March 25-26, 2010
Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Thursday afternoon:
Lihue, Kauai – 79
Honolulu, Oahu – 81
Kaneohe, Oahu – 79
Kaunakakai, Molokai – 78
Kahului, Maui – 79
Hilo, Hawaii – 80
Kailua-kona – 80
Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level around the state – and on the highest mountains…at 5pm Thursday evening:
Port Allen, Kauai – 81F
Molokai airport – 71
Haleakala Crater – 52 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 39 (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:
0.48 Mount Waialaele, Kauai
0.61 Manoa Valley, Oahu
0.06 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
2.78 Puu Kukui, Maui
1.07 Kawainui Stream, Big Island
Marine Winds – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a 1028 millibar high pressure system located far to the northeast, and another 1027 millibar high far to the west-northwest of the Hawaiian Islands. This pressure configuration will keep gusty trade winds blowing into Friday…somewhat lighter Saturday.
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
Makena Beach…Maui
A pleasant early spring trade wind weather pattern will prevail through much of the next week. Friday will find moderately strong winds blowing across our islands, with gusts topping 30 mph in those windiest spots. The current small craft wind advisories have been pared back to just those windiest areas around Maui and the Big Island. Our local wind speeds will slip a bit this weekend, although will remain active. A low pressure system, with its associated cold front passing by to the north of the state, will soften the winds a touch or two. A new high pressure system moving into the area north of the state early next week, will crank the trade winds right back up. As a matter of fact, the computer models are suggesting that the trade winds will become quite strong and gusty as we move into the new work week ahead.
Clouds will be around as usual, although any associated rainfall will likely be rather limited…especially Friday into the weekend. As usual, with the trade winds on the brisk side, the bulk of the showers that do fall, will end up on the windward coasts and slopes. Looking at this satellite imagery, there aren’t that many clouds upstream of the islands early Thursday afternoon, in terms of the trade winds carrying them this way. There’s another new surge of high clouds (those brighter white clouds) to the southwest and west of the state, so we may see them arriving at some point soon…along with a colorful sunset. This looping radar image shows that there are some showers arriving along the windward sides…most notably over the central islands from Oahu down through Maui, and on the southeast coast of the
It’s Thursday evening as I begin writing the last section of today’s narrative. Trade winds remain on the strong and gusty side this evening, and now it looks as if they will remain rather uppity through Friday…finally calming down a bit this weekend. Looking at the strongest gusts around the state at 5pm, there was a 40 mph gust at Maalaea Bay on Maui. The rest of the state was generally in the 15-30 mph range, at least in terms of gusts. Looking a bit further ahead, as we enter into next week, it will be windy again. I actually got through all my meetings at work today, and must admit, am relieved that they are done, at least for the moment. Friday is a holiday here in the islands, called Prince Kuhio Day. Therefore, I’ll be off work here in Kihei, although will be able to do this website updates at home. ~~~ I’m going to see a new film now, one that just opened up at the theatre in Kahului. It’s called The Ghost Writer (2010), starring Ewan McGregor, Kim Cattrall, Pierce Bronsan, Timothy Hutton…among others. A short synopsis: A ghostwriter hired to complete the memoirs of a former British prime minister uncovers secrets that put his own life in jeopardy. Here’s a trailer, and by the way, this film is getting B and B+ ratings by the critics. ~~~ I’ll catch up with you again Friday morning, right here, with your next new weather narrative from paradise! Aloha for now…Glenn.
Interesting: The Asian monsoon spreads industrial pollution from China and India around the world by lofting it high into the atmosphere where it may affect the global climate, a study showed on Thursday. "This is a vivid example of pollutants altering our atmosphere in subtle and far-reaching ways," said William Randel of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research, who led the study in the journal Science.
It said the mid-year Asian monsoon sucks pollutants — such as black carbon, sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides — from the earth’s surface into the stratosphere about 20 to 25 miles high. Strong stratospheric winds then spread fast-growing amounts of pollution from countries such as China, India and Indonesia around the planet, where it can linger for years before falling to earth or breaking down.
"It’s as if there’s a hole that sucks the pollution from the ground and rapidly injects it into the lower stratosphere," said Professor Peter Bernath of the University of York in England who was among the authors. "People suspected it before but this shows that it happens," he told Reuters of the finding by researchers in Canada, Britain and the United States.
It was unclear what impact the Asian stratospheric pollution might have on the climate. Some particles could have a cooling effect by reflecting sunshine back into space while others might trap heat. "Overall you don’t know which way it could go," Bernath said. And pollution might also affect the ozone layer, which protects the planet from harmful ultraviolet rays.
Some scientists have proposed short-cut solutions to climate change known as geo-engineering — among them schemes to dim sunlight by spewing sulphur dioxide high into the atmosphere. Others say it is too risky, with possible damaging side effects. In the past, volcanoes have been shown to spew particles into the stratosphere and giant forest fires can also have the same impact.
But industrial pollution has been typically viewed as a local problem, low in the atmosphere. The study said a projected rise in economic growth, including the opening of many coal-fired power plants in China and India, could mean more pollution sucked up and spread by the Asian monsoon.
Climate change, blamed mainly on a build-up of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, might also alter the monsoon alongside other impacts projected by the U.N. panel of climate scientists such as droughts, floods and rising sea levels. The researchers used satellites to monitor hydrogen cyanide — largely released from burning trees and other vegetation. Flows of hydrogen cyanide exposed how air currents were wafting pollution upwards.
Interesting2: What has been called the worst drought for China’s Yunnan Province in nearly a century will persist, as there is little prospect for meaningful rainfall until May. Between six and seven months of dry winter weather is characteristic of the Yunnan Province of China, but an early end to last year’s rainy season is causing the current drought to be much worse than in previous years.
A villager drives a bullock cart across a dried-up pond in Luliang, in southwest China’s Yunnan province, Monday, March 22, 2010. The worst drought in decades in China’s southern provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan, as well as the Guangxi Autonomous Region and the city of Chongqing, has forced local governments to tap underground water sources and use cloud seeding to produce rain for agricultural production.
Yunnan has felt unusually high temperatures and unusually low rainfall since the beginning of September, when conditions usually dry out for the start of the winter’s dry season. May is expected to be the first month for heavier rainfall, when 4 inches is normal for the region during this time. The seasonal rainy weather usually begins in April or May for the province, with the dry season moving in after October.
The peak month of the rainy season is July, when over 8 inches of rain is normal. The drought is badly affecting the planting of crops, and reservoirs in serious shortage of water will make it even harder for planting to be sustained. The first round of crops this year failed, but there are hopes for a successful summer corn crop.
BBC estimated that over 50 million people in the province have been affected by the water shortage, deepening the poverty there. The dry conditions are being felt as far away as Beijing, where the first big dust storm of the season shrouded the city in orange grit last weekend.
Interesting3: The yellow haze descended across Nigeria, blotting out the sun, canceling airline flights and coating everything with a fine layer of dust. The sudden storm sparked frightened text messages about supposedly killer acid rain, but meteorologists say the weather comes from the harmattan, a yearly trade wind that brings dust from the Sahara Desert through Nigeria and the rest of West Africa.
This year, however, the harmattan has come at an abnormal time, a possible result of global warming. Experts say it may delay the rainy season in Africa’s most populous nation and there are worries it may even throw off future seasonal changes. "It is part of the changes of the climate," said Temi Ologunorisa, a professor of climatology at Osun State University. "With the coming of this dust, you cannot have rain."
The harmattan, caused by shifting weather patterns, means "tears your breath apart" in Twi, a West African language. The harmattan season typically begins in late November, as Nigeria’s dry season begins to end. The winds carry the sands and dust of the Sahara southward, and pick up the loose crop soil of Nigeria’s arid northern Sahel with it. This year, the harmattan briefly appeared in January.
It typically ends by February, said Sampson Wilson, a deputy general manager at the government-run Nigerian Meteorological Agency. But it blew back into Nigeria without warning last weekend, first enveloping the country’s north in dust and dropping visibility to almost zero, according to Wilson, and forcing many airlines to cancel flights in the country of 150 million people.
As it reached south, the storm encased the megacity of Lagos in a yellow fog that made the setting sun give off no more light than the moon. Northern Nigeria is experiencing growing desertification as rising temperatures allow the edge of the Sahara Desert to creep closer to the country. That additional dust adds fuel for the harmattan winds, said Ologunorisa, an expert on climate change.
"The more dust you have, it shows we have more desertification," he said. The harmattan has made it hard to breathe in Lagos, whose air already is polluted by swarms of beat-up cars navigating potholed streets and by electrical generators that provide power during frequent blackouts. Health authorities warned the public to cover faces with wet cloth and stay indoors, but many had to take to the streets to earn a living in a country where most live on less than $1 a day.
Doctors expected the late harmattan to bring colds, flu and asthma attacks, as the kicked-up dust in the air inflames lungs and nostrils. Changing patterns in the trade winds also affect when the harmattan will arrive, Ologunorisa said. The disruption of those patterns throws off Nigeria’s rainy and dry seasons as well — timing long relied on by farmers to know when to plant across the country’s fertile middle belt. Forecasters predict this harmattan will slowly lift across the country in the coming week. But fears over Nigeria’s changing weather patterns will linger.
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