Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs / February 17-18, 2011

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

Lihue, Kauai –                   79
Honolulu airport, Oahu –     81
Kaneohe, Oahu –               80
Molokai airport –                83
Kahului airport, Maui –       87
Kona airport –                   83
Hilo airport, Hawaii –         81

Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountain tops…as of 5pm Thursday evening:

Kahului, Maui – 81F
Lihue, Kauai – 75

Haleakala Crater –     missing (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 Thursday evening:

3.07 Mount Waialeale, Kauai  
1.00 Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
0.09 Molokai 
0.00 Lanai
0.04 Kahoolawe
1.96 Kaupo Gap, Maui
0.59 Kealakomo, Big Island

Marine Winds – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a strong 1037 millibar high pressure system far to our north. At the same time we find a low pressure system to our northwest, with an associated cold front to the west of Kauai. Our winds will be light to moderate east-southeast to south into 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 web cam 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 web cams 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 ends November 30th here in the central Pacific.

 Aloha Paragraphs

  High clouds, locally hazy, generous rain
on Kauai…perhaps Oahu into Friday
Full moon tonight!
 

Hawaii's winds will blow from the southwest to south generally, mostly in the light to moderately strong range. This weather map shows a strong 1037 millibar high pressure system far to our north Thursday night. Winds are coming in from the south, which will gradually become more southwesterly on the Kauai end of the state…as a cold front reaches Kauai soon. This wind direction may bring back volcanic haze…after a modest thinning of the volcanic haze recently. The trade winds will return at some point next week. This will keep light southeasterly winds over the state…and likely keeping varying amounts of volcanic haze in place until then too.

Winds will be generally light to moderate, although locally stronger at times…the following numbers represent the strongest gusts, along with directions Thursday evening:

21 mph       Lihue, Kauai – SSW
15              Kahuku, Oahu – ENE
12              Molokai – SSE
29                Kahoolawe – SE 
07              Kahului, Maui – NNE 
14              Lanai Airport – SE 
29                South Point, Big Island – NE

We can use the following links to see what’s going on in our area of the north central Pacific Oean Thursday night. This large University of Washington satellite image shows a cold front moving over Kauai soon…associated with a low pressure system to the northwest.  Looking at this NOAA satellite picture, we see those long lasting cirrus clouds pulling back towards the north…although there are still some of those high clouds filtering down into the state in association with the cold front. We can use this looping satellite image to see those streaks of cirrus shifting back down towards the south again Thursday night. Checking out this looping radar image, it shows light to moderately heavy showers moving over Kauai, which will become locally heavy at times over both Niihau and the garden isle of Kauai too.

Showers will concentrate most generously over the Kauai end of the island chain, where a flash flood watch is in effect. The winds took on a more easterly orientation yesterday, and sped up locally as well. This limited the afternoon convective activity to some extent over all the islands. There will be some showers being carried our way on the southwest to south winds, coming up from the deeper tropics. We can call these prefrontal showers, which will be most generous on Kauai and Niihau, those two islands closest to the cold front bearing down on those islands now. As the front edges up towards that end of the state, showers will increase tonight into Friday. As the trade winds return towards the middle of next week, the showers will migrate back over to the windward coasts and slopes. Between now and then, we'll likely see a convective weather pattern, with localized afternoon upcountry showers each day.

In sum: high clouds into Friday, with some locally heavy showers over Kauai and perhaps Oahu too, haze locally…and high surf along our north facing shores.  The cold front is still expected to edge up close to Kauai, but not much further. This will increase rainfall on that island, and perhaps on Oahu with time too. There remains no indication of the cold front being able to slide down towards Maui County…much less the Big Island. As noted above, the NWS has also issued a flash flood watch for Kauai and Niihau. This means that there is a good chance of localized flooding into the first part of Friday.  Finally, Kahului and Hilo harbors will see surge breaking through those entrances, making for potentially dangerous conditions for small boaters…due to the large north swell breaking along our north shores.  

~~~ Here in Kihei, Maui at around 530pm Thursday evening, skies were partly cloudy, with more of those high cirrus filtering overhead. This should make for a potentially colorful sunset this evening…and then again Friday morning if they are still around then. The islands of Maui County, and the Big Island too, should remain on the favorably inclined side, as the cold front remains too far to the west to influence us much. Kauai and Oahu, and especially Kauai, will be getting wet soon, please drive carefully! I'll be back early Friday morning with your next new weather narrative from paradise, I hope you have a great Thursday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Extra: the high temperature at the Kahului airport Thursday was a very warm 87F degrees…although missed breaking the record for the date, which was 88 degrees back in 1954, and again in 1997. The all time record high temperature for the month of February on Maui was 89 degrees…which has occurred six times over the years.

Interesting: Lake Baikal is the largest freshwater lake in the world, with an average depth of over 5000 feet down and is 25 million years old, so that it’s not only the deepest lake…but the oldest. Lake Baikal contains roughly 20% of the world's surface fresh water that is unfrozen and is located in the south of the Russian region of Siberia near the city of Irkutsk). has provided scientists with insight into the ways that climate change affects water temperature, which in turn affects life in the lake.

The study is published in the journal PLoS ONE today. The research team discovered many climate variability signals, called teleconnections, in the data. For example, changes in Lake Baikal water temperature correlate with monthly variability in El Niño indices, reflecting sea surface temperatures over the Pacific Ocean tens of thousands of kilometers away.

At the same time, Lake Baikal's temperatures are influenced by strong interactions with Pacific Ocean pressure fields described by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) is a pattern of Pacific climate variability that shifts phases on at least inter-decadal time scale, usually about 20 to 30 years.

The PDO is detected as warm or cool surface waters in the Pacific Ocean, north of 20° N. During a "warm", or "positive", phase, the west Pacific becomes cool and part of the eastern ocean warms; during a "cool" or "negative" phase, the opposite pattern occurs. The scientists found that seasonality of Lake Baikal's surface water temperatures relate to the fluctuating intensity and path of the jet stream on multiple time scales.

Although the lake has warmed over the past century, the changing of seasons was not found to trend in a single direction, such as later winters. The climate indices reflect alterations in jet stream strength and trajectory, and these dynamics collectively appear to forecast seasonal onset in Siberia about three months in advance, according to the study.

Lake Baikal's seasonality also tracked decadal-scale variations in the Earth's rotational velocity. The speed of the Earth's rotation determines the length of a day, which differs by milliseconds from day to day depending on the strength of atmospheric winds, including the jet stream. This scale of variability was also seen to affect the timing variability in seasonal lake warming and cooling, reinforcing the mechanistic role of the jet stream.

"Remarkably, the temperature record that reflects all these climate messages was collected by three generations of a single family of Siberian scientists, from 1946 to the present, and the correlation of temperature with atmospheric dynamics is further confirmation that this data set is of exceptionally high quality," said Katz who is another author.

Interesting2: Up to two-thirds of Earth's permafrost likely will disappear by 2200 as a result of warming temperatures, unleashing vast quantities of carbon into the atmosphere, says a new study by the University of Colorado Boulder's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. The carbon resides in permanently frozen ground that is beginning to thaw in high latitudes from warming temperatures, which will impact not only the climate but also international strategies to reduce fossil fuel emissions, said CU-Boulder's Kevin Schaefer, lead study author.

"If we want to hit a target carbon dioxide concentration, then we have to reduce fossil fuel emissions that much lower than previously thought to account for this additional carbon from the permafrost," he said. "Otherwise we will end up with a warmer Earth than we want." The escaping carbon comes from plant material, primarily roots trapped and frozen in soil during the last glacial period that ended roughly 12,000 years ago, he said.

Schaefer, a research associate at CU-Boulder's National Snow and Ice Data Center, an arm of CIRES, likened the mechanism to storing broccoli in a home freezer. "As long as it stays frozen, it stays stable for many years," he said. "But if you take it out of the freezer it will thaw out and decay." While other studies have shown carbon has begun to leak out of permafrost in Alaska and Siberia, the study by Schaefer and his colleagues is the first to make actual estimates of future carbon release from permafrost.

"This gives us a starting point, and something more solid to work from in future studies," he said. "We now have some estimated numbers and dates to work with." Schaefer and his team ran multiple Arctic simulations assuming different rates of temperature increases to forecast how much carbon may be released globally from permafrost in the next two centuries. They estimate a release of roughly 190 billion tons of carbon, most of it in the next 100 years.

The team used Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scenarios and land-surface models for the study. "The amount we expect to be released by permafrost is equivalent to half of the amount of carbon released since the dawn of the Industrial Age," said Schaefer. The amount of carbon predicted for release between now and 2200 is about one-fifth of the total amount of carbon in the atmosphere today, according to the study.

While there were about 280 parts per million of CO2 in Earth's atmosphere prior to the Industrial Age beginning about 1820, there are more than 380 parts per million of carbon now in the atmosphere and the figure is rising. The increase, equivalent to about 435 billion tons of carbon, resulted primarily from human activities like the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. Using data from all climate simulations, the team estimated that about 30 to 60 percent of Earth's permafrost will disappear by 2200.

The study took into account all of the permanently frozen ground at high latitudes around the globe. The consensus of the vast majority of climate scientists is that the buildup of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere is the primary reason for increasingly warm temperatures on Earth. According to NOAA, 2010 was tied for the hottest year on record.

The hottest decade on record occurred from 2000 to 2010. Greater reductions in fossil fuel emissions to account for carbon released by the permafrost will be a daunting global challenge, Schaefer said. "The problem is getting more and more difficult all the time," he said. "It is hard enough to reduce the emissions in any case, but now we have to reduce emissions even more. We think it is important to get that message out now."

Interesting3: The more humanity acidifies and warms the world's oceans with carbon emissions, the harder we will have to work to save our coral reefs. That's the blunt message from a major new study by an international scientific team, which finds that ocean acidification and global warming will combine with local impacts like overfishing and nutrient runoff to weaken the world's coral reefs right when they are struggling to survive.

Modeling by a team led by Dr Ken Anthony of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and The University of Queensland's Global Change Institute has found that reefs already overfished and affected by land runoff are likely to be more vulnerable to increasing CO2 in the atmosphere caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

Their study is the first to integrate global scale processes, such as warming and acidification, with the local factors overfishing and runoff, to predict the combined impact on coral reefs. "As CO2 levels climb to 450-500 parts per million – as they are now expected to do by 2050 – how well we manage local impacts on reefs like fishing and runoff will become absolutely critical as to whether they survive as coral reefs, or are overtaken by algae that compete with corals for space on reefs," Dr Anthony says.

Warmer conditions cause periodic mass coral deaths by bleaching, while acidifying sea water – due to CO2 dissolving out of the atmosphere – weakens the corals by interfering with their ability to form their skeletons, making them more vulnerable to impact by storms. If the corals are also affected by heavy nutrient runoff from the land – which fertilizes the algae – and overfishing of parrot fishes and others that keep the reefs clear of weed, then corals can struggle to re-establish after a setback, he explains.

"In those situations, the reef can become completely overgrown by algae." The team's modeling, which they say is on the conservative side, has far-reaching implications for the preservation even of well-managed reefs such as Australia's Great Barrier Reef – and extremely serious implications for reefs in developing countries, where most reefs are located and where reefs face high levels of stress from human activities.

"Put simply, our model indicates that the more CO2 we humans liberate, the harder it will become for coral reefs, as we know them, to survive. This means they will need all the help they can get in the way of good management to prevent their being overgrown by sea weeds," he adds.

"Coral reefs in developing nations, where most of the world's reefs occur and overfishing and nutrification remain key concerns, are particularly vulnerable, highlighting the need to continue to build capacity amongst reef managers and governments in areas like SE Asia," the team warns in their report, which was recently published in the journal Global Change Biology.

"A failure to rapidly stabilize and reduce the concentration of CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere is likely to lead to significant loss of key (coral) framework builders such as Acropora, irrespective of the effectiveness of local management," the scientists conclude. "However local reef management efforts to maintain high grazing fish populations and prevent runoff of silt, fertilizers and sewage from the land will play a critical role in maintaining coral resilience while CO2 concentrations are stabilized," they add.

The study, which is the first to quantify the relative importance of carbon emissions and local disturbances in compromising reef health, can be used to optimize future management practices of coral reefs. It makes clear that both policy changes on emissions and local management measures are required to secure a future for coral reefs.

Interesting4: If you wander up to a seismograph in a museum, unless you are lucky enough to be there right during an earthquake, all you will see is a small wiggly signal being recorded. What's inside the wiggles is called noise by seismologists, because the signal is always there and originates from the normal activity of the earth between the jolts caused by large earthquakes.

Up until recently, few researchers paid any heed to these apparently boring signals — analyzing them, it was thought, would be like critiquing elevator music. But now a seismologist and his adviser from Washington University in St. Louis, building on a serendipitous, humorous find of three years ago linking seismic noise and soccer, have discovered a source of seismic noise in Africa near the island of Bioko in the Bight of Bonny in the Gulf of Guinea.

Improbable as it may seem the strength of this source varies with the intensity of storm activity in the Southern Atlantic Ocean. During the largest storms, seismic waves from the Bight of Bonny are recorded by broadband seismometers all around the world.

Washington University doctoral candidate Garrett Euler, using a mathematical technique called cross correlation, analyzed four arrays of broadband seismometers in Cameroon, South Africa, Ethiopia and Tanzania and found that seismic noise oscillating at 28 and 26 second periods originates in the Bight of Bonny and varies with the intensity of storm activity in the Southern Atlantic Ocean.

During the largest storms, seismic waves from the Bight of Bonny are recorded by broadband seismometers all around the world. Although the exact mechanism causing seismic noise near Africa is unknown, Euler speculates that long-period ocean waves from storms in the Southern Atlantic Ocean reflect off the coast of Africa and focus near the island of Bioko.

The interaction of the waves with the shallow seafloor changes the ocean wave energy into seismic waves that travel through solid earth. The noise source was first discovered by Jack Oliver, PhD, of Columbia University in 1962, but Euler's work is the first to accurately locate the source. "It's said that one researcher's noise is another's signal," says Euler's co-advisor Douglas A. Wiens, PhD, professor and chair of Washington University's earth and planetary sciences department in Arts & Sciences.

"When we don't understand it, we call it noise. When we do, we call it a signal. In the past, this kind of data didn't stick out at all, but just recently people are coming to grips with how to analyze it. There are intriguing possibilities for what noise might reveal." Although seismic noise analysis is still developing, some seismologists are modeling noise to look for a signature that could reveal a global warming effect.

For instance, as the number of storms increase, perhaps there are corresponding fluctuations in seismic noise. Others are considering using seismic noise to map volcanic magma chambers. There has even been some very preliminary work exploring the possibility that seismic noise might predict earthquakes. The idea is that the wave speed of a region might change as stress builds up before an earthquake.

Euler gave a presentation on his observations at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco this December. "We have some very bizarre observations that we're still trying to figure out," says Euler, of his initial data. "One is the signal is at longer periods than we'd expected. It has multiple peaks in frequency — it 'hums' at 28 seconds, as well as 26 seconds.

It's really, really strong during some particular times that correlate with storms at sea. "Another observation is that the signal shifts its location with frequency. The source of the 28-second period band is about 300 kilometers from the 26-second source, which is essentially at Mount Cameroon." Cross correlation compares the similarity of two seismic signals, usually recorded at two different locations, as a function of the time lag between them — essentially sliding one signal past the other until they match up.

Peaks in the correlation function correspond to the average seismic velocity between the two locations. To cross correlate seismic noise, though, Euler faces a conundrum because there is no well-defined termination of seismic noise. "This noise is made up of a cacophony of overlapping signals across quite long seismic records that have to be averaged, and that information comprises this noise field," he says.

Euler wandered into the field of seismic noise in 2007 when he found consistent spikes in noise from one of 32 different seismic stations in Cameroon. The spikes turned out to correspond with joyous, celebratory foot-stomping of Cameroon's avid soccer fans at various cities after goals were scored or key plays made during the African Cup of Nations games in 2006.

This was the first time widespread anthropogenic noise — created by humans — had been found in seismic signals. And it was the first known reporting of "footquakes." "When I got that data, I was stumped, because there hadn't been any earthquakes recorded during that time," he says.

"We finally put two and two together and saw this as the result of thousands of fans spread out over many miles, reacting to things ranging from a goal, to the reaction of a star player, to the ultimate, a win. There were slight fluctuations in all the scenarios. That was the start of my interest in seismic noise. It's grown a lot since."

Interesting5: There is no cure for the common cold, no magic elixir that will make all of your symptoms go away. However, over human's many millennia of battling the cold, we have found little tricks that can help fight it. According to new systematic review published in The Cochrane Library, we have found a new trick that could provide huge benefits.

A way to significantly reduce severity and duration of the common cold is to take Zinc supplements. The common cold, while generally not a serious illness, takes a toll on society. People calling out of work can cause an economic impact which is difficult to calculate, but is real nonetheless. About forty percent of all sick days used are due to the common cold.

For children, millions of school days are missed every year. It was originally theorized in 1984 that zinc could be used as an effective bulwark against the common cold. Studies then showed that zinc lozenges reduced the symptom length of duration. Ensuing trials, however, produced conflicting results. To this point, no biological explanation for zinc's effect on the cold has been confirmed. The recent study updates a systematic review carried out in 1999 by adding several new trials.

A total of 15 trials were examined which involved 1,360 people. The researchers found that people who took zinc syrup, lozenges, or tablets within one day of the onset of cold symptoms had less intense symptoms and cleared their symptoms faster than the subjects who took a placebo. Children who had taken zinc syrup or lozenges for more than five months had fewer colds and missed less school. Another effect of zinc is that it reduced antibiotic use in children.

Overuse of antibiotics can be a serious problem because it leads to antibiotic resistance in the body. This is another positive effect of zinc supplements. "This review strengthens the evidence for zinc as a treatment for the common cold," said lead researcher Meenu Singh of the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research in Chandigarh, India.

"However, at the moment, it is still difficult to make a general recommendation, because we do not know very much about the optimum dose, formulation or length of treatment." This study used mostly healthy people as test subjects. Future research will involve population groups with specific health problems to see how zinc supplements would affect them. For example, would zinc help an asthma patient who comes down with a cold? Also, future research should be done in low income populations which may have a zinc deficiency in their diets.