May 24-25, 2009
Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Sunday afternoon:
Lihue, Kauai – 82
Honolulu, Oahu – 81
Kaneohe, Oahu – 80
Kahului, Maui – 86
Hilo, Hawaii – 84
Kailua-kona – 86
Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountains…at 5 p.m. Sunday evening:
Port Allen, Kauai – 84F
Princeville, Kauai – 72
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 Sunday afternoon:
0.12 Princeville airport, Kauai
0.20 Schofield Barracks, Oahu
0.00 Molokai
0.32 Lanai
1.02 Kahoolawe
0.09 Puu Kukui, Maui
0.23 Kahuku Ranch, Big Island
Marine Environment – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map shows a low pressure system to the north of Kauai. This low pressure cell has a trough extending south over the islands. This pressure configuration will keep light breezes in place, generally from the southwest to southeast…with localized sea breezes into Tuesday.
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
The gorgeous Hawaiian Islands
Light winds varying between southwest and southeast, are keeping our atmosphere muggy…and have brought volcanic haze to some parts of the island chain Sunday evening. Looking at the weather map in the next sentence, we see the same low pressure system to the north of Kauai. Here’s that weather map to view this low, which is keeping our normal trade winds well to the south and east. Those areas that have south and southeast breezes blowing, have thick volcanic haze now, which will stick around for at least another couple of days. It will take the departure of the long lasting low to our north…to bring the atmospheric clearing trade winds back during the second half of the new week.
At the upper levels of the atmosphere Sunday evening, we have a low pressure system, with a surface low pressure system below it. These low pressure systems are adding some instability to our air mass. This means that whatever clouds that around, will be more than normally shower prone. 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 will be rather generous…especially during the afternoons through Monday.
This upper level low is spinning in a counterclockwise fashion to the north of the western islands of Kauai and Oahu. If you look into the area north of
It’s Sunday evening here in Kula, Maui, as I begin writing this last section of today’s narrative. Looking out the window of my weather tower, it’s getting darker and darker again just before sunset…which could easily bring our next round of showers. Besides all the dark clouds, there’s a thick volcanic haze out there too. We’ve seen generally light off and on showers during the afternoon, but not as much precipitation as we saw on Saturday. It appears that Oahu got the lion’s share of the afternoon showers Sunday. Speaking of showers, we can check out this looping radar image, which is showing rain falling generally over the ocean to the northeast of Oahu, as well as in the Kauai Channel, at the time of this writing. ~~~ I’ll be back again Monday morning, which is of course a holiday, meaning that I have the day off from work in Kihei. I hope you have a great Sunday night until then! 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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