March 10-11, 2009
Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Tuesday afternoon:
Lihue, Kauai – 73
Honolulu, Oahu – 81
Kaneohe, Oahu – 77
Kahului, Maui – 81
Hilo, Hawaii – 71
Kailua-kona – 78
Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountains…at 5 p.m. Tuesday afternoon:
Port Allen, Kauai – 81F
Hilo, Hawaii – 68
Haleakala Crater – 41 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – missing (near 14,000 feet on the Big Island)
Precipitation Totals – The following numbers represent the largest precipitation totals (inches) during the last 24 hours on each of the major islands, as of Tuesday afternoon:
1.08 Mount Waialaele, Kauai
8.12 Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
0.01 Molokai
0.02 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
3.89 West Wailuaiki, Maui
3.02 Piihonua, Big Island
Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a 1030 millibar high pressure system located far to the northeast of the islands, and a 1033 millibar high to our NW Wednesday. Meanwhile, we have a trough of low pressure still to east of the Big Island. Our winds will remain generally light from the north to NE into Thursday…locally stronger and gusty.
Satellite and Radar Images: To view the cloud conditions we have here in Hawaii, please use the following satellite links, starting off with 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
Nice snorkeling…Hawaii
Photo credit: Flickr.com
Our local winds are coming in from the north to northeast direction Tuesday, and will remain so into Wednesday…perhaps longer. Our winds will remain generally light to moderate, although locally stronger and gusty when they get pinched through valleys. A developing low pressure system to the northeast of the islands, will keep cool northerly breezes our way during the second half of this week. The computer forecast models are a little fuzzy about how long this low pressure system will remain to our north.
Our local weather has generally calmed down, with the threat of heavy showers tapering off nicely…as the trough of low pressure edges eastward. This area of low pressure is definitely moving away Tuesday evening, which is allowing drier air to move in now. This means that we’ll continue to see spotty rainfall, although much less than we’ve seen lately. As we find northerly breezes coming our way, we’ll also find a drying out of our overlying atmosphere. We will likely see a precipitation producing frontal cloud band arriving at some point Thursday…although it won’t be a big deal.
We actually saw lots more sunshine during the day Tuesday, which was a nice change…finally! Our overlying skies started off partly cloudy to mostly cloudy Tuesday morning…but sunshine filled our skies during the afternoon hours…at least in most areas. Wednesday should be a nice day, with slightly cooler breezes, but at the same time less showers. As noted in the paragraph above, a weak cold front may slide down over the state, mostly along the windward sides at some point during the last two days of this work week.
I’m just getting ready to leave Kihei, for the 40 minute or so drive back home to Kula. Looking out the window down here by the ocean, I can see blue skies for a change. I’m looking forward to hoping in my car, and then out of my work clothes once I get home. Then, I’ll be out on the road for my usual walk, which I greatly enjoy. If I see something unusual on the way upcountry, in terms of weather that is, I’ll get back online a little later and let you know. Otherwise, I’ll be back early Wednesday morning for your next new weather narrative. I anticipate that there will be generally clear skies overhead then, and that it will be cooler in Kula, than it has been for the last several days. I hope you have a great Tuesday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.
One more thing, if you have left me a response in the reply box, down the page from here, and you can’t find it…or my answer, here’s what to do: go to the left hand margin of this page, and find where it says "Other Useful Links", and from there scroll down to where it says Archived Narratives. If you click there, you can go back to the previous day, where you’ll find what you wrote, and what I wrote back at the bottom of that page. By the way, from there you can go back and find any narrative that I’ve written, over the last almost three years!
Interesting: It’s hard to visualize a water crisis while driving the lush boulevards of Los Angeles, golfing Arizona’s green fairways or watching dancing Las Vegas fountains leap more than 20 stories high. So look Down Under. A decade into its worst drought in a hundred years Australia is a lesson of what the American West could become. Bush fires are killing people and obliterating towns. Rice exports collapsed last year and the wheat crop was halved two years running. Water rationing is part of daily life. "Think of that as California’s future," said Heather Cooley of California water think tank the Pacific Institute.
Water raised leafy green Los Angeles from the desert and filled arid valleys with the nation’s largest fruit and vegetable crop. Each time more water was needed, another megaproject was built, from dams of the major rivers to a canal stretching much of the length of the state. But those methods are near their end. There is very little water left untapped and global warming, the gradual increase of temperature as carbon dioxide and other gases retain more of the sun’s heat, has created new uncertainties.
Global warming pushes extremes. It prolongs drought while sometimes bringing deluges the parched earth cannot absorb. California Department of Water Resources Director Lester Snow says two things keep him up at night: drought and flood. "It isn’t that drought is the new norm," said Snow. "Climate change is bringing us higher highs and lower lows in terms of water supplies."
Take Los Angeles, which had its driest year in 2006-2007, with 3 inches of rain. Only two years earlier, more than 37 inches fell, barely missing the record. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a drought emergency last month, and Los Angeles plans to ration water for the first time in 15 years. Courts are limiting the amount of water taken from rivers to save decimated fish populations, which is cutting back even more to farms.
California farmers lost more than $300 million in 2008 and economic losses may accelerate to 10 times that this year as 95,000 people lose their jobs. Farmers will get zero water from the main federal supplier. Nick Tatarakis sank his life savings into the fertile San Joaquin Valley but now thinks his business will die of thirst. "Every year it seems like this water thing is getting rougher and rougher," he said. "I took everything I had saved over the last three or four years, put it into farming almonds, developed this orchard. Now it is coming into its fifth year and probably won’t make it through this year."
Interesting2: Arsenic may be tough, but scientists have found a Yellowstone National Park alga that’s tougher. The alga — a simple one-celled algae called Cyanidioschyzon — thrives in extremely toxic conditions and chemically modifies arsenic that occurs naturally around hot springs, said Tim McDermott, professor in the Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences at Montana State University. Cyanidioschyzon could someday help reclaim arsenic-laden mine waste and aid in everything from space exploration to creating safer foods and herbicides, the scientists said.
The alga and how it detoxifies arsenic are described in a paper that’s posted this week (week of March 9) in the online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, or PNAS. Lead authors are McDermott and Barry Rosen, of Florida International University. Among the four co-authors is Corinne Lehr, who formerly worked with McDermott as a postdoctoral scientist at MSU and is now a faculty member at California Polytechnic State University.
Arsenic is the most common toxic substance in the environment, ranking first on the Superfund list of hazardous substances, the researchers wrote in their paper. McDermott said arsenic is very common in the hot, acidic waters of Yellowstone and presents real challenges for microorganisms living in these conditions. Indeed, there are challenges for the researchers. McDermott said the acid in the soil and water are strong enough that it sometimes eats holes through his jeans when he kneels to collect samples.
Interesting3: A recent study reports that high school students who study fewer science topics, but study them in greater depth, have an advantage in college science classes over their peers who study more topics and spend less time on each. Robert Tai, associate professor at the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education, worked with Marc S. Schwartz of the University of Texas at Arlington and Philip M. Sadler and Gerhard Sonnert of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics to conduct the study and produce the report.
The study relates the amount of content covered on a particular topic in high school classes with students’ performance in college-level science classes. "As a former high school teacher, I always worried about whether it was better to teach less in greater depth or more with no real depth. This study offers evidence that teaching fewer topics in greater depth is a better way to prepare students for success in college science," Tai said. "These results are based on the performance of thousands of college science students from across the United States."
The 8,310 students in the study were enrolled in introductory biology, chemistry or physics in randomly selected four-year colleges and universities. Those who spent one month or more studying one major topic in-depth in high school earned higher grades in college science than their peers who studied more topics in the same period of time. The study revealed that students in courses that focused on mastering a particular topic were impacted twice as much as those in courses that touched on every major topic.
Interesting4: It seems we’re not the only ones struggling to adapt to the summer weather – University of Queensland researchers have found the increased temperatures may be affecting turtles too. Zoologist Dr David Booth, from UQ’s School of Biological Sciences, said green turtle hatchlings from Heron Island weren’t swimming as well as usual. “The 2008-2009 green turtle nesting season on Heron Island has seen the highest nest temperatures recorded at this site, with many nests having average temperatures above 31 degrees, and experiencing temperatures above 35 degrees during the last week of incubation,” Dr Booth said.
“Initial impressions are that hatchlings emerging from these hot nests are not as strong swimmers as hatchlings coming from cooler nests recorded in previous years. “If climate change results in consistently high nest temperatures in the future, then the poorer swimming ability of hatchlings emerging from hot nests may have a negative impact on recruitment of hatchlings from coral cays because predation rate is thought to be related to swimming ability.”
Interesting5: Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has affirmed on March 6 the decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to remove gray wolves from the list of threatened and endangered species in the western Great Lakes and the northern Rocky Mountain states of Idaho and Montana and parts of Washington, Oregon and Utah. Wolves will remain a protected species in Wyoming. “The recovery of the gray wolf throughout significant portions of its historic range is one of the great success stories of the Endangered Species Act,” Salazar said.
“When it was listed as endangered in 1974, the wolf had almost disappeared from the continental United States. Today, we have more than 5,500 wolves, including more than 1,600 in the Rockies.”
“The successful recovery of this species is a stunning example of how the Act can work to keep imperiled animals from sliding into extinction,” he said. “The recovery of the wolf has not been the work of the federal government alone. It has been a long and active partnership including states, tribes, landowners, academic researchers, sportsmen and other conservation groups, the Canadian government and many other partners.”
The Fish and Wildlife Service originally announced the decision to delist the wolf in January, but the new administration decided to review the decision as part of an overall regulatory review when it came into office. The Service will now send the delisting regulation to the Federal Register for publication. The Service decided to delist the wolf in Idaho and Montana because they have approved state wolf management plans in place that will ensure the conservation of the species in the future.
Interesting6: Colorful poison frogs in the Amazon owe their great diversity to ancestors that leapt into the region from the Andes Mountains several times during the last 10 million years, a new study from The University of Texas at Austin suggests. This is the first study to show that the Andes have been a major source of diversity for the Amazon basin, one of the largest reservoirs of biological diversity on Earth. The finding runs counter to the idea that Amazonian diversity is the result of evolution only within the tropical forest itself.
"Basically, the Amazon basin is a ‘melting pot’ for South American frogs," says graduate student Juan Santos, lead author of the study. "Poison frogs there have come from multiple places of origin, notably the Andes Mountains, over many millions of years. We have shown that you cannot understand Amazonian biodiversity by looking only in the basin.
Adjacent regions have played a major role." Santos and Dr. David Cannatella, professor of integrative biology, published their findings this month in the journal PLoS Biology. It has been assumed that much of the evolution of biodiversity in the Amazon basin occurred over the last one to two million years, a mere snapshot in time.
Interesting7: Scientists have warned that the impact of global warming is accelerating well beyond a forecast made by UN experts two years ago. Sea levels this century may rise several times higher than predictions made in 2007 that form the scientific foundation for policymakers today, a meeting meeting of climate experts has heard. In March 2007, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that global warming, if unchecked, would lead to a devastating amalgam of floods, drought, disease and extreme weather by the century end.
The world’s oceans would creep up 18cm to 59 centimetres, enough to wipe out several small island nations and wreak havoc for tens of millions living in low-lying deltas in east Asia, the Indian subcontinent and Africa. But a new study, presented at the Copenhagen meeting overnight, factored in likely water runoff from disintegrating glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica, and found the rise could be much higher. The IPCC estimate had been based largely on the expansion of oceans from higher temperatures, rather than meltwater and the impact of glaciers tumbling into the sea.
Using the new model, "we get a range of sea level rise by 2100 between 75cm and 190cm when we apply the IPCC’s temperature scenarios for the future", said climate expert Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. Even if the world manages to dramatically cut the emission of greenhouse gases driving global warming, the "best estimate" is about one metre, he said. "A few years ago, those of us who talked about the impact of the ice sheets were seen as extremists. Today it is recognised as the central issue," said glaciologist Eric Rignot of the University of California at Irvine.
"The world has very little time," IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri told the meeting after the new findings were presented. Participants also spoke out about fears that greenhouse gases – mainly emissions from oil, gas and coal – could trigger tipping points that would be nearly impossible to reverse. The shrinking of the Arctic ice cap, and the release of billions of tonnes of greenhouse gases trapped in melting permafrost are two such "positive feedbacks" that could become both cause and consequence of global warming.
"We need to look at what is a ‘reasonable worst case’ in the lifetime of people alive today," said John Ashton, Britain’s top climate negotiator, noting even rich nations had yet to take such scenarios seriously. "A sea level rise of one or two metres would not just be damaging for China, it would be an absolute catastrophe. And what is catastrophic for China is catastrophic for the world," he said.
Interesting8: Asian cities have shot up the list of the world’s most expensive places as currency fluctuations bring down the relative cost of living in Europe, a survey found Wednesday. Tokyo and Osaka leapfrogged Oslo and Paris to rank as first and second respectively in the cost of living index by the Economist Intelligence Unit.
Singapore jumped five places to 10th while Hong Kong overtook London and Vienna to leap 17 places to 11th on the twice-yearly survey of costs in 140 cities worldwide. With the yuan strengthening considerably over the last year, major Chinese cities have comparatively become sharply more expensive with Shanghai climbing 16 places to 29th on the index.
Beijing rose 22 places to 36th while southern cities Shenzhen and Guangzhou each climbed 26 places to rank as 41st and 53rd respectively. Taipei moved up 10 places to 57th. Despite the relative fall in living costs, Europe still claimed seven out of the top 10 most expensive cities on the index with Copenhagen, Zurich, Frankfurt, Helsinki and Geneva also claiming top- 10 berths.
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