UW and NOAA Researchers Say ‘Warm blob’ in Pacific Ocean is Linked to Weird Weather Across The U.S.
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SEAFOODNEWS.COM [WUWT] By Anthony Watts - April 10, 2015 The one common element in recent weather has been oddness. The West Coast has been warm and parched; the East Coast has been cold and snowed under. Fish are swimming into new waters, and hungry seals are washing up on California beaches.A long-lived patch of warm water off the West Coast, about 1 to 4 degrees Celsius (2 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit) above normal, is part of what’s wreaking much of this mayhem, according to two University of Washington papers to appear in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.“In the fall of 2013 and early 2014 we started to notice a big, almost circular mass of water that just didn’t cool off as much as it usually did, so by spring of 2014 it was warmer than we had ever seen it for that time of year,” said Nick Bond, a climate scientist at the UW-based Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean, a joint research center of the UW and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.Bond coined the term “the blob” last June in his monthly newsletter as Washington’s state climatologist. He said the huge patch of water – 1,000 miles in each direction and 300 feet deep – had contributed to Washington’s mild 2014 winter and might signal a warmer summer.Ten months later, the blob is still off our shores, now squished up against the coast and extending about 1,000 miles offshore from Mexico up through Alaska, with water about 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than normal. Bond says all the models point to it continuing through the end of this year.The new study explores the blob’s origins. It finds that it relates to a persistent high-pressure ridge that caused a calmer ocean during the past two winters, so less heat was lost to cold air above. The warmer temperatures we see now aren’t due to more heating, but less winter cooling.Co-authors on the paper are Meghan Cronin at NOAA in Seattle and a UW affiliate professor of oceanography, Nate Mantua at NOAA in Santa Cruz and Howard Freeland at Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans.The authors look at how the blob is affecting West Coast marine life. They find fish sightings in unusual places, supporting recent reports that West Coast marine ecosystems are suffering and the food web is being disrupted by warm, less nutrient-rich Pacific Ocean water.The blob’s influence also extends inland. As air passes over warmer water and reaches the coast it brings more heat and less snow, which the paper shows helped cause current drought conditions in California, Oregon and Washington.The blob is just one element of a broader pattern in the Pacific Ocean whose influence reaches much further – possibly to include two bone-chilling winters in the Eastern U.S.A study in the same journal by Dennis Hartmann, a UW professor of atmospheric sciences, looks at the Pacific Ocean’s relationship to the cold 2013-14 winter in the central and eastern United States.Despite all the talk about the “polar vortex,” Hartmann argues we need to look south to understand why so much cold air went shooting down into Chicago and Boston.His study shows a decadal-scale pattern in the tropical Pacific Ocean linked with changes in the North Pacific, called the North Pacific mode, that sent atmospheric waves snaking along the globe to bring warm and dry air to the West Coast and very cold, wet air to the central and eastern states.“Lately this mode seems to have emerged as second to the El Niño Southern Oscillation in terms of driving the long-term variability, especially over North America,” Hartmann said.In a blog post last month, Hartmann focused on the more recent winter of 2014-15 and argues that, once again, the root cause was surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific.That pattern, which also causes the blob, seems to have become stronger since about 1980 and lately has elbowed out the Pacific Decadal Oscillation to become second only to El Niño in its influence on global weather patterns.“It’s an interesting question if that’s just natural variability happening or if there’s something changing about how the Pacific Ocean decadal variability behaves,” Hartmann said. “I don’t think we know the answer. Maybe it will go away quickly and we won’t talk about it anymore, but if it persists for a third year, then we’ll know something really unusual is going on.”Bond says that although the blob does not seem to be caused by climate change, it has many of the same effects for West Coast weather.“This is a taste of what the ocean will be like in future decades,” Bond said. “It wasn’t caused by global warming, but it’s producing conditions that we think are going to be more common with global warming.”
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Mystery blob in the Pacific messes up US weather and ecosystems
An unusual threat is looming off the Pacific coast of North America from Juneau in Alaska to Baja California.Read the story here: NewScientist.com
No, California won't run out of water in a year
Lawmakers are proposing emergency legislation, state officials are clamping down on watering lawns and, as California enters a fourth year of drought, some are worried that the state could run out of water.State water managers and other experts said Thursday that California is in no danger of running out of water in the next two years, even after an extremely dry January and paltry snowpack. Reservoirs will be replenished by additional snow and rainfall between now and the next rainy season, they said. The state can also draw from other sources, including groundwater supplies, while imposing tougher conservation measures."We have been in multiyear droughts and extended dry periods a number of times in the past, and we will be in the future," said Ted Thomas, a spokesman for the California Department of Water Resources. "In periods like this there will be shortages, of course, but the state as a whole is not going to run dry in a year or two years."The headline of a recent Times op-ed article offered a blunt assessment of the situation: "California has about one year of water left. Will you ration now?"Jay Famiglietti, senior water scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a professor at UC Irvine, wrote about the state's dwindling water resources in a March 12 column, citing satellite data that have shown sharp declines since 2011 in the total amount of water in snow, rivers, reservoirs, soil and groundwater in California.In an interview Thursday, Famiglietti said he never claimed that California has only a year of total water supply left.He explained that the state's reservoirs have only about a one-year supply of water remaining. Reservoirs provide only a portion of the water used in California and are designed to store only a few years' supply. But the online headline generated great interest. Famiglietti said it gave some the false impression that California is at risk of exhausting its water supplies.The satellite data he cited, which measure a wide variety of water resources, show "we are way worse off this year than last year," he said. "But we're not going to run out of water in 2016," because decades worth of groundwater remain.Still, the state's abysmal snowpack and below-average reservoir levels could exacerbate the overpumping of already depleted groundwater reserves — a problem detailed in an in-depth Los Angeles Times article Wednesday.There's little debate that the state's water situation is troubling, but there is some improvement from last year. Water levels in some of the state's largest reservoirs in Northern California are higher than last year at this time, largely because of big December storms. But some smaller Southern California reservoirs aren't doing so well and have lower reserves than a year ago.The Department of Water Resources did not have a readily available estimate of the total water supply in California or the amount expected to be used over the next year.Just because California is not exhausting its water supply "doesn't mean we're not in a crisis," said Leon Szeptycki, executive director of the Water in the West program at Stanford University, who called the state's snowpack, at 12% of average, "both bad for this year but also a troubling sign for the future."State officials said stricter conservation measures, including watering restrictions for cities and big cuts in water deliveries to San Joaquin Valley farmers, will help reduce the drain on reservoirs.Madelyn Glickfeld, director of the UCLA Water Resources Group at the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, said the drought is so serious that stricter conservation measures are urgently needed. "But I'm confident California's government will not let this get to the point where water is not coming out of peoples' faucets."
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Action Taken To Protect Fish At Bottom Of Ocean Food Chain
Preface: The Council took action to prohibit new directed fisheries on a list of currently unmanaged, largely unfished forage species this week which brings the following species and species groups into all four of the Council’s FMPs as ecosystem component (EC) species: • Round herring (Etrumeus teres) and thread herring (Opisthonema libertate and O. medirastre) • Mesopelagic fishes of the families Myctophidae, Bathylagidae, Paralepididae, and Gonostomatidae • Pacific sand lance (Ammodytes hexapterus) • Pacific saury (Cololabis saira) • Silversides (family Atherinopsidae) • Smelts of the family Osmeridae • Pelagic squids (families: Cranchiidae, Gonatidae, Histioteuthidae, Octopoteuthidae, Ommastrephidae (except Humboldt squid, Dosidicus gigas), Onychoteuthidae, and Thysanoteuthidae) The above species would be known as “Shared EC Species,” meaning that they are shared between all of the FMPs
A new rule prohibits new fisheries on forage fish species including silversides, shown here.Paul Asman and Jill Lenoble/Flickr
by Cassandra Profita OPBWest Coast fishery managers adopted a new rule Tuesday that protects many species of forage fish at the bottom of the ocean food chain.The rule prohibits commercial fishing of herring, smelt, squid and other small fish that aren’t currently targeted by fishermen. It sets up new, more protective regulations for anyone who might want to start fishing for those species in the future.The Pacific Fishery Management Council unanimously voted to adopt the rule at a meeting in Vancouver, Washington. The council sets ocean fishing seasons off the coasts of Washington, Oregon and California.The idea behind the new rule is to preserve so-called forage fish so they’re available for the bigger fish, birds and whales that prey on them. It’s part of a larger push by the council to examine the entire ocean ecosystem when setting fishing seasons.Environmentalists who have been advocating for the rule for years celebrated the approval.“If we’re going to have a healthy ocean ecosystem in the long term, we have to protect that forage base,” said Ben Enticknap of the environmental group Oceana. “These are the backbone of a healthy ocean ecosystem.”Enticknap said many of the forage fish subject to the new rule are already being fished elsewhere in the world. Little fish at the bottom of the food chain are used to make fish meal for aquaculture, and they’re increasingly in demand as food for people as other fish populations decline.Previous rules only required managers to be notified of a new fishery on non-managed forage fish species. Now, the council will require a more rigorous scientific review to prove that the new fishery won’t harm the ecosystem before it is allowed.“Really, it’s being precautionary,” said Enticknap. “It’s getting out ahead of a crisis rather than waiting for a stock to collapse and then having to have serious consequences for fisheries after the fact.”The rule has gained broad support — even from the fishing industry, according to Steve Marx of the Pew Charitable Trusts. Valuable commercial fish such as rockfish, salmon, halibut and tuna all prey on forage fish.“The fishing industry support has been pretty strong because everybody understands how important these small forage fish are to the fish they like, that they make a living off of,” he said.Rod Moore, executive director of the West Coast Seafood Processors Association, congratulated the council on moving forward with the rule.“It’s rare to get this sort of consensus support from commercial, environmental and recreational sectors, and I think you have it on this one,” he said.Before voting, council members discussed the best way to allow existing fisheries to catch some of the forage fish species incidentally – as they’re targeting other fish.The council directed staff to continue developing the details of the rule so that it doesn’t constrain existing fisheries, but it does discourage fishing boats from targeting forage fish.Councilors instructed staff to hold fishing boats accountable the forage fish they catch and consider discouraging development of at-sea processing of forage fish species into fish meal.
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NBCNews.com Replaces Reality, Regulation and History with Hyperbole
Original post: AboutSeafood.com | © 2015 National Fisheries Institute | Published with permission.
A story this week on NBCnews.com about the state of the seafood industry is packed with sensationalism and hyperbole, yet absent much of the real science, facts and figures that drive actual sustainability.To begin, U.S. fisheries are among the world’s best managed and most sustainable. Though not referenced by name a single time in this article, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, regulates U.S. seafood with headquarters in Washington D.C., five regional offices, six science centers and more than 20 laboratories around the country and U.S. territories.Author John Roach, however, perpetuates doom and gloom throughout this piece, asserting “voids” left by cod, halibut and salmon that need to be filled by other fish. We’re guessing Mr. Roach isn’t aware that salmon shattered modern-day records in 2014, returning to the Columbia River Basin in the highest numbers since fish counting began at Bonneville Dam more than 75 years ago. Could you tell us again about that void?Mr. Roach also intones a narrative of sustainability disaster for popular predators like tuna but forgot to mention groups like the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF), a coalition created through a partnership between WWF, the world’s leading conservation organization, and canned tuna companies from across the globe to insure the long-term conservation and sustainable use of tuna stocks. In an article that claims the sky is falling for species like tuna it’s odd that ISSF gets nary a nod or even a mention.Switching gears, Mr. Roach goes on to blame giant trawlers “armed” with technology and massive nets as part of the reason we’re “running low” on fish. As in any industry, technology gets better by the day, creating more efficient ways to do business. However, new technology is by no means exempt from standing national and global fishery regulations, such as catch-limits, by-catch laws, compliance, and so forth. To suggest that enhanced technology or “bigger or faster” boats are causing our fish supplies to dwindle ignores the impact of technology on sustainability and even regulatory oversight. There are pros and cons to every catch-method and there is no one-size-fits all solution to sustainability challenges but to blame technology without recognizing its contribution to solutions is folly.Hyperbolic rhetoric about sustainability continues to be discounted by legitimate fisheries experts in the scientific community. In fact, one “report” forecasting empty oceans by 2048 was challenged by a number of independent researchers who described the study that promoted the statistics as, “flawed and full of errors.” Including Ray Hilborn, a professor of aquatic and fishery sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle whose research into the study lead him to say, "this particular prediction has zero credibility within the scientific community.” After Hilborn’ s analysis the author of the original study himself explained that his research was not in fact predicting worldwide fish stock collapse at all but merely examining trends. Articles like this track along precisely with the discounted, overblown storyline that gave birth to the empty oceans by 2048 nonsense.Whether you’re a “natural optimist” or not, there is no question that seafood harvested from U.S. fisheries is inherently sustainable as a result of NOAA’s fishery management process and global fisheries management is far from the wild west scenario bandied about. Things aren’t perfect and there’s work to be done but the “game” is not “almost over” and those who suggest it is, willfully propagate that narrative not because it’s accurate but because bad news sells.
California drought likely a fixture, says Stanford study
Two piers lay on the shoreline at Shadow Cliffs Regional Recreation Area in Pleasanton, Calif., on Friday, Jan. 9, 2015. The man-made lake's water level remains at historically low levels, about 10 feet below normal for the winter season. (Doug Duran)
Human-caused climate change is increasing drought risk in California -- boosting the odds that our current crisis will become a fixture of the future, according to a major report Stanford scientists released Monday.The finding comes as cities across the Bay Area wrap up the warmest three-month stretch of winter on record.The new study looked at data from the past and simulations foretelling the future to understand the influence of greenhouse gases on California."What has happened in California has been a clear warming trend over the historical record ... that probably would not have happened without humans," said Stanford climate scientist Noah Diffenbaugh.The continuation of global warming "will result in more frequent occurrences of high temperatures and low precipitation that will lead to increased severe drought conditions," said Diffenbaugh. The research was published in the March 2 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.Low precipitation, alone, doesn't cause a drought -- what matters is whether it happens in a warm year, according to members of the Stanford team. They don't offer specific recommendations but say their findings could help California plan for the future.The news comes on the eve of this winter's third manual snow survey, taken atop the Sierra on Highway 50. Other readings reveal that statewide, the snowpack water content is just 19 percent of the historical average for the date.AdvertisementReinforcing the drought's threat, one weather agency is reporting that many Bay Area cities have broken records for the warmest winter in history. Average temperatures for December through February were 54.44 degrees in San Jose, up from the 54.42 degree record of 1996; 52.62 degrees in Livermore, up from the 51.72 degree record of 1996; and 57 degrees in San Francisco, up from the 55.70 degree record of 1970, according to Jan Null of Golden Gate Weather Services.The Stanford study supports the growing recognition that warming temperatures can worsen a drought that is driven by declining precipitation, noted Richard Seager of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, who was not involved in the research."This is happening all over the world -- there is nothing unusual in terms of California," said Seager.The Stanford team previously reported that the conditions behind our current drought -- a high pressure system parked over the Pacific Ocean, diverting storms away from California -- are much more likely to occur amid concentrations of greenhouse gases.The new study goes further. Using a recently released trove of 120 years of historical data, the researchers found more than a doubling of the frequency of drought years. There were six droughts in past 20 years (1995-2014), compared to 14 in the previous 98 years (1896-1994.)What's happening? Imagine flipping two coins, one for precipitation and one for temperature, said Diffenbaugh, associate professor of Environmental Earth System Science at Stanford.Until recently, precipitation and temperature occurred independently.But climate change means that the temperature coin is landing on warm weather most of the time. So even as precipitation varies, the combination of both warm and dry is more common. We see little rain, snow melts earlier, and soil and plants lose more water."Low precipitation isn't enough to create a drought. The key difference is temperature," said Diffenbaugh. And that's what is changing.Seager agrees that climate change will produce warmer weather, although he contends that our recent extreme heat is due to natural variations in sea surface temperatures, "far in excess of what you would expect from background greenhouse gases," based on his National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-sponsored research.He agrees that California "will also face tremendous water problems as the climate changes, because of warmer temperatures, less snow, shorter and sharper winters, and warming that takes moisture out of the soil."The Stanford team doesn't have data for the future, of course, and it's impossible to run a real-world experiment. So they created climate simulations to peer into the future.Their models show that the warming trend is likely to continue, boosting the odds that a heads-tails coin toss -- co-occurring warm and dry years, creating drought -- will climb in the coming decades.Droughts have occurred throughout California's pre-human history, just as the coin toss example would predict, they say. And nature creates its own variability, with volcanic eruptions and solar fluctuations.But steadily rising temperatures -- caused by burning fossil fuels and clearing forests -- increases the probability of such conditions, they found."Continued global warming will result in more frequent occurrences of high temperatures and low precipitation," said Diffenbaugh, "leading to more of the severe drought conditions that we've been experiencing."
Read the original post: MercuryNews.com | By Lisa M. Krieger
Sen. Murkowski Defines Goal of Commercial Fishing Discharge Exemption Bill
SEAFOODNEWS.COM | Published by permissionCongress will consider a new effort during the current session to take vessel discharge regulations off the books for commercial, fishing and recreational vessels that are less than 79 feet in length.That's S.387, introduced Feb. 4 and sponsored by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska.Co-sponsors are Senators Barbara Boxer, D-CA, Maria Cantwell, D-WA, and Dan Sullivan, R-AK."For those who need a little more graphic detail as to what we're talking about, when you take a commercial fishing vessel out, your 45-foot commercial fishing vessel, and you have a good day fishing, you've got some salmon guts on the deck," Murkowski said. "You've got a little bit of slime. You hose it off. That would be an incidental discharge that would be reportable to the EPA and if you fail to report, you could be subject to civil penalties. That's what we're talking about here."The senator said current Environmental Protection Agency regulations are so broadly written that they would penalize Alaska's fishermen and more than 8,000 boats statewide simply for rinsing fish guts off their decks, or rainwater washing other materials off of their decks.Alaska's congressional delegation has been trying for several years to get a permanent exempt for these vessels through Congress. Last year Murkowski and former Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, introduced similar legislation.
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With West Coast Port Talks Gridlocked, U.S. Labor Secretary Intervenes to Press For a Deal
Copyright © 2015 Seafoodnews.com | Posted by permissionWith idled cargo ships piling up along the coastline, President Obama ordered his labor secretary to California to try to head off a costly shutdown of 29 West Coast ports.Obama dispatched Tom Perez on Saturday to jump-start stalled labor talks between shipping companies and the dockworkers' union. The move ramps up pressure to resolve a dispute that stranded tens of thousands of containers on cargo ships over the holiday weekend.The Los Angeles and Long Beach ports account for some 40% of the nation's incoming container cargo, with $1 billion in goods moving through daily. A prolonged shutdown could hobble some Southland businesses and ripple across the U.S. economy.On Saturday morning, 32 massive ships were anchored outside the ports, unable to unload thousands of cargo containers filled with auto parts, electronics and clothes destined for store shelves across the country."Any company that imports supplies, inventory or parts is going to feel it," said Ian Winer, a managing director at Wedbush Securities. "There are very few companies who don't have something coming through those ports."That has businesses across the world focused on a dispute between a network of terminal operators and one of the strongest unions left in American industry.After nine months of talks, the two sides agree on key issues including healthcare but remain gridlocked over rules governing the removal of arbitrators, who settle disputes on the docks.At stake is a new contract for roughly 20,000 dockworkers at 29 West Coast ports. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union has been working without one since July amid negotiations with the Pacific Maritime Assn.The association has accused union workers of slowdown tactics and has at times halted the unloading of ships, including this weekend. The local union denies the allegations. The unloading of ships is expected to resume Tuesday.But the congestion has been building for months, because of the labor dispute and other factors. And the holiday weekend stoppage heightens fear of a longer-term disruption.Some businesses have attempted expensive workarounds, rerouting goods via air or through Gulf and East Coast ports, analysts said. Items ordered by retailers for the spring probably won't reach stores on time. Deliveries from Asian manufacturers could be delayed until after the Chinese New Year, which starts next week.For now, retailers still have inventory left over from the holiday season, analysts said. But they will need shipments before the busy spring shopping season.Communities close to the ports have been hit first and hardest. In Los Angeles, which has recovered slowly from the recession, truck drivers and warehouse workers are already seeing their hours cut.Elsewhere in the state, the agriculture industry is in pain..Ronald C. Leimgruber, namesake and owner of a farm in Holtville in southeastern California, said his small company normally exports two or three 20-ton loads of alfalfa hay and grasses a week . Now, he's forced to stockpile it or sell it cheaper domestically."You do whatever you can to survive," he said.Customers have canceled orders, and Leimgruber fears they may never come back. His sister's trucking company is also suffering. She usually sends 24 loads of goods to the ports each week, he said. It's dropped to five. She's laid off all but a few of her employees."All those wives won't get a good Valentine's Day, because their husbands aren't working," Leimgruber said.Companies across the globe will also feel the effects. A shift toward "just in time" manufacturing means companies keep their inventories low, making them far more susceptible to supply chain interruptions.Honda North America Inc. will slow production at factories in Ohio, Indiana and Canada because it can't get crucial parts from Japan, said spokesman Mark Morrison.The company has tried using air cargo and special truck shipments to obtain key supplies since January.If labor disruptions continue, businesses may reconsider their reliance on shipping to the West Coast, said Mark Vitner, a senior economist at Wells Fargo."The longer we have disruptions at the ports, the more and more people say this is a reason to do business elsewhere," he said.An extreme example of what could happen came Tuesday, when South Korea's largest shipping company, Hanjin, announced it was pulling out of the Port of Portland.The shipper accounted for 78% of business at the port, according to the Oregonian newspaper, importing apparel for companies such as Nike and exporting apples and other crops.Just last weekend, a Hanjin ship sat for four days without being unloaded amid walkouts and lockouts.Another looming threat is the widening of the Panama Canal, which will allow much larger cargo ships to head directly to the Gulf and East coasts, where ports are racing to expand. That business now mostly flows to L.A. and Long Beach.With the canal project scheduled for completion next year, this is a bad time for the West Coast to give "themselves a bad name in terms of reliability," said Jock O'Connell, an international trade economist.For now, the unions have a strong hand.While globalization has hurt unions in many U.S. industries, it's had the opposite effect at West Coast ports. Surging trade with Asia has nearly tripled traffic at the ports of L.A. and Long Beach over the last 20 years and given dockworkers here ever more clout.Today, the dockworkers are among the best-paid blue-collar workers in the country, earning between $26 and $41 an hour. And their union — tied not to the fate of any one company but to a whole network of international trade — has been able to play hardball."These 20,000 workers occupy one of the central choke points of the entire U.S. economy," said Harley Shaiken, a UC Berkeley professor who specializes in labor unions. "That gives them enormous power."It will be up to Perez and a federal mediator to craft a deal that satisfies the dockworkers, the shipping companies and the many industries watching the talks.If an agreement comes in the next week, the aftershocks will be "a blip," said Winer, the Wedbush managing director. But if it drags longer, the situation could be dire, he said."Six months would be a horror show," he said. "Even if this lasts more than a month, it's going to be a significant issue."
Ken Coons | SeafoodNews.com | Read original article here.