Explorers spot mysterious purple orb on ocean floor

 Update : We're still working on a species ID with our science partners at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology, but currently we're thinking the purple orb is a pleurobranch, a nudibranch relative.
Both are types of sea slugs, like this one

From CNET by Amanda Kooser

The research vessel Nautilus is a floating laboratory equipped with cameras that can peer deep down to the ocean floor.
Researchers with the Ocean Exploration Trust posted a video on Monday showing an unusual find.
The Nautilus spied a small bright-purple orb underwater in the Channel Islands off the coast of California.
The main focus for the vehicle's Channel Islands mission is to study deep-sea corals, but the odd sphere attracted the scientists' attention.
The video includes a soundtrack of the researchers making real-time observations as the camera sweeps along.
They call it a "purple blob" and then wonder aloud "What is that?"
The researchers throw out some scientific names as possibilities before deciding to suck it up into a tube for a closer look.
They wonder if it might be an egg sac or an embryo of some sort.
There's a moment of suspense as a crab closes in on the orb and jars it with its leg, but the Nautilus successfully grabs the sphere using a remote-controlled suction tube.

 Channel Islands, offshore California with the GeoGarage platform (NOAA chart)

The Nautilus website offers an update on the oddball discovery: "This unidentified purple orb stumped our scientists onboard. After sampling, it began to unfold to reveal two distinct lobes. This could possibly be a new species of nudibranch."
Nudibranchs are marine mollusks.
They have soft bodies and some of them are quite colorful, appearing in bright shades of orange, blue and pink.
Some have slug-like shapes, while others have small branch-like protuberances.
If you're looking for answers as to exactly what the purple orb is, you'll probably have to wait for some time.
The Nautilus team notes, "It could take several years for scientists to determine if this organism is a new species."

Mysterious purple ocean orb starts to reveal its secrets

Scientists get a closer look at a strange purple sphere found in the ocean and have some ideas about its origins.

Everybody loves a good mystery.
Researchers with the Exploration Vessel Nautilus peered down through a camera at the ocean floor in mid-July and found something very odd there.
A bright-purple sphere glowed in the camera's light. Scientific curiosity kicked in and the researchers suctioned up the strange creature for a closer look. Now they're sharing the latest information on the discovery.
The Nautilus team initially thought the critter might be a nudibranch, a type of soft-bodied marine mollusk.
Current thinking is that it could actually be a close relation called a pleurobranch.
"Pleurobranchs have rhinophores (ear-like structures) in a particular location and a gill under the emantle on the right side, but we are still determining if this is present on this sample. Currently none of the known species of California deep-sea pleurobranchs are purple, so this could be a new discovery," the team said on its website Wednesday.
The orb was found in Arguello Canyon, an underwater canyon west of the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary off the coast of Southern California. It was living at a depth of 5,301 feet (1,616 meters).
It's only about 2 inches (5 centimeters) in size. Researchers sent samples of the creature to the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology for further identification work.
Closeup photos of the purple orb show a more complex creature than could originally be seen on underwater video.

The purple orb actually has two lobes.

photo : Ocean Exploration Trust
 

It's not just a single sphere but seems to have a couple of lobes, making it look a bit like a sci-fi alien brain.
There's also a slug-like part of the creature, which fits with the pleurobranch idea.
Pleurobranchs are a type of sea slug.
The Nautilus is funded by the Ocean Exploration Trust, an organization dedicated to studying the scientific wonders of the seafloor.
The Nautilus is a high-tech floating laboratory that aims to "explore areas of the ocean that have never been explored before, seeking out new discoveries in the fields of geology, biology, maritime history, archaeology, and chemistry."
Think of it as the USS Enterprise of ocean vessels.
The Nautilus team isn't rushing to conclusions: "It could possibly take years for scientists to definitively determine whether it's a newly discovered species!"

Links :

• The Guardian : Scientists fight crab for mysterious purple orb discovered in California deep
• National Geographic : Mysterious Purple Blob Found on Ocean Floor—What Is it?
• GeoGarage blog : Explore a shipwreck LIVE: Underwater project lets you watch in real-time as scientists navigate a sunken warship

NOAA to develop new global weather model

Hindcast of the peak of the 2008 hurricane season, one of the most active on records, simulated by an FV3-powered GFDL model at 13-km resolution.

FV3 improves representation of small-scale weather features such as hurricanes while maintaining the quality of large-scale global circulation.

From NOAA

The new global model will continue to be called the GFS. As with the current GFS, the new GFS will run in the background of NOAA’s suite of weather and climate models improving skill across all NOAA's forecast mission areas.

“Using our powerful supercomputers, our new dynamic core which drives the model, and the newest modeling techniques, we are poised to develop and run a more accurate and reliable global model that is used as a basis for all weather forecasts in the U.S.,” said Louis W. Uccellini, director, NOAA’s National Weather Service.

The new dynamic core, Finite-Volume on a Cubed-Sphere (FV3), was developed by NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, New Jersey.
The FV3 core brings a new level of accuracy and numeric efficiency to the model’s representation of atmospheric processes such as air motions.
This makes possible simulations of clouds and storms, at resolutions not yet used in an operational global model.

The FV3 core enables the model to provide localized forecasts for several weather events simultaneously all while generating a global forecast every six hours.
Looking 10 years ahead, the GFS model with the FV3 core will run in higher resolution and be able to zoom in on smaller and smaller storm systems to provide forecasters better pictures of how storms will evolve.

Goals for the new model are:

• a unified system to improve forecast accuracy beyond 8 to 10 days
• better model forecasts of hurricane track and intensity, and
• the extension of weather forecasting through 14 days and for extreme events, 3 to 4 weeks in advance.

Engaging the meteorology community during model development and improvement is a priority for NOAA.
The agency plans to develop a program to involve researchers in testing and improving algorithms, data assimilation methods and physics.
The goal is to incorporate successful enhancements into operations.
“We are collaborating with the best model developers in the U.S. and around the world to ensure the GFS has the most recent advances in weather prediction modeling, and so we can accelerate improvements to the model as they are developed,” Uccellini added.

FV3 offers 'zoom-in' capability when threats loom

An example of FV3's capability to zoom in on critical weather events: here, the model resolution has been enhanced to better represent hurricanes threatening the Southeastern US.

The reverse side is coarser resolution because we are less concerned with that part of the world.

By enhancing the resolution only over a part of the earth, we are able to economically get to ultra-high resolution simulations of important areas, or on a potentially-dangerous storm, anywhere around the globe.

The colors represent the grid spacing lengths, and the grid is partially outlined in black. (NOAA)

Building the Next Generation Global Prediction System will take a tremendous amount of testing, analysis and verification.
Model components, including the physics package, data assimilation and post processing—all parts of the existing architecture—will be rebuilt and improved to work with the new software.                                                         
Links :

• GeoGarage blog : NOAA’s premier forecast model goes 4-D / NOAA WeatherView 

Ile de Brehat

Ile de Bréhat from Askell-Drone

 Ile de Brehat with the GeoGarage platform (SHOM chart)

Les Voiles de Saint Barth by drone view

Les Voiles de St Barth 2016 by drone from St Barth Fly Cam

MH370: Missing jet 'could be further north'

This animation shows how the floating debris from the MH370 aircraft could have spread, from the day of the crash up until May 2016.
The location of the debris at the various times is calculated using a computer model based on oceanographic data and the location of the five confirmed debris found to date (indicated by red dots, used to weight the outcomes of multiple simulations)

From BBC by Jonathan Amos

The crashed remains from the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 could be as much as 500km further north than the current search area, say scientists in Italy.

Their assessment is based on the location of confirmed debris items and computer modelling that incorporates ocean and weather data.
They say this has allowed them to determine where the plane most likely hit the water and where future aircraft fragments might wash up.
The MH370 search will soon be halted.
Authorities have agreed that "in the absence of new credible evidence" the effort to find the plane on the ocean floor west of Australia will be suspended once a zone covering 120,000 square km has been fully surveyed.
That could happen in the next few weeks.
A team led by Eric Jansen, from the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change in Italy, is the latest to try its hand at using modelling to identify the impact site.
The approach relies on two years of high-resolution data that describe the currents and wind conditions across the Indian and Southern oceans.
Multiple simulations were used to predict where objects might drift given different starting points.
These forecasts were then analysed and the greatest weight given to those tracks that best matched the locations of known MH370 debris items.
These are the parts of the Boeing 777, such as an engine cowling and wing flap, that have since washed up on the beaches of Africa and Indian-ocean islands.

 A number of items from the plane have washed up on beaches
To improve their simulation, the researchers used the locations of the five confirmed debris found to date: two in Mozambique and one each in Réunion, South Africa and Rodrigues Island (Mauritius).

(Reuters)

The conclusion is that main wreckage of the plane is likely to be in the wide search area between 28 degrees South and 35 degrees South that was designated by crash investigators.
However, only the southern end of this zone - a priority segment between 32 degrees South and 35 degrees South - is currently being surveyed by underwater cameras and detectors.
This still leaves a swathe of ocean floor to the north where Dr Jansen and colleagues say MH370 could possibly be resting today undiscovered.

 The results suggest the plane could be on the ocean floor to the north of the underwater search area 
To find out how MH370 debris drifted since the crash, the researchers ran a computer model that used oceanographic data from the EU Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service, including data of global surface currents and winds over the past two years.

(Jensen et Al)

One of the advantages of the type of model produced by the team is that its solutions can be updated as more debris is found.
"We use the location where debris is found to create a ranking of the different simulations. So, the simulations that cause debris in all of the locations where this material was found - we rank those higher; and the ones that are not as good at predicting the locations of the debris - we rank them lower. And then we combine the result. This has the benefit that if new debris is found we only have to repeat the ranking, which is very fast, while the simulations of drift over two years take several hours."

An animation of the debris pathways originating from Location 11.

The tracks of particles over a ten day time window are shown.

 Animation courtesy of the University of Western Australia.

This means also that should more debris come to light, the model will refine its solution for where in the ocean the missing jet is most likely to be found.
And given that the underwater search is about to be suspended, Dr Jansen says perhaps greater effort should now be directed towards finding more washed-up debris.
It is an endeavour that would be low-cost, he argues, but would very much aid the type of research he does, while at the same time possibly yielding additional information on the state of the aircraft in its final moments.
Such inferences can be gleaned by examining materials for tell-tale damage.
Dr Jansen and colleagues have published their research in the journal Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences.
Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared in March 2014 with 239 passengers and crew.

Links :

• The Independant : MH370: Search team looking for missing Malaysia Airlines flight reveals new theory on plane's location 
• EGU : New study reveals where MH370 debris more likely to be found
• Wired : Finding MH370: How algorithms are helping to hone in on the missing plane
• CNN : MH370: Captain's home simulator had Indian Ocean course plotted
• GeoGarage blog : Shift in MH370 search points to revision of assumptions