This talk highlights renowned scientist Christopher Clark's research on
the effects of sonar, shipping noise and offshore energy activities on
marine mammals at both local and ocean-basin scales. His work has been cited by his peers including Peter Tyack's 2010 TED Talk on whale communications. When asked what he does, Christopher W. Clark’s answer is simple: “I listen to this singing planet!” Clark
pioneered the ocean listening systems for studying whales and other
marine life.
His work has been cited by Peter Tyack's 2010 TED Talk on
whale communications.
His research has led to a better understanding of
the effects of sonar, shipping noise and offshore energy activities on
marine mammals at both local and ocean-basin scales.
Most recently, Clark was featured in Discovery Channel documentary films: “Racing Extinction”
and “Sonic Sea.”
An
engineer and biologist, Clark is the founding director and Imogene
Johnson Senior Scientist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology Bioacoustics
Research Program at Cornell University.
He is also a senior scientist at
the university’s Department of Neurobiology & Behavior.
Rogue wave photo taken from the deck of the RV Cape Henlopen in the
western North Atlantic during the Atlantic Remote Sensing Land/Ocean
Experiment (ARSLOE)
The crest of the rogue propogates from the right to
left.
University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric
Science scientist Mark Donelan and his Norwegian Meteorological
Institute colleague captured new information about extreme waves, as one
of the steepest ever recorded passed by the North Sea Ekofisk platforms
in the early morning hours of Nov. 9 2007.
Photo by Sohit Sukla
Within the first hour of the day, the Andrea wave passed by a
four-point square array of ocean sensors designed by the researchers to
measure the wavelength, direction, amplitude and frequency of waves at
the ocean surface.
Aerial view from southwest (elevation 45 degrees) of the reconstructed Andrea wave.
The colorbar indicates surface elevation. Vertical exaggeration is seven.
The blue dot (location: 0,0) indicates the observed crest of 14.97 m above MSL; the red dot indicates the reconstructed maximum crest height of 15.33 m at location: 14 m West, 6 m North.
The crest was advancing to the SSE (164 degrees) at 17.85 m/s.
Using the information from the wave set—a total of 13,535 individual
waves—collected by the system installed on a bridge between two offshore
platforms, the researchers took the wave apart to examine how the
components came together to produce such a steep wave.
The data from the 100-meter wide “wall of water” moving at 40 miles
per hour showed that Andrea may have reached heights greater than the
recorded height of 49 feet above mean sea level.
They also found that
rogue waves are not rare as previously thought and occur roughly twice
daily at any given location in a storm.
The findings showed that the
steeper the waves are, the less frequent their occurrence, which is
about every three weeks at any location for the steepest rogues.
Surface elevation of groups in each period band displayed on axes of time and logarithm of period in seconds.
All 32 periods are displayed and their sum (divided by 20) is graphed along the time axis.
The Andrea crest is at 862 s.
Credit: Donelan, et.al.
The Andrea crest height was 1.63 times the significant height
(average height of the one third highest waves).
Optimal focusing of the
Andrea wave showed that the crest could have been even higher and
limited by breaking at 1.7 times the significant height.
A 100-foot wave hits a ship in the North Sea, during an intense storm.
Had the ship been much smaller it could have been catastrophic, but the ship managed to withstand the blow.
This
establishes the greatest height rogues can reach for any given (or
forecasted) significant height.
“Rogue waves are known to have caused loss of life as well as damage
to ships and offshore structures,” said Mark Donelan, professor emeritus
of ocean sciences at the UM Rosenstiel School. “Our results, while
representing the worst-case rogue wave forecast, are new knowledge
important for the design and safe operations for ships and platforms at
sea.”
The study, titled “The Making of the Andrea Wave and other Rogues,”
was published in the March 8 issue of the journal Scientific Reports.
The authors include: Donelan and Anne-Karin Magnusson from the Norwegian
Meteorological Institute.
The work was partly performed within the
ExWaMar project (ID 256466/O80) funded by the Norwegian Research
Council.
ConocoPhillips provided the wave data.
A rock structure in the form of an arch which had featured in countless Malta tourism brochures collapsed into the sea on Wednesday in what Prime Minister Joseph Muscat described as a "heartbreaking event".
The Azure Window in the Gozo island with the GeoGarage platform (UKHO map)
Geologists had long warned that the structure, on the north-western coast of the small island of Gozo, was eroding fast and the authorities had banned visitors from walking on top of it.
@gozosecrets Tweet March 8, 2017
The structure, known as the Azure Window because it arched over blue seas popular with divers, collapsed as Malta was hit by rough seas and stormy weather.
Gozo resident Roger Chessell went to the coastline in the morning to take pictures.
"There was a big raging sea beneath the Azure Window," he told the Times of Malta newspaper. "Suddenly, the arch collapsed into the sea with a loud whoomph, throwing up a huge spray."
Prime Minister Muscat said in a Tweet that the famous Mediterranean landmark had always faced destruction because of natural corrosion. "That sad day has arrived," he wrote.
That was among the many
clear warnings that oil giant Shell issued in a film it produced about
climate change more than 25 years ago.
Many environmentalists, however,
argue that the company has largely ignored its own alarm bells.
“The need to understand the
interplay of atmosphere and oceans has been given a new sense of urgency
by the realization that our energy-consuming way of life may be causing
climatic changes with adverse consequences to us all,” the nearly
30-minute video notes.
The film is eerily
prophetic, warning of spiraling global temperatures, a sea level rise
that could prove “disastrous,” wetland habitats inundated by salt water
and ferocious storm surges brought on by warming ocean temperatures.
“What is now considered abnormal weather could become a new norm,” the film’s narrator says.
“In a crowded world subject to such adverse shifts of climate, who would take care of such greenhouse refugees?”
What Shell knew about climate change in 1991 – video explainer
According to The Correspondent, which shared the video with The Guardian,
the film was produced for the public eye, particularly for viewing in
schools and universities, but has gone largely unseen for many years.
In
a separate 1986 document reviewed by both publications, Shell
reportedly wrote of the uncertainties regarding climate science but
noted that “changes may be the greatest in recorded history.”
In an interview with The
Correspondent, professor Tom Wigley, the former head of the Climate
Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, which assisted Shell in
creating the film, spoke about the accuracy of its predictions.
“It’s amazing it’s 25 years ago,”
Wigley said. “It was quite comprehensive on what might happen, what the
consequences are, and what we can do about it. I mean, there’s not much
more.”
Along with linking fossil
fuel consumption and rising carbon dioxide emissions to warming global
temperatures, the film celebrates renewable energy technologies,
including solar and wind.
Although Shell does recognize climate change and made investments in wind energy, it is also a key player in the destructive and dirty Canadian tar sands.
In an email Tuesday to The
Huffington Post, a Shell spokesman said, “Our position on climate change
is well known; recognizing the climate challenge and the role energy
has in enabling a decent quality of life. Shell continues to call for
effective policy to support lower carbon business and consumer choices
and opportunities such as government lead carbon pricing/trading
schemes.”
But environmental groups aren’t convinced that the company has walked the walk when it comes to acting to combat climate change.
“The fact that
Shell understood all this in 1991, and that a quarter-century later it
was trying to open up the Arctic to oil-drilling, tells you all you’ll
ever need to know about the corporate ethic of the fossil fuel
industry,” Bill McKibben, the co-founder of 350.org, said in a statement.
“Shell made a big difference in the world ― a difference for the worse.”
In the film (which can be seen in full here),
Shell warned that while global warming was not fully understood, “many
think that to wait for final proof would be irresponsible.”
“Whether or not the threat
of global warming proves as grave as the scientists predict, is it too
much to hope that it might act as the stimulus, the catalyst, to a new
era of technical and economic cooperation?” the narrator asks.
“Our
numbers are many and infinitely diverse, but the problems and dilemmas
of climatic change concern us all.”
