June 8-9, 2009
Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Monday afternoon:
Lihue, Kauai – 83
Honolulu, Oahu – 92
Kaneohe, Oahu – 82
Kahului, Maui – 85
Hilo, Hawaii – 83
Kailua-kona – 87
Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountains…at 4 p.m. Monday afternoon:
Honolulu, Oahu – 89F
Kaneohe, Oahu – 80
Haleakala Crater – 57 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 43 (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 Monday afternoon:
0.58 Mount Waialaele, Kauai
0.18 Poamoho 2, Oahu
0.00 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
0.33 West Wailuaiki, Maui
0.16 Honokaa, Big Island
Marine Winds – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map shows a 1023 millibar high pressure system to the northeast of the islands, with a ridge extending from the southwest flank of this high…into the area north and northwest of Kauai. The trade winds will remain active, although be lighter Tuesday and Wednesday.
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
Larger surf along our leeward sides now
Our local trade winds will ease up a little in strength through mid-week…then increase again Thursday and Friday into the weekend. Looking at this weather map Monday evening , we see the same long lasting 1023 millibar high pressure system to our northeast. This high pressure cell has a ridge extending southwest from its center…which extends into the area north and northwest of
There will be a few minor showers around through mid-week…with a more noticeable increase in showers Wednesday night into Thursday. The leeward beaches will remain mostly dry, with generally favorable weather conditions during this first half of the week. The computer forecast models continue to bring in an area of showers late in the day Wednesday through most of Thursday. The bulk of these showers will fall along the windward sides, and around the mountains. As the trade winds will be on the increase Thursday, there will continue to be some passing showers along the windward sides…a few of which may spread over locally into the leeward sides. We should see drier weather moving back in most places Friday into the weekend.
Looking at satellite imagery, and especially the clouds upstream of the islands, we see rather distinct cloud bands, with what looks like relatively dry areas between them. Depending up on the timing of arrival of these bands, we could continue to see slight increases in windward biased showers during the nights, with drying out during the days. The main area, that has a center to it, is located pretty much directly to the northeast of the islands. It might be easiest to start off looking at this area using this non-moving, daytime viewable visible satellite image. Shifting to this looping IR satellite image, we see a slight counterclockwise rotation to this center. This center is expected to move along in a more or less WSW direction, opening up into a more or less north to south oriented trough. The southern edge of this trough is what will bring the increased chance of showers Wednesday night into Thursday. We could certainly use the moisture, so we’re hoping that these showers actually arrive! We can see lots of high level cirrus going by to our north…which seems to be dissipating as it dips southward into our area.
It’s Monday evening here in Kihei, Maui, as I begin writing this last section of today’s narrative. Looking out the window here in Kihei, before I high-tail it back upcountry, it’s generally sunny out there. The trade winds are still quite stiff, with the tropical vegetation swaying to and fro under the influence. While I was down near the beach at lunch, I could see white caps on the ocean surface, along with a sizable south swell, bringing larger than normal waves to the leeward beaches. I saw that the life guards had put up red flags on the sand, warning people to be careful of these breakers. ~~~ By the way, I’m making a very spontaneous trip to California this Thursday. I have to address some health issues there, not my own, but others. I’ll speak more about that in the next couple of days. ~~~ I’ll be back early Tuesday morning with your next new weather narrative. I hope you have a good Monday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.
Interesting: The skeleton of a whale that died around 10,000 years ago has been found in connection with the extension of the E6 motorway in Strömstad. The whale bones are now being examined by researchers at the University of Gothenburg who, among other things, want to ascertain whether the find is the mystical "Swedenborg whale".
There are currently four species of right whale. What is particularly interesting is that the size and shape of the whale bones resemble those of a fifth species: the mystical "Swedenborg whale", first described by the scientist Emmanuel Swedenborg in the 18th century.
"Bones from what is believed to be Swedenborg’s right whale have previously been found in western Sweden. However, determining the species of whale bones found in earth is complicated and there is no definitive conclusion on whether the whale actually existed, it could equally well be a myth," says zoologist Thomas Dahlgren and his colleague Leif Jonsson.
To determine the species of whale that has been found Thomas Dahlgren has conducted DNA tests that are to be analyzed in conjunction with researchers at the Natural History Museum in London. The whale bones are interesting in several respects. The fragments of bone were collected in a clay deposit and remains of marine organisms that today are also endangered species were found around them.
"The hunt for the large whale species, which led to the extinction of the Atlantic grey whale and perhaps the Swedenborg whale, may also have caused the extinction of a large number of species that are dependent on whale carcasses for their survival," says Thomas Dahlgren.
The whale bones are thought to be around 10,000 years old and were found 75 meters above sea level, but in a site that at that time was located out on the coast. It is conjectured that the bones have been preserved for such a long time as they were surrounded by fine, oxygen-free clay.
The largest whale bone, approximately 2.5 meters long, is part of a jawbone. Among the smaller bones is a vertebra. Discussions are underway on whether the bones can be put in order and potentially put on public display.
Interesting2: Not a plant to be seen, the desert ground is too dry. But the air contains water, and research scientists have found a way of obtaining drinking water from air humidity. The system is based completely on renewable energy and is therefore autonomous. Cracks permeate the dried-out desert ground, the landscape bears testimony to the lack of water.
But even here, where there are no lakes, rivers or groundwater, considerable quantities of water are stored in the air. In the Negev desert in Israel, for example, annual average relative air humidity is 64 percent – in every cubic meter of air there are 11.5 milliliters of water.
Research scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB in Stuttgart working in conjunction with their colleagues from the company Logos Innovationen have found a way of converting this air humidity autonomously and decentrally into drinkable water.
“The process we have developed is based exclusively on renewable energy sources such as thermal solar collectors and photovoltaic cells, which makes this method completely energy-autonomous. It will therefore function in regions where there is no electrical infrastructure,” says Siegfried Egner, head of department at the IGB.
The principle of the process is as follows: hygroscopic brine – saline solution which absorbs moisture – runs down a tower-shaped unit and absorbs water from the air. It is then sucked into a tank a few meters off the ground in which a vacuum prevails.
Energy from solar collectors heats up the brine, which is diluted by the water it has absorbed. Because of the vacuum, the boiling point of the liquid is lower than it would be under normal atmospheric pressure. This effect is known from the mountains: as the atmospheric pressure there is lower than in the valley, water boils at temperatures distinctly below 100 degrees Celsius.
The evaporated, non-saline water is condensed and runs down through a completely filled tube in a controlled manner. The gravity of this water column continuously produces the vacuum and so a vacuum pump is not needed. The re-concentrated brine runs down the tower surface again to absorb moisture from the air.
Interesting3: Chopping down fewer trees and caring for the soil may be cheaper and more effective in fighting climate change than curbing emissions from coal plants, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). Many energy companies and analysts say the world should invest in technology which traps carbon emissions from the flue gas of coal plants and then buries it underground.
But the technology is untested. And according to a UNEP report, there are better natural ways to store carbon. Trees store the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) as they grow, while soil traps carbon in the organic matter of roots and tiny organisms underground.
"Tens of billions of dollars are being earmarked for carbon capture and storage at power stations, with the CO2 to be buried underground or under the sea," said Achim Steiner, UNEP Executive Director, in the report "The Natural Fix? The Role of Ecosystems in Climate Mitigation". "The Earth’s living systems might be capable of sequestering more than 50 gigatons (billion tons) of carbon over the coming decades with the right market signals," he added.
Interesting4: True or false: taking the commuter train across Boston results in lower greenhouse gas emissions than travelling the same distance in a jumbo jet. Perhaps surprisingly, the answer is false. A new study compares the "full life-cycle" emissions generated by 11 different modes of transportation in the US.
Unlike previous studies on transport emissions, Mikhail Chester and Arpad Horvath of the University of California, Berkeley, looked beyond what is emitted by different types of car, train, bus or plane while their engines are running and includes emissions from building and maintaining the vehicles and their infrastructure, as well as generating the fuel to run them.
Transport studies expert Abigail Bristow of Loughborough University, UK, who was not involved in the study, says it is valuable because it attempts to compare transport on equal terms. To do this, Chester and Horvath calculated how many passengers each train, plane, bus or car would carry in its lifetime and how many kilometers it would cover. The pair took into account how much each infrastructure component — such as tracks, roads and airports — is used in its lifetime.
Interesting5: A transparent thin film barrier used to protect flat panel TVs from moisture could become the basis for flexible solar panels that would be installed on roofs like shingles. The flexible rooftop solar panels – called building-integrated photovoltaics, or BIPVs – could replace today’s boxy solar panels that are made with rigid glass or silicon and mounted on thick metal frames. The flexible solar shingles would be less expensive to install than current panels and made to last 25 years.
"There’s a lot of wasted space on rooftops that could actually be used to generate power," said Mark Gross, a senior scientist at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. "Flexible solar panels could easily become integrated into the architecture of commercial buildings and homes. Solar panels have had limited success because they’ve been difficult and expensive to install."
Interesting6: The Maldives, one of the nations most threatened by global warming, is appealing to the United Nations space agency to help the island country plan its defenses against rising sea levels. "Beach erosion is the No. 1 problem for our country right now," Environment Minister Abdulla Shahid said over the weekend in an interview in Vienna. The Indian Ocean nation of 385,000 people has had to relocate the populations of two of its 200 islands because of eroding beaches, he said.
The UN Office for Outer Space Affairs is meeting this week in the Austrian capital to help poorer nations get access to satellite imagery that can help them plan for environmental disasters and climate change. Commercial photos from space, which normally cost $4,000 each, can be obtained through the UN for free, Shahid said. The Maldives wants the images to plan sea walls and future population centers.
"The storm surges have become extreme, much worse than anything our people have seen in their lifetimes," Shahid said. One island lost a 1,200-foot (366-meter) long, 160-foot deep stretch of beach in the last two weeks, he said. The team came up with a "phase-shift index" to determine the state of each reef.
Pristine reefs where coral was still abundant had an index number of -2 to -3, while areas where macroalgae have overwhelmed reefs’ surfaces were given an index ranking of between 3 and 5. They found that while there were moderate local increases in seaweed cover over the study period, only four percent of reefs worldwide were dominated by macroalgae — that is, more than 50 percent of a reef’s surface was covered in seaweed.
Researchers also found overall "phase shift severity" decreased in the Caribbean, did not change in the Florida Keys and the Indo-Pacific, and increased slightly on the Great Barrier Reef due to moderate coral loss>
Interesting7: To aesthetes, high-voltage power lines are a blight on the rural landscape. But zoologists at the University of Duisburg–Essen in Germany welcome them as a tool for testing the power of large ruminants to perceive Earth’s magnetic field. Last year, a team led by Hynek Burda and Sabine Begall discovered that free-ranging cattle and deer tend to align their bodies in a north–south direction.
The animals sure seemed to be responding to the geomagnetic field. If so, the zoologists reasoned, they should lose their orientation when they graze or rest near power lines, because the current passing in the lines distorts Earth’s magnetic field. If not, and the animals are reacting instead to the sun or some other cue, power lines should have no effect.
By observing wild roe deer and studying aerial images from Google Earth of cattle in European fields, Burda, Begall and three colleagues confirmed their hypothesis. In general, the animals faced every which way near the lines. (East–west power lines were an intriguing exception; cattle tended to align with them, for reasons still unclear.)
What’s more, cattle gradually regained their north–south body orientation the farther they moved away from the lines. The study is the first strong demonstration of magnetic alignment in mammals other than rodents or bats. An internal compass could well be handy equipment in the roaming lifestyle of grazing animals. The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Interesting8: Hong Kong’s worst rainstorm on record, which saw 145 millimeters of rain (5.71") fall in a single hour, cost the wealthy city 75 million US dollars, according to a report issued Monday. The environmental group Greenpeace conducted a detailed survey into the cost of the June 7, 2008 storm, and said it showed Hong Kong needed a comprehensive policy to tackle global warming.
The damages included 15.4 million US dollars related to landslides in 25 locations, nearly 300,000 US dollars for 22 injuries and accidents and 12.4 million US dollars for flight cancellations. "The extreme rainfall Hong Kong suffered last June and the associated high costs will become a horrific normality if no action is taken to stop the climate crisis," Koo Wai Muk, climate campaigner for the group, said.
"Greenpeace calls on the chief executive Donald Tsang to tackle the problem by urgently drawing up a climate-change policy and to keep his promise to transform Hong Kong into a low-carbon economy." There was no immediate response to the report from Hong Kong’s Beijing-appointed administration, which has been accused in the past of being weak on environmental issues.
Hong Kong, a high-rise city of 7 million, has one of the world’s greatest carbon footprints. Campaigns by green groups to use less lights, and turn down air conditioners, have received only lukewarm public response.
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