8-12 March 2010

• Eye on the tropics ---
At the start of last week, a tropical cyclone 17P intensified to become Tropical Storm Sarah over the waters of the South Pacific, but dissipated near the Cook Islands. For more information and satellite imagery concerning Tropical Storm Sarah see NASA Hurricane Page
• Becoming AWARE --
Kansas and Missouri will observe Severe Weather Awareness Week during this upcoming week (8-12 March 2010). Residents of these two states are urged to learn more about NOAA Weather Radio and the potentially life saving information broadcast by the National Weather Service Offices serving these states.
• Ships stuck in Baltic Sea ice --
Between 30 and 40 ships, including several passenger ferries, were stuck last week in the ice that covered the Baltic Sea off Sweden. The below average temperatures across southern sections of the Baltic Sea contributed to the sea ice. By the end of the week, most of the ships had been freed by icebreakers. [CNN News]
• Giant waves on Mediterranean are killers --
A set of three giant waves that were 26 feet high struck the cruise ship Louis Majesty in the Mediterranean Sea off the northeast coast of Spain last Wednesday, killing two passengers. The investigation continued into this incident on Friday after the cruise ship docked at the port of Barcelona. Strong winds appeared to contribute to the large waves that may have interacted with astronomical tides. [CNN News]
• White House unveils its Gulf Coast restoration plan --
Last week, President Obama's administration outlined a plan designed to support coastal restoration of the Gulf Coast from damage wrought by major hurricanes during the last four years including in the restoration of barrier islands and wetlands in Mississippi and Louisiana. The catastrophic dangers from future hurricanes, rising sea levels and erosion from the Gulf Coast would also be addressed. [USA Today]
• Regional climate science center planned for Alaska --
The Secretary of the US Department of Interior recently announced that the University of Alaska-Anchorage had been selected as the site for his Department's eight planned regional climate science centers around the nation that will provide science about climate change impacts, help land managers adapt to the impacts and engage the public through education initiatives. The focus of the Alaska center would be on the thawing of the permafrost and the loss of sea ice in the Arctic basin. [US Dept. of Interior] [Anchorage Daily News]
• Internship Opportunities --
The National Council for Science and the Environment provides college students and recent graduates paid Climate Change Internships with federal agencies, non-profit organizations and businesses. These internships involve science-based research, resource conservation, data collection, monitoring, communication, policy development, sustainable operations, and other projects to support adaptation to and mitigation of the effects of climate change on lands administered by the National Park Service. For further details and how to apply, visit http://www.ncseonline.org/CampustoCareers/.
• Only one February tornado in US --
Except for a weak EF0 tornado (on the Enhanced Fujita Scale) that caused no damage as it moved across California's southern San Joaquin Valley on 27 February 2010, no other tornadoes were reported across the 48 coterminous states during the month of February 2010. Before this late month California tornado, the previous confirmed tornado was reported on 24 January in middle Tennessee. While the occurrence of tornado activity in winter is typically low, the database maintained by the National Weather Service indicates that no February since 1950 has not experienced at least one tornado.[US Severe Weather Blog]
• Ocean sensors indicate accelerated changes in global hydrological cycle --
An oceanographer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and his colleagues from other research institutions have found that data collected by the Argo network of ocean-observing sensors indicate increased salinity associated with increased evaporation from surface waters of the world's oceans because of increased global temperatures. Consequently, they argue that climate change is accelerating the world's hydrological cycle. [Explorations, Scripps Institution of Oceanography]
• NASA Hurricane Page http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hurricanes/main/index.html
• Eye on the tropics ---
At the start of last week, a tropical cyclone 17P intensified to become Tropical Storm Sarah over the waters of the South Pacific, but dissipated near the Cook Islands. For more information and satellite imagery concerning Tropical Storm Sarah see NASA Hurricane Page
• Radar on orbiter helps in constructing Martian climate record --
The Shallow Radar instrument on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has provided a detail map of widespread deposits of glacial ice buried under the surface in the midlatitudes of Mars. Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory hope that the data collected from this instrument on the orbiter can be used to construct a climate record of Mars. [NASA JPL]
• Daylength could be shortened by Chilean earthquake --
A research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has computed that recent magnitude 8.8 earthquake in Chile has affected the Earth's rotation, shortening the length of each Earth day by approximately 1.26 microseconds. [NASA JPL]
• Passing of a weather science legend --
Dr. Joanne Simpson, Chief Scientist Emeritus for Meteorology, Earth Sun Exploration Division, at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, died last Thursday in Washington, DC at the age of 86. Dr. Simpson, who was the first woman to obtain a doctorate in meteorology in the US, was involved with the study of hurricanes, tropical meteorology and cloud physics. She received numerous scientific awards and was a past President of the American Meteorological Society. Joanne was married to Robert H. Simpson, who helped devise the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. [NASA]
• Giant iceberg collides with Antarctic ice tongue --
In early February 2010, Iceberg B-09B, the size of Luxembourg collided with the Mertz Glacier Tongue in Eastern Antarctica to form a new iceberg the size of Rhode Island. Scientists with Australia's Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre (ACECRC) warned that this newly formed floating ice could affect ocean circulation, which could also affect the planetary climate. [National Geographic Daily News] A series of three images obtained from the MODIS sensor on NASA's Aqua satellite during the first half of February 2010 also shows this collision. [NASA GSFC] [Editor's Note: Special thanks are extended to Roy Chambers a LIT Leader from Portland, OR for forwarding this article. EJH]
• New environmental satellite reaches geosynchronous orbit --
Late last Thursday, NOAA and NASA officials announced that the new Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES), which was launched from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and successfully reached its initial geosynchronous orbit at an altitude of 22,300 miles above the equator. This new satellite, currently identified as GOES-P and later GOES-15, has sensors that will provide high resolution images of weather patterns, make atmospheric measurements and monitor solar activity. [NOAA News] [NASA GOES-P Mission] [NASA Earth Observatory]
• Reductions in marine life found to accompany current El Niño event --
Using data collected from satellites, buoys and robotic submersible gliders, Researchers with the California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and NOAA's Southwest Fisheries Science Center report that the northward spread of warm Pacific ocean water farther northward than normal along the Southern California coast has led to a high sea-level event in January and the low abundance of plankton and pelagic fish. They report that these conditions, which are affecting ecosystems in the North Pacific Ocean, are consistent with the currently occurring El Niño event, an anomalous but cyclic atmospheric and oceanic circulation episode. [Scripps Institution of Oceanography]
• Stores of seabed methane could be released from Arctic shelf --
Scientists from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and colleagues from eleven other institutions in five countries recently reported that vast stores of frozen methane along a section of the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean could be released through the perforated permafrost under the East Siberian Arctic Shelf and vent into the atmosphere, releasing large quantities of this greenhouse gas. [University of Alaska-Fairbanks]
• Changes in climate a factor in malaria spread --
Scientists from Emory University and Wageningen University in the Netherlands report that climate change appears to be one of several factors including migration and land-use change influencing the spread of malaria across highland areas of East Africa, Indonesia, Afghanistan. [EurekAlert!]
• Chemicals employed to ease one environmental problem could worsen other problems --
A chemist from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and his colleagues report that hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) employed to replace chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) during the 1990s to reduce the damage to the stratospheric ozone layer appear to act as super greenhouse gases and decompose to form oxalic acid, one of the culprits in acid rain. [EurekAlert!]
• Dirty California air could cost millions annually in medical care --
A new RAND Corporation study reports that exposure to high levels of near surface ozone and particulate pollution in California resulted in more than $60 annually in hospital-based medical care for people suffering from such medical problems as asthma and pneumonia triggered by the elevation pollution levels. [EurekAlert!]
• Atmospheric nanoparticles adversely impacts human health --
Researchers at Texas A&M University claim that the amount of tiny nanoparticles suspended in the atmosphere is increasing and that these particles are affecting not only global weather patterns, but also human health in a negative way, especially for those people with breathing problems. [EurekAlert!]
• New estimates of Alaska's glacier melt rate are presented --
Researchers from Northern Arizona University, the University of British Columbia, the University of Northern British Columbia and France's Université de Toulouse recently claimed that their study of the glacier melt in Alaska from 1962 through 2006 using satellite imagery indicates a slower glacial retreat rate that contributed approximately one-third less to sea level rise than previously estimated. [Northern Arizona University]
• Transitions between interglacial and glacial epochs studied --
Climate scientists from Germany's Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research and the Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig and the Russian Academy of Sciences report that their geochemical and pollen analysis of sediments collected from lakes in Germany and Russia indicates a short warming event occurred at the very end of the Eemian Interglacial, the last interglacial period at approximately 115,000 years ago, before a rapid transition to the last major Weichselian Glacial epoch. [EurekAlert!]
• Signs of an ancient "snowball Earth" found --
Scientists from Harvard University, Boise State University, Washington University in St. Louis, Princeton University and the Geological Survey of Canada have found evidence from ancient tropical rocks found in northwestern Canada that sea ice extended to the equator approximately 716.5 million years ago, which helps reinforce the theory that the ancient planet was essentially ice covered at a time when early life was beginning to evolve. [EurekAlert!]
• Weaker ancient magnetic field affected early planetary atmosphere --
Scientists at the University of Rochester who studied the paleo-magnetic signatures of igneous rocks from Africa have discovered that the Earth's magnetic field approximately 3.5 billion years ago was only half as strong as the current field, which meant that water was more readily stripped from the planet's early atmosphere because of this weaker magnetic field along with a strong wind of energetic particles emanating from the young Sun. [EurekAlert!]
• Mass extinction due to asteroid impact reaffirmed --
A panel of experts from the US, Mexico, Canada, Europe and Japan using new data collected from ocean drilling and continental sites conclude that an asteroid impact that created the Chicxulub crater in Mexico resulted in mass extinction of species of life including the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous geologic period (approximately 65.5 million years ago). They also found that alternative hypotheses are inadequate to explain the abrupt mass extinction. [EurekAlert!]
• An All-Hazards Monitor--
This Web portal provides the user information from NOAA on current environmental events that may pose as hazards such as tropical weather, fire weather, marine weather, severe weather, drought and floods. [NOAAWatch]
• Global and US Hazards/Climate Extremes --
A review and analysis of the global impacts of various weather-related events, including drought, floods and storms during the current month. [NCDC]
• Earthweek --
Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com] Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.

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Prepared by Edward J. Hopkins, Ph.D., email hopkins@meteor.wisc.edu
© Copyright, 2010, The American Meteorological Society.