Rogue Waves

Rogue waves by the numbers
The widely accepted definition is a wave roughly three times the average height of its neighbors.

No one is certain yet just how frequently freak waves form; accurate numbers are extremely difficult to collect given the waves' rare and transient nature. With more sophisticated monitoring and modeling—and as first-hand accounts are taken more seriously—the waves' prevalence appears to be rising. "[Rogue waves] are all short-lived, and because ships are not everywhere, the probability that a ship encounters one is relatively small," says Daniel Solli, who studies the optical version of rogue waves at the University of California, Los Angeles. "But with increasing amounts of oceanic traffic in the future, the likelihood of encountering them is getting larger."

Forming fearsome waves
Various theories exist for how rogue waves form. The simplest suggests that small waves coalesce into much larger ones in an accumulative fashion—a faster one-meter wave catches up with a slower two-meter wave adding up to a three-meter wave. One burgeoning wave can actually soak up the energy of surrounding waves.

Quahog and Cherry Stone clams

I lived on Cape Cod as a child and I remember eating these raw with my Mom.  Mmm...they were so yummy.

                                             Quahog

                                           Cherry Stones

Enviornmental Sensitivity Map

Environmental Sensitivity Index (ESI) systematically compiles information in standard formats for coastal shoreline sensitivity, biological resources, and human-use resources. ESI maps are useful for identifying sensitive resources before a spill occurs so that protection priorities can be established and cleanup strategies designed in advance."

The Polar Regions

Although the polar ice caps have been in existence for millions of years, scientists disagree over exactly how long they have survived in their present form. It is generally agreed that the polar cap north of the Arctic Circle, which covers the Arctic Ocean, has undergone contraction and expansion through some 26 different glaciations in just the past few million years.

       

  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7T7beACtQs


North Polar Ice Cap

South Polar Ice Cap


Icebergs

An Iceberg is a floating mass of freshwater ice that has broken from the seaward end of a glacier or a polar ice sheet. Icebergs are typically found in open seas, especially around Greenland and Antarctica. 



They form mostly during the spring and summer, when warmer weather increases the rate of calving (separation) of icebergs at the boundaries of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets and smaller outlying glaciers. In the Northern Hemisphere, for example, about 10,000 icebergs are produced each year from the West Greenland glaciers, and an average of 375 flow south of Newfoundland into the North Atlantic shipping lanes, where they are a hazard to navigation. 

  

Cool iceberg video!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnyK624FC4Y

Polor Ice Fluctuations

The poles go through cycles of ice advance and retreat every year depending on the season. However, it is the average diminishing ice concentrations that trouble scientists. Presented here are two years of ice concentration data from the NASA QuikSCAT satellite. NOAA uses this data to observe major trends in ice concetration.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkunS0WmYJk

Light

As light passes through water, it is absorbed and scattered by water molecules, ions, and suspended particles, including silt and micro-organisms.  It is also absorbed by organisms for photosynthesis, to be used in their life process.  This decrease in the intensity of light over distance is known as attenuation.  Seawater transmits only a small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, primarily in the visible range.  Light energy is attenuated very rapidly with depth, particularly the longer infrared wavelengths.  The intensity of light at any depth can be calculated using Beer's Law: I_z = I₀e ^–kz therefore by rearranging terms  z = -ln(I_z/I₀)/k

The attenuation coefficient k varies with the clarity of the water.  The clearer the water, the smaller the attenuation coefficient and the greater the light penetration.  In typical open ocean water, about 50% of the entering light energy is attenuated in the first 10 m (33 ft), and almost all the of the light is attenuated 100 m (330 ft) beneath the surface.

This graph shows how much visible light (%) broken down into the familiar spectrum of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet and to what depth it can reach.

Articles

Global Cycle of Mercury


Mercury cycles in the environment as a result of natural and human  activities.  Most of the mercury in the atmosphere is elemental mercury vapor, which circulates in the atmosphere for up to a year, and can be widely dispersed and transported thousands of miles from likely sources of emission. Most of the mercury in water, soil, sediments, or plants and animals is in the form of inorganic mercury salts and organic forms of mercury (e.g., methylmercury). The inorganic form of mercury, when either bound to airborne particles or in a gaseous form, is readily removed from the atmosphere by precipitation and is also dry deposited. Wet deposition is the primary mechanism for transporting mercury from the atmosphere to surface waters and land. Even after it deposits, mercury commonly is emitted back to the atmosphere either as a gas or associated with particles, to be re-deposited elsewhere. As it cycles between the atmosphere, land, and water, mercury undergoes a series of complex chemical and physical transformations, many of which are not completely understood.  Because it is very toxic and accumulates in organisms, particularly fish, merucry is an important pollutant and one of the most studied.

http://www.jstor.org/pss/221718

Red Tides and Dead Zones

The intensification of agriculture, waste disposal, coastal development, and fossil fuel use has increased the discharge of nitrogen, phosphorus, and other nutrients into the environment.  The nutrients are moved by streams, rivers, groundwater, sewage outfalls, and the atmosphere toward the sea.  Once they reach the ocean, nutrients stimulate the growth of timy marine plants called phytoplankton or algae.  When these species occur in high concentrations, they can color the water and produce what are popularly referred to as “red tides” or “brown tides.”  Scientist prefer to call these outbreaks harmful algal blooms of HABs.

Andrew R Solow.  (2004). Red Tides and Dead Zones. Oceanus, 43(1), 43-45.  Retrieved September 26, 2010, from Research Library. (Document ID: 978253011).

 http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?index=2&did=978253011&SrchMode=1&sid=1&Fmt=4&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1285545203&clientId=30360

Precursors to the El Nino/La Nina onset and their Interrelationship

This article was rather technical and extremely boring.  The jest of the article was about the equatorial sea level, western Pacific zonal wind, and high-frequency wind variability as precursors of the onset of El Nino and La Nina. 

http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?index=0&did=1982880451&SrchMode=1&sid=1&Fmt=3&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1285547319&clientId=30360

Bathymetric Maps and Hypsographic curves

The term bathymetry is defined as the depth of water relative to sea level. Thus bathymetric measurements can determine the topography of the ocean floor, and have shown that the sea floor is varied, complex, and ever-changing, containing plains, canyons, active and extinct volcanoes, mountain ranges, and hot springs. Some features, such as mid-ocean ridges (where oceanic crust is constantly produced) and subduction zones, also called deep-sea trenches (where it is constantly destroyed), are unique to the ocean floor.   Bathymetric maps also depict the contours of lakes.  From these maps you can create a hypsographic curve, which we did for class.  To figure out the total volume of the lake, just add up all the volumes of the different contours.

These are my hypsographic charts:

also for more info on bathymetric maps and hypsographic curves, check out:
http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Oc-Po/Ocean-Floor-Bathymetry.html
http://lakewatch.ifas.ufl.edu/circpdffolder/Morph2ndEdPt2.pdf

The Marianas Trench

The Marianas Trench:
It's the deepest spot in any ocean of the world. It is located in the Pacific Ocean, just east of the Phillippines.

Nearby is the island of Guam, a U.S. Territory inhabited by natives identified as Chamorros.  I lived there for four years attending middle school and high school.  It was such a fun place to live.

The Marianas trench is sometimes called the 'Challenger Deep' because it was located and named after His Majesty's Ship 'Challenger' of the British Royal Navy in the 19th century.

The Marianas Trench's depth is about 10,924 m, or almost 11 km (7 miles). This is a height greater than any mountain on the surface of the earth!

Creatures of the deep

Guam

First Blog