Marufish BLoG

MODIS Aqua satellite images of Sulu Sea. This is the beginning of daily satellite monitoring for this area. Latest news show they already start dumping one tonne of urea into Sulu Sea and going to dump more later. We need to act fast before they turn the Sulu Sea into a public toilet! Some actions are coming ....

S'pore contributing S$1m to help tackle haze in Jambi, Indonesia By Wong Mun Wai, Channel NewsAsia http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/310167/1/.html SINGAPORE : Singapore is providing S$1 million to an area in Indonesia's Jambi province to help tackle the haze. The money is earmarked for training officials and providing technical equipment. The assistance is part of a masterplan signed between Singapore and Indonesia focussing on fire prevention. The haze which hit Singapore last year was said to be the worst in decades, so a plan has been in the pipeline since March to root out the problem. To fight the haze, the first phase of the masterplan will see two stations set up in Jambi regency later in November. The stations, costing some S$500,000, will automatically monitor the weather and air quality as well as measure the temperature. The plan is to have the stations working by the next haze season from July. Two batches of Jambi officials will also b...

Enviros Challenge Dumping Urea in Ocean to Sink Carbon By Brandon Keim 11.07.07 12:00 AM http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/news/2007/11/urea_dumping An Australian company is injecting urea into the ocean, hoping to sequester greenhouse-gas pollution and cash in on carbon credits. If all goes according to plan, oceanic plankton will thrive on the nitrogen-rich urea broth and absorb carbon dioxide. When the plankton die, they'll sink to the bottom of the sea taking the carbon dioxide with them. The business plan: Companies licensing the technology can sell carbon offsets. But some scientists worry the technique hasn't been rigorously studied. The nitrogen injections, they say, could feed toxic algae, disrupt poorly understood ecosystems and ultimately release more carbon dioxide than is deep-sixed. "If we're going to entertain such massive measures, they need to be informed by scientific fact and experimentation, and less by opinion and profit motivations," ...

Proposal to fix Pacific with 'urea' dump By Charles Clover, Environment Editor Last Updated: 6:01pm GMT 05/11/2007 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/11/05/eapacific105.xml Proposals to dump large quantities of nitrogen-rich chemical in the Pacific as a quick fix for climate change have emerged at a UN treaty meeting in London. An Australian company is planning to dump 500 tons of urea into the sea between Philippines and Borneo Governments meeting to discuss whether the oceans should be used for experiments aimed at "fixing" carbon from the atmosphere heard that an Australian company is planning to dump 500 tons of industrially-produced urea - a substance that naturally occurs in urine - into the sea between Philippines and Borneo. The meeting of members of the London Convention, the UN treaty on dumping at sea, heard that Ocean Nourishment Corporation of Sydney was in discussion with the Philippines government to pump nitrogen-rich water int...

MODIS Aqua Images of Chlorophyll a (top), Sea surface temperature (middle) and RGB (bottom) on 3 Nov 2007 showing the event of Indian Ocean Dipole 2007. The long chlorophyll a tongue extended far to the south and west from Java Island.

El Nino and La Nina Current Situation and Outlook 31 Oct 2007 By WMO http://www.wmo.ch/pages/prog/wcp/wcasp/documents/El_Nino_Oct07_Eng.pdf La Niña conditions are now well established across the central and eastern Equatorial Pacific. The magnitude of the current sea surface temperature departures from normal in the central and eastern Equatorial Pacific are in the middle-range of La Niña events found in the historical record. La Niña conditions are most likely to continue at least through the first quarter of 2008. Each La Niña event is different in some respect from the other events, but some, like this one, are more different from the others. The most substantial difference for this event is that sea surface temperatures currently across the north of Australia to the Indian Ocean continue to be cooler than normal, contrary to those generally found in most La Niña events. In addition, the sequence leading up to this event has been unusual, with La Niña conditions established only aft...

Vietnam MODIS Aqua Chlorophyll a (top), sea surface temperature (middle) & nLw 551 (bottom) images on 31 Oct 2007.

MODIS Aqua chlorophyll a (top), sea surface temperature (middle) and RGB (bottom) on 30 Oct 2007. High chlorophyll a extended south from Java Island. Cool water remain at Southern Java and Sumatra Island.

The human toll of a nuclear blast (Click on link to view the movie from MSN)

MODIS Aqua chlorophyll a (top), sea surface temperature (middle) and RGB (bottom) on 24 Oct 2007.

MODIS Aqua chlorophyll a (top), sea surface temperature (middle) and RGB (bottom) images of Northern Borneo. The Baram River Plume (114E 4.5N) is flowing towards the northeast direction.

MODIS Aqua chlorophyll a (top), sea surface temperature (middle) and RGB (bottom) images on 18 Oct 2007. High chlorophyll a tongue extended from eastern Java towards the south. This phenomena very much similar to that in 2006. IOD driven coastal upwelling still persist at Southern Java. Reducing cloud observed at Southern Sumatra, Southern Kalimantan and whole Java Island.

Very clear MODIS Aqua images for Vietnam on 16 Oct 2007. Warm water observe near the mouth of Mekong river.

MODIS Aqua Chlorophyll a (top) and Sea Surface Temperature images for Sumatra and Java on 16 Oct 2007

A Decade of Ocean Color NASA Earth Observatory New Images http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=17801 It may seem obvious that life is distributed across Earth in uneven patches: lush forests teem with life, while barren deserts support a relatively small number of specialized plants and animals. But scientists have only started to glimpse the pattern of life in Earth’s oceans with the advent of Earth-orbiting satellites, and the greatest contribution has come from a small satellite called the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-View Sensor (SeaWiFS). Designed to orbit the Earth for five years collecting information about the oceans, SeaWiFS entered its eleventh year of operation in September 2007. Along with its predecessor, the Coastal Zone Color Scanner, the satellite provided scientists their first view of how plants are distributed across the globe’s oceans and revealed that, like land, the oceans contain rainforest-like areas where plants proliferate and d...

Hotspots put Sarawak on haze alert The Star, 5 Oct 2007 http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2007/10/5/nation/19085103&sec=nation MIRI: Sarawak has been placed on haze alert with 130 major fires having been detected in Kalimantan. Shifting cultivators in rural Sarawak have also started burning their farmlands and hillslopes to prepare for the planting season. Deputy Chief Minister Tan Sri Dr George Chan Hong Nam, who is state Disaster Relief Committee chairman, said the fires in Kalimantan were large enough to be detected by satellites. “There are about 130 hotspots already in Kalimantan. In Sarawak, we have detected about 71 cases of burning in the central region. “These local fires are not big. They are scattered fires here and there caused by open burning carried out by interior farmers and shifting cultivators,” he said. He was commenting on the presence of a persistently hazy-looking skyline over various parts of the state over the past week. Dr Chan said there was no im...

Chlorophyll a and Sea surface temperature of eastern Indian Ocean on 12 Oct 2007. Very warm water observed around the Malay Peninsular.

Large phytoplankton bloom extended far south of Java. Cooler coastal water due to upwelling. Indian Ocean Dipole still around!