Sea Water Temperatures at Race Rocks

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From
1921 until 1997 daily records of Seawater Temperature and
Salinity were manually taken at Race Rocks by the Lightkeepers and assistants. In 1997 the station was automated and Lester Pearson College took over the hiring of the Lightkeeper Mike Slater and his wife Carol as Guardians for the Ecological Reserve / Marine Protected Area. They  maintained the daily sea temp and salinity records until their retirement in 2009. The records have been submitted monthly to the Institute of Ocean Sciences, thus continuing this important long term record.

See the Decade Comparisons:Sea Surface Temperature at Race Rocks- 1921-1930 and 1995-2005


The students from Lester Pearson College often stayed at the island and took over the daily duties such as the water sampling for temperature and salinity. The following is their introduction to the video:During our project week at Race Rocks, Mike Slater, the Race Rocks Marine Protected Area Guardian asked us if we could make a video explaining the daily duties necessary to maintain the facility. Students who are relieving on the island during Mike’s absence will be able to use this data as a guide for performing their duties, as well as providing a useful information resource for students visiting the island. These duties include two daily engine checks, a salinity check one hour before high tide, and keeping a record of the days weather, as well as explaining the functions and instructions for testing machinery located on the island.

 

 
Garry gives a good demonstration of when one should avoid taking seawater temperatures!~ (Photo by Barry Herring Feb 2009)

 

SEA TEMPERATURE 1921 to 2008

Also
see historic sets of raw data from IOS for the British
Columbia Light Stations

http://www.pac.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/science/oceans/data-donnees/lighthouses-phares/data/racerockday.txt

Observations of Seawater Temperature and Salinity at British Columbia Shore Stations, 1983. F. Glovando 1985
Refer
to the File “Temperature Changes Through Time for an
Educational exercise on Sea water Temperature changes.

 

OCEAN
WARMING:
The
long-term Sea temperature record at Race Rocks has
been pointed out as one of the pieces of evidence that has
accumulated on global warming. Terry Glavin, in reviewing
the book The Weather Makers by Tim
Flannery ( Harper Collins Publishers, 2006) says
:”
The Pacific Ocean itself is getting warmer.
Measurements at the Race Rocks lighthouse near
Victoria show an average rise in temperature of 1°C
since 1921, which doesn’t sound like much until you
remember that its only 10°C in the other direction
that separates us from the deep freeze of the Ice Age.
The ocean, absorbing increasing volumes of carbon
dioxide, is becoming more acidic too, inhibiting the
production of plankton, the basis of all life in the
sea.”The
rest of the article may be seen at
http://www.straight.com/content.cfm?id=17132See this file for our own analysis which supports this statement:

page 21 State
of the Pacific Ocean 2005
context.http://www.pac.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/sci/psarc/OSRs/StateofOceans2005fnl.pdfTwo
references are made to Race Rocks Sea Temperature
data. page 6 and page 31
State
of the Pacific Ocean , 2006
state of the pacific ocean 2006,page 36 ” Ocean
Temperatures along the west coast of Vancouver island
declined to below average conditions in the latter half
of 2006. The waters of race Rocks …did not follow this
pattern, and remained above average all year.”
RESPONSE
OF ORGANISMS TO SEAWATER TEMPERATURES:
The
seawater in the Strait of Juan de Fuca has a very narrow
variation in temperature range. It is important to
understand about Heat Capacity, as it is partly due to
this ability of water to warm up slowly and cool off
slowly that the climate of Vancouver Island and the lower
mainland of British Columbia has the mildest weather in
Canada.
Heat
capacity is the ratio of the heat energy absorbed to the
rise in temperature. Objects with high heat capacity, such
as water, require a great amount of heat energy to change
temperature. Materials with low heat capacities, such as
air, easily change temperature with small amounts of heat
energy.

These
photos are from the California sea lion page. They demonstrate one of the forms of heat exchange used by the sea lions atRace Rocks. Their flippers are filled with blood vessels, so this behaviour allows heat exchange with the atmosphere.
Heat
Capacity is also sensitive to the size of the object
(for example, a bathtub of water has more heat capacity
than a cup of water). Therefore we can expect the
greatest variation in temperatures to occur at Race
Rocks in the tidepools.

This file shows one example of measurements taken on
tidepools. It illustrates this idea of size of the object and it also helps explain why our tidepools
have different biodiversity depending on the temperature variations of the pools.

Other ideas to be developed here:
1.Temperature stratification in tidepools and
distribution of organisms.

2.
Temperature stratification in the ocean. The importance
of the thermocline in determining marine-life zones.

3.
The relationship of temperature of water to its ability
to absorb the gases oxygen and carbon dioxide. (An
inverse relationship which has significant implications
for where organisms can live.)

4.
Birds and mammals have adaptation for cold temperatures,
e.g. Insulation, activity levels and counter-current
arterial circulation

 

Dr.
Kate Edwards of the University of Washington School of
Oceanography is doing research on the sea temperatures
of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. (click on image to left).She maintains web pages at:
Strait of Juan de Fuca page:
http://www.ocean.washington.edu/~kate
West Coast headlands page:
http://www-ccs.ucsd.edu/~kate
Jan Newton is at the Washington state Department of Ecology and is interested in how the Straits affect Puget Sound.
She has organized the “Joint Effort to Monitor the
Straits,” which regularly sample the three stations south
of San Juan Island in the map at http://www.ecy.wa.gov/apps/eap/marinewq/mwdataset.asp
.
Click on the Station Group Puget Sound, and the Selected
Station – Juan de Fuca.

This
paper references Strait of Juan de Fuca Temperatures

 

Educational Exercises Using Data From Race Rocks – Excel and
Statistics