WEEKLY WATER NEWS

DataStreme WES Week Eleven: 12-16 November 2007

Water in the News:

• (Thurs.) A follow-up on southern California's wildfires -- The catastrophic wildfires that swept across southern California during October 2007 were responsible for several deaths, destroyed more 2000 homes and burned one million acres. Recent additional information concerning these fires include:
  • False-color MODIS images obtained from NASA satellites of the burn areas across southern California are being used by Burned Area Emergency Rehabilitation teams to assist local and state officials in assessing the extent of the wildfires and plan for post-fire erosion control. [NASA Earth Observatory] An image from NASA's Landsat 5 satellite provides a detailed view of the burn area on Santa Catalina Island offshore of Long Beach, CA, caused by wildfires last May. [NASA Earth Observatory]
  • Images (along with an animation) obtained from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument on NASA’s Aura, together with superimpose wind vectors obtained from the NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Prediction, show the change in the direction of the smoke plume as Santa Ana winds from the east initially carry the plume out to sea, then winds from the west carry the plume back over southern California. This wind reversal was associated with large-scale circulation changes. [NASA Earth Observatory]
  • Reports from fire officials have been released detailing the situations leading to the wildfire-related deaths and injuries near San Diego. [USA Today]
  • NOAA's National Weather Service and the US Geological Society have jointly developed a flash flood and debris flow warning system that is designed to protect residents of southern California from the flash floods and the debris flows (or mudslides) that result from heavy rain falling upon the burn areas on hilly terrain created by recent wildfires. [NOAA News]
• (Thurs.) New drought portal is launched -- NOAA officials recently unveiled a new interactive website called the "U.S. Drought Portal" (at www.drought.gov) as part of the National Integrated Drought Information System. This portal is designed to provide the public and civic leaders a means of monitoring current drought conditions across the nation, obtain drought forecasts, see how drought impacts their communities and determinate what mitigation efforts exist. [NOAA News]
• (Thurs.) Climate change could shrivel drinking water supplies -- Researchers at Ohio State University warn that coastal communities could lose up to 50 percent more of their freshwater supplies than previously thought as projected rising sea levels associated with higher global temperatures could infiltrate freshwater aquifers within this century. [Ohio State University]
• (Thurs.) Another sign of changing climate -- Various environmentalists along with federal and state marine experts report that endangered humpback and fin whales swam into the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas off the northwest and northeast coasts of Alaska this past summer, well to the north of their usual habitat in the Bering Sea. This northward displacement was blamed upon the shifting Arctic ecosystem associated with higher global temperatures. [USA Today]
• (Thurs.) Using stellar occultation methods to study planetary atmospheres -- A variety of spacecraft have been used to study the upper atmospheric layers of a variety of planets using a method called "stellar occultation" by astronomers that measures the intensity of light rays from setting stars that pass through these atmospheres. Several missions have been deployed by the European Space Agency to study the Earth, Venus and Mars. An instrument called GOMOS (Global Ozone Monitoring by Occultation of Stars) orbiting Earth has been used to measure ozone concentration, along with nitrogen dioxide, a gas that destroys ozone. The SPICAM (Spectroscopy for Investigation of Characteristics of the Atmosphere of Mars) on the Agency's Mars Express has studied the Martian upper atmosphere and persistent haze layers, while the SPICAV (Spectroscopy for Investigation of Characteristics of the Atmosphere of Venus) on Venus Express is currently studying the upper Venusian atmosphere. [ESA]
• (Tues.) Oil spill in Black Sea -- Storm-created 5-m waves broke an oil tanker in half in the Black Sea spilling 1,300 metric tons of fuel oil. Several other ships were sunk or damaged by the storm. Continuing stormy conditions are making clean-up efforts hazardous. [Euro News]
• (Tues.) La Niña event seen to persist -- Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory report that their analysis of data collected from the US-French Jason altimetric satellite shows sea surface height patterns across the equatorial Pacific that indicate a continuation of the La Niña episode. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• (Tues.) New website for Great Lakes marine information -- The National Weather Service recently unveiled a new Great Lakes Marine Portal at http://www.crh.noaa.gov/greatlakes/ that will allow the user to obtain a wide variety of information about the weather and lake environments across the five Laurentide Great Lakes. [NWSFO Milwaukee-Sullivan]
• (Tues.) The legacy of Noel -- A tropical cyclone, which intensified to become Hurricane Noel late last month as it moved from the Caribbean across western Hispaniola, eastern Cuba and the northern Bahamas before traveling northward across the western North Atlantic offshore of the continental US, was responsible for at least 115 deaths due to flooding and mudslides from the heavy rain associated with the system.
  • A map of the rainfall totals for the last week of October generated by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis from data collected from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite show the locally heavy rainfall across the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas. [NASA Earth Observatory] An image obtained last week from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA’s Terra satellite shows the effects of the flooding and mudslides across the Dominican Republic. [NASA Earth Observatory] Note: For a highly detailed analysis of Noel, see the NASA's Hurricane Web page with numerous maps and images.
  • Late reports from Cuba indicates that torrential rain from several weather systems, including Tropical Storm Noel, across eastern Cuba produced floods and mudslides that killed one person, damaged nearly 22,000 homes and caused $500 million in damages. [USA Today]
• (Tues.) Another look at recent Mexican floods -- Comparison of a pair of MODIS images obtained from NASA's Aqua satellite taken in mid-October and two weeks later in early November shows the widespread flooding across the Mexican state of Tabasco caused by a slow-moving low pressure system in the southwest Gulf of Mexico. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• (Tues.) Better estimates of hurricane intensity could come from space -- Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Colorado State University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a new "cloud profiling" technique for estimating the intensity of tropical cyclones from data collected by instruments on NASA's "A-Train" of Earth-observing satellites. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• (Tues.) Air pollution from ships can be deadly -- Recent studies by international teams of researchers indicate that airborne particulate matter originating from ships is responsible for at least 60,000 deaths per year worldwide. They also report that this rate of premature deaths could rise by 40 percent in the next five years, unless immediate action is taken to reduce these aerosols, such as through the use of cleaner fuels. [New Scientist]
• (Tues.) Attempting to study a "black smoker" analog -- Researchers from researchers from the University of California-Davis, the University of California-Riverside, Stanford University and the University of Oregon participating in the Iceland Deep Drilling Project plan on sinking a bore hole on Iceland down to where superheated seawater circulates through hot rock in an effort to simulate conditions in deep sea hydrothermal vents called "black smokers." [UC Davis]
• Oil spill affects San Francisco Bay -- Last week, a container ship collided with a pier supporting a tower of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, resulting in the discharge of approximately 58,000 gallons of bunker fuel oil into the Bay. [USA Today] Several NOAA organizations, including the Office of Response and Restoration, the National Weather Service and a NOAA Hazmat Response Team, assisted the US Coast Guard, the US Department of Interior and the state of California in responding to this incident. [NOAA News]
• Dealing with the Southeastern drought -- Drastic measures are being used to deal with the exceptional drought that has been gripping the Southeast:
  • Georgia's Gov. Sonny Perdue has asked church leaders throughout the Peach State to conduct prayer services this Tuesday to ask for relief from the drought. [USA Today]
  • Water conservation measures have been instituted across Georgia, including the emptying of water from some exhibits at the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta. [US Water News Online]
  • The governors of Georgia and Alabama recently met with the US senators from both states and federal officials in Washington, DC to settle the ongoing disagreements concerning water rights between these two states and Florida. [US Water News Online]
• Northwest Europe battered by a major storm -- A powerful storm accompanied by strong winds caused a tidal surge and coastal flooding along the North Sea coast of the British Isles at the end of last week. [USA Today] Comparison of MODIS images obtained from NASA's Terra satellite taken in the third week of October and last week show the North Sea surf and sediments stirred up due to the surge of water against the shores of northeastern England. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• Eye on the tropics ---
  • No organized tropical cyclones formed in the North Atlantic, eastern North Pacific or central North Pacific basins last week.
  • In the western North Pacific basin , Typhoon Peipah made landfall late last week along the southeastern coast of Viet Nam near Nha Trang as a tropical depression after travelling across the South China Sea. [The Daily Green] An image obtained from the Japanese MTSAT satellite shows the swirl of clouds and the characteristic eye associated with Typhoon Peipah as it was moving westward across the South China Sea west of Luzon early last week. [NOAA OSEI] Additional images, maps and discussion of former Typhoon Peipah are available on the NASA Hurricane Website. [NASA]
    Tropical Depression 22W formed west of the Mariannas on Sunday and was beginning a projected track to the northeast.
  • In the North Indian Ocean basin, Tropical Cyclone 06B formed over the southern Bay of Bengal west of the Andaman Islands on Sunday (local time). It was beginning to move toward the northwest.
• New power source for lighthouses -- A consortium led by the United Kingdom's Centre for Process Innovation has developed and tested a fuel cell that can power lighthouses and withstand the harsh marine environment. [New Scientist]
• Human development could affect health of tidal creeks -- The results of a NOAA study issued last week at the Estuarine Research Federation International Conference warns that the level of development by humans directly impacts the health of the nation's coastal ecosystems, especially along tidal creeks of Southeastern estuaries, and could potentially threaten the health of residents in these coastal areas. [NOAA News]
• Good news-bad news assessment of Yangtze River -- Scientists from China and Switzerland recently reported that the Yangtze River that flows through China is less polluted than expected because the volume of river water tends to dilute the industrial and agricultural waste entering the river, but these pollutants continue to pose a threat to plants and animals. [US Water News Online]
• Waste water treatment for peanuts -- Turkish researchers at Mersin University have found that peanut husks, considered a waste product by the food industry, can be used to extract toxic copper ions from wastewater. [EurekAlert!]
• Enhancing the natural carbon handling mechanism -- A team of researchers from Harvard and Penn State Universities have developed a method that would manipulate the volcanic silicate rocks to enhance the natural process of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and sequestering it in the oceans. They claim that this process would not acidify the oceans and may be beneficial to coral reefs. [EurekAlert!]
• 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]
• Global Water News Watch -- Other water news sources can be obtained through the SAHRA Project at the University of Arizona [SAHRA Project]
• Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com] Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Concept of the Week: Desertification

Desertification is one of the world's most pressing environmental issues, threatening the existence of more than a billion people who depend on the land for survival. In 1992, the United Nation's Conference on Environment and Development defined desertification as "land degradation in arid, semi-arid, and dry sub-humid areas resulting from various factors, including climate variations and human activities." Through desertification, arable land is transformed into desert-like land, greatly reducing or eliminating the land's capacity to produce food. Desertification's impact on people dependent on subsistence farming and herding is food insecurity. Often, their only option to avoid famine is to migrate to urban areas.

According to U.N. estimates, desertification affects about 130 million hectares (320 million acres) of land worldwide, equivalent to the combined areas of France, Italy, and Spain. Portions of some 110 nations are impacted, including parts of the North American Great Plains, the Pampas of South America, the steppes of Asia, the Australia's "outback," and the edges of the Mediterranean. But by far the most widespread and severe impact is in Africa, where two-thirds of the continent's land area is desert or dry land. Almost three-quarters of Africa's dry-land agricultural area is degraded to some extent. Desertification is a very serious problem in Sub-Saharan Africa with its considerable year-to-year variability in seasonal rainfall and frequent long-term droughts (described on pages 83-84 of your DataStreme WES Textbook).

The systems approach is valuable in understanding desertification in that the process involves interactions of climate, Earth's land surface, the water cycle, and human activity. Desertification of dry lands accelerates during prolonged drought. Climate change can alter the frequency, duration, and intensity of drought and thereby contribute to soil desiccation. Although climate change may play an important role in desertification, a key factor is human mismanagement of the soil resource. Poverty and subsistence agriculture drive people to over-cultivate the land, quickly exhausting the soil's fertility. Overgrazing by livestock and deforestation exacerbate an already bad situation by removing the protective vegetative cover and exposing the topsoil to erosion by wind and running water. Winds can transport fine topsoil thousands of kilometers and sandstorms strip the leaves from plants and bury crops under dunes.

Land mismanagement also impacts the local climate and water budget, speeding up desertification. Without a vegetative cover, soil surface temperatures rise, accelerating evaporation of water, depletion of soil moisture, and build up of salts in the soil. Less soil moisture means that more of the available heat is used for raising the air temperature through conduction and convection (i.e., sensible heating). In this way heat stress combines with moisture stress to cut crop yields.

Concept of the Week: Questions

1. Through desertification, crop productivity [(declines) (increases)].
2. Human mismanagement of the soil resource [(is) (is not)] a key factor in desertification.

Historical Events:

• 12 November 1956...(date approximate) The crew on the icebreaker USCGC Glacier saw what may have been the world's largest iceberg. Observed about 150 miles west of Antarctica's Scott Island, the iceberg was about 60 mi wide by 208 mi long, or roughly the size of Maryland. (Accord Weather Guide Calendar)
• 12 November 1968...New England was battered by the third severe coastal storm in only 5 days. An intense low crossed Long Island and produced wind gusts to 100 mph at Block Island, RI. Tides ran 5 to 10 ft above normal in some places with severe coastal flooding and property damage. Rockland, ME recorded a wind gust of 86 mph. Winds reached 90 mph in Massachusetts. Up to 10 in. of snow fell at some of the higher elevations, bringing the totals for the three storms to as much as 60 in. (David Ludlum) (Intellicast)
• 12 November 1974...A great Alaska storm in the Bering Sea caused the worst coastal flooding of memory at Nome, AK with a tide of 13.2 ft. The flooding caused $12 million damage; however, no lives were lost. (David Ludlum)
• 12 November 1980...A fringe rain band from Hurricane Jeannie in the Gulf of Mexico let loose a deluge of 23.38 in. of rain in 24 hrs at Key West, FL, an all-time 24-hr record. (Intellicast)
• 13 November 1946...General Electric scientists, led by Vincent J. Schaefer, produced snow from a natural cloud over Mt. Greylock in the Massachusetts Berkshires in the first modern day cloud seeding experiment. An airplane spread small pellets of dry-ice (frozen carbon dioxide) for three miles at a height of 14,000 ft. Although the snow fell an estimated 3,000 feet, it evaporated as it fell through dry air, and never reached the ground. (The Weather Channel) (Today in Science History)
• 13 November 1970...A cyclone swept over Bangladesh, then known as East Pakistan, pushing a 49-foot storm surge against the coast at high tide. Flooding killed an estimated 500,000. Over 50 million people were affected by the storm rain, wind and surge. (The Weather Doctor)
• 13 November 1998...The youngest son of former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and two companions were swept into Kokanee Lake in British Columbia's Kokanee Glacier National Park by an avalanche while on a backcountry ski trip. The companions swam to shore, but the young Trudeau drowned. (Accord Weather Guide Calendar)
• 13 November 2002...The single-hulled oil tanker Prestige sank off Spain's Galician coast, causing a huge oil spill. (Wikipedia)
• 14-18 November 1979...Approximately 40 in. of rain were measured over northeast Hawaii, with much higher amounts likely in mountainous areas not monitored by rain gauges. The Waipio Valley was hit hard, with more than 90 percent of the valley's farmland covered by flood debris. The new $6.9 million road to Waipio Lookout that had just been dedicated was severely damaged. (Accord Weather Guide Calendar)
• 14-21 November 1991...Tropical Cyclone Tia spent most of its life near the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. However, it completely destroyed 90 percent of all dwellings on Tikopia Island. The remaining 10 percent of the buildings had collapsed walls or roofs that had been blown off. (Accord Weather Guide Calendar)
• 15 November 1900...A record lake-effect snowstorm at Watertown, NY produced 45 in. in 24 hrs. The storm total was 49 in. (14^th-15^th) (David Ludlum) (The Weather Channel)
• 18 November 1421...Wind-driven waves from an intense storm breached Dutch dikes, sweeping away 72 villages. At least 10,000 people died in "St. Elizabeth's flood." (Accord Weather Guide Calendar)
• 18 November 1873...A severe storm raged from Georgia to Nova Scotia causing great losses to fishing fleets along the coast. In Maine, the barometric pressure dropped to 28.49 in. at Portland. (David Ludlum)
• 18-19 November 1921...A storm that produced 54 in. of snow, sleet and glaze in Oregon blocked the Columbia River Highway at The Dalles. Apart from traffic on the river itself, all transportation between Walla Walla, WA and Portland, OR came to a halt. Nine trains were stopped as railroads were blocked for days in both Washington and Oregon. (Intellicast) (David Ludlum)

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Prepared by AMS DataStreme WES Central Staff and Edward J. Hopkins, Ph.D., email hopkins@meteor.wisc.edu
ã Copyright, 2007, The American Meteorological Society.