June 28-29, 2010
Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Monday afternoon:
Lihue, Kauai – 83
Honolulu, Oahu – 86
Kaneohe, Oahu – 82
Kaunakakai, Molokai – 87
Kahului, Maui – 90
Hilo, Hawaii – 82
Kailua-kona – 84
Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level around – and on the highest mountains…as of 5pm Monday evening:
Kahului, Maui – 83
Lihue, Kauai – 78
Haleakala Crater – 55 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 46 (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:
0.36 Puu Lua, Kauai
1.15 Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
0.00 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
0.25 Kepuni, Maui
1.24 Piihonua, Big Island
Marine Winds – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing two near 1031 millibar high pressure systems generally to the north of the islands. Trade winds gradually increasing later Tuesday into Wednesday.
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 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. Of course, as we know, our hurricane season won’t begin again until June 1st here in the central Pacific.
Aloha Paragraphs
East side of windward Maui…Hana
Lighter than usual trade winds remained active Monday…although will be increasing in strength Tuesday onwards. Looking at this weather map, we see two moderately strong high pressure systems, located generally to the north of our islands. As the winds are lighter than usual now, there are still no wind advisories posted anywhere in Hawaiian coastal or channel waters. Whatever volcanic haze that has been around the last 24 hours or so, should be ventilated away by Tuesday. As the trades pick up soon, we’ll see small craft wind advisories going up over those windiest waters around Maui and the
There will continue to be some showers around…which will remain active along the windward sides. The showers recently have been enhanced by an upper level trough of low pressure, especially over Oahu. Here’s a IR satellite image to check out the clouds around the islands. It shows just a few clouds draped across the windward sides of the islands around Oahu. As this looping radar image of the Hawaiian Islands points out, there were some showers converging around the northern islands, from Oahu up towards
The eastern Pacific Ocean has just one active tropical cyclone Monday night.
This satellite image shows dissipating tropical depression Celia, while tropical depression Darby has dissipated. Celia continues to head generally towards the west, while Darby is heading towards the Mexican coast…as shown on this graphical track map. Neither of these storms are any danger to the Hawaiian Islands. Meanwhile, in the Gulf of Mexico we find that tropical storm Alex has increased back into a tropical storm…likely reaching hurricane strength before impacting the Mexican coast Wednesday night. There’s still that chance that Alex may impact the Texas coast around Brownsville. Here’s the latest graphical track map…along with a satellite image.
It’s Monday evening as I begin writing this last section of totday’s narrative update. As noted above, we’re at the tail-end of a short period of lighter than normal winds, which will be taking off again Tuesday onwards. These stronger trade winds will continue to blow through the rest of this week. By the way, Kahului, Maui reached 90F degrees Monday afternoon! Checking in with the record book, we see that this hot day missed the highest maximum temperature by a full 2 degrees…which occurred back in 1969. ~~~ Here in Kihei, Maui, its partly cloudy, and still mildly hazy, although the recent bout of vog is trying to clear…under the influence of the strengthening trade winds Monday evening. I’ll be heading upcountry soon, heading home to Kula in a few minutes. To get a sense of how strong or light the trade winds are now, here’s the strongest gusts on each of the islands at around 5pm Monday evening:
Kauai – 17 mph
Oahu – 23
Molokai – 23
Lanai – 17
Kahoolawe – 35
Maui – 30
Big Island –
29
I’ll look forward to catching up with you early Tuesday morning, with your next new weather narrative from paradise. I hope you have a great Monday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.
Interesting: Two prominent climate experts, including one from the University of Arizona, are calling for a "no-regrets" strategy for planning for a hotter and drier western North America. Their advice: use water conservatively and continue developing ways to harness energy from the sun, wind and Earth.
Jonathan Overpeck, principal investigator with the Climate Assessment for the Southwest at the UA, and Bradley Udall, director of the Western Water Assessment at the University of Colorado, write in the June 25 issue of the journal Science that such an approach is necessary for coping with a wide range of projected future climate changes in the West and Southwest.
In their overview of shifting climate in the region, Overpeck and Udall cite published findings of prevalent signs of change: rising temperatures, earlier snowmelt, northward-shifting winter storms, increasing precipitation intensity and flooding, record-setting drought, plummeting Colorado River reservoir storage, widespread vegetation mortality and more large wildfires.
"The West, and especially the Southwest, is leading the nation in climate change — warming, drying, less late-winter snowpack and drought — as well as the impacts of this change," said Overpeck, a UA professor of geosciences and atmospheric sciences and co-director of the Institute of the Environment.
In the past 10 years, temperatures in almost all areas in western North America have surpassed the 20th century average, many by more than 1 or even 2 degrees Fahrenheit. The warming has decreased late-season snowpack, which serves as a water reservoir, as well as the annual flow of the Colorado River, the researchers said.
Those reductions, combined with the worst drought observed since 1900, haven’t helped matters; water storage in Lakes Powell and Mead, the largest southwestern water reservoirs, fell nearly 50 percent between 1999 and 2004 and has not risen significantly since.
In addition to water, vegetation is feeling the effects of climate change. Work by UA’s David Breshears and colleagues have already showed that more than 1 million hectares of piñon pine have died in the Southwest in the last few decades from a lethal combination of record-high temperatures and uncommonly severe drought. In addition, the frequency of large wildfires has increased as snowpack has decreased.
While researchers are confident that the higher temperatures and resulting changes in snowpack, Colorado River flow, vegetation mortality and wildfires are human-caused, they don’t know whether the drought that has plagued the West for the last 10 years — the worst since record-keeping began — is because of humans, Overpeck said.
"It’s critical to determine the causes of the observed change, including the drought, because then we will have a much improved ability to say what’s coming next, in the future," Overpeck said.
To complicate issues, studies published to date suggest that Colorado River flow could continue to decrease by 20 percent by 2050, with severe implications for cities served by Colorado River water and for agricultural production.
"One thing is for sure," Overpeck said. "The best strategy now — the no-regrets strategy — is to prepare for a hotter and drier West, Southwest and Arizona, and to make sure we don’t commit water to things now in ways that could make water shortages in the future more difficult to deal with."
Fortunately, Overpeck said, scientists have a better understanding about potential future climate change in western North America than for many other regions around the globe, making it easier for policy makers to plan coping strategies. The researchers also point to the region’s potential wealth of solar, wind and geothermal renewable energy production.
"That offers a way to make up economically for the costs that will be incurred in adapting to the warmer, drier conditions," Overpeck said. "And it will have the side benefit of decreasing the chances, through reducing greenhouse gas emissions, for potentially greater human-caused climate change."
Interesting2: Even though freshwater concentrations of mercury are far greater than those found in seawater, it’s the saltwater fish like tuna, mackerel and shark that end up posing a more serious health threat to humans who eat them. The answer, according to Duke University researchers, is in the seawater itself. The potentially harmful version of mercury — known as methylmercury — latches onto dissolved organic matter in freshwater, while it tends to latch onto chloride — the salt — in seawater, according to new a study by Heileen Hsu-Kim, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering.
"The most common ways nature turns methylmercury into a less toxic form is through sunlight," Hsu-Kim said. "When it is attached to dissolved organic matter, like decayed plants or animal matter, sunlight more readily breaks down the methylmercury. However, in seawater, the methlymercury remains tightly bonded to the chloride, where sunlight does not degrade it as easily. In this form, methylmercury can then be ingested by marine animals."
Methylmercury is a potent neurotoxin that can lead to kidney dysfunctions, neurological disorders and even death. In particular, fetuses exposed to methylmercury can suffer from these same disorders as well as impaired learning abilities. Because fish and shellfish have a natural tendency to store methylmercury in their organs, they are the leading source of mercury ingestion for humans.
"The exposure rate of mercury in the U.S. is quite high," Hsu-Kim said. "A recent epidemiological survey found that up 8 percent of women had mercury levels higher than national guidelines. Since humans are on the top of the food chain, any mercury in our food accumulates in our body."
The results of Hsu-Kim’s experiments, which have been published early online in the journal Nature Geoscience, suggest that scientists and policymakers should focus their efforts on the effects of mercury in the oceans, rather than freshwater. Her research is supported by the National Institute of Environmental Health Science.
In the past, most of the scientific studies of effects of mercury in the environment have focused on freshwater, because the technology had not advanced to the point where scientists could accurately measure the smaller concentrations of mercury found in seawater.
Though the concentrations may be smaller in seawater, mercury accumulates more readily in the tissues of organisms that consume it. "Because sunlight does not break it down in seawater, the lifetime of methlymercury is much longer in the marine environment," Hsu-Kim said. "However, the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency do not distinguish between freshwater and seawater."
Mercury enters the environment through many routes, but the primary sources are coal combustion, the refinement of gold and other non-ferrous metals, and volcanic eruptions. The air-borne mercury from these sources eventually lands on lakes or oceans and can remain in the water or sediments.
The key to the sun’s ability to break down methylmercury is a class of chemicals known as reactive oxygen species. These forms of oxygen are the biochemical equivalent of the bull in the china shop because of the way they break chemical bonds. One way these reactive oxygens are formed is by sunlight acting on oxygen molecules in the water.
"These reactive forms of oxygen are much more efficient in breaking the bonds within the methylmercury molecule," Hsu-Kim said. "And if the methylmercury is bonded to organic matter instead of chloride, then the break down reaction is much faster."
Interesting3: Life is confusing. When buying a product one has to consider whether it is green, inexpensive, actually works, and so forth and so on. There is also the life cycle of the product to consider. Is the product beneficial to the environment in the long run? For example, Marcal Manufacturing has just introduced new packaging to all of its Small Steps brand products this week, which places an environmental facts panel on the front of all product packaging.
The panel resembles a nutrition label for food products and highlights the environmental performance of its 100% recycled paper products. The Environmental Facts label includes information about the company’s use of recycled content (100%), how much chlorine bleach was used for whitening the paper products (0%) and the quantities of chemical additives such as fragrance and dyes (0%).
The packaging has just completed a nationwide roll out to grocery, drug, convenience and other major retail outlets. Many products claim to be good for the environment. The problem lies with our measure it and then prove it.
Some common principles to consider in determining whether a product is sustainable are as follows: Low environmental impact materials: choose non-toxic, sustainably produced or recycled materials which require little energy to process Energy efficiency: use manufacturing processes and produce products which require less energy Quality and durability: longer lasting and better functioning products will have to be replaced less frequently, reducing the impacts of producing replacements Design Impact Measures for total carbon footprint and life cycle assessment for any resource used are increasingly required and available.
Many are complex, but some give quick and accurate whole earth estimates of impacts. Marcal claims that it is the first in the industry to offer this level of transparency on product packaging. Yet unless all use the same comparisons, one cannot compare side by side.
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