August 15-16, 2009
Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Saturday afternoon:
Lihue, Kauai – 83
Honolulu, Oahu – 90
Kaneohe, Oahu – 83
Kahului, Maui – 89
Hilo, Hawaii – 84
Kailua-kona – 88
Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountains…at 7 p.m. Saturday evening:
Port Allen, Kauai – 84F
Molokai airport – 77
Haleakala Crater – 48 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 39 (near 14,000 feet on the Big Island)
Precipitation Totals – The following numbers represent the largest precipitation totals (inches) during the last 24 hours on each of the major islands, as of Saturday evening:
0.86 Mount Waialaele, Kauai
0.52 Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
0.00 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
0.52 Kula, Maui
0.31 Pohakuloa, Big Island
Marine Winds – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a high pressure system to the northeast of the islands. This high pressure cell, along with its associated ridge, will keep our trade winds blowing through the weekend…into the first couple of days of the new week ahead.
Satellite and Radar Images: To view the cloud conditions we have here in Hawaii, please use the following satellite links, starting off with this Infrared Satellite Image of the islands to see all the clouds around the state during the day and night. This next image is one that gives close images of the islands only during the daytime hours, and is referred to as a Close-up visible image. This next image shows a larger view of the Pacific…giving perspective to the wider ranging cloud patterns in the Pacific Ocean. Finally, here’s a Looping IR satellite image, making viewable the clouds around the islands 24 hours a day. To help you keep track of where any showers may be around the islands, here’s the latest animated radar image.
Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live webcam on the summit of near 14,000 foot Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. The tallest peak on the island of Maui is the Haleakala Crater, which is near 10,000 feet in elevation. These two webcams are available during the daylight hours here in the islands…and when there’s a big moon rising just after sunset for an hour or two! Plus, during the nights and early mornings you will be able to see stars, and the sunrise too…depending upon weather conditions.
Tropical Cyclone activity in the eastern and central Pacific – Here’s the latest weather information coming out of the National Hurricane Center, covering the eastern north Pacific. You can find the latest tropical cyclone information for the central north Pacific (where Hawaii is located) by clicking on this link to the Central Pacific Hurricane Center. Here’s a tracking map covering both the eastern and central Pacific Ocean. A satellite image, which shows the entire ocean area between Hawaii and the Mexican coast…can be found here.
Aloha Paragraphs
Hurricane Guillermo…to the east of Hawaii
Drier air is arriving over the state of Hawaii, brought in our direction by the trade winds…as we move through Sunday. As normal, we’ll see a few showers falling along the windward coasts and slopes…generally during the night and morning hours. The leeward sides will find pleasant weather conditions, with good beach weather Sunday. As we move into the new week ahead, we may see an increase in windward biased showers, as a trough of low pressure edges closer…enhancing the shower activity starting then.
Powerful hurricane Guillermo is in the eastern Pacific Saturday night, which is expected to cross over into our central Pacific Sunday afternoon or evening. Guillermo is forecast to be a weakening hurricane when it passes into the central Pacific. Here’s a tracking map, showing its track heading up to the north of the islands. Here’s a satellite image showing Guillermo in relation to the Hawaiian Islands. Here’s a close-up satellite image of Guillermo. Here’s an interesting satellite presentation…showing the looping of Guillermo.
Guillermo remains a category 2 hurricane, with 109 mph sustained winds…with gusts to 132 mph! Nonetheless, I remain confident, based on the latest forecast track, that Guillermo will weaken well before getting near our islands. As Guillermo moves by to our northeast and north, it will cut off our trade winds, and have us feeling hot and muggy from Tuesday through Thursday. We would expect a convective weather pattern to develop then, with clear mornings, giving way to afternoon cloudy periods…with potentially heavy interior showers. Strengthening trade winds will move back into the islands Friday into next weekend…becoming locally strong and gusty.
It’s Saturday evening here in Kula, Maui, as I begin typing this last part of today’s narrative. Despite the fact that hurricane Guillermo remains powerful, I remain encouraged by looking at the latest track map. The storm’s path seems to be going in the right direction, and will be going through a major weakening as it comes closer to Hawaii. This will be caused by it moving over cooler water…and running underneath stronger winds aloft. We still need to keep an eye on this tropical cyclone, but I must admit, at least at this point, I’m not too worried about Guillermo bringing us any kind of strong wind. We may however have some in-direct influence…with locally heavy showers around the middle of the upcoming new week.
~~~ I went to see the new film called G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009), starring Dennis Quaid, and Channing Tatum, among others…Friday evening after work. This is about a real American hero, based on the 1980’s cartoon/action figures, who comes to life to battle the evil forces of Cobra. This was a true action film, I thoroughly enjoyed it! It really was one of the best films of this type that I’ve seen in a long time. If you’re an action film affectionado, this is definitely one for you! Here’s a trailer if you’re interested in seeing what I’m talking about.
~~~ I spent the better part of Saturday in Haiku, on the windward side of east Maui, participating in an all day zen meditation sitting. This group, who used to be affliated with the Maui Zendo, in the old days some 35+ years ago…has remained together all these years. This is my first time sitting with them in many, many years. It was good to settle into this, what is called zazenkai, which simply means a full day of sitting meditiation. All I really felt like doing quite honestly, after being so deeply involved with working with near back to back tropical cyclones Lana, Felicia, and now Guillermo…was nothing. I just felt like relaxing to da max. Although, as it turned out, paying great attention to my breath, as I sat with this great group of people, was inspiring. ~~~ I’ll be back Sunday morning with more information about Guillermo, and all the other things that I can think to write about, in terms of the weather here in the wonderful Hawaiian Islands. I hope you have a great Saturday night! Aloha for now…Glenn.
Interesting: There are a lot of ups and downs in tropical cyclone formation in the Pacific Ocean this week, and that’s keeping NOAA’s GOES-11 satellite busy. There are remnants of Maka and Tropical Depression 9E, a fizzled Felicia, and a new Tropical Storm named Guillermo.
The graphics folks that create images from the satellite at the GOES Project at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. are posting updated images on the GOES Project website often and forecasters are watching them.
In the Central Pacific Ocean, Maka and Felicia are now a memory. Felicia dissipated before it reached Hawaii, and the remnants of Maka are 1,400 miles west-southwest of Kauai. Maka’s remnant clouds and showers are still moving west, and it’s unlikely that it will re-organize.
That means a quiet Central Pacific Ocean for the next two days. In the Eastern Pacific, Tropical Depression 9E (TD9E) appears to be fizzling although it may get a second chance at life, while Tropical Depression 10E powered up into Tropical Storm Guillermo.
The remnants of TD9E are weakly spinning to around 30 mph, while it continues moving west-southwest near 9 mph. The center was located about 1,750 miles west-southwest of the southern tip of Baja California, near 13.9 north and 134.1 west.
The National Hurricane Center noted that shower and thunderstorm activity has increased this morning, and the environment seems to be a little more conducive to strengthening, so TD9E isn’t written off yet. In fact, there’s about a 30-50% chance it may strengthen back into a tropical depression.
Meanwhile, Tropical Depression 10E gained strength took the name Guillermo and it’s sustained winds whipped up to near 50 mph. Guillermo is moving west-northwest near 16 mph and will continue in that direction. Guillermo is closer to mainland Mexico, but poses no threat as its heading away from land.
On Aug. 13 at 5 a.m. EDT the storm was located 805 miles west-southwest of the southern tip of Baja California near 16.9 north and 120.5 west. His minimum central pressure is 999 millibars.
Guillermo is moving into a favorable environment, so he’s expected to continue strengthening. Even though the peak of hurricane season in the eastern and central Pacific Oceans are a month away, it seems like we’re already there.
Interesting2: Regular wobbles in the Earth’s tilt were responsible for the global warming episodes that interspersed prehistoric ice ages, according to new evidence. The finding is the result of research led by Russell Drysdale of the University of Newcastle that has been able to accurately date the end of the penultimate ice age for the first time.
The new dates, which appear in the today’s edition of Science, show the end of the second last ice age occurring 141,000 years ago, thousands of years earlier than previously thought. Using information gathered from a trio of Italian stalagmites, the research has punched a hole in the prevailing theory that interglacial periods are related to changes in the intensity of the northern hemisphere summer.
Drysdale and colleagues suggest that the Earth emerges from ice ages due in large part to changes in the tilt of the planet in relation to the sun, otherwise known as its obliquity. This affects the total amount of sunlight each hemisphere receives in its respective summer, rather than the peak intensity of the solar radiation during the northern summer.
Sediment on the sea floor contains accurate a record of what happened to the Earth’s climate prior to the last ice age. But up until now dating the sediment and the evident climatic changes has not been possible.
Interesting3: Salmon are returning to the Seine after an absence of almost a century as water in the river that runs through Paris has become cleaner in recent years, French scientists said. Once numerous in the river, Atlantic salmon disappeared from the Seine in the early 20th century, partly due to pollution from Paris sewers.
But scientists celebrated an improvement in water quality in the Seine that has tempted the protected species back to Paris. "There has been a turning point. The improvement in water quality has meant that salmon have returned to the Seine," Charles Perrier of the National Institute for Agronomic Research told Reuters. The National Federation for French Fishing estimated that about 1,000 salmon are present in the Seine.
Interesting4: The same things that make Alaska’s marine waters among the most productive in the world may also make them the most vulnerable to ocean acidification. According to new findings by a University of Alaska Fairbanks scientist, Alaska’s oceans are becoming increasingly acidic, which could damage Alaska’s king crab and salmon fisheries.
This spring, chemical oceanographer Jeremy Mathis returned from a cruise armed with seawater samples collected from the depths of the Gulf of Alaska. When he tested the samples’ acidity in his lab, the results were higher than expected.
They show that ocean acidification is likely more severe and is happening more rapidly in Alaska than in tropical waters. The results also matched his recent findings in the Chukchi and Bering Seas.
"It seems like everywhere we look in Alaska’s coastal oceans, we see signs of increased ocean acidification," said Mathis. Often referred to as the "sister problem to climate change," ocean acidification is a term to describe increasing acidity in the world’s oceans.
The ocean absorbs carbon dioxide from the air. As the ocean absorbs more carbon dioxide, seawater becomes more acidic. Scientists estimate that the ocean is 25 percent more acidic today than it was 300 years ago. "The increasing acidification of Alaska waters could have a destructive effect on all of our commercial fisheries.
This is a problem that we have to think about in terms of the next decade instead of the next century," said Mathis. The ocean contains minerals that organisms like oysters and crabs use to build their shells. Ocean acidification makes it more difficult to build shells, and in some cases the water can become acidic enough to break down existing shells.
Mathis’ recent research in the Gulf of Alaska uncovered multiple sites where the concentrations of shell-building minerals were so low that shellfish and other organisms in the region would be unable to build strong shells. "We’re not saying that crab shells are going to start dissolving, but these organisms have adapted their physiology to a certain range of acidity.
Early results have shown that when some species of crabs and fish are exposed to more acidic water, certain stress hormones increase and their metabolism slows down. If they are spending energy responding to acidity changes, then that energy is diverted away from growth, foraging and reproduction," said Mathis.
Another organism that could be affected by ocean acidification is the tiny pteropod, also known as a sea butterfly or swimming sea snail. The pteropod is at the base of the food chain and makes up nearly half of the pink salmon’s diet. A 10 percent decrease in the population of pteropods could mean a 20 percent decrease in an adult salmon’s body weight.
"This is a case where we see ocean acidification having an indirect effect on a commercially viable species by reducing its food supply," said Mathis. The cold waters and broad, shallow continental shelves around Alaska’s coast could be accelerating the process of ocean acidification in the North, Mathis said.
Cold water can hold more gas than warmer water, which means that the frigid waters off Alaska’s coasts can absorb more carbon dioxide. The shallow waters of Alaska’s continental shelves also retain more carbon dioxide because there is less mixing of seawater from deeper ocean waters.
Ask any coastal Alaskan and they will tell you that Alaska’s waters are teeming with biological life, from tiny plankton to humpback whales. All of these animals use oxygen and emit carbon dioxide. Mathis and other scientists call this the "biological pump."
"We are blessed with highly productive coastal areas that support vast commercial fisheries, but this productivity acts like a pump, absorbing more and more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere," said Mathis. "Because of this, the acidity of Alaska’s coastal seas will continue to increase, and likely accelerate, over the next decade."
Mathis said that it is still unclear what the full range of effects of ocean acidification will be, but that it is a clear threat to Alaska’s commercial fisheries and subsistence communities. "We need to give our policy makers and industry managers information and forecasts on ocean acidification in Alaska so they can make decisions that will keep our fisheries viable," said Mathis. "Ecosystems in Alaska are going to take a hit from ocean acidification. Right now, we don’t know how they are going to respond."
Interesting5: A new study reveals that treelines are not responding to climate warming as expected. The research, the first global quantitative assessment of the relationship between climate warming and treeline advance, is published in Ecology Letters and tests the premise that treelines are globally advancing in response to climate warming since 1900.
Treelines are the elevation or latitudinal limits where trees are capable of growth or survival and are considered to be early indicators of climate warming because they are constrained primarily by cold temperatures. Summer temperature is widely considered to be the primary control of treeline formation and maintenance, whereas winter temperatures have previously been considered less critical because of the insulative effects of snow.
This study reveals how winter warming has overturned this prevailing view. "Average temperatures have risen over the last century, with a more pronounced and rapid change at high altitudes and latitudes", said Ms. Melanie Harsch from the Bio-Protection Research Centre in New Zealand. "Within these zones, treelines are thought to be more temperature sensitive and so the rise in summer temperatures should result in an advance of treeline position."
Harsch and her co-authors conducted a multivariate meta-analysis, using a global dataset of 166 treeline sites with temperature data taken from the closest climate station to each site. The team used this data to analyse treeline advance throughout the 20th century and consider the contributing factors to that advance.
The team found that only 87 of the 166 sites (52%) had advanced while simultaneously the mean annual local temperatures had increased at 111 of the 166 sites at an average rate of 0.013?C a year (or 1?C in 77 years). Of the remaining sites, 77 (47%) remained stable and only two (1%) had treelines that receded.
Both of the receding sites showed evidence of disturbance, indicating that regardless of form, location or degree of temperature change experienced over the last century, treeline positions have either advanced or remained static. "Surprisingly these results reveal that treelines are not universally responding to climate warming by advancing, as expected," said Harsch,
"However they demonstrate the importance of temperature on treeline advance over other factors such as disturbance, latitude, scale, elevation and distance to the ocean; none of which demonstrated strong relationships with the probability of treeline advance." Another surprising result of this study was the association with winter, rather than summer, warming.
These results provide no evidence of the prevailing view that high altitude and latitude treelines are controlled only by summer temperatures. Instead they show that treelines are more likely to advance at sites that had warmed during the winter months. It is known, at least in northern latitudes that climate-associated changes in winter conditions are on average more extreme than changes in summer conditions.
"These results show that treelines are responding to warming, but are not consistent in that only half of the sites showed signs of advance despite most sites experiencing warming. Several studies on plant species’ responses to climate warming have shown mixed results and this study provides a possible explanation – both winter and summer conditions control treeline position," concluded Harsch.
"Our expectations of response depend upon which factors are limiting the current treeline distribution. Where summer temperature is the primary limiting factor we can expect to continue seeing advance, but at other sites treeline advance is unlikely to occur until other limiting factors are first lessened."
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