Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountain tops…as of 2pm Wednesday afternoon:

Kahului, Maui - 82
Molokai airport - 79

Haleakala Crater -  55 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea –         45 (near 13,800 feet on the Big Island)

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. Here's the Haleakala Crater webcam on Maui…although this webcam is not always working correctly.

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 (once the season begins June 1) for the central north Pacific (where Hawaii is located) by clicking on this link to the Central Pacific Hurricane Center. A satellite image, which shows the entire ocean area between Hawaii and the Mexican coast…can be found here.  Here's a tropical cyclone tracking map for the eastern and central Pacific.

 Aloha Paragraphs

 

  Rebounding trades today…a modest
increase in windward showers as well 
 

As this weather map shows, we have high pressure system located to the northeast of the Hawaiian Islands. At the same time, we find a weak cold front just to our north…which is pulling slowly away from Kauai. Our local winds will increase from the trade wind direction today through the next few days.

The following numbers represent the most recent wind gusts (mph), along with directions as of Wednesday afternoon:

18                Waimea Heights, Kauai -SW 
25                Kahuku, Oahu – SE
22                Molokai – NE 
33                Kahoolawe – NE
24                Lipoa, Maui – NE
23                Lanai – NE
27                Upolu Point, Big Island – NE

We can use the following links to see what’s going on in our area of the north central Pacific Ocean.  Here's the latest NOAA satellite picture – the latest looping satellite image…and finally the latest looping radar image for the Hawaiian Islands. 

Here are the latest 24-hour precipitation totals (inches) for each of the islands as of late Wednesday morning:
 
0.41               Waialae, Kauai
0.05               Moanalua RG, Oahu
0.00               Molokai
0.01               Lanai
0.00               Kahoolawe
0.17               Kahakuloa, Maui
0.11               Pahoa, Big Island  

Sunrise Commentary:  The low clouds associated with a quickly weakening cold front reached Kauai Tuesday, and will dissipate over that island today. These clouds brought bring generally light showers to Kauai, with a couple of places receiving somewhat over 1/2 an inch of precipitation. At the same time, this frontal boundary interrupted the usual trade wind flow, with lighter than normal wind conditions remaining in place over the Hawaiian Islands the last several days. This has kept the area from Oahu down through Maui County in a convective weather pattern. As this frontal boundary continues to dissipate, it will be pushed away to the west and southwest…by returning trade winds today.

Meanwhile, the latest satellite image shows a north to south oriented band of showery clouds over the Big Island, and heading west towards Maui…and the rest of the island chain. It's associated with a low level trough of low pressure, which are both moving westward through our area. It will bring light showers mainly to our windward sides, arriving today into the evening. At the same time, this trough will usher in a surge of stronger trade winds, as it arrives. These trade winds will continue into the weekend, although ease up some by then. As far as rainfall is concerned for the weekend, it shouldn't be much of an issue, with generally light to very light amounts along our north and east facing windward coasts and slopes.

Here in Kula, Maui at 545am, skies were clear with calm breezes, and a cool air temperature of 52.9F degrees. As this satellite image shows, the cold front is still draped over Kauai this morning. It's rather weak as far as cold fronts go, although it still has a few showers embedded in it…which will continue to fall over the mountains of Kauai a bit longer. This showery cloud band mentioned above, will arrive over the windward sides today, along with the increasingly stronger trade winds into Wednesday night. The showers will ease up along those windward sides by Thursday, although we'll see a few continuing on through the weekend. The leeward sides should remain quite nice, with good beach weather prevailing throughout. ~~~ I'll be back during the day with more weather updates, and then with a sunset commentary early this evening as usual. I hope you have a great Wednesday until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Tropical cyclone activity:  We find the first tropical cyclone of the 2012 hurricane season…moving away from the mainland Mexican coast Wednesday morning. It's called tropical storm Aletta, and is located approximately 785 miles south-southwest of the southern tip of Baja California. Here's the NHC graphical track map for tropical storm Aletta (1E), along with this satellite image.  Aletta is peaking in strength now, and will weaken steadily into Thursday.  There is absolutely no threat to the Hawaiian Islands, as the storm turns back towards the northeast and east through the remainder of its life cycle. Meanwhile, there's an area of disturbed weather (92E) further to the east of Aletta, offshore from the southern Mexican coast. It's being given a 20% chance of developing into a tropical cyclone during the next 48 hours. Here's a satellite image showing both Aletta, and this new area circled in yellow.

Interesting:  All are aware of the tragic loss of biodiversity that this planet is current going through in various ecosystems. However, a new National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) report shows that when good policies are in place, natural ecosystems can sustain themselves and thrive.

NOAA has released its annual report, stating that a record six fish populations have been rebuilt to healthy levels in 2011. This brings the number of rebuilt US marine fish populations to 27 since the start of the 21st century, showing that great strides have been made to end overfishing thanks to all interested parties.

The NOAA report, Status of U.S. Fisheries, detailed the comeback of the following species:

- Bering Sea snow crab

- Atlantic coast summer flounder

- Gulf of Maine haddock

- Northern California coast Chinook salmon

- Washington coast coho salmon

- Pacific coast widow rockfish

"With annual catch limits in place this year for all domestic fish populations and the continued commitment of fishermen to rebuild the stocks they rely on, we're making even greater progress in ending overfishing and rebuilding stocks around the nation," said Samuel Rauch, acting assistant NOAA administrator for fisheries.

"Healthy and abundant fish populations and marine ecosystems support seafood for Americans, create lasting jobs, and enhance saltwater recreational fishing opportunities." However, overfishing is not the only factor that holds down fish populations.

There are also environmental factors, disease, invasive species, and degraded fish habitat. Many of these may be indirectly attributable to a changing climate, which affects temperature, salinity, and potentially the spread of pathogens.

NOAA researchers predict that fully rebuilt fisheries could add over $30 billion to the economy and add 500,000 new jobs. At the moment, commercial and recreational fishing generates $183 billion per year and supports over 1.5 million full and part-time jobs.

Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountain tops…as of 5pm Tuesday evening:

Kaneohe, Oahu - 81
Molokai airport - 77

Haleakala Crater -  48 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea –         43 (near 13,800 feet on the Big Island)

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. Here's the Haleakala Crater webcam on Maui…although this webcam is not always working correctly.

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 (once the season begins June 1) for the central north Pacific (where Hawaii is located) by clicking on this link to the Central Pacific Hurricane Center. A satellite image, which shows the entire ocean area between Hawaii and the Mexican coast…can be found here.  Here's a tropical cyclone tracking map for the eastern and central Pacific.

 Aloha Paragraphs

 

  Strengthening trades tonight into Wednesday, still a few
  showers on Kauai from the cold front tonight…then a
modest increase in windward showers Wednesday 
 

As this weather map shows, we have high pressure system located to the northeast of the Hawaiian Islands…with a ridge offshore just to the northeast of the islands. At the same time, we find a weak cold front just to our north…which has reached Kauai. Our local winds will begin increase again from the trade wind direction tonight into Wednesday onwards.

The following numbers represent the most recent wind gusts (mph), along with directions as of Tuesday evening:

08                Lihue, Kauai – ENE 
09                Honolulu, Oahu – S
00                Molokai 
18                Kahoolawe – SE
17                Lipoa, Maui – NE
09                Lanai – NE
21                South Point, Big Island – ENE

We can use the following links to see what’s going on in our area of the north central Pacific Ocean.  Here's the latest NOAA satellite picture – the latest looping satellite image…and finally the latest looping radar image for the Hawaiian Islands. 

Here are the latest 24-hour precipitation totals (inches) for each of the islands as of Tuesday evening:
 
0.43               Puu Lua, Kauai
0.01               St. Stephens, Oahu
0.00               Molokai
0.00               Lanai
0.00               Kahoolawe
0.00               Maui
0.01               Kealakekua, Big Island  

Sunset Commentary:  The low clouds associated with a late season cold front reached Kauai last evening, and remained over that island today. These clouds brought generally light showers, although the rest of the state didn't benefit from this light frontal precipitation. At the same time, this frontal boundary interrupted the usual trade wind flow, with lighter than normal wind conditions remaining in place over the Hawaiian Islands, with the exception of the Big Island…where they began to show up. This kept the area from Oahu down through Maui County in a convective weather pattern Tuesday. 

Meanwhile, the latest satellite image shows a north to south oriented band of showery clouds to the east of the island chain. It's associated with a low level trough of low pressure, which are both moving westward towards our area. It will bring light showers mainly to our windward sides, arriving first over the Big Island later tonight, then Maui County and Oahu Wednesday…and finally to Kauai Wednesday evening. At the same time, this trough will usher in a surge of stronger trade winds…or perhaps even ahead of its arrival. These trades may necessitate small craft wind advisories through Friday, before the trade winds ease up some this coming weekend into early next week. As far as rainfall is concerned for the weekend, it shouldn't be much of an issue, with generally light to very light amounts along our north and east facing windward coasts and slopes.

Here in Kula, Maui at 530pm, skies were clear to partly cloudy with light breezes, and a warm air temperature of 75.4F degrees. As this satellite image shows, the cold front is now draped over Kauai. It's rather weak as far as cold fronts go, although it still has a few showers embedded in it…which will fall over Kauai for a bit longer. As we get into Wednesday, that showery cloud band will arrive over the windward sides, along with the increasingly stronger trade winds into Wednesday night. The showers will ease up along those windward sides Thursday, although we'll see a few right on through the weekend in those areas. The leeward sides should remain quite nice, with good beach weather prevailing throughout. ~~~ It's 815pm here in Kula, and I just felt the first soft push of trade winds arrive, jingling my wind chimes softly. I'll be back early Wednesday morning with your next new weather narrative, I hope you have a great Tuesday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Tropical cyclone activity: The 2012 hurricane season in the eastern Pacific begins today. We find the first tropical cyclone of the 2012 hurricane season…moving away from the mainland Mexican coast. It's called tropical storm Aletta, and is located approximately 775 miles south of the southern tip of Baja California. Here's the NHC graphical track map for tropical storm Aletta (1E), along with this satellite image.  Aletta should gain a bit more strength, although certainly not reaching hurricane strength…before starting to weaken rather quickly Wednesday onwards.  There is absolutely no threat to the Hawaiian Islands, and actually the storm may turn back towards the northeast. 

Interesting:  Vast groundwater resources have been revealed in Africa by the first continent-wide quantitative maps. But the resources may not be easily accessible because of political and technical challenges and costs, say experts. The new groundwater maps, published last month (19 April) in Environmental Research Letters, are based on an extensive review of available maps, publications and data.

They show the continent has a total underground water storage capacity of 0.66 million cubic kilometres — more than 20 times the freshwater storage capacity of lakes on the continent. The largest aquifers are in northern Africa, mostly in Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya and Sudan.

The study says that "many countries designated 'water scarce' have substantial groundwater reserves," and concludes that boreholes for community hand pumps would be feasible in these. But although some media reports have suggested that the discovery could mark the end of water shortages on the continent, experts say it is not that simple.

"The study makes it clear that these groundwater [aquifers] are far from population centres," Mohamed Gad, professor of hydrology at the Desert Research Center in Egypt, told SciDev.Net. Most of the aquifers in North Africa are also very deep underground, at 100—250 meters, making them costly to develop, he added.

Gad said North African countries need to develop extraction technologies, have the political will, and find new funds to make use of the groundwater. "North African countries need to resume negotiations about the management of the shared groundwater, as most of the aquifers in this region are crossing borders between more than two countries," he said, adding that "countries like Algeria, Libya and Tunisia already have an agreement for the preservation of the groundwater resources, but countries like Egypt, Libya and Sudan still have challenges managing shares".

Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountain tops…as of 5pm Monday evening:

Kahului, Maui - 80
Lihue, Kauai - 73

Haleakala Crater -  50 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea –         45 (near 13,800 feet on the Big Island)

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. Here's the Haleakala Crater webcam on Maui…although this webcam is not always working correctly.

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 (once the season begins June 1) for the central north Pacific (where Hawaii is located) by clicking on this link to the Central Pacific Hurricane Center. A satellite image, which shows the entire ocean area between Hawaii and the Mexican coast…can be found here.  Here's a tropical cyclone tracking map for the eastern and central Pacific.

 Aloha Paragraphs

 

  Rebounding trades late Tuesday onwards, a
few windward biased showers beginning then,
with a few more on Kauai from the cold front
 

As this weather map shows, we have high pressure systems located to the west-northwest, and the northeast of the Hawaiian Islands…with a ridge over the islands. At the same time, we find a weak cold front just to our north…which won't quite make it to Kauai. Our local winds will gradually begin increasing again later Tuesday onwards.

The following numbers represent the most recent wind gusts (mph), along with directions as of Monday evening:

04                Barking Sands, Kauai 
12                Bellows, Oahu – NE
07                Molokai 
12                Kahoolawe – NE
14                Lipoa, Maui – NE
07                Lanai 
18                South Point, Big Island – ENE

We can use the following links to see what’s going on in our area of the north central Pacific Ocean.  Here's the latest NOAA satellite picture – the latest looping satellite image…and finally the latest looping radar image for the Hawaiian Islands. 

Here are the latest 24-hour precipitation totals (inches) for each of the islands as of Monday evening:
 
0.32               Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.03               Schofield Barracks, Oahu
0.00               Molokai
0.00               Lanai
0.00               Kahoolawe
0.00               Maui
0.08               Keaumo, Big Island  

Sunset Commentary:  The low clouds associated with a late season cold front have reached Kauai this evening. This frontal boundary is interrupting the usual trade wind flow, with lighter than normal wind conditions in place over the Hawaiian Islands into Tuesday. This frontal boundary will stall near Kauai, and likely remain near that island into Tuesday. The rest of the island chain will find good weather prevailing, with some afternoon cloud buildups over the mountains…leading to a few localized showers. Then, later Tuesday into Wednesday, the trade winds will rebound, bringing more typical late spring weather conditions to the Aloha state through the rest of this week at least.

As noted above, a late season cold front is slowly migrating southward to near Kauai. This in turn has kept our local breezes on the light side the last couple of days. We'll see the convective pattern extend into Tuesday, with a characteristic cool clear morning…giving way to cloudy afternoons over the islands locally, with a few showers over the interior sections Tuesday afternoon. Our winds will be sea breezes during the day Tuesday, with overnight down slope land breezes tonight into Tuesday morning. Kauai will see a slight uptick in showers due to the moisture from the close by cold front. As we get into the middle of the week, we'll see the start of a well established trade wind weather pattern…which may break down somewhat by the upcoming weekend briefly.

Here in Kula, Maui at 540pm, skies were partly to mostly cloudy with light breezes, and a slightly cool air temperature of 66.9F degrees. As this satellite image shows, we have an area of high and middle level clouds, that are showing up brighter white in color, having moved away further to the east of the state today. This satellite image also shows the aforementioned ragged cold front just to the north of Kauai. It's weak and will be pretty much a non-event as it bottoms-out near Kauai into Tuesday morning. There may be a few associated showers around Kauai, but nothing too much more than that. High pressure building in to the north of the dissipating front will bring our trade winds back late tomorrow, and onwards into the week from there. As the trade winds return, the convective weather pattern will shift back into a trade wind pattern, with some manner of showers beginning to fall along our windward sides again, generally during the night and early morning hours by Wednesday. ~~~ I'll be back early Tuesday morning with your next new weather narrative, I hope you have a great Monday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Extra: The 2012 hurricane season in the eastern Pacific begins May 15th. We now find the first tropical cyclone of the 2012 hurricane season…spinning offshore from mainland Mexico. It's called 1E, and is located approximately 650 miles south-southwest of Manzanillo, Mexico. Here's the NHC graphical track map for now strengthened tropical storm Aletta (1E), along with this satellite image.  Aletta should gain a bit more strength, although certainly not reaching hurricane strength…before starting to weaken rather quickly Wednesday onwards. Despite the fact that it will be moving westward, it poses absolutely no threat to the Hawaiian Islands.

Interesting:  New Navy estimates showing many more dolphins, whales and other marine mammals could be hurt by sonar off Hawaii and Southern California…has caused alarm among environmentalists. The Navy, for its part, emphasized those were worst-case estimates and that the numbers cover a much larger testing area than before.

The numbers are in the Navy's new draft environmental impact statement for exercises planned from 2014-2018. In it, the Navy says that, under its preferred alternative, sonar training and testing might unintentionally harm marine mammals 2.8 million times a year over five years.

"The numbers are staggering and there is absolutely no corresponding mitigation to account for this harm," Zak Smith, an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council. That's up from about 150,000 instances a year in the Navy's impact statement for 2009-2013, Smith added.

But the Navy said the numbers were misleading since the new area is much larger and more activities have been added since the last statement. "It's like comparing three grapes to a watermelon," Pacific Fleet spokesman Mark Matsunaga. "These are just worst-case estimates," he added.

"That's not to say we're going to go out there and hurt them all." "Direct comparisons with the prior analysis might not be comparing apples to apples," acknowleged Smith. "But I think that's irrelevant. … Regardless of what accounts for this change the fact is that we — including the Navy — now understand that the Navy's activities will have a much greater impact than previously thought."

Twelve million potential exposures over those five years are listed under "behavioral," Smith noted. It's the least harmful category, but Smith said it can include an impact like forcing a whale to abandon its habitat for several days. "Marine mammals don't have the energy to continually withstand" that kind of impact, he added. Two million incidents are counted for temporary hearing loss, Smith said, and 2,000 are listed for permanent hearing loss.

Hearing is critical to marine mammals, much like seeing is to humans, Smith said. "It's as if some technology used in my neighborhood blinded me for the next 10 minutes. It becomes a problem if I go outside and get hit by a car." Dolphins are the most impacted species under the new estimates, which are based on models, followed by whales and orcas.

In addition, the Navy estimates traditional explosives testing and training might kill 1,000 marine mammals during the period. The Navy numbers were presented Thursday by John Van Name, a senior environmental planner at the U.S. Pacific Fleet. US sued over sonar tests in whale waters

"Each time around, each time we swing through this process, we get better, we take a harder look, we become more inclusive," the Associated Press quoted him as saying. Matsunaga added that the new estimates include "more activities that weren't analyzed the first time around" and "hundreds more sources of sound" from Navy ships.

"We're at an early stage of the process," said Matsunaga, noting that the estimates don't take into account Navy mitigation. Smith said his group isn't looking to block sonar and explosives testing and training, but to see it used at times and places where the impacts to marine mammals are minimized. Will the Navy work with other federal agencies to mitigate the damage?

"That's the big question," said Smith, noting that, as part of the environmental process, the Navy is now taking public comments and then will consult with the National Marine Fisheries Service. The NRDC, he added, will be submitting formal comments and hopes that the Navy and the fisheries service will eventually have "a very thoughtful conversation as to what they can work out."

Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountain tops…as of 5pm Sunday evening:

Honolulu, Oahu - 79
Lihue, Kauai - 75

Haleakala Crater -  46 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea –         41 (near 13,800 feet on the Big Island)

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. Here's the Haleakala Crater webcam on Maui…although this webcam is not always working correctly.

 Aloha Paragraphs

 

Light and variable breezes…what few
showers that fall will occur in the
upcountry areas through Monday 

Returning trades later Tuesday onwards…
with refreshing breezes returning

Happy Mothers Day!

As this weather map shows, we have high pressure systems located far to the west-northwest, and far to the east-northeast of the Hawaiian Islands…with a small low pressure system north of the state too. At the same time, we find an approaching cold front to our north, heading towards Kauai, although which won't make it our islands. Our local winds will continue to gradually become lighter through Monday…then begin increasing again later Tuesday onwards.

The following numbers represent the most recent wind gusts (mph), along with directions as of Sunday evening:

10                Barking Sands, Kauai – NNW  
16                Honolulu, Oahu – SW
23                Molokai – NNE 
14                Kahoolawe – NE
25                Kapalua, Maui – NE
08                Lanai – WSW
20                South Point, Big Island – NNW

We can use the following links to see what’s going on in our area of the north central Pacific Ocean.  Here's the latest NOAA satellite picture – the latest looping satellite image…and finally the latest looping radar image for the Hawaiian Islands. 

Here are the latest 24-hour precipitation totals (inches) for each of the islands as of Sunday evening:
 
0.23               Kalaheo, Kauai
0.02               Nuuanu Upper, Oahu
0.00               Molokai
0.00               Lanai
0.00               Kahoolawe
0.00               Maui
0.57               Honaunau, Big Island  

Sunset Commentary:  A late season cold front, approaching from the north, will keep unusually lighter wind conditions in place over the Hawaiian Islands through the next several days. This frontal boundary will stall just short of reaching Kauai. The island chain between now and then will find good weather, with some afternoon cloud buildup activity over the mountains leading to localized showers. Then, later Tuesday or Wednesday, the trade winds will rebound, bringing more typical late spring weather conditions to the Aloha state through the rest of the week at least.

As noted above, a late season cold front will slide southward towards us over the next 24 hours or so. This in turn will drop our local breezes to their lightest levels through Tuesday morning. We'll see a convective pattern exist now, with the characteristic cool clear mornings…giving way to cloudy afternoons over the islands locally, with a few showers over the interior sections. Kauai may see a slight increase in showers due to the moisture from the close by cold front. As we get into the middle of the new week, we will see the start of a long lasting trade wind weather pattern.

Here in Kula, Maui at 545pm, skies were clear to partly cloudy with light breezes, and a warm air temperature of 71.4F degrees. As this satellite image shows, we have cloud patches around the islands, most of which are offshore. There's also an area of higher level clouds, that are showing up brighter white in color, having moved into the state locally…which should provide a nice colorful Mother's Day sunset.  Speaking of Mothers Day, I'd like to send out a warm wish of love to all you Mom's out there, and especially to my own Mom, Mrs. Dorothy Rae James in Long Beach, California. She and my Sister Judy were spending the day in the lovely town of Santa Barbara…I wish I could have been there to celebrate them both! I'll be back early Monday morning with your next new weather narrative, I hope you have a great Sunday night wherever you're spending it! Aloha for now…Glenn. 

Extra: The 2012 hurricane season in the eastern Pacific begins May 15th. It's interesting to note that there's an area clouds that are under investigation, some 600 miles south-southwest of Acapulco, Mexico. It's being called 90E Invest, and can be seen by viewing this looping satellite image. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami is giving this area a 60% chance of developing into a tropical cyclone during the next 48 hours. Just for the record, there is absolutely no threat to the Hawaiian Islands, and I'm sharing this just as information.

Interesting:  How can NASA physicist and climatologist James E. Hansen, writing in the New York Times today, “say with high confidence” that recent heat waves in Texas and Russia “were not natural events” but actually “caused by human-induced climate change”? It wasn’t all that long ago that respected MIT atmospheric scientist Kerry Emanuel flatly refuted the notion that you can pinpoint global warming as the cause of an extreme weather event. “It’s statistical nonsense,” he told PBS.

In 2005, Emanuel reported that hurricane intensity, which is fed by warmth, had increased some 80 percent during the previous 50 years, a period during which temperatures had increased more dramatically than any time in at least 500 years. Nonetheless, he asserted, that didn’t mean Hurricane Katrina, the sixth strongest Atlantic storm on record, had been brought on by climate change. 

Even with a multitude of extreme weather events in recent years — tornadoes in New York City, blizzards in Washington, D.C., 15,000 warm-temperature records shattered across the U.S. in March — each consistent with computer models of a warming world, Emanuel and many other noted scientists have been unwilling to attribute any one event to global warming.

There’s just too much variability in the weather, these experts say, and their dedication to data has helped prop open the door for “denialists” to sow doubt about the reality of our warming world. But Hansen’s shot across the bow this morning indicates that the unwillingness to point fingers may be changing. According to a peer-reviewed paper Hansen has submitted to a leading scientific journal and made available prior to publication, scientists can now state “with a high degree of confidence” that some extremely high temperatures are in fact caused by global warming, simply because they occur much more frequently than they used to.

Hansen’s reasoning has to do with math. Statisticians employ standard deviation to measure variability; it’s the calculation pollsters use to determine margin of error, and it’s especially valuable when looking at the weather. Perfect distribution of standard deviation is graphed as the familiar bell curve; about two-thirds of the time, data points fall in the middle of the bell — or within one standard deviation of the mean.

Hansen, with co-authors Reto Ruedy, also of NASA, and Makiko Sato, of Columbia University, has crunched decades’ worth of readings from more than 1,000 weather stations around the world as well as satellite observations and measurements from Antarctic research stations. The aim: to figure out how often temperatures varied from the mean — and how far they varied — during two periods.

In the paper, the authors show that extreme outliers of more than three standard deviations above the mean temperature covered between six and thirteen percent of the globe during the years 2003 to 2008. If they were normally distributed and similar to the climactic record, that should have been just a 0.1-to-0.2 percent frequency of an extreme heat event. (That’s about exactly as often as a perfect bell curve predicts they would occur.)

Hansen dubs this difference a “three-sigma anomaly,” for the Greek-letter symbol for standard deviation. And in the world of statistics, these anomalies represent a stunning 10-fold increase in extreme weather events. Hansen says the heat wave that struck Texas and Oklahoma last summer and the Moscow heat wave of 2010 (which caused 11,000 deaths in the city) are examples of three-sigma anomalies.

In a paper published last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Stefan Rahmstorf and Dim Coumou of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, in Germany, wrote that it was 80 percent probable that the Moscow heat wave had been caused by global warming. “These three-sigma anomalies,” Hansen says, “we can now say are due to global warming.” But what about the extreme cold snaps climate-change deniers keep pointing to?

Even with global warming, Hansen told Time.com in an email, there “is still a broad bell curve. In fact, it has become broader, which means there will still be times when a season is colder than average. When that happens [people] should not say, ‘What happened to global warming?’ It will still be there — they are just looking at natural variability.” Back in 1988, when Hansen was among the first and most credible scientists to sound the alarm about global warming, he, Ruedy and several co-authors came up with the concept of “climate dice.”

Imagine dice with two sides red (for hot), two sides blue (for cold) and two sides white (average temperatures). If you roll the dice, you’re equally likely to get any result. With continued emissions of greenhouse gas, however, the authors predicted that by the early 21st century, four of the sides would be red. “The climate dice are loaded now, just as we said back in the 1980s that they would be,” Hansen wrote. “People should be able to recognize the change, especially the increasingly extreme events. Don’t be surprised if there are more examples this summer.”

Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountain tops…as of 5pm Saturday evening:

Honolulu, Oahu - 80
Hilo, Hawaii - 73

Haleakala Crater -  45 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea –         46 (near 13,800 feet on the Big Island)

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. Here's the Haleakala Crater webcam on Maui…although this webcam is not always working correctly.

 Aloha Paragraphs

 

Trade winds gradually fading away, most showers will
occur in the upcountry areas during the afternoons 

Somewhat muggy conditions Sunday/Monday -
returning trades slated for later Tuesday
onwards…with refreshing breezes returning

Happy Mothers Day!

As this weather map shows, we have high pressure systems located to the west-northwest, and far to the northeast of the Hawaiian Islands…with a small low pressure system east-northeast of the state too. At the same time, we find an approaching cold front to our north, heading towards Kauai this weekend. Our local winds will continue to gradually become lighter through Monday…then begin increasing again later Tuesday onwards.

The following numbers represent the most recent wind gusts (mph), along with directions as of Saturday afternoon:

17                Princeville, Kauai – NE  
22                Kalaeloa airport, Oahu – NE
20                Molokai – NE 
28                Kahoolawe – NE
27                Kahului, Maui – NE
04                Lanai – NE
18                South Point, Big Island – NE

We can use the following links to see what’s going on in our area of the north central Pacific Ocean.  Here's the latest NOAA satellite picture – the latest looping satellite image…and finally the latest looping radar image for the Hawaiian Islands. 

Here are the latest 24-hour precipitation totals (inches) for each of the islands as of Saturday afternoon:
 
0.67               Kilohana, Kauai
0.24               Hakipuu Mauka, Oahu
0.00               Molokai
0.00               Lanai
0.00               Kahoolawe
0.01               Kahului airport, Maui
2.24               Honaunau, Big Island  

Sunset Commentary:  A late season cold front, approaching from the north, will prompt somewhat unusual conditions for our Hawaiian Islands through the next several days. Looking at this weather map, we see a small area of low pressure to our east-northeast, along with high pressure centers stretched out towards our west-northwest and far northeast…with an associated ridge of high pressure between the two. The keynote weather feature however, is that cold front that's dipping southward to the north of the islands…which has recently breaking the hold between the high pressure systems. The latest forecast continues to show the cold front pushing close to Kauai Monday.

There's still some question as to how close the frontal cloud band will get, although it's expected to get close enough to perhaps bring an increase in clouds and showers near Kauai by Monday morning. The island chain between now and then will find good weather, with some afternoon cloud buildup activity over the mountains leading to localized showers…especially over Maui and the Big Island. Then, say around Tuesday or so, the trade winds will rebound, bringing more typical late spring weather conditions to the Aloha state through the rest of the week at least.

There are several new films that I'd like to see, although I thought they might still be too crowded this weekend. Therefore, I went to see one that wasn't my first choice last evening. It was called The Raven, starring John Cusack and Alice Eve…among many others. The synopsis, Edgar Allen Poe joins forces with a young Baltimore detective to hunt down a mad serial killer who's using Poe's own works as the basis in a string of brutal murders. When a mother and daughter are found brutally murdered in 19th century Baltimore, Detective Emmett Fields makes a startling discovery: the crime resembles a fictional murder described in gory detail in the local newspaper – part of a collection of stories penned by struggling writer and social pariah Edgar Allan Poe. But even as Poe is questioned by police, another grisly murder occurs, also inspired by a popular Poe story. Realizing a serial killer is on the loose using Poe's writings as the backdrop for his bloody rampage, Fields enlists the author's help in stopping the attacks. But when it appears someone close to Poe may become the murderer's next victim, the stakes become even higher and the inventor of the detective story calls on his own powers of deduction to try to solve the case before it's too late. ~~~ The Yahoo user reviews give it a 4 out of 5 star rating, which was good enough to get me into the theater.  As is almost always the case, I ended up liking this film well enough, although not greatly. It was a bit too dark for my mood, and didn't really hit the mark that closely for me personally. It was my own fault of course, as I knew what I was getting into. There was only a few folks in the theater, which typically isn't a good sign eiither. I can give this film a B- grade, and here's a trailer in case you're interested in a little peek.

As noted above, a late season cold front will slide southward towards us over the next several days. This in turn will help to ease our trade winds, which should drop to their lightest levels Sunday through Tuesday morning. We'll see the current trade wind weather pattern shift to a convective pattern, with the characteristic cool clear mornings giving way to cloudy afternoons over the islands locally, with a few showers over the interior sections. It will be interesting to see just how close the frontal band gets to Kauai, although as the trade winds return later Tuesday…what's left of it will be pushed away to the west. As we get into the middle of the new week, we will see the start of a long lasting trade wind weather pattern.

Here in Kula, Maui at 430pm, skies clear to partly cloudy with light breezes, and a warm air temperature of 75.4F degrees. As this satellite image shows, we have cloud patches around the islands, most of which are offshore from the islands…with the exception of the Big Island. One area of higher level clouds, that are showing up brighter white in color, is approaching the state from the north. As the trade winds are still blowing generally from the northeast to east-northeast, we could expect a few windward biased showers tonight. As the winds calm down further, and the cold front gets closer, pushing the high pressure ridge down over or near our islands, we'll shift into a convective weather pattern. This will bring light and variable breezes to the state Sunday into Tuesday morning. At the same time, we'll find cool early mornings, with those clouds increasing over and around the mountains…with a few showers falling there locally.

I had a great time at the Seabury Crafts Fair in lower Olinda, staying several hours in the perfectly sunny and warm weather. I met up with a friend, whose a doctor in Makawao and Kihei, and his girlfriend. He has invited me over to his place for a bbq this evening, where there will be about 9-10 other folks attending. He sent out an email saying he had venison, elk, buffalo, and chicken that he was going to be grilling, which is very unusual…at least for me to taste! I'll let you know about what I thought of this game, which was all grown here here on Maui, except for the buffalo I'll be back. ~~~ I'll be back Sunday morning with your next new weather narrative from paradise, I hope you have a great Saturday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Extra: The 2012 hurricane season in the eastern Pacific begins May 15th. It's interesting to note that there's an area clouds that are under investigation, some 500+ miles south-southwest of Acapulco, Mexico. It's being called 90E Invest, and can be seen by viewing this satellite image. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami is giving this area a 40% chance of developing into a tropical cyclone during the next 48 hours. Just for the record, there is absolutely no threat to the Hawaiian Islands, and I'm sharing this just as information.

Interesting:  How can NASA physicist and climatologist James E. Hansen, writing in the New York Times today, “say with high confidence” that recent heat waves in Texas and Russia “were not natural events” but actually “caused by human-induced climate change”? It wasn’t all that long ago that respected MIT atmospheric scientist Kerry Emanuel flatly refuted the notion that you can pinpoint global warming as the cause of an extreme weather event. “It’s statistical nonsense,” he told PBS.

In 2005, Emanuel reported that hurricane intensity, which is fed by warmth, had increased some 80 percent during the previous 50 years, a period during which temperatures had increased more dramatically than any time in at least 500 years. Nonetheless, he asserted, that didn’t mean Hurricane Katrina, the sixth strongest Atlantic storm on record, had been brought on by climate change. 

Even with a multitude of extreme weather events in recent years — tornadoes in New York City, blizzards in Washington, D.C., 15,000 warm-temperature records shattered across the U.S. in March — each consistent with computer models of a warming world, Emanuel and many other noted scientists have been unwilling to attribute any one event to global warming.

There’s just too much variability in the weather, these experts say, and their dedication to data has helped prop open the door for “denialists” to sow doubt about the reality of our warming world. But Hansen’s shot across the bow this morning indicates that the unwillingness to point fingers may be changing. According to a peer-reviewed paper Hansen has submitted to a leading scientific journal and made available prior to publication, scientists can now state “with a high degree of confidence” that some extremely high temperatures are in fact caused by global warming, simply because they occur much more frequently than they used to.

Hansen’s reasoning has to do with math. Statisticians employ standard deviation to measure variability; it’s the calculation pollsters use to determine margin of error, and it’s especially valuable when looking at the weather. Perfect distribution of standard deviation is graphed as the familiar bell curve; about two-thirds of the time, data points fall in the middle of the bell — or within one standard deviation of the mean.

Hansen, with co-authors Reto Ruedy, also of NASA, and Makiko Sato, of Columbia University, has crunched decades’ worth of readings from more than 1,000 weather stations around the world as well as satellite observations and measurements from Antarctic research stations. The aim: to figure out how often temperatures varied from the mean — and how far they varied — during two periods.

In the paper, the authors show that extreme outliers of more than three standard deviations above the mean temperature covered between six and thirteen percent of the globe during the years 2003 to 2008. If they were normally distributed and similar to the climactic record, that should have been just a 0.1-to-0.2 percent frequency of an extreme heat event. (That’s about exactly as often as a perfect bell curve predicts they would occur.)

Hansen dubs this difference a “three-sigma anomaly,” for the Greek-letter symbol for standard deviation. And in the world of statistics, these anomalies represent a stunning 10-fold increase in extreme weather events. Hansen says the heat wave that struck Texas and Oklahoma last summer and the Moscow heat wave of 2010 (which caused 11,000 deaths in the city) are examples of three-sigma anomalies.

In a paper published last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Stefan Rahmstorf and Dim Coumou of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, in Germany, wrote that it was 80 percent probable that the Moscow heat wave had been caused by global warming. “These three-sigma anomalies,” Hansen says, “we can now say are due to global warming.” But what about the extreme cold snaps climate-change deniers keep pointing to?

Even with global warming, Hansen told Time.com in an email, there “is still a broad bell curve. In fact, it has become broader, which means there will still be times when a season is colder than average. When that happens [people] should not say, ‘What happened to global warming?’ It will still be there — they are just looking at natural variability.” Back in 1988, when Hansen was among the first and most credible scientists to sound the alarm about global warming, he, Ruedy and several co-authors came up with the concept of “climate dice.”

Imagine dice with two sides red (for hot), two sides blue (for cold) and two sides white (average temperatures). If you roll the dice, you’re equally likely to get any result. With continued emissions of greenhouse gas, however, the authors predicted that by the early 21st century, four of the sides would be red. “The climate dice are loaded now, just as we said back in the 1980s that they would be,” Hansen wrote. “People should be able to recognize the change, especially the increasingly extreme events. Don’t be surprised if there are more examples this summer.”

Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountain tops…as of 5pm Friday evening:

Kahului, Maui - 82
Hilo, Hawaii - 73

Haleakala Crater -  41 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea –         45 (near 13,800 feet on the Big Island)

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. Here's the Haleakala Crater webcam on Maui…although this webcam is not always working correctly.

 Aloha Paragraphs

 

Trade winds gradually fading away, a few showers
  along the windward sides…and then in the upcountry
areas by Sunday and Monday afternoons

Somewhat muggy and voggy Sunday/Monday -
returning trades slated for Tuesday onwards

As this weather map shows, we have high pressure systems located to the northwest, and far to the northeast of the Hawaiian Islands…with several troughs of low pressure east through north of the state too. At the same time, we find an approaching cold front to our north, heading generally towards Kauai later this weekend. Our local winds will continue to gradually become lighter through the upcoming weekend into Monday…then begin increasing again next Tuesday onwards.

The following numbers represent the most recent wind gusts (mph), along with directions as of Friday evening:

12                Barking Sands, Kauai – SW  
25                Honolulu, Oahu – ENE
27                Molokai – NE 
35                Kahoolawe – E
29                Kahului, Maui – NE
05                Lanai – NW
27                South Point, Big Island – NE

We can use the following links to see what’s going on in our area of the north central Pacific Ocean.  Here's the latest NOAA satellite picture – the latest looping satellite image…and finally the latest looping radar image for the Hawaiian Islands. 

Here are the latest 24-hour precipitation totals (inches) for each of the islands as of Friday evening:
 
1.44               Kilohana, Kauai
0.63               Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
0.01               Molokai
0.00               Lanai
0.00               Kahoolawe
0.22               Ulupalakua, Maui
0.43               Hilo airport, Big Island  

Sunset Commentary:  Troughs of low pressure to our north and east are helping to keep our local trade winds from attaining their full strength now. At the same time, we see on this weather map, a late season cold front pushing southward into the sub-tropics to our north. We still have high pressure centers stretched out towards our northwest and far northeast…although the cold front is starting to break through this ridge. The latest forecast continues to show the cold front pushing closer to Kauai later weekend into Monday.

There's still some question as to how close the frontal cloud band will get, although it get close enough may bring an increase in clouds and showers near Kauai later Sunday into Monday. The other islands between now and then will find reasonably good weather, with afternoon cloud buildups over the mountains leading to localized showers…especially over Maui and the Big Island this weekend. Then, say around next Tuesday or so, the trade winds will rebound, bringing more typical late spring weather conditions to the Aloha state through the rest of the week at least.

Here in Kula, Maui at 520pm, skies were partly cloudy with near calm winds, and a warm air temperature of 70.7F degrees. As this satellite image shows, we less have than the usual scattered patches of low level cumulus clouds around the islands, especially upstream of the windward sides. If we put this satellite image into motion, we can see a general east-northeast movement to those clouds…carried along by the light to moderately strong trade winds. I anticipate that tonight into the weekend will continue to see nice weather, punctuated by those afternoon clouds and a few showers around the mountains again during the afternoons…with clear skies along the coasts.

~~~ There are several new films that I'd like to see, although I think they will still be too crowded tonight. Therefore, I'm going to see one that certainly wouldn't be my first choice, although looks good enough. It's called The Raven, starring John Cusack and Alice Eve…among many others. The synopsis, Edgar Allen Poe joins forces with a young Baltimore detective to hunt down a mad serial killer who's using Poe's own works as the basis in a string of brutal murders. When a mother and daughter are found brutally murdered in 19th century Baltimore, Detective Emmett Fields makes a startling discovery: the crime resembles a fictional murder described in gory detail in the local newspaper – part of a collection of stories penned by struggling writer and social pariah Edgar Allan Poe. But even as Poe is questioned by police, another grisly murder occurs, also inspired by a popular Poe story. Realizing a serial killer is on the loose using Poe's writings as the backdrop for his bloody rampage, Fields enlists the author's help in stopping the attacks. But when it appears someone close to Poe may become the murderer's next victim, the stakes become even higher and the inventor of the detective story calls on his own powers of deduction to try to solve the case before it?s too late. ~~~ The Yahoo user reviews give it a 4 out of 5 star rating, which is good enough to get me into the theater. I'll be sure to let you know what I thought when I get back online Saturday morning. Here's a trailer in case you're interested in a little taste.

As noted above, a cold front will slide southward towards us over the next several days. This in turn will help to ease our trade winds, which should drop to their lightest levels later Saturday through Monday. We'll see the current trade wind weather pattern shift to a convective pattern, with the characteristic cool clear mornings giving way to cloudy afternoons over the islands, with showers over the interior sections locally. It will be interesting to see how close the frontal band gets to Kauai, although as the trade winds return next Tuesday…what's left of it will be pushed away to the west. As we get into the middle of the new week, we should see the start of a long lasting trade wind weather pattern. ~~~ I'll be back Saturday morning with your next new sunrise commentary. I hope you have a great Friday night wherever you happen to be spending it! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Extra: The 2012 hurricane season in the eastern Pacific begins May 15th. It's interesting to note that there's an area clouds that are under investigation, well to the south of the southern tip of Baja, California. It's being called 90E Invest, and can be seen by viewing this satellite image. This next satellite image shows this area far east-southeast from the Hawaiian Islands. I show this last picture just to assure anyone that might get worried by this information…its a very long ways from Hawaii, and may not spin up into a tropical cyclone anyway. I'll continue to check it out, and let you know if there are any changes.

Interesting:  How can NASA physicist and climatologist James E. Hansen, writing in the New York Times today, “say with high confidence” that recent heat waves in Texas and Russia “were not natural events” but actually “caused by human-induced climate change”? It wasn’t all that long ago that respected MIT atmospheric scientist Kerry Emanuel flatly refuted the notion that you can pinpoint global warming as the cause of an extreme weather event. “It’s statistical nonsense,” he told PBS.

In 2005, Emanuel reported that hurricane intensity, which is fed by warmth, had increased some 80 percent during the previous 50 years, a period during which temperatures had increased more dramatically than any time in at least 500 years. Nonetheless, he asserted, that didn’t mean Hurricane Katrina, the sixth strongest Atlantic storm on record, had been brought on by climate change. 

Even with a multitude of extreme weather events in recent years — tornadoes in New York City, blizzards in Washington, D.C., 15,000 warm-temperature records shattered across the U.S. in March — each consistent with computer models of a warming world, Emanuel and many other noted scientists have been unwilling to attribute any one event to global warming.

There’s just too much variability in the weather, these experts say, and their dedication to data has helped prop open the door for “denialists” to sow doubt about the reality of our warming world. But Hansen’s shot across the bow this morning indicates that the unwillingness to point fingers may be changing. According to a peer-reviewed paper Hansen has submitted to a leading scientific journal and made available prior to publication, scientists can now state “with a high degree of confidence” that some extremely high temperatures are in fact caused by global warming, simply because they occur much more frequently than they used to.

Hansen’s reasoning has to do with math. Statisticians employ standard deviation to measure variability; it’s the calculation pollsters use to determine margin of error, and it’s especially valuable when looking at the weather. Perfect distribution of standard deviation is graphed as the familiar bell curve; about two-thirds of the time, data points fall in the middle of the bell — or within one standard deviation of the mean.

Hansen, with co-authors Reto Ruedy, also of NASA, and Makiko Sato, of Columbia University, has crunched decades’ worth of readings from more than 1,000 weather stations around the world as well as satellite observations and measurements from Antarctic research stations. The aim: to figure out how often temperatures varied from the mean — and how far they varied — during two periods.

In the paper, the authors show that extreme outliers of more than three standard deviations above the mean temperature covered between six and thirteen percent of the globe during the years 2003 to 2008. If they were normally distributed and similar to the climactic record, that should have been just a 0.1-to-0.2 percent frequency of an extreme heat event. (That’s about exactly as often as a perfect bell curve predicts they would occur.)

Hansen dubs this difference a “three-sigma anomaly,” for the Greek-letter symbol for standard deviation. And in the world of statistics, these anomalies represent a stunning 10-fold increase in extreme weather events. Hansen says the heat wave that struck Texas and Oklahoma last summer and the Moscow heat wave of 2010 (which caused 11,000 deaths in the city) are examples of three-sigma anomalies.

In a paper published last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Stefan Rahmstorf and Dim Coumou of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, in Germany, wrote that it was 80 percent probable that the Moscow heat wave had been caused by global warming. “These three-sigma anomalies,” Hansen says, “we can now say are due to global warming.” But what about the extreme cold snaps climate-change deniers keep pointing to?

Even with global warming, Hansen told Time.com in an email, there “is still a broad bell curve. In fact, it has become broader, which means there will still be times when a season is colder than average. When that happens [people] should not say, ‘What happened to global warming?’ It will still be there — they are just looking at natural variability.” Back in 1988, when Hansen was among the first and most credible scientists to sound the alarm about global warming, he, Ruedy and several co-authors came up with the concept of “climate dice.”

Imagine dice with two sides red (for hot), two sides blue (for cold) and two sides white (average temperatures). If you roll the dice, you’re equally likely to get any result. With continued emissions of greenhouse gas, however, the authors predicted that by the early 21st century, four of the sides would be red. “The climate dice are loaded now, just as we said back in the 1980s that they would be,” Hansen wrote. “People should be able to recognize the change, especially the increasingly extreme events. Don’t be surprised if there are more examples this summer.”

Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountain tops…as of 5pm Thursday evening:

Honolulu, Oahu - 80
Princeville, Kauai - 75

Haleakala Crater -  39 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea –         43 (near 13,800 feet on the Big Island)

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. Here's the Haleakala Crater webcam on Maui…although this webcam is not always working correctly.

 Aloha Paragraphs

 

Easing trades – a few windward showers at times…
with afternoon upcountry showers leeward areas

Small surf south and west leeward beaches

As this weather map shows, we have high pressure systems located to the northwest, and far to the northeast of the Hawaiian Islands…with several troughs of low pressure northwest through east of the state too.  Our local winds will remain moderately strong, although gradually becoming lighter through the rest of the week into next Monday.

The following numbers represent the most recent wind gusts (mph), along with directions as of Thursday evening:

16                Lihue, Kauai – NE
23                Honolulu, Oahu – ENE
25                Molokai – NE 
27                Kahoolawe – NE
20                Lipoa, Maui – NE
21                Lanai – SE
18                South Point, Big Island – NE

We can use the following links to see what’s going on in our area of the north central Pacific Ocean.  Here's the latest NOAA satellite picture – the latest looping satellite image…and finally the latest looping radar image for the Hawaiian Islands. 

Here are the latest 24-hour precipitation totals (inches) for each of the islands as of Thursday evening:
 
1.32               Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.10               Palisades, Oahu
0.10               Molokai
0.00               Lanai
0.00               Kahoolawe
0.61               Ulupalakua, Maui
1.46               Honaunau, Big Island  

Sunset Commentary:  Troughs of low pressure to our north have helped to erode our local trade wind speeds now, with this easing up of our local winds continuing through the weekend into Monday. The latest forecast continues to bring one of these troughs even closer, helping to prompt a further slow down in local winds. The latest thought, and there is still some question here…is that this low pressure system would remain to the north of our islands. As our local winds tumble, and low pressure aloft edges closer to the state, it would shift some of the showers over to our upcountry interior sections during the afternoon hours through Monday. As we get to next Tuesday, the trade winds will rebound, bringing back more normal windward biased showers…along with lots of warm sunshine for the south and west facing leeward beaches.

Here in Kula, Maui at 540pm, skies were partly to mostly cloudy with calm winds and a few light showers, and an air temperature of 68.9F degrees. As this satellite image shows, island skies were generally quite clear, with just those locally generated clouds over the interior sections on Maui and the Big Island. These clouds will very likely dissipate overnight, making way for a clear and slightly cooler morning Friday. I began to notice an added vertical lift to our clouds this afternoon, which indicate that cooler air is streaming in over aloft our the islands now. I got a note from a reader who lives in Ulupalakua here on Maui, and he pointed out that they finally had some showers arrive this afternoon…which made their way briefly over here to Kula late in the day. I expect to see more afternoon cloud buildups, especially over the taller eastern Islands through the next 3-4 days. This modified convective weather pattern will keep most of the beaches clear, although some of the clouds over the mountains may spread down towards the coasts in places. The models continue to point out an area of low pressure edging this way into early next week. It looks like lighter winds and afternoon showers will continue occur over the interior parts of the island chain until the trade winds return next Tuesday. ~~~ I'll be back early Friday morning with your next new weather narrative, I hope you have a great Thursday night wherever you happen to be spending it! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting:  How can NASA physicist and climatologist James E. Hansen, writing in the New York Times today, “say with high confidence” that recent heat waves in Texas and Russia “were not natural events” but actually “caused by human-induced climate change”? It wasn’t all that long ago that respected MIT atmospheric scientist Kerry Emanuel flatly refuted the notion that you can pinpoint global warming as the cause of an extreme weather event. “It’s statistical nonsense,” he told PBS.

In 2005, Emanuel reported that hurricane intensity, which is fed by warmth, had increased some 80 percent during the previous 50 years, a period during which temperatures had increased more dramatically than any time in at least 500 years. Nonetheless, he asserted, that didn’t mean Hurricane Katrina, the sixth strongest Atlantic storm on record, had been brought on by climate change. 

Even with a multitude of extreme weather events in recent years — tornadoes in New York City, blizzards in Washington, D.C., 15,000 warm-temperature records shattered across the U.S. in March — each consistent with computer models of a warming world, Emanuel and many other noted scientists have been unwilling to attribute any one event to global warming.

There’s just too much variability in the weather, these experts say, and their dedication to data has helped prop open the door for “denialists” to sow doubt about the reality of our warming world. But Hansen’s shot across the bow this morning indicates that the unwillingness to point fingers may be changing. According to a peer-reviewed paper Hansen has submitted to a leading scientific journal and made available prior to publication, scientists can now state “with a high degree of confidence” that some extremely high temperatures are in fact caused by global warming, simply because they occur much more frequently than they used to.

Hansen’s reasoning has to do with math. Statisticians employ standard deviation to measure variability; it’s the calculation pollsters use to determine margin of error, and it’s especially valuable when looking at the weather. Perfect distribution of standard deviation is graphed as the familiar bell curve; about two-thirds of the time, data points fall in the middle of the bell — or within one standard deviation of the mean.

Hansen, with co-authors Reto Ruedy, also of NASA, and Makiko Sato, of Columbia University, has crunched decades’ worth of readings from more than 1,000 weather stations around the world as well as satellite observations and measurements from Antarctic research stations. The aim: to figure out how often temperatures varied from the mean — and how far they varied — during two periods.

In the paper, the authors show that extreme outliers of more than three standard deviations above the mean temperature covered between six and thirteen percent of the globe during the years 2003 to 2008. If they were normally distributed and similar to the climactic record, that should have been just a 0.1-to-0.2 percent frequency of an extreme heat event. (That’s about exactly as often as a perfect bell curve predicts they would occur.)

Hansen dubs this difference a “three-sigma anomaly,” for the Greek-letter symbol for standard deviation. And in the world of statistics, these anomalies represent a stunning 10-fold increase in extreme weather events. Hansen says the heat wave that struck Texas and Oklahoma last summer and the Moscow heat wave of 2010 (which caused 11,000 deaths in the city) are examples of three-sigma anomalies.

In a paper published last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Stefan Rahmstorf and Dim Coumou of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, in Germany, wrote that it was 80 percent probable that the Moscow heat wave had been caused by global warming. “These three-sigma anomalies,” Hansen says, “we can now say are due to global warming.” But what about the extreme cold snaps climate-change deniers keep pointing to?

Even with global warming, Hansen told Time.com in an email, there “is still a broad bell curve. In fact, it has become broader, which means there will still be times when a season is colder than average. When that happens [people] should not say, ‘What happened to global warming?’ It will still be there — they are just looking at natural variability.” Back in 1988, when Hansen was among the first and most credible scientists to sound the alarm about global warming, he, Ruedy and several co-authors came up with the concept of “climate dice.”

Imagine dice with two sides red (for hot), two sides blue (for cold) and two sides white (average temperatures). If you roll the dice, you’re equally likely to get any result. With continued emissions of greenhouse gas, however, the authors predicted that by the early 21st century, four of the sides would be red. “The climate dice are loaded now, just as we said back in the 1980s that they would be,” Hansen wrote to Time.com. “People should be able to recognize the change, especially the increasingly extreme events. Don’t be surprised if there are more examples this summer.”

Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountain tops…as of 5pm Wednesday evening:

Barking Sands, Kauai - 83
Kapalua, Maui - 75

Haleakala Crater -  45 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea –         39 (near 13,800 feet on the Big Island)

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. Here's the Haleakala Crater webcam on Maui…although this webcam is not always working correctly.

 Aloha Paragraphs

 

Gusty trades – windward showers at times…
with generally dry leeward areas

Active surf leeward beaches

As this weather map shows, we have a near 1036 millibar high pressure system located to the northeast of the Hawaiian Islands…moving eastward.  Our local winds will remain moderately strong, although stronger at times through Thursday…then gradually become lighter through the rest of the week into Monday.

The following numbers represent the most recent wind gusts (mph), along with directions as of Wednesday evening:

33                Lihue, Kauai – NE
39                Kuaokala, Oahu – N
31                Molokai – NE 
33                Kahoolawe – E
30                Kahului, Maui – NE
35                Lanai – NE
31                PTA Keamuku, Big Island – NE

We can use the following links to see what’s going on in our area of the north central Pacific Ocean.  Here's the latest NOAA satellite picture – the latest looping satellite image…and finally the latest looping radar image for the Hawaiian Islands. 

Here are the latest 24-hour precipitation totals (inches) for each of the islands as of Wednesday evening:
 
0.61               Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.08               Mililani, Oahu
0.05               Molokai
0.00               Lanai
0.00               Kahoolawe
0.28               Puu Kukui, Maui
1.61               Kaloko-Honaunau, Big Island  

Sunset Commentary:  A strong high pressure to our northeast will keep the trade winds blowing Wednesday night into Thursday. These trades will blow in the moderately strong realms, although there will be gusts that reach 35+ mph at times in those windiest locations locally into Thursday. A small craft wind advisory continues until 6am Thursday morning. The trade wind speeds will begin fall into the light to moderately strong category by Friday …then even lighter during the upcoming weekend into next Monday. The trade winds should rebound beginning Tuesday, and likely last well into the future from there. 

The latest forecast continues to show a trough of low pressure with an associated cold front approaching the Hawaiian Islands this weekend into early next week. This could cause our local winds to become more easterly or even southeast…and falter in strength quite a bit too. The latest thought, and it has been changing on a daily basis…is that this low pressure system would remain to the north of our islands, although perhaps close enough to send its cold front southward towards the islands. If this were to occur, and there still is some question, it would trigger some showers by Sunday into the first part of next week…especially over the Big Island and Maui.  As we move into the mid-point of next week, the trade winds will strengthen, bringing back more normal windward biased showers…along with lots of warm sunshine for the south and west facing leeward beaches.

Here in Kula, Maui at 525pm, skies were partly cloudy with light winds, and an air temperature of 75F degrees. As this satellite image shows, we have patches of lower level clouds…which will bring passing light showers to the windward sides of Maui this evening. It will take until tonight for these showers to reach Oahu and Kauai…while the Big Island will be the least showery of the bunch. As noted above, our trade winds will persist, remaining quite gusty into Thursday. These trades will taper off quite a bit starting Friday, and remain lighter into the weekend and next Monday. The models point out an area of low pressure edging this way Saturday and Sunday into early next week. It looks like lighter winds and afternoon showers will occur over the interior parts of the island chain for the weekend into early next week…particularly over the eastern islands. It will take until later next Tuesday into Wednesday for our trade winds to kick-in again, bringing back windward biased showers, and generally more normal weather our way. ~~~ I'll be back early Thursday morning with your next new weather narrative, I hope you have a great Wednesday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting:  The United States government has issued recommendations on the proper amount of exercise required for adults to stay healthy. The recommendations were created by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCP). They say that adults between ages 18 and 64 should get about four hours of physical activity each week. Of this, one hour and fifteen minutes should consist of vigorous activity such as running or muscle strengthening.

The other 2.5 hours could be moderate exercise such as walking. A new study from researchers at Penn State and University of Maryland suggests Americans fall short of these recommendations, spending only about two hours per week on fitness activities.

According to Geoffrey Godbey, professor emeritus at Penn State, "The United States is the fattest country in the world. The amount of exercise Americans get has become a major concern." Working with Prof. John Robinson of the University of Maryland, the team analyzed data from the US Census Bureau's most recent study of over 100,000 respondents.

They found that the most popular exercise is walking, engaged in by about five percent of Americans for an average 53 minutes per walker. Of the more physically active sports, the most popular is basketball, followed by football, soccer, baseball, volleyball, and hockey. "Baseball may be our national pastime and football our main spectator sport, but the daily time spent on basketball is higher than both of them combined," said Robinson.

"This is particularly true among teenagers, who spend about seven times more time than older adults playing basketball, as well as other team sports." Teenagers are much more prone to fitness activites than adults. Teens spend an average 41 minutes per day exercise versus a mere 17 minutes for adults and 13 minutes for seniors.

The researchers try to explain why Americans do not exercise as much as they should. Reasons include:

- The automobile culture. Four out of every five miles Americans spend moving are in an automobile.

- Electronic entertainment. Americans are "addicted" to television and computers. Adults spend half of their free time each week staring at a screen.

- Aging society. 13 percent of Americans are over age 65.

- Costs of exercising. Many activities like hockey and tennis can be expensive to participate in due to the required gear, travel to the courts, and memberships they might require.

- Fear of crime. Many are afraid to leave their homes and walk or run around the neighborhood.

Although two hours per week is not much, the researchers say it is still better than what American adults were getting 50 years ago. The recent survey results were three times higher than a US national survey conducted in 1965.

Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountain tops…as of 8pm Tuesday evening:

Lihue, Kauai - 76
Hilo, Hawaii - 69

Haleakala Crater -  46 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea –         32 (near 13,800 feet on the Big Island)

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. Here's the Haleakala Crater webcam on Maui…although this webcam is not always working correctly.

 Aloha Paragraphs

 

Gusty trades – windward showers at times…
with generally dry leeward areas

High cirrus clouds…good sunrise Maui County

As this weather map shows, we have a near 1036 millibar high pressure system located to the north of the Hawaiian Islands.  Our local winds will remain moderately strong, although stronger at times through Wednesday…then gradually lighter thereafter.

The following numbers represent the most recent wind gusts (mph), along with directions as of Tuesday evening

07                Barking Sands, Kauai – NE
16                Bellows, Oahu – NE
25                Molokai – NE 
29                Kahoolawe – NE
27                Kahului, Maui – NE
23                Lanai – NE
17                South Point, Big Island – NE

We can use the following links to see what’s going on in our area of the north central Pacific Ocean.  Here's the latest NOAA satellite picture – the latest looping satellite image…and finally the latest looping radar image for the Hawaiian Islands. 

Here are the latest 24-hour precipitation totals (inches) for each of the islands as of Tuesday evening:
 
0.21               Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.02               Moanalua RG, Oahu
0.00               Molokai
0.00               Lanai
0.00               Kahoolawe
2.19               Puu Kukui, Maui
1.70               Island Dairy, Big Island  

Sunset Commentary:  As we move through Wednesday, strong high pressure to our north will keep the trade winds blowing. These trades will blow in the moderately strong realms, although there will be gusts that approach 40 mph at times in those windiest locations through Wednesday evening. These windiest areas will include parts of Maui County and the Big Island, where a small craft wind advisory continues until 6pm Wednesday evening. Weather circumstances will bring the trade wind speeds down during the second half of the week, at which point they will fall into the light to moderately strong category Thursday…then even lighter during the upcoming weekend.

The latest forecast continues to show a trough of low pressure with an associated cold front approaching the Hawaiian Islands this weekend into early next week. This could cause our local winds to become more easterly or even southeast…and falter in strength quite a bit too. The latest thought, and it has been changing on a daily basis…is that this low pressure system would remain to the north of our islands, although perhaps close enough to trigger some wetter weather in our area by Sunday into next Monday.  As we move further into next week, the trade winds will rebound, bringing back more normal windward biased showers…along with lots of warm sunshine for the south and west facing leeward beaches.

Here in Kula, Maui at 515pm, skies were clear to partly cloudy with calm winds, and an air temperature of 75.7F degrees. As this satellite image shows, we have a fairly minor area of high cirrus clouds to our west, which is spreading over the state locally. This should bring a nice colorful sunset to our island skies this evening…at least in some areas. ~~~ As noted above, our trade winds will persist, remaining quite gusty through Wednesday. These trades will taper off quite a bit starting Thursday, and remain lighter into the weekend. The models point out an area of low pressure edging this way Saturday and Sunday into early next week. The models still haven't nailed down a solid weather solution, although again it looks like lighter winds and potentially wetter weather for the weekend into early next week. The lighter winds may also help promote afternoon clouds around the mountains…with likely clear skies along our beaches below. I suggest that we hold this wetter weather prospect lightly for the time being, giving the computer models a bit more time to sort things out. ~~~ I'll be back early Wednesday morning with your next new weather narrative, I trust that you will have a great Tuesday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting:  Many of us in the West take for granted our state-of-the-art banking systems, which make it very easy to deposit and withdraw cash. Every little town has a bank, and in the city there is practically one around the corner. Unfortunately, not every country has such luxury. In India, for example, personal banking requires traveling to the nearest branch, often in far-away cities, requiring nearly a full day to do so.

However, thanks to an innovation in ATM technology, all this is going to change. Vortex Engineering, a start-up sponsored by Chennai's Indian Institute of Technology, has created an energy-efficient solar power ATM machine. This will bring the ability to do banking to even the most remote Indian Village.

The innovation of a solar powered ATM is a win-win for Indian account-holders and Indian bankers. It will allow more transactions to be done, and decrease the often prohibitive expense of traveling to the closest branch. Vortex is marketing their machines as a way for banks to reach out to un-banked and under-banked regions.

The new ATMs are being called Gramateller, whereas "gram" in Hindi means "village". Their unique design allows them to run using 90% less power than traditional ATM machines. Their low power requirements allow them to function in the extreme heat of southern India without overheating.

It also allows them to function well in the snowy winters of northern India. To date, 450 Gramatellers have been installed and 10,000 more are set to be installed within the next two years. Other countries have taken notice, and the solar panels may soon be going international.

Other countries with interest include Bangladesh, Madagascar, Nepal, and Djibouti. The Vortex ATMs are more rugged and durable than other ATMS, and they will work well even in harsh conditions. Other developing nations should take a look at this innovation in banking. It may be one of the best ways to improve their economies, particularly in rural communities.

Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountain tops…as of 5pm Monday evening:

Barking Sands, Kauai - 82
Hilo, Hawaii - 70

Haleakala Crater -  50 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea –         36 (near 13,800 feet on the Big Island)

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. Here's the Haleakala Crater webcam on Maui…although this webcam is not always working correctly.

 Aloha Paragraphs

Gusty trades – windward showers at times…
with generally dry leeward areas

As this weather map shows, we have a near 1032 millibar high pressure system located to the northeast of Hawaii, with a second near 1036 millibar high pressure far northwest.  Our local winds will remain moderately strong, although stronger at times through this first half of the work week.

The following numbers represent the most recent wind gusts (mph), along with directions as of Monday evening:

25                 Waimea Heights, Kauai – NE
37                 Kuaokala, Oahu – NE
32                 Molokai – NE 
36                 Kahoolawe – NE
32                 Kahului, Maui – NE
44                 Lanai – NE
39                 Puu Mali, Big Island – NE

We can use the following links to see what’s going on in our area of the north central Pacific Ocean.  Here's the latest NOAA satellite picture – the latest looping satellite image…and finally the latest looping radar image for the Hawaiian Islands. 

Here are the latest 24-hour precipitation totals (inches) for each of the islands as of Monday evening:
 
1.28               Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.51               Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
0.14               Molokai
0.09               Lanai
0.00               Kahoolawe
1.69               Puu Kukui, Maui
0.65               Kawainui Stream, Big Island  

Sunset Commentary:  As we move through this first half of the week, high pressure to our north will keep the trade winds blowing. These trades will blow in the moderately strong realms, although there will be gusts that approach 40 mph in those windiest locations through Tuesday evening. These windiest areas will include parts of Maui County and the Big Island, where a small craft wind advisory continues until 6am Wednesday morning. Weather circumstances will likely bring the trade wind speeds down during the second half of the week, at which point they will fall into the light to moderately strong category by Thursday.

The long range forecast continues to show a trough of low pressure with an associated cold front approaching the Hawaiian Islands this coming weekend. This is late in the spring season for such an event, so we'll have to take a wait and see attitude for the moment. However, if it did manifest as the computer forecast models are suggesting, there would be several consequences. The first would be for our winds to veer around to the southeast…and falter in strength quite a bit too. If this were to happen, we would likely see the advent of volcanic haze over some parts of the island chain, coming up from the vents on the Big Island. Then, we could see some increase in precipitation too, depending upon whether the precipitation source intrudes into the island chain or not.

Here in Kula, Maui at 545pm, skies were clear to partly cloudy with light winds, and an air temperature of 75.2F degrees. As noted above, our trade winds will persist, and continue unabated through the rest of this new week. These trades will more than likely taper off some after mid-week, and remain lighter for several days into the weekend. They won't stop altogether, but will be noticeably less strong than anytime that we've seen during the last several weeks. Then, and this would be a big change…the models point out an area of low pressure edging this way Sunday into early next week. I'm certainly not placing any large bets on this happening, although stranger things have happened. I'll be following this prospect closely during the week, and will write more about it as things develop one way or the other. 

Meanwhile, glancing at this satellite image, we see yet another cloud band that's moving our way from the east. These patches of showery clouds will bring more showers to the state this evening into early Tuesday morning. At the same time, we see those whiter and brighter high cirrus clouds approaching from the west, on the upper winds aloft. ~~~ I'll be early Tuesday morning with your next new weather narrative. I hope you have a great Monday night wherever you're spending it! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Extra: Youtube video of a very fast car…allows us to get a true feeling for what race cars are built to do!

Extra: Youtube video of another very fast ride…showing what we would be going through as a passenger!

More fun: Youtube video…a fun ride!

Interesting:  Researchers at the University of Hull are developing a way to produce constant supplies of sterile water, powered simply by sunlight and air. The device is aimed at remote communities where conventional systems using chemicals or electricity are not a viable option. The research — funded by the Sir Halley Stewart Trust — will make use of molecules which, in response to sunlight, produce a form of oxygen that is highly toxic.

Lead researcher from Hull’s Department of Chemistry, Dr Ross Boyle, originally developed these molecules to attack cancer cells, but has spotted a new application for their use in the developing world. “We know from earlier work that the same technique which works on cancer cells will destroy many species of bacteria including MRSA and E. Coli,” says Dr Boyle.

“It can also knock out at least one common parasite. And a major advantage is that it doesn’t create resistance in micro-organisms.” The molecules – known as porphyrins – will be attached to small glass beads, which are packed inside a transparent tube.

As water flows through the tube in natural light, the porphyrins on the beads react to create the toxic form of oxygen, killing the bacteria and parasites in the water to render it sterile. Dr Boyle already knows how to fix his molecules to a glass surface, so is confident that production of the beads will be straightforward.

“The device needs to be very simple, low-cost and easy to transport in order to be a realistic and practical option for remote rural communities,” says Dr Boyle. “No special materials beyond the glass beads will be needed; an up-turned plastic drinking bottle may even be enough to hold them.

The beads won’t need refrigeration or special storage conditions, and will keep indefinitely if stored in the dark.” The system will also have no by-products, other than the used glass beads, as the toxic form of oxygen converts back to normal oxygen spontaneously and rapidly if it does not react with the microorganisms.

The beads will have a set lifespan, but once spent can be recycled as ordinary glass or can be taken away to be recoated with the light-sensitive molecules for re-use. Sterile water is vital for communities with limited access to healthcare services, to help wounds and sores heal effectively.

It is usually made using chemicals such as hydrogen peroxide or chlorine – which are toxic and heavy to transport – or ultra-violet, which requires electricity. Other systems, such as filtration, tend to have limited use as filters clog with other particles present in the water.

Because Dr Boyle’s device brings together existing technologies, he hopes to have a basic system up and running in his laboratory within a few months. He will then need to optimize the device under controlled laboratory conditions using cultured bacteria, to determine how fast the water should flow through the device and how long the lifetime of the beads will be.

Once he has a working prototype, this will go into trials in South Africa to ensure the final design is effective in the field.