Hawaiian Islands Weather details & Aloha Paragraphs / May 20-21, 2015

Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures (F) were recorded across the state of Hawaii Wednesday…along with the minimums Wednesday:

77 – 74  Lihue, Kauai
83 – 72  Honolulu, Oahu
79 – 67  Molokai AP
85 – 69  Kahului, Maui
84 – 75  Kailua Kona
80 – 68  Hilo, Hawaii

Here are the latest 24-hour precipitation totals (inches) for each of the islands, as of Wednesday evening:

1.17  Mount Waialeale, Kauai
1.95  Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
0.63  Puu Alii, Molokai
0.01  Lanai
0.00  Kahoolawe
0.32  Hana AP, Maui
0.73  Puu Waawaa, Big Island

The following numbers represent the strongest wind gusts (mph)…as of Wednesday evening:

21  Port Allen, Kauai – NE
20  Kuaokala, Oahu – NE
23  Molokai – NE
24  Lanai – NE
28  Kahoolawe – NE
23  Kapalua, Maui – NE
27  Kealakomo, Big Island – NE

Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live web cam on the summit of near 13,800 foot Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. This web cam is available during the daylight hours here in the islands…and when there’s a big moon shining down during the night at times. Plus, during the nights you will be able to see stars, and the sunrise and sunset too… depending upon weather conditions.

Aloha Paragraphs

High cirrus streaming eastward…with an
approaching weak cold front northwest

Clear to partly cloudy, cloudy areas, with cirrus now southeast,
south and southwest – looping version of this satellite photo

Showers are falling over the nearby ocean…spreading
over the islands locally

Here’s the looping radar image for the Hawaiian Islands

~~~ Hawaii Weather Narrative ~~~

Trade winds will lose strength soon, becoming light and variable Thursday and Friday…then gradually strengthening through the weekend into next week. Here’s the latest weather map, showing the Hawaiian Islands, and the rest of the North Pacific Ocean, along with a real-time wind profiler of the central Pacific. We find high pressure systems located to the northwest through northeast of the state. There’s also a cold front approaching from the northwest. The forecast has the trade winds slowing down tonight, and then mostly stopping Thursday and Friday, bringing sultry and hazy weather our way. We’ll see gradually returning trade winds later in the weekend into next week. This unusual break in our trade winds will be brought about by an usual cold front. This front goes against our climatological norm for this time of year, although satellite imagery continues to show it taking aim on our islands.

We’re moving into a new weather situation, with clear mornings giving way to afternoon clouds around the mountains…showers locally. These interior showers will be most prevalent on the Big Island and Maui. As we get into the Thursday and Friday time frame, and as a cold front pushes the trade winds away…we’ll see more clouds forming during the afternoons. I’m not expecting these clouds to produce heavy showers, although they will be light to moderately heavy at times. The models continue to insist that this late season cold front will push down into the state. It looks like it will arrive over Kauai Friday night, Oahu Saturday morning, Maui County and the Big Island later Saturday into early Sunday morning. It will be interesting to see how much in the way of shower activity it will bring. I’ll be back with more updates on all of the above, I hope you have a great Wednesday night wherever you’re spending it! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Here on Maui...early Wednesday morning before sunrise, skies are mostly cloudy. The air temperature here in Kula at 535am was 57.6 degrees, 71 at the Kahului AP, 68 degree reading out in Hana, and 39 degrees at the Haleakala Crater. / It’s now 1030am, under very cloudy skies, with very light rain falling, with an air temperature of 67.8 degrees.

– It’s 225pm this afternoon, with clear skies down by the beaches for the most part, with clouds over the mountains. Here in Kula, it has been lightly showering all day, and cool too. The temperature here in Kula is 68.9 degrees, while at the same time down in sunny Kahului, it was 83 degrees in contrast.

– It was an interesting day up here in Kula, as light precipitation began falling as I was sitting out having breakfast…and it showered lightly off and on all day. It’s now 615pm, and the clouds have quickly parted, with mostly sunny skies now prevailing as we head towards sunset. It was seriously cloudy all day up here, although all those light showers didn’t amount to very much precipitation. I could see that down at the beaches, it was a much different story, with sunny to partly cloudy weather prevailing. I expect a clear start to Thursday, with another repeat performance of clouds and light showers in the upcountry areas…with the beaches remaining quite lovely in contrast. Finally, there’s a thin sliver of a new moon in the western horizon, with a planet not far to the upper right – which is a really nice sight.

>>> Atlantic Ocean: The last regularly scheduled Tropical Weather Outlook of the 2014 Atlantic hurricane season…has occurred. Routine issuance of the Tropical Weather Outlook will resume on June 1, 2015. During the off-season, Special Tropical Weather Outlooks will be issued as conditions warrant.

Here’s a satellite image of the Atlantic Ocean

>>> Caribbean Sea: The last regularly scheduled Tropical Weather Outlook of the 2014 Atlantic hurricane season…has occurred. Routine issuance of the Tropical Weather Outlook will resume on June 1, 2015. During the off-season, Special Tropical Weather Outlooks will be issued as conditions warrant.

>>> Gulf of Mexico: The last regularly scheduled Tropical Weather Outlook of the 2014 Atlantic hurricane season…has occurred. Routine issuance of the Tropical Weather Outlook will resume on June 1, 2015. During the off-season, Special Tropical Weather Outlooks will be issued as conditions warrant.

Here’s a satellite image of the Caribbean Sea…and the Gulf of Mexico.

>>> Eastern Pacific: There are no active tropical cyclones

TROPICAL WEATHER OUTLOOK
NWS NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL

For the eastern North Pacific…east of 140 degrees west longitude:

1. A tropical wave located several hundred miles south-southwest of
the southern tip of Baja California is producing a large area of
disorganized cloudiness and showers. Environmental conditions are
expected to become conducive for some slow development of this
system over the weekend.

* Formation chance through 48 hours...low...near 0 percent
* Formation chance through 5 days...low...20 percent

2. An area of low pressure is expected to form during the next
couple of days well to the west-southwest of the southern tip of
Baja California.  Environmental conditions are expected to be
conducive for gradual development of the system over the weekend
while the low moves slowly northwestward.

* Formation chance through 48 hours...low...near 0 percent
* Formation chance through 5 days...low...30 percent

This NHC image shows these two disturbances described above

Here’s a wide satellite image that covers the entire area between Mexico, out through the central Pacific…to the International Dateline.

Here’s the link to the National Hurricane Center (NHC)

>>> Central Pacific: The central north Pacific hurricane season has officially ended. Routine issuance of the tropical weather outlook will resume on June 1, 2015. During the off-season, special tropical weather outlooks will be issued as conditions warrant.

Here’s a link to the Central Pacific Hurricane Center (CPHC)

>>> Northwest Pacific Ocean:There are no active tropical cyclones

>>> South Pacific Ocean: There are no active tropical cyclones

>>> North and South Indian Oceans: There are no active tropical cyclones

Here’s a link to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC)

Interesting: US Exposure to Extreme Heat is on the Rise – U.S. residents’ exposure to extreme heat could increase four- to six-fold by mid-century, due to both a warming climate and a population that’s growing especially fast in the hottest regions of the country, according to new research.

The study, by researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the City University of New York (CUNY), highlights the importance of considering societal changes when trying to determine future climate impacts.

“Both population change and climate change matter,” said NCAR scientist Brian O’Neill, one of the study’s co-authors. “If you want to know how heat waves will affect health in the future, you have to consider both.”

Extreme heat kills more people in the United States than any other weather-related event, and scientists generally expect the number of deadly heat waves to increase as the climate warms. The new study, published May 18 in the journal Nature Climate Change, finds that the overall exposure of to these future heat waves would be vastly underestimated if the role of population changes were ignored.

The total number of people exposed to extreme heat is expected to increase the most in cities across the country’s southern reaches, including Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, Houston, Oklahoma City, Phoenix, Tampa, and San Antonio.

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, which is NCAR’s sponsor, and the U.S. Department of Energy.

CLIMATE, POPULATION, AND HOW THEY INTERACT

For the study, the research team used 11 different high-resolution simulations of future temperatures across the United States between 2041 and 2070, assuming no major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. The simulations were produced with a suite of global and regional climate models as part of the North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program.

Using a newly developed demographic model, the scientists also studied how the U.S. population is expected to grow and shift regionally during the same time period, assuming current migration trends within the country continue.

Total exposure to extreme heat was calculated in “person-days” by multiplying the number of days when the temperature is expected to hit at least 95 degrees by the number of people who are projected to live in the areas where extreme heat is occurring.

The results are that the average annual exposure to extreme heat in the United States during the study period is expected to be between 10 and 14 billion person-days, compared to an annual average of 2.3 billion person-days between 1971 and 2000.

Of that increase, roughly a third is due solely to the warming climate (the increase in exposure to extreme heat that would be expected even if the population remained unchanged). Another third is due solely to population change (the increase in exposure that would be expected if climate remained unchanged but the population continued to grow and people continued to moved to warmer places). The final third is due to the interaction between the two (the increase in exposure expected because the population is growing fastest in places that are also getting hotter).

“We asked, ‘Where are the people moving? Where are the climate hot spots? How do those two things interact?'” said NCAR scientist Linda Mearns, also a study co-author. “When we looked at the country as a whole, we found that each factor had relatively equal effect.”

At a regional scale, the picture is different. In some areas of the country, climate change packs a bigger punch than population growth and vice versa.

For example, in the U.S. Mountain region—defined by the Census Bureau as the area stretching from Montana and Idaho south to Arizona and New Mexico—the impact of a growing population significantly outstrips the impact of a warming climate. But the opposite is true in the South Atlantic region, which encompasses the area from West Virginia and Maryland south through Florida.

Exposure vs. vulnerability

Regardless of the relative role that population or climate plays, some increase in total exposure to extreme heat is expected in every region of the continental United States. Even so, the study authors caution that exposure is not necessarily the same thing as vulnerability.

“Our study does not say how vulnerable or not people might be in the future,” O’Neill said. “We show that heat exposure will go up, but we don’t know how many of the people exposed will or won’t have air conditioners or easy access to public health centers, for example.”

The authors also hope the study will inspire other researchers to more frequently incorporate social factors, such as population change, into studies of climate change impacts.

“There has been so much written regarding the potential impacts of climate change, particularly as they relate to physical climate extremes,” said Bryan Jones, a postdoctoral researcher at the CUNY Institute for Demographic Research and lead author of the study. “However, it is how people experience these extremes that will ultimately shape the broader public perception of climate change.”