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

82 – 74  Lihue, Kauai
83 – 72  Honolulu, Oahu
84 – 71  Molokai AP
8566  Kahului AP, Maui
84 – 69  Kailua Kona
77 – 68  Hilo AP, Hawaii

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

2.20  Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.89  Manoa Lyon Arboretum,
Oahu
0.42  Molokai
0.00  Lanai
0.00  Kahoolawe
0.77  Mount Wailuaiki, Maui
2.29  Saddle Quarry, Big Island

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

28  Port Allen, Kauai
42  Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu

33 
Molokai
24  Lanai

52  Kahoolawe
30  Kaupo Gap, Maui

37  South Point, Big Island

Hawaii’s MountainsHere’s a link to the live webcam on the summit of our tallest mountain Mauna Kea (nearly 13,800 feet high) on the Big Island of Hawaii. This webcam is available during the daylight hours here in the islands, and at night whenever there’s a big moon shining down. Also, at night you will be able to see the stars — and the sunrise and sunset too — depending upon weather conditions.


Aloha Paragraphs

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High pressure to our north and northeast will continue to shield Hawaii from gales and storms, and their associated cold fronts

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Rainy clouds remain far west and south of Hawaii

http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/west/hi/vis.jpg
The high cirrus clouds have arrived over the state again, which will provide more good sunsets and sunrises…with low scattered clouds still being carried towards us on the strong winds from the southeast

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Showers locally –
Looping radar image


Small Craft Advisory
…most coasts and channels (25-33 knots)


High Surf Advisory
…east facing shores of Kauai, Oahu, Molokai, Maui and the Big Island


~~~
Hawaii Weather Narrative
~~~

 

 

Winds remaining strong and gusty locally…with a slight easing up into Tuesday morning. Here’s the latest weather map, showing a large area of high pressure northeast of Hawaii. This windy weather will bring near 50 mph wind gusts to some areas of the island chain tonight. These winds will ease up going forward, at least compared to the blustery stuff we’ve seen over the last week. A cold front will approach the islands although not arrive, which will help to calm our winds down a little, veering them to the southeast…bringing volcanic haze (vog) to some of the smaller islands. The trades are forecast to rebound over the islands later Tuesday through Thursday, then weakening Friday into next weekend.

Here’s a wind profile of the offshore waters around the islands – and a closer look

Here’s the Hawaiian Islands Sulfate Aerosol animated graphic, showing vog forecast

A few windward showers will fall locally, while the leeward sides will be dry. There will be localized showery low clouds at times, although rainfall will be less than normal through Tuesday. The off and on, mostly on, long lasting high cirrus clouds will stick around for a while longer. As we move into early Wednesday, an area of moisture is forecast to move over the state for several days. As the trade winds will be blowing then, the bulk of these showers will impact the windward sides. These showers may become quite heavy…thanks to the arrival of an upper level trough of low pressure at about the same time. Looking even further ahead, we may see a second period of wet weather arriving later next week into the weekend.

Marine environment details:  The long running Gale Warning has been dropped, and the existing Small Craft Advisory (SCA) has been expanded to cover the entire coastal waters. Winds and seas will slowly decrease tonight and Monday, and a few leeward zones will likely be dropped from the SCA by tonight. SCA conditions will likely continue over the windward waters and the channels for at least the next couple of days, and the SCA has been extended for those areas through Monday afternoon.

The strong easterly trade winds will continue to produce rough and choppy surf along east facing shores, and the High Surf Advisory for those shores has also been extended through Monday afternoon. Surf should slowly decrease thereafter through midweek.

Surf heights along north and west facing shores will remain well below the late November average, with only a series of small swells expected through the middle of the new week. A larger northwest swell is expected to arrive late Thursday and linger into next weekend. This swell may produce advisory level surf for north and west facing shores.

A couple of small south swells will arrive Monday and Tuesday, causing a minor bump in surf for south facing shores.

 

Friday Evening Film: The film that my friends Jeff and Svetlana and I saw Friday night was very good, called Allied. This action, adventure drama stars Brad Pitt, Marion Cotillard, Lizzy Caplan and Jared Harris…among many others. The synopsis: The story of intelligence officer Max Vatan (Brad Pitt), who in 1942 North Africa encounters French Resistance fighter Marianne Beausejour (Marion Cotillard) on a deadly mission behind enemy lines. Reunited in London, their relationship is threatened by the extreme pressures of the war.

Most of the critics are being reasonably kind to this film, although certainly not jumping out of their seats by any means. Nonetheless, I very much like the two main actors, and looking at the trailer (full screen viewing is best), it definitely caught my attention. There were so many shots of Pitt and Cotillard, although for my money, I never got tired of seeing them work together…a truly handsome couple! This film had me on the edge of my seat more than once, and I’ll admit, I had to try really hard to keep the tears at bay a couple of times as well. As it turned out, Jeff and I both gave this special film A- grades, with Svetlana giving it a strong B. As you’ll see if you look at the trailer, it’s not exactly a light weight piece of work! In the end, all that was left was a great sense of love, that swept me off my feet.

 

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Still locally windy…with some vog

 


World-wide tropical cyclone activity…


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>>> Atlantic Ocean: No active tropical cyclones

Here’s a satellite image of the Atlantic Ocean

>>> Caribbean: No active tropical cyclones

>>> Gulf of Mexico: No active tropical cyclones

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

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

>>> Eastern Pacific: No active tropical cyclones

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
: No active tropical cyclones

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

>>> Northwest Pacific Ocean:


Tropical Depression 29W
is dissipating in
the South China Sea, here’s the JTWC graphical track map, with a satellite imageFinal Warning

>>> South Pacific Ocean: No active tropical cyclones


>>>
North and South Indian Oceans / Arabian Sea:
No active tropical cyclones

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


Interesting:
Saharan dust in the wind
Every year, trade winds over the Sahara Desert sweep up huge plumes of mineral dust, transporting hundreds of teragrams — enough to fill 10 million dump trucks — across North Africa and over the Atlantic Ocean. This dust can be blown for thousands of kilometers and settle in places as far away as Florida and the Bahamas.

The Sahara is the largest source of windblown dust to the Earth’s atmosphere. But researchers from MIT, Yale University, and elsewhere now report that the African plume was far less dusty between 5,000 and 11,000 years ago, containing only half the amount of dust that is transported today.

In a paper published today in Science Advances, the researchers have reconstructed the African dust plume over the last 23,000 years and observed a dramatic reduction in dust beginning around 11,000 years ago. They say this weakened plume may have allowed more sunlight to reach the ocean, increasing its temperature by 0.15 degrees Celsius — a small but significant spike that likely helped whip up monsoons over North Africa, where climate at the time was far more temperate and hospitable than it is today.

“In the tropical ocean, fractions of a degree can cause big differences in precipitation patterns and winds,” says co-author David McGee, the Kerr-McGee Career Development Assistant Professor in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. “It does seem like dust variations may have large enough effects that it’s important to know how big those impacts were in past and future climates.”

A wet Sahara

Around 11,000 years ago, the Earth had just emerged from the last ice age and was beginning a new, interglacial epoch known as the Holocene. Geologists and archaeologists have found evidence that during this period the Sahara was much greener, wetter, and more livable than it is today.

“There was also extensive human settlement throughout the Sahara, with lifestyles that would never be possible today,” McGee says. “Researchers at archaeological sites have found fish hooks and spears in the middle of the Sahara, in places that would be completely uninhabitable today. So there was clearly much more water and precipitation over the Sahara.”

This evidence of wet conditions shows that the region experienced regular monsoon rains during the early Holocene. This was primarily due to the slow wobbling of Earth’s axis, which exposed the Northern Hemisphere to more sunlight during summer; this, in turn, warmed the land and ocean and drew more water vapor — and precipitation — over North Africa. Increased vegetation in the Sahara may have also played a role, absorbing sunlight and heating the surface, drawing more moisture over the land.

“The mysterious thing is, if you try to simulate all these changes in these early and mid-Holocene climates, the models intensify the monsoons, but nowhere near the amounts suggested by the paleodata,” McGee says. “One of the things not factored into these simulations is changes in windblown dust.”

Tracking a dust plume

In their results published today, McGee and colleagues propose a reduction in African dust may indeed have contributed to increasing monsoon rains in the region. The researchers came to their conclusion after estimating the amount of long-range windblown dust emitted from Africa over the last 23,000 years, from the end of the last ice age to today.

They focused on dust transported long distances, as these particles are small and light enough to be lifted and carried through the atmosphere for days before settling thousands of kilometers away from their source. This fine-grained dust scatters incoming solar radiation, cooling the ocean’s surface and potentially affecting precipitation patterns, depending on how much dust is in the air.

To estimate how the African dust plume has changed over thousands of years, the team looked for places where dust should accumulate rapidly. Dust can sink to the floor of open ocean, but there layers of sediment build up very slowly, at a rate of 1 centimeter every 1,000 years.

Places like the Bahamas, by contrast, accumulate sediment much more quickly, making it easier for scientists to determine the ages of particular sediment layers. What’s more, it’s been shown that most of the windblown dust that has accumulated in the Bahamas originated not from local regions such as the U.S., but from the Sahara.

Dust’s climate role

McGee and his colleagues obtained sediment core samples from the Bahamas that were collected in the 1980s by scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. They brought the samples back to the lab and analyzed their chemical composition, including isotopes of thorium — an element that exists in windblown dust worldwide, at known concentrations.

They determined how much dust was in each sediment layer by measuring the primary isotope of thorium, and determined how fast it was accumulating by measuring the amount of a rare thorium isotope in each layer.

In this way, the team analyzed sediment layers from the last 23,000 years, and showed that around 16,000 years ago, toward the end of the last ice age, the dust plume was at its highest, lofting at least twice the amount of dust over the Atlantic, compared to today. However, between 5,000 and 11,000 years ago, this plume weakened significantly, with just half the amount of today’s windblown dust.

Colleagues at Yale University then plugged their estimates into a climate model to see how such changes in the African dust plume would affect both ocean temperatures in the North Atlantic and overall climate in North Africa. The simulations showed that a drop in long-range windblown dust would raise sea surface temperatures by 0.15 degrees Celsius, drawing more water vapor over the Sahara, which would have helped to drive more intense monsoon rains in the region.

“The modeling showed that if dust had even relatively small impacts on sea surface temperatures, this could have pronounced impacts on precipitation and winds both in the north Atlantic and over North Africa,” McGee says. Noting that the next key step is to reduce uncertainties in the modeling of dust’s climate impacts, he adds: “We’re not saying, the expansion of monsoon rains into the Sahara was caused solely by dust impacts. We’re saying we need to figure out how big those dust impacts are, to understand both past and future climates.”

Ina Tegen, a professor at the Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research in Germany, says the group’s results suggest that “dust effects today may be considerable as well.”

“Dust loads vary with changing climate, and due to the effects of dust on [solar] radiation, ice formation in clouds, and the carbon cycle, this may cause important climate feedbacks,” says Tegen, who was not involved in the research. “The changing climate since the last ice age can be considered a ‘natural laboratory’ to study such effects. Understanding the past is the basis for predicting future changes with any confidence.”