Pacific Hurricane Names
For hundreds of years, many hurricanes in the West Indies were named after the particular saint’s day on which the hurricane occurred. Before the end of the 19th century meteorologists began giving women’s names to tropical storms. During World War II, this practice became widespread in weather map discussions among forecasters, especially Air Force and Navy meteorologists who plotted the movements of storms over the wide expanses of the Pacific Ocean. The practice of naming hurricanes solely after women came to an end in 1978 when men’s and women’s names were included in the Eastern North Pacific storm lists. In 1979, male and female names were included in lists for the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico.
Given names are also used to identify typhoons and hurricanes in the Pacific Ocean, with a set of six alphabetical lists being used in the eastern North Pacific Ocean. As in the Atlantic, the sets are used again when the six-year lists are completed. The 2006 list will be used again in 2012. In addition, names are retired, after land-falling storms having major economic impact.
2012 Pacific Hurricane Names
Aletta, Bud, Carlotta, Daniel, Emilia, Fabio, Gilma, Hector, Ileana, John, Kristy, Lane, Miriam, Norman, Olivia, Paul, Rosa, Sergio, Tara, Vicente, Willa, Xavier, Yolanda, Zeke.
Pacific Hurricane Season 2012
The 2012 Pacific hurricane season officially starts on May 15, 2012 in the Eastern Pacific, and on June 1, 2012 in the Central Pacific, and ends on November 30, 2012. There are approximately 80-100 tropical storms annually and about half of these storms become full-fledged hurricanes when their winds reach 74 mph. Hurricanes vary widely in area and intensity. They can be from 60 to 1000 miles wide, and their strength is measured on the Saffir-Simpson scale from a weak category 1 storm to a catastrophic category 5 storm.
Hurricane damage results from three primary causes:
Storm Surge.
Most human fatalities can be attributed to the storm surge that quickly floods low-lying coastal areas with anywhere from 3 feet to 20 feet of storm surge.
Wind Damage.
The strong winds of a hurricane can cause widespread destruction far inland of coastal areas, destroying homes, buildings, and infrastructure.
Freshwater Flooding.
Hurricanes are huge tropical storms and dump many inches of rain over a widespread area in a short period of time. This water can engorge rivers and streams, causing hurricane-induced flooding.
Pacific Hurricane Formation
In the Pacific Ocean when an organized area of showers and thunderstorms intensifies, it becomes known as a tropical disturbance. This disturbance becomes an organized area of tropical low pressure that is called a tropical depression. A tropical depression’s winds are measured at 33 feet above the surface, and must be at or below 38 miles per hour when averaged out over one minute. These cyclonic winds go counter-clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere. Once average winds reach 39 mph then the cyclonic system becomes a tropical storm and receives a name. Tropical storm names are preselected and issued alphabetically for each storm, while tropical depressions are numbered.
A hurricane is a heat engine, powered by the latent heat energy released from condensation. That heat energy is derived from the ocean, and to develop it must be supplied with a constant supply of warm humid air for this process. When seawater evaporates from the surface, it takes heat with it. As the rising water vapor reaches clouds an incredible amount of heat is released, warming the air and driving the hurricane’s circulation. Surface air with enough energy to generate a hurricane only exists over oceans with a temperature greater than 80 degrees F and at least 600 feet deep. Ocean temperatures this high only occur in selected regions of our planet and during particular seasons.
On average, hurricanes that form in the North Pacific move in a west or northwestward path. In reality, the track taken by any individual storm is often very chaotic. Hurricanes can suddenly change both their speed and direction of travel.
Ocean Health
The world’s oceans are under siege from pollution, overfishing, and other man-made problems all at once, and their health is declining much faster than originally thought. Troubles from global warming, dead zones from farm run-off, an increase in acidity from too much carbon dioxide, habitat destruction, melting sea ice, along with overfishing are worse when they combine with each other all at once.
At an international meeting of marine scientists was designed to consider the cumulative impact of multiple stressors on the ocean. The 27 participants from 18 organizations in 6 countries produced a grave assessment of current threats: that the world’s ocean is at high risk of entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history.
Case Study 1 In Brief: Most, if not all, of the five global mass extinctions in Earth’s history carry the fingerprints of the main symptoms of global carbon perturbations (global warming, ocean acidification and anoxia or lack of oxygen). It is these three factors which are present in the ocean today. In fact, the current carbon perturbation is unprecedented in the Earth’s history because of the high rate and speed of change. Acidification is occurring faster than in the past 55 million years, and with the added man-made stressors of overfishing and pollution, undermining ocean resilience.
Case Study 2 In Brief: What the multi-disciplinary approach of the IPSO workshop made clear for the first time was the multiple threats reefs are facing, that are now acting together to have a greater impact than if they were occurring on their own. This suggests that existing scientific projections of how coral reefs will respond to global warming have been highly conservative and must now be modified.
Case Study 3 In Brief: Continued releases and slow breakdown rates mean that legacy chemical pollution remains a major concern. However, concerns have been raised recently over a wide range of novel chemicals now being found in marine ecosystems or suspected to be harmful to marine life. Some of these chemicals have been located recently in the Canadian Arctic seas, and some are known to be endocrine disrupters or can damage immune systems. Marine litter and plastics are also of major concern, and there is evidence that certain plastics can transport other harmful chemicals in the marine environment.
Case Study 4 In Brief: Scientists agreed that overfishing is exerting an intolerable pressure on ecosystems already under attack by the effects of acidification and warming, and other largely man-made ocean problems. A recent study showed that 63% of the assessed fish stocks worldwide are over-exploited or depleted and over half of them require further reduction of fishing, in order to recover.
Some of the changes affecting the world’s seas – all of which have been warned about individually in the past – are happening faster than the worst case scenarios that were predicted just a few years ago.
Protecting Coral Species From Extinction
Coral reefs around the world are facing extinction due to overfishing, pollution, and the overarching threats of global warming and ocean acidification. Corals in U.S. waters ranging from Florida and Hawaii to American territories in the Caribbean and Pacific, have all declined by more than 30 percent over a 30-year period. The U.S. government pledged to determine by April 2012, whether Endangered Species Act protections are needed for 83 species of coral.
Nine corals in Hawaii waters being considered for endangered species protection are: Fuzzy Table Coral (Acropora paniculata), Irregular Rice Coral or Hawaiian Reef Coral (Montipora dilatata), Blue Rice Coral (Montipora flabellata), Sandpaper Rice Coral, Spreading Coral or Ringed Rice Coral (Montipora patula), (Leptoseris incrustans), (Porites pukoensis), Agassiz’s Coral (Cyphastrea agassizi), Ocellated Coral (Cyphastrea ocellina), and Stellar Coral (Psammocora stellata).
Blue rice coral (Montipora flabellata), only found in Hawaii, blue rice coral is uncommon and thrives in shallow reefs pounded by waves. Although this coral is usually flat and sheetlike, on one reef in Molokai it grows branches with an opening at the tip that provides a home to small shrimp. Blue rice coral is vulnerable to bleaching, habitat degradation, and disease.
Hawaiian reef coral (Montipora dilatata) remains in fewer than five locations. It has the unfortunate trait of being among the first corals to bleach during increased water temperatures, and the slowest to recover. It has experienced significant climate-related population fluctuations over the last 20 years, and its small distribution makes it extremely vulnerable to extinction.
Scientists warn that by mid-century, coral reefs are likely to be the first worldwide ecosystem to collapse due to carbon dioxide pollution, which causes both global warming and ocean acidification. Warm water temperatures in 2010 marked the second-most deadly year on record for corals due to bleaching – a process by which they expel the colorful algae needed for their survival. Many corals die or succumb to disease after bleaching. An additional threat to coral reefs is ocean acidification, caused by the ocean’s absorption of CO2. The agreement is an important step toward legal protections for some of the most vulnerable coral reefs.
Hawaiian Wildlife and Spinner Dolphin Echolocation
Spinner Dolphin use clicks, whistles, and pulsed sounds to echolocate and communicate. Echolocation enable Spinner Dolphins (Stenella longirostris) to track objects in dark water, and to see much further than their eyes will allow. Dolphins bounce sounds off objects and then interpret the returning echo to get an acoustic picture of its surroundings. Their complex array of whistle sounds also allow dolphins to talk to one another. Spinners can identify themselves with sounds they make by trailing bubbles from their blowholes – sounds called signature whistles.
The time lapse between the dolphin emitting the signal and receiving the echo indicates the distance to the object being echolocated, and also the target’s density. By determining the target’s density, dolphins are able to recognize particular species, even in the total darkness of the deep ocean. Researchers discovered that dolphins reduce the volume of the echolocation pulses they emit as they approach the object they are echolocating. The dolphins first use echolocation to check the distance to the object, then adjust their volume and use echolocation to determine the object’s size (the more waves that are reflected back indicates a bigger object). The advanced capabilities of dolphins using echolocation may also allow dolphins to be able to tell if a human is in distress, since there have been numerous reports of dolphins saving drowning people.
Spinner Dolphins also communicate by slapping the water with various parts of their body. For instance, when the pod is emerging from a rest period, they thrust their beak above the surface in what is called a nose-out. Impending danger or a dive is indicated by tail slaps. Head slaps, side slaps, and back slaps most frequently indicates the pod is accelerating. Most spectacular, are the spins themselves. Many animals spin repeatedly, with each spin tending to get smaller and smaller, finishing with an emphatic side slap. Spinner Dolphins (Nai’a in Hawaiian) maximize their splash by twisting around to land in a belly-flop, or back-flop. Spins are most frequently performed while the school is spread out across the water. A spinning dolphin may be signaling to the others direction and speed of travel.
