Aloha Paragraphs



New banana stalk forming
Photo Credit: Flickr.com

There will be a general strengthening of the trade winds through the next several days. A trough of low pressure, which has kept our local winds from attaining their full strength so far this week…is losing its influence now. Thursday onward, and especially by the weekend, our trade winds will be noticeably stronger. We may end up having small craft advisory flags being hoisted in those windiest spots by Friday or Saturday. These trade winds will continue on into next week.

We’ll be moving back into a fairly normal trade wind weather pattern now. That being said, we still have a layer of colder than normal air aloft over the islands, which may continue to enhance some of our shower cells locally. The majority of showers will be carried in our direction by the trade winds, landing along the windward coasts and slopes. Computer models still are hinting that those windward biased showers may be quite generous later Friday into the weekend. Meanwhile, we may continue to see a couple of showers over the leeward slopes during the afternoon hours as well.

~~~ Its early Wednesday evening here in Kihei, Maui, as I begin updating this last section of today’s narrative. As has been the case off and on all this week, afternoon clouds increased in many leeward areas, which lead to showers…some locally heavy. Here on Maui, there was a thick blanket of clouds hugging the leeward slopes of the Haleakala Crater. These clouds kept the area from Kula to Keokea and Ulupalakua quite wet most of the afternoon. Here in Kihei, the clouds spread down from the mountain towards the coast, cutting off our famous Hawaiian sunshine early in the afternoon. Meanwhile, the trade winds have returned, and will become fresher over the next few days. Early Wednesday evening the strongest gust that I saw at 5pm, was 23 mph at Maalaea Bay. We’ll see showers increasing somewhat overnight along the windward coasts, and perhaps again on Thursday, during the afternoon hours in the upcountry areas. By the way, we’ll see the July full moon occurring later in the day Thursday, we have that to look forward to. Speaking of looking forward, I’m already doing that in relation to coming back online with your next new weather narrative, very early Thursday morning! I hope you have a great Wednesday night wherever you happen to be spending it, Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting: A recycling bin awaiting curbside pickup doesn’t seem like an obvious location for a crime, but it often is in Northern California cities and in other locations throughout the country, reports the Associated Press. The combination of a slow economy and higher prices for aluminum, cardboard and newsprint is contributing to the rise in curbside theft.  In many instances, the robbers have organized into fleets of trucks, sweeping neighborhoods for valuable recyclables. Many state and local authorities are seeking more stringent regulations to discourage theft because lost revenue can endanger recycling programs. Some cities already have laws against recycling bin poaching. Getting caught in San Francisco could mean a fine of up to 500 dollars and six months in jail. In New York City, thieves are subject to arrest, vehicle impoundment and fines of up to 5,000 dollars. Authorities continue to pursue a solution to the growing problem.

Interesting2: The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico could reach a new record size this year, and grow to cover an area equal to the State of New Jersey, researchers said Tuesday. One prime culprit: The record Midwest flooding that caused the Mississippi to swell. The discharge of pollutants and nutrients from the Mississippi River causes algae to bloom in the Gulf of Mexico. When the algae dies, the decaying absorbs so much oxygen from the water that large areas become inhospitable to fish. The resulting lifeless area is called a eutrophic or hypoxic zone, or more colloquially, a dead zone. The condition is cyclic, and reaches its maximum in late summer. The biggest dead zone on record was in 2002, when 8,481 square miles of water became lifeless. Last year, researchers also predicted a record was possible, but the dead zone reached 7,903 square miles. This year, the total could exceed 8,800 square miles, or 5% greater than the last record.

Interesting3: Only 48 per cent of Laotians are connected to the electrical grid. Access to electricity is limited due to lack of infrastructure and high costs so most rural communities rely on environmentally unfriendly energy sources, such as firewood and kerosene. Solar-powered systems are a logical alternative but start-up costs are high. To get around this, local company Sunlabob Rural Energy is renting solar-based systems to villagers.  Solar-powered lanterns are available to rent at a competitive price and users can recharge the lamps for a small fee at a central facility in the village. Alternatively, a whole village can rent the equipment for generating solar electricity from the company and sub-lease power to individual houses. And larger villages can use a combination of solar, hydro and generator power to create a grid with enough energy to power health clinics, rice mills and water pumps. The program is proving highly successful because the community itself is in charge, ensuring sustainability. Around 1,800 village systems and 500 solar lanterns have been rented to families in 73 villages in Laos. Sunlabob is now seeking to extend the project into Cambodia and Indonesia and other regions.

Interesting4: A lot more Martian rocks were altered by water than scientists originally thought, suggesting that early Mars was a very wet place. New observations made by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), currently circling the planet, have revealed evidence that vast regions of the southern highlands of Mars were altered by water in a variety of environments billions of years ago. Water is a key condition for life as we know it. Though there is no firm evidence that Mars has ever harbored life, knowing that the planet was once wet suggests that it was at least habitable in the past. The key to the finding is the discovery that rocks called phyllosilicates are widespread on at least the planet’s southern hemisphere. The water present on Mars from about 4.6 billion to 3.8 billion years ago transformed some rocks into these phyllosilicates, which include clays rich in iron, magnesium or aluminum, mica, and kaolinite (an ingredient in Kaopectate). "In a phyllosilicate, the atoms are stacked up into layers, and all of the phyllosilicates have some sort of water or hydroxyl [oxygen and hydrogen group] incorporated into the crystal structure," said study team member Scott Murchie of JohnsHopkinsUniversity.

Interesting5: Telescope mirrors made from lunar dust could help realize dreams of stargazing from the far side of the moon. Creating gigantic lunar telescopes would normally carry an astronomical price tag, but NASA researchers used a mix of epoxy, simulated lunar dust and carbon nanotubes to demonstrate how to use materials already found on the moon. "You can go to the moon with a few buckets, and build something far larger than anything a rocket can carry," said Peter Chen, a physicist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Astronomers have argued about which is better in the future: building additional orbiting space telescopes such as Hubble or setting them up on the moon. Both types of telescopes would be beyond the interference of Earth’s atmosphere, although the moon has the added advantages of being a stable platform with a far side shielded from Earth’s cluttered radio background. On the other hand, getting to the moon represents more of a challenge than simply launching a space telescope. However, the debate so far has been "limited by launching from the ground," Chen told SPACE.com, because Earth’s gravity places both size and cost limits on what rockets can carry into space or to the moon.

Interesting6: Sloshing back and forth in constant rhythm, the ocean’s tides are a predictable source of renewable energy. Hoping to tap into this, the world’s largest tidal turbine is set to start generating electricity this month. The installation of the SeaGen marine current generator was completed this past May in Strangford Lough, a large inlet on the coast of Northern Ireland. The system, designed and built by Marine Current Turbines Ltd., has two rotors that each span 16 meters (52 feet) in diameter.  "The technology is very analogous to wind, except we are doing everything underwater," said Peter Fraenkel, the company’s technical director. The maximum power output of the SeaGen will be 1.2 megawatts — four times more than any other turbine. Operating for roughly 20 hours per day, it is expected to supply 1,000 homes.  The $20 million SeaGen is a single tower, moored to the seafloor a quarter mile (400 meters) from shore. It is designed to catch both the incoming (flow) and outgoing (ebb) tides by rotating its two rotors 180 degrees.  No power is generated during tide changes, as the turbine only works when the water is moving 2 knots (2.3 mph) or more.

Aloha Paragraphs



The windward side of Oahu
Photo Credit: Flickr.com

The recent lighter than normal trade winds will give way to increasingly strong trade winds through the rest of the week. A trough of low pressure, located to the north through northwest of Hawaii Tuesday evening…have kept our local winds from attaining their full strength so far this week. As we move into Wednesday, the trough will be getting further away, far enough to limit the influence our local trade winds. The second half of the week, and especially by the weekend, our trade winds will be noticeably stronger. We may end up having small craft advisory flags going up in those windiest spots by Friday or Saturday. These trade winds will continue on into next week, and likely through the rest of the month.

The bias for showers has been over the leeward areas with the recent light winds…but will shift back to the windward sides with the strengthening trade winds. We saw a relatively clear morning give way to afternoon clouds Tuesday. These cumulus clouds spilled a few more showers along the leeward slopes, but not as many as the previous several days. The showers will move back to the windward sides soon, with the chance that they may increase later Friday into the weekend, which would be a great thing…due to the dry to very dry conditions that currently exist.

~~~ Its early Tuesday evening here in Kihei, Maui, as I begin updating this last section of today’s narrative. It seemed as though we saw the beginning of a stronger trade wind flow starting this afternoon. The winds didn’t get too strong, but nonetheless, they were enough it appears, that it interrupted the strong convective cumulus cloud buildups over the leewards slopes. When I went to lunch today, actually on the way back to work, my car thermometer, which measures the outside temperature, read 91F degrees…which is hot for here in the tropics. By the way, the hottest temperature ever recorded here in the islands was 100F degrees on the Big Island. Some of the hottest days during the height of summer, will attain the middle 90F’s, which is actually quite rare. At any rate, the trade winds will be gaining a stronger toe hold here in Hawaii now, which will bring their cooling relief from the heat soon. Those trade winds will bring some showers to the windward sides, especially by this weekend. I’ll be back very early Wednesday morning with your next new weather narrative from paradise. I hope you have a great Tuesday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting:  The Chinese government has successfully cleared tons of algae that was blocking the Olympic sailing course in the eastern city of Qingdao.  A special protection zone was set up using a boom and netting. But in other areas the thick bright green algae is still polluting the beaches. The Chinese government had set a goal of clearing the sailing area by Tuesday. The Olympic Games begin on 8 August. The water at the Olympic sailing course in Qingdao is now largely algae free. Some 10,000 troops from the People’s Liberation Army have lifted over half a million tonnes of the thick heavy weed from the coastline. A boom and netting is stopping more of the algae coming ashore. Olympic sailing teams here say they can now train and will be able to compete in Qingdao‘s waters. But at beaches not protected by the boom, the algae is still coming in. China says it is a naturally occurring, though rare, phenomenon. Environmentalists blame pollution.

Interesting2: 

Two hundred thousand boats sat idle in Japan, as fishermen across the nation took to the streets on Tuesday to protest skyrocketing fuel prices.  The strike — the first ever by the country’s fishermen — hopes to convince the government that without its intervention, rising fuel costs will kill the fishermen’s businesses. Across Japan‘s fishing ports, fishermen simultaneously blew their whistles in a symbol of solidarity, and operations ground to a halt. Thousands of others rallied in downtown Tokyo, marching in circles around the fisheries ministry and chanting, "We’re dying," through bullhorns. The protesting fishing unions say fuel once accounted for 10 percent of a business’ operating cost. It now accounts for 30 to 50 percent.

They want the government to provide subsidies to make up for the price hike. The demonstration was the latest in a wave of protests around the world over fuel prices. Masatoshi Wakabayashi, the minister of agriculture, forestry and fisheries, told reporters Tuesday morning that he "understands the frustration of the fishermen." He urged reforms within the fishing industry to decrease its reliance on oil, adding it would be "difficult to compensate them for the hike in the price of oil." The deep-sea tuna fishermen’s association told CNN it might suspend operations for two to three months later this year, due to fuel price hike. Marine life has long been a staple food source in Japan.

Interesting3: Rock Port, Mo., has an unusual crop: wind turbines. The four turbines that supply electricity to the small town of 1,300 residents make it the first community in the United States to operate solely on wind power. "That's something to be very proud of, especially in a rural area like this — that we're doing our part for the environment," said Jim Crawford, a natural resource engineer at the University of Missouri Extension in Columbia. A map published by the U.S. Department of Energy indicates that northwest Missouri has the state's highest concentrations of wind resources and contains a number of locations that are potentially suitable for utility-scale wind development. The four turbines that power RockPort are part of a larger set of 75 turbines across three counties that are used to harvest the power of wind.

"We're farming the wind, which is something that we have up here," Crawford said. "The payback on a per-acre basis is generally quite good when compared to a lot of other crops, and it's as simple as getting a cup of coffee and watching the blades spin." And the turbines have another benefit besides produces clean energy: MU Extension specialists said that the Missouri wind farms will bring in more than $1.1 million annually in county real estate taxes, to be paid by Wind Capital Group, a wind energy developer based in St. Louis. "This is a unique situation because in rural areas it is quite uncommon to have this increase in taxation revenues," said Jerry Baker, and MU Extension community development specialist.

Interesting4: A good-sized asteroid sailing past our planet right now turns out to be two giant rocks doing a celestial jig. The setup, catalogued as 2008 BT18, was thought to be nearly a half-mile wide after its discovery by MIT's LINEAR search program in January. Nothing else was known about it. Now seen as two objects orbiting each other, the pair will be closest to Earth on July 14, at about 1.4 million miles (2 million kilometers) away. That's nearly six times as far from us as the moon. It will not strike the planet. But scientists want to learn more about binary asteroids because one day they might find one headed our way.

Deflecting a binary off course could be considerably more challenging that altering the path of a single rock. Radar observations from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico on July 6 and 7 "clearly show two objects," said Lance Benner of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The objects are estimated to be 1,970 feet (600 meters) and 650 feet (200 meters) in diameter. The larger one rotates upon its axis in 3 hours or less. Additional observations from NASA's Goldstone radar in the Mojave Desert in California are expected to reveal more about the density, shapes and orbit of the pair.

Interesting5: Hurricane seasons have been getting longer over the past century and the big storms are coming earlier. The trend has been particularly noticeable since 1995, some climate scientists say. Further, the area of warm water able to support hurricanes is growing larger over time. The Atlantic Ocean is becoming more hurricane friendly, scientists say, and the shift is likely due to global warming. "There has been an increase in the seasonal length over the last century," Jay Gulledge, a senior scientist with the PewCenter on Global Climate Change, told LiveScience. "It's pretty striking." A study Gulledge co-authored with other climate scientists found a five-day increase in season length per decade since 1915. Hurricane season officially starts June 1, but the first named storm of the 2008 season, Tropical Storm Albert, formed on May 31.

The first hurricane of the season, Hurricane Bertha, formed on July 1, reaching hurricane strength on July 7, relatively early in the season for a major storm. In the last decade, more strong storms have been forming earlier in the season, said hurricane researcher Greg Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. While this trend hasn't been formally linked to global warming because climate models can't reproduce individual storms, Holland thinks it's likely that the warming caused by manmade greenhouse gases is a major factor in the seasonal shift based on observations of changes in recent decades and the predictions models are making for the changing conditions in the Atlantic basin. The length of the hurricane season is "one of the potentially big signals" that could change in response to global warming, Holland said.

Interesting6: Sailors and scientists have been mapping ocean currents for centuries, but it turns out they’ve missed something big. How big? The entire ocean is striped with 100-mile-wide bands of slow-moving water that extend right down to the seafloor, according to a recent study. Nikolai A. Maximenko of the University of Hawaii at Manoa and colleagues developed a precise new method for measuring the topography of the ocean surface by combining data from satellites and from the movements of more than 10,000 drifting oceanographic buoys. In doing so, the team generated detailed maps, in which they first noticed the peculiar striations. Some scientists initially dismissed the stripes as statistical artifacts, but Maximenko’s team dug deeper, looking for a similar pattern in water temperature measurements from two test areas in the Pacific.

Indeed, though barely detectable, the striated currents are real. They flow past each other in opposing directions at 130 feet per hour—just one-tenth to one-hundredth the speed of major ocean currents—and subtle changes in temperature demarcate their boundaries. Maximenko says a new computer model has corroborated some features of the observed striations, but his team is still mystified by their orientation, location, and strength. The discovery is important, he says, because even weak currents can have large effects on global climate and on the flow of food and creatures in the oceans.

Aloha Paragraphs



Palm tree swaying in the light trade winds
Photo Credit: Flickr.com

An usual spell of lighter than normal trade winds will remain in place through the first several days of this new week. A trough of low pressure, moving by to the north of Hawaii…is keeping our local winds from attaining their full strength for the time being. The computer models forecast it will take until mid-week or Thursday, before our trade winds start to increase again in strength, becoming stronger during the second half of the week. 

The atmosphere over our islands is rather dry and stable, helping to limit shower production, although not completely. Despite the trough of low pressure moving by to our north, there won’t be many an excessive amount of showers falling. Whatever few showers that do fall, will occur along the windward coasts and slopes, during the nights and early mornings. There will be a few convective showers that occur along the leeward slopes too, during the afternoon into the early evening hours…which may turn out to be heavier than elsewhere.

~~~ It’s early Monday evening here in Kihei, Maui, as I begin updating this last section of today’s weather narrative. Skies started off in a mostly clear way Monday morning, after a few overnight windward biased showers. As the day wore on however, aided by the daytime heating, and the light winds, clouds increased greatly during the afternoon hours. Those convective cumulus clouds let loose with some generous showers locally, most noteworthy of which occurred in the upcountry areas of Maui. The NWS forecast office in Honolulu issued a flood advisory along the southwest flank of the Haleakala Crater, near Ulupalakua…with showers eventually working their way down towards the coasts near Makena and Wailea. Clouds will decrease steadily after sunset, with another clear morning for Tuesday. As the weather ingredients will remain in place, we can look for another repeat performance, with afternoon cloud buildups locally Tuesday…leading to showers here and there. I’ll be back very early Tuesday morning with a brand new weather narrative for you, I hope you have a great Monday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting: Starting next year, the Rolls-Royce Group and British Airways hope to test up to four airplane fuel alternatives to kerosene. The companies are asking suppliers to provide fuel samples for testing in 2009. The companies are seeking fuels that perform as well as kerosene but emit fewer greenhouse gases. They are also taking into account if production of the fuels will have detrimental effects on food supplies, land use and water. Suppliers will also need to ensure the fuels can be mass-produced and distributed around the world. The fuels will be tested on a Rolls-Royce RB211 engine from a British Airways Boeing 747 at an indoor test engine bed. The companies aren’t experimenting on actual flights so that outside factors will not affect performance and emissions. Results will be compared to that of an engine running on kerosene, and the tests will include performance while idling, accelerating, taking off and cruising.

Testing will finish by March 2009. The Federal Aviation Administration and the X Prize Foundation have also teamed up to spur innovation and investment in greener alternatives to jet fuel. The X Prize Foundation will spend the next 14 months working with aviation experts and identify incentives for the creation of alternative fuels and technologies. Once finalized, the alternative fuel competition is expected to run three-eight years. The competition will also look for fuels that are renewable, not based on fossil fuels, and which do not affect food production or land changes that lead to increases in greenhouse gas emissions. Current and former X Prize awards range from $10 million to $30 million. The FAA’s partnership with the X Prize Foundation is an outgrowth of its Next Generation air traffic modernization program aimed at doubling the capacity of the U.S. aviation system by 2025, a goal that includes the development and use of renewable fuels.

Interesting2: Booming demand for food, fuel and wood as the world’s population surges from six to nine billion will put unprecedented and unsustainable demand on the world’s remaining forests, two new reports said on Monday. The reports from the U.S.-based Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) said this massive potential leap in deforestation could add to global warming and put pressure on indigenous forest dwellers that could lead to conflict.  "Arguably we are on the verge of the last great global land grab," said Andy White, co-author of "Seeing People Through the Trees," one of the two reports. "Unless steps are taken, traditional forest owners, and the forests themselves, will be the big losers. It will mean more deforestation, more conflict, more carbon emissions, more climate change and less prosperity for everyone."

RRI is a global coalition of environmental and conservation non-government organizations with a particular focus on forest protection and management and the rights of forest peoples. White’s report said that unless agricultural productivity rises sharply, new land equivalent in size to 12 Germanys will have to be cultivated for crops to meet food and biofuel demand by 2030. Virtually all of it is likely to be in developing countries, principally land that is currently forested. The second report, "From Exclusion to Ownership", noted that governments still claim ownership of most forests in developing countries, but said they had done little to ensure the rights and tenure of forest dwellers. It said people whose main source of livelihood is the forests were usually the best custodians of the forests and their biodiversity.

Interesting3: The trend of more frequent global natural disasters continues, due to an onslaught of weather-related crises in the first half of 2008.  The total number of disasters as of June 30, 2008 already exceeds the average number of disasters recorded at mid-year over the past decade. Although 2008 is not on pace to eclipse 2007 as registering the most natural disasters ever, an especially active Atlantic hurricane season is expected. During the first half of each year between 1998 and 2007, the average number of disasters recorded was 380. So far in 2008, 400 disasters have been reported, according to data released last week by Munich Re, a German reinsurance group. The data covers geological events, such as earthquakes and volcanoes, as well as weather-related disasters like storms, floods, and heat waves.  

Based on the mid-year report, 2008 is following the steady rise in natural disasters that Munich Re has tracked since 1980. The average number of disasters throughout the 1980s was 400. It increased to 630 in the 1990s and to 730 in the past ten years. The highest recorded number of natural disasters, 960, occurred in 2007, Munich Re reported. So far this year, tornadoes, severe thunderstorms, and massive flooding have crippled the American Midwest. An earthquake in China‘s Sichuan province killed more than 69,000 people and caused an estimated $20 billion in damages. Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar killed at least 84,000 people and left at least $10 billion in damages. The majority of this year’s disasters, 80 percent, are classified as severe thunderstorms, Munich Re says.

Interesting4: A good-sized asteroid sailing past our planet right now turns out to be two giant rocks doing a celestial jig. The setup, catalogued as 2008 BT18, was thought to be nearly a half-mile wide after its discovery by MIT’s LINEAR search program in January. Nothing else was known about it. Now seen as two objects orbiting each other, the pair will be closest to Earth on July 14, at about 1.4 million miles (2 million kilometers) away. That’s nearly six times as far from us as the moon. It will not strike the planet. But scientists want to learn more about binary asteroids because one day they might find one headed our way.

Deflecting a binary off course could be considerably more challenging that altering the path of a single rock. Radar observations from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico on July 6 and 7 "clearly show two objects," said Lance Benner of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The objects are estimated to be 1,970 feet (600 meters) and 650 feet (200 meters) in diameter. The larger one rotates upon its axis in 3 hours or less. Additional observations from NASA’s Goldstone radar in the Mojave Desert in California are expected to reveal more about the density, shapes and orbit of the pair.

Interesting5: Hurricane seasons have been getting longer over the past century and the big storms are coming earlier. The trend has been particularly noticeable since 1995, some climate scientists say. Further, the area of warm water able to support hurricanes is growing larger over time. The Atlantic Ocean is becoming more hurricane friendly, scientists say, and the shift is likely due to global warming. "There has been an increase in the seasonal length over the last century," Jay Gulledge, a senior scientist with the PewCenter on Global Climate Change, told LiveScience. "It’s pretty striking." A study Gulledge co-authored with other climate scientists found a five-day increase in season length per decade since 1915. Hurricane season officially starts June 1, but the first named storm of the 2008 season, Tropical Storm Albert, formed on May 31.

The first hurricane of the season, Hurricane Bertha, formed on July 1, reaching hurricane strength on July 7, relatively early in the season for a major storm. In the last decade, more strong storms have been forming earlier in the season, said hurricane researcher Greg Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. While this trend hasn’t been formally linked to global warming because climate models can’t reproduce individual storms, Holland thinks it’s likely that the warming caused by manmade greenhouse gases is a major factor in the seasonal shift based on observations of changes in recent decades and the predictions models are making for the changing conditions in the Atlantic basin. The length of the hurricane season is "one of the potentially big signals" that could change in response to global warming, Holland said.

Interesting6: Sailors and scientists have been mapping ocean currents for centuries, but it turns out they’ve missed something big. How big? The entire ocean is striped with 100-mile-wide bands of slow-moving water that extend right down to the seafloor, according to a recent study. Nikolai A. Maximenko of the University of Hawaii at Manoa and colleagues developed a precise new method for measuring the topography of the ocean surface by combining data from satellites and from the movements of more than 10,000 drifting oceanographic buoys. In doing so, the team generated detailed maps, in which they first noticed the peculiar striations. Some scientists initially dismissed the stripes as statistical artifacts, but Maximenko’s team dug deeper, looking for a similar pattern in water temperature measurements from two test areas in the Pacific.

Indeed, though barely detectable, the striated currents are real. They flow past each other in opposing directions at 130 feet per hour—just one-tenth to one-hundredth the speed of major ocean currents—and subtle changes in temperature demarcate their boundaries. Maximenko says a new computer model has corroborated some features of the observed striations, but his team is still mystified by their orientation, location, and strength. The discovery is important, he says, because even weak currents can have large effects on global climate and on the flow of food and creatures in the oceans.

Aloha Paragraphs



A good ending to another nice day here in Hawaii
Photo Credit: Flickr.com

Our local trade winds will remain light through the first half of the new work week. A trough of low pressure, now to the north-northeast of the Big Island, will move by to our north…which is why our winds are lighter than normal for this time of year. The computer models forecast it will take until mid-week or Thursday, before our trade winds will start to increase again in strength, becoming stronger during the second half of the week. 

There will be a few showers falling, mostly along the windward sides, and perhaps a few in the leeward areas here and there too.  The overlying atmosphere remains dry and stable now however, which will limit shower activity. Despite the trough of low pressure moving by to our north, there won’t be all that many showers falling. Most of the showers that fall along those windward coasts and slopes, will occur during the nights and early mornings. Whatever convective showers that occur along the leeward slopes…will fall during the afternoon into the early evening hours.

~~~ It’s early Sunday evening here in Kula, Maui, as I begin updating this last paragraph of today’s weather narrative. We’re involved in yet another unusual weather situation here in the islands now. First of all, what "normal would look like" would be moderately strong trade winds blowing from the east. The interesting weather feature, which is keeping that from happening, is a low pressure trough moving by…just to our north. This trough is getting in between our trade wind producing high pressure systems, located to the northwest through northeast of our islands…and our Hawaiian Island. The interruption that this trough is having, is making for lighter than normal trade winds for mid-July. Lighter breezes will make our atmosphere feel very warm and somewhat sultry through the first half of the new week, during the days that is. Otherwise, our weather will be just fine, with generally light showers popping-up here and there. 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.

Aloha Paragraphs



The end to another perfect day in the islands!
Photo Credit: Flickr.com

Our local trade winds will generally be light the rest of the weekend…through the first half of the upcoming work week. A trough of low pressure, now to the east-northeast of the Big Island, will across the islands later Sunday and Monday, which is why our winds are more from the northeast than usual, and softer too. The computer models forecast it will take until after mid-week, before our trade winds will start to increase again in strength, becoming stronger during the second half of the week. 

There will be a few showers falling, mostly along the windward sides, and perhaps a few along the leeward areas here and there too.  The overlying atmosphere is pretty dry and stable now however, which will limit shower activity. Despite the trough of low pressure moving by over the next couple of days, there won’t be all that many showers falling. Most of the showers that fall along those windward coasts and slopes, will occur during the nights and early mornings. In contrast, whatever convective shower that occur along the leeward slopes…will fall during the afternoon into the early evening hours.

~~~ It’s early Saturday evening here in Kula, Maui, as I begin updating this last section of today’s weather narrative from paradise. There have been spotty showers falling in many places across the Hawaiian Islands Saturday. Here in Kula, there have been at least four different individual shower periods during the last 24 hours. The latest is falling as I write, after an earlier fairly heavy downpour earlier in the afternoon…although it was brief. It had a slant to it, with the winds involved, which gave it the look of winter for several minutes. I’m quite sure that you’ve, if you’re a regular reader, that this year has been full of unusual weather circumstances…which continues on into this early summer period.

I went over to the Lahaina side early this morning, where I found fun waves to surf. It was nice and glassy (smooth ocean), with the waves generally breaking in the knee to shoulder high range. I coudn’t resist

stopping at Baldwin Beach, on the north shore, on the way home. I love walking on that long sandy beach in the mornings, watching the clouds move by in the trade winds offshore. It always feels so good to drive back home to Kula, which is in the upcountry area, under the cloud cover…and the cooler temperatures. I have a friend coming over for dinner soon, so I’d better get out in the garden and pick from the several varieties of salad greens we’re growing. I hope you have a great Saturday night wherever you’re spending it! I’ll be back online Sunday morning with your next new weather narrative. Aloha for now…Glenn.

Aloha Paragraphs



A perfect beach on Maui
Photo Credit: Flickr.com

The northeast trade winds will remain generally light Saturday…only to get even lighter again Sunday through Tuesday. Our local winds have been lighter than normal this week. High pressure systems to the north through northeast of the islands, will prompt our winds into the light to almost moderate now…considered more or less normal for this time of year. A trough moving through the islands Sunday through Tuesday, will slow our winds down again. The computer models are suggesting that by the middle of the new week ahead, our trade winds will increase again in strength, into the moderate levels…lasting through the remainder of the week.

Despite the continuing trade winds, our overlying atmosphere will remain rather dry and stable…limiting the showers that will fall along the windward sides of the islands.  After the leeward focus of showers the last several days, the bias for showers has shifted back to the windward sides now. As the trade winds diminish again Sunday through Tuesday, the showers will work their way back over to the leeward sides again during the afternoon hours…only to return again to the windward sides when the trade winds pick up starting next Wednesday.



~~~  As noted above, our trade winds will continue their unusual fluctuations in strength and direction. Generally, when we consider the trade winds during the summer here in the tropical latitudes of the Hawaiian Islands, we think in terms of easterly winds blowing in the more or less moderately strong realms. The later part of our spring season, and now right on into early Summer, hasn’t been normal in that regard. The trades, rather than being in a fairly steady state, have faltered in strength repeatedly…with more of that on tap through the next five days.

~~~ It’s early Friday evening here in Kihei, Maui, as I begin updating this last paragraph of today’s weather narrative from paradise. I just finished work, after a nice day in terms of weather here in Hawaii. I’m about ready to leave for Kahului, where I’ll see the new film called Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008)…I know that’s a weird name for a film, isn’t it! Hellboy II stars Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, among others. This is a film about the world’s roughest, toughest, reddest superhero, who is back in action to battle an unstoppable army of otherworldly creatures. I saw the original version of this film, and found myself adequately entertained, if not a bit more than that. I’m looking forward to sitting down in the theater, with a nice bag of unbuttered popcorn, and being once again swept away into a strange and different world! Here’s a trailer for this film, just in case you were curious what I’ll be sitting through. I’ll let you know what I thought early Saturday morning, before I leave for a surf session on the Lahaina side. I hope you have a great Friday night wherever you happen to be spending it! Aloha for now…Glenn.

A good song: Baby Come to Me…by James Ingram & Anita Baker – what voices!

Interesting: 

China has ordered dog meat to be taken off the menu at its 112 official Olympic restaurants in order to avoid offending foreign visitors. Restaurant workers are advised to "patiently" suggest other options to diners who order dog. Any restaurant found violating the ban would be black-listed, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported. Dog – known as "fragrant meat" – is eaten by some Chinese for purported medicinal properties. The ban, issued by the Beijing Catering Trade Association, forbids all designated Olympic restaurants from offering dog and urges other food outlets to remove the meat from menus.

"If a customer orders dog meat, restaurant staff should patiently suggest another entree," said Xiong Yumei, deputy director of the Beijing Tourism Bureau told Xinhua. The measure has been implemented to "respect the habits of many countries and nationalities," the Beijing News quoted the municipal food department as saying. The BBC’s James Reynolds says the ban is one of several steps taken by China to avoid foreign visitors being amused or offended by local customs. Authorities have also told people to queue up politely, to smile and not to spit on the streets. During the 1988 Seoul Olympics, South Korea also banned doggie dishes from menus. Officials invoked a law banning the sale of "foods deemed unsightly".

Interesting2: New evidence has emerged that a large plate of floating ice shelf attached to Antarctica is breaking up, in a troubling sign of global warming, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Thursday. Images taken by its Envisat remote-sensing satellite show that Wilkins Ice Shelf is "hanging by its last thread" to CharcotIsland, one of the plate’s key anchors to the Antarctic peninsula, ESA said in a press release. "Since the connection to the island… helps stabilise the ice shelf, it is likely the breakup of the bridge will put the remainder of the ice shelf at risk," it said. Wilkins Ice Shelf had been stable for most of the last century, covering around 16,000 square kilometres (6,000 square miles), or about the size of Northern Ireland, before it began to retreat in the 1990s. Since then several large areas have broken away, and two big breakoffs this year left only a narrow ice bridge about 2.7 kilometres (1.7 miles) wide to connect the shelf to Charcot and nearby LatadyIsland.

Interesting3: A long list of factors have been blamed for the global food crisis which along with the energy crisis has hit developing countries, and the poor in particular, hardest. Prices of staple foods have risen by up to 100 per cent. A growing population, changes in trade patterns, urbanization, dietary changes, biofuel production, climate change and regional droughts are all responsible, and commentators point to a classic pattern of price increases caused by high demand and low supply. But few mention the declining supply of water that is needed to grow irrigated and rain-fed crops. An often-mooted solution to the food crisis is to breed plants that produce the ultimate high-yielding, low water-consuming crops. While this is important, it will fail unless we also pay attention to where the water for all our food, fibre and energy crops is going to come from. Essentially, every calorie of food requires a litre of water to produce it. So those of us on Western diets use about 2,500-3,000 litres per day. The expected addition of a further 2.5 billion people to the world by 2030 will mean that we have to find over 2,000 more cubic kilometres of fresh water per year to feed them.

This is not any easy task, given that current water usage for food production is 7,500 cubic kilometres per year and supplies are already scarce. A few years ago, my organization, the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), demonstrated that many countries are facing severe water scarcity, either because insufficient fresh water is available or because they lack investment in water infrastructure, such as dams and reservoirs. What makes matters worse is that this scarcity predominantly affects developing countries where the majority of the world’s 840 million under-nourished people live. Serious and extremely worrying evidence indicates that water supplies are steadily being used up. And the causes of water scarcity are much the same as those of the food crisis: demand exceeds a finite supply. The world’s population is projected to grow from 6 billion to 8.5 billion by 2030 and unless we change the way we use water and increase water productivity — ie. produce more ‘crop per drop’ — we will not be able to feed them. That is the conclusion of the IWMI’s recent Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture and its book, Water for Food, Water for Life, which drew on the work of 700 scientists.

Interesting4: Like a tooth dipped in a glass of Coca-Cola, coral reefs, lobsters and other marine creatures that build calcified shells around themselves could soon dissolve as climate change turns the oceans increasingly acidic. The carbon dioxide spewed into the atmosphere by factories, cars and power plants is not just raising temperatures. It is also causing what scientists call "ocean acidification" as around 25 percent of the excess CO2 is absorbed by the seas. The threat to hard-bodied marine organisms, such as coral reefs already struggling with warming waters, is alarming, and possibly quite imminent, marine scientists gathered this week for a coral reef conference in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, said.  "The threshold for (corals) could be approached by the middle of this century … when they’ll reach a point where they may no longer be able to reproduce themselves as fast as they’re being destroyed," said Chris Langdon, am associate professor at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. "It’s not going to be instant. They’re not going to disappear that year. It may take another 50 or 100 years." It was only recently that scientists woke up to the fact that global warming would reduce the pH value of the oceans due to a chemical reaction of water with CO2. The pH scale is a measure of alkalinity or acidity, with 7 being neutral. The pH value of the oceans has been around 8.2 for hundreds of thousands of years, but since the start of the industrial age in 1800, it has dropped by 0.1.

Aloha Paragraphs



A perfect beach on Maui…Kapalua this time
Photo Credit: Flickr.com

The light northeast trade winds will increase in strength a little now, then increase a bit more Friday…only to calm down again some Sunday and Monday. The latest weather map shows a 1028 high pressure system located far to the northeast of Hawaii Thursday evening. The computer models are suggesting that by next week, our trade winds will increase in strength, into the moderate levels starting next Tuesday or Wednesday…lasting through the remainder of the week.

Generally light showers will fall locally along the windward sides at night, while afternoon showers will occur over the leeward areas locally. As the trade winds surge some Friday into Saturday, the chances for those afternoon showers along the leeward sides will diminish, with the bias for showers shifting back to the windward sides then. As the trade winds diminish again Sunday and Monday…the showers will work their way back over to the leeward sides again.



~~~  Low pressure systems in the north Pacific Ocean during the late spring, even into our summer season…have taken unusually southern courses in their tracks. This has kept our local trade winds lighter than normal, and even taken them completely away at times. This constant faltering of our trade wind flow, isn’t what we would expect typically, at least compared to our climatological norm. We would look for a more or less steady trade wind flow from May right through the summer months, during a so called normal year.

~~~ The current weather pattern is another good example of the off kilter conditions of this unusual year. Our trade winds, which usually come in from the east, have taken on a more northeast orientation. Winds from this direction can often be lighter than normal, although in some parts of the state, they can accelerate through valleys, and be quite strong locally. At any rate, our winds are coming in from a different direction than usual for the summer. They will remain light to moderately strong Thursday, but then kick up their heels a bit more Friday into Saturday.

~~~ It’s early Thursday evening here in Kihei, Maui, as I begin updating this last paragraph of today’s narrative. The big question today was whether those leeward showers would pop up later in the day. As it turned out, they didn’t flair up nearly as much as they had the last couple of afternoons. The trade winds become a little stronger than expected, which helped to limit the vertical growth of the afternoon cumulus clouds…and thus the resulting showers. There were however some thick clouds that formed over southwest Maui, down to the south of Wailea and Makena. Radar showed the showers extending out over the ocean towards Kahoolawe. The rest of the state saw less clouds and showers, with many areas having considerable sunshine during the day. The trade winds are expected to increase another notch Friday and Saturday, so that those afternoon clouds and showers that occurred over the leeward sides recently…will migrate back over to the windward sides for the most part. I’ll be back very early Friday morning with your next new weather narrative. I hope you have a great Thursday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting:   Heavy rain fell on many parts of Mexico during the early and middle stages of this week. Some of the heaviest cloudbursts broke along the nation’s Pacific coast. In southernmost Oaxaca state, for example, 12.4 inches of rain poured down upon the town of Puerto Angel



from Sunday morning to Thursday morning.

Searing heat burned



Algeria‘s Sahara this week. At El Oued-Guemar, for instance, consecutive highs of 118, 119 and 118 degrees F were registered Monday through Wednesday, and the temperature soared to at least 118F again on Thursday. Biskra soared to 115 degrees F Monday, 117F Tuesday, 119 F Wednesday and at least 117 F on Thursday.

Interesting2: A cold snap has affected parts of southern Australia with temperatures plummeting close to zero and snow falling in places. Strong and bitterly cold gale force winds have also swept across Victoria and New South Wales, with snowfalls across Glen Innes in the north of NSW.

Average temperatures across the state of Victoria at this time of year are usually between 6 and 13C (43 to 55F) but recently temperatures have dropped to nearer 2C (36F) in many places, with snowfall across the Australian Alps. The Bureau of Meteorology warned motorists travelling to Barrington Tops to take care in the adverse weather conditions.

A complex low pressure system off Tasmania pulled up much colder air from the south and interacted with a strong high pressure system over Australia. Winds around the low became strong and gusty and sent a series of cold fronts up across southern Australia bringing bands of rain, with snow and blizzard conditions across the mountains.

Farmers were rejoicing as much needed rain fell earlier this week. Vast parts of Australia have been suffering from one of the worst droughts in living memory. The joy, however, may be short-lived as the low pressure system responsible for the recent rain and snow slips away, only to be replaced by high pressure. This high is expected to bring fine, dry and settled conditi



ons.

Interesting3: Ever since the rise of the automobile in the 1950s, the American Dream has featured a home in the suburbs and two cars in the garage. Now the iconic white picket fence comes with a hefty price tag in the form of the cost of the gasoline needed to drive to work and to the supermarket, and the suburban idyll is under review. In different parts of the United States, there are signs of change. While home prices in the suburbs have crashed, apartments in city centers are in demand. Home builders across the country are frantically trying to unload land they had intended for new subdivisions. And planners are rethinking how they can meet demand for housing. One such place is Stapleton, on the site of what used to be Denver's airport. Its developer, real estate company ForestCity, puts homes within walking distance of schools and stores while linking them to the workplace by public transportation. Resident Evelyn Baker says Stapleton appeals to a "cheapskate" side of her nature that favors towing her offspring about in a trailer attached to her bike over paying for gas for her car.

"We're a family of four with two young kids and the obligatory yellow Lab, but we've managed to get by with one car," said Baker, who has lived here since April 2006. And, with gas prices above $4 a gallon, Baker said her move to Stapleton feels like a smart decision both because of lower day-to-day costs and the durability of her home's value. "I do feel like my house is retaining its value, and I'm really excited about that," Baker said. In the suburb of Maricopa, about an hour's drive outside Phoenix, residents have a very different feeling. Built on former corn and cotton fields, the suburb has grown to number 38,000 people from about 1,500 in 2002, accommodating people who were willing to accept longer commutes in order to get homes at cheaper prices.

Interesting4: Scientists have announced the discovery of reef structures they believe doubles the size of the Southern Atlantic Ocean's largest and richest reef system, the Abrolhos Bank, off the southern coast of Brazil's Bahia state. The newly discovered area is also far more abundant in marine life than the previously known Abrolhos reef system, one of the world's most unique and important reefs. Researchers from Conservation International (CI), Federal University of Esprito Santo and Federal University of Bahia announced their discovery in a paper presented today at the International Coral Reef Symposium in Fort Lauderdale. "We had some clues from local fishermen that other reefs existed, but not at the scale of what we discovered," says Rodrigo de Moura, Conservation International Brazil marine specialist and co-author of the paper. "It is very exciting and highly unusual to discover a reef structure this large and harboring such an abundance of fish," he adds.

Interesting5: Water has been found conclusively for the first time inside ancient moon samples brought back by Apollo astronauts. The discovery may force scientists to rethink the lunar past and future, although uncertainty remains about how much water exists and whether future explorers could extract it. The water was found inside volcanic glass beads, which represent solidified magma from the early moon's interior. The news swept through much of the scientific community even before being detailed in the journal Nature this week. "This really appears to have changed the rules of the game," said Robin Canup, astrophysicist and director of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., who was not part of the team that made the discovery. "The assumption has been that the moon is dry."

Interesting6: A new, compact way to collect sunlight from windows and focus it to generate more electricity could make those multiple expensive rooftop solar panels a thing of the past. The solar panels that cover the tops of some buildings today contain photovoltaic cells that convert sunlight into electricity. Unlike burning coal, collecting and converting solar energy releases no greenhouse gases, which warm the atmosphere. Limited efficiency and high construction costs have kept solar from producing more than about 0.07 percent of U.S. energy needs in 2007, according to figures from the U.S. Department of Energy. Solar concentrators can be used to increase the electrical power obtained from the photovoltaic cells. But most concentrators in use today "track the sun to generate high optical intensities, often by using large mobile mirrors that are expensive to deploy and maintain," said MIT's Marc A.

Baldo, who led the team that created the new type of solar concentrator. Instead of covering a large area with solar cells, the new method only requires locating cells around the edges of a flat glass panel. The MIT solar concentrator involves a mixture of two or more dyes painted onto a pane of glass or plastic. The dyes absorb light across a range of wavelengths, reemit it at a different wavelength and transport it across the pane to the solar cells at the edges. "Light is collected over a large area [like a window] and gathered, or concentrated, at the edges," Baldo said. Focusing the light like this increases the electrical power generated by each solar cell "by a factor of 40," he added. The work was funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science.

Aloha Paragraphs



The end of another perfect day!
Photo Credit: Flickr.com

Trade winds, with a more northeast orientation than usual, will continue to blow across the tropical latitudes of Hawaii. The latest weather map shows a far away 1027 high pressure systems located to the northeast of Hawaii Wednesday night. The trade winds will continue blowing in the light to near moderately strong realms through the rest of this week. The computer models are suggesting that by next week, our trade winds will increase in strength, into the moderate to fresh range. The one thing for sure, or at least pretty sure, is that almost everyday this month will have the trade winds blowing.

Showers will fall locally along the windward sides at night, while afternoon showers will occur over the leeward areas locally. The heaviest showers in this pattern will likely focus their efforts best along the leeward upcountry areas…where locally heavy afternoon downpours will take place. There’s a chance that the remnant moisture from former eastern Pacific tropical cyclone Boris, may bring an increase in clouds and windward showers to the Big Island Thursday, but it won’t amount to much…perhaps justing clipping South Point. 



~~~  We find somewhat lighter than normal trade winds, coming in from a more northerly direction than usual now. These northeast trades continue to bring some fairly minor showers to the windward coasts and slopes. At the same time, where the trade winds are converging along the leeward sides, after splitting around the islands…afternoon cloud build ups are dropping afternoon locally heavy convective showers. This pattern will continue over the next several days, with lots of morning sunshine.

~~~ There was some excitement the last few days, over the prospect of some showers arriving, the source of which would have been from an old hurricane, which formed in the eastern Pacific. This retired system lost all of its wind, or at least all the strong winds a long time ago. The remnant moisture, along with its very weak counterclockwise rotating vortex, is now several hundred miles to the lower right (southeast) of the Big Island. Here’s a looping satellite image of what’s left of former tropical cyclone Boris. The bulk of whatever showers that remain in that area will pass south of the Big Island. The northernmost fringe might clip the windward side of that island at some point Thursday.

~~~ It’s early Wednesday evening here in Kihei, Maui, as I begin updating this last paragraph of today’s narrative. The skies began the day in a mostly clear fashion, although it didn’t take long, aided by the daytime heating of the islands…for thick clouds to form over the interior sections. Each island in the chain took its turn in being on the receiving end of locally heavy showers. Here in Kihei, it was no exception, with an hour or so of generous rainfall. I could see up the slopes of the Haleakala Crater, that in Kula, Keokea, and Ulupalakua it was raining even more heavily. The showers spread down to Wailea and Makena as well. This was two afternoons in a row with lots of afternoon showers falling, which is a good thing, in regards to the exceptionally dry conditions of late. At just past 5pm, the Big Island was still under a flood advisory…where heavy rains were falling in the Kohala area. I see no reason to think that Thursday afternoon might not have another dose of rain along those parched leeward sides. I’m about ready to leave for Kula, for home, tucking into what looks like a cloudy and cool reality. I’m quite sure that the clouds will part just enough by sunset, to see some nice colors. I hope you have a great Wednesday night, and that you will meet me here again on Thursday, for your next new weather narrative from paradise. Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting:  Torrential rain during the second half of last week and early this week instigated flooding and mudslides in South Africa‘s province of Western Cape. Around Cape Town, the floodwaters forced hundreds of people to be evacuated as water inundated thousands of buildings. Also, bridges were washed away and mudslides blocked roads.



Downpours continued to plague parts of southeastern China early this week. In Shantou, Guangdong, rainfall was 11 inches within 72 hours as of Wednesday evening, local time. In southern Guangxi, Beihai was soaked by 8.7 inches of rain from Monday morning to Wednesday afternoon.



Very heavy rain swamped parts of Mexico during the first half of this week. In the east, 72-hour rainfall ending Wednesday morning, local time, was 11.5 inches at Matlapa. In the south and on the Pacific coast, 9.8 inches of rain soaked Puerto Angel during the same period.

Interesting2: Scientists have made an important advance in their efforts to predict earthquakes, the journal Nature says. A team of US researchers has detected stress-induced changes in rocks that occurred hours before two small tremors in California‘s San Andreas Fault. The observations used sensors lowered down holes drilled into the quake zone. The team says we are a long way from routine tremor forecasts but the latest findings hold out hope that such services might be possible one day. "If you had 10 hours’ warning, from a practical point of view, you could evacuate populations, you could certainly get people out of buildings, you could get the fire department ready," said co-author Paul Silver of the Carnegie Institution of Science, Washington. "Hurricane [warnings] give you an idea of what could be done," he told BBC News.

Interesting3: The Seattle City Council will hold a public hearing today on Mayor Greg Nickels’ proposal to ban foam containers and impose a plastic/paper bag fee at local stores, reports the Seattle Times. It is expected the proposal will gain approval. If passed, all restaurants and grocery stores would have to find a non-foam container alternative, and a 20-cent fee would be imposed on each plastic or paper bag used in the checkout line at all grocery, convenience and drugstores. The foam ban would take effect in two stages. Beginning in January, foam products would be banned, but restaurants and grocery stores could switch to plastic products if they had not yet found a biodegradable alternative. By July of 2010, plastics would also be banned and only biodegradables allowed. Some members of the city council question the financial impact of the bans, especially to low-income families. The city plans to supply some homes with reusable bags for free. 

Interesting4: Scientists have announced the discovery of reef structures they believe doubles the size of the Southern Atlantic Ocean’s largest and richest reef system, the Abrolhos Bank, off the southern coast of Brazil’s Bahia state. The newly discovered area is also far more abundant in marine life than the previously known Abrolhos reef system, one of the world’s most unique and important reefs. Researchers from Conservation International (CI), Federal University of Esprito Santo and Federal University of Bahia announced their discovery in a paper presented today at the International Coral Reef Symposium in Fort Lauderdale. "We had some clues from local fishermen that other reefs existed, but not at the scale of what we discovered," says Rodrigo de Moura, Conservation International Brazil marine specialist and co-author of the paper. "It is very exciting and highly unusual to discover a reef structure this large and harboring such an abundance of fish," he adds.

Interesting5: Water has been found conclusively for the first time inside ancient moon samples brought back by Apollo astronauts. The discovery may force scientists to rethink the lunar past and future, although uncertainty remains about how much water exists and whether future explorers could extract it. The water was found inside volcanic glass beads, which represent solidified magma from the early moon’s interior. The news swept through much of the scientific community even before being detailed in the journal Nature this week. "This really appears to have changed the rules of the game," said Robin Canup, astrophysicist and director of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., who was not part of the team that made the discovery. "The assumption has been that the moon is dry."

Aloha Paragraphs



The rugged Puna coast on the Big Island
Photo Credit: Flickr.com

The trade winds will continue to grace our islands, although will remain slightly lighter than normal for this time of year. The latest weather map shows far away high pressure systems located to the northeast and northwest of Hawaii Tuesday evening. The trade winds will remain on the light side of the wind spectrum through the rest of this week. The computer models are suggesting that by next week, our trade winds will increase in strength, into the moderate to fresh range. The trade winds on average blow about 95% of the time during the month of July.

There will be periods of showers arriving on the trade winds, although nothing overly generous is in the forecast for the time being. As usual, the windward sides will pick up most of these showers, while the leeward beaches remain generally dry, although a few showers could fall locally there too…perhaps even some heavy downpours. There’s a chance that the remnant moisture from former eastern Pacific tropical cyclone Boris, may bring an increase in clouds and windward showers to the Big Island and possibly Maui. This isn’t a sure thing, as this area of tropical moisture may miss us…moving by to the south. 



~~~  As the two paragraphs above point out, nothing particularly unusual about our weather here in Hawaii at the moment. The trade winds will remain active, just strong enough to temper our summertime heat, but light enough to remain below the small craft wind advisory threshold. The trade winds will gain strength next week, which is normal for this time of year. It would be very unusual for the trade winds to falter too much during July. It generally takes having a retired tropical weather system moving right over the islands, or just to our north…to knock our trade winds down completely during the height of summer.

~~~ Rainfall has been light enough so far this year, that many areas are below, or well below normal. As I’ve mentioned before, our spring rainfall turned out to be less productive than we like to see…which pushes us into a dry summer. If we don’t see some added precipitation coming from some source, which is not on our radar screens at this time, I’ll be writing more and more about that dry weather feature called drought. We actually have drought conditions that exist already, with localized severe drought conditions on Molokai and the Big Island. We remain ever hopeful that some upper level trough of low pressure will move overhead, helping to wring-out extra showers in the not too distant future.

~~~ It’s early Tuesday evening here in Kihei, Maui, as I begin writing this last paragraph of today’s narrative. Tuesday was yet another wonderful summer day here in Hawaii. Clear blue skies prevailed in many areas, with warm to very warm sunshine beaming down. Each of the islands, along the leeward slopes for the most part, developed thick cloud cover, where some localized pretty heavy rains fell. Here on Maui, the rains began upcountry in Ulupalakua, and during the afternoon hours worked their way down towards the coasts into Wailea and even parts of south Kihei I understand. Looking out the window here though, at around 5pm, the clouds are sparse looking towards the north shore, where not a hint of rain is in sight. I’m about ready to leave Kihei for the drive up to Kula, where I’ll find cooler temperatures, and the perfect place awaits me, my deck…to view the sunset. I hope you had a great Tuesday wherever you happened to have spent it! I’ll be back very early Wednesday morning with your next new weather narrative from paradise. Aloha for now…Glenn. 

Interesting:

Global warming will sow destruction across Russia and ex-Soviet states, a report said on Tuesday after the world’s richest countries issued targets on harmful emissions that environmentalists criticized as too soft. The 52-page report — written by green group WWF and British charity Oxfam — described a grim picture of social, ecological and economic collapse in the world’s biggest country and its former empire unless the world took urgent action. "This diagram shows infrastructure collapse. When the temperature raises the infrastructure breaks," WWF climate change expert in Russia Alexei Kokorin said holding up a diagram of the ex-Soviet Union swathed in bands of red, orange and yellow at a presentation of the report in Moscow. Earlier on Tuesday leaders of G8 nations — Japan, the United States, Britain, Russia, Canada, Germany, France and Italy — agreed to halve emissions blamed for climate change by 2050, but environmentalists slammed the targets as too soft.

The WWF/Oxfam report on climate change in Russia and the former Soviet Union had been timed to press home this point. Photos on the report’s cover showed a dog sleigh team panting against an iceless wasteland, a shrinking glacier, cracking mud in a dry river bed and a polar bear stuck on a isolated piece of ice. Russia — which spans from eastern Europe to Asia’s Far East and is 60 percent covered by permafrost — is particularly at risk from temperature rises, the report said. "We must understand that damage caused by climate change is here and now rather than a problem in the distant future, in distant lands," WWF’s director in Russia, Igor Chestin, said in a statement alongside the report.

Interesting2: The United States Senate passed (June 27, 2008), by unanimous consent, legislation that will allow the U.S. to join an international treaty that could dramatically cut ocean ship pollution that causes tens of thousands of global deaths annually. “The Marine Pollution Prevention Act of 2008” (H.R. 802), was passed overwhelmingly by the U.S. House of Representatives last year. “This action could be a sea change that ultimately helps steer us to cleaner, healthier air for the millions of Americans harmed by toxic air pollution from U.S. and foreign-flagged ships,” said Janea Scott, a senior attorney for Environmental Defense Fund based in Los Angeles. “This action will help our country secure protective international standards for large ocean-going ships. We urge our government to immediately complete the critical process of ratifying the MARPOL treaty.”

Annex VI of the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, commonly known as “MARPOL,” is an international treaty that governs air pollution from large ocean-going ships. Large ocean-going ships are a major source of soot, sulfur dioxide and smog-forming pollution that are associated with premature deaths, hospital visits, and asthma attacks that exact a heavy toll on human health for millions of Americans. About ninety percent of the ships that dock at U.S. ports are foreign-flagged international vessels. Shipping-related soot emissions contribute to approximately 60,000 global deaths annually, with impacts concentrated in coastal regions on major trade routes.