Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs / February 25-26, 2011

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

Lihue, Kauai –                   80
Honolulu airport, Oahu –     80
Kaneohe, Oahu –               79
Molokai airport –                 82
Kahului airport, Maui –        81
Kona airport –                    81
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 Friday evening:

Port Allen, Kauai – 81F
Kaneohe, Oahu – 78

Haleakala Crater –     missing (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 32 (under 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 evening:

0.66    Kilohana, Kauai
0.21    Kahuku, Oahu
0.00    Molokai
0.00    Lanai
0.02    Kahoolawe
0.10    Haiku, Maui
0.01    Pahoa, Big Island

Marine Winds – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing high pressure systems far to the north and northeast of the islands. At the same time we find low pressure trough over the western islands. Our winds will be generally light and variable in direction through Sunday.     

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

A few showers….local volcanic haze

 

Generally light and variable winds through the rest of this week, trade winds returning briefly during the new week.  High pressure systems are located far to our north, and northeast of the islands Friday night. At the same time we find a low pressure trough over the Kauai end of the island chain. Our winds will be generally light, although locally stronger at times. We may finally see the return of our long absent trade winds around next Tuesday or Wednesday.  

Winds will be generally light, although locally stronger…the following numbers represent the strongest gusts, along with directions Friday evening:

23 mph        Port Allen, Kauai – SE
14              Kahuku, Oahu – NE 
20              Molokai – NNE 
11              Kahoolawe – NNE
20              Kapalua, Maui – NE
13              Lanai Airport – NE
20              South Point, Big Island – SE

We can use the following links to see what’s going on in our area of the north central Pacific Ocean Friday night. This large University of Washington satellite image shows a major late winter storm far to the northwest, with a large area of rainy cloudsy to the south of the Big Island. Looking at this NOAA satellite picture, we see some high cirrus clouds around, although the most notable heavy clouds are again over the ocean…to the south and southeast of the Big Island. We can use this looping satellite image to see counterclockwise rotating clouds and showers, associated with an area of low pressure, to the south of the Big Island. We can also see a rather modest area of high cirrus clouds to the north and northwest.  Checking out this looping radar image, it shows a general lack of showers around the islands at the time of this writing, although there have been some cloud buildups over and around the mountains…with some showers falling there. 

Our local atmosphere has become stable again, making way for improved weather conditions through the next several days.  The daytime heating of the islands will prompt clouds to form over and around the mountains during the afternoon hours this weekend. We can think of this as a convective weather pattern, with a few upcountry showers breaking out locally. The mornings should be clear to partly cloudy, and on the cool side through Monday. The afternoon cumulus clouds will build up over the interior sections from late morning through early evening…with clearing as we move through the nights.

Since it's Friday evening, I'm going to see a new film, this one called I Am Number Four. This feature film stars Alex Pettyfer and Teresa Palmer, two unknowns for me. This likely won't be the best film I've ever seen, and perhaps far from it. I'm willing to give it a chance however, as I'm in the mood to be entertained. The synopsis: a mysterious young fugitive with extraordinary powers must stay one step ahead of ruthless enemies sent to destroy him. Obviously this is a science fiction film, which the critics are giving a very low C-…although the users or viewers are upping the grade all the way up to an impressive A- rating. It always interests me how there could possibly be such a wide spread of opinions. At any rate, I'll as usual let you know what I think in the morning. Perhaps most of you might not care about a film like this, however there may be a few of you with some curiosity…so that here's the trailer for this film.

~~~ Here in Kihei, Maui at around 530am Friday evening, skies were partly cloudy, although quite cloudy over the Haleakala Crater, and the West Maui Mountains. There appears to be some increase in volcanic haze around the edges too, which could increase some this weekend. This would be more ensured if the winds come up from the southeast. Otherwise, I think this weekend should be quite nice, with likely lots of daytime sunshine beaming down along our beaches, pretty much all around. The mountains will get cloudy during the afternoons as noted above, with a few showers spilling here and there. I'll be back Saturday morning with your next new weather narrative, I hope you have a great Friday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting: How severe can climate change become in a warming world? Worse than anything we've seen in written history, according to results of a study recently appearing in the journal Science. An international team of scientists led by Curt Stager of Paul Smith's College, New York, has compiled four dozen paleo-climate records from sediment cores in Lake Tanganyika and other locations in Africa.

The records show that one of the most widespread and intense droughts of the last 50,000 years or more struck Africa and Southern Asia 17,000 to 16,000 years ago.

Between 18,000 and 15,000 years ago, large amounts of ice and melt-water entered the North Atlantic Ocean, causing regional cooling but also major drought in the tropics, says Paul Filmer, program director in the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Division of Earth Sciences, which funded the research along with NSF's Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences and its Division of Ocean Sciences.

"The height of this time period coincided with one of the most extreme mega-droughts of the last 50,000 years in the Afro-Asian monsoon region with potentially serious consequences for the Paleolithic humans that lived there at the time," says Filmer.

The "H1 mega-drought," as it's known, was one of the most severe climate trials ever faced by anatomically modern humans.

Africa's Lake Victoria, now the world's largest tropical lake, dried out, as did Lake Tana in Ethiopia, and Lake Van in Turkey.

The Nile, Congo and other major rivers shriveled, and Asian summer monsoons weakened or failed from China to the Mediterranean, meaning the monsoon season carried little or no rainwater.

What caused the mega-drought remains a mystery, but its timing suggests a link to Heinrich Event 1 (or "H1"), a massive surge of icebergs and melt-water into the North Atlantic at the close of the last ice age.

Previous studies had implicated southward drift of the tropical rain belt as a localized cause, but the broad geographic coverage in this study paints a more nuanced picture.

"If southward drift were the only cause," says Stager, lead author of the Science paper, "we'd have found evidence of wetting farther south. But the mega-drought hit equatorial and southeastern Africa as well, so the rain belt didn't just move–it also weakened."

Climate models have yet to simulate the full scope of the event.

The lack of a complete explanation opens the question of whether an extreme mega-drought could strike again as the world warms and de-ices further.

"There's much less ice left to collapse into the North Atlantic now," Stager says, "so I'd be surprised if it could all happen again–at least on such a huge scale."

Given what such a catastrophic mega-drought could do to today's most densely populated regions of the globe, Stager hopes he's right.

Interesting2: If enacted permanently, Chinese initiatives to control air pollution during the 2008 Olympics in Beijing would reduce by almost half the lifetime risk of lung cancer, a new study says. In the metropolitan area of 22 million people that might mean about 10,000 fewer cases of lung cancer — roughly 11,400 cases compared to 21,000 cases if pollution controls are not enacted.

Restricted vehicle use, reduced coal burning and, in some cases, the closing of dirtier factories "definitely reduced" the emissions of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons — PAHs — during the Olympics, said Staci Simonich, a researcher at Oregon State University and one of the authors of the report published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

"That's a positive step, and it shows that if such steps were continued it could lead to a significant reduction in cancer risk from these types of pollutants," Simonich said. According to the study, conducted by scientists at Oregon State and Peking University in Beijing, these pollutants have risen steadily in the developing world as a result of industrial growth. Some pollution-control measures adopted during the Olympics have continued, including reductions in the burning of coal.

Interesting3: Red imported fire ant invasions around the globe in recent years can now be traced to the southern U.S., where the nuisance insect gained a foothold in the 1930s, new University of Florida research has found. Native to South America, the ant had been contained there and in the southeastern U.S. before turning up in faraway places in the last 20 years — including California, China, Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand.

The study in the February 24 edition of Science was co-authored by Marina Ascunce, a postdoctoral associate with the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus and Chin-Cheng Yang of National Taiwan University. The team's findings could prove helpful in finding new ways to control the invasive species, Solenopsis invicta, Ascunce said.

Americans spend more than $6 billion a year to control the ants and offset damage they cause, including medical expenses and $750 million in agricultural losses. "Fire ants are very annoying pests, and they cause people to suffer," Ascunce said. "People who are allergic can die (from ant stings)." Red imported fire ants are highly aggressive.

They have a painful sting, often discovered by humans only after stepping on a mound. The research team used several types of molecular genetic markers to trace the origins of ants in nine locations where recent invasions occurred. They traced all but one of the invasions to the southern U.S.

The exception was an instance where the ants moved from the southeastern U.S. to California, then to Taiwan. Ascunce said the scientists were surprised by the findings. "I thought that at least one of the populations in the newly invaded areas would have come from South America, but all of the genetic data suggest the most likely source in virtually every case was the southern U.S.," she said.

The study results show the problematic side of a robust global trade and travel network. DeWayne Shoemaker, a U.S. Department of Agriculture scientist affiliated with UF's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences who was senior author and lead investigator on the grant that funded the study, said pinning down precise origins for the ants is a huge win because it helps scientists know where to look to find the most effective biological control agents, such as phorid flies.

Since the late 1990s, scientists have been releasing phorid flies to help control the ants while reducing use of pesticides. The flies hover over mounds before injecting an egg into an ant. When the egg hatches, the maggot develops in the ant's head, eventually decapitating it.

The maggot turns into a fly and the cycle repeats. Shoemaker, a key member of the research team that sequenced the complete genome of the red imported fire ant earlier this year, said the team collected ants from 2,144 colonies at 75 geographic sites. From there, they used multiple genetic tests — including some similar to human paternity tests — to determine the ants' origin with high confidence levels.

"I really think our power to distinguish … hinged on us having such a large data set," he said. "I don't think we'd have had the statistical power to come up with these kinds of conclusions otherwise. All of these conclusions are highly supported by data." It is widely believed the red imported fire ant first entered the U.S. in the 1930s through the port of Mobile, Ala., on cargo ships, possibly in dirt used as ballast.