Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Saturday afternoon:
Lihue, Kauai – 85 Honolulu, Oahu – 89 Kaneohe, Oahu – 83 Kahului, Maui – 89 Hilo, Hawaii – 83
Kailua-kona – 86 Air Temperaturesranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level, and on the highest mountains…at 4 p.m. Saturday afternoon:
Honolulu, Oahu – 87F Kaneohe, Oahu– 81
Haleakala Crater- 50 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 41 (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 Saturday afternoon:
0.47 Lihue airport, Kauai 2.01 Lihue, Kauai, Oahu
0.00 Molokai
0.01 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe 0.07 Oheo Gulch, Maui
0.29 Kealakekua, Big Island Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather mapshowing a 1024 millibar high pressure system located to the northeast of Hawaii. This pressure configuration will keep trade winds blowing in the light to moderately strong category Sunday and Monday…locally stronger and gusty.
Satellite and Radar Images: To view the cloud conditions we have here in Hawaii, please use the following satellite links, starting off with theInfrared 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 animatedradar image.
Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live webcam on the summit of near 14,000 footMauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. The tallest peak on the island of Maui is theHaleakala 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
The gorgeous island of Kauai Photo Credit: flickr.com
Our trade winds have picked up in strength Saturday.These trade winds will gain even a bit more speed Sunday. As high pressure strengthens this weekend to our north, our local trade winds are getting a lift, becoming moderately strong as we push into the new week. The trade winds will remain with us through the first part of the new week ahead. Looking further ahead, it appears that the trade winds may calm down quite a bit after mid-week, as a cold front approaches the state from the northwest direction…pushing a ridge of high pressure deeper into the tropics.
Showers will be most active along the windward sides, with a possible increase in showers over the next several days.An upper level trough of low pressure is edging our way now, which can simply be thought of as cooler air aloft. This will help to destabilize our atmosphere to some degree, making our local clouds more shower prone. This influence should be most pronounced later Sunday through the first day or two of the new week. Meanwhile, the leeward sides may begin to see some showers during the afternoon hours too…which could become locally quite generous as well.
It’s early Saturday evening here in Kula, Maui, as I begin writing this last paragraph of today’s tropical weather narrative from Hawaii. We’re now into the last few hours of summer 2008. The official beginning of autumn occurs at 5:44am Monday morning here in the islands. Summer will give way to the autumn season with a chance of increased showers later Sunday into Monday or Tuesday. The wild card at this point, will be whether or not there will be enough moisture around to feed these heavier showers. ~~~ Friday evening I went to see the new film called Righteous Kill (2008), starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. The long and short of this film is that a pair of veteran New York City police detectives are on the trail of a vigilante serial killer, in this adrenaline fueled psychological thriller. The critics have not been kind to this film, as an example: "Al Pacino and Robert De Niro do their best to elevate this dowdy genre exercise, but even these two greats can’t resuscitate the film’s hackneyed script." Despite the low ratings for this film, I went to see it anyway, as I’m fairly easy to please, and a sucker for these kinds of action/adventure flicks. I have to agree, that it wasn’t the best film I’ve seen this year, far from it, but for me, it was good enough to have made it worth my while to sit through. I found it a bit clunky at times, although the interaction between Mr. De Niro and Mr. Pacino, was entertaining. There was an interesting twist at the end, which caught me by surprise. Here’s a trailer for this film. ~~~ Saturday was a good day in a weather sense, with lots of sunshine, and just a bit more hazy than we’ve seen lately. The showers noted in the paragraphs above haven’t reached our islands yet, and may take until late Sunday before we see definite signs of their presence. The cooling air Saturday night might bring an increase in showers along the windward sides, but Sunday night into Monday will be the more favorable time frame for the increase in showers. ~~~ Sunset was great here in Kula, it was warm, even after the sun set. Typically I’d have a fleece parka vest, or its companion full parka, on at this time of day, but even now, at 640pm Saturday evening, its still a relatively warm 67.3F degrees, at this 3,100 foot elevation, on this western slope of the Haleakala Crater. I’ll be back Sunday morning with your next new weather narrative, I hope you have a great Saturday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.
Interesting:
Kraft is the latest company to turn part of its waste stream into a bigger bottom line. Two cheese plants in New York will turn used whey into energy in a move that will supplant a third of the facilities’ natural gas purchases. The company also will avoid the expense of hauling the waste away. Digesters at the company’s Lowville plant, which makes Philadelphia cream cheese, and a string cheese plant in Campbell turn the whey into biogas. It’s part of the company’s broader efforts to green operations in the areas of agriculture, packaging, energy, water, waste and transportation. "Our facilities have previously used strategies such as concentrating the whey to reduce volume and finding outlets for it to be used as animal feed, or for fertilizer on environmentally approved farm fields," said Sustainability Vice President Steve Yucknut.
"Both methods required transporting the whey off-site. Now, we’re reducing the associated CO2 emissions that are part of transporting waste, discharging cleaner wastewater from our on-site treatment systems, and creating enough alternative energy to heat more than 2,600 homes in the Northeast." The company’s broader goals include reducing energy consumption and energy-related CO2 by 25 percent, and manufacturing plant waste by 15 percent. Rather than sending it to landfills, companies from across several sectors are increasingly viewing waste as a commodity. General Motors, for example, recently announced that half of its manufacturing plants worldwide would reach landfill-free status by 2010, with scrap metal sales topping $1 billion. McDonald’s successfully transformed waste into electricity earlier this year at several United Kingdom restaurants, while Chrysler is converting used paint solids from two St. Louis assembly plants into electricity. Heinz also is working on a program to transform used potato peels into energy.
Interesting2:
The Lake Tanganyika area, in southeast Africa, is home to nearly 130 million people living in four countries that bound the lake, the second deepest on Earth. Scientists have known that the region experiences dramatic wet and dry spells, and that rainfall profoundly affects the area’s people, who depend on it for agriculture, drinking water and hydroelectric power. Scientists thought they knew what caused those rains: a season-following belt of clouds along the equator known as the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). Specifically, they believed the ITCZ and rainfall and temperature patterns in the Lake Tanganyika area marched more or less in lockstep. When the ITCZ moved north of the equator during the northern summer, the heat (and moisture) would follow, depriving southeast Africa of moisture and rainfall. When the ITCZ moved south of the equator during the northern winter, the moisture followed, and southeast Africa got rain.
Now a Brown-led research team has discovered the ITCZ may not be the key to southeast Africa‘s climate after all. Examining data from core sediments taken from Lake Tanganyika covering the last 60,000 years, the researchers report in this week’s Science Express that the region’s climate instead appears to be linked with ocean and atmospheric patterns in the Northern Hemisphere. The finding underscores the interconnectedness of the Earth’s climate — how weather in one part of the planet can affect local conditions half a world away. The discovery also could help scientists understand how tropical Africa will respond to global warming, said Jessica Tierney, a graduate student in Brown’s Geological Sciences Department and the paper’s lead author.
Interesting3:
Abrupt climate change is a potential menace that hasn’t received much attention. That’s about to change. Through its Climate Change Prediction Program, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Biological and Environmental Research (OBER) recently launched IMPACTS – Investigation of the Magnitudes and Probabilities of Abrupt Climate Transitions – a program led by William Collins of Berkeley Lab’s Earth Sciences Division (ESD) that brings together six national laboratories to attack the problem of abrupt climate change, or ACC. Sparked by the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize that was shared by Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the reality of global warming finally got through to the majority of the world’s population. Most people think of climate change as something that occurs only gradually, however, with average temperature changing two or three degrees Celsius over a century or more; this is the rate at which ‘forcing’ mechanisms operate, such as the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to the burning of fossil fuels or widespread changes in land use.
But climate change has occurred with frightening rapidity in the past and will almost certainly do so again. Perhaps the most famous example is the reverse hiccup in a warming trend that began 15,000 years ago and eventually ended the last ice age. Roughly 2,000 years after it started, the warming trend suddenly reversed, and temperatures fell back to near-glacial conditions; Earth stayed cold for over a thousand years, a period called the Younger Dryas (named for an alpine wildflower). Then warming resumed so abruptly, that global temperatures shot up 10 °C, in just 10 years. Because civilizations hadn’t yet emerged, complex human societies escaped this particular roller-coaster ride. Nevertheless, some form of abrupt climate change is highly likely in the future, with wide-ranging economic and social effects.
Interesting4:
The Caribbean and GulfCoast have seen a spate of devastating hurricanes in recent years that have cost billions of dollars and thousands of lives. As residents recover from the latest hits, they may wonder about the potential for future Ike’s and Katrina’s. Hurricanes, of course, are nothing new to the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, where tropical storms form between June and November each year. But many factors, both natural and man-made, can affect the number, strength, size and impact of the storms that form each season. For example, the recent surge in storms followed an almost two-decade lull that was part of a natural cycle in hurricane formation. During that lull, new coastal residents built homes in what they thought was a paradise. But now they’ve found out just how susceptible they are to nature’s wrath. And it looks like the situation might only get worse. In 2003, more than half the U.S. population (or about 153 million people) lived along the Gulf and Southeastern U.S. coastline — an increase of 33 million people from 1980 — and that number is just expected to keep rising.
The buildup of these communities in recent decades and the environmental damage that development has caused exacerbate the impact of hurricanes. "There’s been an explosion of population along our coast," said Amanda Staudt, a climate scientist with the National Wildlife Federation (NWF). "That’s just putting a lot more people in harm’s way." This is particularly true in Florida, Texas and North Carolina, where populations are increasing the fastest. Hurricanes are especially a threat for homes right on the beach or on barrier islands, such as Galveston, because they receive the full brunt of a hurricane’s storm surge. Coastal features such as barrier islands and wetlands act as natural protection against a hurricane’s storm surge, slowing it down and absorbing some of the impact. Studies have shown that every mile of wetlands reduces storm surge by about 3 to 9 inches and every acre reduces the cost of damages from a storm by $3,300, Staudt said. "Our wetlands and barrier islands … are our first line of defense," she said.
Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Friday afternoon:
Lihue, Kauai – 84
Honolulu, Oahu – 86 Kaneohe, Oahu – 82 Kahului, Maui – 88 Hilo, Hawaii – 83
Kailua-kona – 85 Air Temperaturesranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level, and on the highest mountains…at 5 p.m. Friday evening:
Kahului, Maui – 84F Hilo, Hawaii– 77
Haleakala Crater- 54 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 43 (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 Friday afternoon:
0.15 Lihue airport, Kauai 0.80 Hakipuu Mauka, Oahu
0.07 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe 0.46 Oheo Gulch, Maui
0.25 Kahua Ranch, Big Island Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather mapshowing two fairly weak high pressure systems located to the north, and far to the east-northeast of Hawaii. This pressure configuration will keep trade winds on the light side light side Friday and Saturday.
Satellite and Radar Images: To view the cloud conditions we have here in Hawaii, please use the following satellite links, starting off with theInfrared 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 animatedradar image.
Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live webcam on the summit of near 14,000 footMauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. The tallest peak on the island of Maui is theHaleakala 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
The windward side of Oahu Photo Credit: flickr.com
Our trade winds will be gradually picking up in strength through the weekend.These trade winds will remain on the light side of the wind spectrum Saturday, but gain speed moving into Sunday. As high pressure strengthens later this weekend, our local trade winds will get a lift, becoming moderately strong as we push into the new week. The trade winds will remain with us through at least the next week.
We’ll see a few showers along the windward sides, with the chance of a shower along the leeward sides too.The night and early morning hours will be the favored time of day for the windward biased showers. The light winds, along with the daytime heating of the islands, will cause clouds to form over and around the leeward slopes during the afternoons…with a few showers. We may see an increase in showers, which could be locally heavy later this weekend into early next week.
It’s early Friday evening here in Kihei, Maui, as I begin writing this last paragraph of today’s tropical weather narrative from Hawaii. The computer models continue showing an upper level low pressure system moving over the islands this weekend. The cool air aloft in association with this upper air feature, could enhance our windward biased showers, and cause showers to increase over the leeward slopes too. ~~~ We’re heading into the last weekend of summer 2008. The official beginning of autumn occurs at 5:44am Monday morning here in the islands. Summer will give way to the autumn season with a chance of increased showers Sunday into Monday. The good part of this is that both the windward and leeward sides will have a chance to receive some much needed water. ~~~ I’m about ready to leave Kihei for the short 15-20 minute drive to Kahului. I’m going to see the new film called Righteous Kill (2008), starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. The long and short of this film is that a pair of veteran New York City police detectives are on the trail of a vigilante serial killer, in this adrenaline fueled psychological thriller. The critics have not been kind to this film, as an example: "Al Pacino and Robert De Niro do their best to elevate this dowdy genre exercise, but even these two greats can’t resuscitate the film’s hackneyed script." Oh well, I’m going to see it anyway, as I’m fairly easy to please, and a sucker for these kinds of action/adventure flicks. Here’s a trailer for this film. I’ll be back early Saturday morning with your next new weather narrative, including my thoughts on the film. I hope you have you have a great Friday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.
Interesting:
Kraft is the latest company to turn part of its waste stream into a bigger bottom line. Two cheese plants in New York will turn used whey into energy in a move that will supplant a third of the facilities’ natural gas purchases. The company also will avoid the expense of hauling the waste away. Digesters at the company’s Lowville plant, which makes Philadelphia cream cheese, and a string cheese plant in Campbell turn the whey into biogas. It’s part of the company’s broader efforts to green operations in the areas of agriculture, packaging, energy, water, waste and transportation. "Our facilities have previously used strategies such as concentrating the whey to reduce volume and finding outlets for it to be used as animal feed, or for fertilizer on environmentally approved farm fields," said Sustainability Vice President Steve Yucknut.
"Both methods required transporting the whey off-site. Now, we’re reducing the associated CO2 emissions that are part of transporting waste, discharging cleaner wastewater from our on-site treatment systems, and creating enough alternative energy to heat more than 2,600 homes in the Northeast." The company’s broader goals include reducing energy consumption and energy-related CO2 by 25 percent, and manufacturing plant waste by 15 percent. Rather than sending it to landfills, companies from across several sectors are increasingly viewing waste as a commodity. General Motors, for example, recently announced that half of its manufacturing plants worldwide would reach landfill-free status by 2010, with scrap metal sales topping $1 billion. McDonald’s successfully transformed waste into electricity earlier this year at several United Kingdom restaurants, while Chrysler is converting used paint solids from two St. Louis assembly plants into electricity. Heinz also is working on a program to transform used potato peels into energy.
Interesting2:
The Lake Tanganyika area, in southeast Africa, is home to nearly 130 million people living in four countries that bound the lake, the second deepest on Earth. Scientists have known that the region experiences dramatic wet and dry spells, and that rainfall profoundly affects the area’s people, who depend on it for agriculture, drinking water and hydroelectric power. Scientists thought they knew what caused those rains: a season-following belt of clouds along the equator known as the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). Specifically, they believed the ITCZ and rainfall and temperature patterns in the Lake Tanganyika area marched more or less in lockstep. When the ITCZ moved north of the equator during the northern summer, the heat (and moisture) would follow, depriving southeast Africa of moisture and rainfall. When the ITCZ moved south of the equator during the northern winter, the moisture followed, and southeast Africa got rain.
Now a Brown-led research team has discovered the ITCZ may not be the key to southeast Africa‘s climate after all. Examining data from core sediments taken from Lake Tanganyika covering the last 60,000 years, the researchers report in this week’s Science Express that the region’s climate instead appears to be linked with ocean and atmospheric patterns in the Northern Hemisphere. The finding underscores the interconnectedness of the Earth’s climate — how weather in one part of the planet can affect local conditions half a world away. The discovery also could help scientists understand how tropical Africa will respond to global warming, said Jessica Tierney, a graduate student in Brown’s Geological Sciences Department and the paper’s lead author.
Interesting3:
Abrupt climate change is a potential menace that hasn’t received much attention. That’s about to change. Through its Climate Change Prediction Program, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Biological and Environmental Research (OBER) recently launched IMPACTS – Investigation of the Magnitudes and Probabilities of Abrupt Climate Transitions – a program led by William Collins of Berkeley Lab’s Earth Sciences Division (ESD) that brings together six national laboratories to attack the problem of abrupt climate change, or ACC. Sparked by the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize that was shared by Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the reality of global warming finally got through to the majority of the world’s population. Most people think of climate change as something that occurs only gradually, however, with average temperature changing two or three degrees Celsius over a century or more; this is the rate at which ‘forcing’ mechanisms operate, such as the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to the burning of fossil fuels or widespread changes in land use.
But climate change has occurred with frightening rapidity in the past and will almost certainly do so again. Perhaps the most famous example is the reverse hiccup in a warming trend that began 15,000 years ago and eventually ended the last ice age. Roughly 2,000 years after it started, the warming trend suddenly reversed, and temperatures fell back to near-glacial conditions; Earth stayed cold for over a thousand years, a period called the Younger Dryas (named for an alpine wildflower). Then warming resumed so abruptly, that global temperatures shot up 10 °C, in just 10 years. Because civilizations hadn’t yet emerged, complex human societies escaped this particular roller-coaster ride. Nevertheless, some form of abrupt climate change is highly likely in the future, with wide-ranging economic and social effects.
Interesting4:
The Caribbean and GulfCoast have seen a spate of devastating hurricanes in recent years that have cost billions of dollars and thousands of lives. As residents recover from the latest hits, they may wonder about the potential for future Ike’s and Katrina’s. Hurricanes, of course, are nothing new to the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, where tropical storms form between June and November each year. But many factors, both natural and man-made, can affect the number, strength, size and impact of the storms that form each season. For example, the recent surge in storms followed an almost two-decade lull that was part of a natural cycle in hurricane formation. During that lull, new coastal residents built homes in what they thought was a paradise. But now they’ve found out just how susceptible they are to nature’s wrath. And it looks like the situation might only get worse. In 2003, more than half the U.S. population (or about 153 million people) lived along the Gulf and Southeastern U.S. coastline — an increase of 33 million people from 1980 — and that number is just expected to keep rising.
The buildup of these communities in recent decades and the environmental damage that development has caused exacerbate the impact of hurricanes. "There’s been an explosion of population along our coast," said Amanda Staudt, a climate scientist with the National Wildlife Federation (NWF). "That’s just putting a lot more people in harm’s way." This is particularly true in Florida, Texas and North Carolina, where populations are increasing the fastest. Hurricanes are especially a threat for homes right on the beach or on barrier islands, such as Galveston, because they receive the full brunt of a hurricane’s storm surge. Coastal features such as barrier islands and wetlands act as natural protection against a hurricane’s storm surge, slowing it down and absorbing some of the impact. Studies have shown that every mile of wetlands reduces storm surge by about 3 to 9 inches and every acre reduces the cost of damages from a storm by $3,300, Staudt said. "Our wetlands and barrier islands … are our first line of defense," she said.
Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Thursday afternoon:
Lihue, Kauai – 84 Honolulu, Oahu – 89 Kaneohe, Oahu – 85 Kahului, Maui – 86 Hilo, Hawaii – 84
Kailua-kona – 85 Air Temperaturesranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level, and on the highest mountains…at 4 p.m. Thursday afternoon:
Port Allen, Kauai – 88F Hilo, Hawaii– 78
Haleakala Crater- 59 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 46 (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 Thursday afternoon:
0.01 Hanapepe, Kauai
0.18 Maunawili, Oahu
0.01 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.20 Kahoolawe 0.44 Puu Kukui, Maui
0.17 Kapapala Ranch, Big Island Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather mapshowing two fairly weak high pressure systems located to the north, and far to the east-northeast of Hawaii. This pressure configuration will keep trade winds on the light side light side Friday and Saturday.
Satellite and Radar Images: To view the cloud conditions we have here in Hawaii, please use the following satellite links, starting off with theInfrared 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 animatedradar image.
Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live webcam on the summit of near 14,000 footMauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. The tallest peak on the island of Maui is theHaleakala 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.
The trade winds will slip down into the light category now through Saturday…then pick up again starting Sunday for several days.These trade winds won’t go away completely, but will be lighter in general. The computer models show them increasing in strength again Sunday for a couple of days, then get lighter Tuesday and Wednesday…only to finish off next week in the moderate to strong realms. In other words, the trade winds will stick around through the next 7-10 days, with variations in speed on a daily basis.
As the trade winds slow down now, we’ll still see a few showers falling along the windward sides…in addition to more showers over the leeward slopes during the afternoons soon.The night and early morning hours will be the favored time of day for the windward biased showers. The light winds, along with the daytime heating of the islands, will cause clouds to congregate over and around the leeward slopes during the afternoons…with a few showers. We may see an increase in showers, which could be locally heavy later this weekend into early next week.
It’s early Thursday evening here in Kihei, Maui, as I begin writing this last paragraph of today’s tropical weather narrative from Hawaii. The computer models continue showing an upper level low pressure system moving over the islands Sunday into early next week. The cold air aloft in association with this upper air feature, could enhance our windward biased showers, and cause showers to increase over the leeward slopes then too. ~~~ Fortunately, the trade winds will stick around, and our high pressure ridge will remain north of Kauai. This will keep us with at least some light breezes, and also keep the volcanic haze from moving up from the Big Island over the other islands. We’re seeing repeated efforts by early season cold fronts lately, which are trying to move down towards the tropics. None of them have made it down into our latitudes, but as they press further south, that’s what’s causing our trade winds to falter more and more often these days. It’s just a matter of time before one of these is able to force its way down to our islands…although that may be awhile yet. ~~~ Thursday was another nice day here in the islands, with a pleasant combination of light to moderately strong trade winds, along with sunny to partly cloudy skies in general. As we move through the next three days, there may be some additional cloudiness in the afternoon hours, which may lead to some increase in showers…especially in the Saturday through Monday time frame. ~~~ I’ll be back well before daybreak Friday morning with your next new weather narrative, I hope you have a great Thursday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.
Interesting:
Australian scientists have discovered hundreds of new coral and marine species on the Great Barrier Reef and Ningaloo Reef which they say will improve monitoring reef biodiversity and the impact of climate change. Three expeditions to the reefs over four years to collect the first inventory of soft corals found 300, of which 130 were new species. Dozens of new marine species were found, such as shrimp-like animals with claws longer than their bodies, along with already known animals like a tongue-eating isopod parasite that eats a fish’s tongue and then resides in its mouth. "We were all surprised and excited to find such a large variety of marine life never before described, most notably soft coral, isopods, tanaid (small, bottom-dwelling) crustaceans and worms, and in waters that divers access easily and regularly," said Julian Caley, research scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS). The marine inventory, being carried out globally as part of a 2010 census of reefs, will allow better understanding of reef biodiversity and climate change, said the AIMS report.
"Corals face threats ranging from ocean acidification, pollution, and warming to overfishing and starfish outbreaks," AIMS chief executive Ian Poiner said in a statement. "Only by establishing a baseline of biodiversity and following through with later censuses can people know the impact of those threats and find clues to mitigate them," said Poiner. The scientists said other major finds included about 100 new isopods, often called "vultures of the sea" because some feed on dead fish. Some two thirds of the species found on LizardIsland on the Great Barrier Reef may be new, along with many polychaetes or "bristle worms", a relative of leeches and earthworms. "The new Australian expeditions reveal how far we are from knowing how many species live in coral reefs around the globe. Estimates span the huge range from 1 to 9 million," marine scientist Nancy Knowlton from the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, said in a statement.
Interesting2:
China‘s capital started pumping "emergency" water from its long-parched neighboring province on Thursday, with officials speaking of a "grim" shortfall weeks after the Olympics when they said the city had enough water.Hebei, which surrounds Beijing, will pump 300 million cubic meters of water to the capital from three dams which usually supply nearby farms, towns and cities. Officials said the capital faced a serious shortfall but made no secret of the strains the transfer places on Hebei, which faces its own chronic water scarcity. "Owing to continuous drought in recent years, the water situation in the capital Beijing is grim and water sources are quite strained," said a statement on the website, adding that the two governments had reached an agreement on the supplies.
"This water is being transferred in circumstances when our province’s water resources are extremely scarce and is an emergency transfer." The water will flow through a 309-km (192-mile) canal quickly built for the Beijing Olympics that will later form part of the larger South-to-North Water Transfer Project. During the Games in August, city officials said they did not need the "emergency" supplies that Hebei and nearby provinces set aside in case the "green" Games host city faced shortages. "I believe the Olympic Games will not pose a big challenge to water supplies in the city," Water Ministry official Hu Siyi told reporters in mid-August. But as north China approaches the dry winter season, officials said Beijing now needs the supplies. Hebei will pump the extra supplies for 174 days until March 2009, the provincial water office said.
Interesting3:
Field researchers have sighted the hairy-nosed otter, the world’s rarest, in a national park in southern Vietnam, a conservation group announced Thursday. Nguyen Van Nhuan, a research officer at Vietnam‘s Carnivore and Pangolin Conservation Programme, said he came face-to-face with two of the endangered animals in March while doing night observations in U Minh Ha National Park in the Mekong Delta. The species was believed extinct in the 1990s, but has recently been seen in several south-east Asian countries. Nhuan’s was the first sighting in Vietnam since 2000. "We could not believe our eyes," Nhuan said. "Suddenly two hairy-nosed otters! I have never had a special feeling like that." An official of the Carnivore and Pangolin Conservation Programme said the group had hesitated to release news of the sighting for fear of revealing the otter’s presence to hunters, but had decided to publicize it now because of threats to the animal’s habitat.
Nhuan said the otters’ habitat was being fragmented by development in and around the 8,000-hectare U Minh Ha park. A state-owned forestry company engages in intensive planning and harvesting of melaleuca trees, and locals have admitted hunting the otters for fur, for use in traditional Chinese medicine, and to keep as pets. The water quality in the park has been degraded by motorboats lured by new ecotourism projects, according to Nhuan. "Due to ecotourism development, there’s a lot of rubbish," Nhuan said. "The ecotourism project is using a lot of land to build its headquarters, hotel rooms and a recreation area." Scientists know relatively little about hairy-nosed otters, which are notoriously shy and mostly nocturnal. They eat fish, frogs, reptiles, snakes, and insects.
Interesting4:
When you have a headache, you take a couple aspirin, but when plants get stressed out, they just make their own. Scientists had known that plants in laboratories produce a chemical called methyl salicylate — a form of the painkiller aspirin — when stressed out, but they had never detected it in plants out in nature. A team of scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., discovered by accident plants in the wild emitting methyl salicylate. They set up instruments last year in a walnut grove near Davis, Calif., to monitor plant emissions of certain volatile organic compounds (or VOCs). VOCs emitted by plants can actually combine with industrial emissions and contribute to smog. To their surprise, the NCAR scientists found that the emissions of VOCs their instruments recorded in the atmosphere included methyl salicylate.
They noticed that the methyl salicylate emissions increased dramatically when the plants, already stressed by a local drought, experienced unseasonably cool nighttime temperatures followed by large temperature increases during the day. Scientists think that the methyl salicylate has two functions: stimulating a process similar to the immune response in animals that helps plants resist and recover from disease, and acting as a form of chemical communication to warn neighbors of threats. "These findings show tangible proof that plant-to-plant communication occurs on the ecosystem level," said study team member Alex Guenther. "It appears that plants have the ability to communicate through the atmosphere."
Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Wednesday afternoon:
Lihue, Kauai – 84 Honolulu, Oahu – 88 Kaneohe, Oahu – 85 Kahului, Maui – 87 Hilo, Hawaii – 80
Kailua-kona – 83 Air Temperaturesranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level, and on the taller mountains…at 4 p.m. Wednesday afternoon:
Port Allen, Kauai – 88F Hilo, Hawaii– 78
Haleakala Crater- 54 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 50 (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 Wednesday afternoon:
0.07 Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.13 Kaneohe, Oahu
0.02 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe 0.10 Hana airport, Maui 0.55 Pahoa, Big Island Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather mapshowing two fairly weak high pressure systems located to the north-northwest, and east-northeast of Hawaii. This pressure configuration will keep our winds light Thursday and Friday.
Satellite and Radar Images: To view the cloud conditions we have here in Hawaii, please use the following satellite links, starting off with theInfrared 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 animatedradar image.
Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live webcam on the summit of near 14,000 footMauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. The tallest peak on the island of Maui is theHaleakala 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
Hidden north shore beaches on Kauai Photo Credit: flickr.com
The trade winds will continue blowing through the rest of this week into the next…varying in strength from day to day.These balmy breezes won’t be strong enough to trigger small craft wind advisories, although certainly be able to bring their cooling and refreshing relief from the late summer heat. The trade winds will pick up some in strength during the second half of the upcoming weekend…continuing right on into next week.
The bias for showers will remain focused on the windward coasts and slopes.The night and early morning hours will be the favored time of day for these showers. There will be some clouds gathering over and around the leeward slopes during the afternoons too, but showers will be limited for the time being. We may see an increase in showers, which could be locally heavy later this weekend into early next week.
It’s early Wednesday evening here in Kihei, Maui, as I begin writing this last paragraph of today’s tropical weather narrative from Hawaii. The computer models continue showing a change coming our way later this weekend, when an upper level low pressure system moves over the islands Sunday into early next week. The cold air aloft in association with this upper air feature, could enhance our windward biased showers, and cause showers to increase over the leeward slopes then too. Some of these showers could be locally heavy over the upcountry slopes on the Big Island and perhaps Maui as well. ~~~ As is often the case during the late afternoon hours here on Maui’s south coast, the trade winds are rather gusty. Looking at the numbers, we find the strongest gust anywhere in the Hawaiian Islands, pushing out to sea across Maalaea Bay…at 33 mph, while the Kahului airport at the same time (5pm), showed 30 mph gusts. The winds will calm down after dark, and remain quite light through the night into the early morning hours. ~~~ Thursday looks to be yet another nice looking day here in the islands, as will Friday and Saturday for that matter. I’ll be back very early Thursday morning with your next new weather narrative from paradise, I hope you have a great Wednesday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.
Interesting:
The search for sustainable energy has never been stronger as climate change concerns drive government, scientists, business and environmentalists around the world in a headlong charge for affordable new technologies. Sources ranging from electricity, wind, biofuel and through solar, geothermal and nuclear to hybrids, fuel cells and methane retrieval _ and many, many more energy possibilities _ are being pursued frantically and expensively. One of the most readily apparent sources _ tidal power _ has been slow to capture the imagination although a Singapore company is keenly eyeing The Rip off Queenscliff for water turbines that might power up to 1000 houses. Atlantis Power Resources has been testing a turbine in CorioBay and if its plans are approved would utilise two turbines in The Rip, exploiting the great mass of water that rushes through the Port Phillip Heads twice a day. It claims its systems would be silent, out of sight and environmentally clean.
At first blush, the tidal turbines sound a good idea. Certainly, they’re not a new idea; late Geelong mayor Howard Glover was calling for some similar arrangement two decades ago. And hardly surprising, really. The power surging through The Rip is phenomenal. No less than 4 per cent of Port Phillip Bay‘s 25 cubic kilometres volume _ a cubic kilometre of water _ is exchanged on every tide. Harnessing this power properly would be difficult because the narrow entrance to the bay makes tidal movements unusual. But the potential is abundantly clear _ and more reliable than wind and sun, cleaner than coal, lacking radioactive half-life problems, easier to extract than fossil fuels. And Atlantis appears to be relatively modest in its ambition, suggesting it could power 1000 houses through tidal power fed directly into the grid. Interesting2:
For the first time in waters surrounding New York City, the beckoning calls of endangered fin, humpback and North Atlantic right whales have been recorded, according to experts from the Bioacoustics Research Program at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC). "This is an exciting time for New Yorkers. Just think, just miles from the Statue of Liberty, the EmpireStateBuilding, Carnegie Hall and Times Square, the great whales are singing," says Chris Clark, the Director of the Bioacoustics Research Program at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. "These are some of the largest and rarest animals on this planet trying to make a living just a few miles from New York‘s shores. It just goes to show us that there are many important and wonderful discoveries to be made about the living world right here, right in our back yards."
"With data generated by acoustic monitoring, we can better understand New York‘s role in the life history of these endangered whales and make more informed conservation decisions," says James Gilmore, chief of the DEC’s Bureau of Marine Resources. "This is especially important for the survival of right whales." The recorders were placed about 13 miles from the New YorkHarbor entrance and off the shores of Fire Island. Information about the seasonal presence of whales will help New York state policymakers develop management plans to protect them. Knowing the whales’ travel paths will help ship traffic managers avoid whale collisions in New York waters. Further, the study will characterize New York waters’ acoustic environment and examine whether underwater noises, including shipping, affect the whales.
Interesting3:
For the 30th consecutive year, the Earth’s summer temperature was above average, according to data released Tuesday by the National Climatic Data Center. Global temperatures were the ninth-warmest since records began in 1880. (Climatologists define summer as the months of June, July and August.) Measuring just the globe’s land areas, it was the seventh-warmest summer on record. The summer was unusually warm in most of the USA, Mexico, Europe, Australia, the British Isles, Asia and South America, while cooler-than-average conditions were recorded across the western and southern coast of Alaska, parts of northern Scandinavia and northwestern Russia. Additionally, the National Snow and Ice Data Center reported Tuesday that Arctic sea ice melted to its second-lowest level on record, just slightly more than the 2007 record-low. Given trends of the past 30 years, likely triggered by man-made global warming, scientists predict that within five to 10 years, the Arctic could be entirely ice-free in the summer.
Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Tuesday afternoon:
Lihue, Kauai – 85 Honolulu, Oahu – 87 Kaneohe, Oahu – 85 Kahului, Maui – 86 Hilo, Hawaii – 82
Kailua-kona – 84 Air Temperaturesranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level, and on the taller mountains…at 4 p.m. Tuesday afternoon:
Barking Sands, Kauai – 85F Princeville, Kauai– 81
Haleakala Crater- 54 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 48 (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 Tuesday afternoon:
0.08 Wailua, Kauai
0.04 Dillingham, Oahu
0.01 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe 0.37 Puu Kukui, Maui
0.32 Pahoa, Big Island Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather mapshowing a 1022 millibar high pressure system located to the east-northeast of Hawaii…with its associated ridge, located northeast of the islands. This pressure configuration will keep our winds light to moderately strong Wednesday and Thursday…locally stronger and gusty. Satellite and Radar Images: To view the cloud conditions we have here in Hawaii, please use the following satellite links, starting off with theInfrared 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 animatedradar image.
Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live webcam on the summit of near 14,000 footMauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. The tallest peak on the island of Maui is theHaleakala 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
A bonfire on Hanalei beach…Kauai Photo Credit: flickr.com
Light to moderately strong trade winds will continue through mid-week, stronger and gusty in those usual windier locations…then get softer Friday into the weekend.The trade winds returned Monday, and did a good job of ventilating our hazy atmosphere of the recent volcanic emissions…which got carried over the entire state this past weekend. The trade winds will bring their cooling and refreshing relief from the sultry weather of late too. These cooling and refreshing trade winds will remain quite active through Thursday…then slip a notch or two in strength through the rest of the week.
Whatever showers that fall here in the islands, will generally be deposited along the windward sides.The night and early morning hours will be the favored time of day for these showers. This satellite image shows scattered clouds being carried towards our islands on the trade winds. There will be some clouds gathering over and around the leeward sides during the afternoons too, but showers will be few and far between. Rainfall will generally be light through the week…with nothing heavy on the horizon at this time.
It’s early Tuesday evening here in Kihei, Maui, as I begin writing this last paragraph of today’s tropical weather narrative from Hawaii.The trade winds will be easing back into the lighter realms later this week, but unlike this past weekend, they shouldn’t go away altogether. The reason for these lighter trade wind periods, are gale low pressure systems far to our north, along with their associated cold fronts, pushing our trade wind producing high pressure ridge southward towards Kauai. When the ridge gets closer, our winds slack-off…then pick up again when the ridge migrates further north. The computer forecast models continue to show an early autumn cold front approaching the islands early next week, which may push our ridge right down over the islands. This in turn could turn off the trade winds, and swing our winds around to the southeast…bringing back another round of voggy weather then. The cold front itself doesn’t look like it will bring showers to Hawaii however. ~~~ Looking out the window here in the south coast of Maui, besides the vog free atmosphere, there are hardly any clouds in the sky…while the trade winds are breezy. How breezy you might wonder? Well, the strongest gusts anywhere in the state late Tuesday afternoon where: 30 mph at Kapalua, and 36 mph at Maalaea Bay, both here on Maui. ~~~ I’ll be back here very early early Wednesday morning with your next new weather narrative, I hope you have a great Tuesday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.
Interesting:The hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica has already surpassed its 2007 size this year, and is set to keep growing for another few weeks, the U.N. weather agency said on Tuesday. The Antarctic ozone hole appears every year and normally stretches to about the size of North America, reaching its maximum size in late September or early October. But in 2008, the World Meteorological Organization said the protective layer, which shields the Earth from ultra-violet rays that can cause skin cancer, began to thin relatively late. "During the last couple of weeks it has grown rapidly and has now passed the maximum size attained in 2007. Since the ozone hole is still growing, it is too early to determine how large this year’s ozone hole will be," it said in a statement. The ozone hole covered 27 million square km as of last Saturday (September 13), against 25 million square km at its peak last year, according to the WMO whose statement was issued on International Day for the Preservation of Ozone Layer. Interesting2:
Utility-scale wind power is an important and growing part of the US energy portfolio. Farms ranging in size from dozens to hundreds of turbines can produce in excess of 60 megawatts of power. Plans for gigawatts of wind power are being proposed all over the globe, and new wind farms are regularly being proposed that outstrip one another to be the largest in their respective locations, or in the world. At the far end of the scale, the largest size wind turbines have a rotor diameter of 126 meters (413 feet), and are estimated to be capable of producing 20,000,000 kilowatt hours of electricity annually (enough to power as many as 5000 European homes).
Since the power generated by a turbine increases exponentially as it gets larger, new turbines will continue to grow in size. But small-scale turbines are perhaps a more exciting realm of development. The standard, propeller-style turbine is well established, and there are many suppliers for this kind of generator in a range of sizes. In 2007, Home Power Magazine had a roundup of more than a dozen small wind turbines ranging from 8 feet to 56 feet in diameter (the latter of which is far larger than even a large, inefficient household would need for their power requirements). Green Building Elements had a review of this article last year.
Interesting3:
In a few weeks, American shoppers will be able to look at a cut of meat or a pound of hamburger and see something they’ve never seen before-a label that says where the meat came from. Starting Sept. 30, food manufacturers and grocery stores have to comply with a new federal law that requires "Country of Origin Labeling," or COOL, on beef, pork, chicken and lamb. The new labels will tell consumers whether their food came from animals raised in the U.S. or another country. The law also covers perishable items, such as fruits and vegetables and a variety of nuts. Some say this will enable consumers to avoid food that, for example, comes from countries that they have heard have food safety problems. It also will allow consumers to stick to American-grown food, if that is their preference.
Because of the complexities of the livestock industry, some product labels may list multiple countries. That’s especially true of ground beef, because some meat processors combine cuts from a number of countries to make ground meat and hamburger patties. Food safety groups have hailed COOL as a necessary step toward broader consumer education and buying choices. But now they complain that the Department of Agriculture has defined it as narrowly as possible. For example, they say, the agency has defined a host of foods as "processed," such as mixed frozen vegetables, which exempts them from the new law. "When they finalized this rule, they bent over backward to make as few things be covered as possible," said Michael Hansen, a senior staff scientist with Consumers Union. "There are giant, giant loopholes in the law."
Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Monday afternoon:
Lihue, Kauai – 85 Honolulu, Oahu – 89 Kaneohe, Oahu – 84 Kahului, Maui – 88 Hilo, Hawaii – 83
Kailua-kona – 85 Air Temperaturesranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level, and on the taller mountains…at 4 p.m. Monday afternoon:
Barking Sands, Kauai – 87F Hilo, Hawaii– 77
Haleakala Crater- 50 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 46 (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:
0.58 Hanapepe, Kauai 0.96 Kalaeloa airport, Oahu
0.04 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.10 Kahoolawe 0.34 Oheo Gulch, Maui
0.42 Waiakea Uka, Big Island Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather mapshowing a 1022 millibar high pressure system located to the northeast of Hawaii…with its associated ridge, located northeast of the islands. This pressure configuration will keep our winds light to moderately strong Tuesday and Wednesday. Satellite and Radar Images: To view the cloud conditions we have here in Hawaii, please use the following satellite links, starting off with theInfrared 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 animatedradar image.
Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live webcam on the summit of near 14,000 footMauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. The tallest peak on the island of Maui is theHaleakala 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.
Light trade winds began filtering back into our Hawaiian Islands Monday, which will strengthen into Tuesday.The light SE breezes this past weekend, brought lots of volcanic haze up over the islands, from the vents on the Big Island. Monday started off with poor air visibilities, although by the afternoon hours, the trade winds had nicely begun clearing our local atmosphere. It will take until Tuesday before we see normal air visibilities. The trade winds will continue blowing through the rest of new week…getting lighter again Thursday.
Now that the trade winds have returned, the bias for showers will move back over to the windward sides.The night and early morning hours will be the favored time of day for these mostly light showers. There may still be some clouds gathering over and around the mountains during the afternoon, with a few showers falling locally. Rainfall will generally be light through the upcoming week…with nothing heavy on the horizon at this time.
It’s early Monday evening here in Kihei, Maui, as I begin writing this last paragraph of today’s tropical weather narrative from Hawaii.The trade winds returned right on schedule today, helping to clear the muggy conditions away, and more importantly…the leftover volcanic haze from this past weekend. Looking out the window, before I leave for home, the skies are almost completely clear of clouds, with hardly a trace of volcanic haze! This is good news, as we love our cooling and refreshing trade winds. The rest of the week looks favorably inclined weatherwise, although with the trade winds getting lighter during the second half of the week, we may turn slightly sultry again then. At that time we may begin to see more clouds over the leeward slopes too, with perhaps a few showers returning. 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:Nearly half of the seafood we eat today is farmed. And while aquaculture is often equated with pollution, habitat degradation, and health risks, this explosive growth in fish farming may in fact be the most hopeful trend in the world’s increasingly troubled food system, according to a new report by Worldwatch Institute. In Farming Fish for the Future, Senior Researcher Brian Halweil illustrates how, if properly guided, fish farming can not only help feed an expanding global population, but also play a role in healing marine ecosystems battered by overfishing. "In a world where fresh water and grain supplies are increasingly scarce, raising seafood like oysters, clams, catfish, and tilapia is many times more efficient than factory-farmed chicken or beef," says Halweil. "Farmed fish can be a critical way to add to the global diet to hedge against potential crop losses or shortages in the supply of meat." "But not all fish farming is created equal," Halweil notes. Carnivorous species like salmon and shrimp, while increasingly popular, consume several times their weight in fish feed-derived from other, typically smaller, fish-as they provide in edible seafood. "It generally requires 20 kilograms of feed to produce just 1 kilogram of tuna," Halweil says. "So even as we depend more on farmed fish, a growing scarcity of fish feed may jeopardize future expansion of the industry."
Poorly run fish farms can generate coastal pollution in the form of excess feed and manure, and escaped fish and disease originating on farms can devastate wild fisheries. For example, a fish farm with 200,000 salmon releases nutrients and fecal matter roughly equivalent to the raw sewage generated by 20,000 to 60,000 people. Scotland’s salmon aquaculture industry is estimated to produce the same amount of nitrogen waste as the untreated sewage of 3.2 million people-just over half the country’s population. Cramped facilities can also create ill health for fish, costing producers millions of dollars in disease prevention and foregone revenues. In recent years, shrimp farmers in China have lost $120 million to bacterial fish diseases and $420 million to shrimp diseases. Fish farming has expanded to meet the soaring global demand for seafood. On average, each person on the planet is eating four times as much seafood as was consumed in 1950. The average per-capita consumption of farmed seafood has increased nearly 1,000 percent since 1970, in contrast to per-capita meat consumption, which grew just 60 percent. In 2006, fish farmers raised nearly 70 million tons of seafood worth more than $80 billion-nearly double the volume of a decade earlier. Experts predict that farmed seafood will grow an additional 70 percent by 2030.
Interesting2: A new study shows a sharp drop in migratory water bird populations along main migration routes in Africa and Eurasia. The report: ‘Conservation Status of Migratory Wate rbirds in the African-Eurasian Flyways’ prepared by Wetlands International for the African-Eurasian Migratory Water bird Agreement (AEWA), reveals that of 522 studied migratory water bird populations on routes across Africa and Eurasia, 40 per cent are in decline. The report is being presented to delegates from over 80 countries at the Fourth Meeting of the Parties to the African-Eurasian Migratory Water bird Agreement (AEWA) in Antananarivo, Madagascar, today. Simon Delany, Water bird Conservation Officer at the Netherlands-based headquarters of Wetlands International and principal author of the report, said: "The main causes of declining water bird numbers along the African-Eurasian Flyways are the destruction and unsustainable exploitation of wetlands, which are largely driven by poorly-planned economic development."
The main causes of population decrease include, infrastructure development, wetland reclamation, increasing pollution, and hunting pressure. These impacts are in many cases compounded by impacts of climate change and associated phenomena, such as increased frequency of droughts, sea-level rise and changes in Arctic tundra habitats. "Climate change… is likely to affect all ecosystems, but wetlands are especially vulnerable because of their sensitivity to changes in water level and susceptibility to changes in rainfall and evaporation." said Delany. Sea-level rise threatens coastal and inland wetland areas. These are crucial habitats for millions of migratory water birds. Huge numbers of water birds also breed in Arctic tundra habitats which too are threatened by climate change.
Interesting3:NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander has photographed several dust devils dancing across the arctic plain this week and sensed a dip in air pressure as one passed near the lander. These dust-lofting whirlwinds had been expected in the area, but none had been detected in earlier Phoenix images. The Surface Stereo Imager camera on Phoenix took 29 images of the western and southwestern horizon on Sept. 8, during mid-day hours of the lander’s 104th Martian day. The next day, after the images had been transmitted to Earth, the Phoenix science team noticed a dust devil right away. "It was a surprise to have a dust devil so visible that it stood with just the normal processing we do," said Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University, College Station, lead scientist for the stereo camera. "Once we saw a couple that way, we did some additional processing and found there are dust devils in 12 of the images." At least six different dust devils appear in the images, some of them in more than one image. They range in diameter from about 2 meters (7 feet) to about 5 meters (16 feet).
Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Sunday afternoon:
Lihue, Kauai – 83
Honolulu, Oahu – 86 Kaneohe, Oahu – 84 Kahului, Maui – 87 Hilo, Hawaii – 86
Kailua-kona – 85 Air Temperaturesranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level, and on the taller mountains…at 3 p.m. Sunday afternoon:
Kahului, Maui – 87F Lihue, Kauai– 80
Haleakala Crater- missing (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 Sunday afternoon:
0.55 Mohihi Crossing, Kauai 1.01 Waiawa, Oahu
0.00 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe 0.32 Kaupo Gap, Maui
0.12 Waiakea Uka, Big Island Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather mapshowing a 1026 millibar high pressure system located far to the northeast of Hawaii…with its associated ridge, now located just north of Kauai…gradually moving northward. This pressure configuration will keep our winds light Monday morning…slowly strengthening into Tuesday. Satellite and Radar Images: To view the cloud conditions we have here in Hawaii, please use the following satellite links, starting off with theInfrared 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 animatedradar image.
Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live webcam on the summit of near 14,000 footMauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. The tallest peak on the island of Maui is theHaleakala 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
Tonight is the September full moon Photo Credit: flickr.com
Our winds will remain light and variable Sunday…with a tendency towards southeast.These light SE breezes have carried lots volcanic haze up over the islands, from the vents on the Big Island. Sunday will have poor air visibilities, with some of the thickest vog that we’ve seen since the late spring months. The return of trade winds Monday will begin the process of clearing our local atmosphere, but it will likely take until Tuesday before we see greatly improved air quality. The trade winds will continue blowing through the rest of the new week.
The emphasis for showers will be focused over the upcountry interior sections, especially over and around the leeward slopes.A trough of low pressure aloft, which has destabilized our local atmosphere some, especially over Kauai and Oahu…will move away soon. Nonetheless, we will find clouds gathering over and around the mountains on all the islands Sunday afternoon, with some showers falling locally. As the trade winds return soon, the bias for showers will slip back over to the windward sides.
It’s early Sunday afternoon here in Kula, Maui, as I begin writing this last paragraph of today’s tropical weather narrative from Hawaii. Clouds gathered around the mountains Sunday afternoon, with showers falling here and there, at least here in Kula…as I type these words. The beaches have remained mostly sunny, warm, and quite humid. The only place that finds the trade winds blowing at the moment, or at least with any strength…was down at South Point on the Big Island. As you saw in the picture as you were scrolling down the page, tonight is the full moon. This big moon reaches its fullest aspect, here in the islands, at 11:14 p.m. This moon may have a slight muted color to it, as has the sun going down, through the volanic haze the last couple of evenings. At 3pm Sunday afternoon, it was 87F degrees in Kahului, and at the same time, a thick and foggy 66F degrees here in Kula…at the 3,100 foot elevation. It’s an interesting life we’re living now…isn’t it! I’ll be back very early Monday morning with your next new weather narrative. I hope you have a great Sunday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn. Interesting:
Cutting down on the use of paper is easy enough, but in spite of all your efforts you’ll never become 100% paperless. That’s where tree free paper comes in. Recently launched on the market by GPA, a Chicago paper company, Ultra Green paper is 100% tree free. And of equal importance; the paper is produced without any water. What more can you ask for? This paper is going to be a massive selling point for business leaders vying for deals. Not to speak of green design/advertising. Ultra Green is made from inorganic mineral powders derived from limestone and calcium carbonate, with a trace amount of non-toxic resin and high density polyethylene (HDPE) as a binding agent. No chlorine is used. Sounds too good to be true? There’s more! Ultra Green paper is also won’t yellow or become brittle no matter how long it’s exposed to sunlight. The paper is resistant to scuffing, water, grease and oils and can be used outdoors without being at risk from decomposing.
Plus it offers antimicrobial protection and conforms to FDA standards for food contact! And due to the water and energy savings made in its manufacturing process, Ultra Green paper is priced 30 to 40% below than regular synthetic paper and film. Replacing one ton of traditional paper with one ton of Ultra Green paper saves 20 trees, according to Environmental Defense’spaper calculator. It also eliminates 42 lbs of waterborne waste, 7,480 gallons water/wastewater, 167 lbs solid waste and 236 lbs carbon emissions. Energy savings amount to 25 million BTU. GPA says that the paper combines the printability of a traditional paper product with the durability of a plastic sheet. It does not require special inks or manufacturing processes. This paper ought to be the invention of the year!
Interesting2:
The amount of sea ice around Antarctica has grown in recent Septembers in what could be an unusual side-effect of global warming, experts said on Friday. In the southern hemisphere winter, when emperor penguins huddle together against the biting cold, ice on the sea around Antarctica has been increasing since the late 1970s, perhaps because climate change means shifts in winds, sea currents or snowfall. At the other end of the planet, Arctic sea ice is now close to matching a September 2007 record low at the tail end of the northern summer in a threat to the hunting lifestyles of indigenous peoples and creatures such as polar bears. "The Antarctic wintertime ice extent increased…at a rate of 0.6 percent per decade" from 1979-2006, said Donald Cavalieri, a senior research scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. At 19 million sq kms (7.34 million sq mile), it is still slightly below records from the early 1970s of 20 million, he said. The average year-round ice extent has risen too. Some climate skeptics point to the differing trends at the poles as a sign that worries about climate change are exaggerated. However, experts say they can explain the development.
"What’s happening is not unexpected…Climate modelers predicted a long time ago that the Arctic would warm fastest and the Antarctic would be stable for a long time," said Ted Maksym, a sea ice specialist at the British Antarctic Survey. The U.N. Climate Panel says it is at least 90 percent sure that people are stoking global warming — mainly by burning fossil fuels. But it says each region will react differently. A key difference is that Arctic ice floats on an ocean and is warmed by shifting currents and winds from the south. By contrast, Antarctica is an isolated continent bigger than the United States that creates its own deep freeze. "The air temperature in Antarctica has increased very little compared to the Arctic," said Ola Johannessen, director of the Nansen Environmental and RemoteSensingCenter in Norway. "The reason is you have a huge ocean surrounding the land." Cavalieri said some computer models indicate a reduction in the amount of heat coming up from the ocean around Antarctica as one possible explanation for growing ice. Another theory was that warmer air absorbs more moisture and means more snow and rainfall, he said. That could mean more fresh water at the sea surface around Antarctica — fresh water freezes at a higher temperature than salt water.
Interesting3:
The first whales once swam the seas by wiggling large hind feet, research now suggests. These new findings shed light on the mysterious shift these leviathans made away from land. The ancestors of whales once strode on land on four legs, just as other mammals do. Over time, as they evolved to dwell in water, their front legs became flippers while they lost their back legs and hips, although modern whales all still retain traces of pelvises, and occasionally throwbacks are born with vestiges of hind limbs. A great deal of mystery surrounds how the anatomy of the first whales changed to propel them through the water. A key piece of that puzzle would be the discovery of when exactly the wide flukes on their powerful tails arose. "The origin of flukes is one of the last steps in the transition from land to sea," explained vertebrate paleontologist Mark Uhen of the Alabama Museum of Natural History in Tuscaloosa. To shed light on this mystery, Uhen analyzed new fossils that amateur bone hunters discovered exposed along riverbanks in Alabama and Mississippi.
These bones once belonged to the ancient whale Georgiacetus, which swam along the Gulf Coast of North America roughly 40 million years ago, back when Florida was mostly submerged underwater. This creature reached some 12 feet in length and likely used its sharp teeth to dine on squid and fish. The first whales known to possess flukes are close relatives of Georgiacetus that date back to 38 million years ago. But while only about 2 million years separate Georgiacetus from these other whales, Uhen now finds that Georgiacetus apparently did not possess flukes. The new 2-inch-long tail vertebra he analyzed — one of some 20 tail vertebrae the ancient whale had — is not flattened as the vertebrae near whales flukes are. Instead, Uhen suggests that Georgiacetus wiggled large back feet like paddles in order to swim. Past research showed this ancient whale had large hips, which suggested it also had large hind legs. Oddly, scientists had also found that its pelvis was not attached to its spine. This meant its hind legs could not paddle in the water or support the whale’s body weight on land, leaving it a puzzle as to what they were for until now.
Interesting4:As Hurricane Ike pummels the Texas coast, the only thing standing in the way is a thin stretch of land called Galveston. Galveston is a barrier island, a narrow landmass made mostly of sand that extends along a coastline parallel to the land. These islands, common along the Gulf Coast and East Coast of the United States, are some of the most fragile and changing landforms on Earth. And they are particularly vulnerable to storms. "Barrier islands are exposed to the open ocean, and the waves and storm surges generated by hurricanes," said Bob Morton, a geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Center for Coastal and Watershed Studies in St. Petersburg, Fla. "As a storm makes landfall they’re the ones that are going to receive the strongest winds and the highest wave actions." National Hurricane Center officials have warned residents of Galveston to evacuate or else face "certain death," though several thousand are thought to be staying put.
Barrier islands like Galveston are particularly vulnerable to storm damage because they are made of sand, as opposed to the hard bedrock that underlies larger islands and the mainland. They also tend to have very low elevations, making it easy for water to wash over and submerge the island. Many have questioned the wisdom of choosing to build on and develop barrier islands, given their risks. "Every year there’s reporting on the foolishness of building on barrier islands, but people are going to do it anyway," Morton told LiveScience. "We don’t learn from the past. If you look at the barrier islands on the Mississippi coast in particular, after both Hurricane Camille in 1969, and Katrina, what did they do? They rebuilt. It’s a perfect example of a coastal area that did get hit as bad as it can get, and they just go back and rebuild."
Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Saturday afternoon:
Lihue, Kauai – 84
Honolulu, Oahu – 84 Kaneohe, Oahu – 83 Kahului, Maui – 87 Hilo, Hawaii – 85
Kailua-kona – 86 Air Temperaturesranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level, and on the taller mountains…at 4 p.m. Saturday afternoon:
Kahului, Maui – 86F Lihue, Kauai– 75
Haleakala Crater- missing (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 43 (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 Saturday afternoon:
1.41 Wailua, Kauai 2.31 Nuuanu Valley, Oahu
0.99 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.50 Kahoolawe 0.17 Lahainaluna, Maui
0.34 Pahoa, Big Island Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather mapshowing a 1025 millibar high pressure system located far to the northeast of Hawaii…with its associated ridge moving southward towards Kauai. This pressure configuration will keep our winds light through Sunday from variable directions….tending towards southeast. The trade winds will return lightly Monday. Satellite and Radar Images: To view the cloud conditions we have here in Hawaii, please use the following satellite links, starting off with theInfrared 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 animatedradar image.
Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live webcam on the summit of near 14,000 footMauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. The tallest peak on the island of Maui is theHaleakala 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
Sunset in Kona…on the Big Island Photo Credit: flickr.com
Our winds will remain light and variable through Sunday…with a tendency towards southeast.Southeast breezes bring volcanic haze up from the Big Island, along with muggy conditions during the days as well. The trade winds will return Monday into Tuesday, and stick around through most of the new week ahead.
The emphasis for showers will be focused over the upcountry interior sections, especially over and around the leeward slopes…which will slip down towards the beaches locally.A trough of low pressure aloft is close to the islands this weekend, which has destabilized our local atmosphere some, especially over Kauai and Oahu. At the same time, the more southern wind flow will carry moisture up over the state from the deeper tropics. The combination of these two factors will cause more than the normal amount of cloudiness, leading to showers…some of which will be locally quite heavy on Kauai.
It’s early early Saturday evening here in Kula, Maui, as I begin writing this last section of today’s tropical weather narrative from Hawaii. We have an upper level trough in the vicinity of the islands, with a cold front pushing our high pressure ridge down close to Kauai. This has caused our local winds to become light, coming out of a more southerly direction than usual. This is bringing volcanic haze up over the state from the vents on the Big Island. At the same time, moisture is being carried over us from the tropics, making for sultry and cloudy conditions in general.
~~~The instability prompted by the upper trough, and the rich moisture brought up on the southeast winds, have worked together to make our atmosphere shower prone. There will be more clouds around than usual now. There may be some localized downpours here and there…especially on the Kauai end of the island chain. This convective weather situation will give way to the return of the trade winds Monday and Tuesday, with fair weather prevailing through most of the rest of the new week.
~~~ Friday evening after work I went to see the new film Burn After Reading (2008), produced and directed by the Coen Brothers, who also did the best film of 2007…No Country for Old Men as you’ll remember. Burn After Reading, is a dark comedy about a CIA disc that falls into the wrong hands. The stars include Brad Pitt, George Clooney, and John Malkovich, among others. The critics are giving this film good grades, generally around B…which I agreed with totally. Actually I found this film to be very entertaining, with great acting, and a fast paced story line. There were parts of the film that I felt B+ might have been more fitting. It was the kind of thing that I was sorry to see the film end, I wanted more! Here’s atrailerfor this film. I don’t often go in for comedies, but this one from the Cohen Brothers, was a real treat. There was a lot of swearing, but it didn’t bother me, so if you’re easily offended by cuss words, you may want to give it a pass. I’ll be back Sunday morning with more weather updates, I hope you have a great Saturday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn. Interesting:
Cutting down on the use of paper is easy enough, but in spite of all your efforts you’ll never become 100% paperless. That’s where tree free paper comes in. Recently launched on the market by GPA, a Chicago paper company, Ultra Green paper is 100% tree free. And of equal importance; the paper is produced without any water. What more can you ask for? This paper is going to be a massive selling point for business leaders vying for deals. Not to speak of green design/advertising. Ultra Green is made from inorganic mineral powders derived from limestone and calcium carbonate, with a trace amount of non-toxic resin and high density polyethylene (HDPE) as a binding agent. No chlorine is used. Sounds too good to be true? There’s more! Ultra Green paper is also won’t yellow or become brittle no matter how long it’s exposed to sunlight. The paper is resistant to scuffing, water, grease and oils and can be used outdoors without being at risk from decomposing.
Plus it offers antimicrobial protection and conforms to FDA standards for food contact! And due to the water and energy savings made in its manufacturing process, Ultra Green paper is priced 30 to 40% below than regular synthetic paper and film. Replacing one ton of traditional paper with one ton of Ultra Green paper saves 20 trees, according to Environmental Defense’spaper calculator. It also eliminates 42 lbs of waterborne waste, 7,480 gallons water/wastewater, 167 lbs solid waste and 236 lbs carbon emissions. Energy savings amount to 25 million BTU. GPA says that the paper combines the printability of a traditional paper product with the durability of a plastic sheet. It does not require special inks or manufacturing processes. This paper ought to be the invention of the year!
Interesting2:
The amount of sea ice around Antarctica has grown in recent Septembers in what could be an unusual side-effect of global warming, experts said on Friday. In the southern hemisphere winter, when emperor penguins huddle together against the biting cold, ice on the sea around Antarctica has been increasing since the late 1970s, perhaps because climate change means shifts in winds, sea currents or snowfall. At the other end of the planet, Arctic sea ice is now close to matching a September 2007 record low at the tail end of the northern summer in a threat to the hunting lifestyles of indigenous peoples and creatures such as polar bears. "The Antarctic wintertime ice extent increased…at a rate of 0.6 percent per decade" from 1979-2006, said Donald Cavalieri, a senior research scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. At 19 million sq kms (7.34 million sq mile), it is still slightly below records from the early 1970s of 20 million, he said. The average year-round ice extent has risen too. Some climate skeptics point to the differing trends at the poles as a sign that worries about climate change are exaggerated. However, experts say they can explain the development.
"What’s happening is not unexpected…Climate modelers predicted a long time ago that the Arctic would warm fastest and the Antarctic would be stable for a long time," said Ted Maksym, a sea ice specialist at the British Antarctic Survey. The U.N. Climate Panel says it is at least 90 percent sure that people are stoking global warming — mainly by burning fossil fuels. But it says each region will react differently. A key difference is that Arctic ice floats on an ocean and is warmed by shifting currents and winds from the south. By contrast, Antarctica is an isolated continent bigger than the United States that creates its own deep freeze. "The air temperature in Antarctica has increased very little compared to the Arctic," said Ola Johannessen, director of the Nansen Environmental and RemoteSensingCenter in Norway. "The reason is you have a huge ocean surrounding the land." Cavalieri said some computer models indicate a reduction in the amount of heat coming up from the ocean around Antarctica as one possible explanation for growing ice. Another theory was that warmer air absorbs more moisture and means more snow and rainfall, he said. That could mean more fresh water at the sea surface around Antarctica — fresh water freezes at a higher temperature than salt water.
Interesting3:
The first whales once swam the seas by wiggling large hind feet, research now suggests. These new findings shed light on the mysterious shift these leviathans made away from land. The ancestors of whales once strode on land on four legs, just as other mammals do. Over time, as they evolved to dwell in water, their front legs became flippers while they lost their back legs and hips, although modern whales all still retain traces of pelvises, and occasionally throwbacks are born with vestiges of hind limbs. A great deal of mystery surrounds how the anatomy of the first whales changed to propel them through the water. A key piece of that puzzle would be the discovery of when exactly the wide flukes on their powerful tails arose. "The origin of flukes is one of the last steps in the transition from land to sea," explained vertebrate paleontologist Mark Uhen of the Alabama Museum of Natural History in Tuscaloosa. To shed light on this mystery, Uhen analyzed new fossils that amateur bone hunters discovered exposed along riverbanks in Alabama and Mississippi.
These bones once belonged to the ancient whale Georgiacetus, which swam along the Gulf Coast of North America roughly 40 million years ago, back when Florida was mostly submerged underwater. This creature reached some 12 feet in length and likely used its sharp teeth to dine on squid and fish. The first whales known to possess flukes are close relatives of Georgiacetus that date back to 38 million years ago. But while only about 2 million years separate Georgiacetus from these other whales, Uhen now finds that Georgiacetus apparently did not possess flukes. The new 2-inch-long tail vertebra he analyzed — one of some 20 tail vertebrae the ancient whale had — is not flattened as the vertebrae near whales flukes are. Instead, Uhen suggests that Georgiacetus wiggled large back feet like paddles in order to swim. Past research showed this ancient whale had large hips, which suggested it also had large hind legs. Oddly, scientists had also found that its pelvis was not attached to its spine. This meant its hind legs could not paddle in the water or support the whale’s body weight on land, leaving it a puzzle as to what they were for until now.
Interesting4:As Hurricane Ike pummels the Texas coast, the only thing standing in the way is a thin stretch of land called Galveston. Galveston is a barrier island, a narrow landmass made mostly of sand that extends along a coastline parallel to the land. These islands, common along the Gulf Coast and East Coast of the United States, are some of the most fragile and changing landforms on Earth. And they are particularly vulnerable to storms. "Barrier islands are exposed to the open ocean, and the waves and storm surges generated by hurricanes," said Bob Morton, a geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Center for Coastal and Watershed Studies in St. Petersburg, Fla. "As a storm makes landfall they’re the ones that are going to receive the strongest winds and the highest wave actions." National Hurricane Center officials have warned residents of Galveston to evacuate or else face "certain death," though several thousand are thought to be staying put.
Barrier islands like Galveston are particularly vulnerable to storm damage because they are made of sand, as opposed to the hard bedrock that underlies larger islands and the mainland. They also tend to have very low elevations, making it easy for water to wash over and submerge the island. Many have questioned the wisdom of choosing to build on and develop barrier islands, given their risks. "Every year there’s reporting on the foolishness of building on barrier islands, but people are going to do it anyway," Morton told LiveScience. "We don’t learn from the past. If you look at the barrier islands on the Mississippi coast in particular, after both Hurricane Camille in 1969, and Katrina, what did they do? They rebuilt. It’s a perfect example of a coastal area that did get hit as bad as it can get, and they just go back and rebuild."
Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Friday afternoon:
Lihue, Kauai – 85
Honolulu, Oahu – 85 Kaneohe, Oahu – 85 Kahului, Maui – 89 Hilo, Hawaii – 85
Kailua-kona – 85 Air Temperaturesranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level, and on the taller mountains…at 4 p.m. Friday afternoon:
Kahului, Maui – 86F Lihue, Kauai– 73
Haleakala Crater- missing (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 Friday afternoon: 3.10 Mount Waialaele, Kauai
0.53 Dillingham, Oahu
0.32 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe 0.05 Lahainaluna, Maui
0.03 Hakalau, Big Island Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather mapshowing a 1025 millibar high pressure system located far to the northeast of Hawaii…with its associated ridge moving southward towards Kauai. This pressure configuration will keep our winds light through Sunday from variable directions. Satellite and Radar Images: To view the cloud conditions we have here in Hawaii, please use the following satellite links, starting off with theInfrared 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 animatedradar image.
Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live webcam on the summit of near 14,000 footMauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. The tallest peak on the island of Maui is theHaleakala 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
Great sunset on the north shore of Kauai Photo Credit: flickr.com
Our winds will be coming down in strength now, becoming light and variable over the next several days…with a tendency towards southeast.We can look for the recent light trades to head south, as our trade wind producing ridge of high pressure moves over the Kauai end of the state. As this happens we’ll find our local winds come up from a more southeasterly direction. SE breezes often bring volcanic haze up from the Big Island, along with muggy conditions during the days as well. The trade winds will return Monday into Tuesday, and stick around through most of the new week ahead.
The emphasis for showers will be focused over the upcountry interior sections, especially over and around the leeward slopes…which may slip down towards the beaches locally.A trough of low pressure aloft will edge closer to the islands this weekend, which will destabilize our local atmosphere, especially over Kauai and Oahu. At the same time, the more southern wind flow will carry moisture up over the state from the deeper tropics. The combination of these two factors will cause cloudiness to increase during the afternoons, leading to showers…some of which will be locally quite heavy. We have two major tropical cyclones in the world at the moment…typhoon Sinlaku in the west Pacific, and hurricane Ike in the Gulf of Mexico. Hurricane Ike continues to be a very dangerous storm, as it gets ready to move inland across the Texas coast. The latest forecast puts a strong category 2 hurricane, making landfall early Saturday morning…along the upper Texas coast. The massive storm surge, along with the exceptionally large waves, coupled with the very blustery winds, and flooding rainfall…will make for a truly damaging situation in that area! Our best wishes go out to the folks who find themselves in harms way for whatever reason! Here’s the latest tracking map for Ike…along with this looping satellite image. Meanwhile, in the western Pacific Ocean, we find typhoon Sinlaku, a strong storm in its own right, moving over northern Taiwan. Here’s a tracking map for Sinlaku.There continues to be no tropical cyclone activity here in the central Pacific.
It’s early Friday evening here in Kihei, Maui, as I begin writing this last section of today’s tropical weather narrative from Hawaii. Recapping what I have described above, we have an upper level trough in the vicinity, with a couple of cold fronts pushing our high pressure ridge down over the Kauai end of the state now. This will cause our local winds to become light, coming out of a more southerly direction than usual. This may bring some volcanic haze up over the state from the vents on the Big Island. At the same time, moisture will be carried over us from the tropics, making for sultry conditions in general.
~~~The instability prompted by the upper trough, and the rich moisture brought up on the southeast winds, will work together to make our atmosphere shower prone. There will be more clouds around than usual over the next several days, becoming most thick and showery during the afternoon hours. There could easily be some localized downpours here and there…especially on the Kauai end of the island chain. This convective weather situation will give way to the return of the trade winds Monday and Tuesday, with fair weather prevailing through most of the rest of the week.
~~~Since it’s Friday evening, I’ll be heading over to Kahului soon, to take in new film. This is opening night for Burn After Reading (2008), produced and directed by the Coen Brothers, who also did the best film of 2007…No Country for Old Men as you’ll remember. Burn After Reading, is a dark comedy about a CIA disc that falls into the wrong hands. The stars include Brad Pitt, George Clooney, and John Malkovich, among others. The critics are giving this film pretty good grades, generally around B…which is good enough to draw me in. Here’s atrailerfor this film. I don’t often go in for comedies, but I have liked what I’ve seen from the Cohen Brothers, and am willing to try another one. I’ll be back early Saturday morning with a review of this film, along with more, much more tropical weather information for you then. I hope you have a great Friday night wherever you happen to be spending it! Aloha for now…Glenn. Interesting:
Cutting down on the use of paper is easy enough, but in spite of all your efforts you’ll never become 100% paperless. That’s where tree free paper comes in. Recently launched on the market by GPA, a Chicago paper company, Ultra Green paper is 100% tree free. And of equal importance; the paper is produced without any water. What more can you ask for? This paper is going to be a massive selling point for business leaders vying for deals. Not to speak of green design/advertising. Ultra Green is made from inorganic mineral powders derived from limestone and calcium carbonate, with a trace amount of non-toxic resin and high density polyethylene (HDPE) as a binding agent. No chlorine is used. Sounds too good to be true? There’s more! Ultra Green paper is also won’t yellow or become brittle no matter how long it’s exposed to sunlight. The paper is resistant to scuffing, water, grease and oils and can be used outdoors without being at risk from decomposing.
Plus it offers antimicrobial protection and conforms to FDA standards for food contact! And due to the water and energy savings made in its manufacturing process, Ultra Green paper is priced 30 to 40% below than regular synthetic paper and film. Replacing one ton of traditional paper with one ton of Ultra Green paper saves 20 trees, according to Environmental Defense’spaper calculator. It also eliminates 42 lbs of waterborne waste, 7,480 gallons water/wastewater, 167 lbs solid waste and 236 lbs carbon emissions. Energy savings amount to 25 million BTU. GPA says that the paper combines the printability of a traditional paper product with the durability of a plastic sheet. It does not require special inks or manufacturing processes. This paper ought to be the invention of the year!
Interesting2:
The amount of sea ice around Antarctica has grown in recent Septembers in what could be an unusual side-effect of global warming, experts said on Friday. In the southern hemisphere winter, when emperor penguins huddle together against the biting cold, ice on the sea around Antarctica has been increasing since the late 1970s, perhaps because climate change means shifts in winds, sea currents or snowfall. At the other end of the planet, Arctic sea ice is now close to matching a September 2007 record low at the tail end of the northern summer in a threat to the hunting lifestyles of indigenous peoples and creatures such as polar bears. "The Antarctic wintertime ice extent increased…at a rate of 0.6 percent per decade" from 1979-2006, said Donald Cavalieri, a senior research scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. At 19 million sq kms (7.34 million sq mile), it is still slightly below records from the early 1970s of 20 million, he said. The average year-round ice extent has risen too. Some climate skeptics point to the differing trends at the poles as a sign that worries about climate change are exaggerated. However, experts say they can explain the development.
"What’s happening is not unexpected…Climate modelers predicted a long time ago that the Arctic would warm fastest and the Antarctic would be stable for a long time," said Ted Maksym, a sea ice specialist at the British Antarctic Survey. The U.N. Climate Panel says it is at least 90 percent sure that people are stoking global warming — mainly by burning fossil fuels. But it says each region will react differently. A key difference is that Arctic ice floats on an ocean and is warmed by shifting currents and winds from the south. By contrast, Antarctica is an isolated continent bigger than the United States that creates its own deep freeze. "The air temperature in Antarctica has increased very little compared to the Arctic," said Ola Johannessen, director of the Nansen Environmental and RemoteSensingCenter in Norway. "The reason is you have a huge ocean surrounding the land." Cavalieri said some computer models indicate a reduction in the amount of heat coming up from the ocean around Antarctica as one possible explanation for growing ice. Another theory was that warmer air absorbs more moisture and means more snow and rainfall, he said. That could mean more fresh water at the sea surface around Antarctica — fresh water freezes at a higher temperature than salt water.
Interesting3:
The first whales once swam the seas by wiggling large hind feet, research now suggests. These new findings shed light on the mysterious shift these leviathans made away from land. The ancestors of whales once strode on land on four legs, just as other mammals do. Over time, as they evolved to dwell in water, their front legs became flippers while they lost their back legs and hips, although modern whales all still retain traces of pelvises, and occasionally throwbacks are born with vestiges of hind limbs. A great deal of mystery surrounds how the anatomy of the first whales changed to propel them through the water. A key piece of that puzzle would be the discovery of when exactly the wide flukes on their powerful tails arose. "The origin of flukes is one of the last steps in the transition from land to sea," explained vertebrate paleontologist Mark Uhen of the Alabama Museum of Natural History in Tuscaloosa. To shed light on this mystery, Uhen analyzed new fossils that amateur bone hunters discovered exposed along riverbanks in Alabama and Mississippi.
These bones once belonged to the ancient whale Georgiacetus, which swam along the Gulf Coast of North America roughly 40 million years ago, back when Florida was mostly submerged underwater. This creature reached some 12 feet in length and likely used its sharp teeth to dine on squid and fish. The first whales known to possess flukes are close relatives of Georgiacetus that date back to 38 million years ago. But while only about 2 million years separate Georgiacetus from these other whales, Uhen now finds that Georgiacetus apparently did not possess flukes. The new 2-inch-long tail vertebra he analyzed — one of some 20 tail vertebrae the ancient whale had — is not flattened as the vertebrae near whales flukes are. Instead, Uhen suggests that Georgiacetus wiggled large back feet like paddles in order to swim. Past research showed this ancient whale had large hips, which suggested it also had large hind legs. Oddly, scientists had also found that its pelvis was not attached to its spine. This meant its hind legs could not paddle in the water or support the whale’s body weight on land, leaving it a puzzle as to what they were for until now.
Interesting4:As Hurricane Ike pummels the Texas coast, the only thing standing in the way is a thin stretch of land called Galveston. Galveston is a barrier island, a narrow landmass made mostly of sand that extends along a coastline parallel to the land. These islands, common along the Gulf Coast and East Coast of the United States, are some of the most fragile and changing landforms on Earth. And they are particularly vulnerable to storms. "Barrier islands are exposed to the open ocean, and the waves and storm surges generated by hurricanes," said Bob Morton, a geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Center for Coastal and Watershed Studies in St. Petersburg, Fla. "As a storm makes landfall they’re the ones that are going to receive the strongest winds and the highest wave actions." National Hurricane Center officials have warned residents of Galveston to evacuate or else face "certain death," though several thousand are thought to be staying put.
Barrier islands like Galveston are particularly vulnerable to storm damage because they are made of sand, as opposed to the hard bedrock that underlies larger islands and the mainland. They also tend to have very low elevations, making it easy for water to wash over and submerge the island. Many have questioned the wisdom of choosing to build on and develop barrier islands, given their risks. "Every year there’s reporting on the foolishness of building on barrier islands, but people are going to do it anyway," Morton told LiveScience. "We don’t learn from the past. If you look at the barrier islands on the Mississippi coast in particular, after both Hurricane Camille in 1969, and Katrina, what did they do? They rebuilt. It’s a perfect example of a coastal area that did get hit as bad as it can get, and they just go back and rebuild."
Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Thursday afternoon:
Lihue, Kauai – 85
Honolulu, Oahu – 86 Kaneohe, Oahu – 85 Kahului, Maui – 89 Hilo, Hawaii – 84
Kailua-kona – 86 Air Temperaturesranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level, and on the taller mountains…at 4 p.m. Thursday afternoon:
Port Allen, Kauai – 86F Molokai airport– 75
Haleakala Crater- 45 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 50 (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 Thursday afternoon:
0.29 Hanalei, Kauai 0.71 Manoa Valley, Oahu
0.49 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe 0.38 Puu Kukui, Maui
0.30 Kealakekua, Big Island Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather mapshowing a 1024 millibar high pressure system located far to the northeast of Hawaii…with its associated ridge now weakening to our north. This pressure configuration will keep our local trade winds quite light Friday…becoming light and variable Saturday. Satellite and Radar Images: To view the cloud conditions we have here in Hawaii, please use the following satellite links, starting off with theInfrared 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 animatedradar image.
Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live webcam on the summit of near 14,000 footMauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. The tallest peak on the island of Maui is theHaleakala 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 Kayaking offshore from Kauai Photo Credit: flickr.com
The Hawaiian Islands are entering into a period of lighter winds as we head into the weekend.We can look for light trades through Friday, then slipping down into the light and variable realms Saturday and Sunday…with daytime sea breezes. As the winds get lighter through the next several days, we could begin to see some haze start collecting in our atmosphere as well. The computer models suggest that early next week, we’ll see the trade winds rebound…with freshening breezes Tuesday into mid-week.
There will still be a few windward showers, but the emphasis will be shifting to the leeward sides now.We may see some of those leeward showers spreading down towards the coast at times during the afternoon hours…with a couple of potentially heavy downpours. As the trade winds return next week, the bias for showers will shift back to the windward sides.
Lighter trade winds mean several things here in the tropics, not the least of which is the sultry weather that will bear down on us…in terms of comfort levels through the rest of the week.Typically, under a convective weather pattern, we start our days off with slightly cooler than normal air temperatures, under clear skies. As the warm late summer sunshine beams down, it doesn’t take long before sea breezes kick-in during the mid-morning hours. This air flow off the ocean, carries moisture inland, and up the slopes of our islands. This invisible moisture, when it cools sufficiently (to the condensation level)…changes state into visible clouds. These late morning through early evening cumulus clouds, often drop rain. We have two active storms in the western Pacific Ocean…while hurricane Ike continues towards the Texas coast.Hurricane Ike continues to be a very dangerous storm, especially in terms of the storm surge on top of the tides…and the high surf as well, bringing a dramatic flooding situation to the lowlying coastal zones. This hurricane is moving across the very warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico…which in spots approaches 90F. The latest thinking puts a strong category 2 or even 3 hurricane, making landfall along the Texas coast Saturday morning. Here’s the latest tracking map for Ike…along with this looping satellite image. Then in the western Pacific Ocean, we find very strong typhoon Sinlaku moving by Taiwan towards southern Japan, as well as tropical cyclone 16W. Here’s a tracking map for Sinlaku, and then one for 16W.There continues to be no tropical cyclone activity here in the central Pacific.
It’s early Thursday evening here in Kihei, Maui, as I begin writing this last section of today’s tropical weather narrative from Hawaii.The focus for afternoon showers Wednesday afternoon was over Maui and the Big Island. This concentration of falling water shifted up the island chain Thursday, where the most generous showers fell from Kauai down through Molokai. The island of Oahu seemed to be getting the greatest rainfall totals later in the day. There were showers falling in the upcountry leeward slopes elsewhere too, which will continue Friday. Given the current inversion layer over the islands, which is right around 10,000 feet, which can be thought of as the cloud top layer…we could see some briefly heavy downpours here and there. ~~~I’ll meet you back here very early Friday morning, when I’ll have your next new weather narrative waiting for you. Aloha for now…Glenn. Interesting:Atiny frog species thought by many experts to be extinct has been rediscovered alive and well in a remote area ofAustralia‘s tropical north, researchers said Thursday. The 40 millimeters-long (1.5 inch) Armoured Mistfrog had not been seen since 1991, and many experts assumed it had been wiped out by a devastating fungus that struck northern Queensland state. But two months ago, a doctoral student at James Cook University in Townsville conducting research on another frog species in Queensland stumbled across what appeared to be several Armoured Mistfrogs in a creek, said professor Ross Alford, head of a research team on threatened frogs at the university. Conrad Hoskin, a researcher at The Australian National University in Canberra who has been studying the evolutionary biology of north Queensland frogs for the past 10 years, conducted DNA tests on tissue samples from the frogs and determined they were the elusive Armoured Mistfrog. Alford’s group got the results on Wednesday.
A spokeswoman for the Queensland Environmental Protection Agency also confirmed Hoskin’s findings. "A lot of us were starting to believe it had gone extinct, so to discover it now is amazing," Hoskin said. "It means some of the other species that are missing could potentially just be hidden away along some of the streams up there." Craig Franklin, a zoology professor at The University of Queensland who studies frogs, said the Mistfrog’s rediscovery was exciting. "It’s very significant," Franklin said. "We’ve lost so many frog species in Australia … Hopefully it’s a population that’s making a comeback." The light brown frogs, with dark brown spots, congregate in areas with fast-flowing water. So far, between 30 and 40 have been found.
Interesting2:Dinosaurs are often seen as unlucky, having been wiped out by an asteroid. But they dominated Earth for more than 160 million years, evolving into a wild array of body types and sizes suited for many different ecological niches. Scientists previously thought that it was this evolutionary diversity that enabled the dinosaurs’ reign, allowing them to out-compete similar groups of reptiles, but a new study, detailed in the Sept. 11 issue of the journal Science, shows that it was really just a matter of luck. "For a long time it was thought that there was something special about the dinosaurs that helped them become more successful during the Triassic, the first 30 million years of their history, but this isn’t true," said lead author of the study, Steve Brusatte, a Ph.D. student at Columbia University and affiliate of the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
The closest competitors to the dinosaurs during the Triassic period (about 251 to 199 million years ago) were the crurotarsans, the ancestors of today’s crocodiles. Both dinosaurs and crurotarsans evolved and filled some of the same ecological niches after a massive extinction event at the end of the Permian period some 250 million years ago. Both groups also survived a later extinction event about 228 million years ago. But only the dinosaurs (and crocodiles) made it through a period of rapid global warming at the end of the Triassic 200 million years ago. And avian dinosaurs are still with us today in the form of modern birds, which evolved from theropod dinosaurs and survived a separate and later mass extinction event at the end of the Mesozoic Era. Interesting3: In many spider species, females eat the males after sex. Studies have suggested various complex evolutionary reasons involving costs and benefits to the species, sperm competition and esoteric sexual selection schemes. Turns out the motivation for this creepy cannibalism is much simpler. It’s all about size. If males are small, they’re easier to catch and therefore more likely to be prey, say Shawn Wilder and Ann Rypstra from Miami University in Ohio. Big females eat their puny mates simply because a) they’re hungry and b) they can. Wilder and Rypstra found that among the wolf spider (Hogna helluo), large males were never eaten by their mates, while small males were consumed 80 percent of the time.
Discovering this, the researchers then pored over the literature and found the size rule to hold true in a wide range of spider species. The finding is detailed in the September issue of the American Naturalist. "We were surprised to find that such a simple characteristic such as how small males are relative to females has such a large effect on the frequency of sexual cannibalism," Wilder said. Perhaps the most well-known example of spider-women eating spider-men is the black widow. But even that cannibalism case is overstated. For most of the many species of black widows, cannibalism is the exception, not the rule, according to Rod Crawford of the Burke Museum of Natural History & Culture at the University of Washington.
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