Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs

  Kauai from the air
Artist Credit: James Coleman

The name of the game now, at least in terms of weather in the islands…will be trade winds, trade winds, and more trade winds! These trade winds will be quite strong and gusty through the rest of the week, with small craft wind advisories having gone up in those windiest locations in the southern part of the state in response. There doesn’t appear to be any end in sight for this extended period of trades, which is normal for this time of year.

All this "air in a hurry" will carry clouds in our direction off the ocean to our east. Whatever showers that fall, will generally end up along the windward sides. As is often the case, the leeward Kona area could see a few showers as well. There are no rainfall enhancing weather systems on our horizon at the moment…although later this weekend, into early next week, we may see some modest increase in those windward biased showers.

~~~ It’s early Thursday evening, here in Kihei, Maui, as I begin writing this last paragraph of today’s narrative.  Looking out the window, I see lots of wind blowing out there, gusty stuff! Looking at the wind reports from around the state early this evening, the strongest gust was, which isn’t usual…that 38 mph reading at that windy bay in Maalaea, here on Maui. Lots of dust is being picked up by the winds, off the dirt covered sugar cane fields in the central valley. Other than these brisk trades, there’s nothing too unusual happening out there. Thursday fair, but windy weather, will track right on into Friday…and then on into the upcoming weekend. I’ll be back very early Friday morning with your next new weather narrative from paradise. I hope you have a lovely Thursday night, which will remain awash with full moon energy, I mean light. Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting:

New research suggests that ocean temperature and associated sea level increases between 1961 and 2003 were 50 percent larger than estimated in the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.  The results are reported in the June 19 edition of the journal Nature. An international team of researchers, including Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory climate scientist Peter Gleckler, compared climate models with improved observations that show sea levels rose by 1.5 millimeters per year in the period from 1961-2003. That equates to an approximately 2½-inch increase in ocean levels in a 42-year span.  The ocean warming and thermal expansion rates are more than 50 percent larger than previous estimates for the upper 300 meters of oceans.

The research corrected for small but systematic biases recently discovered in the global ocean observing system, and uses statistical techniques that “infill” information in data-sparse regions. The results increase scientists’ confidence in ocean observations and further demonstrate that climate models simulate ocean temperature variability more realistically than previously thought. “This is important for the climate modeling community because it demonstrates that the climate models used for assessing sea-level rise and ocean warming tie in closely with the observed results,” Gleckler said. Climate model data were analyzed from 13 different modeling groups. All model data were obtained from the WCRP CMIP3 multi-model dataset archived at the LLNL’s Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI).

Interesting2:

In the Midwest floods, there’s a broad threat to the crops. Here, in some of the best soil in the world, the stunted stalks of Dave Timmerman’s newly planted corn are wilting in what sometimes look more like rice paddies than the plains, the sunshine glinting off of pools of collected water. Although time is running out, he has yet to plant his soybean crop because the waterlogged soil cannot support his footsteps, much less heavy machinery.  Mr. Timmerman’s small farm has been flooded four times in the past month by the Wildcat Creek, a tributary of the Cedar River which overflowed its banks at a record 31 feet last week, causing catastrophic damage in nearby Cedar Rapids and other eastern Iowa towns and farmsteads. "In the lean years, we had beautiful crops but they weren’t worth much," Mr. Timmerman said, surveying his farm, which his family has tended since his great-great-grandfather.

"Now, with commodity prices sky high, mother nature is throwing us all these curve balls. I’m 42 years old and these are by far the poorest crops I’ve ever seen."  And he added, "It’s going downhill by the day." As the floodwaters receded in some areas, they rose in others. On Sunday, residents in Iowa City – where the Iowa River was nearing its projected crest and rising downstream – were struggling with the waters, which submerged part of the University of Iowa‘s campus and sent workers scrambling to move books and paintings from the university’s Arts Campus. "Certainly Iowa City has never seen anything like this before," said Linda Kettner, a university spokeswoman. "A lot of people have been displaced. It’s a very poignant time. And at the University of Iowa, we’ve never faced a challenge like this."

Interesting3:

Presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain are missing a monumental opportunity to save millions of lives and radically change the course of world history. Global warming, the oil crisis, and HIV/AIDS are finally receiving serious attention, and yet we continue to avoid an issue that perennially threatens the lives of children. The issue could not be more basic, more important, or more ignored: The issue is water.  More than 1 billion people, almost 20 percent of the global population, lack access to clean drinking water. Two billion more lack access to basic sanitation. Nearly 2 million children around the world will die this year from water-related illnesses, and with populations in the poorest regions growing faster than in industrialized areas we can expect this number to increase. Meanwhile, the United States has little to say on global or domestic water policy.

Fortune magazine reports that the global water crisis will be as serious in the twenty-first century as oil crises were in the twentieth century, potentially leading to warfare. So it should come as a shock that water is not on the lips of the presidential candidates. Obama denounced the rising oceans associated with climate change in the speech where he claimed his status as the presumptive Democratic nominee, but he did not mention the lack of taps for people in the developing world to access a decent glass of water. Similarly, while McCain has moved away from the Republican Party’s traditional aversion to the issue of global warming, he mostly discusses the environmental component and not the human effects.

Interesting4:

The Gina cloth-covered car is a prototype vehicle from BMW that is covered with fabric rather than metal. Like a living animal, its skin wrinkles a bit when elements are extended (like opening the doors). The shape of the skin can be altered by the car’s owner; it is stretched across flexible metal wires attached to the frame that can be moved with hydraulics. The fabric itself is a silver expansion-resistant textile that is form-fitted to the car’s structure. "The high-precision fit of the material to the metal mesh also allows surface changes without slackening the tension," a spokesman said.

I can’t think of a cloth-covered car in science fiction; readers may have a reference. However, I think that sf writers could suggest some improvements on the fabric skin. For example, I think you’d want to have a car skin that kept itself clean; impregnating the cloth with fabricules from Stephenson’s The Diamond Age would give you a car that never needed to be washed. A Self-Cleaning Fabric With Polymer Film Sprinkled With Silver Nanoparticles demonstrates how scientists are working on this kind of fabric.