May 16-17, 2009
Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Saturday afternoon:
Lihue, Kauai – 81
Honolulu, Oahu – 83
Kaneohe, Oahu – 81
Kahului, Maui – 83
Hilo, Hawaii – 84
Kailua-kona – 84
Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountains…at 5 p.m. Saturday evening:
Kapalua, Maui – 84F
Lihue, Kauai – 74
Haleakala Crater – 50 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 39 (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 Saturday afternoon:
0.14 Anahola, Kauai
0.49 Kamehame, Oahu
0.00 Molokai
0.06 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
0.01 Puu Kukui, Maui
0.33 Kapapala Ranch, Big Island
Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map shows a 1024 millibar high pressure system located NE of the islands. This high pressure cell has a ridge running southwest from its center, to near the islands. The placement of this ridge will provide light winds…with strengthening north to northeast breezes later Sunday into Monday.
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
Kaneohe Bay…on Oahu
A late season frontal cloud band is pushing a high pressure ridge down close to the islands Saturday night…bringing light winds, sultry air, and haze. As this front migrates further south on Sunday, it will weaken and dissipate the ridge. Our local atmosphere has turned hazy, which will continue into Sunday. Winds will become locally stronger later Sunday into Monday, as north to northeast winds fill in behind the front on Kauai and Oahu. These haze clearing breezes won’t last long however, as another light wind episode occurs…keeping our winds lighter than usual through the second half of the upcoming week.
Light winds and daytime heating of the islands caused clouds to increase again during the afternoon Saturday…although will likely clear back into Sunday morning.
Showers were rather limited once again however, falling over the interior sections for the most part here and there. The front itself will bring an increase in showers to Kauai Sunday, passing over Oahu and Maui later in the day…into the evening hours. The Big Island may see it arrive on Monday. The cloud band is expected to dissipate over the Big Island into Tuesday, with those slightly cooler than normal north to northeast breezes filling in behind the front for a day or two.
As far as precipitation goes, the bulk of whatever showers are around through Monday…will be brought in by the front later Sunday into Monday. There had been a few small thunderstorms forming along the leading edge of the front on Friday, although Saturday’s satellite image doesn’t show them any longer…at least not in the vicinity of the front in our area. We seem to be sandwiched in between thunderstorms further up the cold front, towards the northwest…and high clouds looming to the southwest. As a trough of low pressure slides down over or near the islands Sunday, we could see a few brief heavier showers falling. The general thought is however, that the islands won’t get much rainfall.
Friday evening I went to see the new film called Star Trek (2009), which was playing in Kahului. As the story went, 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 I figured, and especially with the good grades the film has been getting from the critics…I was thoroughly entertained. For all of you folks who are familiar with this film series from the past, I’m pretty sure you will enjoy it this time around too. Here’s a trailer for the film, just in case you’re curious.
It’s Saturday evening as I begin writing this last section of today’s weather narrative. The weather turned hazy to very haze here on Maui during the day Saturday. I expected it to arrive in thicker form, and sure enough did. There are clouds blocking my view of the West Maui Mountains, but I can tell it is voggy now. Clouds gathered around the Haleakala Crater this afternoon, and they were actually quite dark…although no showers fell here. The paragraphs above give a good run down on what we have in store coming up Sunday into Monday, and beyond. I’ll be back Sunday morning with your next new weather narrative, I hope you have a great Saturday night! Aloha for now…Glenn.
The amazing Lyre bird…the songs are incredible!
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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