Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs

  The beautiful Kona coast on the Big Island
Photo Credit: Flickr.com

The locally gusty trade winds will remain active, although become a bit lighter as we move towards the weekend. Most areas around the state will find moderately strong trade winds blowing Wednesday and Thursday. The small craft wind advisory, in those windiest areas around Maui and the Big Island, remains active. A storm in the Gulf of Alaska by Friday into the weekend, will cause some weakening of our local winds, although they will continue to blow right into next week.

There will be a few showers, although nothing too impressive for the time being. The majority of whatever passing showers that arrive, will end up along the windward sides. We’re expected a more or less normal amount of incoming showers during this work week, or perhaps slightly less than that through Thursday. There’s a chance that later Friday into this weekend might be more productive in terms of incoming showers…caused by a trough of low pressure moving into our area.

~~~ The trade wind weather pattern remains well established here in the islands. High pressure centers are located to our north, with an elongated trough of low pressure well to our south. This sets up a pressure gradient, as air moves from high pressure to low pressure. This is what causes our local trade winds…those winds that ancient sea mariners used to carry their trading goods from one port to another.

Interesting:

Exactly 20 years have passed since Dr. James E. Hansen of NASA first testified to Congress on June 23, 1988 that global temperatures had risen beyond the range of natural variability. Waiting another 20 years before taking decisive action is not an option. Since 1988, mainstream scientific thinking has caught up with Dr. Hansen’s declaration that our climate is being adversely affected by human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels-and the forecasts of climate change in the coming decades are increasingly dire. But political action has fallen well behind the pace of scientific progress, and despite growing public support to limit greenhouse gas emissions, the U.S. Senate failed early this month to approve landmark legislation that would have begun to do so.

Dr. Hansen’s latest research indicates that greenhouse gas concentrations have already reached damaging levels and the climate is nearing a dangerous tipping point that will unleash far-reaching changes in the atmosphere and oceans that could take millennia to reverse. In his latest paper, Dr. Hansen calls for deep reductions in carbon dioxide emissions, beginning almost immediately, with a focus on phasing out the uncontrolled combustion of coal by 2030.  As the world moves toward a new climate agreement in 2009, decision makers must understand the tremendous risks we face and the urgency of action in the year ahead. Although many still argue that such a transition to a low-carbon energy system will be enormously expensive and difficult, our research has shown that it would open up vast economic opportunities, spur innovation and job creation, assist efforts to reduce poverty, and increase energy security.

Interesting2: Biofuels can be a sustainable part of the world’s energy future, especially if bio-energy agriculture is developed on currently abandoned or degraded agricultural lands, report scientists from the Carnegie Institution and Stanford University. Using these lands for energy crops, instead of converting existing croplands or clearing new land, avoids competition with food production and preserves carbon-storing forests needed to mitigate climate change. Sustainable bioenergy is likely to satisfy no more than 10% of the demand in the energy-intensive economies of North America, Europe, and Asia. But for some developing countries, notably in Sub-Saharan Africa, the potential exists to supply many times their current energy needs without compromising food supply or destroying forests.

Elliot Campbell, Robert Genova, and Christopher Field of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology, with David Lobell of StanfordUniversity, estimated the global extent of abandoned crop and pastureland and calculated their potential for sustainable bioenergy production from historical land-use data, satellite imaging, and ecosystem models. Agricultural areas that have been converted to urban areas or have reverted to forests were not included in the assessment. The results of the study are published in the June 25 online edition of Environmental Science and Technology.

Interesting3: There are more species of bees buzzing around the globe than there are species of mammals and birds combined, a new census shows. This new count of bee species, conducted by John S. Ascher of the AmericanMuseum of Natural History in New York, comes from a list he compiled of more than 19,200 described bee species. "Most people know of honey bees and a few bumble bees, but we have documented that there are actually more species of bees than of birds and mammals put together," Ascher said. Ascher’s census documents 2,000 more described species than the most recent definitive list published eight years ago.

Cataloguing the world’s species, especially small insects, is an enormous challenge; scientists don’t even know how many total species live on the planet — estimates run from 5 million to 100 million total species, though only 2 million have been identified. Taking a head count of the world’s bees is important though because the busy insects are critical to pollinating crops. Honey bees, such as Apis mellifera, are the most economically important pollinators. But while honey bees are the most well-known bee faces, most bees don’t make honey or live in hives like this social species.

Interesting4: By 2015, 17 percent of the residents of the United States will be getting cosmetic procedures, the body enhancement industry predicts. A new study published by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) predicts there will be more than 55 million cosmetic surgery procedures performed in 2015. That’s nearly one procedure for every five Americans, including children, based on U.S. Census Bureau population projections. Of course, the bulk of procedures are done on adults, and some people might get more than one body part fixed in a year. The industry is well aware of what is driving all this: "Pushing this growth is increasing consumer awareness, direct-to-consumer marketing and advertising, as well as technological advances in non-surgical options," the group said in a statement today.

In 2007, Americans spent more than $13 billion for nearly 11.7 million cosmetic procedures. That’s up from nearly 8.5 million procedures in 2001. Thanks to the bad economy, times are tough in human body shops right now, however. "While today’s economy reflects a slow-down in plastic surgery procedures, the specialty will weather the current decline in economic growth just as it has previous declines, such as the stock market correction after the 2001 Internet bubble," said ASPS President Richard D’Amico, MD. "This prediction for 2015 is exciting." Some caution

Interesting5: Substantially improving the accuracy of hurricane intensity predictions could take years and tens of millions of dollars, the NationalHurricaneCenter‘s director said Tuesday. In an interview with The Associated Press, Bill Read said reducing by half the errors made in tasks such as determining whether a storm would remain a Category 1 or grow stronger would be a costly and long-term effort. Predicting a storm’s intensity is much harder for meteorologists than estimating where it will go. Since 1990, forecasters have reduced by more than half their errors in predicting a storm’s path, but over the same time the accuracy of their intensity forecasts has remained virtually unchanged. "To really get after that you’re talking tens of millions of dollars, if not more, to reach an ambitious goal," Read said. "We’ve made a steady gain in the improvement of the track forecasts, and we haven’t figured out how to do that yet for rapid intensification." That could take between five and 10 years, he said. Read said he’s satisfied for now with the $3 million the government is spending this year for research into improving intensity forecasts.

Long-term improvement, however, would require a sustained investment. Read took the helm of the NationalHurricaneCenter in January. The six-month Atlantic hurricane season which officially began June 1 is his first as director. The center monitors the movement and strength of tropical weather systems and issues storm watches and warnings for the U.S. and surrounding areas. Read said he expects to spend a lot of time talking about preparing for storms, as other directors have. He said it’s denial, not complacency, that keeps many people from being prepared. They just don’t think a storm will hit, and that’s what emergency managers and others have to overcome, he said. Read also talked about the sensitive issue of a suggested link between global warming and hurricanes, acknowledging it carries "so much emotional baggage" it can be "really hard to sift out the science."