Environment: Chances of Snow for Christmas

Californians living on the coast may be used to seeing so-called “King Tides,” a regular phenomenon where high tides are higher than normal on certain days of the year. This winter, King Tides — known to scientists as perigean spring tides — are even higher due to El Niño, causing flooding in low-lying areas of California’s coast.

A recent NOAA study, published in the journal PLOS One, shows “living shorelines” — protected and stabilized shorelines using natural materials such as plants, sand, and rock — can help to keep carbon out of the atmosphere, helping to blunt the effects of climate change.

A recent NCCOS study in Marine Pollution Bulletin investigated the distribution of five sunscreen ingredients (oxybenzone, octocrylene, avobenzone, padimate-O, and octinoxate) measured in the coastal waters of South Carolina.  Sunscreen chemicals are increasingly used in personal care products to protect the skin from the damaging effects of UV radiation; however, laboratory studies showed that some of these chemicals cause damage to corals and other aquatic species.

A recent NOAA study shows Living Shorelines are not only an excellent method of erosion control for coastal properties but also sequester carbon which increases coastal resilience. Living shorelines are a green infrastructure technique of incorporating native vegetation alone or in combination with offshore sills to stabilize the shoreline.

The ongoing West Coast harmful algal bloom (HAB) highlights the need for improved regional monitoring of toxic algae in the California Current along the coasts of California, Oregon, and Washington. A first of its kind Oregon HAB monitoring and research pilot project demonstrated a viable strategy to address state management needs and fill a critical data gap for a future operational West Coast HAB monitoring system.

A new NOAA-sponsored report shows that air temperature in 2015 across the Arctic was well above average with temperature anomalies over land more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit above average, the highest since records began in 1900. Increasing air and sea surface temperatures, decreasing sea ice extent and Greenland ice sheet mass, and changing behavior of fish and walrus are among key observations released today in the Arctic Report Card 2015.

Every year, about 12,000 crab pots are lost in the Puget Sound, mostly from recreational fishing. These lost pots can continue to capture marine life, a process called “ghostfishing.” Recreational crab pots may come in different models and designs, but all have an escape mechanism to allow trapped crabs to escape from the pot if it is lost. But— are all escape mechanisms equally effective? If not, can simple modifications make them more effective and decrease the ghostfishing problem?

(post by Ensign Kaitlyn Seberger, Junior Officer, NOAA Ship Thomas Jefferson) This fall, NOAA Ship Thomas Jefferson has had the pleasure of hosting Sub-Lieutenant Uchechukwu Erege. Sub-Lieutenant Erege, known to the ship’s crew as “UK,” is a hydrographer in the Nigerian Navy Hydrographic Office. The Nigerian Navy Hydrographic Office is the national hydrographic authority for the country and is responsible for conducting hydrographic surveys in territorial waters, ensuring nautical charts are up-to-date, processing bathymetric data, and providing Notice to Mariners for hazards to navigation.

Walruses use sea ice for mating, giving birth, and resting, which means they face an increasing threat from global warming. 

High resolution elevation data is critical for many types of spatial analyses. Coastal zone analyses that utilize elevation data include visualizing the future impacts of sea level rise or coastal flooding, estimating shoreline erosion, quantifying vulnerability to coastal hazards, or identifying the sources and pathways of eroded soils entering water bodies.

As the Arctic has warmed over the past three decades, satellites reveal it has also grown greener overall. But in recent years, the tundra appears to be “browning down.” 

The melt season was up to 30 to 40 days longer than average in western, northwestern, and northeastern Greenland, but was close to or below average elsewhere on the ice sheet.  Melt area was above average on 52 of the 90 days of the melt season.

Not only are there now bigger fish to fry in the Arctic's Barents Sea, but scientists predict the natural marine ecosystem will undergo a transformation. 

For those of you dreaming of a white Christmas, this map depicts which places have the best chance of being a winter wonderland according to weather history. The “Historical Probability of a White Christmas” map shows the climatological probability of at least 1 inch of snow being on the ground on December 25 in the contiguous United States. On the map, dark gray shows places where the probability is less than 10 percent, while white shows probabilities greater than 90 percent.

Among other improvements, the new forecast systems will have double the forecast horizon, from 60 to 120 hours, and provide higher horizontal and vertical resolution predictions.

At the end of October, we reported that our oil spill experts were helping the U.S. Coast Guard with a spill coming from the tank barge Argo in Lake Erie. The unusual twist in this case was that the leaking Argo was located at the bottom of the lake under approximately 40 feet of water. Nearly 80 years earlier, on October 20, 1937, this ship had foundered in a storm and sank in western Lake Erie.

NOAA’s Coral Reef Conservation Program is awarding more than $8.4 million in grants and cooperative agreements, this year, to support conservation projects and scientific studies that benefit coral reef management across seven U.S. states and territories, the Caribbean and Micronesia.

Preliminary results from the fourth and final Coral Ecosystem Connectivity expedition (22 August – 4 September 2015) to Pulley Ridge (off the southwest coast of Florida) show the new coral area discovered in 2014 is two times larger than previously thought. Pulley Ridge, the deepest photosynthetic reef off the continental U.S., is one of the areas that the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary Advisory Council requested NOAA analyze for potential inclusion within the sanctuary.

Just how powerful is the current El Niño? There’s more to the story than the very warm equatorial Pacific.

In response to a record-breaking Pacific hurricane season, Hawai'i Sea Grant led a NOAA Coastal Storms Program project to assess the risk of urban Honolulu to coastal inundation.

“Arctic amplification” of climate change remained in full swing in 2015, according to the 2015 Arctic Report Card. Broad areas of the Arctic were more than 5°F (3°C) warmer than average during the report card’s monitoring year (October 2014-September 2015).

Increasing air and sea surface temperatures, decreasing sea ice extent and Greenland ice sheet mass, and changing behavior of fish and walrus are among key observations released today in the Arctic Report Card 2015.