Southern hemisphere waters are starting to warm for this year's bleaching season. The area likely to experience the highest temperature anomalies and greatest potential for widespread bleaching during the next 12 weeks is a region extending southeast from Papua New Guinea to the Solomon Islands, the GBR, and New Caledonia.

Coral Triangle

Ocean temperatures have begun to cool in the Coral Triangle (CT) region west of Torres Strait as the sun has moved southward. HotSpot values are diminishing across Indonesia from Borneo to Papua. HotSpot values are now zero in most of that area, so we do not anticipate any significant accumulation of thermal stress at this time. This may change with renewed warming around March. Thermal stress continues to accumulate just east of Torres Strait and in the region between Papua-New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. As warming continues and is expected to expand in the Coral Sea, thermal stress may continue to accumulate. Reef locations in the east of the Strait, the eastern-most islands of Papua New Guinea (Venema and Rossel Islands), and the western side of the southern Solomon Islands exceed DHW of 4 (Alert Level 1) and continue to warm. The potential for thermal stress levels that can cause severe bleaching is expected to continue through February.

South Pacific

Some warming with positive HotSpot values and mild accumulation of thermal stress has begun along a band from New Caledonia, past Fiji, to waters south of Raratonga. The bleaching outlook model indicates that there is a potential for high thermal stress for New Caledonia and perhaps Fiji and Tonga, with less extreme warming in the southern Cook Islands and French Polynesia. Warming of waters around New Caledonia is expected to continue through February; stress levels of the magnitude shown by the bleaching outlook model are similar to those that may cause bleaching in New Caledonia.

Seasonal bleaching outlooks can be found at:
http://coralreefwatch.noaa.gov/satellite/bleachingoutlook/index.html

Current HotSpot and Degree Heating Week charts and data formatted for HDF and Google Earth can be found at:
http://coralreefwatch.noaa.gov/satellite/index.html

Time series graphics for index sites can be found at:
http://coralreefwatch.noaa.gov/satellite/current/sst_series_24reefs.html
http://coralreefwatch.noaa.gov/satellite/current/experimental_products.html

You can sign up for automated bleaching alerts at:
http://coralreefwatch-satops.noaa.gov/SBA.html

Please report bleaching events (or non-events) at:
http://www.reefbase.org/contribute/bleachingreport.aspx

Around Tuesday 9 December, two regions of abnormally high sea levels, one over the Solomon Sea South of the New Britain Coast in PNG, and one over Guam waters north of the equator, appear to have been forced together by two tropical depressions.
(Source - PNG National Weather Service Press Release, Tuesday 9 December.)

This has created abnormally high sea levels that have since impacted upon Kiribati, the Solomon Islands, Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia.

Kiribati

The Department of Meteorology reported on Friday 12 December that the Island of Marakei was impacted by the sea's increased swell with damage to locally built houses and the sea wall. The Rongorongo Man Ami Tautaeka (RMAT), a newsletter published by the Kiribati Government, reported on Friday that the sea swell had caused no deaths, but that 17 families have been left homeless. The newsletter also reported that a number of people from Rawannawi Village, where the waves from the swell were said to have had the greatest effect, were displaced and have moved to higher ground. The tide is expected to peak on Saturday 13 December.

Federated States of Micronesia

On Saturday 13 December, the Office of Environment & Emergency Management-National Government (OEM) reported high surf and inundation on some of the islands in the FSM. The Kosrae Governor has officially requested assistance from the national government for a preliminary damage assessment. The OEM reports that Yap is experiencing similar phenomena in the outer islands and that there is unofficial word that some of the southwest islands of Pohnpei are also experiencing high surf.

Solomon Islands

The Solomon Islands Red Cross contacted the National Disaster Management Office on Friday morning, 12 December and spoke with the Director. As yet, the office had received no reports from the province of Shortland Islands, which is nearby the affected Bougainville in PNG, of any damage which may cause humanitarian need. As of 6.00 pm Friday 12 December, the Solomon Islands NZAID office had also not received any reports of humanitarian impact caused by abnormal sea swell.

Republic of the Marshall Islands

The Marshall Islands Country Development Manager reported at 6pm on Friday 12 December that swells of 12ft high had impacted the lower lying areas of Majuro on Wednesday 10 December. The National Disaster Management Office reported unofficially on Saturday 13 December that the wave surge event in Majuro had not resulted in any significant damage to infrastructure or threat to life. The NDMO believes that additional wave surges are a possibility at Majuro during the next 24-48 hours. During that same timeframe, locations in Kwajalein atoll (the Army base installations and neighbouring Ebeye) have also been advised to expect and prepare for wave surges. The Marshall Islands Journal reports that the Majuro Weather Station expects the tide will peak at 5.5 feet at 4.32 pm on Saturday 13 December, 1.4 feet higher than the tide associated with the previous destructive wave surge.

Information supplied by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), Pacific Office.

Tel: +679-331-7320
Fax:+679-330-9762
Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Welcome to the new look website of the Pacific Islands Global Ocean Observing System!

Until now the PI-GOOS website comprised of a series of pages under the main SOPAC website (www.sopac.org), SOPAC being the host and an important sponsor of  the PI-GOOS programme.

In 2007 the decision was taken to move the website to a location outside of SOPAC to allow PI-GOOS to operate under its own domain (www.pi-goos.org) and also to bring together the websites of the partner observing programmes operating in the Pacific Islands region, namely the Pacific Islands Global Climate Observing System (PI-GCOS) and the Pacific Hydrological Cycle Observing System (Pacific HYCOS).

The new PI-GOOS website is hosted by the International Pacific Research Center (IPRC) at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Websites for the 3 observing programmes have been developed using the Joomla! open source content management system.

At present the PI-GOOS website is optimised for use with Mozilla Firefox (v3) but adjustments are currently underway to ensure compatibility with other popular browsers.

If you have any comments or suggestions on how the site can be improved, please contact the PI-GOOS Coordinator.

The Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS) anticipates a second year of support from the Nippon Foundation for the NF-POGO Centre of Excellence in Observational Oceanography. The Centre will offer a 10-month Programme of study at BIOS on Observational Oceanography. Tentative programme dates are from 1 August, 2009 to 31 May, 2010. Travel and living expenses of the trainees will be covered by the NF-POGO Programme.

Full details are available at: http://www.bios.edu/education/cofe.html

A programme flyer can be downloaded from here (PDF, 340KB).