NASA scientists recently reported that an estimated 1.5 million tons of floating debris, washed into the ocean by the tsunami, is still drifting on the Pacific Ocean, and is likely destined to bob and swirl for many years in the North Pacific Gyre’s floating garbage dump.

To better predict the ultimate home of the ocean wreckage, researchers at NASA’s Earth Observatory used the Surface Currents from Diagnostic (SCUD) model to simulate where and how the debris would disperse. The model allowed them to produce the animated map you see below. Orange and red shaded areas represent parcels of water with a high probably of containing floating debris. The deeper the red color, the higher the likely concentration. The debris field stretches roughly 5,000 kilometers by 2,000 kilometers across the North Pacific.

Researchers say the debris was initially carried by the potent Kuroshio Current, which whips past eastern Japan much like the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic. The Kuroshio carries surface waters northeast, before eventually turning east in the Kuroshio Extension and then the North Pacific Current.

As of April 3, 2012, there had been very few reports of debris at Midway Island and Kure Atoll. North winds have been minimal in recent months, and ocean currents have favored keeping the debris from the island. But those currents may be shifting, Hafner noted, and debris should eventually wash up with greater frequency, noted Jan Hafner of the International Pacific Research Center (IPRC) at the University of Hawaii.

The research team expects debris to reach the west coast of North America within a year or two, while much of it is likely to end up in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Related Reading:

Update On The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (Yes, It’s Still There)

10 Most Common Types Of Ocean Trash

Tsunami Recovery Funds Subsidize Japanese Whale Hunt

h/t Mojo

One of Antarctica’s ice shelves has shrunk by 85 percent in the past 17 years according to images taken by the European Space Agency (ESA)’s Envisat satellite and scientists say that climate change is the reason.

In 1995, the Larsen B ice shelf was 11,512 square kilometers (4,373 square miles), an area about the size of Qatar. Now it is only 1,670 sq km (634 miles). Prof. Helmut Rott of the University of Innsbruck said that the satellite’s images indeed “confirm the vulnerability of ice shelves to climatic warming and demonstrate the importance of ice shelves for the stability of glaciers upstream.”

Ice shelves are thick masses of floating ice made from runoff from glaciers and are attached to the shore. They differ from ice sheets, which are vast masses of glacier ice that cover Antarctica. Ice shelves are highly sensitive to changes in the temperature and can be hollowed out from below by warmer ocean currents. Ice sheets seem to be stable so far; were they to melt, sea levels would rise and endanger coastal cities and small island states.

Disintegration of the Larsen Ice Shelf

The Larsen ice shelf is a series of three ice shelves that run from north to south on the eastern side of the Antarctic Peninsula. The smallest shelf, A, disintegrated in 1995, says the ESA. C appears stable so far, but Envisat has revealed that it too is thinning and that “melt events” are occurring for longer periods in the summer.

Image from Wikimedia Commons

The US government is keeping tabs on our online escapades. They’re doing things like:

In the age of social media, the federal government’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been reading Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other social networks for years, says Politico. But now the FBI and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are seeking out private tech vendors for technology which can scrape social media sites for billions of keyword hits daily. These could range from the more obvious (“cyberattack”) to the seemingly innocuous (“snow”).

Moreover, DARPA, which oversees technology and R & D for the military, sent out a call last summer for “innovative research proposals” to better enable it to use social media for military operations. DARPA documents say that the intent is to create a system to “detect, classify, measure, track and influence events in social media at data scale and in a timely fashion,” according to DARPA documents.

Both the FBI and DARPA say that “personally identifiable information won’t be collected and stored.” But the DHS program is another matter:

.. [the program] allows for the culling of such data in cases involving a narrow niche of folks, ranging from senior U.S. and foreign government officials to terrorists and drug cartel leaders, according to a DHS privacy compliance review from November. Personal information gathered on anyone else is supposed to be “redacted immediately before further use and sharing,” the privacy document says.

DHS has told Politico that it is seeking to mine only data that is available in public online fora. But two privacy groups, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, have already filed lawsuits against DHS regarding “the release of documents about policies and contracts governing its social media monitoring program.” The EPIC is also demanding that DHS suspend its monitoring program.

EFF staff attorney Jennifer Lynch describes the awkward dance the government has found it in. “The government is still trying to navigate social media, and they’ve definitely overstepped their boundaries on certain issues,” she comments.

It’s no secret that Chinese Communist authorities monitor microblogging sites and keep track of certain keywords and of who is using them. Twitter itself being banned in China, users rely on the Twitter-like Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo. On March 31, both services announced a 72-hour suspension of the comment function. The suspension happened after Chinese microbloggers had spread rumors about an overnight coup in Beijing.

Someone is keeping track of what’s said on any online forum in China. But is the U.S. government starting to look — to be — a bit too much like China as it seeks to keep an eye on whatever is said on Twitter and other social media sites?

Do you know who’s reading your Twitter feed now?

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