Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Monday:
Lihue, Kauai – 82
Honolulu airport, Oahu – 79
Kaneohe, Oahu – 81
Molokai airport – M
Kahului airport, Maui – 88 (record for the date: 89 – 1951)
Kona airport – 84
Hilo airport, Hawaii – 82
Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountain tops…as of 5pm Monday evening:
Kahului, Maui – 84
Hana, Hawaii – 77
Haleakala Crater – 54 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 37 (over 13,500 feet on the Big Island)
Precipitation Totals – The following numbers represent the largest precipitation totals Monday evening:
0.59 Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.86 Kahana, Oahu
0.00 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
0.02 West Wailuaiki, Maui
0.18 Pohakuloa Keamuku, Big Island
Marine Winds – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a 1030 millibar high pressure system to the northeast of the Hawaiian Islands…with a ridge running into the area northeast of Hawaii. Our local winds will be generally light Tuesday, although somewhat faster towards the Big Island end of the chain, increasing 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 web cam on the summit of near 13,500 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 ended November 30th here in the central Pacific…and begins again June 1st.
Aloha Paragraphs
Generally good weather, cloudy at times…some showers
Our winds will be generally on the light side, although locally stronger through Tuesday near the Big Island and Maui County…increasing trade wind speeds by mid-week. Glancing at this weather map, we find a high pressure system located to the northeast of the Hawaiian Islands…which is the source of our light to moderately strong winds now. The next increase in our local trade wind speeds will begin again around Wednesday…lasting through the rest of the work week. We may see those winds veering to the southeast and weakening Friday into this weekend…stay tuned.
Our local winds will remain generally quite light…the following numbers represent the strongest gusts, along with directions Monday evening:
15 mph Port Allen, Kauai – SE
18 Kahuku, Oahu – ENE
06 Molokai – NW
24 Kahoolawe – ESE
23 Lipoa, Maui – SE
10 Lanai Airport – NNE
24 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 Ocean Monday night. Looking at this NOAA satellite picture we see generally partly cloudy skies over the islands, at the same time we find patches of middle and higher level altocumulus and cirrus clouds over some parts of the state as well. We can use this looping satellite image to see a counterclockwise rotating upper level low pressure to our south-southeast. This weather feature is sending us those high and middle level clouds up from the southeast at the moment. At the same time a weakening cold front to our northwest is sending some high and middle level clouds our too. Checking out this looping radar image shows that despite all the clouds around, showers will be pretty few and far between.
Sunset Commentary: Here in Kihei, Maui at around 530pm Monday evening, skies were partly cloudy, with those middle and upper level clouds overhead locally around the state.
~~~ It appears that we may have some possible changes on the horizon later this week. Given that it’s this late in the season, at least in terms of inclement weather, it becomes more difficult for our local weather to turn too far away from the ordinary trade wind weather pattern. Our winds will remain light to moderately strong, with those moderately strong areas finding gusts up towards 30 mph locally.
~~~ The forecast problem that I’m referring to here occurs later this week, after the trade winds and associated showers increase Wednesday onward for a few days. Some of the computer models are showing either a trough of low pressure, or even a low pressure system forming to the north of our islands Friday into the weekend. If this occurs it would have some bearing on our local winds, and the resultant rainfall pattern.
~~~ The GFS computer model shows our winds veering around to the southeast by Friday, with an increase in light to moderately heavy showers. If this happens, as this model suggests, we could see hit and miss showers, especially over and around the mountains during the afternoons Friday through Sunday. As the trade winds falter then, and turn southeast, we could see muggy weather, along with a possible intrusion of volcanic haze locally then too. Bringing this full circle, this may or may not actually happen. Consulting with climatology here in the islands, this is about the time that we often settle into our fairly normal trade wind weather pattern…with passing windward biased showers at times. We can discuss this in more detail over the next couple of days…and see what the models are showing then.
~~~ I'll be back early Tuesday morning with the latest outlook for our local weather conditions here in Hawaii through the rest of this week. I hope you have a great Monday night until then! One more thing, as I got home to Kula, and looking back down towards the West Maui Mountains, it appeared that there was some volcanic haze in our skies around sunset. Aloha for now…Glenn.
Interesting: Julie DeJong can't set foot on the ground of an Oregon marsh to gather duck eggs on a spring day in 1875. But Charles Bendire did. And thanks to a research project that is the next best thing to time travel, DeJong is measuring the duck eggs in several museum collections — from the Smithsonian Institution, in this case, where Bendire was the first curator of the discipline known as oology, or the study of birds' eggs.
When her project is done, DeJong will have assembled and analyzed a metrics database on perhaps 60,000 duck eggs representing at least 40 species and subspecies of ducks found in North America. What she learns could ultimately add new knowledge about how waterfowl respond to climate cycles and long-term climate change.
DeJong is a Ph.D. student in South Dakota State University's Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences. Part of her work involves logging current measurements of duck eggs that cooperating researchers are gathering for her in the field, as well as recent measurements from studies in the past few years.
But DeJong is also visiting museums across the U.S. and Canada to measure duck eggs collected by naturalists up to 150 years ago to build a database of how the dimensions of eggs have changed, if they have changed, over past decades. "What we're trying to do with this project is to see, through different drought cycles and heavily wet cycles, if the size of the eggs from these ducks will change," DeJong said.
"The reason that they might change in size is due to changes in the nutrient levels from foods such as invertebrates that are available during breeding. If, say, the Prairie Pothole Region is completely dried up due to drought for several years in a row, those ducks are going to experience a drop in the nutrients they're used to getting.
They may not breed, but if they do attempt to breed, they're not going to have as many nutrients available to them to produce those eggs. Our hypothesis is that those eggs will be smaller then."
The project is influenced by studies that SDSU Distinguished Professor Carter Johnson and his colleagues have done by examining how the future climate would affect water levels and waterfowl production in the Prairie Pothole Region, a region in South Dakota and neighboring states and provinces that produces more than half of North America's migratory ducks.
Johnson's data from the start of the 20th century until now suggest that some western parts of the Prairie Pothole Region are becoming hotter and drier. If the trend continues, ducks may produce fewer young if drought forces them to nest in unfavorable locations elsewhere. DeJong's adviser, Professor Emeritus Ken Higgins of SDSU's Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences, came up with the idea of investigating whether ducks have already been adjusting to such changes.
And he came up with the ideal mechanism for the study — assembling data from decades of egg collections in natural history museums. "It is like time travel, because there's no way I could go back 150 years and collect that kind of data," DeJong said. "There is so much information sitting there in these museums that people forget about. When people these days plan a research project, they're starting today and going into the future.
They don't usually have the opportunity to look backward." Looking backward is already revealing some surprises. While it's too soon to draw firm conclusions, DeJong noted that her preliminary data does suggest that a few species, such as the Lesser Scaup, appear to be producing smaller eggs over the past 40 to 50 years. However, that data by itself says nothing about why.
Searching for the main causes of the size changes in duck eggs will be the next stage of research for the project. DeJong will plot the coordinates of the egg collections on a map of North America using geographic information system technology, and she'll overlay that map with new layers of information about ecological region and climate patterns through the years.
Ultimately she'll be able to determine whether changes in duck egg size appear for specific species or ecological regions or time periods. Since duck egg collectors weren't spread out systematically over time or geography, there are gaps that pose challenges for statistical analysis. One way DeJong tries to deal with that is by simply visiting more museums and mapping the data from more eggs.
She's indebted to 19th century naturalists for much of her data. "These early bird egg collectors, largely known as 'oologists,' were kind of a breed all their own. They went out and trekked into swamps, prairies and woodlands all over the United States and Canada and the far reaches of Alaska and collected these eggs, some of them just for their own enjoyment, some for commercial sale, and some of them to document what was there," DeJong said.
Counting current and recent data provided to her by other researchers who are interested in the project, DeJong expects to include data from about 60,000 eggs by the time the study wraps up in 2012. For example, a cooperating researcher has shared data on 30,000 eggs from Alaska alone, but other cooperators have shared data from as far afield as Nova Scotia.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is funding most of the cost of the research. Regardless of what she finds, DeJong said the study also will provide baseline data for scientists — a source for comparison of future research. "Early oologists were the first birders in North America, yet most of them were not scientists per se, but an assortment of doctors, farmers, hunters, and nature enthusiasts.
Our early information on the breeding season, habitat use, and physical descriptions of the breeding adults and their nests and eggs of hundreds of North American birds came from oologists," DeJong said.
"By collecting the eggs and other collateral data, they were not only collecting beautiful objects to put in a cabinet drawer, they were also documenting the natural history and breeding history of the birds, which can be used by scientists today and in the future.
None of this type of research would have been possible without the actual presence of the eggs because the metrics needed for this project could not have been obtained solely from photo image alone.
I hope my research stimulates thought about the possible uses of these egg collections and of other kinds of specimen collections in museums around the world. By making use of these collections, we pay tribute to these naturalists for their hard work, perseverance and love of nature."
Interesting2: In the arid Namib Desert on the west coast of Africa, one type of beetle has found a distinctive way of surviving. When the morning fog rolls in, the Stenocara gracilipes species, also known as the Namib Beetle, collects water droplets on its bumpy back, then lets the moisture roll down into its mouth, allowing it to drink in an area devoid of flowing water.
What nature has developed, Shreerang Chhatre wants to refine, to help the world's poor. Chhatre is an engineer and aspiring entrepreneur at MIT who works on fog harvesting, the deployment of devices that, like the beetle, attract water droplets and corral the runoff. This way, poor villagers could collect clean water near their homes, instead of spending hours carrying water from distant wells or streams.
In pursuing the technical and financial sides of his project, Chhatre is simultaneously a doctoral candidate in chemical engineering at MIT; an MBA student at the MIT Sloan School of Management; and a fellow at MIT's Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship.
Access to water is a pressing global issue: the World Health Organization and UNICEF estimate that nearly 900 million people worldwide live without safe drinking water. The burden of finding and transporting that water falls heavily on women and children. "As a middle-class person, I think it's terrible that the poor have to spend hours a day walking just to obtain a basic necessity," Chhatre says.
A fog-harvesting device consists of a fence-like mesh panel, which attracts droplets, connected to receptacles into which water drips. Chhatre has co-authored published papers on the materials used in these devices, and believes he has improved their efficacy. "The technical component of my research is done," Chhatre says.
He is pursuing his work at MIT Sloan and the Legatum Center in order to develop a workable business plan for implementing fog-harvesting devices. Interest in fog harvesting dates to the 1990s, and increased when new research on Stenocara gracilipes made a splash in 2001.
A few technologists saw potential in the concept for people. One Canadian charitable organization, FogQuest, has tested projects in Chile and Guatemala. Chhatre's training as a chemical engineer has focused on the wettability of materials, their tendency to either absorb or repel liquids (think of a duck's feathers, which repel water).
A number of MIT faculty have made advances in this area, including Robert Cohen of the Department of Chemical Engineering; Gareth McKinley of the Department of Mechanical Engineering; and Michael Rubner of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering.
Chhatre, who also received his master's degree in chemical engineering from MIT in 2009, is co-author, with Cohen and McKinley among other researchers, of three published papers on the kinds of fabrics and coatings that affect wettability. One basic principle of a good fog-harvesting device is that it must have a combination of surfaces that attract and repel water.
For instance, the shell of Stenocara gracilipes has bumps that attract water and troughs that repel it; this way, drops collects on the bumps, then run off through the troughs without being absorbed, so that the water reaches the beetle's mouth. To build fog-harvesting devices that work on a human scale, Chhatre says, "The idea is to use the design principles we developed and extend them to this problem."
To build larger fog harvesters, researchers generally use mesh, rather than a solid surface like a beetle's shell, because a completely impermeable object creates wind currents that will drag water droplets away from it. In this sense, the beetle's physiology is an inspiration for human fog harvesting, not a template. "We tried to replicate what the beetle has, but found this kind of open permeable surface is better," Chhatre says.
"The beetle only needs to drink a few micro-liters of water. We want to capture as large a quantity as possible." In some field tests, fog harvesters have captured one liter of water (roughly a quart) per one square meter of mesh, per day. Chhatre and his colleagues are conducting laboratory tests to improve the water collection ability of existing meshes.
FogQuest workers say there is more to fog harvesting than technology, however. "You have to get the local community to participate from the beginning," says Melissa Rosato, who served as project manager for a FogQuest program that has installed 36 mesh nets in the mountaintop village of Tojquia, Guatemala, and supplies water for 150 people. "They're the ones who are going to be managing and maintaining the equipment."
Because women usually collect water for households, Rosato adds, "If women are not involved, chances of a long-term sustainable project are slim." Whatever Chhatre's success in the laboratory, he agrees it will not be easy to turn fog-harvesting technology into a viable enterprise. "My consumer has little monetary power," he notes.
As part of his Legatum fellowship and Sloan studies, Chhatre is analyzing which groups might use his potential product. Chhatre believes the technology could also work on the rural west coast of India, north of Mumbai, where he grew up. Another possibility is that environmentally aware communities, schools or businesses in developed countries might try fog harvesting to reduce the amount of energy needed to obtain water.
"As the number of people and businesses in the world increases and rainfall stays the same, more people will be looking for alternatives," says Robert Schemenauer, the executive director of FogQuest. Indeed, the importance of water-supply issues globally is one reason Chhatre was selected for his Legatum fellowship.
"We welcomed Shreerang as a Legatum fellow because it is an important problem to solve," notes Iqbal Z. Quadir, director of the Legatum Center. "About one-third of the planet's water that is not saline happens to be in the air. Collecting water from thin air solves several problems, including transportation.
If people do not spend time fetching water, they can be productively employed in other things which gives rise to an ability to pay. Thus, if this technology is sufficiently advanced and a meaningful amount of water can be captured, it could be commercially viable some day." Quadir also feels that if Chhatre manages to sell a sufficient number of collection devices in the developed world, it could contribute to a reduction in price, making it more viable in poor countries.
"The aviation industry in its infancy struggled with balloons, but eventually became a viable global industry," Quadir adds. "Shreerang's project addresses multiple problems at the same time and, after all, the water that fills our rivers and lakes comes from air." That said, fog harvesting remains in its infancy, technologically and commercially, as Chhatre readily recognizes. "This is still a very open problem," he says. "It's a work in progress."
Interesting3: What tales they tell of their former lives, these old bones of sirenians, relatives of today's dugongs and manatees. And now, geologists have found, they tell of the waters in which they swam. While researching the evolutionary ecology of ancient sirenians — commonly known as sea cows — scientist Mark Clementz and colleagues unexpectedly stumbled across data that could change the view of climate during the Eocene Epoch, some 50 million years ago.
Clementz, from the University of Wyoming, published the results in a paper in this week's issue of the journal Science. He and co-author Jacob Sewall of Kutztown University in Pennsylvania used their findings to dispute a popular scientific assumption about the temperature and composition of seawater during the time marked by the emergence of the first modern mammals.
The Sirenia, named for the sirens or mermaids of Greek myth, is an order of aquatic, plant-eating mammals that live in swamps, rivers, estuaries, marine wetlands and coastal waters. Four species of "sea cows" are alive today, in two families and genera: the dugong, with one species, and manatees with three species.
Sirenia also includes the Steller's sea cow, extinct since the 18th century, and others known only from fossil remains. The order evolved during the Eocene more than 50 million years ago. In their paper–"Latitudinal Gradients in Greenhouse Seawater δ18O: Evidence from Eocene Sirenian Tooth Enamel"–the scientists used the isotopic composition of sirenian fossils from a broad time period and geographic area, along with climate simulation data, to add to the long-running debate over Eocene climate.
"This study demonstrates the value of the fossil record, and of examining the deep time record of paleoclimatological events, so we can better understand climate change today," says Lisa Boush, program director in the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s Division of Earth Sciences, which funded the research. "This novel approach will potentially transform our way of thinking about the hydrologic response to global climate change."
"I wasn't looking at it from this direction when we started the project," says Clementz, whose research is part of an NSF Career award. "But once we started accumulating enough samples, we could step back and get a better understanding of the habitat and dietary preferences of these fossil species, and also of the big picture. We saw that it could be reflecting climate and environmental change."
A new look at climate during the Eocene, when Earth underwent a dramatic change, could help scientists better understand global climate change today. Most scientists assumed that the oxygen isotopic composition of seawater in the past was very similar to that of today, with high values at low latitudes and low values at high latitudes.
Isotopes are variants of atoms of a particular chemical element, in this case oxygen, with differing numbers of neutrons. "But when we looked at the oxygen isotopic values of the fossils from low-latitude sites for the Eocene, they were much lower than we would predict," says Clementz. The finding suggests that low-latitude sites during the Eocene were much wetter than today.
"This created a very different distribution in the oxygen isotopic composition of seawater for this time interval, which would, in turn, significantly impact estimates of paleoclimate and paleotemperature in the distant past," says Clementz. "Scientists have used this assumption of the oxygen isotopic values of seawater to constrain temperature estimates for the past."
Email Glenn James: 