the lithosphere buckled under the massive weight of ice sheets, and has been slowly recovering in the millennia since they were exposed.
From the Antarctic still shedding weight to Canada's Hudson Bay racing upwards at nearly 2 centimeters per year, the surface of our planet is literally reshaping beneath our feet.
For people in the far north and south of our planet, every time they trim their nails they can reflect on how much higher their home has bounced since the last manicure.

As the lithosphere rebounds, it carries the entire landscape with it.
Sea cliffs and rivers are stranded far above their formation location, and strandlines of past beaches are laid out in beautiful, delicate features tracing sea levels long gone.
Even the tilt of the land changes: drainage patterns struggling to adjust to keep water flowing downhill.

A stranded river cuts a new waterfall as the land rebounds above the sea in Alaska

Image credit: Jim & Laura Massie

The arrival and release of weight impacts the stress of the entire region, potentially triggering earthquakes and volcanoes.
Before fracking and injection wells made a mess of the continental interior, the biggest causes of intraplate earthquakes far from plate tectonic boundaries were attributed to the shifting stresses of isostatic rebound.
These impacts can be far-reaching in both space and time: despite being ice-free, the infamous 1811 New Madrid earthquake in the American south may have been induced by intraplate stresses induced from the last ice age.

The same thing is happening for volcanoes.
A key trigger of eruptions is changing in the subsurface pressure and stress adjustments in the magma chamber.
As the lithosphere flexes and recovers, this redistribution can be enough to fuel a surge in volcanic activity.
Right now, the released pressure in Iceland could be fuelling a surge in volcanism, magma chambers long kept confined expanding and pushing out into surface eruptions from the flight-disrupting Eyjafjallajökull to the ongoing slow, steady trickle of Bárðarbunga.

The Bárðarbunga eruption in Iceland is spilling across the country's terrestrial glaciers.
Image credit: NASA

But most fascinatingly of all, isostatic rebound is the secret process behind how locations can have sea levels changing at odds with the rest of the planet.
While we all know about global sea levels rising and falling, geologists also track local sea levels, the relative change in sea level at particular locations.

During an ice age, water once free to flood the oceans is tied up in continental ice sheets.
This drops global sea levels, exposing seafloor as the new coastline.
Yet the land with these new ice sheets is under load, dropping down relative to its former height.
Relatively speaking, despite the global sea levels falling, the local sea level can actually rise.

Right now, we're distinctly not in an ice age.
The land-bound glaciers are melting, and sea levels are rising from both the influx of released water and thermal expansion.
And yet, for the places suddenly relieved of their frozen load, the land itself is rebounding higher above the waves, maybe even faster than the grasping clutch of the sea.
Determining just how quickly each process is occurring is a jumbled mess of scrambling to monitor rapidly changing data to calibrate our models, but for now, parts of Iceland, Greenland, and Canada are climbing faster than their sea levels.
From the perspective of beach-side homes, the relative sea level is staying stagnant or even dropping while the rest of the world contends with higher storm surges and floods.

Strandlines mark the relative sea level change from isostatic rebound in Bathurst Inlet, Nunavut.
Image credit: Mike Beauregard

Isostatic rebound is just one example of how the surface of our planet is a dynamic, changeable place where the materials behave far differently in aggregate than we perceive them from our daily perspective.

Links :

• Gizmodo : Iceland Is Rising Out of the Water