Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs / November 12-13, 2010

November 12-13, 2010

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

Lihue airport, Kauai –  74
Honolulu airport, Oahu –  83
Kaneohe MCAS, Oahu –  81
Molokai airport – 81
Kahului airport, Maui – 83
Ke-ahole airport (Kona) –   83
Hilo airport, Hawaii –   80

Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountain tops…as of 6pm Friday evening:

Port Allen, Kauai – 81F
Hilo, Hawaii – 74 

Haleakala Crater –    43 (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: 

0.21 Mount Waialeale, Kauai  
0.23 Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
0.03 Molokai 
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
0.46 West Wailuaiki, Maui
0.75 Pahoa, Big Island

Marine Winds – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a strong high pressure system far to the northeast of our islands, with a ridge extending southwest…to the north and northwest of Hawaii. Our local winds will remain moderately strong…locally stronger and gusty 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 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 end until November 31st here in the central Pacific.

 Aloha Paragraphs

Trade wind weather into the weekend
 
 

Our local winds are arriving from the trade direction…locally quite gusty.  This weather map shows a strong 1038 millibar high pressure system far northeast of the islands, moving southwest towards Hawaii.  As we move into the weekend, the trade winds will remain active. The winds are strong enough now, that small craft wind advisories remain in place, across those windiest areas around the Big Island. These winds will begin to slow down as we move into the new week ahead, and gradually shift more east-southeast or southeast by the middle of the week. Winds from this direction are infamous for bringing volcanic haze up over the state…from the Big Island vents. An approaching cold front will keep our winds light, and may shift them to the south to southwest Kona direction…into the second half of next week, as well as keep our overlying atmosphere warm and humid.

Winds around the state are locally gusty, with the following numbers representing the strongest early Friday evening:

24 mph      Port Allen, Kauai
28             Kahuku training area, Oahu
26             Molokai
33               Kahoolawe
24             Maalaea Bay, Maui
07             Lanai Airport 
30             South Point, Big Island

An old cold front brought showers along the windward sides of state…and is now passing off to the west of Kauai. There are patches of moisture being carried our way on the solid trade wind flow…further upstream as we move into the night. At the same time, lots of high level cirrus clouds are still blocking the view of the incoming lower level clouds from Oahu down to the Big Island. Here's a satellite picture of those rather thick high clouds. As we can see, those icy clouds are moving eastward, with Kauai [and some of Oahu] finding clearing skies. We can take a look at this looping radar image, to see where whatever few showers are falling at the moment. Showery conditions will eventually return to the state, especially on the Big Island end of the chain. An upper level trough of low pressure near the state…may enhance some of these showers at times this weekend.  It’s still unclear about how the cold front, that parks itself to the northwest of Kauai, will influence our weather later in the new week.

We’re fully into our autumn season now, so that the high pressure system to our northeast, with its associated ridge, will protect us from the intrusion of a cold front…for the time being. The GFS weather model shows the front eventually dropping down over Kauai and Oahu, and then fizzling-out over Maui County later next week. The other alternative has some form of tropical moisture being drawn up over the state…on the southeast or south winds ahead of the cold front. It seems to make sense at this point, to keep an eye on this weather feature, and fine tune the details over the next 2-3 days. On another note, there will be two episodes of large to very large surf arriving along our north and west shores late Sunday, and then again around the middle of the new work week ahead.

It's Friday evening as I begin writing this last section of today's narrative update. As pointed out above, the trade winds, and off and on passing windward showers are our main concern as we move into the weekend…along with the high cirrus clouds, which will dim and filter our sunshine quite a bit. These high clouds will gradually shift eastward, allowing more sunshine to arrive as we move into the weekend. We can look for a fairly typical autumn trade wind weather pattern for the time being. As we move into the new week ahead however, our gusty trade winds will falter. This will happen as a cold front lurks to the northwest, with still a big question about what it will eventually do. In the near term it won't come into the state, although will push our high pressure ridge down over, or close to the state with time. This will bring southeast winds, of a lighter variety, and the good chance of volcanic haze. I'll be discussing this cold front, with its influences in more detail over the next several days.

~~~ Here in Kula, Maui, early Friday evening, it continues to be cloudy, as much of the state has remained during the day. The one exception was Kauai, and the northern half of Oahu, where the high clouds finally cleared. The air temperature at a little after 5pm was 67.5F degrees, with little in the way of wind. It wouldn't be surprising to see a short bit of color around sunset, although won't likely be too long an episode. I worked from home here in Kula today, and have no plans to go out this evening. I'll likely take a walk, and then plant myself out of the deck to watch the sunset. I'll be here again Saturday morning with your next new weather narrative, I hope you have a great Friday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting: Cleaning up oil spills is a time consuming, difficult process. But a novel approach developed at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) uses a new kind of vacuum cleaner that blows bark or other absorbent material onto oil spills, and then sucks the material up again. The vacuum cleaner is four times more efficient in cleaning up after oil accidents than conventional techniques. It started with a simple assignment for master's students in NTNU's Department of Product Design: make something useful that employs air and electronics.

Silje Rabben and three of her fellow students decided it was time to take oil cleanups out of the Stone Age, and developed the new kind of vacuum cleaner that speeds up oil spill cleanups. The design has been so successful that the students founded a company, Kaliber Industrial Design, and are now looking for investors to help market their invention, the MOSE — or "Mechanical Oil spill Sanitation Equipment."

The invention has already won a number of prestigeous Scandinavian innovation awards, including DnB NOR's Innovation Award for Mid-Norway, 2010; Tekna's Innovation Award 2010; second place in the 2010 Venture Cup National Finals; and the best student idea in the 2010 Venture Cup competition. No more hand scrubbing Today's oil spill cleanup technology usually involves the use of an absorbent material, such as bark or peat moss, to soak up the oil. Workers then have to remove the wet, heavy absorbent material, and the remaining oil residue may have to be scrubbed off the rocks.

"The oil vacuum cleaner automates what we currently do manually," says Rabben. "It is common to use bark to absorb the oil. So we have also used it. But it is also possible to use peat moss or chemical absorbents." The vacuum cleaner currently weighs about 10 kilos, but the engineers are working to cut its weight to 5 kilos. The equipment will also be changed so that it can be folded up to be more compact. But the secret of the design is all in the vacuum cleaner's head.

The machine first sprays bark or other absorbent material onto the spill. Rotating brushes in the head work the oil and the absorbent material together. When the oil and absorbent material are thoroughly mixed, the direction of the rotating brushes is reversed, enabling the bark to be sucked up into the equipment while the rocks are simultaneously scrubbed.

Small spills no problem Leif Gunnar Smistad, a fire engineer and oil spill manager at Trondheim's Fire and Rescue Service, says the advantage of the vacuum cleaner is that it is portable. Smistad helped develop the idea. "Every day we spread bark on small oil spills from overfilled oil tanks or from car accidents. Then we use a broom, a shovel and a bucket to clean up. We're very interested in mobile solutions that make these cleanups more effective," Smistad says.

The American Dream Company representatives participated in the recent Clean Gulf Training Event and Exhibition in Tampa, Florida, and then went to New Orleans to meet with authorities and companies who have been involved with the cleanup after the Macondo Deepwater Horizon accident. "Naturally, there is a lot of focus on oil spills and cleanup work in the Gulf of Mexico after the Macondo accident," Rabben says. "We just have to jump in."

Interesting2: In ecology class, students are taught the effects of keystone species, the dominant species in the ecosystem. They are the top dogs, the big fish. The keystone species have a disproportionate effect on their environment and can determine the types and numbers of species in their ecosystem, not just their prey. A recent study published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment shows that this keystone species effect is similar for both terrestrial and ocean-based predators.

The study was recently conducted by Aaron Wirsing of the University of Washington and William Ripple of Oregon State University (OSU). They analyzed the behavioral effects on prey from both the wolf and the shark, two keystone species from much different ecosystems. The wolves were observed at Yellowstone National Park, and the sharks at Australia’s Shark Bay.

In both cases, the predators altered the behavior of the prey. In Yellowstone, the wolf's main prey, the elk, shifted to new, less-sensitive grazing areas when wolves were present. This had a ripple down effect on the streamside shrubs and aspen trees which the elks normally eat. These species could then re-grow and in turn support many other species. In Shark Bay, the tiger shark's main prey, the dugong altered its behavior similar to the elk.

It would avoid shallow waters when the sharks were present. This allowed the sea grass meadows to re-grow and in turn support other marine species. "For too long we've looked at ecosystem functions on land and in the oceans as if they were completely separate," said William Ripple, a professor in the Department of Forest Ecosystems at OSU. "We're now finding that there are many more similarities between marine and terrestrial ecosystems than we’ve realized.

We need to better understand these commonalities, and from them learn how interactions on land may be a predictor of what we will see in the oceans, and vice versa." In both marine and terrestrial environments, the prey not only shifted to new areas when the predators were around, they also radically shifted their behavior.

They displayed increased vigilance, always looking and listening for a silent stalker. They strove to leave room for escape if necessary, such as moving to areas where they would not feel boxed in, and keeping a safe distance from an approaching predator. The end result is less over-consumption of flora, leading to an overall healthier ecosystem.

Interesting3: A new study in Science has found that the incredible biodiversity of the Amazon rainforest goes back much further than expected, perhaps upending old ideas about how the Amazon basin became arguably the world's most bio-diverse ecosystem. According to the study, the origin of rich biodiversity in the Amazon likely goes back more than 20 million years when the Andean mountains were rising.

"The Andean mountain building profoundly affected the diversity and evolution of the Amazonian biota. It would be difficult to name any major group of Amazonian plants or animals whose fate had not been touched in some way by the formation of the vast Andean mountain chain," William Laurance, a conservation biologist at James Cook University who has spent decades working in the tropics, told mongabay.com.

Laurance was not involved with the study. By comparing biodiversity patterns today with geological and molecular datasets, researchers found that the highest diversity of species were in a region spanning over a million square kilometers which originated with the rising Andes. Given this, the authors believe they have found a strict the connection between the rich diversity Amazon rainforests and the rise of the Andes over 20 million years ago.

The researchers also note that as Andes rose they created a vast wetland appeared in the Amazonian region. This wetland also played a role. Around 10 million years ago when the Amazon River was formed, the wetland dried up, making way for the colonization of new plants and animals.

Interesting4: Chocolate was once the drink of Mayan and Aztec kings. Now a cocoa shortage may make chocolate an exclusive luxury again. Chocolate could become as rare as caviar, said John Mason of the Ghana-based Nature Conservation Research Council. Which means chocolate treats may become unaffordable for the average person.

The price of cocoa, the raw ingredient for chocolate, has been skyrocketing in international markets. Demand for chocolate, especially for dark chocolate which uses more cocoa, has helped fuel price increases.

But unfair trade and environmental problems have resulted in supply not keeping pace with demand. West Africa leads the world in cocoa production. But the profits don't come back to many of the farmers there, and that is one of the main causes of the shortage.

In the Ivory Coast, cocoa farmers often earn less than $1 a day, and in many cases the land they farm has lost its fertility, said Tony Lass, chairman of the Cocoa Research Association in the UK Independent. Ivory Coast farmers are leaving behind unprofitable, failing cocoa orchards for the cities.