May 8-9, 2009
Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Friday afternoon:
Lihue, Kauai – 81
Honolulu, Oahu – 86
Kaneohe, Oahu – 79
Kahului, Maui – 83
Hilo, Hawaii – 82
Kailua-kona – 86
Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountains…at 5 p.m. Friday afternoon:
Honolulu, Oahu – 82F
Hilo, Hawaii – 75
Haleakala Crater – 52 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 34 (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 Hanapepe, Kauai
0.08 Aloha Tower, Oahu
0.00 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
0.22 West Wailuaiki, Maui
0.16 Kamuela, Big Island
Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map shows a high pressure system located far to the NE of the islands. This high pressure cell has a ridge running south of it, to a point north of Kauai. The placement of this ridge will provide light trade winds…although stronger and locally gusty in some places through 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
The Koolau Mountains…windward Oahu
Artist Credit: Gary Reed
The trade winds returned Friday, blowing in the light to moderately strong range generally…whisking all the volcanic haze downwind. These trade wind breezes were very welcome, as they had been on vacation for many days recently. They were replaced by light southeast breezes, which helped to bring volcanic haze over the entire state earlier this week. The way it looks now, the trade winds may falter again by Sunday or Monday…with the possibility of more haze returning then.
These trade winds, as usual, will carry a few windward biased showers our way…although they shouldn’t amount to much in most areas. What few showers that are able to fall, will take aim on the north and east facing windward sides…and perhaps a few in the upcountry areas during the afternoons too. There really isn’t much hope of more widespread well into the future. Perhaps the next chance for an increase in showers would be towards the end of next week.
Since it’s Friday evening, and we’re pushing into a weekend, I’ll go see a new film after work. The film I’ll go watch is another action packed adventure, called X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009), starring Hugh Jackman and Liev Schreiber, among others. "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" tells the story of Wolverine’s epically violent and romantic past, his complex relationship with Victor Creed, and the ominous Weapon X program. Along the way, Wolverine encounters many mutants, both familiar and new, including surprise appearances by several legends of the X-Men universe.
I know, I know, yet another science fiction fantasy, what can I do, I enjoy this stuff. I’ll be sure to let you know what I thought Saturday morning, that is if anyone’s even interested – smile. Just in case you might be slightly curious, here’s a trailer.
It’s early Friday evening as I begin writing this last section of today’s weather narrative. As noted above, the trade winds came back today, which did a near perfect job of ventilating the volcanic haze downwind, out over the ocean. The sky became blue again Friday, with lots of sunshine beaming down, not at all muted, as it has been most of this week. This will make way for a vivid view of the May full moon tonight! I’ll likely take the drive over to the Lahaina side Saturday morning, as I’d like to go surfing. It’s been a while since I’ve ridden any waves, and look forward to catching some soon. Later in the day Saturday, I’ll probably go to the big crafts fair in upcountry Makawao. Right now though, I’m driving over to Kahului for the new film described in the paragraph above. I’ll be back early Saturday morning with your next new weather narrative, and yes, it is paradise again! I hope you have a great Friday night, I’ll catch up with you again soon, be well until then. Aloha for now…Glenn.
Interesting: Estimates of how much crude oil we have extracted from the planet vary wildly. Now, UK researchers have published a new estimate in the International Journal of Oil, Gas and Coal Technology that suggests we may have used more than we think. The idea that we are running out of oil is not a new one, but do we even know how much oil we have extracted from since the first commercial oil wells were sunk in the middle of the nineteenth century?
In 2008, chemists Istvan Lakatos and Julianna Lakatos-Szabo of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences theorized that less than 100 billion ton of crude oil has been produced since 1850 and that the average annual production rate is less than 700 million barrels per year.
They compared proven reserves and estimates of yet-to-find (YTF) resources and echoed the sentiment that we will soon face oil shortages even though a substantial part of those reserves remain in the ground untapped. Now, John Jones in the School of Engineering, at the University of Aberdeen, UK, suggests that the figures cited by Istvan Lakatos and Julianna Lakatos-Szabo for which they give no references grossly underestimates how much oil we have used already.
Jones says that we have used at least 135 billion barrels of oil since 1870, the period during which J.D. Rockefeller established The Standard Oil Company and began drilling in earnest. The oil industry now spans several generations, says Jones, and has historically been as uninterested in how much oil has been drawn as were economists, day-to-day and annual figures being of much greater concern.
However, in 2005, The Oil Depletion Analysis Centre (ODAC) in London provided a total figure of almost 1 trillion barrels of crude oil (944 billion barrels) since commercial drilling began. Even that figure does not add up, Jones explains. He has calculated a better estimate by using the volume of a barrel (42 US gallons, or 0.16 cubic meter) and a crude oil density of 0.9 tons per cubic meter. ODAC’s 944 billion barrels is thus the equivalent of 135 billion tons.
Interesting2: New research that uses an innovative approach to study, for the first time, the relative contributions of food and exercise habits to the development of the obesity epidemic has concluded that the rise in obesity in the United States since the 1970s was virtually all due to increased energy intake. How much of the obesity epidemic has been caused by excess calorie intake and how much by reductions in physical activity has been long debated and while experts agree that making it easier for people to eat less and exercise more are both important for combating it, they debate where the public health focus should be.
A study presented on Friday at the European Congress on Obesity is the first to examine the question of the proportional contributions to the obesity epidemic by combining metabolic relationships, the laws of thermodynamics, epidemiological data and agricultural data.
"There have been a lot of assumptions that both reduced physical activity and increased energy intake have been major drivers of the obesity epidemic. Until now, nobody has proposed how to quantify their relative contributions to the rise in obesity since the 1970s.
This study demonstrates that the weight gain in the American population seems to be virtually all explained by eating more calories. It appears that changes in physical activity played a minimal role," said the study’s leader, Professor Boyd Swinburn, chair of population health and director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Obesity Prevention at Deakin University in Australia.
The scientists started by testing 1,399 adults and 963 children to determine how many calories their bodies burn in total under free-living conditions. The test is the most accurate measure of total calorie burning in real-life situations. Once they had determined each person’s calorie burning rate, Swinburn and his colleagues were able to calculate how much adults needed to eat in order to maintain a stable weight and how much children needed to eat in order to maintain a normal growth curve.
They then worked out how much Americans were actually eating, using national food supply data (the amount of food produced and imported, minus the amount exported, thrown away and used for animals or other non-human uses) from the 1970s and the early 2000s.
The researchers used their findings to predict how much weight they would expect Americans to have gained over the 30-year period studied if food intake were the only influence. They used data from a nationally representative survey (NHANES) that recorded the weight of Americans in the 1970s and early 2000s to determine the actual weight gain over that period.
"If the actual weight increase was the same as what we predicted, that meant that food intake was virtually entirely responsible. If it wasn’t, that meant changes in physical activity also played a role," Swinburn said. "If the actual weight gain was higher than predicted, that would suggest that a decrease in physical activity played a role."
The researchers found that in children, the predicted and actual weight increase matched exactly, indicating that the increases in energy intake alone over the 30 years studied could explain the weight increase.
Interesting3: A decision involving the iconic polar bear could determine whether protecting endangered species might also help save the earth from global warming. The Obama administration is approaching a weekend deadline to decide whether it should allow government agencies to cite the federal Endangered Species Act, which protects the bear, for imposing limits on greenhouse gases from power plants, factories and automobiles even if the pollution occurs thousands of miles from where the polar bear lives.
The species law that affords protection for plants, animals and fish that face possible extinction became entangled with the need to reduce pollution linked to global warming more than a year ago. The Interior Department declared the polar bear a threatened species, citing the decline of Arctic sea ice due to global warming.
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