Blue Angels in the mountains of Hawaii
Photo Credit: flickr.com

The trade winds will dominate our Hawaiian Islands weather picture well into the future. Wind speeds will remain in the light to moderately strong range, although those usual windiest areas will find somewhat stronger gusts at times. High pressure will remain anchored in the area north through northeast of Hawaii, which will be the source of our long lasting trade wind weather pattern.

Dry weather will prevail, with just a few showers falling here and there. Whatever few showers that do ride in on the trades, will fall along the windward coasts and slopes. The leeward sides will find dry weather, with the only exception being Kona slopes, where the usual afternoon cloudiness may drop a couple of light showers.

~~~ As you can tell, by reading the two paragraphs above, there’s nothing much happening here in the Aloha state at this time. I suppose "nothing much happening", in this regard, means just typical late spring weather circumstances. The overlying atmosphere is dry and stable, with a low trade wind inversion across all the islands. This simply means that clouds will remain on the shallow side, inhibiting showers in most areas.

~~~ We have to go out further afield, or in this case, further across the ocean, to find any action here in the Pacific. There’s a tropical storm churning the waters of the western Pacific, called Nakri…here’s a storm tracking map. Looking in the other direction, in the eastern part of the basin, we find an area that has a medium chance of developing into a tropical cyclone…here’s a map of that area. Otherwise, here in the central Pacific, where our hurricane season begins June 1st, we have nothing of the sort brewing.

~~~ Tuesday was a pleasant day in most areas here in the islands. The trade winds were balmy, and just strong enough to keep the volcanic haze at bay on the smaller islands. The Big Island on the other hand, and especially the Kau and Kona Districts, continue to see rather thick vog, making air visibilities and qualities poor there. The plentiful sunshine in most areas, especially along the local beaches, made for a warm to very warm day. There’s nothing unusual this time of year, for the Kahului airport on Maui, to capture the hot spot for the day award…which was 88F degrees Tuesday. I’ll be back very early Wednesday morning with your next new weather narrative from paradise. I hope you have a great Tuesday night wherever you happen to be reading from! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting: U.S. researchers are ramping up their use of unmanned, remote-controlled airplanes this year to penetrate the heart of Atlantic hurricanes in the hope of learning more about what makes the giant storms tick.  But they will be flying the rugged drones from the eastern Caribbean island of Barbados because American aviation authorities won’t let them launch the tiny aircraft from U.S. soil out of concern they could endanger other planes. Nonetheless, storm researchers are confident their drones, which resemble hobbyists’ model airplanes but can be controlled by satellites, will give them a more complete picture of the core of cyclones than they’ve ever had before.  The drones can fly into the eye of a storm just 300 feet above the sea surface and send back a constant stream of temperature, pressure, wind and humidity readings. "It can get measurements we couldn’t get otherwise," said Joe Cione, a research meteorologist with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "That area of the storm is critical because that’s where the maximum winds are. It will give us a better understanding of where the energy is extracted out of the sea." Made by Australia‘s Aerosonde Pty Ltd. and worth between $50,000 and $80,000, the unmanned aircraft measure just 7-feet long, have a 9-foot wingspan, and weigh only 28 pounds.

Interesting2: The ongoing world food crisis has incited riots and protests in more than ten countries over the past several months. In Haiti, seven people were killed in riots that led to the ouster of Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis. Egypt‘s President Mubarak enlisted the army to produce and distribute bread after several people were killed in bakery clashes.

Drought, a declining dollar, and a shift of investment money into commodities have all contributed to bare shelves and empty bellies. The use of cropland for biofuel production has also put pressure on the food supply. At the same time, per capita consumption of meat in the developing world has doubled in the last 20 years, as dietary changes reflect the populations’ expanding wealth. Despite such growth, the average amount of calories consumed or discarded daily in the United States remains several belt notches beyond even some European levels.

Traditional methods of assembly-line meat production require not only ever-increasing inputs of corn, soy, and other grains, but also enormous amounts of energy. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization reported in 2006 that the livestock sector generates 18 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than the transport sector. 

The food crisis is endemic and long term. According to the Guardian, to match the growth in human population "more food will have to be produced worldwide over the next 50 years than has been during the past 10,000 years combined." 

In 1932, Winston Churchill said, "Fifty years hence we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium." The timing of his prediction proved ambitious, but the technology is becoming attainable. 

Animal-free in vitro meat may present a partial solution to hunger. Jason Matheny, director of New Harvest, a nonprofit that funds research on in vitro meat, says that a single cell could produce the annual meat supply for the entire world. And it can be done in a way that’s better for the environment and human health than raising livestock.

The incredible blue ocean here in the islands
Photo Credit: flickr.com

The trade winds will continue through the rest of this week. Wind speeds will remain in the light to moderately strong range, although those usual windiest areas will find somewhat stronger gusts at times. The latest computer forecast models continue to show low pressure approaching the state around mid-week, which may make our trade winds a bit lighter for several days thereafter.

The overlying air mass is dry and stable now, which will keep showers to a minimum. Whatever few showers that do ride in on the trades, will fall along the windward coasts and slopes. The leeward sides will be mostly sunny to partly cloudy during the days, with dry weather in the forecast. The Kona slopes will see the usual afternoon cloudiness, and may receive a few upcountry showers during the afternoon hours. 

~~~ It’s Memorial Day, a day to remember all the fallen soldiers of past wars that the United States has fought…and there is no lack of those. Personalizing it, I could have easily been just a memory for my friends and family. I was drafted into the army, and sent to the Viet Nam war…ending up out in the field with an infantry brigade. Let’s just put it this way, I made it through that experience by the skin of my teeth, with many close calls! Today is a day however to remember those that didn’t make it back, to honor those that did what they were told to do, and died in the process. There are so many people out there who remember their fallen loved ones, and miss them everyday, and who will continue to do so through the rest of their lives.

Perhaps we should take the opportunity to remember all those people who have died fighting wars everywhere in the world, not just the U.S. When I think about the reality of war, it seems so useless, so barbaric, compared to sitting down and talking between people who have the power to make decisions to fight or not. As smart as we are, somehow it seems like we, all of us here on this planet, could find a more positive way to deal with each other…both person to person, and country to country. It’s a sad state of affairs that we find ourselves in, but sometimes its alright to feel sad, and to miss our friends and family who are no longer with us…but should be!

~~~ This was a delightful holiday, with warm to very warm air temperatures everywhere. The warmest of the warm was the Kahului airport, here on Maui…topping out at 89F degrees. It’s just a little after 5pm as I write these words, and up here at the 3,000+ foot elevation, in Kula, Maui, it’s partly cloudy and cooler, with my outside temperature sensor reading 66F degrees. My neighbors are now into the putting thing, and came home with three putters, that a friend of theirs had given them. So they are stocked with putters and plenty of golf balls now. We went down to the Pukalani Country Club this afternoon, for some putting, as he was dying to try this new sport out. The other night he and his wife and I were putting on their carpet into a cup, which was surprisingly fun! I’ll be very early Tuesday morning with your next new weather narrative. I hope you have a great night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.

The old saying…lucky you live Hawaii
Photo Credit: flickr.com

The Hawaiian Islands are fully back into a normal trade wind weather pattern. These cooling and refreshing trade winds will continue Sunday and Monday…on into the week. Wind speeds were blowing in the light to moderately strong range, although those usual windiest areas will see stronger gusts. The latest computer forecast models continue to show a cold front approaching the state Tuesday, which will make our trade winds lighter for several days thereafter…although not stopping them altogether.

The overlying air mass is very dry and stable now, which will keep showers to a minimum through Memorial Day. Whatever few showers that do ride in on the trades, will fall along the windward coasts and slopes. The leeward sides will be mostly sunny to partly cloudy during the days, with dry weather in the forecast. The Kona slopes will see the usual afternoon cloudiness, and may receive a few upcountry showers during the afternoon hours. 

~~~  Sunday has been a nice relaxing day, in which I stayed home here in Kula, Maui. I did just take a quick trip down to the Pukalani Country Club however, for some putting. I’m not going to go on and on about this, and tell you my scores each time I play. I do have to add though, during one game on this 6 hole putting green, I hit 2 holes in one, and went to 2 putt the rest of the holes…giving me my best score of 10! I was so delighted, I had to call my parents and let them know, as my Dad loves golf. By the way, I don’t consider myself a putter, as I only have one club, this putter, and one ball.

~~~ I had planned on going over to Wailea to a party, but I never made it. Instead, I’m going down to lower Kula for dinner and a glass of wine. I’m actually kind of relieved that I didn’t have to make the big drive across the island and back. This friend just lives 10 minutes down the road, which makes it more manageable in terms of time in the car. I must admit though, I do enjoy driving, always have ever since I started driving as a kid. I’ll be back Monday on Memorial Day with your next new weather narrative. I hope you have a great Sunday night wherever you happen to be reading from! Aloha for now…Glenn.

The old saying: lucky you live Hawaii
Photo Credit: flickr.com

The Hawaiian Islands are fully back into a normal trade wind weather pattern. These cooling and refreshing trade winds will continue through the Sunday and beyond. Wind speeds were blowing in the light to moderately strong range Saturday, increasing a notch into the moderately strong category Sunday. The latest computer forecast models continue to show a cold front approaching the state this coming Tuesday, which will make our trade winds lighter for several days thereafter…although not stopping altogether.

The overlying air mass is very dry and stable now, which will keep showers to a minimum through the weekend into Memorial Day. Whatever few showers that do ride in on the trades, will fall along the windward coasts and slopes. The leeward sides will be mostly sunny to partly cloudy during the days, with dry weather in the forecast. The Kona slopes will see the usual afternoon cloudiness, and may receive a few upcountry showers during the afternoon hours. This latest satellite photo does show a cloud area approaching the state from east, so that Sunday will likely be somewhat cloudier than Saturday was.

~~~  I had a good surfing session over on the Lahaina side this morning. The waves were small, although there were some head high sets, with good wind conditions where I paddled out. I surfed for about an hour, and then got out when the crowds started to close in, and the winds started to come up enough to make the ocean choppier. It felt so good to be out in the ocean, and to ride some nice south swell waves!

~~~ I took the drive back to the north shore, arriving at Baldwin Beach, near Paia town around 9am or so. I took a nice walk down the beach, and a quick swim, which was also soul soothing. Then I did something new, which was take a short drive down to Spreckelsville, to the Maui Country Club golf course. It’s a private course, but I took the chance of sneaking onto the small 5 hole putting green they have there. There was hardly anyone around, so somehow I thought it would be ok.

~~~ I made a little game out of it, and started playing. The first three games, it took me 15 putts to go around. The fourth try I had to give myself a little talking to…to bear down a little, get it together Glenn. This talk did some good, as I was able to get my score down to 11, which made me very happy. I decided to step into the club house and get a brochure before I left. I was surprised to find that the pro and the manager both knew of me from my TV weather show, and this webpage. The resident pro took my rusty putter in the back and put it on the grinder, and gave it back to me shining…I was flattered.

~~~ I did my weekly shopping at Mana Foods in Paia, and then drove home here to Kula. I found myself rather tired, after all my morning activites, and have taken it easy during the afternoon hours. As soon as I finish this last paragraph, I’ll head outside and relate to my neighbors, they’re fun folks to hang out with. I’m not sure what I’ll do Sunday morning, although I’m tempted to go surfing again, although all that driving is a bit much. I might just head down to Pukalani and putt on my 6 hole little course down there? Then again, I might not do anything in the morning, as I have a party to go to over in Wailea tomorrow afternoon. At any rate, I hope you have a great Saturday night, and that you will join me again Sunday morning for the next new weather narrative from paradise. Aloha until then…Glenn.

Paradise on the island of Kauai
Photo Credit: flickr.com

As a late season cold front continues to dissipate to our northwest, a trade wind producing ridge of high pressure is pushing into the area northeast of the islands. This pressure configuration, as shown on local weather maps, is allowing the return of the trade winds. The trade winds arrived back over the Big Island Thursday, then rode up over the rest of the island chain during the day Friday. These cooling and refreshing trade winds will continue into the weekend and beyond, clearing the recent episode of voggy weather handily.

As the trade winds are now well established here in the islands, the majority of showers, carried in on these strengthening winds…will fall along the windward sides.  The overlying atmosphere is dry and stable now however, which will limit the extent, and intensity of those windward biased showers. The leeward sides will be sunny to partly cloudy during the days, with dry weather in the forecast. The Kona slopes may see a few upcountry showers during the afternoon hours, otherwise, pleasant weather will continue just about everywhere.

NOAA has now confirmed that the eastern and central north Pacific will see less than the normal amount of tropical cyclone activity during the upcoming 2008 hurricane season. This is good news, as no one wants to hear about an above normal amount of hurricanes prowling our surrounding waters! As I’m sure you’ve heard, and in contrast, the Atlantic Ocean is expecting more than the normal number of tropical storms and hurricanes this summer. Here in the central Pacific, where Hawaii is, we’re expecting just 3-4 tropical cyclones between June 1st and November 30th…our hurricane season. For context, a normal year would see 4-5 tropical cyclones plying the waters of our area of the Pacific.

We’re transitioned out of our recent light wind, vog producing, weather event Friday. The trade winds will ventilate our atmosphere now, bringing us back into a clear skied reality as we move into the weekend time frame. This long three day weekend, the Memorial Day holiday weekend, will have good weather here in the islands. I can’t think of any outdoor activity that will have weather related problems. It will be a time to get out there and enjoy Mother Nature here in the tropics.

~~~  I’m just getting ready to leave Kihei, Maui, to take the drive across the Central Valley, and then up the Haleakala Highway into the Upcountry area. I’m going to stop at the Pukalani Country Club, and try my hand at putting again. I have this little game I play at the putting green, that has six holes. The first time I played, it took me 15 putts to go around this little course… the second time I tried, I whittled it down to 14 putts. This evening, I’d like to make it in 13 putts if I can, at least that’s the goal I have set out for myself.

~~~ I’ll go home to Kula after that, have dinner, do some reading, and hit the hay fairly early. I getting up very early Saturday morning to do the updating on this website, have a quick breakfast, coffee, and hit the road towards Lahaina. I’ll have my surfboard on the car, and hope to find some nice little waves to ride over on that west side of the island. I’m not expecting to find much to ride, but it doesn’t take much to satisfy me. I’m going early so I can beat the trade winds, which bring choppy ocean conditions with them. The early birds get the smooth ocean conditions here in the islands.

~~~ I hope you have a great Friday night wherever you happen to be spending it! I’ll have the usual new weather narrative from paradise waiting for you here, at pretty much the same time you find it during a normal weekday, given my Saturday plans. Aloha for now…Glenn

Interesting: The U.S. Air Force operates the "world’s largest airline" and every $10-per-barrel increase in crude oil boosts its annual operating costs by $610 million, Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne said on Thursday. The Air Force’s bill for aviation fuel was about $6 billion in fiscal 2007, Wynne told a defense industry group. He declined to predict what the total would be for 2008.  U.S. crude oil futures soared to a record above $135 a barrel on Wednesday, more than double the price of one year ago. "We are very concerned about the instability in oil prices because it wreaks havoc on how we manage our flying-hour program across the Air Force, just as it is wreaking havoc on the pricing statistics for an airline," Wynne said. The jump in fuel prices has hammered the U.S. commercial airline industry, forcing seven small carriers to file for bankruptcy or to close their doors in the past five months. The Air Force spent just over $6 billion on fuel costs in fiscal 2006, more than double its costs in fiscal 2001, before the start of the war in Afghanistan. The Air Force, which has 19,000 pilots operating 5,700 aircraft and also flies unmanned aircrafts, has launched an ambitious drive to reduce its carbon dioxide output and reduce its reliance on foreign oil.

Interesting2: The US is always looking for ways of improving its seasonal hurricane forecasts and Amato Evan reckons he can help. He is testing a new forecasting tool, and the critical element is dust. Every year, large amounts of Saharan dust are blown off the West African coast and over the North Atlantic. There, they are thought to reflect solar radiation back out into space, cooling the temperature of the surface of the ocean. Given that the North Atlantic is the breeding ground for hurricanes that make landfall in the U and that their formation is triggered by warm sea-surface temperatures, Evan believes studying desert dust could improve the forecasts put out at the beginning of the hurricane season each May. Evan and his colleagues calculated the dust’s influence on sea-surface temperatures and hurricane strength by combining 25 years of satellite data showing the amount of dust suspended in the atmosphere with a conventional climate model. They estimate that about one-third of the increase in hurricanes intensity over the last 25 years is due to decreases in atmospheric dust load.

Interesting3: As Burma’s government finally allows foreign aid workers into the country, the UN is warning that only a few weeks remain before the country’s main rice crop, in the hard-hit Irrawaddy Delta, must be planted. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization says that the damage caused by Cyclone Nargis to the region’s irrigation canals and tidal defenses will have to be repaired before soils can start to recover from salt damage. So even if the next crop gets planted, it could yield less rice than usual. Nargis, which hit southern Burma on 2 May, is now thought to have killed 134,000 people and left 2.4 million homeless. The UN estimates that only a quarter of the victims have received any assistance. There are reports of cholera among survivors, who have little or no shelter or clean water. Foreign aid workers, and ordinary Burmese trying to bring help from elsewhere in the country, have been banned from going deep into the delta region. It was not immediately clear whether Friday’s announcement, made by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon after a meeting with the junta’s chief, General Than Shwe, meant foreign aid workers would be able to enter the delta, or when.

Interesting4: More than 50 percent of wide-ranging oceanic shark species are threatened with extinction as a result of overfishing, according to a new study. The research, conducted by 15 scientists from institutes around the world and organized by the IUCN Shark Specialist Group, focused on oceanic pelagic sharks and rays, including great white sharks, whale sharks, crocodile sharks, bigeye threshers, basking sharks, shortfin makos, longfin makos, salmon sharks, silky sharks, porbeagle sharks, oceanic whitetip sharks, blue sharks, manta rays, spinetail devilrays, giant devilrays and Chilean devilrays.  

The team determined that 16 out of the 21 oceanic shark and ray species that are caught in high seas fisheries are at heightened risk of extinction due primarily to targeted fishing for valuable fins and meat as well as indirect take in other fisheries.  In most cases, these catches are unregulated and unsustainable. The increasing demand for the delicacy "shark fin soup," driven by rapidly growing Asian economies, means that often the valuable shark fins are retained and the carcasses discarded.  This is the first study to determine the global threat status of 21 species of wide-ranging oceanic sharks and rays, said study leader Nicholas Dulvy of the Centre for Environment, Fishers and Aquaculture Science, Lowestoft Laboratory in the United Kingdom.

Interesting5: Scientists have found life about twice as far below the seafloor as has ever been documented before. A coring sample off the coast of Newfoundland turned up single-celled microbes living in searing temperatures about a mile (1,626 meters) below the seafloor. "These are probably not only the deepest, but the hottest organisms found in deep marine sediments," said R. John Parkes, a geobiologist at CardiffUniversity in Wales. "I was hoping we would find them this deep, so we were very excited that we actually did confirm they were present. It’s fascinating to know what proportion of our planet actually has living organisms in it."  

While life has been known to exist at even greater depths beneath land — such as bacteria found nearly two miles underground in a gold mine in South Africa — life under the sea had previously only been detected to depths of about half a mile (842 meters) below the seafloor.  Parkes and his colleagues analyzed core samples returned from the Ocean Drilling Program. They found evidence for prokaryotic cells, which lack a central nucleus, that appear to be from the archaea family, a sister domain to bacteria.

Sea cave on the Napali coast of Kauai
Photo Credit: flickr.com

Our local winds will remain light and variable, drifting in from the south and southeast for the time being, becoming trade winds Friday. A late season cold front has pushed our trade wind producing ridge down over the northern island of Kauai. This is why our trade winds have been located just to the south of Hawaii. This wind direction has carried volcanic haze up over the islands, along with muggy air from the deeper tropics too. The trade winds arrived back over the Big Island during the day Thursday, and will ride up over the rest of the island chain during the day Friday.

The light south winds near Kauai and Oahu, provided the impetus for localized heavy showers Wednesday  night into the day Thursday.  Our weather will remain in a light wind convective pattern Thursday, with the chance of more locally heavy downpours, especially on the Kauai end of the chain. The daytime heating may trigger showers for the other islands during the afternoons as well. The returning trades Friday into this weekend, will bring back a few showers to the windward sides then.

The current light south to southeast breezes have brought more of that infamous volcanic emission over the islands now. This vog hasn’t gotten as thick as it was last week, although its pretty darn thick! Fortunately, this will be a brief period of hazy weather, as by later Friday the trade winds will have begun carrying the haze away downstream of the Aloha state. We saw muted sunshine during the day Thursday, with much better air qualities and visibilities returning later Friday into this weekend.

I must say that I can hardly believe what I’m about to write next! The computer forecast models are showing another extremely late season cold front approaching the islands by the middle of next week! This will put us practically into the summer month of June, which is "way too late" to be seeing a cold front digging down this into the tropics…into our area of the central north Pacific. If this manifests as the models describe, this would be the third week in a row that we’ve seen very late season cold fronts pushing our trade winds down to the south of the islands. This in turn veers our winds to the southeast, carrying thick volcanic haze up over the islands!

~~~  Thursday was another very voggy day here in the state of Hawaii, at least on most of the islands. Here on Maui, late Thursday afternoon, it was not only hazy, but also quite cloudy. The rainiest rains during the last 24 hours fell on the islands of Kauai and Oahu. This will have been the last day of light south to southwest winds, with the trade winds arriving over all of the state by the end of the day Friday. This will begin the clearing process, with less haze as we move into the upcoming holiday weekend.

~~~ I’ll be back very early Friday morning, with your next new weather narrative from paradise, available right around 530am HST, which will be 830am PST, and 1130am on the east coast…which will cover most of the readers of this website. There are lots of you out there, as I did a search on all the major search engines today, typing in Hawaii Weather, which is fairly wide ranging search, and this website came up #1 on all of them! I’m thrilled that it is so easy to find this site, and that so many of you log on daily, or once in a while, whatever! I hope you have a great Thursday night wherever you happen to be reading from. Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting: NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center today announced that projected climate conditions point to a below-normal hurricane season in the eastern Pacific this year. The Climate Prediction Center outlook calls for a 70 percent probability of a below normal season, a 25 percent probability of a near normal season, and a 5 percent probably of an above normal season. Allowing for forecast uncertainties, seasonal hurricane forecasters estimate a 60 to 70 percent chance of 11 to 16 named storms, including five to eight hurricanes and one to three major hurricanes (category 3, 4, or 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale).

An average eastern Pacific hurricane season produces 15 to 16 named storms, with nine becoming hurricanes and four to five becoming major hurricanes. Among the factors influencing this year’s eastern Pacific outlook are the multi decadal signal – the atmospheric conditions that have decreased hurricane activity over the eastern Pacific Ocean since 1995 – and the expected lingering effects of La Niña.  “La Niña conditions have weakened since February and may become neutral by summer’s end,” said Gerry Bell, Ph.D., lead seasonal hurricane forecaster at the center. “We typically see less hurricane activity in the eastern Pacific when La Niña is active or neutral.”

Interesting2: Basic food crops dangerously vulnerable. In the case of wheat, for instance, as a deadly new strain of Black Stem Rust devastates harvests across Africa and Arabia, and threatens the staple food supply of a billion people from Egypt to Pakistan, the areas where potentially crop and life-saving remnant wild wheat relatives grow are only minimally protected.  “Our basic food plants have always been vulnerable to attack from new strains of disease or pests and the result is often mass hunger and starvation, as anyone who remembers their school history of the Irish Potato Famine will know,” said Liza Higgins-Zogib, Manager of People and Conservation at WWF International. 

“In more recent times we have avoided similar collapses in the production when disease strikes essential foodstuffs like wheat by developing new commercial varieties from naturally resistant wild relatives.”  “Unfortunately the natural habitat of most of the wild or traditional descendents of our modern food plants is without legal and physical protection, leaving them at risk.”   Also at risk are the indigenous and traditional peoples who are critical parts of the landscapes associated with crop wild relatives, who are losing their lands and cultural practices — which puts humanity’s food at even further risk.

Interesting3: The world’s poorest countries could pay 40 percent more for food this year than they did last year, according to a United Nations report released Thursday.  In those countries nearly a billion people are already on the brink of malnourishment and as food prices climb more at at risk of starving. The latest Food Outlook report, compiled by the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization, shows that countries which spend a substantial part of their budgets on food will pay $169 billion this year for food imports. That is 40 percent higher than last year, and four times higher than in 2000. "Food is no longer the cheap commodity that it once was," FAO Assistant Director-general Hafez Ghanem said.

"Rising food prices are bound to worsen the already unacceptable level of food deprivation suffered by 854 million people. "We are facing the risk that the number of hungry will increase by many more millions of people." The FAO lists 82 countries as "Low-Income Food-Deficit Countries" which cannot produce or import enough food to meet their all their population’s needs. More than half of the countries are in Africa.

Interesting4: More than 50 percent of wide-ranging oceanic shark species are threatened with extinction as a result of overfishing, according to a new study. The research, conducted by 15 scientists from institutes around the world and organized by the IUCN Shark Specialist Group, focused on oceanic pelagic sharks and rays, including great white sharks, whale sharks, crocodile sharks, bigeye threshers, basking sharks, shortfin makos, longfin makos, salmon sharks, silky sharks, porbeagle sharks, oceanic whitetip sharks, blue sharks, manta rays, spinetail devilrays, giant devilrays and Chilean devilrays.  

The team determined that 16 out of the 21 oceanic shark and ray species that are caught in high seas fisheries are at heightened risk of extinction due primarily to targeted fishing for valuable fins and meat as well as indirect take in other fisheries.  In most cases, these catches are unregulated and unsustainable. The increasing demand for the delicacy "shark fin soup," driven by rapidly growing Asian economies, means that often the valuable shark fins are retained and the carcasses discarded.  This is the first study to determine the global threat status of 21 species of wide-ranging oceanic sharks and rays, said study leader Nicholas Dulvy of the Centre for Environment, Fishers and Aquaculture Science, Lowestoft Laboratory in the United Kingdom.

Interesting5: Scientists have found life about twice as far below the seafloor as has ever been documented before. A coring sample off the coast of Newfoundland turned up single-celled microbes living in searing temperatures about a mile (1,626 meters) below the seafloor. "These are probably not only the deepest, but the hottest organisms found in deep marine sediments," said R. John Parkes, a geobiologist at CardiffUniversity in Wales. "I was hoping we would find them this deep, so we were very excited that we actually did confirm they were present. It’s fascinating to know what proportion of our planet actually has living organisms in it."  

While life has been known to exist at even greater depths beneath land — such as bacteria found nearly two miles underground in a gold mine in South Africa — life under the sea had previously only been detected to depths of about half a mile (842 meters) below the seafloor.  Parkes and his colleagues analyzed core samples returned from the Ocean Drilling Program. They found evidence for prokaryotic cells, which lack a central nucleus, that appear to be from the archaea family, a sister domain to bacteria.

The Iao Valley on Maui
Photo Credit: flickr.com

South to southeast breezes have replaced our normal trade winds for the time being. A late season cold front has pushed our trade wind producing ridge down over the state now…which is why our trade winds will be on vacation through the next day or two. This wind direction will carry volcanic haze up over the islands, along with muggy air into Friday. Wind speeds will be generally light, with returning trade winds forecast beginning later Friday into the weekend.

This cold front will stall before arriving here in the Hawaiian Islands. Our weather has taken a turn back into a light wind convective weather pattern now, with generally clear to partly cloudy mornings giving way to afternoon cloudy periods. These convective cumulus clouds over the interiors of the islands will drop a few showers, leaving the beaches dry and quite sunny for the most part during the days. The returning trades this weekend, will bring back a few showers to the windward sides then.

~~~  I’m in Kihei as I begin writing this last paragraph of today’s afternoon update. I still don’t see a lot of volcanic haze out there, with the West Maui Mountains, along with the Iao Valley, quite clearly visible. I would expect the haze to be carried over the state during the night, with restricted visibilities evident by Thursday morning. As noted above however, this stuff will depend greatly on the different wind directions that the winds are carrying this vog up from the Big Island…to each individual island. I’ll be back very early Thursday morning with your next new weather narrative…including the nature of our haze atmospherics then. I hope you have a great Wednesday night until then! Aloha, Glenn.

Interesting: In an effort to improve electronics recycling in the United States, the U.S. Postal Service is developing a free national collection program for small electronic items. The program, now in a pilot stage, provides courtesy envelopes with pre-paid postage for patrons to deposit their unwanted digital cameras, printer cartridges, MP3 players, cell phones, and PDAs. International recycling company Clover Technologies Group processes the devices in its U.S. and Mexican facilities and then refurbishes and resells them if possible. Now limited to select cities, including Chicago and Los Angeles, the program may expand nationwide in the fall, and it eventually may accept a wider range of devices. "It doesn’t cost us anything because [Clover] is paying for postage on the envelope," said Joanne Veto, a post office spokesperson. "For us, it’s a really smart thing to do." The program would be a de facto national electronic recycling program, the first for the United States. As the only industrialized nation not to ratify the 1989 Basel Convention, which requires its signatories to notify developing nations of incoming hazardous waste shipments, many environmentalists have criticized the country for its lack of action to reduce the international spread of electronic garbage, known as e-waste.

Interesting2: About 45 minutes north of downtown Los Angeles, a machine the size of a small truck flattens tons of food scraps, paper towels and other household trash into the side of a growing 300-foot pile. To Waste Management, which operates the landfill, this is more than just a mountain of garbage. Pipes tunneled deep into the mound extract gas from the rotting waste and send it to a plant that turns it into electricity. Apart from the huge-wheeled compactor driving over garbage on its surface, it looks like an ordinary hillside. And it doesn’t even smell. Yet it produces enough energy to power 2,500 homes in Southern California.  About 45 minutes north of downtown Los Angeles, a machine the size of a small truck flattens tons of food scraps, paper towels and other household trash into the side of a growing 300-foot pile. To Waste Management, which operates the landfill, this is more than just a mountain of garbage. Pipes tunneled deep into the mound extract gas from the rotting waste and send it to a plant that turns it into electricity. Apart from the huge-wheeled compactor driving over garbage on its surface, it looks like an ordinary hillside. And it doesn’t even smell. Yet it produces enough energy to power 2,500 homes in Southern California.

Interesting3: Honda Motor Co said on Wednesday it would launch a new, low-cost hybrid car in Japan, North America and Europe in early 2009 as it seeks to cut the lead of Toyota Motor Corp in the green car race.  Despite the pressure of record-high oil prices and concerns over climate change, fuel-efficient and low-emission hybrids still occupy a small niche in the global car market, partly due to their higher costs for both consumers and automakers.  Japan‘s top two automakers lead the industry in the fuel-saving technology which runs on both electricity and gasoline, but Toyota has dominated sales with its groundbreaking Prius model, which is only available as a hybrid.  Koichi Ogawa, chief portfolio manager at Daiwa SB Investments, said it was hard to know whether Honda could challenge Toyota‘s dominance.  "When you say ‘hybrid,’ the image that really comes to mind is Prius," he said. "Honda is very dependent on the U.S. market, which is shifting towards things like hybrids, and for survival having a hybrid (model) is essential."  By twinning a conventional engine and battery-powered electric motor, hybrids currently add $5,000 or more to comparable gasoline models, a premium Honda Chief Executive Takeo Fukui sees coming down to around $2,000 in the next generation of hybrids.  "It is important to move hybrid vehicles from the current image-oriented stage to the new stage toward full-scale penetration," Fukui told a news conference.  Executive Vice President Koichi Kondo said Honda hoped to price the hybrid-only car under 2 million yen ($19,290).

Interesting4: The “Big One,” as earthquake scientists imagine it in a detailed, first-of-its-kind script, unzips California’s mighty San Andreas Fault north of the Mexican border. In less than two minutes, Los Angeles and its sprawling suburbs are shaking like a bowl of jelly. The jolt from the 7.8-magnitude temblor lasts for three minutes — 15 times longer than the disastrous 1994 Northridge quake. Water and sewer pipes crack. Power fails. Part of major highways break. Some high-rise steel frame buildings and older concrete and brick structures collapse. Hospitals are swamped with 50,000 injured as all of Southern California reels from a blow on par with the Sept. 11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina: $200 billion in damage to the economy, and 1,800 dead. Only about 700 of those people are victims of building collapses. Many others are lost to the 1,600 fires burning across the region — too many for firefighters to tackle at once. A team of about 300 scientists, governments, first responders and industries worked for more than a year to create a realistic crisis scenario that can be used for preparedness, including a statewide drill planned later this year. Published by the U.S. Geological Survey and California Geological Survey, it is to be released Thursday in Washington, D.C. Researchers caution that it is not a prediction, but the possibility of a major California quake in the next few decades is very real. Last month, the USGS reported that the GoldenState has a 46 percent chance of a 7.5 or larger quake in the next 30 years, and that such a quake probably would hit Southern California. The Northridge quake, which killed 72 people and caused $25 billion in damage, was much smaller at magnitude 6.7.  “We cannot keep on planning for Northridge,” said USGS seismologist Lucy Jones. “The science tells that it’s not the worst we’re going to face.”

It will be a moonlit night in Hawaii
Photo Credit: flickr.com

Tuesday will be the last day of trade winds, until they begin again later Friday afternoon. A trade wind producing ridge of high pressure is still north of Kauai Tuesday night, the source of our recent light to moderately strong trades. As we move into Wednesday, a late season cold front will push our ridge down over the state…with light southeast winds, and more volcanic haze the result into Thursday.

Satellite imagery shows clouds being carried our way on the trade winds. Whatever showers that fall will make their splash down along the windward sides of the islands. The leeward sides will be generally dry, with lots of sunshine during the days. Our weather will take a turn back into a light wind convective weather pattern Wednesday, with interior showers falling locally during the afternoon hours.
 
An unusually late season cold front is bearing down on the islands from the NW. This cold front will stall before moving into the state however…so no rainfall is expected in association with the cloud band. The close proximity of the front will knock down our trade winds, and turn them southeast…ushering in volcanic haze Wednesday into Friday. It will take the trade winds returning later Friday into the weekend…to ventilate this haze away. 

~~~ The trade winds remained active Tuesday, keeping the volcanic haze at bay down over the Big Island…where the Kona coast was very voggy today. As the trade winds stop, and the southeast breezes begin blowing, look for thickening volcanic haze in other parts of the island chain over the next several days. I’ll be back very early Wednesday morning with your next new weather narrative, I hope you have a great Tuesday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting: According to the 2000 census, America’s office workers spend an average of 52 hours a week at their desks or work stations. Many recent studies on job satisfaction have shown that workers who spend longer hours in office environments, often under artificial light in windowless offices, report reduced job satisfaction and increased stress levels.  How can employers make office environments more conducive to productivity and employee happiness" Try adding some “green” to your office. Not greenbacks—green plants! A research study published in the February 2008 issue of HortScience offers employers and corporations some valuable advice for upping levels of employee satisfaction by introducing simple and inexpensive environmental changes. Dr.Tina Marie (Waliczek) Cade, Associate Professor of Horticulture in the Department of Agriculture at Texas State University, explained that the project was designed to investigate whether employees who worked in offices with windows and views of green spaces and workers who had green plants in their offices perceived greater job satisfaction than employees who did not have access to these environmental components.

Interesting2: Los Angeles officials discussed Thursday a plan to conserve water which includes limiting water use, punishing water wasters and recycling waste water, according to an article in the Los Angeles Times. Officials say the City of Los Angeles will have a 15 percent increase in water demand by 2030. To accommodate the robust need, 32 billion gallons of water will have to be saved or recaptured each year.  Los Angeles officials discussed Thursday a plan to conserve water which includes limiting water use, punishing water wasters and recycling waste water, according to an article in the Los Angeles Times. Officials say the City of Los Angeles will have a 15 percent increase in water demand by 2030. To accommodate the robust need, 32 billion gallons of water will have to be saved or recaptured each year.

Interesting3: When major catastrophes strike, like the recent Asian earthquake and tsunami, the mass deaths can lead one to think that natural disasters are the most likely way people can die. Not by a long shot. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the leading causes of death in the United States are, in this order, heart disease, cancer, stroke, chronic lower respiratory diseases, and "accidental injury," a broad category that includes a lot of stuff that just happens. You are more likely to commit suicide or fall to your death than be killed by a tsunami or any natural disaster, the odds say.  In less advanced countries, where residents often live in poverty and huddle near the sea or in poorly constructed houses, tsunamis, floods and earthquakes are a more looming threat. But even in such locales, there are far greater risks over the course of a lifetime. There are no formal estimates on the risk of death by tsunami, because they occur so infrequently. About 2,200 died in a Papua New Guinea tsunami in 1998; roughly 8,000 in the Philippines in 1976, about 120 in Hawaii and California in 1964. You have to go back to 1896 — 27,000 deaths in Japan — to find one that even approached the 150,000-plus scale of the Asian disaster on Dec. 26, 2004.

Interesting4: Damaged aircraft could repair themselves automatically, even during flight, by mimicking healing processes found in nature, a researcher said this week. One method could be as simple as a resin that oozes into cracks on demand. Not only might such a breakthrough lead to safer planes, but it could also lead to lighter craft that would save fuel, drop costs and reduce global warming gas emissions as well. "At oil approaching $130 a barrel, if you can strip weight off, you could save money," said researcher Ian Bond, a materials scientist at the University of Bristol in England. Aircraft routinely suffer damage from day-to-day use. A great deal of aerospace research goes into materials that can resist damage. "You would be surprised how often trucks drive into aircraft when parked at airports, and then you have tools dropped on planes at maintenance hangers, or hailstones when flying through storms. Very subtle damage, little dings and cracks and bangs that, if left undetected…could grow into something serious. At aircraft hangers, a lot of time is spent trying to find these defects." Aircraft designs that nowadays help cope with damage end up adding weight.

Full moon rising over the Haleakala Crater on Maui
Photo Credit: flickr.com

We’ll see another day of light to almost moderately strong trade winds, before they ease up on Wednesday. A trade wind producing ridge of high pressure is north of Kauai Monday evening. These cooling and refreshing trade breezes will continue the clearing our local skies of the haze now. As Wednesday arrives, another late season cold front will push our ridge down over or near the state…with light winds, and more volcanic haze arriving locally then.

The trade winds will carry some moisture our way over the next couple of days. The atmosphere remains dry and stable however, which will limit the amount of those windward biased showers quite a bit. The leeward sides will be generally dry, with lots of sunshine beaming down during the days. Nice weather will prevail through the next several days. Our weather will take a turn back into a light wind convective weather pattern by mid-week.

~~~ The next couple of nights will be good ones to gaze up. The May full moon is happening, and will fill our after dark hours with lots of reflected sunlight. Speaking of the Moon, this month’s full Moon is the smallest of 2008. Remember that the Moon’s orbit is not perfectly circular but elliptical so there is a closest and farthest point to the Earth every month, called perigee and apogee, respectively. This month’s full Moon coincides with its apogee, therefore making it appear smaller in the sky. The difference visually is less than 10% and most people will probably not notice it, but pictures of the Moon compared at both extremes (perigee and apogee) will definitely show the difference.

~~~ I don’t know about you, but I’ll be looking for that full moon the next couple of nights. I’ll be back here 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: Marine scientists surveying a large undersea mountain chain were amazed to find millions of tiny starfish swirling their arms to capture food in the undersea current. An expedition by 19 scientists, including five from Australia, studied the geology and biology of eight Macquarie Ridge sea mounts. They are part of a string of underwater volcanoes — dormant for millions of years — that stretches 875 miles from south of New Zealand toward Antarctica. The scientists also investigated the world’s biggest ocean current — the Antarctic Circumpolar Current — amid expectations they would find evidence of climate change in the Southern Ocean. While the expedition’s cameras found a wide range of corals, a high density of cardinal fish and the huge coral, the vast collection of brittle stars was the highlight of the voyage. "I’ve personally never seen anything like this — all these animals, the sheer volume — all waiting for food from the current,” expedition member and marine biologist Dr. Mireille Consalvey said Monday. "It challenged what we as scientists thought we knew.” Expedition leader and marine biologist Ashley Rowden said starfish usually cover only slopes away from the top of the undersea mountains. "It got us excited as soon as we saw it,” Rowden said of the site, dubbed "BrittleStarCity.”

Interesting2: Global warming isn’t to blame for the recent jump in hurricanes in the Atlantic, concludes a study by a prominent federal scientist whose position has shifted on the subject. Not only that, warmer temperatures will actually reduce the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic and those making landfall, research meteorologist Tom Knutson reported in a study released Sunday. In the past, Knutson has raised concerns about the effects of climate change on storms. His new paper has the potential to heat up a simmering debate among meteorologists about current and future effects of global warming in the Atlantic. Ever since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, hurricanes have often been seen as a symbol of global warming’s wrath. Many climate change experts have tied the rise of hurricanes in recent years to global warming and hotter waters that fuel them. Another group of experts, those who study hurricanes and who are more often skeptical about global warming, say there is no link. They attribute the recent increase to a natural multi-decade cycle. What makes this study different is Knutson, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s fluid dynamics lab in Princeton, N.J. He has warned about the harmful effects of climate change and has even complained in the past about being censored by the Bush administration on past studies on the dangers of global warming. He said his new study, based on a computer model, argues "against the notion that we’ve already seen a really dramatic increase in Atlantic hurricane activity resulting from greenhouse warming.”

Interesting3: While carbon dioxide has been getting lots of publicity in climate change, reactive forms of nitrogen are also building up in the environment, scientists warn. "The public does not yet know much about nitrogen, but in many ways it is as big an issue as carbon, and due to the interactions of nitrogen and carbon, makes the challenge of providing food and energy to the world’s peoples without harming the global environment a tremendous challenge," University of Virginia environmental sciences professor James Galloway said in a statement.  "We are accumulating reactive nitrogen in the environment at alarming rates, and this may prove to be as serious as putting carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," said Galloway, author of a paper and co-author of a second on the topic in Friday’s issue of the journal Science. While nitrogen alone is inert and harmless, reactive nitrogen compounds — such as ammonia — have been released by its use in nitrogen-based fertilizers and the large-scale burning of fossil fuels. Various forms of nitrogen contribute to greenhouse warming, smog, haze, acid rain dead zones with little or no life along the coasts, and depletion of the ozone layer in the stratosphere, the researchers concluded. The researchers propose ways to reduce nitrogen use, ranging from encouraging its uptake by plants to recovering and reusing nitrogen from manure and sewage and decreasing nitrogen emissions from fossil fuel combustion.

Interesting4: The El Nino phenomenon that has puzzled climate scientists in recent decades may have assisted the first trip around the world nearly 500 years ago. Explorer Ferdinand Magellan encountered fair weather on Nov. 28, 1520, after days of battle through the rough waters south of South America. From there his passage across the Pacific Ocean may have been eased by the calming effects of El Nino, researchers speculate in a new study. When an El Nino occurs, the waters of the Equatorial Pacific become warmer than normal, creating rising air that changes wind and weather patterns. The effects can be worldwide, including drought in the western Pacific and more rain in Peru and the west coast of South America. Tree ring data indicate that an El Nino was occurring in 1519 and 1520 and may even have begun in 1518. After passing through the strait later named for him, Magellan sailed north along the South American coast and then turned northwest, crossing the equator and eventually arriving at the Philippines, where he was killed in a battle with natives. Magellan was seeking the so-called spice islands, now part of Indonesia, and his course took him north of that goal. But the route may have been dictated by mild conditions and favorable winds during an El Nino, anthropologists Scott M. Fitzpatrick of North Carolina State University and Richard Callaghan of the University of Calgary, Canada, propose in a new study of his trip. Their research is summarized in Friday’s edition of the journal Science and is scheduled to be published in full in the August edition of the Journal of Pacific History.

The trade winds are clearing the haze away
Photo Credit: flickr.com

The trade winds are back, and will stick around through Tuesday. A trade wind producing ridge of high pressure is north of Kauai Sunday night. Light trade winds have slipped into the state on Kauai, blowing light to moderately strong from the Big Island up through the island of Oahu. These cooling and refreshing trade breezes continuing the clearing our local skies of the haze now.

Dry weather will continue, despite the return of the trade winds. The atmosphere remains dry and stable, which will remain the case into the first part of the new week. The leeward sides will be generally dry, with lots of sunshine beaming down during the days. Nice weather will prevail through the next several days. Our weather will take a turn back into a light wind convective weather pattern by mid-week.

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