Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures (F) were recorded across the state of Hawaii Wednesday along with the low temperatures Wednesday:
80 – 69 Lihue, Kauai
82 – 68 Honolulu, Oahu
84 – 72 Molokai AP
86 – 69 Kahului AP, Maui
83 – 72 Kailua Kona
81 – 68 Hilo AP, Hawaii
Here are the latest 24-hour precipitation totals (in inches) for each of the islands as of Wednesday evening:
0.58 Wailua, Kauai
0.42 St. Stephens, Oahu
0.14 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
1.98 Kahakuloa, Maui
0.58 Saddle Quarry, Big Island
The following numbers represent the strongest wind gusts (mph) as of Wednesday evening:
18 Port Allen, Kauai
15 Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
17 Molokai
15 Lanai
25 Kahoolawe
23 Maalaea Bay, Maui
21 South Point, Big Island
Here’s a wind profile of the Pacific Ocean – Closer view of the islands
Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’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
Low pressure to our west…is drawing heavy weather over us from the southwest
An upper level low pressure system…is drawing unsettled weather over the islands
Thickening high cirrus clouds moving overhead…with thunderstorms
Showers are taking aim on the islands, with thunderstorms and locally heavy rain – Looping radar image
Winter Weather Advisory…Big Island Summits / snow and ice into Friday
Flash Flood Watch…Kauai, Oahu and Maui County
~~~ Hawaii Weather Narrative ~~~
Our winds will remain generally quite light…through the rest of the week. Here’s the latest weather map, showing high pressure systems far northeast, northwest, and another much weaker high pressure cell near Kauai. The winds remain on the light side, prompting daytime onshore sea breezes…followed by offshore flowing land breezes during the nights. By the way, as the breeze becomes southeast, we’ll see volcanic haze over us again…which is already happening now! I would imagine we’ll have a couple of days over very voggy weather coming up, at least in some areas.
A trough of low pressure west of the state, will bring back wet weather…in an off and on fashion into the weekend. The next episode of wet weather will arrive at times today into the weekend. This next batch of showers will be hit and miss in nature, although it will remain partly to mostly cloudy throughout. As we get into the later part of the weekend, we’ll likely see the arrival of a cold front into early next week. There’s a decent chance that we’ll finally see improving conditions by next Tuesday, although not sure how long they will hang around thereafter.
Marine environment details: Light winds will prevail through at least the weekend. A weak surface ridge north of Kauai will shift over the islands on Thursday, causing the weak easterly winds to shift southeast and south. Northerly winds are expected to develop over the western portion of the island chain on Sunday and Monday…in the wake of a cold front.
A northwest swell will peak this afternoon and evening, producing surf below advisory levels on north and west facing shores. After this swell declines on Thursday, very small surf will prevail on all shores into early next week.
A weather change is right around the corner
World-wide tropical cyclone activity…with storms showing up when active
>>> Atlantic Ocean: The 2016 hurricane season has ended
Here’s a satellite image of the Atlantic Ocean
>>> Caribbean: The 2016 hurricane season has ended
>>> Gulf of Mexico: The 2016 hurricane season has ended
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: The 2016 hurricane season has ended
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 2016 hurricane season has ended
Here’s a link to the Central Pacific Hurricane Center (CPHC)
>>> South Pacific Ocean: No active tropical cyclones
>>> North and South Indian Oceans / Arabian Sea:
Tropical Cyclone 05B (Vardah) remains active in the Bay of Bengal, here’s the JTWC graphical track map, a satellite image…along with what the computer models are showing
Here’s a link to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC)
Interesting: When Permafrost Melts, What Happens to All That Stored Carbon? – The Arctic’s frozen ground contains large stores of organic carbon that have been locked in the permafrost for thousands of years. As global temperatures rise, that permafrost is starting to melt, raising concerns about the impact on the climate as organic carbon becomes exposed. A new study is shedding light on what that could mean for the future by providing the first direct physical evidence of a massive release of carbon from permafrost during a warming spike at the end of the last ice age.
The study, published this week in the journal Nature Communications, documents how Siberian soil once locked in permafrost was carried into the Arctic Ocean during that period at a rate about seven times higher than today.
“We know the Arctic today is under threat because of growing climate warming, but we don’t know to what extent permafrost will respond to this warming. The Arctic carbon reservoir locked in the Siberian permafrost has the potential to lead to massive emissions of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane to the atmosphere,” said study co-author Francesco Muschitiello, a post-doctoral research fellow at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
To understand how melting permafrost influenced the carbon cycle in the past, the scientists examined the carbon levels in sediment that accumulated on the seafloor near the mouth of the Lena River about 11,650 years ago, when the last glacial period was ending and temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere spiked by several degrees.
Evidence from ice cores suggests that atmospheric carbon dioxide rose from about 190 parts per million to about 270 ppm during this period. What remains unclear is how much of that increase can be attributed to greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere as the permafrost melted and its once-frozen plant material thawed and decayed.
The new study looks at a parallel process, estimating the change in the amount of carbon released from permafrost by examining the amount of organic carbon that was washed from destabilized permafrost into the Lena River and out toward the Arctic Ocean. When permafrost starts to melt, its top “active layer” deepens and the soil loosens, allowing water to flow through it more easily, releasing greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and washing away stored carbon from long-dead plants and animals.
“The results indicate severe deepening of the active-layer permafrost in the watershed and release of previously frozen-lock soil carbon, which also implies enhanced microbial respiration of CO2 with important implications for carbon-climate feedback during climate warming,” said lead author Tommaso Tesi, a researcher at the Italian National Research Council. Oceans also release CO2 from organic carbon.
The Lena River has the second-largest drainage basin in the Arctic region, with about 2.5 million square kilometers of land draining into it. Water runoff in the basin washes soil and its organic materials into the river, which carries it downstream to the Laptev Sea on the Arctic Ocean, where some of it settles to the seafloor and is buried by new sediment washing in. By drilling a core through the sediment layers and analyzing the layers’ chemistry, scientists could extract a picture of changes in river-borne soil—including its carbon content—over thousands of years.
The scientists used molecular compounds, including lignin phenols that are specific to land-based plants and a waxy polymer derived from plant cuticles, to fingerprint specific sources of organic carbon in the sediment core.
“The climate warming during the last deglacial period offers an extraordinary benchmark against which the stability of permafrost carbon can be evaluated,” Tesi said. “Therefore, this study can also provide insights to assess the vulnerability of high-latitude soils in response to future climate changes and understand the expected feedback from permafrost soils.”
Today’s Arctic warming is already affecting the chemistry of freshwater rivers in Alaska, recent research suggests. An unrelated study published last month in Geophysical Research Letters tracked the chemistry of the Yukon River over 30 years and found significant increases in calcium, magnesium and sulfate, likely from runoff of water that had flowed through newly thawed soil and weathered newly accessible rock.
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