Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs / July 26-27, 2008

Aloha Paragraphs



Lovely hula hands
Photo Credit: flickr.com

The moderately strong trade winds will prevail Sunday into Monday. These balmy breezes will provide good weather all around, keeping just enough wind around to temper our hot afternoons at the beach. As this weather map shows, we have a robust high pressure center located far to the north of Hawaii…which will be the source of our trades through the next several days. The computer models suggest that this trade wind reality will remain in place through Tuesday. We may see some softening in the trade wind speeds around the middle of the week.

Dry weather will continue in most areas, with just a few light showers falling along the windward sides Sunday. Those windward biased showers will drop during the nights and early mornings for the most part. The leeward sides will bask in daytime sunshine, with no rainfall expected. There’s a good chance that we might see an increase in showers early Monday, from the remnant moisture brought our way by former eastern Pacific tropical system Fausto. Meanwhile, there remains the chance that around next weekend, another retired tropical system (the current tropical storm Genevieve), now in the eastern Pacific, will bring a second increase in tropical showers…as it gets carried in our direction on the trades.

~~~  Last evening when I got off work in Kihei, I went to see the new film X-Files: I want to Believe (2008). This film stars David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, and Amanda Peet, among others. This adaptation of the popular tv series, brings together the two paranormal agents once again. The truth is that I wasn’t drawn to the tv show, and found the movie last evening to be a little too spooky for my liking. There were too many disturbing features of this film, and I could have easily given it a pass. I’m sure it was a fine piece of work, if you’re drawn to that kind of subject matter, but I know now that I’m not. 

~~~ It’s early Saturday evening here in Kula, Maui, as I start updating this last section of today’s narrative.



















I ended up lazing around all day, never getting anywhere near my car, much less driving anywhere. The weather has been fabulous all day just about everywhere in Hawaii. Looking over towards the windward side, towards Paia and Haiku, I don’t see even one cloud in the sky! Speaking of Haiku, I’ll be heading over that way soon, as I have a friend’s birthday party to attend. I understand that there will be lots of good food to eat, a bonfire, and a disc jockey spinning CD’s for the guests dancing pleasure. Typically, parties aren’t a big draw for this Maui weatherman, but when I’m told that there will be good music and dancing, that will sometimes pull me in. I’ll let you know how it was Sunday morning, when I have your next new weather narrative available here. It may not be at the crack of dawn, or before that, like it usuallly is during the weekdays, and often Saturday mornings too. I need one day, Sunday, to get up when I feel like it, without having an alarm clock in my ear at 4am. So, I hope you have a nice Saturday night yourself, perhaps out dancing yourself, or whatever! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting: China’s efforts to clear the skies over its polluted capital are having an effect, officials said on Friday, insisting that Beijing’s air would be safe for Olympic athletes despite persistent smog over the city. Beijing authorities have taken cars off the road and opened new subway lines in the past week, in addition to halting some construction and suspending factory production, in a last-ditch effort to ensure clear skies when the Games open on August 8. "For the effects of the measures we have taken to be increasingly felt, we will have to make continued efforts," Du Shaozhong, of the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau, told a news conference. "Given the geographical location of Beijing, it is rather difficult to improve air quality and cut emissions," he said. The city’s chronic pollution, a source of respiratory illness, has been one of the biggest worries for Games organizers, who have had to deflect international criticism over air quality and who have struggled to contain the environmental effects of China’s breakneck economic growth.

Athletes have also expressed concern, with Ethiopia’s Haile Gebrselassie saying he will take part in the 10,000m race, but not the marathon, in Beijing due to worries about air quality, and others saying pollution levels could affect performance. Du conceded that Beijing‘s air quality on Friday was below par, meeting only level 3 on China‘s five-point scale air pollution index. But he said that the overall trend was improving, with a 20 percent reduction in carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter — all pollutants related to vehicle emissions — since the same period last year. According to China‘s Air Pollution Index, 22 days this month have been "blue-sky days", Du said. But the index is not internationally recognized, does not calculate the cumulative effect of different pollutants and omits several of them. 

Interesting2: Companies seeking oil in the Arctic will need better technology to clean up spills onto ice and could new face hazards such as rougher seas caused by climate change, experts said on Friday. The U.S. Geological Survey estimated this week that 22 percent of the world’s undiscovered, technically recoverable reserves of oil and gas were in the Arctic, raising environmentalists’ worries about possible impact on wildlife. "The Exxon Valdez showed what a catastrophe can be caused by oil in the Arctic," said Ilan Kelman, a scientist at the Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo. "The environment is remote, harsh and vulnerable."  The Exxon Valdez tanker ran aground off Alaska in 1989, spilling 11 million U.S. gallons of oil off Alaska and killing thousands of birds and marine mammals. Commercial Arctic oil exploitation began in Canada in the 1920s at Norman Wells but oil companies still lack full technology to handle spills, for instance, if oil seeps into or below ice floating on the sea.

"Responding to major oil spills remains a major challenge in remote, icy environments. This is especially true for spills in waters where ice is present," according to a 2007 report by the Arctic Council, grouping all governments with Arctic territory. New cleanup technologies "have yet to be fully tested…spill prevention should be the first priority for all petroleum activities," according to the study for the United States, Canada, Russia, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Iceland. Governments and oil companies are developing stringent safety standards to minimize risks of spills. The WWF environmental group urged a moratorium on all oil and gas exploration until there was proper anti-spill technology and an ability to deploy clean-up equipment quickly to remote sites hit by winter darkness.

Interesting3:

A new report released by Oceana today concludes that sharks are invaluable to maintaining healthy ocean ecosystems. Predators as Prey: Why Healthy Oceans Need Sharks shows that as shark populations decline, the oceans suffer unpredictable and devastating consequences. Sharks have unfortunately fallen victim to the man-hungry "Jaws" stereotype society has created for them. But as Shark Week nears, Oceana wants the world to know that what we should really fear are oceans without sharks. Sharks now represent the largest group of threatened marine species on the World Conservation Union’s (IUCN) Red List of threatened species. "Humans represent the greatest threat facing sharks today," said Elizabeth Griffin, marine wildlife scientist at Oceana.

"Without proper management and increased enforcement, some shark species are likely to go extinct." Each year, humans kill more than 100 million sharks worldwide. Shark finning alone kills 26 to 73 million sharks annually. Because shark carcasses are bulky, take up a lot of space and are less valuable, they are often thrown overboard. In fact, the practice of shark finning is extremely wasteful and only uses between one and five percent of the shark.  Sharks also are incidentally captured as "bycatch," a term used for unintended catch, in commercial fisheries. It is estimated that tens of millions of sharks are caught as bycatch each year, which is nearly half of the total shark catch worldwide. When sharks are caught as bycatch they are often thrown overboard, many of them dead or seriously injured.