Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs

The beautiful island of Kauai
Photo Credit: flickr.com

The trade winds slipped a little in strength Tuesday, although are expected to increase a notch already Wednesday. A moderately strong 1030 millibar high pressure system, located to the northeast of Hawaii…is the source of our moderately strong trade winds now. The recent small craft wind advisory around Maui and the Big Island, has been brought down, although will likely be initiated again Wednesday. The computer forecast models suggest that this late spring trade wind flow will prevail through the rest of this week, right on into next week.

Satellite imagery shows no lack of clouds upwind of the islands, some of which will bring a few showers to the windward sides…although not many. We should have a better shot of moisture later in the week, as an upper level trough moves over, or close to the state then. This upper trough, with its associated cold air aloft, may destabilize our atmosphere enough…that we could find heavier rainfall arriving along our windward coasts and slopes, which would be a very good thing.

~~~  Not all of the forecast models are showing such a good chance of those heavier showers arriving Thursday into Friday. Although, there seems to be enough model agreement, that the chance at least seems quite likely from this vantage point. This is just the kind of weather that we need now, which would help in replenishing our underground aquifers, and our upcountry water reservoirs. This time of year it gets more and more difficult to have generous rainfall, but it’s not out of the question…despite the fact that June is climatologically the driest month of the year.

~~~ Tuesday was another very nice day here in the Hawaiian Islands, with more than enough sunshine beaming down…at least in most places. The next several days should remain favorably inclined as well, with more warm days, and seasonably warm nights continue…at least at sea level locations. The upcountry areas, what with the added elevations, are cooler as would be expected. We could expect a pretty status quo weather reality for the time being, with no major changes expected through at least Wednesday. As noted above, we may see an interesting change of pace Thursday and Friday, before a beautiful weekend unfolds thereafter. I’ll be back very early Wednesday morning with your next new weather narrative. I hope you have a great Tuesday night until then! Aloha, Glenn

Interesting: Lush fields of lettuce and hothouses of tomatoes line the roads. Verdant new developments of plush pastel vacation homes beckon buyers from Britain and Germany. Golf courses – 54 of them, all built in the past decade and most in the past three years – give way to the beach. At last, this hardscrabble corner of southeast Spain is thriving.  There is only one problem with this picture of bounty: This province, Murcia, is running out of water. Spurred on by global warming and poorly planned development, swaths of southeast Spain are steadily turning into desert.  This year in Murcia farmers are fighting developers over water rights. They are fighting each other over who gets to water their crops. And in a sign of their mounting desperation, they are buying and selling water like gold on a burgeoning black market.  "Water will be the environmental issue this year," said Barbara Helferrich, spokeswoman for the European Union’s Environment Directorate. "The problem is urgent and immediate."  "If you’re already having water shortages in spring, you know it’s going to be a really bad summer."

Interesting2: Global climate change will not only impact plants and animals but will also affect bacteria, fungi and other microbial populations that perform a myriad of functions important to life on earth. It is not entirely certain what those effects will be, but they could be significant and will probably not be good, say researchers today at a scientific meeting in Boston. “Microbes perform a number of critical functions for ecosystems around the world and we are only starting to understand the impact that global change is having on them,” says Kathleen Treseder of the University of California, Irvine, at the 108th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology.  Treseder studied the effect of rising temperatures and fungi on carbon stores in Alaskan boreal forests, one area of the globe that is experiencing greater warming than others. “There is a lot of frozen dead material under the snow pack. There is as much carbon trapped in the soil of northern ecosystems as there is carbon in the atmosphere. It is a big unknown what is going to happen if these environments heat up,” says Treseder. She started her research with the hypothesis that an increase in temperatures would lead to increased decomposition by fungi. Since one by-product of decomposition is carbon dioxide, rising temperatures should result in greater carbon dioxide release from the soil. What she found was that nitrogen levels in the soil increased as temperatures rose, and nitrogen tends to suppress fungal decomposition rates.

Interesting3: Speedier family baths could help Japanese cut their burgeoning energy consumption and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, a government report said on Tuesday. Japanese households consume less energy than their U.S. and European counterparts, but consumption has been sharply increasing –jumping 44 percent between 1990 and 2005 — a big reason the environment white paper zeroed in on ways for people to save energy.  Families should not only shorten their daily showers by a minute — a common recommendation in the West — but should try to take baths in quick succession, the report said. Japanese usually wash outside the tub and then soak in hot water, which is then reused by the next family member. That means the water must be reheated each time if the next person in line dawdles. Hot water use in bathrooms and kitchens accounted for 39 percent of energy consumed in Japanese homes, a stark contrast to European households, where energy is mainly used for air-conditioning and heating, the report said. Japan is one of the world’s most energy-efficient countries, but greenhouse gas emissions from companies and households have been on the rise in recent years, prompting the government to raise public awareness for global warming. Climate change will be a major agenda on at the G8 summit Japan will be hosting in early July.

Interesting4: Being tiny has its advantages, and a newly discovered microbe in Greenland has exploited this fully. The bacterium survived more than 120,000 years beneath the ice where inhospitable conditions reach new lows. Most organisms constantly deal with trade-offs, such as some hot-desert residents that take advantage of sunshine yet must endure dehydration. The new microbe makes dehydration seem like a walk in the park. Called Chryseobacterium greenlandensis, the tiny bacterium was found 2 miles (3.2 km) beneath a Greenland glacier. There, conditions are extreme, with temperatures below 16 degrees F (-9 degrees C), high pressure, very little oxygen and meager food. The ultra-small size of the new species — about 10 to 100 times smaller than E. coli bacteria — could explain why it was able to gain a foothold in such harsh conditions and survive for so long, scientists say. Tiny microbes like this one likely can more efficiently absorb nutrients due to a larger surface-to-volume ratio. They also may be able to hide more easily from predators and take up residence in microenvironments, such as microscopic veins or cracks in the ice.

Interesting5: Another swimmer was killed by a shark off the Pacific coast of Mexico on May 24, the second tragic shark encounter in two months in that area, thus officially launching another summer of shark hysteria. The Mexican Navy immediately took to seas to search for the sharks, perhaps with the intent to punish them or at least send a stern warning to the shark community. Shark reports are now a regular feature of the news as far away as the New England coast; the sharks are tracked as if they are as deadly as a tornado or summer storm. What would be the reaction to the death of a kid in Iowa killed by a bee sting? Imagine the drama unfold as angry and nervous denizens take to the fields with insect repellent. Never mind pollination: The bees must die. And why not? Worldwide bees are nearly a hundred times deadlier than sharks, killing about 500 people annually, including about 50 in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Yes, sharks are deadly. It has something to do with their gazillion or so razor-sharp teeth. But while it is prudent to avoid waters populated with sharks, shark encounters are rare and fatalities from attacks are even rarer.