Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs / September 8-9, 2008

September 8-9 2008

Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Monday afternoon: 

Lihue, Kauai – 85
Honolulu, Oahu – 87
Kaneohe, Oahu – 85
Kahului, Maui – 88
Hilo, Hawaii – 84
Kailua-kona – 84

Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level, and on the taller mountains…at 4 p.m. Monday afternoon:

Port Allen, Kauai -90F  
Kaneohe, Oahu – 80

Haleakala Crater- 46 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 45 (near 14,000 feet on the Big Island)

Precipitation Totals – The following numbers represent the largest precipitation totals (inches) during the last 24 hours on each of the major islands, as of Monday afternoon:

0.35 Wailua, Kauai
0.06 Dillingham, Oahu
0.01 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.01 Kahoolawe
0.32 Oheo Gulch, Maui
0.54 Mountain View, Big Island

Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a 1030 millibar high pressure system located far to the northeast of Hawaii…with its associated ridge now weakening to our north.  This pressure configuration will prompt our local trade winds to be lighter Tuesday and Wednesday, although still locally gusty.

Satellite and Radar Images: To view the cloud conditions we have here in Hawaii, please use the following satellite links, starting off with the Infrared Satellite Image of the islands to see all the clouds around the state during the day and night. This next image is one that gives close images of the islands only during the daytime hours, and is referred to as a Close-up visible image. This next image shows a larger view of the Pacific…giving perspective to the wider ranging cloud patterns in the Pacific Ocean. To help you keep track of where any showers may be around the islands, here’s the latest animated radar image. 

Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live webcam on the summit of near 14,000 foot Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. The tallest peak on the island of Maui is the Haleakala Crater, which is near 10,000 feet in elevation. These two webcams are available during the daylight hours here in the islands…and when there’s a big moon rising just after sunset for an hour or two! Plus, during the nights and early mornings you will be able to see stars, and the sunrise too…depending upon weather conditions.

Aloha Paragraphs

  Remote north shore beach on Kauai
Photo Credit: flickr.com

Our light to locally moderate trade wind flow will continue for the time being…although getting lighter soon through the rest of this week. The trade winds won’t go away completely, but just become lighter by mid-week. There will be daytime sea breezes in those areas that are more sheltered from the trade winds. The reason our local trade winds will be losing some strength, is due to the weakening of our high pressure ridge to the north of the islands. The forecast models show no significant increase in our local trade winds through the next week.

There will be a few showers, although generally on the light side, falling along the windward sides…and in the leeward areas at times during the afternoons too.  The overlying atmosphere remains stable enough, that whatever showers that do manage to fall, will remain rather insignificant. There are still no organized rainmakers on the weather horizon at this time…suggesting fair weather will prevail well into the future.

There are several menacing tropical cyclones churning the world’s tropical oceans now.  Foremost among those is dangerous hurricane Ike, which is giving a beating to Cuba. Ike, which is a strong hurricane, is on its way into the Gulf of Mexico. Here’s the tracking map for Ike, which is a very dangerous storm. By the way, here’s the way the hurricane models are handling Ike as it takes aim on somewhere along the Gulf coast. Then we have tropical storm Lowell in the eastern Pacific, which is heading towards the southern Baja coast…here’s a tracking map. Then in the western Pacific Ocean, we find tropical storm Sinlaku in the Philippine Sea as well, which will move by Luzon Island, offshore to the east…with a tracking map.

It’s early Monday evening here in Kihei, Maui, as I begin writing this last paragraph of today’s tropical weather narrative from Hawaii. Monday was yet another of these near perfect, late summer days…that are often found during the month of September. There was hardly any precipitation, and there was enough of a trade wind flow, that air temperatures felt very warm but not necessarily hot. The leeward beaches were the warmest areas, as usual. The trade winds remained active Monday afternoon, with the top gust at 33 mph (5pm), at those blustery Maalaea Bay on Maui. I see no reason to believe that anything other than more nice weather will prevail through the end of this week, and likely right on into the early part of next week. I’ll be back very early Tuesday morning with your next new weather narrative from paradise. I hope you have a great Monday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting:

The world must speed up the deployment of solar power as it has the potential to meet all the world’s energy needs, the chairman of an industry gathering which wrapped up Friday in Spain said. "The solar energy resource is enormous, and distributed all over the world, in all countries and also oceans," said Daniel Lincot, the chairman of the five-day European Photovoltaic Solar Energy conference held in Valencia. "There is thus an enormous resource available from photovoltaics, which can be used everywhere, and can in principle cover all the world energy demand from a renewable, safe and clean source," he added. Lincot, the research director of the Paris-based Institute for Research and Development of Photovoltaic Energy, said solar energy was growing rapidly but still made only a "negligible" contribution to total energy supply.

Last year the world production of photovoltaic models represented a surface of 40 square kilometres (16 square miles) while meeting the electrical consumption of countries like France or Germany would require 5,000 square kilometres, he said. Under current scenarios, photovoltaic models will represent about 1,000 square kilometres by 2020 accounting for about only 3.0 percent of energy needs in the 27-member European Union, he added. Over 200 scientists and solar power experts have signed a declaration calling on the accelerated deployment of photovoltaic power which was launched at the conference. More than 3,500 experts and 715 sector firms took part in the gathering, billed as the largest conference ever organised in the field of photovoltaic conversion of solar energy. Germany and Spain are the world leaders in solar energy power. Germany has 4,000 megawatts of installed capacity while Spain has 600 megawatts.

Interesting2:

A new set of United Nations laws may be needed to regulate new Arctic industries such as shipping and oil exploration as climate change melts the ice around the North Pole, legal experts said on Sunday. They said existing laws governing everything from fish stocks to bio-prospecting by pharmaceutical companies were inadequate for the polar regions, especially the Arctic, where the area of summer sea ice is now close to a 2007 record low. "Many experts believe this new rush to the polar regions is not manageable within existing international law," said A.H. Zakri, Director of the U.N.University‘s Yokohama-based Institute of Advanced Studies. Fabled shipping passages along the north coast of Russia and Canada, normally clogged by thick ice, have both thawed this summer, raising the possibility of short-cut routes between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Dozens of legal experts are meeting in Iceland from September 7-9 to debate the legal needs of the polar regions. Other threats include a surge in tourism, with 40,000 visitors to Antarctica in 2007 against just 1,000 in 1987. Many legal specialists believe there is a lack of clarity in existing laws about shipping, mining, sharing of fish stocks drawn northwards by the melting of ice, and standards for clearing up any oil spills far from land. "Oil in particular and risks of shipping in the Arctic are big issues. It’s incredibly difficult to clean up an oil spill on ice," said conference chairman David Leary of the Institute of Advanced Studies, which is organizing the conference with Iceland‘s University of Akureyri.

Interesting3: Wide rivers of ice, called ice streams, flow through relatively slow-moving polar ice sheets, en route to the sea. Glaciologists had assumed that ice streams just creep steadily along—until one was recently shown to pack a powerful one-two punch, generating seismic waves twice a day. The seismic signals from Antarctica‘s 60-mile-wide Whillans Ice Stream are as strong as those of a magnitude-7 earthquake, which could cause major damage in a developed area. But, whereas an earthquake of magnitude 7 might last 10 seconds, the Whillans signals continue for ten minutes or longer. They resemble earthquakes at glacial speed, says Douglas A. Wiens of WashingtonUniversity in St. Louis. [Because of the relatively long time over which the slip takes place, scientists standing right on the slipping ice stream feel nothing. In contrast, most rock earthquakes, which can take place in as little as a few seconds, are felt intensely by people in the area.

Interesting4:

The U.S. bottled water market is slowing down after years of steady growth, suggesting that international awareness campaigns may be curbing consumer demand. While bottled water continues to expand in global popularity, the U.S. market is expected to grow 6.7 percent this year, the smallest increase this decade, according to data collected by the Beverage Marketing Corporation. The United States is the largest consumer of bottled water, but opposition is growing. In the past year, several restaurants, municipalities, natural food stores, and schools are deciding to "buy local" – choosing tap water rather than packaged products – for economic, environmental, or social justice reasons.

Bottled water sold in most industrialized countries costs between $500 and $1,000 per cubic meter, compared to $0.50 for municipal water in states such as California, according to Pacific Institute President Peter Gleick. Meanwhile, more than 40 percent of water bottled in the United States comes from public water supplies, and studies suggest that bottled water is not always cleaner than tap water. The bottled products also demand significant amounts of energy to be produced, packaged, stored, and transported. While cities recycle about 23 percent of their plastic bottles, some 2 million tons of the bottles are sent to landfills each year, the Worldwatch Institute reported in 2007. Corporate Accountability International estimates that the annual cost of disposing of water bottles is $70 million. These concerns are beginning to cause a shift in consumer choices.

Interesting5:

Valleys on Mars were carved over long periods by recurring floods at a time when Mars might have had wet and dry seasons much like some of Earth’s deserts, a new study suggests. The research contradicts other suggestions that the large valley networks on the red planet were the result of short-lived catastrophic flooding, lasting just hundreds to a few thousand years and perhaps triggered by asteroid impacts. The new modeling suggests wet periods lasted at least 10,000 years. "Precipitation on Mars lasted a long time – it wasn’t a brief interval of massive deluges," said study leader Charles Barnhart, a graduate student in Earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz. "Our results argue for liquid water being stable at the surface of Mars for prolonged periods in the past."

NASA planetary scientist Jeffrey Moore and Alan Howard of the University of Virginia contributed to the research, which will be detailed in the Journal of Geophysical Research – Planets. In recent years, pictures of Mars have revealed a landscape clearly shaped by runoff. Most researchers now see water as a key player, though carbon dioxide has also been put forth as a possible culprit. A recent study of BoxCanyon in Idaho concluded that similar features on Mars could have been sculpted by ancient megafloods. Whatever, Mars is bone-dry today, and it’s not clear just how wet it was in the past.  The new work, based on computer models, paints a picture of ancient Mars, more than 3.5 billion years ago, as looking somewhat like the deserts of the U.S. Southwest, sans cacti of course.