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This article reports that an oceanographic survey of the southeastern Pacific has discovered a region where ultraviolet radiation penetrates deeper than has been measured in any other ocean locale. 90 percent of the light at certain ultraviolet wavelengths is blocked before it reaches a depth of 3 meters, says Richard Sempere, a marine biogeochemist at the University of the Mediterranean in Marseilles, France.

The article discusses how items that go overboard can teach scientists about ocean currents. When a cargo ship experiences difficult weather, cargo will occasionally fall into the ocean. In January 1992, a freighter delivering toys from Hong Kong, China ran into rough weather in the Pacific ocean and lost several cargo containers. One held tens of thousands of plastic tub toys. As these toys wash up on beaches, scientists learn more about how the ocean current works.

The article focuses on the possible fall of space debris from the 6.5-ton Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite on Earth in September 2011. According to the U.S. National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA), 26 components of the satellite couldstrike the Earth at different sites from 500 kilometers to nearly 1300 kilometers downrange. It mentions that the potential crash sites include Pacific Ocean, Africa, and South America.

An image of the peak wave heights of the tsunami waves that traveled across the Pacific Ocean after an 8.9 magnitude earthquake struck Japan in March 2011 is presented.

The article reports that inhabitants of the Pacific Simbo Island were more likely to survive a tsunami if they heeded the oral culture wisdom of their elders and ancestors. It had become traditional for elders to advise islanders to seek high ground following earthquakes, given their observations that tidal waves often followed temblors.

This article looks at research into the Dust Bowl of the 1930s in the plains of the United States. An 8 year drought transformed the central U.S. during a lengthy La Niña when sea-surface temperatures in the central Pacific were cooler than normal. A computer model made by Travis A. O'Brien at the University of California, Santa Cruz, estimates the effect of airborne dust on the Midwestern climate at the time.

The article reports research on mantle plumes. The Pacific tectonic plate lies over the hot spot that fuels the volcanic activity that formed the Hawaiian Islands. Because South Pacific seamount chains lie on the Pacific tectonic plate, many scientists have speculated that underlying hot spots created all these seamounts. However, analyses of ancient lava samples dredged from undersea peaks cast doubt on that theory, says Hubert Staudigel, a geophysicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif. Staudigel and his colleague Anthony A. P. Koppers used the ratio of two argon isotopes in the samples to estimate the age of rocks in two lines of South Pacific seamounts. Neither of those ages matches the 47-million-year age for the bend in the Hawaiian seamount trail--a sign that a sudden swerve by the Pacific tectonic plate didn't simultaneously cause the bends in the Hawaiian and South Pacific chains, says Staudigel. He and Koppers speculated in the Feb. 11 Science that forces pulling on the southwestern portion of the Pacific tectonic plate might have stretched the ocean crust thin there, creating weak spots that were susceptible to volcanism.

This article reports that a new computer model that analyzes summer-wind patterns can predict whether the United States will suffer a damaging hurricane season, according to the scientists who developed the tool. Eight of the 10 costliest U.S. calamities were hurricanes, says Mark A. Saunders, an atmospheric physicist at University College London in Dorking, England. The new computer model, developed by Saunders and his colleague Adam S. Lea, considers the speed and direction of winds at altitudes between 750 meters and 7,500 m above sea level during the month of July over six broad regions of the eastern Pacific Ocean, the North Atlantic Ocean, and the central United States. The patterns of those winds, which influence the paths of weather systems and steer Atlantic storms either toward land or out to sea, typically persist throughout the hurricane season, says Saunders.

This article reports on the announcement of a program design to expand the tsunami-warning system in the United States. On Jan. 14, the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush announced a $37.5 million The 2-year plan includes placing tsunami-detecting buoys in the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea as well staffing around the clock the existing tsunami-warning centers in Alaska and Hawaii. Currently, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) operates a six-buoy warning system in the Pacific Ocean. Other important initiatives in the new plan include procuring, operating, and maintaining 38 new shore-based tide-gauge stations, upgrading 20 seismometers used to measure earthquakes, identifying shorelines along the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico that would be particularly susceptible to tsunamis, and boosting community preparedness in coastal areas. Although existing budgets included funding for many of these initiatives, Lautenbacher admitted that last week's proposed acceleration of their implementation wouldn't have occurred but for the horrendous toll of last month's tsunamis in the Indian Ocean.