Hawaiian Islands Weather details & Aloha Paragraphs / May 27-28, 2015

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

81 – 65  Lihue, Kauai
83 – 69  Honolulu, Oahu
81 – 66  Molokai AP
84 – 69  Kahului, Maui
82 – 75  Kailua Kona
73 – 68  Hilo, Hawaii

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

0.98  Kilohana, Kauai
0.34  Ahuimanu Loop, Oahu
0.13  Puu Alii, Molokai
0.01  Lanai
0.00  Kahoolawe
0.30  Kahakuloa, Maui
1.25  Saddle Quarry, Big Island

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

15  Mana, Kauai – S
27  Kuaokala, Oahu – NNE
21  Molokai – NNE
16  Lanai – ENE
23  Kahoolawe – ENE
12  Kaupo Gap, Maui – SW
17  Upolu AP, 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

We see a low pressure system far to the northeast…while the
tropical waters of the eastern Pacific are active, with newly
formed Tropical Storm 01E (Andres) – more information below

Clouds still hung-up around the Big Island and Maui County…
with patches of clouds elsewhere – looping version of this image

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 ~~~

Unseasonably light northeasterly winds prevailing through the rest of this 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 far to the west-northwest and east-northeast of the state, along with low pressure systems to the north and northeast. There are troughs of low pressure over the the state as well. As a result of these weather features, we’ll find generally light northeast breezes with localized daytime sea breezes, and overnight down slope land breezes through much of the rest of this week…perhaps even into early next week.

We’ll see localized afternoon showers over the mountains…and elsewhere at times. As we move through the rest of this week, with generally lighter than normal winds, we’ve shifted into a modified convective weather pattern. We’ll more than the ordinary amount of clouds, particularly during the afternoons, with showers over the interior upcountry areas, some may become quite generous in a few locations.  By the way, a few of the models are suggesting that some parts of the state may get even wet around the middle of next week, stay tuned. I’ll be back with more updates on all of the above, I hope you have a great Thursday wherever you’re spending it! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Here on Maui...early Thursday morning near sunrise, skies are mostly cloudy, with a few light showers falling locally. The air temperature here in Kula at 550am was 61.7 degrees, 72 at the Kahului AP, 68 in Hana, and a cooler 41 degrees atop the Haleakala Crater.

~~~ I was in Honolulu on Tuesday, attending the NWS Outlook Briefing for the 2015 hurricane season. I was sitting there in the audience, when there was an announcement for this years Dr. Arthur N.L. Chiu Award for Hurricane Preparedness. I was very surprised to hear my name called out in regards to this honor! Nonetheless, I walked up to the front of the room, and was presented this rather prestigious Award. The presenters included the Vice Director of the State Civil Defense Agency, Hawaii’s Adjunct General (the TAG), and the Governor of Hawaii. Many of the major players in Hawaii’s weather world were in attendance, along with most of Hawaii’s TV weathermen and women, and of course the press. Here’s a picture of my receiving the award, I was very proud to say the least…one of the definite milestones in my career thus far.

~~~ The Central Pacific Hurricane Center (CPHC) is predicting a busy storm season this year, which runs from June through the end of November in our area. In their pre-season press conference they predicted 5 to 8 tropical cyclones could form in the Central Pacific basin this year.  The normal number is 4-5 tropical systems. The busiest months for hurricanes are July thorough October, and models point to a 70% chance for an above normal season because of the strengthening El Nino conditions.

>>> 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: Tropical Storm 01E (Andres)

TROPICAL WEATHER OUTLOOK
NWS NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL

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

 

The National Hurricane Center is issuing advisories on newly formed
Tropical Storm 01E (Andres), located about 690 miles southwest of
Manzanillo, Mexico. Here's the NHC graphical track map.

Maximum sustained winds have increased to near 40 mph
with higher gusts.  Additional strengthening is forecast during
the next couple of days, and Andres is forecast to become a
hurricane late Friday or Friday night.

Here's a looping satellite image of this system - and what the

hurricane models are showing for TS Andres

1.) A small area of disorganized showers and thunderstorms located
several hundred miles south-southwest of the Gulf of Tehuantepec is
associated with a tropical wave.  Some gradual development of this
system is possible early next week while it moves slowly to the
west-northwest.

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

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: Stable Antarctic glaciers are now melting – A dramatic shift has taken place in the glaciers of the southern Antarctic peninsula, writes Bert Wouters. Six years ago these previously stable bodies suddenly stated shedding 60 cubic kilometres of ice per year into the ocean. A stark warning of further surprises to come?

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

The fact that so many glaciers in such a large region suddenly started to lose ice came as a surprise. It shows a very fast response of the ice sheet: in just a few years everything changed.

Antarctica’s glaciers have been making headlines during the past year, and not in a good way.

Whether it’s a massive ice shelf facing imminent risk of collapse, glaciers in the West Antarctic past the point of no return, or new threats to East Antarctic ice, it’s all been rather gloomy.

And now I’m afraid there’s more bad news: a new study published in the journal Science, led by a team of my colleagues and I from the University of Bristol, has observed a sudden increase of ice loss in a previously stable part of Antarctica.

The region in question is the southernmost half of the Antarctic Peninsula, a section of the mainland which extends 1,300km into the Southern Ocean.

Its northern half is the continent’s mildest region and the climate effects there are clear. We already knew for instance that the glaciers of the Northern Antarctic Peninsula were in trouble following the disintegration of some of its ice shelves, most famously Larsen A and B.

Further to the west, the massive glaciers feeding into the Amundsen Sea have been shedding ice into the ocean at an alarming rate for decades. Out of the blue, the Southern Peninsula filled up the gap between these two regions and became Antarctica’s second largest contributor to sea level rise.

Using satellite elevation measurements, we found the Southern Antarctic Peninsula showed no signs of change up to 2009. Around that year, multiple glaciers along a vast 750km coastline suddenly started to shed ice into the ocean at a nearly constant rate of 60 cubic km, or about 55 trillion liters of water, each year. That’s enough water to fill 350,000 Empire State Buildings over the past five years.

Some of the glaciers are currently thinning by as much as 4 meters each year. The ice loss in the region is so large that it causes small changes in the Earth’s gravity field, which can be detected by another satellite mission, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE).

Is this an effect of global warming?

The answer is both yes and no. Data from an Antarctic climate model shows that the sudden change cannot be explained by changes in snowfall or air temperature. Instead, we attribute the rapid ice loss to warming oceans.

Many of the glaciers in the region feed into ice shelves that float on the surface of the ocean. They act as a buttress to the ice resting on bedrock inland, slowing down the flow of the glaciers into the ocean.

The westerly winds that encircle Antarctica have become more vigorous in recent decades, in response to climate warming and ozone depletion. The stronger winds push warm waters from the Southern Ocean poleward, where they eat away at the glaciers and floating ice shelves from below.

Ice shelves in the region have lost almost one-fifth of their thickness in the last two decades, thereby reducing the resisting force on the glaciers.

A key concern is that much of the ice of the Southern Antarctic Peninsula is grounded on bedrock below sea level, which gets deeper inland. This means that even if the glaciers retreat, the warm water will chase them inland and melt them even more.

In just a few years, everything changed. What next?

The region’s melting glaciers are currently adding about 0.16 millimeters to global sea levels per year, which won’t immediately make you run for the hills. But it’s yet another source of sea level rise, about 5% of the global total increase.

What might be a bigger source of concern is that the changes occurred so suddenly and in an area that was behaving quietly until now. The fact that so many glaciers in such a large region suddenly started to lose ice came as a surprise. It shows a very fast response of the ice sheet: in just a few years everything changed.

The Southern Antarctic Peninsula contains enough ice to add 35 cm to sea level, but that won’t happen any time soon. It’s too early to tell how much longer the ice loss will continue and how much it will contribute to future sea level rise.

For this, a detailed knowledge of the geometry of the local ice shelves, the ocean floor topography, ice sheet thickness and glacier flow speeds are crucial.

But the ice on Antarctica is like a sleeping giant. Even if we would stop emitting greenhouse gases as of today, or the inflow of warm water would stop, this inert system would take a long time to find an equilibrium again.