Corals don’t lie: Centuries of rising ocean levels and temperature data revealed

AIMS researchers plus a team in the College of Wa, CSIRO and also the College of North Park have analysed barrier cores in the eastern Indian Sea to know the way the unique barrier reefs of Wa are influenced by altering sea power and water temps. The study was released today within the worldwide journal Character Communications. The findings give new experience into how La Ni?a, an environment swing within the tropical Off-shore, affects the Leeuwin current and just how our oceans are altering.

“Due to the possible lack of lengthy-term findings of marine climate we used lengthy barrier cores, with annual growth bands much like tree rings, to supply a record of history. We acquired records of past ocean temps by calculating caffeine composition from the barrier skeleton from year upon year. This demonstrated how altering winds and sea power within the eastern Indian Sea are impelled by climate variability within the western tropical Gulf Of Mexico,” stated Dr Jens Zinke (Assistant Professor in the UWA Oceans Institute and AIMS-UWA researcher). The lengthy barrier records permitted the researchers to check out these designs of climate variability to 1795 AD.

La Ni?a occasions within the tropical Off-shore create a increased Leeuwin Current and abnormally tepid to warm water temps and greater ocean levels off southwest Wa.

“A prominent example may be the 2011 warmth wave along WA’s reefs which brought to barrier bleaching and seafood kills,” stated Dr Ming Feng CSIRO Principal Research Researcher.?

The worldwide team discovered that additionally to warming ocean surface temps, ocean-level variability and Leeuwin Current strength have elevated since 1980. The barrier cores also demonstrate that the strong winds and extreme weather of 2011 off Wa are highly improbable poor yesteryear 215 years. The authors conclude this is obvious evidence that climatic change and ocean-level rise is growing the seriousness of these extreme occasions which change up the highly diverse barrier reefs of Wa, such as the Ningaloo Reef World Heritage site.

“Given ongoing global global warming, Chances are that future La Ni?a occasions can lead to more extreme warming and ocean-level occasions with potentially significant effects for that upkeep of Western Australia's unique marine environments,” stated Dr Janice Lough, AIMS Senior Principal Research Researcher.

The scientists used core examples of massive Porites colonies in the Houtman-Abrolhos Islands, probably the most southerly reefs within the Indian Sea that are directly within the road to the Leeuwin Current. While using chemical composition from the annual barrier growth bands they could rebuild ocean surface temperature and Leeuwin Current for 215 years, from 1795 to 2010.

Journal Reference:

J. Zinke, A. Rountrey, M. Feng, S.-P. Xie, D. Dissard, K. Rankenburg, J.M. Lough, M.T. McCulloch. Corals record lengthy-term Leeuwin current variability including Ningaloo Ni?o/Ni?a since 1795. Character Communications, 2014 5 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms4607

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Scientists target ocean level rise in order to save many years of historical evidence

Prehistoric spend mounds available on a number of Florida's most pristine beaches are vulnerable to washing away because the ocean level increases, wiping away 1000's of many years of historical evidence.

"The biggest risk of these ancient treasure troves of knowledge is ocean level rise," stated Shawn Cruz, a senior research connect using the Center for Sea-Atmospheric Conjecture Studies at Florida Condition College.

But some pot project between Cruz and also the National Park Services are drawing focus on the issue to hopefully minimize the outcome around the state's cultural sites.

Cruz and Margo Schwadron, an archaeologist using the National Park Service, have launched into a task to look at past and future alterations in climate and just how we are able to adjust to individuals changes in order to save regions of shoreline and therefore preserve cultural and ancient evidence.

"We are type of the pioneers in searching in the cultural focus of the problem," Cruz stated, observing that many weather and sea experts are worried about city infrastructure for seaside areas.

To accomplish the work, the nation's Park Service granted Cruz a $30,000 grant. With this money, Cruz and former Florida Condition College undergraduate Marcus Manley spent hrs producing modern, colonial and paleo weather data.

The main focus of the initial scientific studies are the Canaveral National Seashore and Everglades National Park, which have prehistoric spend mounds, about 50 ft to 70 ft high. Scientists believe these spend mounds offered as fundamentals for structures and pay outs and then offered as navigational landmarks throughout European search for the location.

Modern temperature and storm system information was readily available to scientists. But, to visit 100s after which 1000's of in the past required a rather different approach.

Log books from old The spanish language forts in addition to ships that entered the Atlantic needed to be examined to obtain the missing information.

The end result would be a comprehensive data looking for the location, so detailed that modern era conditions are available these days on an hourly basis.

Cruz and Schwadron are attempting to secure more funding to carry on the work they do, but for the time being, they're making their data set open to everyone along with other scientists hoping raising awareness concerning the unpredicted results of ocean level rise.

The Nation's Park Service has additionally released a sales brochure on global warming and also the impact that ocean level rise might have around the spend mounds available at Cape Canaveral.

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Bamford named new assistant administrator for NOAA's National Ocean Service

February 4, 2013

Holly A. Bamford, Ph.D., is the assistant administrator for NOAA's National Ocean Service.

Download here (Credit:NOAA)

Holly A. Bamford, Ph.D., has been named the new assistant NOAA administrator for the agency’s National Ocean Service, succeeding David M. Kennedy who was named the new NOAA deputy under secretary for operations. Prior to her appointment, Bamford served as deputy assistant administrator for NOS.

“Holly not only brings strong scientific credentials to this position, but she also has significant leadership and management expertise. She is particularly well qualified for this position and I'm confident in her ability to lead NOS as it works to support healthy communities and economies,” said Jane Lubchenco, Ph.D., under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator.

“It’s an honor to have been selected for this position,” said Bamford. “The National Ocean Service boasts a diverse portfolio of highly dedicated and extremely knowledge professionals who run excellent programs that serve Americans every day. NOS translates science into action, delivering the information, tools, and technical services needed to support our nation in a multitude of ways.”

As assistant administrator, Bamford oversees NOS, which serves as the lead federal agency providing science-based solutions to address economic, environmental, and social pressures on our oceans and coasts. NOS observes, measures, assesses, and manages the nation’s coastal, ocean, and Great Lakes areas;  provides critical navigation products and services which contribute $729 billion annually to the Gross Domestic Product; and conducts response and restoration activities to protect vital coastal resources.

As deputy assistant administrator, beginning in 2011, she managed the financial and business operations while improving the agency’s performance to meet its ocean science and service missions. During that tenure, she also led a comprehensive review of headquarters functions that identified efficiencies and oversaw implementation of the recommended changes that resulted in enhanced operations and program coordination. 

As the first director of NOAA’s Marine Debris Program in the Office of Response and Restoration, she brought national recognition to the program and the issues related to marine debris, accomplishments that were recognized with a NOAA Administrator’s Award in 2008. Through her work as marine debris director and division chief, Bamford has served on a number of scientific and advisory committees and presented at a number of national and international meetings, academic institutions, as well as addressed the public through national media outlets including CNN, ABC, PBS NewsHour, Good Morning America, Rolling Stone, People, and the Wall Street Journal. 

Her work in establishing the coordinated federal interagency marine debris effort and in addressing the issues behind the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” earned her finalist status in 2010 for the prestigious Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medal and was highlighted by the Washington Post in its December 21, 2009 Federal Player Profile column.

Bamford has also served on a number of science and advisory committees, including chairperson of the Federal Interagency Marine Debris Coordinating Committee, the U.S. EPA Chesapeake Bay Program Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee, the Potomac Advisory Council, a member of the U.S. delegation at the sixth session of the Law of the Sea, and at the 2007 Ocean Policy Forum in South Korea. 

Throughout her academic and federal service, Bamford has received a number of prestigious awards for the demonstration of exceptional management, leadership, and partnership skills, including a NOAA Bronze Medal, two NOAA Administrator’s Awards, two Coastal America Presidential Partnership Awards, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Gulf Guardian Award.

After graduating from Franklin and Marshall College in 1993 with an undergraduate degree in business administration, Bamford earned both her master’s degree and doctorate in environmental chemistry from the University of Maryland, quantifying the physical and chemical processes that control the transport and fate of organic contaminants. She also spent time as a guest researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology developing analytical methods to detect trace organic contaminants in water and air particles.  

Bamford has a number of peer-reviewed publications that have been widely referenced in the field of environmental chemistry and water quality, including papers in Environmental Science & Technology, Atmospheric Environment, and Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry. In her first position at NOAA, Bamford served as a senior member of the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research executive scientific support team.   

Bamford and her family live in Silver Spring, Md.

NOAA’s mission is to understand and predict changes in the Earth's environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and to conserve and manage our coastal and marine resources. Join us on Facebook, Twitter and our other social media channels.

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Ocean and coastal observing technology efforts awarded $27.2 million

September 30, 2013

IOOS is a federal, regional, and private-sector partnership working to enhance our ability to collect, deliver, and use ocean information.

High resolution (Credit: NOAA)

NOAA is awarding $27.2 million to sustain current critical ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes observing efforts and to support innovative marine sensor technologies, with a goal of helping us better understand our coastal and marine environment. The funding is provided through the U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS®), other federal agencies, and NOAA programs.

“IOOS brings federal and regional ocean observations together to give decision-makers the critical data they need to save lives and build their communities,” said Zdenka Willis, U.S. IOOS program director. “These awards will sustain those observations, and speed the transition of new promising technologies into the ocean, where they can serve our coastal communities day in and day out.”

Highlights of the awards

This year’s awards include $2.9 million for marine sensor innovation projects to enhance our understanding of the coastal and marine environment.  

$1 million to the Southeastern Universities Research Association to make operational the U.S. IOOS Coastal and Ocean Modeling Testbed, an infrastructure for the testing and improvement of non-federal and federal models and prediction tools;

$1 million to the Alliance for Coastal Technologies for technology transfer and accelerating development of promising new marine observing technologies;

$340,000 provided through the Northeast IOOS Regional Association in support of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and McLane Industries efforts to transition cutting-edge observing platforms monitoring the emergence of harmful algal blooms and improve harmful algal bloom forecasts in the Gulf of Maine;

$574,000 to fund projects in five IOOS Western regional associations. These projects will develop ocean acidification sensor technology to support West Coast and Alaska shellfish industry monitoring needs, improve measurements of the state of ocean acidification in the Pacific Islands, and develop workforce capacity to work with ocean acidification sensors.

In addition to the marine sensor innovation projects introduced this year, the U.S. IOOS awarded $24.3 million to sustain critical coastal, ocean, and Great Lakes efforts.  As part of this effort, the U.S. IOOS Program and NASA will continue to jointly fund, at $250,000 each per year, projects to improve satellite sea surface temperature data from existing and new sensors, produce a blended output of sea surface temperature data from U.S. and international datasets, and target these products for coastal applications and regional IOOS usage. The total breakdown of the $27.2 million is:

Alaska Ocean Observing System ($2.2 million)

Alliance for Coastal Technologies ($1 million)

Caribbean Regional Association ($1.6 million)

Central and Northern California Ocean Observing System ($2.3 million)

Gulf of Mexico Coastal Observing System ($1.5 million)

Great Lakes Observing System ($1.6 million)

Mid-Atlantic Regional Association for Coastal Ocean Observing Systems ($3 million)

Multi-sensor Improved Sea Surface Temperature ($500,000)

Northwest Association of Networked Ocean Observing Systems ($3.1 million)

Northeastern Regional Association of Coastal Ocean Observing Systems ($2.4 million)

Pacific Islands Ocean Observing System ($2.2 million)

Southern California Coastal Ocean Observing System ($2.3 million)

Southeastern Coastal Ocean Observing Regional Association ($2.5 million)

Southeastern Universities Research Association ($1 million)

Funding supports NOAA's efforts to develop a national IOOS for tracking, predicting, managing and adapting to changes in the marine environment. IOOS delivers data and information needed to increase understanding of the Nation’s waters to improve safety, enhance the economy, and protect our environment.

NOAA’s mission is to understand and predict changes in the Earth's environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and to conserve and manage our coastal and marine resources. Join us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and our other social media channels.

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Indian Ocean earthquakes triggered quakes globally

AP

Residents flee to higher ground after tsunami warnings April 11. A quake off Indonesia's western coast shook this Thai province of Phuket.

AP

Residents flee to higher ground after tsunami warnings April 11. A quake off Indonesia's western coast shook this Thai province of Phuket.

Giant earthquakes that rocked the Indian Ocean in April had global effects, triggering sizable quakes off the Oregon and Mexican coasts and elsewhere, geologists reported Wednesday.

The undersea quakes on April 11, which measured magnitude 8.6 and 8.2, struck about 300 miles southwest of Indonesia's Aceh province. The larger quake was among the 20 most powerful recorded in the past century, and the pair triggered tsunami warnings around the Indian Ocean. Those were soon canceled when only small waves washed onto coastal beaches. But their effects now appear to have been more far-reaching, an idea once seen as unlikely by geologists.

"The energy from the earthquakes radiated sideways around the planet and likely triggered many more events," says Fred Pollitz of the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif. He led the analysis in the journal Nature, which looked for links between the quakes April 11 and the jump in quakes of magnitude 5.5 or stronger seen worldwide in the days afterward. The number was five times higher than normal.

The Indonesia quakes were so-called slip-strike quakes in which portions of the Earth's crust slide sideways against each other. The unusual sideways motion of the quakes April 11 prevented them from raising large tsunami waves but appears to have more efficiently sent the "ground waves" they created traveling worldwide. Normally, aftershocks or quakes triggered by large quakes are contained within a relatively local zone.

"Essentially, we're seeing here the entire globe become an aftershock zone of these two earthquakes," says seismologist Aaron Velasco of the University of Texas-El Paso, who was not part of the study. " A decade ago we would have laughed at thinking there was a connection, but we see pretty clear links in this case."

One related quake was the magnitude-7.0 quake that struck in the Gulf of California on April 12. The study says the odds are 1 in 300 of a swarm of quakes like that one happening by chance so soon after the Indian Ocean events. These triggered quakes fell most heavily in regions that seismological measures show were the most stressed by ground waves from the quakes April 11.

Earthquake experts hotly debate a possible link between the magnitude-9.1 Indian Ocean earthquake in 2004 that killed 230,000 people and a large increase in quakes since, says Georgia Tech earthquake expert Zhigang Peng. The triggered events seen from the quakes April 11 don't settle that debate, he says, but the analysis "provides a hope for scientists to search for further evidence, or lack of evidence, to link those great earthquakes."

For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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Indian Ocean earthquakes triggered quakes globally

AP

Residents flee to higher ground after tsunami warnings April 11. A quake off Indonesia's western coast shook this Thai province of Phuket.

AP

Residents flee to higher ground after tsunami warnings April 11. A quake off Indonesia's western coast shook this Thai province of Phuket.

Giant earthquakes that rocked the Indian Ocean in April had global effects, triggering sizable quakes off the Oregon and Mexican coasts and elsewhere, geologists reported Wednesday.

The undersea quakes on April 11, which measured magnitude 8.6 and 8.2, struck about 300 miles southwest of Indonesia's Aceh province. The larger quake was among the 20 most powerful recorded in the past century, and the pair triggered tsunami warnings around the Indian Ocean. Those were soon canceled when only small waves washed onto coastal beaches. But their effects now appear to have been more far-reaching, an idea once seen as unlikely by geologists.

"The energy from the earthquakes radiated sideways around the planet and likely triggered many more events," says Fred Pollitz of the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif. He led the analysis in the journal Nature, which looked for links between the quakes April 11 and the jump in quakes of magnitude 5.5 or stronger seen worldwide in the days afterward. The number was five times higher than normal.

The Indonesia quakes were so-called slip-strike quakes in which portions of the Earth's crust slide sideways against each other. The unusual sideways motion of the quakes April 11 prevented them from raising large tsunami waves but appears to have more efficiently sent the "ground waves" they created traveling worldwide. Normally, aftershocks or quakes triggered by large quakes are contained within a relatively local zone.

"Essentially, we're seeing here the entire globe become an aftershock zone of these two earthquakes," says seismologist Aaron Velasco of the University of Texas-El Paso, who was not part of the study. " A decade ago we would have laughed at thinking there was a connection, but we see pretty clear links in this case."

One related quake was the magnitude-7.0 quake that struck in the Gulf of California on April 12. The study says the odds are 1 in 300 of a swarm of quakes like that one happening by chance so soon after the Indian Ocean events. These triggered quakes fell most heavily in regions that seismological measures show were the most stressed by ground waves from the quakes April 11.

Earthquake experts hotly debate a possible link between the magnitude-9.1 Indian Ocean earthquake in 2004 that killed 230,000 people and a large increase in quakes since, says Georgia Tech earthquake expert Zhigang Peng. The triggered events seen from the quakes April 11 don't settle that debate, he says, but the analysis "provides a hope for scientists to search for further evidence, or lack of evidence, to link those great earthquakes."

For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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Indian Ocean tsunami warning system tested (AP)

JAKARTA, Indonesia – Nations along the Indian Ocean are testing a U.N.-backed early tsunami warning system put in place after the massive 2004 wave off western Indonesia that left more than 230,000 people dead or missing.

Wednesday's exercise — the first full-scale test of the system — tested communication and emergency response. Evacuation drills were held in India and Malaysia, with bulletins sent by telephone, email, SMS and fax to more than 20 countries taking part.

The switch was flipped by officials at Indonesia's Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency at 8:05 a.m. — the same time a magnitude-9.2 earthquake triggered a tsunami on Dec. 26, 2004, that barreled into a dozen nations.

The agency said the test would last until 8 p.m. and that no glitches were immediately detected.

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Hurricane Irwin forms in Pacific Ocean (AP)

MIAMI – Forecasters say Irwin has been upgraded to a hurricane in the Pacific Ocean, becoming the eighth hurricane of the Eastern Pacific season.

The National Hurricane Center in Miami says early Friday that Irwin had maximum sustained winds of 80 mph (130 kph) and was centered about 910 miles (1,460 km) southwest of the southern tip of Baja California.

It is moving west-northwest at 10 mph (17 kph).

There are currently no coastal watches or warnings in effect from the storm.

Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Jova was continuing to gradually strengthen in the Pacific. It had maximum sustained winds of 50 mph (85 kph) and was centered about 520 miles (835 km) southwest of Manzanillo, Mexico. It was moving west-northwest at 12 mph (19 kph). Jova could become a hurricane by Saturday.

In the Atlantic, Hurricane Philippe was far off the U.S. coast and was not expected to threaten land.

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