May 23-24, 2009
Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Saturday afternoon:
Lihue, Kauai – 80
Honolulu, Oahu – 83
Kaneohe, Oahu – 81
Kahului, Maui – 84
Hilo, Hawaii – 77
Kailua-kona – 85
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 – 82F
Princeville, Kauai – 77
Haleakala Crater – missing (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 Saturday afternoon:
0.29 Moloaa Dairy, Kauai
0.02 Waimanalo, Oahu
0.00 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
0.02 Kaupo Gap, Maui
0.37 Pahoa, Big Island
Marine Environment – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map shows a low pressure system to the north of the state. This map also shows a high pressure system far to the northwest, with another 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 generally southwest to southeast Saturday and Sunday.
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
Kaanapali beach…west Maui
Light winds varying between south and southeast, are keeping our atmosphere a bit muggy…and will bring haze over some parts of the state into Sunday. Looking at the weather map just ahead, we spot the same low pressure system to the north of the islands Saturday evening. Here’s that weather map to view this low, which is keeping our normal trade winds away. Those areas that have southeast breezes this weekend, will find an area of volcanic haze approaching, which will stick around for a couple of days. There is still no clear idea about exactly when the trade winds will begin blowing again.
At the upper levels of the atmosphere, we will have a low pressure system moving by to the north of Hawaii…with its associated pool of cold air. This cold air is making our local atmosphere more unstable than it has been during this past work week. This means that whatever clouds that around, will become more shower prone. There will be a couple of source areas for these showers, which are expected to converge on our islands over the next several days. The most likely chance for showers, will be during the afternoon hours, in the upcountry areas on each of the islands. These showers aren’t expected to be widespread, although a few could be rather generous…especially by Sunday afternoon.
This upper level low is spinning in a counterclockwise fashion to the north of the islands. If you look into the area north of
During this holiday weekend, we’ll find light winds, generally clear to partly cloudy mornings, cloudy afternoons, localized showers, along with some increase in haze. Often under these circumstances, the beaches can remain dry, although afternoon clouds can easily slide down the mountains towards the coasts in places. Many areas will remain petty nice under these conditions…so as we move through this holiday weekend, many locations will be just fine. Speaking of the holiday on Monday, Memorial Day, things may improve some, at least in terms of the precipitation, although the light winds will remain in place.
It’s early Saturday evening here in Kula, Maui, as I begin writing this last section of today’s narrative. Looking out the window of my weather tower this evening, I see lots of clouds cloaking the mountains, with showers falling locally…like here in Kula. There isn’t much haze around, at least that I can see yet. We can check out this looping radar image, which is showing some showers moving in towards the leeward sides of the central islands, on southerly Kona breezes. ~~~ I went down to sunny Baldwin Beach today, took a long walk on that great sandy beach, and jumped in the warm ocean afterwards. I went shopping then in Paia, and finally made my way home to Kula. I got out on my weather deck, with a pressure washer, and took off all the mold that had grabbed hold during the winter months. It was raining while I was doing that, but I didn’t let that stop me. It’s just before sunset now, and the clouds are still hugging pretty tightly to the slopes of the Haleakala Crater. ~~~ I’m going to go down and have a bite to eat now, but will be back Sunday morning with your next new weather narrative then. I hope you have a great Saturday night until then. I expect very similar conditions on Sunday that we saw happening on Saturday, in terms of weather. I’m going to sign off now, as the next wave of pretty heavy showers moves over this upcountry location. Aloha for now…Glenn.
Interesting: Wings which redirect air to waggle sideways could cut airline fuel bills by 20% according to research funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and Airbus. The new approach, which promises to dramatically reduce mid-flight drag, uses tiny air powered jets which redirect the air, making it flow sideways back and forth over the wing.
The jets work by the Helmholtz resonance principle – when air is forced into a cavity the pressure increases, which forces air out and sucks it back in again, causing an oscillation – the same phenomenon that happen when blowing over a bottle. Dr Duncan Lockerby, from the University of Warwick, who is leading the project, said: “This has come as a bit of a surprise to all of us in the aerodynamics community.
It was discovered, essentially, by waggling a piece of wing from side to side in a wind tunnel.” “The truth is we’re not exactly sure why this technology reduces drag but with the pressure of climate change we can’t afford to wait around to find out. So we are pushing ahead with prototypes and have a separate three year project to look more carefully at the physics behind it.”
Interesting2: After thoroughly investigating Victoria Crater on Mars for two years, the instruments aboard the Rover Opportunity reveal more evidence of our neighboring red planet’s windy, wet and wild past. Opportunity’s two-year exploration of Victoria Crater – a half-mile wide and 250 feet deep – yielded a treasury of information about the planet’s geologic history and supported previous findings indicating that water once flowed on the planet’s surface, according to Steve Squyres, Cornell professor of astronomy and the principal investigator for NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover mission.
The rover is now heading south toward Endeavor crater, 8.5 miles away. Many of those observations – of hematite spheres ("blueberries"), sulfate-rich sandstone and small chunks of rock containing kamacite, troilite and other minerals commonly found in meteorites – are consistent with Opportunity’s findings across Meridiani Planum.
"It shows that the processes that we investigated in detail for the first time at Endurance crater [where Opportunity spent six months in 2004] are regional in scale, [indicating that] the kinds of conclusions that we first reached at Endurance apply perhaps across Meridiani," said Squyres. Still, there are a few key differences.
The rim of Victoria Crater is about 30m higher than the rim of Endurance, said Squyres; and as the rover drove south toward Victoria the hematite blueberries in the soil became ever fewer and smaller. Rocks deep inside the crater, however, contained big blueberries – indicating that the rocks higher up had less interaction with water – and thus the water’s source was likely underground.
The overview of the findings is published in the latest issue of the journal Science (May 22, 2009). Detailed analysis of the Victoria data will occupy researchers for years to come, said Jim Bell, professor of astronomy and leader of the mission’s Pancam color camera team.
Interesting3: Eating fish – long considered ‘brain food’ – may really be good for the old grey matter, as is a healthy dose of sunshine, new research suggests. University of Manchester scientists in collaboration with colleagues from other European centers have shown that higher levels of vitamin D – primarily synthesized in the skin following sun exposure but also found in certain foods such as oily fish – are associated with improved cognitive function in middle-aged and older men.
The study, published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, compared the cognitive performance of more than 3,000 men aged 40 to 79 years at eight test centers across Europe. The researchers found that men with higher levels of vitamin D performed consistently better in a simple and sensitive neuropsychological test that assesses an individual’s attention and speed of information processing.
“Previous studies exploring the relationship between vitamin D and cognitive performance in adults have produced inconsistent findings but we observed a significant, independent association between a slower information processing speed and lower levels of vitamin D,” said lead author Dr David Lee, in Manchester’s School of Translational Medicine.
“The main strengths of our study are that it is based on a large population sample and took into account potential interfering factors, such as depression, season and levels of physical activity.
“Interestingly, the association between increased vitamin D and faster information processing was more significant in men aged over 60 years, although the biological reasons for this remain unclear.”
“The positive effects vitamin D appears to have on the brain need to be explored further but certainly raise questions about its potential benefit for minimizing ageing-related declines in cognitive performance.”
Interesting4: A new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers found that participants who drank for a week from polycarbonate bottles — the popular, hard-plastic drinking bottles and baby bottles — showed a two-thirds increase in their urine of the chemical bisphenol A (BPA). Exposure to BPA, used in the manufacture of polycarbonate and other plastics, has been shown to interfere with reproductive development in animals and has been linked with cardiovascular disease and diabetes in humans.
The study is the first to show that drinking from polycarbonate bottles increased the level of urinary BPA, and thus suggests that drinking containers made with BPA release the chemical into the liquid that people drink in sufficient amounts to increase the level of BPA excreted in human urine.
In addition to polycarbonate bottles, which are refillable and a popular container among students, campers and others and are also used as baby bottles, BPA is also found in dentistry composites and sealants and in the lining of aluminum food and beverage cans. (In bottles, polycarbonate can be identified by the recycling number 7.)
Numerous studies have shown that it acts as an endocrine-disruptor in animals, including early onset of sexual maturation, altered development and tissue organization of the mammary gland and decreased sperm production in offspring. It may be most harmful in the stages of early development. "We found that drinking cold liquids from polycarbonate bottles for just one week increased urinary BPA levels by more than two-thirds.
If you heat those bottles, as is the case with baby bottles, we would expect the levels to be considerably higher. This would be of concern since infants may be particularly susceptible to BPA’s endocrine-disrupting potential," said Karin B. Michels, associate professor of epidemiology at HSPH and Harvard Medical School and senior author of the study.
Interesting5: A new article in the journal Risk Analysis assessed various ways in which aerosol transmission of the flu, a central mode of diffusion which involves breathing droplets in the air, can be reduced. Results show that face protection is a key infection control measure for influenza and can thus affect how people should try to protect themselves from the swine flu.
Lawrence M. Wein, Ph.D., and Michael P. Atkinson of Stanford University constructed a mathematical model of aerosol transmission of the flu to explore infection control measures in the home.
Their model predicted that the use of face protection including N95 respirators (these fit tight around the face and are often worn by construction workers) and surgical masks (these fit looser around the face and are often worn by dental hygienists) are effective in preventing the flu. The filters in surgical masks keep out 98 percent of the virus.
Also, only 30 percent of the benefits of the respirators and masks are achieved if they are used only after an infected person develops symptoms. "Our research aids in the understanding of the efficacy of infection control measures for influenza, and provides a framework about the routes of transmission," the authors conclude. This timely article has the potential to impact current efforts and recommendations to control the so-called swine flu by international, national and local governments in perspective.
Interesting6: It’s been popular in New York and other places where open space is at a premium, so San Francisco figured, "eh, why not?" The first reclamation of street space to create a pedestrian plaza opened last week on San Francisco’s famous Castro Street at the intersection with 17th St. It’s a small space, maybe 1000 square feet in sum, but it’s symbolic, and perhaps a hopeful sign for pavement reclamation enthusiasts everywhere.
The idea is to close a section of street to vehicular traffic, so that citizens can have a place to eat, drink coffee, read the paper, and generally hang out outside. As part of San Francisco’s Pavement to Parks Program, it is the first of what some hope will be many pieces of paved street that are repositioned as business centers. If successful, the 17th and Castro plaza will be made permanent, and likely many others will follow in the city and perhaps in other cities.
It makes the city more walkable and pedestrian friendly, and marks a stark contrast to the never-ending paving of America that began in earnest in the 1950’s and continues to do this day in most parts of the country. And it’s one of the big reasons why people love cities like San Francisco and New York and are increasingly returning to them as the illusions of suburbia burst like gnats on a windshield.
Interesting7: With all the potential good wind power could do for the carbon economy, one of the objections hindering its implementation is aesthetic; people simply don’t want massive turbines dotting the landscape and marring their views. The Dutch founder of London’s Solar Botanic Ltd. was wrestling with that very issue in 2002 when the idea began to blossom: why not redesign the technology to blend into the natural world?
Founded last year, Solar Botanic’s ambitious goal involves layering existing technologies three-fold into the natural form of a leaf and producing fake power-producing trees that individually could power an entire home.
Each "nanoleaf" would incorporate photovoltaics for collecting solar power, thermoelectrics for converting the sun’s heat to electricity, and piezoelectric nanogenerators in the leaves’ petioles (the stalk connecting the leaf to the branch) that capture the kinetic energy from the wind rustling the leaves.
Solar Botanic estimates that a single tree with a canopy 20 feet in diameter could power an average home, producing about 120,000 kilowatt-hours over two decades. Forests, on the other hand, could power entire population centers.
But a more reasonable deployment scenario involves greening up parking lots while providing power to charge electric vehicles or planting the "trees" along highways to capture the turbulence of passing traffic.
Interesting8: After tickling the tongue, artificial sweeteners pass through our bodies and end up in wastewater virtually unchanged. Some sweeteners are particularly widespread in the environment, according to a new study, making them ideal markers for following pollution from treatment plants and other sources into the environment.
"Groundwater can be polluted by several sources, and it’s sometimes not clear where that pollution comes from," said Ignaz Buerge, an environmental chemist at the Swiss Federal Research Station in Schloss. "We now have a marker of domestic wastewater which can be used in tracing pollution." Contaminated groundwater is both an environmental and public health issue.
Once run-off gets into the environment, though, it can be hard to know whether it came from industry, agricultural fields, traffic, homes or other sources. Scientists have been looking for marker molecules that might help them track down and possibly reduce some of these inputs.
Interesting9: Globally, 85 per cent of reefs have been lost. Destructive fishing practices, disease and coastal development threaten many of the survivors. What sounds like an apocalyptic vision of the future for the world’s tropical corals is in fact a chilling assessment of the current state of reefs built in cooler waters by oysters and other bivalve shellfish. According to a report from
The Nature Conservancy (TNC), released this week at the International Marine Conservation Congress in Washington DC, shellfish reefs are the world’s most imperiled marine habitats – faring worse than coral reefs and mangrove forests.
TNC’s team scoured the literature, surveyed scientists and analyzed fisheries statistics to assess the health of reefs in 144 bays and estuaries in 44 "eco-regions" across the globe.
In most bays, shellfish reefs are down to around 10 per cent of their historical abundance. In many former strongholds – such as in North America, Europe and Australia – they are all but extinct.
Reasons for the decline vary, but include overfishing, introduction of exotic species, and disturbance from human activities. In Europe, Pacific oysters introduced for aquaculture are now moving from southern latitudes into the North Sea, where they are outcompeting native mussels – with knock-on effects for other wildlife.
In the Gulf of Mexico off the south-eastern US, meanwhile, the water demands of Atlanta and other cities mean river flows are down, making estuaries more salty and allowing invading marine predators to feast on native oysters. The good news is that oyster reefs can bounce back, if managed with care.
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