Continents of garbage adrift in oceans

As much as 10 per cent of plastics produced end up inside giant marine vortexes
Alex Roslin , Canwest News ServicePublished: Monday, November 17, 2008

Scientists are growing alarmed about massive floating dumps that are believed to be building up in centres of nearly all of the world's oceans.
The best-known patch, known by some as the Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch, consists of an estimated 100 million tonnes of plastic debris that has accumulated inside a circular vortex of currents known as the North Pacific gyre. Environmentalists call it the Pacific Trash Vortex.
It is estimated to be anywhere from 700,000 square kilometres -- an area larger than Alberta -- up to 15 million square kilometres (the size of two Australias), depending on how it is measured. Plastic from the vortex is increasingly washing up on Hawaiian atolls and being found in the guts of seabirds and fish.

An estimated 100,000 marine mammals die each year from eating or being entangled in debris -- mostly plastic -- in the North Pacific alone. Hence the vortex's other nickname: the Plastic Killing Fields.
Plastic in the sea doesn't biodegrade like other garbage. Instead, it slowly breaks up into tinier and tinier pieces that float on the ocean surface or sink to the sea bottom and can take years to reach the ocean gyres.
These vortexes are increasingly seen as environmental disaster zones. Plastic contains many toxic chemicals; it also soaks up other dangerous substances already present in the ocean, like carcinogenic PCBs and DDT.
Eighty per cent of the plastic in the ocean gyres is believed to come from the land, while the remainder is litter from cargo ships, cruise boats and other vessels.
Richard Thompson, a marine biologist at England's University of Plymouth, is one of the few scientists studying plastic in oceans.
In a 2004 study, Thompson found microscopic pieces of plastic in the water that had been scooped up with plankton samples in the North Atlantic starting in the 1960s, but there was four times as much plastic in recent samples, coinciding with a 25-fold increase in plastic production worldwide between 1960 and 2000.
Even more alarming, the water samples were from an area of the Atlantic north of Britain that isn't even in the gyre. No one has studied the amount of plastic in the Atlantic gyre itself.
Ocean currents and winds are slowly bringing debris -- estimated to be 10 per cent of the world's plastic production -- to the centre of five major ocean gyres in the North and South Atlantic, North and South Pacific and the Indian Oceans, said Marieta Francis, executive director of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, based in Long Beach, Calif.
But despite the ever-growing plastic blobs in other oceans, the Pacific gyre is the only one that has been studied.
The Algalita foundation's founder, a yachter named Charles Moore, chanced upon the Pacific Garbage Patch during a 1997 boat race.
"Here I was in the middle of the ocean, and there was nowhere I could go to avoid the plastic," he told the U.S. News and World Report.
The vortex was in the North Pacific gyre, where a high-pressure zone forces debris into a central area that has low currents and winds.

Moore returned with a scientific vessel to study the vortex and found up to 970,000 pieces of plastic per square kilometre in some areas. That was triple the density found in a landmark 1988 study in the western Pacific by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That study found one area 1,000 kilometres east of Japan that had 315,000 pieces of plastic per square kilometre.
While much of the debris is large and conspicuous, most of it has disintegrated after years of washing around in the ocean.
The plastic pieces are usually five millimetres across or less -- about the width of a pea -- and must be scooped up in nets finer than a window screen.

It's not quite what people think. It's like a soup," said Algalita's Francis.
In the Atlantic, the only research on plastic garbage is more than 30 years old. A survey in the northeastern Atlantic in the early 1970s found 160,000 pieces of plastic per square kilometre in some areas.
Back in Canada, the growing plastic vortexes still seem far from the official radar. At the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, oceanographer Denis Gilbert, one of Canada's leading experts on the Atlantic environment, said he'd never even heard about plastic accumulating in the Atlantic gyre.
"We have no one working on that," he said.

State unprepared for effects of warming, report says

Jane Kay, Chronicle Environment Writer
Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Despite its tough goals to reduce greenhouse gases, California is not prepared to deal with the flooding, coastal erosion and loss of wildlife habitat that scientists are predicting in the coming decades as a result of higher global temperatures, a new report says.

Inundation of the coastal shoreline from accelerating sea-level rise and storm surges threaten property, recreational activities and wildlife enclaves, yet agencies are just starting to assess these climate risks and inform local communities, said a study released Monday by the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonprofit research group.
The report examines the state's capability to provide water and electricity to the public as well as protecting coastal resources, air quality, public health and ecosystems in response to climate change and extreme weather events such as wildfires. It is based on previous studies done by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, UC Davis and Scripps Institution of Oceanography, among other researchers.
"We need to help agencies get prepared to deal with climate change," said Louise Bedsworth, a research fellow at the institute and co-author of the report. "In some areas, we need to be acting now."
Providers of water and electricity are the furthest along in responding to the projections for changing weather patterns in California, according to the report.
Water managers are beginning to plan for the warmer winters that are expected to bring more rainfall and less snow, dramatically reducing - perhaps by half - the Sierra snowpack.
The mountain ice has provided free water storage that gets cities and farms through the dry summer months and supplies salmon and other wildlife with fresh water. Now water agencies are using tools of conservation, recycling water, desalination and groundwater banking.
Electricity providers are preparing for peak use in the summer months, particularly in inland areas, the report said. They are encouraging energy-efficient construction and lighting, and alerting customers to cut back during the peaks.
In recent years, water agency managers have become increasingly aware of how climate change will affect their agencies and consumers, said Peter Gleick, executive director of the Pacific Institute, a nonprofit research center in Oakland.
"But there's a big difference between awareness and action. I don't think enough is being done on the ground to reduce the vulnerability of our water supplies," Gleick said.
Scientists project that sea level could rise between 8 and 16 inches by mid-century, but efforts to control flooding are lagging, the report said. Flood managers haven't started to change land-use plans to ward off possible devastating floods, particularly in fast-growing parts of the Central Valley, the report added.
The state is also behind in protecting coastal resources, the report said. The California Coastal Commission and Bay Conservation and Development Commission have been urging communities and agencies to incorporate sea-level rise into development plans but the measures are in infancy stages, the report said.
In March, the BCDC is hosting an international symposium with Holland to tap into that nation's hundreds of years experience in dealing with rising seas and compare research on problems and solutions, said BCDC Executive Director Will Travis.
California's preparation to protect wildlife from climate change is also inadequate, the report said. As temperatures rise, plants and animals will begin to try to shift to cooler, higher elevations.
If conservation of habitat doesn't take climate into account, the wrong lands could be protected, the report said. The federal government has resisted considering climate change as a threat under the Endangered Species Act.
What happens in California is key, the report said, because other states and even nations have been looking to California for regulatory and technical ways to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
California law requires an 80 percent reduction of carbon emissions below 1990 levels by 2050. The state Air Resources Board next month will release its latest plan on reductions from improved energy efficiency in buildings, increased renewable energy sources and more fuel-efficient vehicles.
After President-elect Barack Obama takes office in January, the federal government is expected to grant waivers to the states to allow tougher regulations on greenhouses gases. California has been hampered by lawsuits from the auto industry, which has spent millions of dollars fighting state laws requiring cuts in tailpipe carbon emissions, a change that improves fuel efficiency.
On Monday, California Attorney General Jerry Brown, along with his counterparts in other states, sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urging a requirement in any proposed auto industry bailout measure to include provisions to combat global warming. The states want automakers to drop their opposition to California's greenhouse gas emission standards and produce energy-efficient vehicles that cut emissions by 30 percent by 2016.
The Public Policy Institute of California's study was paid for in part with funds from the Nature Conservancy, PG&E and Next Ten, a business group.
Read the report online
View "Preparing California for a Changing Climate" at links.sfgate.com/ZFJX.
E-mail Jane Kay at jkay@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page B - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/11/18/BAPT146BFJ.DTL&feed=rss.news

Slow progress on ocean protection

By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News website



Less than 1% of the world's oceans have been given protected status, according to a major survey.
Governments have committed to a target of protecting 10% by 2012, which the authors of the new report say there is no chance of meeting.
Protecting ecologically important areas can help fish stocks to regenerate, and benefit the tourism industry.
The survey was led by The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and is published in the journal Conservation Letters.
"For those of us working in the issue full-time it's not a surprise, we've known all along that marine protection is lagging behind what's happening on land, but it's nice to have it pinned down," said TNC's Mark Spalding.
"It's depressing that we've still got so far to go, but there are points of hope," he told BBC News.

Coastal concentration
Four years ago, signatories to the UN's biodiversity convention - which includes almost every country - pledged to protect at least 10% of the oceans in a way that makes sense ecologically
Protecting them does not mean banning activities such as fishing or shipping completely, but making sure they are carried out sustainably.
All of the areas currently protected fall into countries' Exclusive Economic Zones, and the majority are along coasts, the study finds.
Even so, only about 4% of coastal waters are protected.
Countries diverge widely in how much protection they have mandated.
Whereas New Zealand has almost 70% of its coastline under some form of protection, countries around the Mediterranean have set aside less than 2%.
In the developing world, Dr Spalding cites Guinea-Bissau as a country that has had invested in protection, particularly in the Bijagos Archipelago, which is home to a community of hippos dwelling along its mangrove coast, as well as more conventional marine species.
Palau, Indonesia, Micronesia and several Caribbean states are also making significant progress, he said.
About 12% of the Earth's land surface has been put under protection.
Richard.Black-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

Marine Protected areas

http://www.davidsuzuki.org/Oceans/Healthy_Oceans/Marine_Conservation/
Marine protected areas (MPAs) are a key tool to help protect ecosystems from the effects of industrial activity. They can protect exploited species during critical stages of their life, reduce secondary impacts of fishing, such as habitat degradation brought about by trawl fisheries, and act as “insurance” against poor and inadequate management. By their simplest definition, marine protected areas are areas of ocean that are free from destructive forms of resource exploitation.
Not only can marine protected areas protect sedentary species such as shellfish, reef fish and rockfish, they can also help protect migratory species such as salmon and cod through the protection of key spawning and rearing grounds and migration corridors.
MPAs have been shown to increase the density of organisms within their boundaries, increase the average size of organisms, and increase the numbers of many exploited species. One benefit of MPAs is to return the protected ecosystem to its pre-exploited state, providing a baseline by which to judge the effectiveness of management in surrounding areas.
One of the greatest attractions of marine protected areas from a fisheries perspective is their ability to enhance fish populations outside of the reserve. Spillover into areas adjacent to MPAs can be expected to occur if the density and size of organisms increases within established reserves.
MPAs can also be important scientific tools, by providing information about the structure of unexploited ecosystems and how they compare to their exploited analogues.
MPAs are not, however a panacea for damaged marine ecosystems. An oil spill does not have the good sense to turn away at the boundary of a marine reserve. Protection of habitat outside of reserves, control of industrial activity and reforms to fishing practices are essential complements to the establishment of reserves.
Despite increasing evidence of the success of the management technique, less than one 10,000th of the world’s oceans are fully protected in MPAs, and Canada has protected less than 0.1 per cent of its oceans. Some countries, however, have come further than most. The New Zealand parliament has announced its intent to protect 10 per cent of its coastline in MPAs before 2010, while Australia has announced a plan to create the world’s largest marine reserve. Canada is off to a slow start.
The successful establishment of MPAs that are scientifically sound and provide maximum benefit requires good science and a well structured, transparent planning process based on the principles of ecosystem-based management. While Canada is committed to these planning measures in the Oceans Act and Oceans Strategy, it has not developed or funded them.
Join us in urging Canada’s government to adequately fund ecosystem-based oceans planning to protect our common heritage while allowing Canadians to make a living from our oceans.

Wild Salmon

Wild Pacific salmon – the Spirit of B.C.

Wild Pacific salmon are inextricably woven into the culture and the economy of the West Coast. Few images are as evocative as the salmon in full spawning colours. They’re icons in our art, our cuisine and storytelling. The salmon fishery was a founding industry of what would become the province of British Columbia. Long before that, salmon was a key resource for Aboriginal people – one that was treated with reverence. Every First Nation kept the custom of returning all the bones of the first salmon caught to the river. Respect for the Salmon Spirit ensured abundance of food and the fish’s perpetual return.
The relationship between these extraordinary fish and humans dates to the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago. Since that time, Pacific salmon have evolved into more than 9,600 distinct populations and live in nearly every Canadian watershed that drains into the Pacific Ocean.
Today, the wild Pacific salmon fishery is worth $184.4 million a year and is an important part of the economy for many coastal communities. Salmon is eaten fresh, smoked or canned in B.C., across Canada and around the world.
But wild Pacific salmon are in trouble. The West Coast of Vancouver Island once boasted 1,200 stocks. Now, some 718 -- more than half -- are extinct, at moderate risk of extinction or considered stocks of special concern. Province-wide, at least 142 salmon populations have vanished forever. If salmon are to survive in the wild, they need help.
The David Suzuki Foundation is working to conserve Pacific salmon
The Foundation is committed to the conservation and protection of wild Pacific salmon and their habitats. We are currently working with government, industry and other conservation organizations to improve habitat protection and fisheries management.

What you can do to help salmon
Join with the Foundation in convincing the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to take action to preserve our wild salmon stocks. Ask them to take these three simple steps:
1. Stop paving over salmon streams and overfishing (preserve habitat and improve fisheries management).2. Start taking global warming into account in salmon-protection plans.3. Go out in the field to enforce the laws protecting salmon (renew the will to enforce the Fisheries Act and other legislation that would halt the destruction of salmon habitat and over-exploitation of the resource).
Other ways to help include:
Make waves. Send an
e-mail to the Fisheries Minister and ask the Canadian government to provide more resources for implementation of the Pacific Wild Salmon Policy.Work with local governments and encourage them to pass bylaws that protect our “Salmon Neighbourhoods”. Check out our municipal salmon handbook: Zoned RS-1 (Residential Salmon).

SALMONOPOLIS – helping salmon where they live
The David Suzuki Foundation has developed http://www.salmonopolis.ca/, a web tool designed to support education, capacity building and advocacy resources for people who want to help salmon where they live.
Salmonopolis.ca is also a Crime Stoppers for fish. The site has a “Report-a-Violation” section that allows citizens to make habitat-damage reports, contact lists to help them connect with and support local stream-stewardship groups, and an “Ask-an-Expert” feature where an appropriate scientist or policy expert posts answers to visitors' questions. Check it out.

www.davidsuzuki.org

Ocean Acidity Rising at Surprising Pace

Jessica Marshall, Discovery News

Nov. 25, 2008 -- Measurements of ocean acidification in the U.S. Pacific Northwest show acidity is rising more than ten times faster than climate models have predicted.
The researchers can't yet say how widespread this trend is. But as the waters acidified over the eight years the team measured, the numbers of barnacles, mussels and algae inhabiting the area also changed.
Ocean acidity rises as sea water absorbs more carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere from power plants and automobiles. Lead author Timothy Wootton of the University of Chicago did not intend to measure the effects of ocean acidification when he installed his ocean monitor in the waters near Tatoosh Island off the northwest tip of Washington state in 2000.
But as global concern over ocean acidification grew, "I realized we'd been sitting on all this data that we could use to determine whether it was happening," Wootton said. His instruments recorded changes in pH -- a measure of acidity that lowers as acidity rises.

"The expectation was that the pH would change so slowly that it would be hard to see a change. Almost to our surprise we found the signal that it was going on," Wootton said. "We were sort of surprised to find in general just how much it was changing over time."
From there, Wooton looked at his biological observations to try to assess how much these pH changes matter to the ecosystem of the area. His team published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
He found certain species that would be expected to be the most pH-sensitive did indeed show the worst performance. These included mussels and certain barnacles -- large species with calcified shells. Scientists believe acidification interferes with the formation of such shells.
But the trend was not entirely predictable.
The acorn barnacle increased in abundance, along with several types of noncalciferous algae. Wootton suggests that the acorn barnacle may also suffer from low pH conditions, but not as much as the other types of barnacles, which normally outcompete it. With the other species taking a bigger hit, the acorn barnacle can move in.
Another possibility, Wootten added, is that these species are easy prey for shelled predators like snails, which may also be less abundant in a more acidic environment.

Such complicated interactions would not have emerged from studies of individual organisms, said Christopher Harley of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, "That's the stroke of genius of this paper."
"I think the ecological observations are quite important, also for future projections," agreed Peter Brewer of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in Moss Landing, Calif., who was not involved in the study. "For example, the study indicates which species may be most affected in a low-pH/high-CO2 world."
But how does Wootton explain why his measured pH changes are so much larger than what models have predicted?
"That's something that, frankly, is a big mystery and presumably will spark some thought or explanation of what might be going on," said Brewer.
Richard Zeebe of the University of Hawaii at Manoa pointed out that Wootten's study was on a coastal site, not in the open ocean, so "one needs to be cautious about extrapolating the pH findings to other locations."
The part of the ocean that Wootton studied also experiences a great deal of upwelling, so it's not completely suprising to find changes in acidity. But, Brewer said, "I think the changes are bigger than we expected."
The unexpected scale of the pH changes suggest that scientists may be in for more surprises as global warming continues to alter ocean environments.
"If I look at how the wider scale of impacts may occur," Brewer added, "it is clear that we are in for big changes that are not yet well understood."

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/11/25/ocean-acidity.html

Chemicals Entering Coastal Waters: Freshwater And Saltwater Interactions In Coastal Groundwater

ScienceDaily (Sep. 2, 2005) —
Scientists have recently recognized an imbalance in the flow of salty groundwater into the coastal ocean: considerable saltwater discharge into the ocean has been observed, but little or no return flow has been seen. Now it appears that the timing of the discharge may be key to the health of our coastal waters.New measurements and models suggest that seasonal changes in the water table may provide clues to how water is exchanged and why the largest discharge occurs during the summer, when the coastal ocean may be most vulnerable to the dissolved chemicals in the groundwater because biological activity is at its highest and river inflow at its lowest.
Fresh and salty groundwater flows into coastal waters as submarine groundwater discharge and is an important source of nutrients, contaminants and trace elements to the coastal ocean. Recent research has revealed that a large portion of submarine groundwater discharge is saline water. Although this water was once ocean water, the mechanism controlling its flow into and out of the sediments has not been previously determined. Using seepage meters and geochemical tracers, scientists have directly measured and inferred groundwater flow from land to sea. But they have not previously been able to observe the opposite, large-scale flow or intrusion of seawater into coastal aquifers to balance this exchange.
In a paper published August 25, 2005 in Nature, scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) made both direct and indirect measurements of flows back and forth at Waquoit Bay, Massachusetts at various seasons of the year and compared those results with a general model of a coastal groundwater system. Their findings reveal a lag in the inflows and outflows related to seasonal changes in the water table.
Study co-author Ann Mulligan of the WHOI Marine Policy Center says seawater is drawn into aquifers as the freshwater-saltwater interface or boundary moves landward during winter. The water discharges back into coastal waters as the boundary moves seaward in summer. Since summer is typically associated with higher temperatures and evaporation, saltwater should intrude inland rather than discharge at the coast. However, the numerical model reveals that there may be a time lag of several months between precipitation, groundwater recharge, and associated impacts on saltwater flowing into or out of the aquifer.
“We looked at several mechanisms other than seasonal exchange that could drive saltwater circulation, including tides, wave run-up on the beach, and entrainment or trapping of saltwater into fresh,” Mulligan said. “ But each of these flows balanced over a tidal cycle and occurs in a well-defined relatively small area, and could not account for the large discharge we observed during summer in Waquoit Bay.“
The study was conducted at the Waquoit Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve in Falmouth, Massachusetts and supported by the National Science Foundation.
The authors say the global extent of seasonal exchange of freshwater and saltwater is unknown but could be an important factor in transporting nutrients and contaminants trapped in sediments into coastal waters. Because the chemistry of coastal waters is affected, it is important to understand the link between the seasonal hydrologic cycle on land and the saline groundwater system in coastal aquifers. Now that a major driving mechanism of saline water flow has been determined, important follow-up studies will look at the chemical content of the inflowing and outflowing water over a yearly cycle. Most previous studies have looked at chemical loading from groundwater over short time-periods, but this study shows that a major process is occurring on a yearly cycle.
“The impact on coastal chemistry could be enormous,” Mulligan says. “Along the U.S. east coast the greatest saltwater discharge may occur in summer, when biological activity is at its highest and river inflow at its lowest. The input of nutrients at certain times of the year may be key to the health of our coastal waters.”

Climate Change Threatens Drinking Water, As Rising Sea Penetrates Coastal Aquifers

ScienceDaily (Nov. 7, 2007) — As sea levels rise, coastal communities could lose up to 50 percent more of their fresh water supplies than previously thought, according to a new study from Ohio State University.

Hydrologists here have simulated how saltwater will intrude into fresh water aquifers, given the sea level rise predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC has concluded that within the next 100 years, sea level could rise

as much as 23 inches, flooding coasts worldwide.
Scientists previously assumed that, as saltwater moved

inland, it would penetrate underground only as far as it did

above ground.
But this new research shows that when saltwater and fresh water meet, they mix in complex ways, depending on the texture of the sand along the coastline. In some cases, a zone of mixed, or brackish, water can extend 50 percent further inland underground than it does above ground.
Like saltwater, brackish water is not safe to drink because it causes dehydration. Water that contains less than 250 milligrams of salt per liter is considered fresh water and safe to drink.
Motomu Ibaraki, associate professor of earth sciences at Ohio State, led the study. Graduate student Jun Mizuno presented the results October 30, 2007, at the Geological Society of America meeting in Denver.
“Almost 40 percent of the world population lives in coastal areas, less than 60 kilometers from the shoreline,” Mizuno said. “These regions may face loss of freshwater resources more than we originally thought.”
“Most people are probably aware of the damage that rising sea levels can do above ground, but not underground, which is where the fresh water is,” Ibaraki said. “Climate change is already diminishing fresh water resources, with changes in precipitation patterns and the melting of glaciers. With this work, we are pointing out another way that climate change can potentially reduce available drinking water. The coastlines that are vulnerable include some of the most densely populated regions of the world.”
In the United States, lands along the East Coast and the Gulf of Mexico -- especially Florida and Louisiana -- are most likely to be flooded as sea levels rise. Vulnerable areas worldwide include Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and northern Europe.
“Almost 40 percent of the world population lives in coastal areas, less than 60 kilometers from the shoreline,” Mizuno said. “These regions may face loss of freshwater resources more than we originally thought.”
Scientists have used the IPCC reports to draw maps of how the world's coastlines will change as waters rise, and they have produced some of the most striking images of the potential consequences of climate change.
Ibaraki said that he would like to create similar maps that show how the water supply could be affected.
That's not an easy task, since scientists don't know exactly where all of the world's fresh water is located, or how much is there. Nor do they know the details of the subterranean structure in many places.
One finding of this study is that saltwater will penetrate further into areas that have a complex underground structure.
Typically, coastlines are made of different sandy layers that have built up over time, Ibaraki explained. Some layers may contain coarse sand and others fine sand. Fine sand tends to block more water, while coarse sand lets more flow through.
The researchers simulated coastlines made entirely of coarse or fine sand, and different textures in between. They also simulated more realistic, layered underground structures.
The simulation showed that, the more layers a coastline has, the more the saltwater and fresh water mix. The mixing causes convection -- similar to the currents that stir water in the open sea. Between the incoming saltwater and the inland fresh water, a pool of brackish water forms.
Further sea level rise increases the mixing even more.
Depending on how these two factors interact, underground brackish water can extend 10 to 50 percent further inland than the saltwater on the surface.
According to the United States Geological Survey, about half the country gets its drinking water from groundwater. Fresh water is also used nationwide for irrigating crops.
“In order to obtain cheap water for everybody, we need to use groundwater, river water, or lake water,” Ibaraki said. “But all those waters are disappearing due to several factors --including an increase in demand and climate change.”
One way to create more fresh water is to desalinate saltwater, but that's expensive to do, he said.
“To desalinate, we need energy, so our water problem would become an energy problem in the future.”

How Global Warming May Affect U.S. Beaches, Coastline

ScienceDaily (Nov. 24, 2008) — In “Dover Beach,” the 19th Century poet Matthew Arnold describes waves that “begin, and cease, and then again begin…and bring
the eternal note of sadness in.”
But in the warming world of the 21st Century, waves could be riding oceans that will rise anywhere from 0.5 meters (19 inches) to 1.4 meters (55 inches), and researchers believe there’s a good chance they will stir stronger feelings than melancholia.
Several scientists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego are finding that sea level rise will have different consequences in different places but that they will be profound on virtually all coastlines. Land in some areas of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States will simply be underwater.
On the West Coast, with its different topography and different climate regimes, problems will likely play out differently. The scientists’ most recent conclusions, even when conservative scenarios are involved, suggest that coastal development, popular beaches, vital estuaries, and even California’s supply of fresh water could be severely impacted by a combination of natural and human-made forces.
Scripps climate scientists often consider changes in average conditions over many years but, in this case, it’s the extremes that have them worried. A global sea level rise that makes gentle summer surf lap at a beachgoer’s knees rather than his or her ankles is one thing. But when coupled with energetic winter El Niño-fueled storms and high tides, elevated water levels would have dramatic consequences.
The result could transform the appearance of the beaches at the heart of California’s allure.
“As sea level goes up, some beaches are going to shrink,” said Scripps oceanographer Peter Bromirski. “Some will probably disappear.”
Sea level has been trending upward for millennia. For the last 6,000 years, it is estimated that global sea levels have rising an average of five centimeters (2 inches) per century. Before that, between 18,000 and 6,000 years ago, the seas rose a full 120 meters (400 feet). Step by step, they bit into rocky coastlines like California’s by smashing cliffs, creating beaches with the debris, rising a bit more, and repeating the process over and over again.
Humans are speeding up the pace of that assault. The United Nations-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported that sea level rose, on average, 1.7 millimeters (0.07 inches) per year over the entire 20th Century. But recent estimates from satellite observations find a marked increase, at 3.1 millimeters (0.12 inches) per year since 1993.
The oceans are rising because the warming ocean water increases in volume and because water is being added from melting glaciers and land-based ice sheets. The complex difficult-to-predict contribution of the latter is such a matter of controversy that the recent IPCC Fourth Assessment report didn’t factor glacial melt into its sea level rise estimates. Today there is quite broad-based opinion that the IPCC estimates are considerably lower than the higher range of possible sea level rise. Some individuals, pointing to the quantity of water frozen in Greenland and Antarctica and to ancient sea level evidence, have suggested that sea level rise could reach several meters by the end of the 21st Century. However, an August paper in the journal Science co-authored by former Scripps postdoctoral researcher Shad O’Neel suggests that some of the more exaggerated claims that water could rise upwards of 10 meters (33 feet) by century’s end are not in the realm of possibility. O’Neel and co-authors indicate that the realities of physics impose a cap of 2 meters (6.6 feet) for possible sea level rise by 2100.
“That’s fine,” said Scripps climate researcher Dan Cayan, who is leading an analysis of climate change scenarios for the state of California, “but two meters is still enough to do a lot of damage.”
Recent news footage of overtopped levees makes it easy to envision what two meters’ difference means to low-lying cities like New Orleans, especially when extreme events like hurricanes are factored in. Any flooding would be proportionately higher than it is now. Additionally Bromirski recently showed that sea level rise will amplify the power and frequency of hurricane-generated waves that reach shore, even if the storms themselves don’t make landfall.
In contrast to the beaches of the East Coast, many of which are covered with vast expanses of sand, California’s coastline is predominantly bedrock covered by a relatively thin veneer of sand. That sand can shift or disappear during storms. Thus, preserving the precious supply that keeps the tourists coming has for decades been a priority for state officials. Resource management, however, has required them to make trade-offs. They have constructed seawalls to protect houses built on ocean cliffs. They have dammed rivers to create supplies of water for drinking and to prevent floods and debris from damaging downstream developments.
In so doing, nature’s two primary sources of beach replenishment have been muted in a process known as passive erosion. Managers have compensated through artificial beach replenishment projects but at a costs that approach $10 per cubic yard. Since usually millions of cubic yards of sand need to be moved, there are monetary limits to what they can reasonably accomplish.
Reinhard Flick, who received his doctorate in oceanography from Scripps in 1978, needs only to look out his office window to watch the losing battle of beaches unfold. During his student days, he used to play volleyball on stretches of sand that are now underwater except during low tide. Rocks buried under several feet of sand four decades ago are now exposed for large parts of the year.
The staff oceanographer for the California Department of Boating and Waterways, Flick said that seawalls causing passive erosion will likely combine with sea level rise to doom some Southern California beaches. The change will become most apparent during El Niño events, when a pool of warm Pacific Ocean water settles off the coast for a year or two. El Niño has a dual effect on the West Coast. It not only feeds more intense storms but the warm ocean water itself causes a temporary spike in sea level that is above and beyond the rise that climate change is causing. During the 1997-98 El Niño, for instance, tide gauges off San Francisco recorded that sea level was 20 centimeters (8 inches) above normal for more than a year, including the winter storm season. That temporary rise is about equal to the rise observed for the entire 20th Century.
If sea levels rise substantially, when a large storm coincides with a high tide during an El Niño event, there could be widespread inundation along the California coast. Effects could range from a submersion of areas of San Diego’s Mission Beach to an inundation of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. There, an overtopping of the delta’s levees by brackish water could paralyze the main component of the state’s water delivery system. Cayan noted that repairs to the system could take months.
The threat resonates with state officials, who have tasked Scripps and other institutions with creating and updating sea level rise scenarios.
“There’s no clear path forward with sea level rise,” said Tony Brunello, deputy secretary for climate change and energy at the California Resources Agency, a key Scripps partner in developing the state’s response to manifestations of global warming. “You typically want to work with one number (but) what we want people to do is work with the whole range of estimates.”
Cayan and other Scripps researchers who are collaborating to study sea level rise emphasize that there remains a great deal of uncertainty in the creation of estimates for the coming century. The range of rise estimated by Cayan is based on scenarios of global air temperatures over the next 100 years, which range from about 2° C (3.6° F) to about 6° C (10° F). By 2100, global sea level rise reaching a half-meter seems likely, and if the higher rates of potential warming occur it could rise by more than one meter. The potential cost of any government project or policy change puts a high premium on narrowing this range. As O’Neel and his co-authors observed in their paper, the cost of raising Central Valley levees only 15 centimeters (6 inches) to prepare for higher sea levels has been estimated at more than $1 billion.
“These are very broad-brush preliminary kinds of studies right now, but you have to start somewhere,” said Scripps coastal oceanographer Bob Guza.
Flick said it will be essential for scientists to be able to study the effects of the next El Niño so they can begin to understand not just where damage will happen on the California coast but to what extent. He only had surveyor’s equipment and aerial photos available to him to measure beach changes after the 1982-83 El Niño, but Guza and his collaborators now have light detection and ranging (LIDAR) and GPS technologies to make precise surveys of beach and cliff damage. Guza and Flick hope that Scripps can not only enhance its use of such technology but to deploy it within hours of a major storm event.
“We need to be geared up to quantify what beach changes are,” said Flick. “We have to do an even better job of studying wave forces and wave climate.”
If there’s any good news for Southern California, Scripps climate scientist Nick Graham has estimated that ocean warming trends will drive storm tracks farther north, perhaps sparing the state’s lower half from the full brunt of buffeting El Niño waves the 21st Century will generate. Graham compared winds produced in three different simulations of climate change with those generated in the late 20th Century. The models showed that Southern California can expect a moderate decrease in wave size of about 0.25 meters (10 inches). But even there, Graham sees a problem.
“I’m a surfer. I think that’s horrible,” he said.

Fishermen warned to steer clear of sunken barge in N.S.

Updated Mon. Nov. 24 2008 5:25 PM ET
The Canadian Press
HALIFAX -- On the first day of the fall season for Atlantic Canada's biggest and most lucrative lobster fishery, federal officials warned Nova Scotia fishermen to stay away from an area where a dredging barge carrying 70,000 litres of diesel sank in rough seas on the weekend.
An emergency response team confirmed Monday that surveillance flights spotted a long, narrow slick of some kind of oily substance, but team members stressed that the volume probably amounted to less than four litres of light fuel.
"The amount of oil is very minimal at the surface," said Roger Percy, a regional manager with Environment Canada. "The leakage rate is not very great."
He said the barge may have sprung a slow leak, but he couldn't say for sure.
Joe LeClair, a Canadian Coast Guard spokesman, said the slick was about 15 metres wide and about 1,600 metres long.
The federal Fisheries Department is warning lobster fishermen not to come within one kilometre of the site, about 80 kilometres southeast of Yarmouth, N.S.
There were no lobster boats nearby when the barge sank, but the site is at the edge of lobster fishing area 34, a zone where lobstermen usually head near the end of the season.
"The issue of concern was the opening of the lobster season -- there's a lot of fishermen in the area," said Percy. "And we are monitoring in terms of other wildlife."
The coast guard icebreaker Edward Cornwallis is also in the area and more surveillance flights are expected later this week.
The dredging barge, known as the Shovel Master, is resting on the ocean bottom, about 150 metres from the surface. At that depth, recovering the vessel or pumping out the oil would be a challenge, said LeClair.
However, the owners of the barge -- a subsidiary of J.D. Irving Ltd. of New Brunswick -- told officials that they haven't ruled out any options, LeClair said.
The barge was under tow from Saint John, N.B., to Halifax last Wednesday when it ran into trouble. As it pitched and rolled in large swells, it was cut loose from its tow vessels.
At the time, winds were gusting at 83 kilometres per hour and wave heights reached three metres. Photos from the coast guard show the vessel getting swamped by heavy swells.
The 42-metre-long barge capsized Wednesday, but crew aboard three Atlantic Towing Ltd. tugs managed to secure the flipped craft.
However, it was cut loose again when it started sinking Saturday.
Transport Canada is investigating the circumstances surrounding the ill-fated voyage.
If federal officials determine there has been a significant spill, the coast guard and a private-sector company will begin a cleanup. The costs would be covered by the barge owner, Harbour Developments.
LeClair said the 70,000 litres of diesel aboard the vessel is a concern, but the amount is far less than what larger, ocean-going ships carry.
As well, a diesel spill of this size would cause less damage to the environment than a comparable spill of a heavier type of fuel oil, such as Bunker C or crude.
Diesel, like gasoline, tends to evaporate quickly once it rises to the surface.
"The good news is the diesel will dissipate in the water . . . which is good news from the point of environmental impact," said LeClair, the coast guard's superintendent of environmental response.
"The heavier the product, the more the impact to the environment because it becomes what we call a persistent oil -- it stays around longer."
LeClair said it was possible the barge could remain intact for decades to come, with little threat to the environment.
Officials said it would be misleading to compare the incident with the sinking and recovery of the Irving Whale, a barge that sank off the coast of P.E.I. in 1970.
That barge -- also owned by the Irving group of companies -- was actually a tanker, twice as long as the Shovel Master and carried 40 times the amount of fuel. As well, the Irving Whale was hauling Bunker C heavy oil when it went down.
"The amount of produce was vastly greater," said LeClair.
The 80-metre long Irving Whale was lifted to the surface from 67 metres of water in 1996.
The Shovel Master, weighing in at 592 gross tonnes, also contains 1,100 litres of hydraulic oil and 750 litres of waste oil. Though these are heavier oils, the amounts are relatively small, LeClair added.
Response to the sinking is being handled by the Regional Environmental Emergencies Team, a federal-provincial body that includes representatives from Environment Canada, Transport Canada, the Canadian Wildlife Service, the federal Fisheries Department and Nova Scotia's Environment Department.
Meanwhile, Atlantic Towing Ltd. has hired Eastern Canada Response Corp. to handle cleanup operations.

Study: Sunlight Has More Powerful Influence On Ocean Circulation And Climate Than North American Ice Sheets

Underwatertimes.com News ServiceNovember 7, 2008 17:48 EST

Santa Barbara, California -- A study reported in today's issue of Nature disputes a longstanding picture of how ice sheets influence ocean circulation during glacial periods.
The distribution of sunlight, rather than the size of North American ice sheets, is the key variable in changes in the North Atlantic deep-water formation during the last four glacial cycles, according to the article. The new study goes back 425,000 years, according to Lorraine Lisiecki, first author and assistant professor in the Department of Earth Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Lisiecki and her co-authors studied 24 separate locations in the Atlantic by analyzing information from ocean sediment cores. By observing the properties of the shells of tiny marine organisms, called foraminifera, found in these cores, they were able to deduce information about the North Atlantic deep water formation. Scientists can discern historical ocean temperature and circulation patterns through the analysis of the chemical composition of these marine animals.
Previously, scientists relied on a study called "Specmap," performed in 1992, to find out how different parts of the climate system interacted with one another during glacial cycles. Specmap analyzed ocean circulation at only one place in the Atlantic.
"What I found was that the one site that the Specmap study used actually didn't match most of the other sites in the Atlantic," said Lisiecki. "They just happened to have a strange site that didn't behave like most of the other sites. The other sites show that the circulation is not responding to the ice volume, but that it is responding to changes in the distribution of sunlight."
Previously, scientists believed that deep ocean circulation –– the amount of water formed in the North Atlantic that goes into the deep ocean –– varied or responded according to the amount of ice volume in the Northern Hemisphere. The prevailing idea was that when ice ages occur, with large sheets of ice over North America, the amount of North Atlantic deep water is reduced.
"That's an important part of circulation," said Lisiecki. "The Gulf Stream brings up warm water from the tropics and that water is turned into this North Atlantic deep water that then sinks and moves southward at depth so you have a cycle. Warm water moves northward and then cools and sinks. That's the North Atlantic deep water formation process."
When warm water in the Gulf Stream comes north, it brings heat to the North Atlantic and Europe and then sinks in the North Atlantic and flows back southward at a depth of 3,000 meters.
"This is fairly important for the climate because it brings this heat northward," said Lisiecki. "The Specmap study in 1992 found that circulation is reduced when you have large ice sheets –– presumably because you have less of this North Atlantic deep water forming. Our results show that this is not always true."
She explained that the new data changes our understanding about how the different parts of the climate system are interacting with one another and in particular the influence of the ice sheets on climate.
"Because the ice sheets are so large, it was a nice simple story to say that they were having the predominant influence on all the parts of the climate system," said Lisiecki. "But our study showed that this wasn't the only important part of the changes in climate. The distribution of sunlight is the controlling factor for North Atlantic deep water formation.
"Our study tells us a lot about how the ocean circulation is affected by changes in climate," she adds. "The ocean does not always follow the climate; it exerts its own impact on climate processes. In other words, the ocean circulation doesn't just follow along with the rest of the climate, it actually changes in different ways than the ice sheets during glacial cycles."

New Wonders Found In The Oceans' Depths

Census Of Marine Life Reveals Newly-Discovered Creatures, Migrations And Adaptations

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9, 2008

AP) A city of brittle stars off the coast of New Zealand, an Antarctic expressway where octopuses ride along in a flow of extra salty water and a carpet of tiny crustaceans on the Gulf of Mexico sea floor are among the wonders discovered by researchers compiling a massive census of marine life. "We are still making discoveries," but researchers also are busy assembling data already collected into the big picture of life in the oceans, senior scientist Ron O'Dor said. The fourth update of the census was released Sunday ahead of a meeting of hundreds of researchers that begins Tuesday in Valencia, Spain. More than 2,000 scientists from 82 nations are taking part in the project, which is to be completed in 2010. A discovery that delights O'Dor is that many deep-ocean octopuses share an Antarctic origin. As the Antarctic got colder, ice increased and octopuses were forced into deeper water, he said in a telephone interview. Salt and oxygen are concentrated in the deeper waters, he said. This dense water then flows out, carrying along the octopuses that have adapted to the new conditions, enabling them to spread to deep waters around the world. Deep-water octopuses worldwide, he pointed out, lack the ink sack that allows their shallow-water cousins to shoot out a camouflage screen. After all, if they live where it is dark, ink is unnecessary, said O'Dor, a Canadian member of the research team. Patricia Miloslavich, a senior scientist from Venezuela, is pleased with newly-discovered mollusks, from snails to cuttlefish to squids. Once the census is complete, the plan is to publish three books: a popular survey of sea life, a second book with chapters for each working group, and a third focusing on biodiversity. O'Dor said also researchers are working with the online scientific journal PLoS ONE, which is open to anyone and thus would make the results readily available. Scientists at this week's sessions will hear about the discovery of what the researchers call a brittle star city off the coast of New Zealand. The brittle stars, animals with five arms, have colonized the peak of a seamount - an underwater mountain - where the current flows past at about 2.5 miles per hour. The current delivers such an ample food supply that thousands of stars can capture food simply by raising their arms. Researchers found a carpet of small crustaceans inhabiting the head of the Mississippi Canyon in the Gulf of Mexico. There are as many as 12,000 of these small crustaceans per square yard. Among the other findings being reported at the meeting:
The mid-Atlantic ridge half way between America and Europe is home to hundreds of species rare or unknown elsewhere.
The ridge includes the world's deepest known active hot vent, more than 13,300 feet deep and populated by anemones, worms and shrimp.
Reefs deep in the Black Sea are made of bacterial mats using methane as an energy source. The bacteria form chimneys up to 13 feet high.
The deepest comb jellyfish ever found was discovered at a depth of 23,455 feet in the Ryukyu Trench near Japan. The discovery raises questions about the availability of food resources at such depths, which had not been thought capable of supporting predators like this one.
The White Shark Cafe. Satellite tagging discovers that white sharks travel long distances each winter to concentrate in the Pacific for up to six months. While there, both males and females make frequent, repetitive dives to depths of 975 feet, which researchers theorize may be significant in either feeding or reproduction.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/09/tech/main4586743.shtml

By AP Science Writer Randolph E. Schmid© MMVIII The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Great Barrier Reef could adapt to climate change, scientists say

THE prediction of a prominent marine biologist that climate change could render the Great Barrier Reef extinct within 30 years has been labelled overly pessimistic for failing to account for the adaptive capabilities of coral reefs.

University of Queensland marine biologist Ove Hoegh-Guldberg said yesterday that sea temperatures were likely to rise 2C over the next three decades, which would undoubtedly kill the reef.
But several of Professor Hoegh-Guldberg's colleagues have taken issue with his prognosis.
Andrew Baird, principal research fellow at the Australian Research Council's Centre for Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, said there were "serious knowledge gaps" about the impact rising sea temperatures would have on coral.
"Ove is very dismissive of coral's ability to adapt, to respond in an evolutionary manner to climate change," Dr Baird said.
"I believe coral has an underappreciated capacity to evolve. It's one of the biological laws that, wherever you look, organisms have adapted to radical changes."
Dr Baird acknowledged that, if left unaddressed, climate change would result in major changes to the Great Barrier Reef.
"There will be sweeping changes in the relative abundance of species," he said. "There'll be changes in what species occur where.
"But wholesale destruction of reefs? I think that's overly pessimistic."
Dr Baird said the adaptive qualities of coral reefs would mitigate the effects of climate change.
His comments were backed by Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority chairman and marine scientist Russell Reichelt.
"I think that he's right," Dr Reichelt said. "The reef is more adaptable and research is coming out now to show adaptation is possible for the reef."
Dr Reichelt said the greatest threat facing the reef was poor water quality in the coastal regions, the result of excess sediment and fertiliser.
"If a reef's going to survive bleaching, you don't want to kill it with a dirty river," he said.
Professor Hoegh-Guldberg, who in 1999 won the prestigious Eureka science prize for his work on coral bleaching, said the view "that reefs somehow have some magical adaptation ability" was unfounded.
"The other thing is, are we willing to take the risk, given we've got a more than 50 per cent likelihood that these scenarios are going to come up?" Professor Hoegh-Guldberg said.
"If I asked (my colleagues) to get into my car and I told them it was more than 50 per cent likely to crash, I don't think they'd be very sensible getting in it."
He told the ABC's Lateline program on Thursday the threat posed by climate change to the Great Barrier Reef should be treated as a "global emergency".
"Why we aren't just panicking at thispoint and starting to really make some changes? Professor Hoegh-Guldberg said. "It just ... it blows my mind sometimes."

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24584070-30417,00.html

Ancient reef found in Australia's outbackArticle from: AAP

AN ancient underwater reef discovered in Australia's outback could unlock the secrets of the world's climate change history, scientists said.

September 22, 2008 04:55am

Located in South Australia's Flinders Ranges, the 650-million-year-old reef existed during a period of tropical climate between two major ice age events, scientist Jonathan Giddings said today.
"This reef is an internationally significant discovery because it provides a significant step forward in showing the extent of climate change in Earth's past and the evolution of ancient reef complexes - and it also contains fossils which may be of the earliest known primitive animals," Mr Giddings said.
"From a climate change point of view, this reef provides an important record of what was happening in the ocean 650 million years ago.
"The chemistry of the reef and other sediments forming in the ocean at the same time show the ocean was poorly mixed, and this may have had an effect on Earth's climate at that time by allowing carbon to be trapped in the ocean's depths."
Scientists will outline their discovery at the University of Melbourne on Thursday.

http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,24382482-911,00.html

Internal Waves Moving Across The Pacific Ocean Affect Global Climate System

ScienceDaily (Jan. 17, 2008) — When ocean tidal currents encounter undersea topography, waves called internal tides are generated.

These waves propagate into the ocean interior and can contribute significantly to oceanic mixing when they break, influencing how nutrients are distributed and how energy is transported throughout the ocean.
Understanding where this breaking occurs in the ocean is thus central to understanding the global climate system.
Prior models showed that a particular breaking mechanism known as "parametric subharmonic instability" (PSI) could in principle remove a large amount of energy from the internal tides at a "critical latitude" of 28.8 degrees North.
To test this notion, Alford et al. heavily instrumented a 1400-km (870-mile)-long line beginning at French Frigate Shoals, a major generation site at the Hawaiian Ridge, with the intention of tracking the internal tide's northward progress past the critical latitude.
They found strong evidence that PSI does occur, leading to intense alternating bands of clockwise-rotating velocity, but that the process appears not to substantially attenuate the internal tide (whose fate remains uncertain). However, PSI does appear to strongly affect the latitudinal distribution of internal wave energy.
Title: Internal waves across the Pacific
Authors: M. H. Alford: Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.; also at School of Oceanography, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.; J. A. MacKinnon and Rob Pinkel: Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, California, U.S.A.; Zhongxiang Zhao: Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.; Jody Klymak: School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada; Thomas Peacock: Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge Massachusetts, U.S.A.
Source: Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) paper 10.1029/2007GL031566, 2007; http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2007GL031566

NASA Launches Ocean Satellite To Keep A Weather, Climate Eye Open

ScienceDaily (June 23, 2008) — A new NASA-French space agency oceanography satellite launched June 20 from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., on a globe-circling voyage to continue charting sea level, a vital indicator of global climate change. The mission will return a vast amount of new data that will improve weather, climate and ocean forecasts

With a thunderous roar and fiery glow, the Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason 2 satellite arced through the blackness of an early central coastal California morning at 12:46 a.m. PDT, climbing into space atop a Delta II rocket. Fifty-five minutes later, OSTM/

Jason 2 separated from the rocket's second stage, and then

unfurled its twin sets of solar arrays. Ground controllers

successfully acquired the spacecraft's signals. Initial telemetry

reports show it to be in excellent health.
"Sea-level measurements from space have come of age," said Michael Freilich, director of the Earth Science Division in NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. "Precision measurements from this mission will improve our knowledge of global and regional sea-level changes and enable more accurate weather, ocean and climate forecasts."
Measurements of sea-surface height, or ocean surface topography, reveal the speed and direction of ocean currents and tell scientists how much of the sun's energy is stored by the ocean. Combining ocean current and heat storage data is key to understanding global climate variations. OSTM/Jason 2's expected lifetime of at least three years will extend into the next decade the continuous record of these data started in 1992 by NASA and the French space agency Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales, or CNES, with the TOPEX/Poseidon mission. The data collection was continued by the two agencies on Jason 1 in 2001.
The mission culminates more than three decades of research by NASA and CNES in this field. This expertise will be passed on to the world's weather and environmental forecasting agencies, which will be responsible for collecting the data. The involvement of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) as mission partners on OSTM/Jason 2 helps establish this proven research capability as a valuable tool for use in everyday applications.
OSTM/Jason 2's five primary instruments are improved versions of those flying on Jason 1. These technological advances will allow scientists to monitor conditions in ocean coastal regions -- home to about half of Earth's population. Compared with Jason 1 measurements, OSTM/Jason 2 will have substantially increased accuracy and provide data to within 25 kilometers (15 miles) of coastlines, nearly 50 percent closer to shore than in the past. Such improvements will be welcome news for all those making their living on the sea, from sailors and fishermen to workers in offshore industries. NOAA will use the improved data to better predict hurricane intensity, which is directly affected by the amount of heat stored in the upper ocean.
OSTM/Jason 2 entered orbit about 10 to 15 kilometers (6 to 9 miles) below Jason 1. The new spacecraft will gradually use its thrusters to raise itself into the same 1,336-kilometer (830-mile) orbital altitude as Jason 1 and position itself to follow Jason 1's ground track, orbiting about 60 seconds behind Jason 1. The two spacecraft will fly in formation, making nearly simultaneous measurements for about six months to allow scientists to precisely calibrate OSTM/Jason 2's instruments.
Once cross-calibration is complete, Jason 1 will alter course, adjusting its orbit so that its ground tracks fall midway between those of OSTM/Jason 2. Together, the two spacecraft will double global data coverage. This tandem mission will improve our knowledge of tides in coastal and shallow seas and internal tides in the open ocean, while improving our understanding of ocean currents and eddies.
CNES is providing the OSTM/Jason 2 spacecraft. NASA and CNES jointly are providing the primary payload instruments. NASA's Launch Services Program at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida was responsible for launch management and countdown operations for the Delta II. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.
To learn more about OSTM/Jason 2, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ostm .
JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Evidence Of Tsunamis On Indian Ocean Shores Long Before 2004

ScienceDaily (Oct. 31, 2008) — A quarter-million people were killed when a tsunami inundated Indian Ocean coastlines the day after Christmas in 2004. Now scientists have found evidence that the event was not a first-time occurrence.

A team working on Phra Thong, a barrier island along the hard-hit west coast of Thailand, unearthed evidence of at least three previous major tsunamis in the preceding 2,800 years, the most recent from about 550 to 700 years ago. That team, led by Kruawun Jankaew of Chulalongkorn University in Thailand, included Brian Atwater, a University of Washington affiliate professor of Earth and space sciences and a U.S. Geological Survey geologist.
A second team found similar evidence of previous tsunamis during the last 1,200 years in Aceh, a province at the northern tip of the Indonesian island of Sumatra where more than half the deaths from the 2004 tsunami occurred.
Sparse knowledge of the region's tsunami history contributed to the loss of life in 2004, the scientists believe. Few people living along the coasts knew to heed the natural tsunami warnings, such as the strong shaking felt in Aceh and the rapid retreat of ocean water from the shoreline that was observed in Thailand.
But on an island just off the coast of Aceh most people safely fled to higher ground in 2004 because the island's oral history includes information about a devastating tsunami in 1907.
"A region's tsunami history can serve as a long-term warning system," Atwater said.
The research will reinforce the importance of tsunami education as an essential part of early warning, said Jankaew, the lead author.
"Many people in Southeast Asia, especially in Thailand, believe, or would like to believe, that it will never happen again," Jankaew said. "This will be a big step towards mitigating the losses from future tsunami events."
The team found evidence for previous tsunamis by digging pits and auguring holes at more than 150 sites on an island about 75 miles north of Phuket, a Thai tourist resort area ravaged by the 2004 tsunami. That tsunami was generated 300 miles to the west when the seafloor was warped during a magnitude 9.2 earthquake.
At 20 sites in marshes, the researchers found layers of white sand about 4 inches thick alternating with layers of black peaty soil. Witnesses confirmed that the top sand layer, just below the surface, was laid down by the 2004 tsunami, which ran 20 to 30 feet deep across much of the island.
Radiocarbon dating of bark fragments in soil below the second sand layer led the scientists to estimate that the most recent predecessor to the 2004 tsunami probably occurred between A.D. 1300 and 1450. They also noted signs of two earlier tsunamis during the last 2,500 to 2,800 years.
There are no known written records describing an Indian Ocean tsunami between A.D. 1300 and 1450, including the accounts of noted Islamic traveler Ibn Battuta and records of the great Ming Dynasty armadas of China, both of which visited the area at different times during that period. Atwater hopes the new geologic evidence might prompt historians to check other Asian documents from that era.
"This research demonstrates that tsunami geology, both recent and past tsunamis, can help extend the tsunami catalogues far beyond historical records," Jankaew said.
The new findings also carry lessons for the northwest coast of North America, where scientists estimate that many centuries typically elapse between catastrophic tsunamis generated by the Cascadia subduction zone.
"Like Aceh, Cascadia has a history of tsunamis that are both infrequent and catastrophic, and that originate during earthquakes that provide a natural tsunami warning," Atwater said. "This history calls for sustained efforts in tsunami education."
Findings from both teams are published in the Oct. 30 edition of Nature.
Other co-authors of the Thai paper are Yuki Sawai of the Geological Survey of Japan, Montri Choowong and Thasinee Charoentitirat of Chulalongkorn University, Maria Martin of the UW and Amy Prendergast of Geoscience Australia.
The research was funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, Thailand's Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and the Thailand Research Fund.

Ocean census discovers new fish

By Julianna Kettlewell BBC News Online staff

More than 600 new species of fish have been discovered by a major ocean census and thousands more may be lurking undetected.

Some 300 scientists from 53 countries are creating a record of all known marine life, in a project reminiscent of an aquatic Domesday Book.
The 10-year Census of Marine Life project will form an open database of raw material available to everyone.
It will pinpoint endangered animals and suggest how to protect them.

Pole to pole

So far, 15,304 species of fish have been logged. Between 2,000 and 3,000 more are expected to join the list before the census ends in 2010 - and many will be previously unknown species.

Apart from cataloguing species diversity, distribution and abundance, the census will explain how ocean life changes over time and in the face of human activity.
Extending from pole to pole and covering virtually every ocean, the Census of Marine Life (CoML) is easily the most ambitious and costly project of its kind.
Much of the $1bn bill will be footed by the Alfred P Sloan Foundation - a philanthropic non-profit organisation - and individual governments.

The unknown ocean

The census is divided into seven parts. As well as Pacific shorelines and the North Atlantic sea floor, scientists are examining the Gulf of Maine, hydrothermal vents, coastal salmon runs, the world wide habits of large fish and mammals, and animals of the abyss.
The first census report just published outlines how the understanding of these seven topics has advanced since the initiative began three years ago.
One "hot pot" of discovery has been the deep waters off Angola. Researchers exploring the abyssal sediments found an environment with more species per area than any other known aquatic environment on Earth.

About 500 of the species collected are thought to be new to science. Experts hope that the research will improve understanding of the relationship between deep-sea species diversity and the richness of food in the water column.
The report also highlights the habits of young salmon during the sea dwelling stage of their lives, challenging conventional ideas about their survival.
"Most of the attention on salmon has been in rivers," Mike Vecchione, a scientist at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, told BBC News Online.
"But the census has found that most deaths of young salmon occur in the open ocean. This information may be key to maintaining their populations."
Long journey
This is not the first survey into marine life. Numerous catalogues of aquatic creatures are available to the public, but the Census of Marine Life claims to be a league apart.
"Most other marine surveys concentrate on commercially important species or charismatic animals like sharks or whales, but we are casting our net far wider," said Jesse Ausubel, Program Director of CoML.
Over the next seven years, the census hopes to bring the number of marine species on the database to well over 210,000.
They also plan to establish pharmaceutical uses for some of the new species discovered.
Less than 14 kilometres off the Florida Keys, scientists recently discovered a new species - perhaps even a new genus - of sponge, which has been nicknamed the "Rasta sponge". Chemical compounds found in the sponge may help treat cancerous tumours.
But those involved in the census acknowledge they are still at the beginning of a very long voyage.
"Some 95% of the ocean is still unexplored biologically. We don't know what that figure will be in 2010, but we hope it will be much smaller," Mr Ausubel said.
"We hope we will have visited and sampled all the major domains of the ocean.
"We are at the start of a great adventure, like going to the Moon," he added. "But we know more about the surface of the Moon."

INDEPTH: FORCES OF NATURE: Tsunamis

CBC News Online July 17, 2006

What is a tsunami?

A tsunami is a series of very long ocean waves created when a large body of water is displaced. A tsunami can hit shore with devastating impact, as one did on Dec. 26, 2004, when a series of waves pounded the coastlines of Southeast Asia, levelling whole villages and killing around 150,000 people.

Tsunami, pronounced soo-NAH-mee, comes from a Japanese word that means "harbour wave." It's often incorrectly called a tidal wave, which is a periodic movement of water produced by the gravitational pull of the sun and moon. Tsunamis are not connected with the weather or tides

How are tsunamis created?

Tsunamis can be generated by any disturbance that displaces a large amount of water, including earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, meteorites or landslides into the water or below its surface.

The tsunamis that hit the shorelines of eleven countries on Dec. 26, 2004, were triggered by a megathrust earthquake. Megathrust earthquakes are a potentially very destructive type caused when a tectonic plate in the Earth's crust slips under another one. In this case, a 1,000-km section of the India plate moved sideways and downward under the Burma plate just off the west coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, according to the U.S. government's Earthquake Hazards Program. The resulting earthquake measured a magnitude of 9.0 on the Richter scale, making it the most powerful tremor in 40 years. The collision caused the seabed under the Indian Ocean to rise by as much as 10 metres and possibly even 30. The vertical movement of the ocean floor triggered the tsunamis.

How big do tsunamis get?

In the deep ocean, tsunamis might have wavelengths as long as several hundred kilometres and reach speeds of up to 720 kilometres per hour. Yet the waves may be less than a metre tall, letting them pass unnoticed beneath ships at sea. When these waves enter the shallower water approaching shore, their speeds drop and their heights increase dramatically. They tend to get bigger if they roll over gentling sloping shores and underwater ridges, towering as high as 30 metres. The highest recorded tsunami occurred in Lituya Bay, Alaska, on July 9, 1958. The wave, triggered by a landslide in a narrow bay, reached a height of 518 metres by the time it hit the opposite slope. When tsunamis slam into shore, they can flood up to two kilometres inland, sweeping people out to sea, flattening buildings and toppling trees. Between five minutes and an hour can pass between a tsunami's waves, amplifying its destruction. For example, after an initial tsunami wave swept over Thai resorts in December 2004, people flocked onto the beaches to help the injured. Then a second wave struck and claimed even more victims.

What was the most destructive tsunami?

The most devastating recorded tsunami demolished parts of the East Indies on Aug. 27, 1883, after the volcano Krakatoa exploded. More than 36,000 people died because of the waves, which reached heights of 30 metres and speeds of 724 km/h.

Is there any warning?

The killer waves usually strike with little warning. When an earthquake rumbled off the coast of Hokkaido in Japan in July of 1993, the resulting tsunami hit just three to five minutes later, killing 202 people who were trying to flee for higher ground. Often a sharp swell gives the first sign as a series of tsunami waves approach the coastline. Then the water suddenly rushes outward, often exposing offshore areas for a few minutes. Then the first massive wave hits. Usually, the third to eighth waves are the biggest.

About 80 per cent of all tsunamis occur in the Pacific and many cities around the ocean – mostly in Japan, but also in Hawaii – have warning systems and evacuation procedures for serious tsunamis. One of the best ways to predict tsunamis is to monitor earthquakes, which set off most of the waves. Seismograph networks, wave gauges (such as those operated by international Tsunami Warning System) and satellite measurements of sea level changes can help warn of tsunamis.

How often do they occur?

There are an average of two tsunamis each year that cause damage somewhere in the world. About every 15 years, a destructive, Pacific-wide tsunami occurs, according to the U.S. government's West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center.

Can tsunamis hit Canada?

They have. On March 27, 1964, a large earthquake in Alaska triggered a tsunami that caused damage all the way to California. It pounded Vancouver Island shorelines, causing several million dollars of destruction to the community of Port Alberni. A warning system allowed thousands of people to flee their homes, so no lives were lost. B.C.'s Provincial Emergency Program warns that several areas are vulnerable to tsunamis, including the Queen Charlotte Islands, the West Coast north of Vancouver Island and the western shorelines of the island itself.

What do you do to survive a tsunami?

If you are near the ocean and feel a large earthquake, you should go inland or to higher ground immediately. If a tsunami were to be generated close to British Columbia, waves could reach shore within a few minutes – not enough time for officials to issue a warning. On land, know the community's suggested evacuation routes to safe areas. Prepare an emergency supplies kit for your home, car and work. Stay away from the coast because waves can roll in for hours. Getting to higher ground is the best bet. Otherwise, climb to an upper floor or roof. As a last resort, climb a tree. If you are on a boat, you should leave the harbour for open water, where tsunami effects aren't as damaging. If you're swept up in the waves, climb onto something that floats.

On land, know the community's suggested evacuation routes to safe areas. Prepare an emergency supplies kit for your home, car and work. Stay away from the coast because waves can roll in for hours.

How can low-lying regions protect themselves?

Asian countries have devised some low-tech ways to survive natural disasters such as cyclones. Unlike tsunamis, cyclones often come with advance notice. In Bangladesh, storm shelters are built on stilts, and emergency preparedness volunteers have radios and megaphones to warn of cyclones. In the Philippines and in India, car tires are placed on top of huts as anchors. In southern India, a series of loosely packed boulders form structures with sloping surfaces that can channel water into the sea. Mangrove forests are planted in Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines and southern India to help filter wind and water during cyclones.