Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs / July 18-19, 2008

Aloha Paragraphs



We’ll be seeing more rainbows here in the islands
Photo Credit: Flickr.com

We’ve entered in what looks to be a period of prolonged trade winds. High pressure systems, the source of our trade winds, are now well established far to the north and northeast of our islands. This has been quite a change from the lighter than normal winds that we’ve seen for much of the last week and more. The latest computer forecast models show these gusty trade winds staying active right on into next week…and potentially longer. The windiest places around Maui and the Big Island, including most coastal and channel waters, now find small craft wind advisory flags waving in the gusty breezes.

Showers have been on the increase, carried to us off the tropical ocean…by the trade winds. The bulk of these showers will end up falling along the windward coasts and slopes. The inversion layer is still quite high, capping the clouds between 9,000 and 11,000 feet. This means that cloud tops will be allowed to grow vertically more than normal, enhancing the showers…some of which will be locally heavy. This higher than normal inversion is allowing some showers to stretch over into the leeward sides at times, particularly on the smaller islands…which have lower mountains separating the windward and leeward sections. We can keep an eye on the incoming shower clouds, and the showery plumes coming off the west side of the Big Island (at least at the time of this viewing), by clicking on this looping radar image. Meanwhile, it appears the next batch of showery clouds, at least in any increased way, is still a ways to our east. This looping satellite image, also shows an area of high cirrus clouds moving in our direction from the west, on the upper winds…those that travel at jet stream altitudes of the atmosphere, or 20,000 feet and above.

The computer models are still showing a decent chance of increased windward biased showers into this weekend. We might see another more organized increase in showers next week, from moisture arriving from what will then be former tropical storm Elida. Further out to the east, over closer to Mexico, we find a second system, called hurricane Fausto…which may end up bringing some of its leftover showers to us eventually too. If there ‘s enough of a low pressure vortex still holding together, as it moves by to the south of the state around next Tuesday or Wednesday…we may see our local trade winds surge noticeably. Neither of these two tropical cyclones pose any threat to our Hawaiian Islands. Here is a current storm track map for Elida and Fausto.

~~~ It’s early Friday evening here in Kula, Maui, as I begin updating this last section of today’s narrative. During the last 24 hours there has been a substantial increase in showers, most notably along the windward coasts and slopes…some of which were locally heavy Thursday night into early Friday morning. All the ingredients appear to be still in place, so that during the next 24 hours, it wouldn’t surprise me to see more incoming showers, with some embedded downpours included. As many of you regular readers know, it wouldn’t be unusual for me to take in a new film after work on Friday. I can’t wait to see the new Batman film, but thought I’d wait for a week or even two, to let the crowds die down some. It’s gotten amazingly positive reviews, and I’m quite sure opening night will be a full house at the local theater. Therefore, I’m home, with not much to do but have a little dinner, read some, and probably go to bed relatively early for a Friday night. This will put me in a good place to get up early Saturday morning, in order to get an early start on a surfing trip to the Lahaina side. I will of course be back to bring you your new weather narrative before I leave however. I hope you have a great Friday night, and it will be another bright one, with the just past full moon beaming down from above. Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting:







The cacao bean is in danger. The Nature Conservation Research Council (NCRC) recently announced that in 20 years time, "Chocolate will be much like caviar today." So what’s the deal?  Unsustainable farming practices are to blame. Cacao typically grows in rainforest conditions with high biodiversity. Instead, farmers now clear the forest and use hybrid seeds to increase output over the short-term. Unfortunately, this leads to soil erosion and shorter lifespan of trees. Over time, this practice is predicted to lead to an overall shortage of cacao.

Most of the world’s cacao is grown in West Africa….even though Ghana is a net exporter of cacao, most of the country’s inhabitants could not afford to purchase a Cadbury or Hershey’s bar. For Ghanaians, "no chocolate 20 years from now" is now. Such reminders are necessary to place in perspective predictions of ecological change and impacts on human populations. While we, in wealthy, industrialized countries, may fear with trepidation the loss of resources and biodiversity associated with global warming, it is important to remember that half the world’s peoples are already living that reality.

Interesting2:

Did the tropics overheat during the Eocene some 55 to 34 million years ago? The answer holds the key to how our planet will respond to global warming, according to one climate researcher. The Earth went through a prolonged phase of extremely high temperatures during the Eocene, in which even the poles were ice-free.  However, there has always been some doubt about the temperatures of the tropics during this period. Most paleo-climate records show that the tropics had mean annual temperatures of 28 to 33°C, which is not much warmer than today. Recently, however, better calibrated data have suggested that ocean temperatures could have soared as high as 41°C (105.8F). If the tropics were indeed this hot, it would solve a huge problem faced by existing climate models, including those used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Existing models have difficulty duplicating climates in which the temperature gradient from the tropics to the poles is small, as suggested by the older paleo-climate data for the Eocene.

Interesting3: From Don Knotts’ portrayle of "Mr. Limpet" to the children’s favorite "Nemo" and the tuna-pitching character in the "Sorry, Charlie" commercials, we all have seen fish that can talk. But that’s just fiction, right? Well … Researchers say real fish can communicate with sound, too. And they say (the researchers, that is) that your speech skills and, in fact, all sound production in vertebrates can be traced back to this ability in fish. (You got your ears from fish, too.)  The new study was led by Andrew Bass (we did not make this up) of Cornell University. The scientists mapped developing brain cells in newly hatched midshipman fish larvae and compared them to those of other species.

They found that the chirp of a bird, the bark of a dog and all the other sounds that come out of animals’ mouths are the products of the neural circuitry likely laid down hundreds of millions of years ago with the hums and grunts of fish. "Fish have all the same parts of the brain that you do," Bass explained. His team traced the development of the connection from the midshipman fish’s vocal muscles to a cluster of neurons located in a compartment between the back of its brain and the front of its spinal cord. The same part of the brain in more complex vertebrates, such as humans, has a similar function, indicating that it was highly selected for during the course of evolution. The finding is published in the July 18 issue of the journal Science.

Interesting4:

If busy bars and blasting music seem to go hand in hand, new research from France suggests that might be because loud music encourages more drinking. The finding is reported in the October issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, and is drawn from research led by Nicolas Gueguen, a professor of behavioral sciences at the Université de Bretagne-Sud in France. "This is an informative and good study that I think a lot of people will identify with, because it makes a lot of sense," said Dr. Marc Galanter, director of the division of alcoholism and drug abuse at the LangoneMedicalCenter at New York University. "Because it seems that loud music throws people off their game and renders them less in control of their capacity to moderate their drinking."

Galanter was not a part of the research team, which noted that prior explorations into the effect of music on drinking have already revealed that people spend more time in a bar that plays music than one that doesn’t, and that fast music in particular seems to prompt fast drinking. The style of music played in a bar can also affect drinking behavior, although in varying ways, depending on the cultural setting. In the current effort, the authors observed 40 male patrons between the ages of 18 and 25 while they visited one of two bars located in the western region of France. Both establishments were local hangouts for young people. The male participants — unaware that they were being tracked — were chosen for monitoring only if they were sitting at a table in pairs and had initially ordered an 8-ounce glass of draft beer.