May 20-21, 2009
Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Wednesday afternoon:
Lihue, Kauai – 80
Honolulu, Oahu – 81
Kaneohe, Oahu – 78
Kahului, Maui – 81
Hilo, Hawaii – 80
Kailua-kona – 84
Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountains…at 4 p.m. Wednesday afternoon:
Kailua-kona – 82F
Hilo, Hawaii – 75
Haleakala Crater – 52 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 45 (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 Wednesday afternoon:
0.05 Kokee, Kauai
0.09 Schofield Barracks, Oahu
0.00 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
0.01 Kahakuloa, Maui
1.14 Pali 2, Big Island
Marine Environment – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map shows a low pressure system to the north of the state. This same weather map shows a strong high pressure system far to the northwest, with another high pressure cell far to the northeast. The low is located in an area, which is acting like a blocking force…not allowing the normal trade winds to blow across our tropical latitudes. Winds will be light and variable Thursday and Friday.
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
Fun on the Beach…Hawaii
A usual late season area of low pressure remains cemented into place just north of Maui County, with a feeble cold front stretching down from it…into the area just east of the Big Island. The majority of the computer models keep this low in place to our north, which strongly suggests it will hang out up there for the time being. We can use this weather map to see this low, and its associated dissipating cold front just offshore from the Big Island. Winds will be light and variable in direction Wednesday into Thursday, right on into the weekend. Light and variable winds are notorious for giving very warm and muggy weather…along with localized haze to our islands. The computer models now show a new low pressure system forming to the NNW of the islands this weekend, keeping our trade winds away until next week.
The closeness of the low pressure system to our island chain will keep our overlying atmosphere rather stagnant…with light sea breezes at best. We have definitely moved into a light winded convective weather pattern Wednesday…through the rest of the week, and what now looks like longer. Using this satellite image, we can see that the residual clouds associated the cold front, which passed through the islands over the last couple of days, is still near…and out to the east and NE of the Big Island. Meanwhile, glancing at this looping satellite picture, we can see an area of high cirrus clouds migrating our way from the west of Kauai to. It looks likely that these high clouds will stick around for at least another day or two…and the way it looks from here, right on into the weekend.
The primary weather feature here in the islands Wednesday night, continues to be the low pressure system to the north of the islands. It’s not as bold or impressive looking as it was over the last couple of days. If you look closely however, into the area north of Hawaii, using this link, you’ll be able to spot this counterclockwise rotating low pressure cell. This late season low is effectively blocking our trade winds. This time of year, with light winds and a sun that is nearly directly overhead during the days, we will find sultry conditions. This muggy reality will start off with clear to partly cloudy skies in the mornings, giving way to cloudiness during the afternoons, with a few localized showers over the interior parts of the islands.
It’s early Wednesday evening as I begin writing this last section of today’s weather narrative. We had thought that the trade winds would return as we moved into early next week…as noted above. The latest computer model output however, now shows another low pressure system moving into the area to our northwest, which could keep our light winds in place beyond the weekend. This low pressure system could act to increase our showers too. ~~~ Looking out the windows here in Kihei, before I jump in the car for the ride back upcountry, I see partly to mostly cloudy skies. A large part of this cloudiness is associated with the high cirrus clouds streaming across our island skies. There may very well be a beautiful sunset this evening, and then again on Thursday morning as well. That’s when I’ll be back with you again, I hope you have a restful night, and are full of life’s energy on Thursday! Bye for now…Glenn.
Interesting: Railroad companies are pressing federal regulators to cut back on trains carrying hazardous materials through urban areas, saying they fear a catastrophic release of toxic chemicals in a large city. The companies also fear billions in legal claims if toxic materials spill during a derailment or act of sabotage. Rail industry associations are petitioning to allow railroads for the first time to refuse to carry chemicals such as chlorine over long distances.
Federal law requires railroads to transport such materials, which are used in manufacturing, agriculture and water treatment. The companies’ move is opposed by the Obama administration and others who say railroads are the safest way to move toxic materials.
If trucks end up carrying materials that railroads reject, "that would pose a much greater danger," said Patricia Abbate of Citizens for Rail Safety, a Massachusetts advocacy group. The railroad petition is the latest effort to address the danger posed by the 110,000 carloads of toxic chemicals rail companies carry each year.
Navy researchers have said an attack on a chemical-carrying train could kill 100,000 people. Photograph shows several train cars transporting new motor vehicles on their sides after the train derailed along the McDade Expressway in Scranton, Pa., in March. Two train cars carrying hazardous materials were intact after one-fourth of a 43-car freight train derailed.
Interesting2: Experts say that more than half of the world’s coral reefs could disappear in the next 50 years, in large part because of higher ocean temperatures caused by climate change. But now Stanford University scientists have found evidence that some coral reefs are adapting and may actually survive global warming.
"Corals are certainly threatened by environmental change, but this research has really sparked the notion that corals may be tougher than we thought," said Stephen Palumbi, a professor of biology and a senior fellow at Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment. Palumbi and his Stanford colleagues began studying the resiliency of coral reefs in the Pacific Ocean in 2006 with the support of a Woods Institute Environmental Venture Project grant.
The project has expanded and is now being funded by Conservation International and the Bio-X program at Stanford. "The most exciting thing was discovering live, healthy corals on reefs already as hot as the ocean is likely to get 100 years from now," said Palumbi, director of Stanford’s Hopkins Marine Station.
"How do they do that?" Coral reefs form the basis for thriving, healthy ecosystems throughout the tropics. They provide homes and nourishment for thousands of species, including massive schools of fish, which in turn feed millions of people across the globe. Corals rely on partnerships with tiny, single-celled algae called zooxanthellae.
The corals provide the algae a home, and, in turn, the algae provide nourishment, forming a symbiotic relationship. But when rising temperatures stress the algae, they stop producing food, and the corals spit them out. Without their algae symbionts, the reefs die and turn stark white, an event referred to as "coral bleaching."
During particularly warm years, bleaching has accounted for the deaths of large numbers of corals. In the Caribbean in 2005, a heat surge caused more than 50 percent of corals to bleach, and many still have not recovered, according to the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, an international collaboration of government officials, policymakers and marine scientists, including Palumbi.
In recent years, scientists discovered that some corals resist bleaching by hosting types of algae that can handle the heat, while others swap out the heat-stressed algae for tougher, heat-resistant strains. Palumbi’s team set out to investigate how widely dispersed these heat-tolerant coral reefs are across the globe and to learn more about the biological processes that allow them to adapt to higher temperatures.
In 2006, Palumbi and graduate student Tom Oliver, now a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford, traveled to Ofu Island in American Samoa. Ofu, a tropical coral reef marine reserve, has remained healthy despite gradually warming waters.
Interesting3: The decline of honeybee colonies has slowed slightly since last fall, but a mysterious combination of ailments is still decimating the insect’s population, federal researchers say. U.S. Department of Agriculture researchers found that honeybee colonies declined by 29 percent between September 2008 and early April.
That’s an improvement over the last two years, when researchers found that 32 percent and 36 percent of all beekeepers surveyed lost hives. Domestic honeybee stocks have been waning since 2004 because of a puzzling illness scientists called colony collapse disorder, which causes adult bees to inexplicably forsake their broods. Bees now appear also to be suffering from other ailments.
Interesting4: Scientists have for the first time genetically modified white corn to increase the levels of several different vitamins — bringing closer the prospect of crops that can deliver full nutritional requirements. The team increased the levels of beta-carotene, the precursor of vitamin A 170-fold; levels of vitamin C six-fold and also doubled the folic acid in the African staple.
White corn normally contains only trace amounts of beta-carotene. Diseases caused by low consumption of vitamin A, vitamin C and folate are widespread in Africa, says lead researcher Paul Christou of the University of Lleida in Spain. Until recently researchers had struggled to introduce multiple genes into a plant simultaneously to create several different traits.
His team developed a method that transfers the desired genes into plant embryos by bombarding them with gene-coated metal particles The resulting plants are then screened for those containing the required genes. The method can introduce an unlimited number of transgenes into any plant, says Christou. The method is quicker than others and the genes persist in subsequent generations.
Interesting5: The most comprehensive modeling yet carried out on the likelihood of how much hotter the Earth’s climate will get in this century shows that without rapid and massive action, the problem will be about twice as severe as previously estimated six years ago – and could be even worse than that. The study uses the MIT Integrated Global Systems Model, a detailed computer simulation of global economic activity and climate processes that has been developed and refined by the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change since the early 1990s.
The new research involved 400 runs of the model with each run using slight variations in input parameters, selected so that each run has about an equal probability of being correct based on present observations and knowledge. Other research groups have estimated the probabilities of various outcomes, based on variations in the physical response of the climate system itself. But the MIT model is the only one that interactively includes detailed treatment of possible changes in human activities as well – such as the degree of economic growth, with its associated energy use, in different countries.
Interesting6: NOAA’s Central Pacific Hurricane Center today announced that projected climate conditions point to a near to below normal hurricane season in the Central Pacific Basin this year. An average season has 4-5 tropical cyclones which includes tropical depressions, tropical storms, and hurricanes. The prediction was issued at a news conference called to urge Hawaii residents to be fully prepared for the onset of hurricane season, which begins June 1.
“Living on an island in the middle of the Pacific means each person and family should have an emergency plan every hurricane season. It is now time to review these plans before a storm threatens,” said Jim Weyman, director of the Central Pacific Hurricane Center. “Planning and preparation are key to surviving a hurricane.”
The forecast, a collaborative project with the Central Pacific Hurricane Center and NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, calls for an 80% chance of a near- to below- normal season. Because of uncertainties in current predictions for El Nino, both a near-normal and below-normal season are equally likely at this time.
The outlook also indicates a 20% chance of an above-normal season. Climate patterns similar to those expected this year have historically produced a wide range of activity. Allowing for these uncertainties, the Central Pacific Hurricane Center forecasts the expected occurrence of 3-5 tropical cyclones in the central Pacific during the 2009 season.
This outlook is a general guide to the overall seasonal hurricane activity and does not predict whether, where, or when any of these systems will affect Hawaii. Once a tropical cyclone forms in the central Pacific or moves into the area, however, the hurricane center swings into action.
Weyman said, “Our hurricane specialists are ready to track any tropical cyclone, from a depression to a hurricane in the Central Pacific Basin, and then provide accurate forecasts.” The Central Pacific Hurricane Center calls in additional staff meteorologists when a system forms.
They continuously monitor the weather conditions, employing a dense network of satellites, land- and ocean-based sensors and aircraft reconnaissance missions operated by NOAA and its partners. This array of data supplies the information for complex computer modeling and human expertise that serves as the basis for the hurricane center’s track and intensity forecasts that extend out five days. The science behind the outlook is rooted in the analysis and prediction of current and future global climate patterns as compared to previous seasons with similar conditions.
Interesting7: Earth may have a heartbeat. Evidence from Hawaii and Iceland hints that the planet’s core may be dispatching simultaneous plumes of magma towards the surface every 15 million years or so. If the hypothesis is true, it would revolutionise our ideas of what’s happening far below our feet.
Independent scientists contacted by New Scientist were split, with some scornful and others intrigued. Rolf Mjelde of the University of Bergen and Jan Inge Faleide of the University of Oslo, both in Norway, used seismological data to measure the thickness of Earth’s crust between Iceland and Greenland. Iceland is on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where magma wells up to form fresh crust.
The measurements allowed Mjelde and Faleide to infer the past flow of magma in the plume generally thought to rise beneath Iceland. When this plume is strong, it thickens the crust that it forms at the surface. They found that the crust has thickened roughly every 15 million years, suggesting the plume pulses at around that frequency.
Regular pulsing of plumes is not a new idea, but when the pair compared their results with similar pulsing in Hawaii, which also sits on a plume, they found a surprising correlation. Data collected by Emily Van Ark and Jian Lin of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Massachusetts, suggests that Hawaii’s plume pulses have coincided with Iceland’s.
"These two are on very different parts of the Earth, so I don’t think the synchrony could be related to something in the mantle," says Mjelde. "It must relate to the core somehow. I can’t see any other possibility." This would mean that the Earth’s core periodically heats up the overlying mantle, generating synchronised plumes that rise to the surface at widely separated spots.
Interesting8: Mars may have had a wet, life-friendly past without ever getting warmer than the freezing point of water. So concludes a new study that investigates what would happen to various mineral solutions on Mars. Researchers found that solutions containing certain combinations of sulphur, silicon and other ions stay liquid even down to -28 °C – a much more plausible temperature for early Mars than one above 0 °C.
"The results were a happy surprise," says Ricardo Amils of the Astrobiology Centre in Madrid, Spain. "The concentrations you need are not much higher than seawater."In the study, Alberto Fairén of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, used models to determine what would happened to water loaded up with generous helpings of calcium, sodium, silicon, iron and sulphur ions, among others.
The relative concentrations of the ingredients matched mineral compositions sampled by four Mars probes: the landers Viking 1 and Mars Pathfinder, and the rovers Spirit and Opportunity. In many cases, the water not only remained liquid at extremely low temperatures but precipitated minerals as it got colder, including jarosite, haematite and gypsum – all present on Mars today.
Sad9: Stars of the show they may be, but elephants, lions and tigers are the wild animals least suited to life in a circus, concludes the first global study of animal welfare in circuses. "It’s no one single factor," says Stephen Harris of the University of Bristol, UK, and lead researcher of the study. "Whether it’s lack of space and exercise, or lack of social contact, all factors combined show it’s a poor quality of life compared with the wild," he says.
The survey concludes that on average, wild animals spend just 1 to 9 per cent of their time training, and the rest confined to cages, wagons or enclosures typically covering a quarter the area recommended for zoos. Worst affected are elephants, lions, tigers and bears. Often they’re confined to cages where they pace up and down for hours on end.
"Even if they are in a larger, circus pen, there’s no enrichment such as logs to play with, in case they use them to break the fence and escape," says Harris. Travel also takes its toll, although the evidence is limited. The study cites data showing that concentrations of the stress hormone cortisol in saliva from circus tigers remains abnormal up to 6 days after transport, and up to 12 days in tigers who’ve never travelled before.
The itineraries can be grueling too. When Harris and his colleagues analyzed 153 European and North American circus trips, troupes only stayed at each single location for an average of a week before moving on, with an average of almost 300 kilometers between locations. Even when they reach their destinations, the animals are often kept in conditions drastically different from their natural habitat.
Elephants can be shackled for 12 to 23 hours per day when not performing, in areas from just 7 to 12 square meters. Often, they could only move as far as the chain would let them, just 1 to 2 meters. In the wild, elephants spend 40 to 75 per cent of their time feeding, and cover up to 50 kilometers in a day.
Evidence also shows that circus elephants, lions, tigers, bears and even parrots, adopt repetitive abnormal movements and pacing, called stero-types. The animals also suffer ill-health both from confinement and from the tricks they learn to perform. Elephants, for example, become obese through inactivity and develop rheumatoid disorders and lameness as a result, as well as joint and hernia problems through having to adopt unnatural positions during performance.
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