Breathtaking manoeuvres in the harbour of Chios

Nissos Rodos, the ferry of Hellenic Seaways Island Rhodes evolves one "breath" from the ship Eleftherios Venizelos (ANEK Lines) at the port of Chios. 

 Harbour aerial view

 Khios harbour with the GeoGraage platform (NGA chart)

Welcome to Pe'ahi

Welcome To Pe'ahi from Marc Chambers

Shane Dorian (Kona, Hawaii, USA) pulls off one of the heaviest air drops in the history of big wave surfing while warming up before the start of the Pe'ahi Challenge at Jaws, Maui, Hawaii on December 6, 2015. 

Big Friday Peahi Paddle Session 2016 Aaron Gold paddles into biggest wave ever paddled into @ Peahi. Shane Dorian & Ian Walsh were also stand outs.

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : Wave of the week : "Jaws" big wave surfing in January /Jaws : about adrenaline / Jason Polakow presents Jaws / Surfing Jaws Pe'ahi Maui, Hawaii - October 9th &10th 2012 / Jaws : about adrenaline / Chuck Patterson skiing Jaws / Point break : Jaws

By 2050, there will be more plastic than fish in the world’s oceans, study says

National Geographic explorer and grantee Gregg Treinish wants everyone to know about the hidden toxic cost of synthetic fabrics.

Tiny, invisible microplastics are entering our waterways straight from our washing machines.

About 2,000 synthetic particles are released from washing a single polyester fleece jacket.

All clothing items—including cotton and wool—shed micro-fibers when washed, but the natural fibers biodegrade.

Synthetic particles don't degrade and can absorb toxins while traveling through the waterways.

If they're eaten by small organisms, such as fish, they can bioaccumulate and end up on our dinner plates.

From Washington Post by Sarah Kaplan

There is a lot of plastic in the world’s oceans.
It coagulates into great floating “garbage patches” that cover large swaths of the Pacific.
It washes up on urban beaches and remote islands, tossed about in the waves and transported across incredible distances before arriving, unwanted, back on land.
It has wound up in the stomachs of more than half the world’s sea turtles and nearly all of its marine birds, studies say.
And if it was bagged up and arranged across all of the world’s shorelines, we could build a veritable plastic barricade between ourselves and the sea.
But that quantity pales in comparison with the amount that the World Economic Forum expects will be floating into the oceans by the middle of the century.
If we keep producing (and failing to properly dispose of) plastics at predicted rates, plastics in the ocean will outweigh fish pound for pound in 2050, the nonprofit foundation said in a report Tuesday.
According to the report, worldwide use of plastic has increased 20-fold in the past 50 years, and it is expected to double again in the next 20 years.
By 2050, we’ll be making more than three times as much plastic stuff as we did in 2014.

 Trajectories of reported and reconstructed marine fisheries catches 1950–2010

Contrast between the world’s marine fisheries catches, assembled by FAO from voluntary submissions of its member countries (‘reported’) and that of the catch ‘reconstructed’ to include all fisheries known to exist.

Caption and image via Pauly and Zeller 2016. (Nature)

Meanwhile, humans do a terrible job of making sure those products are reused or otherwise disposed of: About a third of all plastics produced escape collection systems, only to wind up floating in the sea or the stomach of some unsuspecting bird.
That amounts to about 8 million metric tons a year — or, as Jenna Jambeck of the University of Georgia put it to The Washington Post in February, “Five bags filled with plastic for every foot of coastline in the world.”
The report came a day before the start of the glitzy annual meeting arranged by the World Economic Forum to discuss the global economy.
This year’s meeting in Davos, Switzerland, is centered on what the WEF terms “the fourth industrial revolution” — the boom in high-tech areas like robotics and biotechnology — and its effect on the widening gulf between the wealthy and the world’s poor.
But the plastic situation — fairly low-tech and more than a century old at this point — is a reminder that we still haven’t quite gotten the better of some of the problems left over from the first few “industrial revolutions.”

 source : World Economic Forum

According to the report, more than 70 percent of the plastic we produce is either put in a landfill or lost to the world’s waterways and other infrastructure.
Plastic production accounts for 6 percent of global oil consumption (a number that will hit 20 percent in 2050) and 1 percent of the global carbon budget (the maximum amount of emissions the world can produce to prevent global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius).
In 2050, the report says, we’ll be spending 15 percent of our carbon budget on soda bottles, plastic grocery bags and the like.
Once it gets washed into waterways, the damage caused by plastics’ presence costs about $13 billion annually in losses for the tourism, shipping and fishing industries.
It disrupts marine ecosystems and threatens food security for people who depend on subsistence fishing.
Besides which, all that plastic in the water isn’t too great for the animals trying to live there.
The data in the report comes from interviews with more than 180 experts and analysis of some 200 studies on “the plastic economy.”

Plastic will outweigh fish in oceans by 2050

photo : Getty images

The report was published on the same day that a study came out in the journal Nature Communications asserting that the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization is drastically underestimating the overfishing of the oceans.
The study, from researchers Daniel Pauly and Dirk Zeller of the University of British Columbia’s Sea Around Us project, found that global catches between 1950 and 2010 were probably 50 percent higher than previously thought — meaning that damage to the world’s fish stocks was also much worse.
Overall, it was not a good news day for anyone with fins.

A scavenger collects plastic for recycling in a river covered with rubbish in Jakarta, Indonesia, April 20, 2009.

In a recent report, Ocean Conservancy claims that China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam are spewing out as much as 60 percent of the plastic waste that enters the world’s seas.

But both reports gave some signs for optimism. Pauly and Zeller told The Washington Post that the underestimation of how much humans were fishing means the U.N. also underestimated how much fish the oceans can provide.
“If we rebuild stocks, we can rebuild to more than we thought before,” Pauly said. “Basically, the oceans are more productive than we thought before.”
And the World Economic Forum report, though not quite so sunny, suggests that there are ways to offset all this plastic we’re making and discarding.
Countries can implement incentives to collect waste and recycle it, use more efficient or reusable packaging and improve infrastructure so that less trash slips through the system and into the seas.

Links :

• The Conversation : Far more microplastics floating in oceans than thought
• Huffington Post : There's Rage-Inducing New Data On The Amount Of Plastic In The Ocean
• [Nearly all of the world’s seabirds have eaten plastic, study estimates] 
• [‘Microbeads’ soon will be banned from toothpaste and soaps]

Submarine cable maps

www.submarine-cable-map-2015.telegeography.com

From GoogleMapsMania by Keir Clarke

Every year Telegeography creates an updated undersea cable map of the world.
The 2015 Submarine Cable map was inspired by medieval and renaissance cartography and features not only a vintage map style but sea monsters, map border illustrations and images showing some of the common causes of cable faults.
The map shows 299 submarine cable systems across the globe, that are active or are under construction.
The border illustrations provide information on the capacity data of some of the major cable routes. Other inset illustrations provide information on how submarine cables are laid.
A number of  images on the map explain some of the common causes of cable faults.
Some fictional causes of cable faults are also included in the map in the form of mythical sea monsters.
The text provided with each monster includes a reference to which historical map it first appeared on.

 http://richiecarmichael.github.io/cable/index.html

Esri has used Telegeography's cable data to create their own 3d map of Submarine Cables.
This 3d globe of submarine cables allows you to search the world's undersea cables by location and by date of construction.
If you select a cable on the map you can find out more about the cable's owner, date of construction and the cable's length,

https://builtvisible.com/messages-in-the-deep/

Messages in the Deep is another fascinating undersea cable map which allows you to explore the history of the growth of the undersea fibre optic network around the world since 1989.
The map allows you to view the undersea cable network for any year, or you can animate the map to view how this global network has grown since 1989.
The map also allows you to refine the cables shown by cable owner.
You can click on any of the cables displayed on the map to view it's length, it's first year of operation and the cable's owners.

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : Thin underwater cables hold the internet / The medieval undersea cable map / Messages from the deep: Interactive map plots the sprawling growth of the submarine cable network since 1989 / Here’s how the Internet’s arteries travel across the world's oceans in 2014 / Undersea cables are actually more vulnerable than you might think / Submarine cables : how the net connected the world

Advanced core AIS technology innovation

HF-AIS™ is an advanced DSP core technology which enables an AIS transceiver to reliably and accurately receive and decode every AIS transmission in real time, even in very busy areas where there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of transmissions every minute.

This means that you do not miss targets and see everything that there is to see.

From BusinessWire & SRT Marine

High Fidelity AIS (HF-AIS™) technology is another innovation from the global leaders in Automatic Identification System ‘AIS’ technology research and development - SRT Marine Technology. HF-AIS™ is advanced core technology which ensures that, even in increasingly busy areas, all AIS transmissions are received and decoded and thus displayed.
Not all AIS transceivers are the same, and HF-AIS™ defines a meaningful performance difference.

AIS transceivers constantly receive and then process hundreds, perhaps thousands of transmissions from other transceivers in real time.
Successful processing of AIS transmissions and therefore display of targets and data is often taken for granted by the end user.

But, if a transmission is not successfully received and processed, that data is not displayed.

The user may think they are seeing everything but that may not be the case. 

The ultimate determining factor of how well any AIS transceiver works in the field is determined by the core technology – its ability to receive, transmit and process thousands of messages in real time simultaneously.

HF-AIS is a turbo-decoder technology more commonly found in high-end communication devices such as 4G mobile phones where very high data rates are required.
It ensures reliable decoding and processing of all AIS messages in real time – which in turn ensures that the end user sees everything.

As more commercial and leisure vessels use AIS transceivers, the number of transmissions that your AIS transceiver must cope with is increasing exponentially.

Your transceiver must receive and decode (extract the information in the AIS transmission) each and every transmission in real time with absolute accuracy for you to see the target on your display.
This receive and decoding performance goes unseen, but sits at the heart of every AIS transceiver and defines the difference in performance between different AIS products.

Since AIS is an international maritime technology standard it is often assumed that the core performance [the receiving and transmitting of messages] of every AIS transceiver, and associated accessory, is the same and that the only variation between products are physical attributes such as size or user related functionali- ty such as connectivity options.

However, this is not the case.

The baseline functionality and radio operating protocol of all AIS devices are defined in the formal AIS product specification documents issued and maintained by the IEC and ITU committees under the auspices of the IMO.

However these do not define the actual operational real world performance of the core radio transceivers which do all AIS message communication work within every AIS device—and if the radio transceiver performance is compromised, so are the targets and data displayed.

This means targets may be present, but your AIS transceiver is not decoding them.

HF-AISTM ensures that every AIS message is received, decod- ed and displayed in real time.

 How AIS works :
AIS technology is optimized for real time terrestrial operation
using a sophisticated TDMA based radio communications protocol. 

Every AIS transmission is a standard structure as defined in the IEC & ITU, but the content (payload) of each message is different.

The content of every message is made up of static data such as MMSI, name, dimensions and dynamic (constantly changing) data such as position, speed, course, status etc.

AIS transceivers are continuously transmitting and receiving AIS messages between each other and the information seen on any display medium such as a chart plotter, ECDIS and or PC is ultimately determined by the ability of the radio transceiver to receive and decode each message and provide the static and dynamic data contained within each message.

[Decode?? When a radio transmission is received, the information contained within it needs to be ex- tracted and converted into a format which can be used such as NMEA0183 or NMEA2000. This process is called decoding.]

In very quiet areas, where there are perhaps only a few AIS transmissions the core radio transceiver technology may only have to decode 15 to 20 messages per minute.

However as the use of AIS has massively in- creased across leisure and commercial boats and now includes new active transmitting AIS devices such as AtoN, MOB, SART, Coast Stations and additional functionality and content such as weather, text messaging and satellite AIS an AIS transceiver must receive and decode a relentless stream of transmissions in real time—perhaps over 2,000 transmissions per minute: every minute.

Every transmission needs to be ’cleanly’ received and then accurately decoded and the information outputted in the correct data format to the selected display platform.

The process of decoding is complex and one which is relatively easy to achieve when the transmit loading is low, but becomes exponentially challenging as the transmit loading increases.

The result is that errors are made at the receive point and the decode point—which means transmissions are lost and therefore the content contained within not seen.

Example of AIS targets display (courtesy of Weather 4D 2.0)

Radio communication loading issues are not new and are encountered in all radio communication systems.

It is therefore a major challenge and area of specific expertise for the developers of all core communications technology—GSM, GPRS, 3G, 4G, WiFi etc.

The normal way for technology to manage this is through a combination of high performance technology (software & hardware) and to regulate the data rates between two entities so as not to overload the devices and or to request lost data is resent.

This regulating is unseen by the user, who may experience the device ’freezing’ or slowing, or in some cases, the data not coming through.

However AIS is a real time communication system and so it is not possible to regulate transmission rates.

Every transmission is unique and if not received and decoded the first time is lost.

Therefore when an AIS transceiver has sub optimal core technology as loading increases, transmissions will be simply be lost and targets and other information not seen—without the user being aware.

HF-AISTM uses advanced radio communications decoding technology known as ‘Turbo Decoding’ which, through a combination of advanced DSP (Digital Signal Processing) software and high quality hardware, en- sures that every message received is decoded.

The concept and technology fundamentals of Turbo Decoding originates in the cell-phone technology space where huge leaps in data rates were required, whilst at the same time devices were expected to be smaller and more power efficient.

The practical development and implementation of turbo decoding technology is highly specialist and exceptionally challenging.

DSP software capable of handling large amounts of data in real time without error needs to be developed which can operate to the required performance levels on hardware processors which meet the size and power consumption parameters for the overall product—one works against the other. Equally it is important that performance is achieved without overstressing hardware as this creates long term reliability and performance issues.

AIS is a sophisticated VHF radio based maritime tracking and data communications system.

Multiple independent entities such as vessels, buoys and coast stations automatically transmit and receive messages to and from each other.

HF-AIS turbo decoding technology is an ultra efficient DSP technology operating on a single high performance processor.

This streamline architecture means that the real time processing of all AIS messages at even the highest loading level is achieved whilst at the same time the size of the core transceiver module is minimized along with power consumption and heat generation.

For the user of an AIS transceiver with HF-AIS technology it means peace of mind that all targets and information will be received and decoded and available to display.

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : Concern over 'high seas security loophole' / Space station keeps watch on world's sea traffic / Google can track ships at sea ; detailed maps planned of sea bottom / Space station keeps watch on world's sea traffic / AIS vessel tracking experimentation in the Marine GeoGarage / AIS vessel tracking for 'la Solitaire du Figaro' 

Today's oceans are different than they were twenty years ago

The NOAA Ocean Heat Content Intensity Forecasting.

From Forbes by Eric Mack

While we can’t say that climate change causes El Nino, the evidence is mounting that the warming of our planet could be intensifying the natural phenomenon, which in turn can lead to some extreme weather events.
New research published today in the journal Nature Climate Change found that half of the warming of our oceans seen since 1865 has happened in the past twenty years.
“Since the 1990s, the total amount of heat content change in the oceans is twice that of what we’d seen up until that point in the past 150 years,” said Chris Forest, a Penn State meteorology professor and coauthor of the paper.
While El Nino and La Nina are cyclical phenomena, they are powered by warm water in the Pacific and this current El Nino is accompanied by record-setting ocean temperatures.
The combination has already led to a series of intense storms and flooding in line with the effects of previous strong El Nino years.
While the new research does not attempt to link the data on warming oceans to the current El Nino, some see a correlation in that the two strongest El Nino events we’ve seen have occurred in that same twenty year window.

 Pacific and Atlantic meridional sections showing upper-ocean warming for the most recent complete decade. Red colors indicate a warming (positive) anomaly and blue colors indicate a cooling (negative) anomaly.

(Source: Timo Bremer/LLNL)

“Yes, the randomness of weather is playing a role here.
But these (El Nino) events have been supercharged by the extra energy in an atmosphere made warmer and moister by human-caused climate change,” Michael Mann, the director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University said in December.
According to the new research, ocean warmth is somewhat akin to the canary in the coal mine when it comes to the effects of climate change on the planet.
That’s because our oceans’ heat capacity accounts for 90 percent of the heat gained by the climate system over the last several decades.
Here’s how a release from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on the research explains it:
Quantifying how much heat is accumulating in the Earth system is critical to improving the understanding of climate change already under way and to better assess how much more to expect in decades and centuries to come. It is vital to improving projections of how much and how fast the Earth will warm and seas rise in the future.
“It’s really the true signature of climate change in the Earth system records,” said Forest.
“Melting glaciers and ice sheets, reduction of sea ice — these are all signals we are seeing, but this tells us there is a change in the energy balance of the planet in a strong sense.”
That could mean that the flooding and intense weather seen around the globe in recent months are a mere prelude to El Nino years still to come.

Links :

• The Guardian : World's oceans warming at increasingly faster rate, new study finds 
• WashingtonPost : This is where 90 percent of global warming is going

Jason ocean height mission blasts off

With this mission, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket will deliver the Jason-3 satellite to low-Earth orbit for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), French space agency Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT).
The Jason-3 launch is targeted for a 18:42 UTC launch from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.

If all goes as planned, the Jason-3 satellite will be deployed approximately an hour after launch.
This mission also marks an experimental landing of the first stage on the SpaceX drone ship “Just Read the Instructions”.

The landing of the first stage is a secondary test objective.

From BBC by Jonathan Amos

A US-European satellite that is fundamental to our understanding of the oceans has launched from California.
Jason-3 will measure the shape of the global sea surface to an accuracy of better than 4cm.
It will track currents, tides, winds, wave heights, and will help forecast the intensity of storms.
But the new mission will also maintain the reference data-set on sea-level rise.
This shows the world's oceans to be rising at more than 3mm per year.
Jason-3 was launched atop a SpaceX Falcon-9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force base at 10:42 local time (18:42 GMT) yesterday.
The flight to orbit took just under the hour.
An attempt by SpaceX to recover the bottom part of the Falcon by landing it back on a sea barge came very close to success.

 SpaceX has tried again to land the Falcon 9’s first stage on one of the NewSpace firm’s Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ships for the launch of Jason 3.

"Just Read the Instructions" is the baseline of the platform ;-)

Photo Credit: SpaceX

but SpaceX said a landing leg failed to lock properly.
"Definitely harder to land on a ship.
Similar to an aircraft carrier vs land: much smaller target area, that's also translating & rotating."

The booster found the platform but could not remain upright because a landing leg failed to lock.
As a result, it toppled over and exploded.
The rocket company had managed a historic first controlled return of an orbital stage last month.

Did you know satellites can measure Earth’s oceans from space?

The Jason-3 satellite, set to launch in January 2016, will collect critical sea surface height data, adding to a satellite data record going back to 1992.
The ocean is an important driver of weather and climate on the planet, and forecasters need this information to predict the intensity of devastating hurricanes before they reach our shores. Jason-3 will also help us track the rise in sea-level over time, allowing our coastal communities to prepare and adjust to a changing climate. 

Jason-3 will spend the coming weeks being moved into a position some 1,336km above the Earth where it can make tandem measurements with its still-operational predecessor, Jason-2.
This will enable scientists to cross-calibrate their altimeters - the microwave radar instruments they use to map the various "hills" and "valleys" in the ocean surface below.
Understanding these variations in elevation has myriad applications, both short term and long term.
Just as air pressure tells meteorologists what is going on in the atmosphere, so ocean height will betray details about the behaviour of water below just the top layers.
The data gives clues to temperature and salinity.
When combined with gravity information, it will also indicate current direction and speed.
The oceans store vast amounts of heat from the Sun, and how they move that energy around the globe and interact with the atmosphere are what drive key elements of our weather and the climate system.

The current El Nino is seen as anomalously high (warm) water in the eastern Pacific

A classic example is the El Niño phenomenon, which is in play at the moment.

This sees usually cold waters in the eastern central Pacific overtaken every few years by a surge of warm waters from the west.

This disrupts weather patterns worldwide, bringing drought to some areas and intense rainfall to others.
The Jason satellites act as an early warning system for El Niño by detecting the developing bulge in surface waters associated with the warming.

Did you know satellites can measure the height of Earth’s oceans from space?

The mission series, which started in 1992, has always been a US-European venture, but the number of organisations involved has grown over time and now includes the US and French space agencies (Nasa and Cnes) and the premier weather satellite services on both sides of the Atlantic - Noaa and Eumetsat.
For future Jason missions, this co-operation will be extended further, to include the European Space Agency (Esa) and the European Commission.
This wider interest underlines the importance of the satellite data, and the stronger partnership should ensure the continuation of the series.

Europe will be folding Jason into its Sentinel programme of Earth observers, giving follow-on spacecraft the designation "Sentinel-6".

Jason-3 will be the fourth satellite in the continuous series of ocean topography missions

Links :

• HuffingtonPost : SpaceX Rocket Botches Landing At Sea After Successful Launch
• Space : SpaceX to Launch Jason-3 Satellite, Try Rocket Landing
• Spaceflight Insider : Jason-3 satellite to track rising sea levels, global weather
• Phys: Support leg breaks as SpaceX rocket lands on ocean barge
  
• CNES : Jason 3 / NOAA : Jason 3
• BBC : Sentinel to measure ocean height  
• GeoGarage blog :New NASA model maps sea level rise like never before / Satellites trace sea level change / SpaceX to try ocean platform landing of Falcon rocket
   

The unforgiving ocean with Volvo Ocean Race

Nine months. Four oceans, five continents.
Over 40,000 nautical miles.
There's a reason why they call the Volvo Ocean Race the world's toughest ocean challenge - and here it is.
A trophy desired by so many, but lifted by so few, every three years, the best sailors on the planet step out of the comfort zone to truly test themselves against Mother Nature.

David Attenborough's Great Barrier Reef: An interactive journey

attenboroughsreef.com

Links : 

• GeoGarage blog : The reef of the future /Seek-and-destroy robot to stop starfish killing the Great Barrier Reef /Has the Great Barrier Reef just been approved for destruction by the Australian government? / Great Barrier Reef has lost half its corals since 1985, new study says / Ships threaten Australia's Great Barrier Reef / Scientists capture amazing views of the Great Barrier Reef /The Observer view on the destruction of the world’s great coral reefs / 'Un-mappable' Great Barrier Reef finally mapped in 3D / Dive into the Great Barrier Reef with the first underwater imagery in Google Maps / Oil leakage threatens Great Barrier Reef
  

NASA sees formation of unusual North Atlantic Hurricane Alex

Climate is changing faster than ever.
Alex has become a hurricane near the Azores in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
It marks the first Atlantic hurricane to form in the month of January since 1938 and is the first Atlantic hurricane to exist during January since Alice in 1955.
Alex formed in the Atlantic Ocean on Wednesday, making it one of the earliest tropical systems to form in the Atlantic Hurricane Basin since records began in 1851. 
Images from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show Hurricane Alex as it moves north over the Atlantic Ocean on Thursday. (NOAA) 

From Phys by Rob Gutro

The low pressure area known as System 90L developed rapidly since Jan. 13 and became Hurricane Alex on Jan. 14. Several satellites and instruments captured data on this out-of-season storm.

NASA's RapidScat instrument observed sustained winds shift and intensify in the system and NASA's Aqua satellite saw the storm develop from a low pressure area into a sub-tropical storm.
NOAA's GOES-East satellite data was made into an animation that showed the development of the unusual storm.

 Early on Jan. 13 (left) NASA's RapidScat instrument saw the strongest sustained winds near 27 meters per second (60.4 mph/97.2 kph) northwest of center.

Eight hours later strongest sustained winds near 30 mps (67.1 mph/108 kph) shifted east of center. Credit: NASA JPL/Doug Tyler

Twice on Jan. 13 NASA's RapidScat instrument measured the strongest sustained winds in what was then a tropical low pressure area called "System 90L."
RapidScat flies aboard the International Space Station. RapidScat's earliest view of System 90L showed strongest sustained winds were near 27 meters per second (mps)/60.4 mph/97.2 kph) and were located northwest of center.
Eight hours later at 1200 UTC (7 a.m. EST) strongest sustained winds shifted east of center and increased to near 30 mps (67.1 mph/108 kph), making them tropical-storm force.
Later in the day at 2100 UTC (4 p.m. EST) satellite images indicated that the low pressure system developed into a subtropical storm and was named Alex.

At the time, Alex was located near 27.1 degrees north latitude and 30.8 degrees west longitude, about 782 miles (1,260 km) south-southwest of the Azores.
By 1500 UTC (10 a.m. EST) on January 14, hurricane force winds extended outward up to 25 miles (35 km) from the center and tropical storm force winds extend outward up to 150 miles (240 km).

 Hurricane Alex on Jan. 14 at 15:30 UTC (10:30 a.m. EST) in the central Atlantic Ocean.

The image revealed an eye and showed bands of thunderstorms spiraling into the low level center of circulation. Credit: NASA Goddard MODIS Rapid Response

An animation of GOES-East satellite visible and infrared imagery from Jan. 10 to 14 showed the development of Hurricane Alex in the Central Pacific Ocean.
The animation was created at the NASA/NOAA GOES Project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
The animation showed the sub-tropical low pressure area consolidate quickly on Jan. 13 and reach hurricane status on Jan. 14, 2016.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured a visible image of Hurricane Alex on Jan. 14 at 15:30 UTC (10:30 a.m. EST) in the central Atlantic Ocean.
The image revealed an eye and showed bands of thunderstorms spiraling into the low level center of circulation.
According to the National Hurricane Center, Alex is the first hurricane to form in the month of January since 1938.
Alex is also the first North Atlantic hurricane thriving in January since Alice of 1955, which formed on Dec. 30, 1954. Alice developed on December 30, 1954 from a trough of low pressure in the central Atlantic Ocean in an area of unusually favorable conditions.

This animation of GOES-East satellite imagery from Jan. 10 to 14 shows the development of Hurricane Alex in the Central Pacific Ocean.
Credit; NASA/NOAA GOES Project 

The Azores Meteorological Service has issued a Hurricane Warning for the islands of Faial, Pico, Sao Jorge, Graciosa, and Terceira in the central Azores, and a Tropical Storm Warning for the islands of Sao Miguel and Santa Maria in the eastern Azores.
A Hurricane Warning is in effect for Faial, Pico, Sao Jorge, Graciosa, and Terceira in the central Azores and a Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for Sao Miguel and Santa Maria in the eastern Azores.

At 10 a.m. EST (1500 UTC), the National Hurricane Center said that the center of Hurricane Alex was located near latitude 31.5 North, longitude 28.4 West.

Alex was moving toward the north-northeast near 20 mph (31 kph) and a turn toward the north with an increase in forward speed is expected over the next day or two.

On the forecast track, the center of Alex will move near or over portions of the Azores Friday morning, Jan. 15.
Maximum sustained winds are near 85 mph (140 kph) with higher gusts. Little change in strength is forecast through Friday.

The estimated minimum central pressure is 981 millibars.

NHC NOAA

NHC's Forecaster Pasch said "Remarkably, Alex has undergone the transformation into a hurricane. A distinct eye is present, embedded within a fairly symmetric mass of deep convection.

It is very unusual to have a hurricane over waters that are near 20 degrees Celsius, but the upper-tropospheric temperatures are estimated to be around -60 degrees Celsius, which is significantly colder than the tropical mean.

The resulting instability is likely the main factor contributing to the tropical transition and intensification of Alex."
Alex is expected to maintain hurricane status on Friday, Jan. 15 and transition into an extra-tropical storm by Jan. 16 as it continues to move north toward Greenland.

Links :

• NASA : NASA Sees Formation of Unusual North Atlantic Hurricane Alex / An Atlantic Hurricane…in January
• Weather : Hurricane Alex approaching Azores 
• NPR : For The First Time Since 1938, A January Hurricane Has Formed In The Atlantic

A robot life preserver goes to work in the Greek refugee crisis

The remote-controlled Emily robot can reach struggling swimmers far faster than a lifeguard.

From Wired by Matt Simon

The European refugee crisis isn’t so much a crisis as it is a catastrophe.
Fleeing violence in Africa and the Middle East, particularly Syria, more than a million migrants crossed by sea into Europe in 2015.
Almost 4,000 of them lost their lives in the journey.
The sea crossings can be especially dire, as leaky, unsafe boats capsize or break apart in rough water.
In Greece the danger has proven massive, particularly off the island of Lesvos, which takes in an average of 2,000 refugees daily.

Every day around Lesvos the Coast Guard must rescue boats that have capsized, run out of fuel, or simply broken down.
Which is why the Coast Guard invited a team from Texas A&M University’s Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue to launch a pilot project this week for a very special robot—Emily, the Emergency Integrated Lifesaving Lanyard.

Think of Emily as a life preserver melded with a jet ski. It’s about four feet long and shaped like a pickle spear.
An operator remotely controls the robot, tethered to a rope up to 2,000 feet long, to migrants struggling at sea.
The victims take hold of the buoyant bot and a rescuer reels the line in.
Quadcopter drones called Fotokites, themselves tethered on 30-foot ropes near the operators, pipe back an overhead view.

In fact, NGOs on the island had already been thinking about using UAVs to aid rescue efforts, says Robin Murphy, the Texas A&M roboticist running the project.
“In the meantime we were saying, ‘You’re talking about people drowning,'” Murphy says.
“There’s this new technology, Emily, these robots that are life preservers.”
UAVs turn out to run afoul of Greek aviation regulations anyway—and a tethered quadcopter isn’t considered a UAV.
Combined with Emily, the drones make for a powerful (and legal) way to spot and save people in the water.

It's deployable from both boat and land and hit speeds of 20 mph

At a constant full speed of 20 mph, the robot has enough juice for 20 minutes at sea, plenty of time to make several trips to fetch victims—especially since it only needs to propel itself on the outbound leg.
And it’s buoyant enough to hold five people at once.
“We can run the boat out there and we can start plucking people that can actually hold on and get them out of the way,” says John Sims, a fire captain formerly of the US Coast Guard, who’s operating the robots for the deployment.
“And then the live lifeguard can do his job and get out there to get the unconscious people.”

That’s the plan, anyway. Emily has never faced a test like this.
The robot has helped struggling swimmers here in there in America, but deploying it in Greece is a tremendous scale-up.
“One has to be a little bit careful,” says M. Ani Hsieh, co-chair of the Safety, Security and Rescue Robotics committee at the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society.
“What many people who work with rescue robots will tell you is a lot of things start with good intentions.”
You never really know what the best use is for a robot “until you actually have people on the ground and see things being tested.”
It may well be, for instance, that Emily is more useful for plucking a single swimmer out of the water instead of big groups.

The buoyant bot can hold around 5 people. 

And as with any interaction between humans and increasingly sophisticated robots, the pilot project has risks.
Its designers know, for example, that Emily’s long tether could get tangled in the propeller of a Coast Guard boat.
(Those kinds of concerns led the Coast Guard to prohibit the 81 NGOs on Lesvos from operating their own boats without specific permission.)

But the important distinction here is the team has the Coast Guard’s blessing.
Coordination among NGOs, independent volunteers, and the Greek government has been lousy on Lesvos, says Boris Cheshirkov, spokesman on Lesvos for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
The Texas A&M roboticists hope to avoid those conflicts.
“As long as it’s coordinated with the government,” Cheshirkov says, “it can only be a welcome addition to the response.”
The Emily team is confident enough in the robot’s abilities that it’s already raising funds to leave one of the robots behind in Greece.
The machine can’t stop war or uncapsize boats, but but any tool that helps in the fight against catastrophe is a good one.

Links :

• GeoGarage blog :  A wintry sea seems a safer bet than life at home for refugees / Migrants can't be left to die in the seas of Europe /SAR crisis in the Mediterranean – commercial vessels rescue thousands / The millionaires who rescue people at sea / European Union authorizes military action against people smugglers / Lampedusa, the Italian Island thousands are dying to reach

NZ Linz update in the GeoGarage platform

  7 nautical raster charts updated

see GeoGarage News

Satellite images are source for first-of-its-kind charts of Alaska's Yukon River

New depths are overlaid on an existing Yukon River electronic navigational chart,

demonstrating the river's changing shoreline.

From NOAA

Coast Survey has issued provisional charts for barge operators and others traversing Alaska's challenging Yukon River, relying solely on satellite images to create the electronic navigational charts that only display shoreline and shoals (shallow areas).
The ENCs, which display no depth soundings, will give the mariners annually updated information to help their navigation along the changeable river.

During a virtual meeting on January 6 with barge operators who requested NOAA's charting assistance, Andrew Kampia, the cartographer in charge of the project explained, “You may hear me refer to them as an experiment because we have not created or released a navigational product like this before.”
“The Yukon was literally uncharted,” Kampia told the group. “After some analysis and brainstorming, we decided to create a prototype ENC using only satellite data. This is unprecedented.”

Yukon River with Google imagery (Terrametrics provider)

overlayed with the GeoGarage RNC platform

Yukon River with Google Maps 

overlayed with the GeoGarage RNC platform

Coast Survey is not able to provide contemporary surveys to acquire data for charting the length of the river, as funding, survey vessel availability, remoteness, and small windows of opportunity to survey are major obstacles.
Satellite-derived bathymetry from two navigation seasons between July 2014 and October 2015 helps to fill the void of contemporary data for Western Alaska.
The charts will help to address the concerns of the local barge industry that supplies goods and services to western Alaska and who have had to deal with a lack of data inshore of the 12-foot contour.
(The average draft of vessels transiting up river for village deliveries is four to six feet.)
The new Yukon River provisional ENCs US4AK98M, US4AK99M, and US4AK00M offer 1:90,000 scale coverage that spans the entrance to the Yukon River, including Apoon Pass to Kotlik, and continues east to Russian Mission.

Satellite-derived bathymetry uses satellite images and histograms and performs some logarithmic calculations that can sometimes estimate depths in relatively shallow areas.
Or, as in the case of the Yukon, satellite-derived bathymetry can estimate shoals, which are displayed on the Yukon ENCs as obstruction areas.
Unlike traditional hydrography, however, satellite-derived bathymetry doesn’t provide exact depth measurements or tidal data at the time the satellite imagery was taken.
“Shoreline depictions are derived from automated processing of satellite imagery,” Kampia said.
“We felt pretty confident in the position of the shoreline, but it is below our customary standards, so we added notes to the ENCs.”

These screenshots show the western entrance to the Yukon River on ENC US4AK98M with zoom

Entrance of Yukon River with Google imagery (Terrametrics provider)

overlayed with the GeoGarage RNC platform

Entrance of Yukon River with Google Maps 

overlayed with the GeoGarage RNC platform

Coast Survey has provided two special notes for the Yukon River ENCs:

WARNING PROVISIONAL ENC
This ENC was constructed using the best data available. All or much of the shoreline, depths and shoals within this ENC are below customary quality, are not corrected for tides, nor based on a known sounding datum. All or much of the charted detail is highly changeable. Navigators should use this ENC with extreme caution.
SATELLITE DERIVED DEPTHS
Shoreline, depths, and obstruction areas within the area of this ENC are derived from satellite imagery from 2015. Their vertical accuracy is typically ± 2m. Uncharted dangers may exist.

Since the river is in a constant state of change, Coast Survey will use satellite images after the spring thaws to make annual updates.
Late this spring, a satellite-derived bathymetry analyst will examine the first satellite images after the Yukon thaws and is navigable.
The Landsat 8 images are available every 16 days as the satellite makes it trip around the globe, so the first usable images may not be available until May or June.
After turning the images into shoreline and bathymetric updates, updated ENCs will be issued in early July – or earlier if possible.
“We would like to routinize and improve this process over the coming years based on our analyses,” Kampia said.
“We hope to build on these successes and use these solutions in areas other than the Yukon, where traditional surveys aren’t able to provide the charts that navigators need.”
The Office of Coast Survey recently issued the revised U.S. Arctic Nautical Charting Plan, but agency officials stress that it is a “living document,” needing adjustments as priorities change.
Hydrographic and cartographic experts will travel to Alaska in March to ask the state’s maritime industry for input that will help future surveying and charting activities for the State.

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : Avoiding rock bottom: How Landsat aids nautical charting / Keeping false pass true / Finding hidden shoals on the North Slope

Revealed: how giant icebergs breathe life into remote oceans

Iceberg B-15T still adrift
Giant icebergs leave surprising green plumes of carbon sequestration in their wakes

NASA

From The Conversation by Grant Bigg

As giant icebergs bob across the open seas they leave behind a trail of nutrient-rich meltwater, sparking new life in the world’s remotest and least hospitable oceans.
This in turn means more carbon is taken from the atmosphere and stored below the waves.
Massive icebergs may be a symptom of climate change – but they can also help keep it in check.
“Giant” icebergs are technically those at least 18km in length.
At any one time several dozen are afloat in the Southern Ocean, and individually they can survive for up to a decade.
They make up roughly half of the ice discharged from Antarctica, so around 1000km³ per year – equivalent to the annual flow of the Congo River.
However these icebergs come in fits and starts.
Some years hardly any break off, whereas five of the biggest icebergs recorded in the satellite era broke off into the Southern Ocean during 1999-2003.
So a big iceberg year can have a huge impact.
In fact, during previous ice ages huge “iceberg armadas” from Northern Hemisphere ice sheets are believed to have redirected the Gulf Stream – albeit thanks to melting on a slightly larger scale.
It’s clear then that meltwater from giant icebergs can directly impact circulation of the Southern Ocean, and the climate above it.
However, in a recent paper in Nature Geoscience, colleagues at the University of Sheffield and I have shown there is also a significant impact on the carbon sink, and hence the rate of exchange of CO₂ between the ocean and atmosphere.

 Antarctica's giant icebergs are helping fight climate change

Why icebergs mean oceans store more carbon

Here’s how it works: as Antarctic ice sheets slowly slide towards the ocean they bump along the continent’s bedrock, picking up iron and other nutrients which become imprisoned within the ice.
When icebergs melt they release these chemicals into the sea.
As icebergs are essentially freshwater, their water is buoyant and ascends to the ocean surface, where the iron and nutrients are utilised by phytoplankton – tiny plant-like organisms at the bottom of the marine food web.
This makes a big difference in the Southern Ocean, where limited dissolved iron – important for cell growth – restricts productivity despite an abundance of nitrate.
Melting icebergs release iron in a bio-available form, so encourage phytoplankton growth, photosynthesis, and the draw-down of atmospheric CO₂.

 Chlorophyll – a direct product of phytoplankton photosynthesis – 

shows life blossoming for hundreds of kilometres around this giant iceberg. 

Duprat et al / Nature

Giant icebergs are especially important as we found the increase in productivity from their meltwater could be as much as a factor of ten above background levels, and extend hundreds of kilometres away from the melting iceberg, both upstream and downstream.
At fixed points, the effect could last for up to a month after passage of an iceberg.
This is a far larger impact on the surrounding ocean than the limited previous observational studies had found, and could provide as much as 10-20% of the net carbon export into the deep waters of the Southern Ocean.

Giant icebergs could hold back global warming

We’ve only accurately tracked giant icebergs since the 1980s so it’s difficult to know exactly what the future holds.
However, the increasing amounts of ice discharged from Antarctica in recent decades, combined with likely acceleration of change under global warming, suggests we’ll see more giant icebergs in future. If this were so, the enhanced productivity of the Southern Ocean, taking more CO₂ from the atmosphere, will act as a small check on global warming.
What of the Arctic?
Icebergs are abundant in parts of the northern oceans, as the Titanic tragedy showed.
However, those calved from Greenland are only very rarely more than a kilometre or so long, and are almost never “giants".
The North Atlantic also has plenty of iron, mostly thanks to Saharan dust carried there in the atmosphere.
The Arctic and North Atlantic are therefore missing key ingredients for a strong biological response to iceberg meltwater.
However, large amounts of freshwater entering the North Atlantic could affect the meridional overturning circulation, a current which sends the Gulf Stream northwards along the surface while cooler, deeper water moves southwards.
More icebergs from Greenland, or further ice melting due to global warming, may help slow this current and check climate change.
Fortunately, the Northern Hemisphere no longer has the large ice sheets with a history of instability that could cause this sort of “Day After Tomorrow” scenario.
So if any giant icebergs are going to help slow climate change they will likely come from Antarctica, one of global warming’s most symbolic places.

Links :

• CarbonBrief : Giant icebergs boost Southern Ocean carbon storage, says study

Inmarsat’s maritime vision

The maritime industry is changing.

Watch our short video to hear about Inmarsat’s maritime vision in supporting the data revolution and setting a new standard in communications at sea.

From Maritime Executive by Wendy Laursen

Early this month, Inmarsat confirmed that global commercial service introduction has been achieved for its new Global Xpress (GX) constellation.
The constellation consists of three Ka-band, high-speed mobile broadband communications satellites.

GX is the first high-speed broadband network to span the world, and Inmarsat says that its maritime functionality, Fleet Xpress, will make video a viable proposition for remote assistance and diagnostics and will enable advanced applications such as telemedicine and video surveillance.
But the potential for very high availability has many ship management and safety applications and could ultimately include the potential for the safe deployment of unmanned vessels.

Purposely designed for mobility, the new GX system will provide a continuous, consistent service as traffic is handed seamlessly across each spot beam and from one satellite to another.
Global Xpress operates in the Ka-band, but, combined with the Inmarsat L-band network it is anticipated to deliver 99.9 percent overall network availability.

In announcing the launch of the company’s third GX satellite last year, Rupert Pearce, CEO of Inmarsat, said: “We have been working towards this day ever since we announced plans to create the Global Xpress constellation in 2010…
Global Xpress will deliver broadband speeds that are an order of magnitude faster than our fourth generation (I-4) constellation, to customers on the move on land, at sea and in the air, globally.

“As such, the GX fleet will offer a host of new opportunities for both our existing and new customers to significantly enhance their connectivity capabilities and to deploy bandwidth-hungry applications and solutions efficiently and effectively, even in the remotest and most inaccessible parts of the world. Global Xpress is, therefore, an important enabler for continued growth in global mobile broadband – it is the ‘Internet of Everywhere.”

In a series of videos Inmarsat will be taking you on a transformational connectivity journey

that is set to change the way we live our lives – watch the trailer to find out more.

The Power of Availability

New communication capabilities that have very high availability will be an enabler for the real-time transfer of significant amounts data from ship to shore and vice versa, says DNV GL in its 2015 position paper Ship Connectivity.

Potential applications include condition monitoring, remote maintenance, decision support tools and energy optimization such as those offered by engine manufacturers and system integrators, such as Rolls Royce, Wärtsila and Marorka.
In the case of Marorka, the company’s on board system can log, track, and analyse more than 500 data sources, including fuel consumption, speed, weather and draft.

The E.U. and the IMO are introducing regulations for monitoring, reporting and verification of emissions, and new satellite communications capabilities could aid in meeting these requirements by providing reliable, transparent data without unnecessary burdening ships’ crew.

Another potential environmental application would be using vessels as sailing weather stations, says DNV GL. (see WMO)
“If an advanced weather station is fitted on a vessel, relevant data may be transmitted regularly to an onshore data centre, for further analysis or data sharing.
If many vessels participate, a network with continuous feeds of weather data from many locations would be created.
This could become a meteorological Big Data application in which the collated data could be used to calibrate weather models and improve weather forecasts.”

Safety applications include the live monitoring of critical systems, says DNV GL.
This could determine the integrity and status of various safety systems and alert shoreside personnel if, for example, fire detectors are offline, watertight doors are kept open too often or if ECDIS is using an obsolete version of maps.

During emergencies, shore parties could benefit from additional data being transferred live from the vessel.
They could keep informed of the status of the navigation system and safety systems (e.g. fire and flooding status), stability information from the vessel’s loading computer and possibly video streams from strategic positions on board the vessel.
DNV GL also proposes VDR-in-the-cloud as a way of sending vessel black box data to shore on a regular basis in case the voyage data recorder is not found after an accident.

Remote control and autonomy

Ultimately, the increased reliability and capacity of data transfer could enable the controlling of ship functions from shore.
“Remote control of vessel functions will have intensive requirements regarding the communication link to the vessel,” says DNV GL.
“Firstly, the connection needs broadband in order to be able to transfer sufficient amount of information to the onshore operator and back to the vessel. The bandwidth requirements for the forward link will be smaller as it will be mainly control commands from pilot to vessel.
“Secondly, as loss of communication will result in loss of ability to control the vessel, the communication system must be highly reliable. Furthermore, the connection should have low latency to avoid an introduced lag impeding reaction times, which may be critical for adequate response times.”

The provision of a robust and dependable communication link could be provided by redundancy and diversity where several independent communication systems are used.
Backing up a satellite connection with a terrestrial connection, such as 3G or 4G, is another alternative.
If communication is lost, a fail-safe logic could be applied, so that the autonomous system configures the vessel to the safest possible state until communication is restored.

Rolls-Royce leads a project for ship automation

Satellite Number 4

Inmarsat continues to build its capacity for VSAT service technology.
A fourth GX satellite – Inmarsat-5 F4 – is currently completing construction and testing by Boeing in California.
This satellite is now likely to be launched in the second half of 2016 in order to provide additional GX network capacity.
During the course of 2016, Inmarsat will be introducing a series of market-specific, high-speed connectivity services powered by Global Xpress.

Links :

• GeoGraage blog : The Internet of everything sets sail / S@iLink, stay connected at sea ! / Drone ships move closer to reality as Inmarsat gets on board

The floor of the ocean comes into better focus

Undersea mountains near the Hawaiian Islands, from the Marine Geoscience Data System. Images of the mountains and nearby seafloor are derived from sonar readings taken along the paths sailed by research ships.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-01-floor-ocean-focus.html#jCp

Undersea mountains near the Hawaiian Islands, from the Marine Geoscience Data System.

Images of the mountains and nearby seafloor are derived from sonar readings taken along the paths sailed by research ships.

From Phys by David Funkhouser (Columbia Univ)

The bottom of the ocean just keeps getting better.
Or at least more interesting to look at.
In an ongoing project, mappers at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory have been gathering data from hundreds of research cruises and turning it all into accessible maps of the ocean floor with resolutions down to 25 meters.

 marine-geo.org/tools/GMRTMapTool/

You can see some of the results here, at a mapping site that allows scientists—and you—to zero in on a particular location, zoom in and download topographical maps of the ocean floor.
The Lamont data has also contributed to the latest version of Google ocean map, which now offers its own more closely resolved view of the ocean floor globally.
(You can take a quick tour of the updated Google map here.)
"I love looking at everything," said Vicki Ferrini, a scientist at Lamont who oversees the team that synthesizes the data and creates the maps. Ferrini may have absorbed more data about the ocean floor than anyone; a self-professed map and data geek, she says she has her own map of the oceans in her head.
"I really like these sinuous channels in the deep sea, they're very cool to me. … There [are] clearly concentrated areas of energy that are able to scour these river-like features through the seafloor. And the [mid-ocean] ridges are all pretty cool."

A map showing the tracks of research vessels where more detailed imagery of the seafloor is available.

The new data from Lamont covers about 8 percent of the ocean floor, a fraction of the oceans, but a sizable piece overall of the earth's surface. The data mostly comes as a byproduct of scientific expeditions that send research vessels criss-crossing the seas, explained Suzanne Carbotte, a professor of marine geology and geophysics at Lamont. The cruises may not be focused on ocean topography at all; but as the ships sail, they keep their measuring instruments humming and collect sonar data.
The sonar sends a pulse of sound down through the water column, and uses the speed of the sound's return to calculate depth. Data from U.S. expeditions is archived by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Lamont processes that data, gathers more from scientists around the world, and turns it into maps.
The Google ocean map, covering the entire ocean floor, relies mostly on data collected by satellite that is curated by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, in partnership with NOAA, the U.S. Navy and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, with contributions from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology and Australia Geosciences-AGSO. It also incorporates the more precise data from Lamont. (A video produced by Scripps at this site offers an interesting global tour of mid-ocean ridges.)


Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-01-floor-ocean-focus.html#jCp

The new data from Lamont covers about 8 percent of the ocean floor, a fraction of the oceans, but a sizable piece overall of the earth's surface.
The data mostly comes as a byproduct of scientific expeditions that send research vessels criss-crossing the seas, explained Suzanne Carbotte, a professor of marine geology and geophysics at Lamont.
The cruises may not be focused on ocean topography at all; but as the ships sail, they keep their measuring instruments humming and collect sonar data.

The sonar sends a pulse of sound down through the water column, and uses the speed of the sound's return to calculate depth.
Data from U.S. expeditions is archived by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Lamont processes that data, gathers more from scientists around the world, and turns it into maps.

 Welcome to a Deep Sea Vents Tour in Google Earth, where you can watch the deepest volcanic eruption ever captured on video at the West Mata volcano, near Fiji and learn about the exciting discovery of hydrothermal vents.

Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory highlights Ridge 2000 discoveries in this tour now visible with the new underwater terrain data published in Google Earth from Columbia's Global Multi-Resolution Topography Synthesis covering half of the ocean that has ever been mapped in detail.

The Google ocean map, covering the entire ocean floor, relies mostly on data collected by satellite that is curated by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, in partnership with NOAA, the U.S. Navy and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, with contributions from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology and Australia Geosciences-AGSO.
It also incorporates the more precise data from Lamont.

 The seafloor off the northwest coast of the United States and southwest Canada.

From the Marine Geoscience Data System.

The satellite data details small changes in sea surface height which, through gravity, reflect the underlying topography of the sea floor.

The latest version of the Scripps-NOAA ocean map offers a resolution of roughly 500 meters—an improvement over the earlier, 1 kilometer resolution.That means one data point for every 500-meter-square grid of the seafloor.

Even that rough picture is valuable, Carbotte said.

"The coarse data does a beautiful job revealing the detailed boundaries of earth's tectonic plates and other large-scale seafloor structures, and the map covers the entire ocean," she said.
Those measurements allowed researchers to discover a new "microplate" in the Indian Ocean—a remnant from the crustal shifts that sent the Indian subcontinent crashing into Eurasia, creating (and still forming) the Himalaya mountains.

Researchers studying that plate have come up with a more precise date for when that collision began, 47.3 million years ago.

But the finer resolution mapping processed by Lamont opens up other avenues for scientists.

"It allows you to study the active modern processes that shape the seafloor," Carbotte said, like earthquakes and undersea landslides that can flush sediments across long distances.

A section from the Marine Geoscience Data System map shows details along the mid-Atlantic ridge.

Scientists can dive into the maps and data and use various tools at the Marine Geoscience Data System site, created to provide free public access to marine geoscience data.

Lamont-Doherty serves as the host laboratory; funding comes from the National Science Foundation, and from Google.

The mapping page, here, has a "masking" tool (at the upper right) that allows the viewer to see the tracks of research vessels and contrast the sonar data results with the broader ocean map.

Some of the more interesting features include the deep ocean trenches, the zigs and zags of fault lines where earth's crust is forming and deforming, and massive oceanic plateaus and undersea volcanoes that reflect volcanic outpourings away from the mid-ocean ridges.

There are "fabulous canyons that carve the continental margins and channels that extend out into the deeper oceans," Carbotte said.

2015 Ocean in Google Earth Global Map Update- After.
“We're updating the entire Google ocean at once- the Scripps, NOAA, US Navy, NGA, GEBCO SRTM15plus global ocean map and the Columbia Lamont high resolution ocean map synthesis together at the same time- something that we've never done before." 
Six years ago, we launched an explorable ocean seafloor in Google Earth and Maps.
Since then, Google Earth has been downloaded over 2 billion times, and Google Maps has over 100 million users a month, enabling a new generation of virtual ocean explorers.
Three years ago, we released the 2nd major global update in partnership with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, NOAA, the US Navy, NGA, and GEBCO with major contributions from IFREMER and the IBCAO arctic synthesis), resulting in a 1 km resolution global map.
Today, we announce our 3rd and biggest update to our global ocean map with the first ever SRTM15 global grid curated by Scripps Institution of Oceanography, in partnership with NOAA, the US Navy, NGA, and with major contributions from JAMSTEC (2.2% of the seafloor), Australia Geosciences- AGSO (0.5% of the seafloor) and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University with their latest high resolution synthesis.
There’s a brand new major discovery- the first microplate discovered in the Indian Ocean over an area larger than the state of West Virginia, named the “Mammerickx Microplate” after Jacqueline Mammericks, who is the author of all the original GEBCO maps in the Pacific Ocean.
The full data reference list is here.
New areas to explore include the Philippine Sea, Ryukyu Trench, the Seafloor fabric east of Hawaii, the continental margins around Australia, and the Reykjanes Ridge.
Incorporating data from 3 satellite altimeters significantly improves the spatial resolution of areas having no ship coverage.
The SRTM15 grid is in the public domain and available online here.
Our partners at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University have curated more than 33 years of ship-based data from nearly 900 global research cruises conducted aboard more than 20 ships.
This latest update representing 3 years of work adds nearly 1.6 million ship-track km of coverage from 400 additional cruises conducted by 18 different institutions including the Schmidt Ocean Institute.
This release brings the total ship-track coverage to 28 million square km of the ocean at 100m resolution.
This is a 3% increase from the 2011 publication, bringing the total area in the Columbia compilation to ~8% of the ocean in high resolution.
High-res underwater mapping is vital to understanding important earth processes such as how tsunamis spread around the globe.
This is the best multi-resolution map of the ocean that’s been created in history.

 Explore the ocean seafloor with Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory Global Multi-Resolution Topography (GMRT) Synthesis covering half of all of the ocean that has ever been mapped in detail, an area larger than North America.

You can also view new data of Cordell Bank and the Gulf of the Farallones off of the California coast from California State University Monterey Bay (CSUMB) along with a beautiful 50 meter synthesis of the Hawaiian Islands from the University of Hawai'i at Manoa's School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (UHM-SOEST).

Scientists expect to see plenty of activity along the edges of tectonic plates including at the mid-oceanic ridges, where new crust is formed from upwelling and melting of the mantle below, and at subduction zones, where enormous slabs of earth's crust collide and one plate sinks beneath another.

But the new mapping has helped scientists see that there's also geologic activity in the broad interior spaces of the oceanic plates, Carbotte says, such as fields of volcanic seamounts of many sizes, and far-reaching channels of sediments transported into the deep ocean.

The finer resolution helps scientists study how the crust forms at mid-ocean ridges and then deforms before descending into earth's mantle, bending and faulting along subduction zones.

"With the new detailed data from many subduction zones, we can conduct comparative studies of this bend faulting and relationships to the rate of subduction, the age of the plate and sediment cover, and [that] helps us in … understanding the subduction process," Carbotte says.

Multibeam sonar readings from the R/V Falkor opened up the details of Scott Reef, off the west coast of Australia, to view at about a 10 m resolution, shown here from the GeoMapApp.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-01-floor-ocean-focus.html#jCp

Multibeam sonar readings from the R/V Falkor opened up the details of Scott Reef, off the west coast of Australia, to view at about a 10 m resolution, shown here from the GeoMapApp.

The process of mapping the ocean floor in detail continues; there's enough data already available to keep Carbotte, Ferrini and the staff busy for a long time. Covering just 8 percent of the oceans has involved hundreds of cruises over millions of miles. The oceans are so large that a thorough mapping would involve an estimated 125 to 200 ship-years of cruises (mapping on land, even on distant planets, can happen far more quickly using satellites). The Lamont crew updates their maps every six months.
Lamont has been collecting measurements and other data about the oceans for more than half a century. The first comprehensive map of the global ocean floor was created by Lamont oceanographers Marie Tharp and Bruce Heezen and published in 1977. In the 1980s, another Lamont scientist, William Haxby, used satellite measurements to compose the first "gravity field" map of the oceans. Now, the same database contributing to Google Earth feeds Lamont's EarthObserver, a global scientific mapping application for iPads and other mobile devices.
When we step onto an airliner, "We have map displays at our seats that show the flight paths, and it used to be the ocean was just a single flat, featureless blue," Carbotte said. "Now they make use of these new ocean floor maps, so when you're flying across the middle of the Atlantic, you can see the mid-ocean ridge right from your airplane seat."


Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-01-floor-ocean-focus.html#jCp

The process of mapping the ocean floor in detail continues; there's enough data already available to keep Carbotte, Ferrini and the staff busy for a long time.

Covering just 8 percent of the oceans has involved hundreds of cruises over millions of miles.

The oceans are so large that a thorough mapping would involve an estimated 125 to 200 ship-years of cruises (mapping on land, even on distant planets, can happen far more quickly using satellites).

The Lamont crew updates their maps every six months.

 New Global Seafloor Map Incorporated into Google Ocean

Updated Google Earth image at right shows new seafloor features in the western Philippine Sea compared to earlier version

see : Scripps

Lamont has been collecting measurements and other data about the oceans for more than half a century.

The first comprehensive map of the global ocean floor was created by Lamont oceanographers Marie Tharp and Bruce Heezen and published in 1977.

In the 1980s, another Lamont scientist, William Haxby, used satellite measurements to compose the first "gravity field" map of the oceans.

Now, the same database contributing to Google Earth feeds Lamont's EarthObserver, a global scientific mapping application for iPads and other mobile devices.

 Global map of ocean depths and land elevations,

with data mapped to colour (cyan to dark grey) by quantile.

courtesy of geotheory.co.uk

When we step onto an airliner, "We have map displays at our seats that show the flight paths, and it used to be the ocean was just a single flat, featureless blue," Carbotte said.

"Now they make use of these new ocean floor maps, so when you're flying across the middle of the Atlantic, you can see the mid-ocean ridge right from your airplane seat."

Links :

• GeoGarage blog :  Seafloor features are revealed by the gravity field / New maps reveal California's sensational seafloor geography / Monterey Canyon: Stunning deep-sea topography revealed / New map exposes previously unseen details of seafloor / USGS maps California seafloor in unprecedented detail /'Un-mappable' Great Barrier Reef finally mapped in 3D / Bing Maps now shows ocean floor topography / Marie Tharp: the woman who mapped the ocean floor / Secretly mapping the sea floor / New bathymetry in Google Earth / New map reveals New Zealand's seafloor in stunning detail / NIWA survey reveals deep water canyons off Otago coast (NZ) /A virtual first look at unexplored seafloor : Farallon islands / 3-D maps reveal depths of sea floor