May 15-16, 2009
Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Friday afternoon:
Lihue, Kauai – 81
Honolulu, Oahu – 84
Kaneohe, Oahu – 81
Kahului, Maui – 85
Hilo, Hawaii – 81
Kailua-kona – 84
Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountains…at 5 p.m. Friday evening:
Port Allen, Kauai – 82F
Hilo, Hawaii – 74
Haleakala Crater – 57 (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 Friday afternoon:
0.02 Moloaa Dairy, Kauai
0.07 Waihee Pump, Oahu
0.00 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
0.11 West Wailuaiki, Maui
0.12 Pahoa, Big Island
Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map shows a 1027 millibar high pressure system located NE of the islands. This high pressure cell has a ridge running southwest from its center, to a point north of Kauai. The placement of this ridge will provide light winds, gradually becoming more southeast Friday into Saturday.
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
Sandy beach on the island of Kauai
Our winds will be light to very light, until a cold front arrives later Sunday into Monday…when breezy north to northeast winds take over. This weather map shows a 1027 millibar high pressure system northeast of our islands…with its associated ridge to the north of Kauai. This weather map also shows a late season cold front just to the north of the ridge. As this front gets pushed further south, it will nudge the ridge of high pressure down over the state of Hawaii this weekend. Our local atmosphere will probably turn hazy in the process…accompanied by light to very light breezes. Winds will become locally stronger later Sunday into Monday, as north to northeast winds fill in behind the cold front.
Local weather here in the islands will remain quite nice, until the cold front arrives…bringing an increase in showers locally. Daytime heating of the islands will cause clouds to increase again during the afternoon into the evening hours Saturday. Showers will be rather limited once again however, falling over the interior sections. The cold front will likely bring an increase in showers later this weekend, as it arrives Sunday. The front is expected to stall as it moves down into the islands of Maui County Monday. The frontal cloud band is expected to remain in place for several days, which could act as a focus for showers locally into the new work week over Maui and the Big Island.
Computer models continue to show an upper level low pressure system, digging southward into the area north or northeast of the islands Saturday…sending a trough down into the state. They go on to show the aforementioned shower bearing cold front, pushing into the state as far as perhaps Maui Sunday night into Monday morning. The weather situation becomes a bit more difficult to figure out as we move into the new week…as the trough remains anchored over the state, at least over Maui and the Big Island. The presence of the trough, along with the front’s leftover moisture, could keep our weather somewhat unsettled and locally showery.
Before we go any further, lets take a quick look at this satellite image, which shows the cold front to our north. There have been a few small thunderstorms forming along the leading edge of this front, although its too early to know if they will still be there when the cold front arrives. Meanwhile, high cirrus clouds are moving over the islands from the west. I anticipate that Saturday will be a fine day, with all the characteristics of a convective weather situation: light winds, haze, clear mornings leading to cloudy afternoons in the upcountry areas…with just a few showers falling.
It’s early Friday evening as I begin writing this last section of today’s weather narrative.
I’m about ready to head out from Kihei, for the drive to Kahului, where I’ll see a new film. Looking out the window before I start the drive, I see haze out there, with partly cloudy conditions in general…especially up on the slopes of the Haleakala Crater, and over the West Maui Mountains, where it’s more like cloudy. Back to the film, called Star Trek (2009), which is generally getting great reviews…the fate of the galaxy rests in the hands of bitter rivals. One, James Kirk, is a delinquent, thrill-seeking Iowa farm boy. The other, Spock, was raised in a logic-based society that rejects all emotion. As fiery instinct clashes with calm reason, their unlikely but powerful partnership is the only thing capable of leading their crew through unimaginable danger, boldly going where no one has gone
. As usual, Star Trek is an action film, with science fiction and fantasy…which seems to be right down my alley! Here’s a trailer for the film, just in case you are curious.
~~~ At any rate, I’ll be back Saturday morning with the latest weather information, especially about this very late season cold front that is taking aim on our islands. I’ll likely be telling you how much I enjoyed the film too. I hope you have a great Friday night until we meet again. Aloha for now…Glenn.
Interesting: A Swedish climate change study released Thursday called for focusing assistance on the world’s most vulnerable poor communities. The study by Sweden’s Commission on Climate Change and Development said the world’s most vulnerable communities have somewhat adapted to climate change as many have already felt its impacts.
Fighting poverty and climate change are inseparable and must be solved together in order to pursue goals of development in poor countries, the study said. The poor have no voice in the current debate on climate change at the highest levels of government and international organizations, it added.
The study was carried out with information gathered in visits to countries with varied environments: Cambodia’s Mekong Delta; Mali, a semi-arid country; and Bolivia, a high altitude country with a complex geography. "Climate change impacts are already here and happening faster than predicted," the study said.
"Arctic ice and tropical glaciers are melting, weather-related disasters are increasing, oceans are getting more acidic, changing ecosystems – we have no other option than to adapt." The study was given to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon at UN headquarters in New York as the UN is preparing for the final conference in Copenhagen December 7-18 to try to adopt a document to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which will expire in 2012.
The protocol deals with the regulations of greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming. The Swedish commission called for the mobilization of additional funds to help the most vulnerable communities like small island and low-income nations, but said the money should not come at the expense of existing funds for development in poor countries.
It called on donor countries to mobilize between 1 billion and 2 billion dollars annually to assist the vulnerable communities and also to build democratic and efficient governance in order to receive and allocate the new funding, particularly to local governments.
Interesting2: Contrary to the industry’s position that visible drink labels will promote responsible drinking, young people are, instead, using these visible standard drink labels to increase or even maximize the amount of alcohol they consume at the lowest cost possible. According to a new study, young people in Australia have very high awareness of standard drink labeling.
However, this was predominately to help them choose the drinks that would get them drunk in the shortest time possible. The labels also served as guides, ‘advising’ them on which drink would reduce the time needed to get drunk and the least amount they would need to drink – hence getting the best ‘value’ for their money.
The study examines the young people’s perceptions of standard drink labeling, the purposes for which they use the labels and the potential impact on their alcohol consumption. "Participants generally agreed that they notice drink labels and take in account what to purchase and consume.
While earlier research with adult beer and alcohol drinkers has shown that standard drink labeling enables them to drink safely and responsibly, this motivation is not evident in the consumption choices with young drinkers and might even be counter-productive", said co-author Professor Sandra Jones from the Centre for Health Initiatives, University of Wollongong.
Interesting3: Climate change, fishing and commercial shipping top the list of threats to the ocean off the West Coast of the United States. "Every single spot of the ocean along the West Coast," said Ben Halpern, a marine ecologist at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) at the University of California at Santa Barbara, "is affected by 10 to 15 different human activities annually."
In a two-year study to document the way humans are affecting the oceans in this region, Halpern and colleagues overlaid data on the location and intensity of 25 human-derived sources of ecological stress, including climate change, commercial and recreational fishing, land-based sources of pollution and ocean-based commercial activities. With the information, they produced a composite map of the status of West Coast marine ecosystems.
The work was published online in the journal Conservation Letters, and was conducted at NCEAS. NCEAS is primarily funded by NSF’s Division of Environmental Biology. "This important analysis of the geography and magnitude of land-based stressors should help focus attention on the hot-spots where coordinated management of land and ocean activities is needed," said Phillip Taylor, section head in NSF’s Division of Ocean Sciences.
The lead scientists on the study conducted a similar analysis on a global scale; the results were published last year in Science. By refining the methods used in the global study and applying them at a regional scale, the scientists were able to test how well the results predicted regional ocean health.
"We found two remarkable and unexpected results in this research," said Halpern. "Ocean management needs to move beyond single-sector management and towards comprehensive ecosystem-based management if it is to be effective at protecting and sustaining ocean health.
Interesting4: NASA’s Kepler spacecraft has begun its search for other Earth-like worlds. The mission, which launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on March 6, will spend the next three-and-a-half years staring at more than 100,000 stars for telltale signs of planets. Kepler has the unique ability to find planets as small as Earth that orbit sun-like stars at distances where temperatures are right for possible lakes and oceans.
"Now the fun begins," said William Borucki, Kepler science principal investigator at NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. "We are all really excited to start sorting through the data and discovering the planets." Scientists and engineers have spent the last two months checking out and calibrating the Kepler spacecraft.
Data have been collected to characterize the imaging performance as well as the noise level in the measurement electronics. The scientists have constructed the list of targets for the start of the planet search, and this information has been loaded onto the spacecraft.
"If Kepler got into a staring contest, it would win," said James Fanson, Kepler project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "The spacecraft is ready to stare intently at the same stars for several years so that it can precisely measure the slightest changes in their brightness caused by planets."
Kepler will hunt for planets by looking for periodic dips in the brightness of stars — events that occur when orbiting planets cross in front of their stars and partially block the light. The mission’s first finds are expected to be large, gas planets situated close to their stars. Such discoveries could be announced as early as next year. Kepler is a NASA Discovery mission.
NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., is the home organization of the science principal investigator, and is responsible for the ground system development, mission operations and science data analysis. JPL manages the Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. of Boulder, Colo., is responsible for developing the Kepler flight system and supporting mission operations.
Interesting5: The National Science Foundation (NSF) has put out a special report detailing known changes to the planet related to global warming. These are not things that might happen, but things that have. The highlights, directly from the NSF: Ecologists have noted marked changes in the habitats of the species they study — changes in the places where they find a particular species, changes in the dates plants first sprout and bloom, changes in plant growth rates and even signs of evolutionary adaptation brought on by a warming climate.
In some cases, species extinctions appear linked to climate change. Ocean scientists have recorded higher temperatures and higher ocean acidity, which alter the characteristics of the most fundamental organisms of the ocean food chain. Coral reefs — some of which have thrived for centuries — have died off suddenly as a result of ocean temperatures that exceed the corals’ ability to survive.
Polar scientists have watched vast tracts of Arctic sea ice melt away, leaving behind more open water than anyone can remember seeing during any previous Northern Hemisphere summer. Glaciologists have witnessed ice shelves — once thought too large to be influenced by anything short of cataclysmic environmental change — break up into a churning sea of icebergs in a matter of days.
Interesting6: Many raindrops travel at "super-terminal" velocities, faster than was thought possible. As a result, meteorologists may be miscalculating how much it rains. Previously, it was assumed that all raindrops fall at terminal velocity, a constant maximum speed that is determined by the interplay of gravity and drag.
The velocity for individual drops is considered to be largely controlled by their size: larger drops fall faster than smaller drops, due to their greater mass. Fernando García-García of the National Autonomous University of Mexico and colleagues measured the shadows of natural raindrops passing through a ray of infrared light.
They found that up to half exceed their terminal velocity. Some travel as much as 10 times faster, for their size. "Others had detected this before, but everybody disregarded it, blaming it on an error," says Garcia-Garcia. The team suspects that the super-terminal drops may be fragments of larger drops broken apart as they fall.
"If a large drop breaks into several fragments, each drop will have the speed of the large drop, at least temporarily, until the smaller drops slow to their new terminal velocity," García-García says. As a result, meteorologists may be overestimating total rainfall by up to 20 per cent, say the team.
Weather forecasters use total rainfall figures to predict floods, and climatologists use the estimates to gauge how rain patterns are changing with climate change. Total rainfall over an area is generally calculated indirectly, by using a Doppler radar that bounces electromagnetic waves off the raindrops.
The radar can measure rainfall over thousands of square kilometers. But the radar records only the speed of drops. This is then used to infer the average size of the drops. This is then multiplied by the number of drops to give a total volume of water. "If you get a signal back and see drops are moving quickly, you assume they are big drops, but in reality they are small drops moving faster," says Garcia-Garcia.
Ana Barros of Duke University in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, says meteorologists’ rainfall estimates are unlikely to be too far wrong, pointing out that the super-terminal drops would soon slow down after fragmenting from larger drops.
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