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Tuesday, October 16, 2018
Helping the shipping industry adapt to climate change
From Copernicus
Ships are responsible for ninety per cent of the worldwide transport of goods.
Playing such an important role in world trade and economy, the shipping industry needs to be able to predict how it will be affected by evolutions in the climate and to adapt accordingly.
This is where data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), implemented by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), come in.
Global climate datasets relevant to the shipping industry are being bundled into a Global Shipping Service to aid decision-making and support medium- and long-term planning.
The shipping industry is influenced both positively and negatively by climate change.
Increases in tropical storms and ocean temperatures can pose problems for ships, but rising sea levels allow larger ships to enter harbours that were previously too shallow, and melting ice makes it much easier for ships to traverse the Arctic.
The Northwest and Northeast Arctic Passages.
The opening of the Northeast passage is interesting for Europe.
Credit: Susie Harder, Arctic Council
Credit: Susie Harder, Arctic Council
When the Arctic passage is open, the time required to travel between parts of Europe and Asia is significantly reduced, decreasing the fuel usage and associated emissions.
Not only is this good for the environment, it also reduces operational costs – potentially leading to reduced prices for customers.
The industry is extremely interested in the opening of the route, although there are ethical questions surrounding sending ships to the Arctic.
Oil spillages, for example, pose huge dangers for the Arctic environment, and clearing pathways by breaking-up ice speeds up the melting process.
Overview of the arctic route availability application.
The dotted red line represents the standard north-east passage route.
The white region is the average ice coverage for the selected month and year.
The bar plot depicts the time window during which the standard north-east passage route is considered navigable.
Different shades of green correspond to different route availability thresholds, i.e. the ratio between the ice-covered distance and total navigation distance.
C3S is currently working with a variety of contractors, including Offshore Navigation, who are developing the Global Shipping Service.
“This is the first service that allows the industry to see how the climate will affect shipping routes,” explains Carlo Buontempo, who oversees the project on behalf of C3S.
“Several companies have already expressed their interest in using the service when it is up and running.”
Overview of the shaft power application.
The map shows the average wind speed and wave contours, as well as the selected shipping route.
The percentile plot shows the required shaft power along the route to maintain the selected ship type at the selected speed over ground.
The Global Shipping Service will include a variety of tools to help the industry, including:
An Arctic route model that estimates the number of days per year that a given route will be available, based on projected ice conditions in the Arctic.
A fuel consumption model that calculates the impact of meteorological and oceanic conditions on set routes, as well as the seasonal forecast of the cost of a route.
An iceberg drifting model that defines areas containing icebergs, helping ships to navigate the northern oceans.
The drifting of very large icebergs from northern Canada into the open ocean, during which time they also shrink. The yellow colour symbolises icebergs that are ten times larger than those symbolised by the purple colour.
Credit: The C3S for Global Shipping Project Team
The Global Shipping Service uses many different types of data, including raw observations, seasonal predictions and climate projections.
C3S provides information on the wind, waves, ocean current, sea surface pressure and temperature, and ice thickness and concentration.
All of this information is publicly available via the Climate Data Store.
Exciting opportunities for new trade routes?
Last month, Maersk, one of the world’s largest logistics firms, sailed a cargo ship from Asia to Europe through a route north of Russia for the first time.
courtesy of GeoPoliticalFeatures
The Global Shipping Service will be built around a web application including a world map with predefined routes and charts of the essential climate variables most relevant to the shipping industry.
Kris Lemmens from Offshore Navigation explains further, “A menu allows users to select the month of interest, the desired variables to be represented, and the time scale. The user selects a route and sees their chosen climate variables plotted along that route on the map.”
The C3S data are available on three different time scales ranging from months to decades. This assists the industry with both short- and long-term planning and investment.”
Data from ECMWF showing the percentage of waves that are higher than 3.5 metres across the world.
The Global Shipping service uses this kind of data to help their users plan shipping routes.
Credit: ECMWF
Credit: ECMWF
Once these tools are ready for use, the team would like to expand their services with statistics related to cargo loss, ship hull stress and the accumulation of small plants and animals on the ship.
They are also considering a function that allows users to create their own routes.
“The development of this service would not have been possible were it not for the variety of skills and knowledge brought in by the different contractors,” concludes Lemmens.
“We are delighted that we have been given the opportunity to work on a project with such high importance and relevance to the world economy, and we are certain that this will be a fantastic service for the community.”
Links :
- C3S : a quick introduction / Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S)
- GeoGarage blog : Copernicus Sentinel-3 offers safer navigation at sea / Copernicus Marine Service / Sentinel satellite exposes sulphur dioxide pollution / Copernicus ocean currents /
Copernicus Sentinel-1 : making our seas safer / Sentinel tracks ships' dirty emissions from orbit / Sentinel's first map of sea-surface 'hills and valleys'
Monday, October 15, 2018
Expedition into Belize Blue Hole could unlock ancient Mayan secrets
The Mysterious Belize Great Blue Hole is a large underwater hole off the coast of Belize.
It lies near the center of Lighthouse Reef, a small atoll 100 kilometers (62 mi) from the mainland and Belize City.
The
hole is perfectly circular in shape, over 300 meters (1000 ft) across
(diameter), 3140 feet circumference and 125 meters (410 ft) deep.
It
was formed as a limestone cave system during the last glacial period
when the sea level was 400 to 500 feet below present time and was dry
land.
Last glacial period began about 120,000 years ago and end about 15,000 years ago.
Reaching the maximum extension 26,500 years ago.
At the end the ocean began to rise, the caves flooded, and the roof collapsed.
Blue Hole in Belize with the GeoGarage platform (NGA chart)
From 9News by
A world-first submarine expedition, involving billionaire Richard Branson, will explore the darkest depths of Belize's Blue Hole, using military-grade sonar to map the sinkhole's vast underwater interior in wondrous detail.
Situated 70km off the Belize coast, the giant Blue Hole is one of the world's leading scuba dive spots, and the UNESCO site is believed to hold clues to the mystery of how the Mayan civilisation collapsed between 800 and 1000 AD.
The bottom of the Blue Hole, which measures 124 metres deep, has been reached by divers before. But the environment, enveloped in total darkness, is inhospitable and divers are unable to linger for long periods.
It is hoped that powerful lighting and sonar rigged to a number of agile three-man submarines will expose the immense space which formed hundreds of thousands of years ago during the last Ice Age.
Expedition leader Harvey Flemming says the large team, which includes Branson and Fabien Cousteau, grandson of famed ocean explorer Jacques, don't really know what they will find.
"It's a wildcard … I'm excited to get there and jump in and see what it is all about," Flemming tells nine.com.au from the Aquatica submarine base in Vancouver, Canada.
Flemming says his submarines will be armed with sonar so strong it will be possible to detect if a coin on the hole's floor is facing heads or tails, from 15 metres away and in the dark.
When the mission is complete high-resolution maps will be rendered from the sonar scans, giving scientists and oceanographers an extremely precise, never-before-seen understanding of the hole and its cave system.
"We're really excited to see what we'll see. We don't really know for sure. Maybe a body, who knows? It is totally open for discovery."
Geologists on the team will gather evidence in an attempt to better understand the effect of climate change over the last 100,000 years.
The role of climate change in the development and demise of the classic Maya civilisation has long been debated and studied by researchers.
Potentially significant rock formations and tiny imperfections on cave walls deep inside the hole, which will be made clearly visible by sonar, could add further weight to theories drought triggered the collapse of the Mayans.
What is certain is Flemming's submarines will come across huge stalactites, dripstone sheets and columns inside the blue hole.
Geologists believe these structures formed when sea levels were much lower.
There is no oxygen at all in the water in the farthest reaches of the hole, so marine life is sparse in the anoxic and black conditions.
Flemming says his team will probably make two dives each day over a fortnight period, allowing them to methodically build out the resolution and complexity of the sonar map.
Branson, a known intrepid explorer with an interest in air and space travel, will pilot some of the submarine dives, Flemming says.
Ramon Llaneza diving rebreather explore stargate the entrance to alien underworld in Belize and Bahamas.
Watch more details about this exploration at https://youtu.be/mh49kkENw_Q .
Believed to be the world's largest feature of its kind, the Great Blue Hole is part of the larger Belize Barrier Reef Reserve System, a World Heritage site of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
The hole itself is the opening to a system of caves and passageway that penetrate this undersea mountain.
In various places, massive limestone stalactites hang down from what was once the ceiling of air-filled caves thousand of years before the end of the last Ice Age 15,000 years ago.
When the ice melted the sea level rose, flooding the caves.
This process occurred in stages.
Evidence for this are the shelves and ledges, carved into the limestone by the sea, which run the complete interior circumference of the Blue Hole at various depths.
The Blue Hole is a "karst- eroded sinkhole."
It was once a cave at the center of an underground tunnel complex whose ceiling collapsed.
Some of the tunnels are thought to be linked right through to the mainland, though this has never been conclusively proved.
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Notable are the large population of sharks such as lemon, black tip, reef, hammerhead, and bull sharks. Mysterious and legends always have been around the Belize Blue Hole.
This was the entrance to Xibalba?.
It's the kind of underwater geology that inspires speculation about aliens creating geometrically perfect anomalies, mermaids and monsters living in darkness.
I explored the bottom of the Blue Hole perimeter (3,140 feet circumference).
To do this I dove down twice, reaching the depth of 375' feet which took 4 to 5 hours of diving each day.
Scuba divers will drop lines and various items of equipment into the hole.
A documentary crew will film the expedition, which will be live streamed to a global online audience.
The deeper divers go, the danger increases.
Divers can be hit with nitrogen narcosis below 30 metres, a phenomenon where one’s decision making is severely impaired.
Also known as the “martini effect”, fatalities can occur as divers are overcome by symptoms of dizziness, euphoria and panic.
"There are typical risks associated with any marine operation,” Flemming says.
"But we will bring the necessary equipment and rescue vehicles to circumvent that."
The Stingray SR500 model submarines, manufactured by Flemming's company, Aquatica, are fitted out with a 96-hour life support system, in case anything should go wrong.
Entanglement poses one of the biggest dangers to the submarines.
Flemming says the expedition, which last month was sanctioned by the Belize government, is likely to begin before Christmas.
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Sunday, October 14, 2018
Drowning in plastic
Our blue planet is facing one its biggest threats in human history.
Trillions of pieces of plastic are choking the very lifeblood of our earth, and every marine animal - from the smallest plankton to the largest of mammals - is being affected.
Trillions of pieces of plastic are choking the very lifeblood of our earth, and every marine animal - from the smallest plankton to the largest of mammals - is being affected.
But can we turn back this growing plastic tide before it is too late?
In this 90-minute special wildlife biologist Liz Bonnin visits scientists working at the cutting edge of plastics research.
In this 90-minute special wildlife biologist Liz Bonnin visits scientists working at the cutting edge of plastics research.
She will work with some of the world’s leading marine biologists and campaigners to discover the true dangers of plastic in our oceans and what it means for the future of all life on our planet, including for us.
Liz travels 10,000 miles to a remote island off the coast of Australia which is the nesting site for a population of seabirds: Flesh Footed Shearwaters.
Liz travels 10,000 miles to a remote island off the coast of Australia which is the nesting site for a population of seabirds: Flesh Footed Shearwaters.
Newly-hatched chicks are unable to regurgitate effectively, so they are filling up on deadly plastic. In America she joins an emergency mission to save an entangled grey seal pup found in some of the world’s busiest fishing areas, and visits the Coral Triangle that stretches from Papua New Guinea to the Solomon Islands to find out more from top coral scientists trying to work out why plastic is so lethal to the reefs, a fragile ecosystem that contain 25 percent of all marine life.
Liz learns that the world’s biggest rivers have been turned into huge plastic arteries, transporting 50 percent of all plastic that arrives in the ocean.
Liz learns that the world’s biggest rivers have been turned into huge plastic arteries, transporting 50 percent of all plastic that arrives in the ocean.
She travels to Indonesia - where she watches a horrifying raft of plastic rubbish travel down one of the main rivers, the Citarum.
Here, 60 percent of fish species have died, meaning that fishermen are now forced to collect plastic to sell instead of fish.
With the world only now waking up to this emerging crisis, this film will look at whether scientists have found any solutions.
With the world only now waking up to this emerging crisis, this film will look at whether scientists have found any solutions.
Liz meets the 24 year-old inventor of a monumental 600-metre construction that will travel across the ocean’s ‘garbage patches’, collecting millions of pieces of plastic pollution.
Liz also meets a local environmental campaigner who is working with volunteers and the Indonesian army to clean up the worst affected areas, and a young entrepreneur who has invented an alternative to plastic packaging made from seaweed.
Plastic in our oceans is one of the greatest environmental challenges of our time and this film hopes to add to the urgent and vitally important debate of how to solve this global crisis.
source : BBC program
Plastic in our oceans is one of the greatest environmental challenges of our time and this film hopes to add to the urgent and vitally important debate of how to solve this global crisis.
source : BBC program
In the 1950s, scientists invented a new material that would change the world forever: plastic.
Cheap, durable, sanitary, strong, and light – and, as we have seen in the years since, very, very difficult to get rid of once we are through with it.
About 70 percent of our discarded plastic winds up in open dumps or landfills, but much winds up in an even worse place: the ocean.
David Pogue reports on why, even with ramped-up recycling efforts, it is so hard to get rid of plastic.
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