Urge Congress to Continue Funding for NOAA Lab & Marine Mammals

Recently, the proposed federal fiscal budget under President Obama eliminated funding for James J. Howard National Marine Fisheries Service NOAA lab on Sandy Hook, New Jersey beginning in Fiscal Year 2013. The Marine Sciences NOAA Lab on Sandy Hook is a vital part of the local, national, and international marine science community, providing invaluable benefits to the ecosystems of the Atlantic Ocean.

If the closure of the NOAA lab on Sandy Hook becomes reality, this would be a devastating and shocking blow for science and research in coastal and estuarine waters of New York and New Jersey and in the entire Mid-Atlantic region. This lab is a vital part of the local, national, and international marine science community and provides important research and information on the habitats and resources of the Mid-Atlantic to the people of this nation.  

The NOAA lab at Sandy Hook is one of the region's premier facilities for research on the effects of climate change and ocean acidification on the East Coast. In addition, its location within the NY-NJ Harbor Estuary makes the Howard lab one of a few federal labs positioned to study problems associated with large urban areas. During the 1970s, this lab discovered industrial toxins in fish; and during the 1980s and 1990s it studied the environmental effects of ocean dumping and contaminated harbor sediment. These scientific efforts at Sandy Hook lead to major policy changes that cleaned up the ocean and Lower New York Bay. The NOAA lab is also instrumental in both environmental studies, marine science studies and is used by the high school students at MAST (Marine Academy of Science and Technology).

On a similar issue, the proposed 2013 budget also de-funds the John H. Prescott Marine Mammal Rescue Assistance Grant Program in its entirety. The Prescott Grant Program provides funding for recovery and treatment of stranded marine mammals, data collection from living or dead stranded marine mammals, and operation costs and staffing needs for stranding centers. In New Jersey, the only facility that handles stranded or stressed marine mammals and sea turtles is the Marine Mammal Stranding Center (MMSC) in Brigantine, New Jersey. Coastal New Jersey is such a populated and urban region that we can't leave these animals on the beach for days on end to see if they're okay!

 

The de-funding of these vital coastal-estuarine resources to the people of New York and New Jersey would have an incredibly significant impact on our ability to monitor and clean up the ecosystems of Lower New York Bay and help save marine mammals and sea turtles from injury and death.

Federal agencies were told by the Obama administration that their Fiscal Year 2013 budget requests were to be at least 5 percent less than what Congress approved for the FY 2011 budget and should include additional potential cuts that, if imposed, would reduce the agency's budget by at least 10 percent. Yet, Congress gets the last word, so any decision won't be made until the fall, when it goes through the appropriations process.

Please contact your federal senators and congressperson now to express your strong opposition to the proposal to close the NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service lab on Sandy Hook, New Jersey and the elimination of the Prescott grant program. Please urge Congress to reinstate funding for these two essential coastal resources.

Your opposition to the proposed budget cuts is appreciated, as is your commitment to supporting the health and biodiversity of Lower New York Bay and surrounding coastal waters.

To find out how to contact your federal senators and congressperson, please check out this website: http://www.contactingthecongress.org/

To sign a petition created by Clean Ocean Action to save funding for both coastal resources, please go to this website: http://www.change.org/petitions/the-president-of-the-united-states-restore-funding-for-sandy-hook-noaa-lab-marine-mammal-rescues

Weather Runs Hot and Cold, So Scientists Look to the Ice

By JUSTIN GILLIS and JOANNA M. FOSTER

Published: March 28, 2012

The New York Times 

Members of the Coney Island Polar Bear Club

Some people call what has been happening the last few years “weather weirding,” and March is turning out to be a fine example.

As a surreal heat wave was peaking across much of the nation last week, pools and beaches drew crowds, some farmers planted their crops six weeks early, and trees burst into bloom. “The trees said: ‘Aha! Let’s get going!’ ” said Peter Purinton, a maple syrup producer in Vermont. “ ‘Spring is here!’ ”

Now, of course, a cold snap in Northern states has brought some of the lowest temperatures of the season, with damage to tree crops alone likely to be in the millions of dollars.

Lurching from one weather extreme to another seems to have become routine across the Northern Hemisphere. Parts of the United States may be shivering now, but Scotland is setting heat records. Across Europe, people died by the hundreds during a severe cold wave in the first half of February, but a week later revelers in Paris were strolling down the Champs-Élysées in their shirt-sleeves.

Does science have a clue what is going on?

The short answer appears to be: not quite.

The longer answer is that researchers are developing theories that, should they withstand critical scrutiny, may tie at least some of the erratic weather to global warming. Specifically, suspicion is focused these days on the drastic decline of sea ice in the Arctic, which is believed to be a direct consequence of the human release of greenhouse gases.

“The question really is not whether the loss of the sea ice can be affecting the atmospheric circulation on a large scale,” said Jennifer A. Francis, a Rutgers University climate researcher. “The question is, how can it not be, and what are the mechanisms?”

Some aspects of the climate situation are clear from earlier research.

As the planet warms, many scientists say, more energy and water vapor are entering the atmosphere and driving weather systems. “The reason you have a clothes dryer that heats the air is that warm air can evaporate water more easily,” said Thomas C. Peterson, a researcher with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

A report released on Wednesday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations body that issues periodic updates on climate science, confirmed that a strong body of evidence links global warming to an increase in heat waves, a rise in episodes of heavy rainfall and other precipitation, and more frequent coastal flooding.

“A changing climate leads to changes in the frequency, intensity, spatial extent, duration and timing of extreme weather and climate events, and can result in unprecedented extreme weather and climate events,” the report found.

Some of the documented imbalances in the climate have certainly become remarkable.

United States government scientists recently reported, for instance, that February was the 324th consecutive month in which global temperatures exceeded their long-term average for a given month; the last month with below-average temperatures was February 1985. In the United States, many more record highs are being set at weather stations than record lows, a bellwether indicator of a warming climate.

So far this year, the United States has set 17 new daily highs for every new daily low, according to an analysis performed for The New York Times by Climate Central, a research group in New Jersey. Last year, despite a chilly winter, the country set nearly three new highs for every low, the analysis found.

But, while the link between heat waves and global warming may be clear, the evidence is much thinner regarding some types of weather extremes.

Scientists studying tornadoes are plagued by poor statistics that could be hiding significant trends, but so far, they are not seeing any long-term increase in the most damaging twisters. And researchers studying specific events, like the Russian heat wave of 2010, have often come to conflicting conclusions about whether to blame climate change.

Scientists who dispute the importance of global warming have long ridiculed any attempt to link greenhouse gases to weather extremes. John R. Christy, a climate scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, told Congress last year that “the weather is very dynamic, especially at local scales, so that extreme events of one type or another will occur somewhere on the planet every year.”

Yet mainstream scientists are determined to figure out which climate extremes are being influenced by human activity, and their attention is increasingly drawn to the Arctic sea ice.

Because greenhouse gases are causing the Arctic to warm more rapidly than the rest of the planet, the sea ice cap has shrunk about 40 percent since the early 1980s. That means an area of the Arctic Ocean the size of Europe has become dark, open water in the summer instead of reflective ice, absorbing extra heat and then releasing it to the atmosphere in the fall and early winter.

Rear more at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/29/science/earth/arctic-sea-ice-eyed-for-clues-to-weather-extremes.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&sq=Weather%20Runs%20Hot%20and%20Cold&st=cse&scp=1

How do Spring plants know when to bloom?

From: Science Daily
Published March 25, 2012 07:23 AM

With buds bursting early, only for a mild winter to turn Arctic and wipe them out, we are witnessing how warm weather can trigger flowering, even out of season, and how important it is for plants to blossom at the right time of year.

In research published in the journal Nature, scientists from the John Innes Centre on the Norwich Research Park have identified the switch that accelerates flowering time in response to temperature.

With warm air, a control gene, called PIF4, activates the flowering pathway, but at lower temperatures the gene is unable to act.

"What is striking is that temperature alone is able to exert such specific and precise control on the activity of PIF4," said Dr Phil Wigge.

Previously, it has been shown that PIF4 is vital for controlling other aspects of plant responses to warmth, for example growth, but this is the first time that the gene has been shown to be necessary for the activation of flowering by temperature.

Flowering is activated by a special molecule, called Florigen. Florigen is activated by many signals, including the longer days of spring. Some plants rely more on temperature, others more on day-length to control key stages in their life cycle such as leaf emergence and flowering. This is reflected in the old saying "Ash before Oak, you're in for a soak; Oak before Ash, you're in for a splash."

Article continues at ScienceDaily. (http://www.sciencedaily.com)

March Winds Doth Blow

Given that the calendar said spring, who would have guessed that we would get a little taste of winter in late March, especially after enjoying record-breaking mild temperatures into the low 70s last week. I let myself believe that the warm weather was here to stay. 

(New York City in the background with a choppy Lower New York Bay seen from Port Monmouth, NJ)

Unfortunately, March can be a cruel and unpredictable month. Temperatures didn't freeze all that much during the winter, but the National Weather Service has issued a freeze warning for Tuesday morning. My hopeful and happy daffodils are going to be subjugated to the cruelties of early spring. Poor little things. 

 

Air temperature today were no higher than the 50s, which is normal for this time of year, but out of place for this weird weather year. There has been nothing normal about this year's weather.

A steady and strong west-northwest wind was also blowing for most of the day. Gusts were as high as 45 mph around Lower New York Bay, maybe even higher in some locations. Plenty of chop and whitecaps on the water made it no fun to be on a ferry today.

But despite this setback to a sociable spring, I was outside along Sandy Hook Bay this afternoon looking for signs of life. The hardiest were out. I spotted a small flock of gulls resting and relaxing with the chilly winds to their back. The real residents of the bay were showing me how to deal with this unfriendly weather - just chill out. Warm temperatures will return, it's just a question of when.

Warm Winter’s Impact on NYC Greenmarkets

John Farley | March 12, 2012

MetroFocus  - WNET

New York State’s 2011-2012 winter was the second warmest on record (yes, technically speaking, it does not end until March 20, but c’mon…). Not surprisingly, in New York City the unusually mild temperatures have translated to an abundance of unsold sleds, early blossoms, allergies and heightened crime levels.

So despite the hail of sneezes and bullets, the warm winter will result in an early arrival of fresh fruits and vegetables at the city’s farmers markets, right? Perhaps, but they might be accompanied by some unwanted guests…

“Insects, that’s my chief concern about this winter,” said Ted Blomgren, owner of Windflower Farm in Valley Falls, N.Y. Blomgren’s farm supplies fruit, vegetables, flowers and eggs to Community Supported Agriculture sharing programs in New York City neighborhoods including Park Slope, Clinton Hill, Harlem and the Lower East Side (and — somehow not surprisingly — directly to the folks who work in Google’s NYC office). Like many of the farmers who supply to the city’s CSA’s and Greenmarkets, Blomgren’s crops are all organic, so he doesn’t use any pesticides. That’s why he’s especially anxious.

“I’m happy to have cold weather disrupt pest cycles. So I fear that insects and diseases could come in greater numbers, and start causing trouble earlier,” said Blomgren.

 

Kids running down the rows at Garden of Eve organic farm on Long Island. Garden of Eve farmer Chris Kaplan-Walbrecht said the warm winter has caused certain destructive species of insects to move further north than usual. Photo courtesy of Garden of Eve. 

Chris Kaplan-Walbrecht, who runs Garden of Eve Organic Farm and Market on Long Island, agrees that the insects that like to munch his crops every year — mainly beetles and fleas — are more prevalent after a mild winter. But Kaplan-Walbrecht, whose farm supplies vegetables to the Greenpoint-Williamsburg Greenmarket in Brooklyn, says there’s an even bigger unknown to fear: insect species that aren’t even native to New York.

Last fall, Kaplan-Walbrecht began noticing certain destructive worms and caterpillars that he hadn’t seen in years; it turns out that these species were migrating from down south. “As the season comes we’ve started to get them moving up the coast,” Kaplan-Walbrecht said of the destructive creatures.

Daniel Gilrein, an entomologist at Cornell University’s agricultural research center in Suffolk County, said that the true impact of the warm winter on local crops will be revealed over the next couple of months.

“I can safely say that when we have mild winters the corn earworm [which feasts on corn and tomato crops] tends to winter better than it normally does, meaning we will see them earlier this year,” Gilrein said.

Then there’s the issue of soil diseases that usually die off in the cold.

“We count on freezing and thawing in the soil. That loosens it up and kills any diseases, like powdery mildew,” said Kaplan-Walbrecht. “But they could possibly have found a safe area over the winter and they may appear earlier.”

Simple city-folk logic indicates that farmers should start planting earlier than usual to counteract the downsides of the warm weather. But Jack Hoeffner, owner of Hoeffner Farms in Montgomery, N.Y., said that would be jumping the gun.

“We have frost in May to worry about. Once we get to May we could be looking at 10 to 15 degrees warmer than usual, and we presume we might be two or three weeks ahead of schedule,” said Hoeffner, who supplies herbs and vegetables to Union Square Greenmarket and other farmers’ markets throughout the city. “Asparagus and rhubarb might be coming early this year.”

Many of New York City’s Greenmarkets are open year-round, but what you see at the markets all depends on whether farmers like Hoeffner think the rewards of planting early outweigh the risks of a spring cold snap. A little more than half of the city’s Greenmarkets open between April and July, and a representative for GrowNYC, the nonprofit that operates them, said they didn’t think the weather would have an impact on the opening dates.

In the meantime, the farmers are stockpiling defenses.

“It sounds kind of mean, but if pests emerge before there are vegetables for them to eat, they’ll perish. So in our greenhouses, we use some techniques to try and draw them out early,” said Blomgren.

Out on Long Island, Garden of Eve is waging bug-on-bug combat.

“I’m optimistic — what if we do get insects? — we do put out a lot of beneficials [insects that feast on the plant-eating species] so that’s our counter to the problem,” said Kaplan-Walbrecht.

http://www.thirteen.org/metrofocus/news/2012/03/buggin-out-over-the-warm-winters-impact-on-nyc-greenmarkets/