Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs / March 11-12, 2010

March 11-12, 2010

Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Thursday afternoon:

Lihue, Kauai – 78
Honolulu, Oahu – 82
Kaneohe, Oahu – 74
Kaunakakai, Molokai – 78
Kahului, Maui – 79
Hilo, Hawaii – 80
Kailua-kona – 81

Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level around the state – and on the highest mountains…at 4pm Thursday afternoon:

Barking Sands, Kauai – 81F
Hilo, Hawaii – 73

Haleakala Crater –    50 (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 Thursday afternoon:

0.58 Mount Waialaele, Kauai  
2.36 South Fork Kaukonahua, Oahu
0.01 Molokai 
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
1.90 Puu Kukui, Maui 
1.58 Saddle Quarry, Big Island

Marine Winds – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing high pressure systems to the northwest through northeast of Hawaii. The winds will be strong and gusty…gradually losing strength into the weekend.

Satellite and Radar Images: To view the cloud conditions we have here in Hawaii, please use the following satellite links, starting off with this 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.

Tropical Cyclone activity in the eastern and central Pacific – Here’s the latest weather information coming out of the National Hurricane Center, covering the eastern north Pacific. You can find the latest tropical cyclone information for the central north Pacific (where Hawaii is located) by clicking on this link to the Central Pacific Hurricane Center. Here’s a tracking map covering both the eastern and central Pacific Ocean. A satellite image, which shows the entire ocean area between Hawaii and the Mexican coast…can be found here.

 Aloha Paragraphs

Napping Hawaiian cat

The trade winds are still wound up pretty tight, with wind gusts having topped 40 mph again today at a couple of spots in Maui County, and on the Big Island. The pressure gradient across our central Pacific, at least in the area around the Hawaiian Islands, remains fairly steep. Despite this, the winds do seem to have come down from their even stronger realms a tad, which we saw earlier in the week. Nonetheless, the NWS forecast office in Honolulu is keeping small craft wind advisories active across every square inch of our coastal marine environment. All this wind, not only locally, but also well upstream of the islands, is keeping rough and choppy waves…breaking along our east facing beaches. Thus, we see the high surf advisory flags stuck in the sand along those windward shores.

The winds are expected to ease up going forward, perhaps a little more tomorrow, than what we saw today…and then more significantly by the weekend. This will be caused by our high pressure systems, now positioned to the northwest through northeast, losing strength. This weather map shows a 1029 millibar high pressure system to the northwest, with its 1024 millibar counterpart to the northeast. Meanwhile, we also see a very deep 96 millibar storm to the northwest, moving very rapidly towards our central Pacific. This storm has a cold front draping southwest from its center, with hurricane force winds blowing behind it. The computer models show this frontal boundary arriving near Kauai Sunday night or Monday morning. The latest iteration of the GFS model now shows the frontal cloud band slowing way down as it approaches Kauai. This may limit the frontal showers for the areas past Oahu. However, here could be some prefrontal showers ahead of the front, or perhaps more likely…moisture associated with the front being carried onto the north and northeast coasts and slopes.

Looking even further ahead, the computer models are showing a second cold front approaching the state around the middle of next week. If we consider the drought conditions around the state now, we’re hoping that the postfrontal showers (from this next front) brings good precipitation to the windward sides Monday and Tuesday. Then, the models go on to show another cold front arriving around next Wednesday, posing the chance of more much needed moisture. Perhaps looking a bit too far into the future, the GFS model is showing a third cold front arriving next weekend. It seems that after a break from lots of cold fronts coming our way during February, the trade winds have taken over in no uncertain terms during March. Perhaps we’re moving into another period of frontal activity…lets just hope these cold fronts bring more rain than those February ones did! As is always the case, it will take time to tell. Back to the moment, a good thing has been happening more recently…as the windward sides have seen more prolific rainfall than we’ve seen in quite some time.

It’s Thursday evening, as I begin writing the last section of today’s narrative. The winds have let up a bit, especially over the Kauai and Oahu end of the island chain. They are still quite uppity down around Maui and the Big Island. Just to get an idea about the nature of the winds, here’s the strongest gusts, at around 630pm Thursday – 25 mph on Kauai; 24 mph on Oahu; 28 mph on Molokai; 35 mph on Lanai; 33 Kahoolawe; 35 mph on Maui; and 40 mph at South Point on the Big Island.  ~~~ Here in Kula, Maui, there isn’t any wind at around 7pm, while being partly cloudy and dry. The air temperature was running 62.2F degrees. I just got back from my evening walk, and feeding the cats…one of which named Kiwi, looks remarkably like the one in the picture above. I hope you have a great Thursday night, and perhaps you can meet me here again Friday morning. Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting: China and India joined almost all other major greenhouse gas emitters Tuesday in signing up to the climate accord struck in Copenhagen, boosting a deal strongly favored by the United States. More than 100 nations have now endorsed the Copenhagen Accord, a non-binding agreement reached after two weeks of tortuous wrangling at a 194-nation summit in December.

The accord plans $100 billion a year in climate aid for developing nations from 2020 and seeks to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6F) above pre-industrial times, but produced no timetable of emission limits to reach that goal. Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh told parliament that India would also let its name join the list of "associated" countries on the three-page document.

"This will strengthen our negotiating position on climate change," Ramesh said. Chinese negotiator Su Wei wrote a one-sentence letter to the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat in Bonn saying that it could "proceed to include China in the list." China, the United States, the European Union, Russia and India are the main emitters of the greenhouse gases that are blamed for global warming — mostly carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels.

Only Russia has yet to associate with the deal. The endorsements are a small boost for the Accord, which environmentalists say was a bare-minimum outcome from a summit that many nations hoped would end with a broad, legally binding pact to fight climate change.

But they offer little indication of how, or when, rich and poor nations might agree on a binding mechanism for combating climate changes that scientists say will multiply droughts, floods, storms and heat waves, and dramatically raise sea levels. China and India have preferred since Copenhagen to stress the supremacy of the 1992 U.N. Climate Convention, agreed in Kyoto, which puts the emphasis on rich nations cutting emissions.

Interesting2: The sensitivity of Amazon rain forests to dry season droughts is still poorly understood, with reports of enhanced tree mortality and forest fires on one hand, and excessive forest greening on the other. In a current story there is a report that previous conclusions of large scale greening of the Amazon as a result of drought are not reproducible. Approximately 11%-12% of the drought stricken forests display greening, while, 28%-20% show browning or no change, and for the rest, the data are not of sufficient quality to characterize any changes.

These changes are also not unique; approximately similar changes are observed in non-drought years as well. The Amazon drought of 2005 was the worst ever recorded in the Amazon. The drought has turned rivers into grassy mud flats, killed tens of millions of fish, stranded hundreds of communities, and brought disease and economic despair to the region.

There have been other droughts such as in 1926, 1983, and 1998. These other droughts can be more linked to El Nino effects. Scientists are not certain as to the cause of the 2005 drought, although warmer water temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean are the leading suspect. Wet tropical forests are the most species rich biome, and tropical forests in the Americas such as along the Amazon River are consistently more species rich than the wet forests in Africa and Asia.

As the largest tract of tropical rain forest in the Americas, the Amazonian rain forests have unparalleled biodiversity. However extensive deforestation has occurred in the last few decades and the 2005 drought did not help. There had been earlier claims that the 2005 drought caused a "greening" of the Amazon. Tied to this thought was that available sunlight increased in this area.

In the March Geophysical Letters an article was published by several authors entitled: "Amazon Forests Did Not Green-up in the 2005 Drought". The authors included Arindam Samanta and Ranga B. Myneni. In this the authors concluded that only about 10% of the affected area increased in greenness and about three times this area became browner. The majority of the affected areas could not be determined.

At the same time sunlight (in the wavelengths most useful for plant life) decreased rather than decreased in most areas. There was no co-relation between drought severity and greenness changes, which is contrary to the idea of drought induced greening. Finally the study concluded that the spatial patterns of Enhanced Vegetation Index changes seen in drought year 2005 are not unique in comparison to non” drought years.

Interesting3: Two billion people worldwide do their cooking on open fires, producing sooty pollution that shortens millions of lives and exacerbates global warming. If widely adopted, a new generation of inexpensive, durable cook stoves could go a long way toward alleviating this problem. With a single, concerted initiative, says Lakshman Guruswami, the world could save millions of people in poor nations from respiratory ailments and early death, while dealing a big blow to global warming — and all at a surprisingly small cost.

"If we could supply cheap, clean-burning cook stoves to the large portion of the world that burns biomass," says Guruswami, a Sri Lankan-born professor of international law at the University of Colorado, "we could address a significant international public health problem, and at the same stroke cut a major source of warming." Sooty, indoor air pollution from open wood or other biomass fires has long been linked to health problems and deaths.

More recently, scientists have been surprised to learn that black carbon — not only from biomass fires but from dirty diesel engines and other sources — is a far larger contributor to global warming than previously suspected: The dark particles absorb and retain heat close to the Earth’s surface that might otherwise be reflected. Some two billion people around the world, Guruswami notes, do most or all of their cooking and heating with fires from simple biomass — dried dung, wood, brush, or crop residues.

In India alone, the ratio is much higher — about three-fourths. "Think about that," says Guruswami, who directs his university’s Center for Energy and Environmental Security. "Two billion people, one-third of the people on Earth, are caught in a time warp, with no access to modern energy. They got energy from Prometheus a long time ago, and that was it."

Interesting4: Consider this T-shirt: It can monitor your heart rate and breathing, analyze your sweat and even cool you off on a hot summer’s day. What about a pillow that monitors your brain waves, or a solar-powered dress that can charge your MP3 player? This is not science fiction — this is cotton in 2010.

Now, the laboratory of Juan Hinestroza, assistant professor of Fiber Science and Apparel Design, has developed cotton threads that can conduct electric current as well as a metal wire can, yet remain light and comfortable enough to give a whole new meaning to multi-use garments.

This technology works so well that simple knots in such specially treated thread can complete a circuit — and solar-powered dress with this technology literally woven into its fabric will be featured at the annual Cornell Design League Fashion Show on Saturday, March 13 at Cornell University’s Barton Hall.

Using multidisciplinary nanotechnology developed at Cornell in collaboration with the universities at Bologna and Cagliari, Italy, Hinestroza and his colleagues developed a technique to permanently coat cotton fibers with electrically conductive nanoparticles. "We can definitively have sections of a traditional cotton fabric becoming conductive, hence a great myriad of applications can be achieved," Hinestroza said.

"The technology developed by us and our collaborators allows cotton to remain flexible, light and comfortable while being electronically conductive," Hinestroza said. "Previous technologies have achieved conductivity but the resulting fiber becomes rigid and heavy. Our new techniques make our yarns friendly to further processing such as weaving, sewing and knitting." This technology is beyond the theory stage.

Hinestroza’s student, Abbey Liebman, was inspired by the technology enough to design a dress that actually uses flexible solar cells to power small electronics from a USB charger located in the waist. The charger can power a smartphone or an MP3 player. "Instead of conventional wires, we are using our conductive cotton to transmit the electricity — so our conductive yarns become part of the dress," Hinestroza said. "Cotton used to be called the ‘fabric of our lives’ but based on these results, we can now call it ‘The fabric of our lights.’"