March 29-30, 2009
Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Sunday afternoon:
Lihue, Kauai – 75
Honolulu, Oahu – 81
Kaneohe, Oahu – 75
Kahului, Maui – 79
Hilo, Hawaii – 76
Kailua-kona – 84
Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountains…at 2 p.m. Sunday afternoon:
Kailua-kona – 81F
Princeville, Kauai – 73
Haleakala Crater – missing (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 37 (near 14,000 feet on the Big Island)
Precipitation Totals – The following numbers represent the largest precipitation totals (inches) during the last 24 hours on each of the major islands, as of Sunday afternoon:
0.71 Mount Waialaele, Kauai
0.25 Wheeler Field, Oahu
0.00 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
1.20 Puu Kukui, Maui
0.70 Piihonua, Big Island
Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a strong 1034 millibar high pressure system far to the northeast of the islands. Our trade winds will be moderate to locally strong and gusty Monday and Tuesday…lighter in those more protected places.
Satellite and Radar Images: To view the cloud conditions we have here in Hawaii, please use the following satellite links, starting off with the Infrared Satellite Image of the islands to see all the clouds around the state during the day and night. This next image is one that gives close images of the islands only during the daytime hours, and is referred to as a Close-up visible image. This next image shows a larger view of the Pacific…giving perspective to the wider ranging cloud patterns in the Pacific Ocean. Finally, here’s a looping IR satellite image, making viewable the clouds around the islands 24 hours a day. To help you keep track of where any showers may be around the islands, here’s the latest animated radar image.
Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live webcam on the summit of near 14,000 foot Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. The tallest peak on the island of Maui is the Haleakala Crater, which is near 10,000 feet in elevation. These two webcams are available during the daylight hours here in the islands…and when there’s a big moon rising just after sunset for an hour or two! Plus, during the nights and early mornings you will be able to see stars, and the sunrise too…depending upon weather conditions.
Aloha Paragraphs
Maui, No Ka Oi…as the saying goes ("the best")
Photo Credit: Google.com
Moderately strong trade winds will continue, which will increase in strength as we move into the new week ahead. A large 1035 millibar high pressure system remains the source of these strong and gusty winds Sunday. These winds are strong enough to keep small craft wind advisories active across the Hawaiian channel waters, from Kauai down through the Big Island…as well as a few of the windier coastal waters. There is the expectation that these trade winds will increase in strength Monday through mid-week…necessitating localized wind advisories in those typically most windy areas.
There are some showers along the windward sides Sunday afternoon, with an increase on tap during the first half of the new work week. Meanwhile, the cirrus clouds, being carried our way on the upper winds aloft, will remain a part of our Hawaiian Island weather picture, as we move through the next couple of days. Looking at this satellite image, we see this latest area of cirrus cloudiness covering much of the state. This looping satellite image shows the high clouds (brighter clouds) arriving from the southwest, while the lower level clouds (dull gray), being carried by the trade winds…coming in from the east.
Let’s keep track of the trade wind gusts again today, as they will continue to dominate our Hawaiian Island weather picture Sunday afternoon. These trade winds were still quite gusty at around 3pm, with these numbers (mph) the strongest on each of the individual islands:
Kauai: 35
Oahu: 39
Molokai: 33
Lanai: 37
Kahoolawe: 40
Maui: 45
Big Island: 37
Looking ahead into the next 3-4 days, it appears that the trade winds will do nothing but remain strong, or get stronger. I will keep providing you these top gusts periodically…as I find it very interesting as well.
It’s mid-afternoon Sunday here in Kula, Maui, as I begin typing out this last paragraph. I’m going to take off the rest of the day, or at least I think I am. My Mom sometimes remarks that "you work too much Glenn." So, I’m going to follow her lead, and just take the rest of the day off from updating this website. The truth is that I don’t even feel like updating this popular website as work! By the way, the reason that I refer to my own website as popular, is by referring to what the Google team tells me. They say that so far this month, there have been 411,328 unique page impressions on this site, which quite honestly impresses me! This number is working towards half a million looks at all my pages…by you! The number of times that you have clicked on my google ads has been, as of 3pm Sunday afternoon, 6,872 times…wow! I would like to take this moment to thank you for your readership, it so makes it worth while to continue my daily updates! ~~~ If I really don’t come back online later this evening, than I will absolutely return early Monday morning with your next new weather narrative from paradise. I hope you have a wonderful Sunday evening/night until we meet again here! By the way, rest assured, that if you live here in the islands, we will be viewing the colorful sunset together this evening. Aloha for now…Glenn
Interesting: Honda Motor Company on Tuesday set the base price for its Insight hybrid at 10 percent below the market-leading Prius hybrid made by larger rival Toyota Motor Corp. Honda said the 2010 Insight would start at $19,800, making it the first hybrid to sell in the U.S. market below $20,000. The 2009 model Prius starts at $22,000. Honda has positioned the five-door Insight as an economical alternative to the Prius, which has come to dominate the hybrid market with its distinctive styling and fuel economy. "I think what they are looking to do is to bring a new buyer to the marketplace for hybrids, people who are interested but maybe couldn’t afford the Prius," said Jack Nerad, analyst at Kelley Blue Book, a leading vehicle pricing guide.
Interesting2: Farmers of the future will have to use cattle and sheep that belch less methane, crops that emit far less planet-warming nitrous oxide and become experts in reporting their greenhouse gas emissions to the government. Agriculture is a major source of greenhouse gases, and globally that share will rise as demand for food from growing human populations also increases, scientist Richard John Eckard of the University of Melbourne said on Thursday.
But farmers are facing a near-impossible challenge: feeding the world while trying to trim emissions and adapt to greater extremes of droughts and floods because of global warming, he said. In coming years, farmers will have to monitor and report emissions as more nations move toward emissions trading.
Interesting3: Our brain extracts important information for face recognition principally from the eyes, and secondly from the mouth and nose, according to a new study from a researcher at the University of Barcelona. This result was obtained by analyzing several hundred face images in a way similar to that of the brain. Imagine a photograph showing your friend’s face. Although you might think that every single detail in his face matters to recognize him, numerous experiments have shown that the brain prefers a rather coarse resolution instead, irrespective of the distance at which a face is seen.
Until now, the reason for this was unclear. By analyzing 868 male and 868 female face images, the new study may explain why. The results indicate that the most useful information is obtained from the images if their size is around 30 x 30 pixels. Moreover, images of eyes give the least "noisy" result (meaning that they convey more reliable information to the brain compared to images of the mouth and nose), suggesting that face recognition mechanisms in the brain are specialized to the eyes.
Interesting4: A new study published in the journal Soil Use and Management attempts for the first time to measure the extent and severity of land degradation across the globe and concludes that 24% of the land area is degrading – often in very productive areas. Land degradation – the decline in the quality of soil, water and vegetation – is of profound importance but until now there have been no consistent global data by which to assess its extent and severity.
For nearly thirty years the world has depended on the Global Assessment of Soil Degradation (GLASOD) based on the subjective judgement of soil scientists who knew the conditions in their countries.
GLASOD indicated that 15 per cent of the land area was degraded, but this was a map of perceptions, rather than measurement of land degradation.The new study by Bai et al. measures global land degradation based on a clearly defined and consistent method using remotely sensed imagery. The results are startling.
The new assessment indicates that 24 per cent of the land has been degraded over the period 1981-2003 – but there is hardly any overlap with the GLASOD area that recorded the cumulative effects of land degradation up to about 1990. One of the authors, Dr David Dent of ISRIC – World Soil Information explains: “Degradation is primarily driven by land management and catastrophic natural phenomena.
Interesting5: A new study by researchers at the University of British Columbia suggests taking public transit may help you keep fit. The study, published in the Journal of Public Health Policy, finds that people who take public transit are three times more likely than those who don’t to meet the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada’s suggested daily minimum of physical activity.
Doctoral student Ugo Lachapelle and Assoc. Prof. Lawrence Frank of the UBC School of Community and Regional Planning used 4,156 travel surveys from metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia, to examine whether transit and car trips were associated with meeting the recommended levels of physical activity by walking. Because transit trips by bus and train often involve walking to and from stops, the study found that users are more likely to meet the recommended 30 minutes of moderate physical activity a day, five days a week.
According to the study, people who drove the most were the least likely to meet the recommended level of physical activity. "The idea of needing to go to the gym to get your daily dose of exercise is a misperception," says Frank, the J. Armand Bombardier Chair holder in Sustainable Transportation and a researcher at the UBC Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability. "These short walks throughout our day are historically how we have gotten our activity. Unfortunately, we’ve engineered this activity out of our daily lives."
Interesting6: Large size and a fast bite spelled doom for bony fishes during the last mass extinction 65 million years ago, according to a new study. Today, those same features characterize large predatory bony fishes, such as tuna and billfishes, that are currently in decline and at risk of extinction themselves, said Matt Friedman, author of the study and a graduate student in evolutionary biology at the University of Chicago. "The same thing is happening today to ecologically similar fishes," he said.
"The hardest hit species are consistently big predators." Studies of modern fishes demonstrate that large body size is linked to large prey size and low rates of population growth, while fast-closing jaws appear to be adaptations for capturing agile, evasive prey—in other words, other fishes. The fossil record provides some remarkable evidence supporting these estimates of function: fossil fishes with preserved stomach contents that record their last meals.
When an asteroid struck the earth at the end of the Cretaceous about 65 million years ago, the resultant impact clouded the earth in soot and smoke. This blocked photosynthesis on land and in the sea, undermined food chains at a rudimentary level, and led to the extinction of thousands of species of flora and fauna, including dinosaurs.
Scientists had speculated that during that interval large predatory fishes might have been more likely than other fishes to go extinct because they tended to have slowly increasing populations, live more spread out, take longer to mature, and occupy precarious positions at the tops of food chains. Today, ecologically similar fishes appear to be the least able to rebound from declining numbers due to overfishing.
Interesting7: University of Michigan ecologists and their colleagues have answered a question that has puzzled biologists for more than a century: What is the main factor that determines a lizard’s ability to shed its tail when predators attack? The answer, in a word: Venom. Tail-shedding, known to scientists as caudal autotomy, is a common anti-predator defense among lizards. When attacked, many lizards jettison the wriggling appendage and flee.
The predator often feasts on the tail while the lucky lizard scurries to safety. Later, the lizard simply grows a new tail. The ease with which lizards shed their tails varies from species to species and from place to place. For more than a century, biologists have suspected that this variation is controlled mainly by predator pressure: As the number of local lizard-eaters rises, so does the need for this effective defense mechanism.
When lizards live alongside lots of creatures eager to devour them, they’re more likely to evolve the ability to shed their tails easily, because this trait enables them to survive long enough to reproduce and pass their genes to the next generation. However, tail loss carries long-term costs, including impaired mobility, lower social status and slower growth rates.
So from an evolutionary perspective, it only makes sense to maintain tail-shedding ability if there are predators around. The U-M-led team decided to test the long-held predator-pressure idea using a clever combination of laboratory experiments and field measurements made in mainland Greece and multiple offshore Aegean Sea islands inhabited by different combinations of predators.
Their conclusion? The predator-pressure hypothesis, while generally true, comes with an unexpected twist: Not all predators are created equal. "The only predators that truly matter are vipers," said U-M vertebrate ecologist Johannes Foufopoulos, co-author of a study published online this week in the journal Evolution.
Interesting8: Italy and Switzerland are planning to redraw their shared alpine border, as global warming is melting the glaciers that originally guided the line. Although peaceful, the move raises fears of future conflicts over shifting borders and resources. Glaciers and ice fields around the world are melting as temperatures rise, with Europe’s high mountains particularly hard hit.
The original proposal to move the Swiss-Italian border comes from Franco Narducci, a member of Italy’s centre-left opposition party. The Italian parliament must approve a new law before the change can happen, whereas Switzerland does not need to go through this process.
The final border will be agreed by a commission of experts from Switzerland’s Federal Office of Topography and Italy’s Military Geographic Institute. "I think it’s fantastic that these two countries are talking about adjusting their borders," says Mark Zeitoun of the University of East Anglia, UK, an expert on international resource management and conflict.
"Elsewhere in the world you see a much more nationalistic attitude." The proposal would move the border by up to 100 meters in several regions, including the area surrounding the famous Matterhorn Mountain, which will remain straddling the border.
Border communities would be unaffected by the border changes, as the area in question is more than 4000 meters above sea level, and uninhabited. However, other areas of glacial melting and geographic change could prove more contentious. "Climate change has the potential to lead to large conflicts, particularly where water resources are concerned," says Nick Robson of the South Asian Strategic Stability Institute.
Interesting9: The warming of Atlantic Ocean waters in recent decades is largely due to declines in airborne dust from African deserts and lower volcanic emissions, a new study suggests. Since 1980, the tropical North Atlantic has been warming by an average of a half-degree Fahrenheit per decade. While that number may sound small, it can translate to big impacts on hurricanes, which are fueled by warm surface waters, said study team member Amato Evan of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
For example, the ocean temperature difference between 1994, a quiet hurricane year, and 2005’s record-breaking year of storms (including Hurricane Katrina), was just 1 degree Fahrenheit. Evan and his colleagues had previously shown that African dust and other airborne particles can suppress hurricane activity by reducing how much sunlight reaches the ocean and keeping the sea surface cool.
Dusty years predict mild hurricane seasons, while years with low dust activity — including 2004 and 2005 — have been linked to stronger and more frequent storms. In the new study, the researchers investigated the exact effect of dust and volcanic emissions on ocean temperatures.
They combined satellite data of dust and other particles with existing climate models and calculated how much of the Atlantic warming observed during the last 26 years could be accounted for by simultaneous changes in African dust storms and tropical volcanic activity, primarily the eruptions of El Chichón in Mexico in 1982 and Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991.
The results: More than two-thirds of this upward trend in recent decades can be attributed to changes in African dust storm and tropical volcano activity during that time. This was a surprisingly large amount, Evan said. The results, detailed in the March 27 issue of the journal Science, suggest that only about 30 percent of the observed Atlantic temperature increases are due to other factors, such as a warming climate.
"This makes sense, because we don’t really expect global warming to make the ocean [temperature] increase that fast," Evan said. This adjustment brings the estimate of global warming’s impact on the Atlantic more in line with the smaller degree of ocean warming seen elsewhere, such as the Pacific.
Of course, this doesn’t discount the importance of global warming, Evan said, but indicates that newer climate models will need to include dust storms as a factor to accurately predict how ocean temperatures will change.
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