Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs / April 4-5, 2011

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

Lihue, Kauai –                    82
Honolulu airport, Oahu –     84
Kaneohe, Oahu –                80
Molokai airport –                   84
Kahului airport, Maui –         84
Kona airport –                     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 Monday evening:

Kailua-kona – 79F
Hilo, Hawaii – 73

Haleakala Crater –     missing (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 34 (over 13,500 feet on the Big Island)

Precipitation Totals – The following numbers represent the largest precipitation totals late Monday evening:

1.45    Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.26    Waiawa, Oahu
0.00    Molokai
0.00    Lanai 
0.00    Kahoolawe
0.11    Puu Kukui, Maui
0.23    Glenwood, Big Island

Marine Winds – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a large 1042 millibar high pressure system far to the north of Hawaii. Our winds will become gradually lighter, trending towards the east to southeast over the open ocean…with daytime onshore sea breezes in closer to the islands.

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

Increasing clouds over the next two days, leading
to showers, some of which will eventually become
locally heavy, with isolated thunderstorms
  Flash flood watch….starting late Tuesday night
 
 

 

The trade winds are still blowing, although should gradually give way to lighter southeast breezes…before the trade winds return this weekend.  According to this weather map, we find a strong 1042 millibar high pressure system positioned to the north of the islands Monday night.  At the same time we find an approaching weak cold front, along with a trough of low pressure aloft to our northwest.  Our winds are still from the trade wind direction, although will become quite light through much of the rest of this work week. There may be some strong and gusty winds associated with thunderstorms by mid-week…and also over the offshore waters. The NWS has issued an unusual gale warning over the far northwest waters, well offshore from the islands. At the same time we have a small craft wind advisory due to the incoming swells in Hawaiian waters. The winds will pick up from the trade wind direction this weekend…into next week.

Gradually lighter breezes will prevail through much of this week…the following numbers represent the strongest gusts, along with directions early Monday evening:

10 mph       Lihue, Kauai – NE
20              Kahuku, Oahu – NE
24                Molokai – NE
22              Kahoolawe 
18              Kahului, Maui – ESE
20              Lanai Airport – NE 
20              South Point, Big Island – NNE

We can use the following links to see what’s going on in our area of the north central Pacific Ocean Monday night.  This large University of Washington satellite image shows  clouds ranging over our islands, and to our east.  Looking at this NOAA satellite picture we see these increasing clouds having moved over much of the state now…from the northwest. At the time, we see another area of higher level clouds just to the east of the Big Island. Finally, there are various patches of low clouds out over the ocean and over the islands too.  We can use this looping satellite image to see those bright white clouds, at upper levels, closing in on the state from several directions. Checking out this looping radar image shows showers falling over the ocean, and over some of our windward coasts and slopes too.

In sum: the trade winds are blowing still in the light category Monday night, with a few gusts bumping-up into the lower medium range. As a trough of low pressure moves overhead soon, and a weak surface cold front shifts further southeast…our winds will start easing up and even fading away, as our high pressure ridge gets pushed close to the islands. This in turn may lead to a volcanically haze reality with time. We see lots of high clouds associated with this approaching trough/cold front of low pressure to our northwest. Otherwise, our weather will remain generally fair into Tuesday, with a combination of windward biased showers as our trade winds are still around…and a few upcountry afternoon showers as the winds ease up Tuesday afternoon.

As we push into later Tuesday and Wednesday, things will become more interesting, as the computer models have been intimating for the last week or so. An area of unusually cold air aloft will move over the state, making our overlying atmosphere unstable. This unstable atmosphere could spark thunderstorms Tuesday night into Thursday. If this situation manifests as the computer models are suggesting, we could see locally heavy rainfall, along with the unusual chance of small hail falling here and there, with snow falling over our highest summits on both Maui and the Big Island. This unsettled weather pattern will exist late Tuesday through Thursday, with a gradual return to more favorably inclined weather by this weekend…into early next week. ~~~ I'll be back early Tuesday morning with your next new weather narrative. I hope you have a great Monday night from wherever you're reading from! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting: Melting mountain glaciers are making sea levels rise faster now than at any time in the last 350 years, according to new research. Universities at Aberystwyth, Exeter and Stockholm looked at longer timescales than usual for their study. They mapped changes in 270 of the largest glaciers between Chile and Argentina since the "Little Ice Age".

Studies showed glaciers have lost volume on average "10 to 100 times faster" in the last 30 years. The rapid melt rate is linked to their contribution to global sea level. The new research was published in the journal Nature Geoscience on Sunday.

Their survey centered on remotely sensed images of outlet glaciers of the south and north Patagonian icefields, but used longer timescales than previous studies. The glaciers straddle the Andes, on the border between Chile and Argentina.

The northern icefield extends for nearly 200 km and covers a surface of 4,200 square km, while the southern icefield is more than 350km long, covering 13,000 square km. The scientists mapped changes in the position of the glaciers since the "Little Ice Age".

This took place around 1870 for the north icefield and around 1650 for the southern icefield, the last time that they were much larger in the recent past. Lead author, Professor Neil Glasser of Aberystwyth University, said: "Previous estimates of sea-level contribution from mountain glaciers are based on very short timescales.

"They cover only the last 30 years or so when satellite images can be used to calculate rates of glacier volume change. "We took a different approach by using a new method that allows us to look at longer timescales.

'Above-average' "We knew that glaciers in South America were much bigger during the Little Ice Age so we mapped the extent of the glaciers at that time and calculated how much ice has been lost by the retreat and thinning of the glaciers."

Their calculations showed that in recent years the mountain glaciers have rapidly increased their melt rate and thus their contribution to global sea level. Dr Stephen Harrison of the University of Exeter, added: "The work is significant because it is the first time anyone has made a direct estimate of the sea-level contribution from glaciers since the peak of the industrial revolution (between 1750-1850)."

He said their results showed that estimates taken a decade ago of rates of glacier contribution to sea-level rise are "well above" the long-term averages, which cover 1650/1750 to 2010 and 1870-2010.

Interesting2: While the number of severe thunderstorms typically increases during April, this month could be especially nasty, when compared to other years. Much of the U.S. will continue to experience huge temperature swings this April. The magnitude and frequency of these swings will be like ringing the dinner bell for severe weather.

The temperature swings are brought on by the passage of a surface front. However, it is the steering winds high overhead, known as the jet stream, that helps push the fronts along and help generate the high winds in severe thunderstorms.

We cannot say that the presence of a La Nina directly increases the number of severe thunderstorms and tornadoes. It does, however, strengthen the polar jet stream and which could have an indirect effect on the number and frequency of severe weather outbreaks.

This spring, the presence of a strong, ongoing La Nina will continue to result in a strong polar jet stream, prone to big dips and bulges. The dips and bulges will push a great deal of warm and cold air around at the surface.

Certainly, any spring can have its cold outbreaks, but to have several snow events within one week in the Northeast (Binghamton, N.Y.) is unusual. Snow falling over the Oklahoma Panhandle (Guyman, Okla.) less than 10 hours after 90-degree temperatures is quite rare.

When you move air around like this, there is the risk of lifting it violently, allowing powerful thunderstorms to form. Last year, chilly Gulf of Mexico waters worked to cool and correspondingly stabilize the low-level air flowing northward. This coolness took a bit of an edge off severe weather outbreaks and storm intensity in general in the South during the spring.

While the air was warmer in the Northern states last year, it was terribly moist. This year, waters in the Gulf of Mexico are warmer than average and much warmer than last year at this point. The warm water will add instability to the atmosphere by making the air that passes over it warm, humid and hence more buoyant.

Now combine the persistent nature of the cold air this spring clashing with the building warmth spurred on by the warm Gulf and you have plenty of ammunition for severe weather. During the first three months of 2011, the number of severe weather incidents is above the prior five-year average (2006-2010) of 2650 incidents, according to the National Weather Service. It will be interesting to see if the warm Gulf waters play a role in the upcoming Atlantic Hurricane Season, particularly along the Gulf Coast of the U.S.

Interesting3: World population will reach 7 billion this year, prompting new concerns about whether the world will soon face a major population crisis. "In spite of 50 years of the fastest population growth on record, the world did remarkably well in producing enough food and reducing poverty," said University of Michigan economist David Lam, in his presidential address at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America.

Lam is a professor of economics and a research professor at the U-M Institute for Social Research. The talk is titled "How the World Survived the Population Bomb: Lessons from 50 Years of Exceptional Demographic History." In 1968, when Paul Ehrlich's book, "The Population Bomb," triggered alarm about the impact of a rapidly growing world population, growth rates were about 2 percent and world population doubled in the 39 years between 1960 and 1999.

According to Lam, that is something that never happened before and will never happen again. "There is virtually no question that world population growth rates will continue to decline," said Lam. "The rate is only as high as it is because of population momentum, with many women of childbearing ages in developing countries because of rapid population growth in earlier decades."

Lam discussed a variety of factors that have worked together to reduce the impact of population increases. Among the economic forces, he cited the green revolution, started by Nobel prize-winner Norman Borlaug, that increased per capita world food production by 41 percent between 1960 and 2009.

"We've been through periods of absolutely unprecedented growth rates, and yet food production increased even faster than population and poverty rates fell substantially," he said. The capacity of cities to absorb the growth in world population is another major reason that the world was able to double its population in the last 40 years without triggering mass starvation or increased poverty, Lam told the group.

Along with urbanization, Lam pointed to the impact of continued declines in fertility and rising investments in the education and well-being of children. Work Lam did in Brazil with ISR social demographer Leticia Marteleto shows a mean increase of 4.3 years of schooling among 16-17-year-olds from 1960 to 2000.

"This increase clearly involves more than just reductions in family size," Lam said. "For example, children with 10 siblings in 2000 have more schooling than children with one sibling in 1960.

"There is no Norman Borlaug of education to explain how schooling improved so much in developing countries during a period in which the school-age population was often growing at 3 percent or 4 percent a year.

This is one of the accomplishments of the last 50 years that deserves to be noted and marveled about." In conclusion, Lam told the group, "The challenges we face are staggering. But they're really nothing compared to the challenges we faced in the 1960s."

Interesting4: A strong earthquake registering magnitude 5.4 has shaken the India-Nepal border region. There were no early reports of death or damage. According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the epicenter of the temblor was a bit inside western Nepal about 230 miles east-northeast of Delhi, or 310 miles west-northwest of Kathmandu, Nepal.

The focal depth, the point of initiation of the fault break, was rather shallow at less than 8 miles. The earthquake struck a little after 5 p.m., local time. Estimated population exposure to ground shaking by the USGS showed that more than 100,000 people may have been exposed to strong shaking with light to moderate damage potential.

At the time of the earthquake, the weather in the area of the epicenter was dry. Dry weather will persist for at least another few days.

Interesting5: Milk and other staples like mushrooms and berries are still contaminated in parts of Ukraine by radioactive fallout from Chernobyl, 25 years after the world's worst nuclear disaster, Greenpeace said on Sunday.

The environmental group published findings of a field investigation ahead of a Ukraine-hosted international conference on Chernobyl on April 19. The meeting has taken on added significance since the nuclear crisis in Japan.

Ukraine is seeking 600 million euros ($840 million) in extra funding to build a massive new shell over a reactor at the Chernobyl plant which blew up in 1986, spewing radioactive debris across neighboring Belarus and other parts of Europe.

The investigation in three parts of Ukraine earlier this month focused on contamination of locally-produced food by caesium-137, a radionuclide carried around the region by wind at the time. The findings showed varying degrees of contamination in food such as milk and milk products, mushrooms, berries and root vegetables like beetroot and potatoes, staples of the rural diet in Ukraine.

In many cases the presence of cs-137 was well above acceptable levels for children and adults. Cs-137 "represents a long-term threat to the public's health particularly for people who consume this food on a daily basis," Greenpeace scientist Iryna Labunska told a briefing. The Greenpeace report was especially critical of the Ukrainian government for suspending regular monitoring of food contamination from Chernobyl two years ago.

Interesting6: An extensive rescue operation is in progress in an attempt to save thousands of penguins soaked in oil after a cargo ship leaked heavy oil, diesel fuel and soya beans near the Nightingale Islands, a British territory. The oil spill threatens remote areas on the South Atlantic Ocean, west of Cape Town, South Africa. The affected island chain is part of the Tristan da Cunha archipelago, located between Africa and Argentina.

The rescue began March 16, when M.S. Olivia, a Maltese-registered ship, ran aground. The ship was ultimately split in half due to a fracture to the hull, and is under investigation. The vessel was holding 60,000 metric tons of soya beans and 1,500 metric tons of heavy fuel, according to islands' administrator Sean Burns and Transport Malta, the Maltese shipping authority, in a report to CNN.

Footage of the rescue of the ship's 22 crew members, which were heading from Santos, Brazil, to Singapore, was captured by an expedition team aboard an ego-tourism ship. Inflatable boats were used to ferry sailors to safety. In the video of the wreckage, oil can be seen covering the northern rockhopper penguins.

Inflatable water crafts and fishing vessels are being used by island officials and volunteers to transport rescued penguins to several rehabilitation centers. The centers will attempt to return the penguins back to health. According to the RSPB, the northern rockhopper penguin had been listed as "one of the world's most threatened species of penguin."

The team had rallied up and transported an estimated 5,000 penguins as of Friday, April 1, 2011. Rescue crews braved strong winds and rocky waters to reach the penguins. The weather interfered with earlier rescue attempts. "The weather conditions for the next few days will be tough but manageable for rescuers.

With the exception of a storm crossing over the region Sunday night into Monday, a high pressure system will bring lighter winds and dry weather on Tuesday," said AccuWeather.com meteorologist Andrew Mussoline.

Mussoline also stated, "In the region, Monday will be cloudy with showers and a high of 67 degrees Fahrenheit. Tuesday will be partly Sunday with temperatures around 64 degrees Fahrenheit, and Wednesday will see dry conditions. Hopefully, the weather will hold out in the days to come to bring more penguins to safety."

The penguins face a difficult battle as the spill occurred at the end of the bird's molting season. The birds not only have no feathers because of shedding but the season is nearing its end when penguins re-enter the water, which is filled with oil.

Interesting7: "Cattle ranchers in southwestern Alberta have suspected it for a long time and now, GPS tracking equipment confirms it: wolf packs in the area are making cow meat a substantial part of their diets. University of Alberta researchers tracked wolves to bone yards, where ranchers dispose of dead cattle, and to sites of fresh cow kills.

The study was done over two grazing seasons in 2008 and 2009. The vast study area in southwestern Alberta includes private ranchland and wooded public lands bordering the Rocky Mountains. Researchers found that during the summer months when livestock was set out to graze on public lands, cattle made up to 45 per cent of the diet for the three wolf packs in the study.

This shows a seasonal switch from the wolf's usual pattern of wild prey in the non-grazing season to cattle in the grazing season. Four wolves in three different packs were outfitted with radio collars that included a standard tracking beacon and a device that collected and saved detailed GPS location data.

When the researchers used the radio signals to locate the general area of the collared wolf, the detailed, hour—by-hour GPS data showing the wolf's movements was uploaded into a handheld device. The researchers looked for GPS clusters, the locations on the map where the wolves spent a lot of time and went to a total 698 sites where the wolves had gathered.

The fieldwork turned up locations where 50 cows were killed. Researchers calculated that, during the winter months, 85 per cent of the wolves' scavenged (already dead animals) feeding events were at bone yards located on land belonging to ranchers.

The researchers noted that often the bone yards were located within a few hundred meters of grazing cattle. The ease of feeding at bone yards can also attract other predators such as grizzly bears and cougars. Wolves primarily feed on medium to large sized ungulates (sometimes 10—15 times larger than themselves, though they are not fussy eaters.

Medium and small sized animals preyed on by wolves include marmots, hares, badgers, foxes, ground squirrels, mice, hamsters, voles and other rodents, as well as insectivores. When such foods are insufficient, they will prey on lizards, snakes, frogs, rarely toads and large insects.

In times of scarcity, wolves will readily eat carrion, visiting cattle burial grounds and slaughter houses. Wolves will sometimes supplement their diet with fruit and vegetable matter. I

n Eurasia, many wolf populations are forced to subsist largely on livestock and garbage in areas with dense human activity, though wild ungulates such as moose, red deer, roe deer and wild boar are still important food sources in Russia and the more mountainous regions of Eastern Europe. Dr. Carita Bergman, an Area Wildlife Biologist with Alberta Sustainable Resource Development (SRD), says research in other regions shows that many wolves do not kill cattle.

An accurate tracking system would allow her to identify which packs may be responsible for depredation so that prevention and control measures can be targeted to those specific packs. Limiting the loss of those wolves that are not causing problems is essential to allow wolves to fulfill their vital role in the natural ecosystem.

Better information on wolf movements can help ranchers prevent cattle depredation. "Proactive measures include moving cattle to a different pasture, running cow-calf pairs instead of yearlings in high-risk pastures, or changing the timing of when specific pastures are used," notes Bergman.

"Or if you have a pasture that you’re worried about, you could check it more often. The increased human presence may deter wolves from starting to kill cattle." Lead U of A researcher, Andrea Morehouse says the most alarming element of the research is that almost 50 per cent of the wolf packs' summer diet was cattle meat. The researchers say this shows the need for management plans in the study area in order to reduce the opportunities for wolves to prey on cattle.