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

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

Lihue, Kauai –                    80
Honolulu airport, Oahu –      84 
Kaneohe, Oahu –                80
Molokai airport –                 85
Kahului airport, Maui –          86  (record for Monday 92 – 1953)
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 Tuesday evening:

Port Allen, Kauai – 82
Hilo, Hawaii – 77

Haleakala Crater –     missing (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 46 (over 13,500 feet on the Big Island)

Here are the 24-hour precipitation totals (inches) for each of the islands as of Tuesday evening:

0.18     Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.32     Moanalua RG, Oahu
0.00     Molokai
0.23     Lanai
0.00     Kahoolawe
0.43     Puu Kukui, Maui
0.75     Kealakekua, Big Island

Marine Winds – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a surface trough of low pressure located far west of the state. At the same time we find a 1025 millibar high pressure system to our northeast. Our local winds will come down in strength Wednesday…picking up again later Thursday.

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. 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 shining down during the night at times. Plus, during the nights you will be able to see stars, and the sunrise and sunset 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. 

 Aloha Paragraphs

Light winds, localized showers…especially Wednesday afternoon

 

Lighter than normal trade wind speeds occurred today, which will drop another notch Wednesday, quickly returning to normal…or even slightly more than that later Thursday into the weekend.  Glancing at this weather map, we find a 1025 millibar high pressure system to our northeast, while a surface low pressure trough remains parked far to our west.  A cold front moving by well to north Wednesday will help to knock down the trade winds temporarily…before they strengthen again Thursday and Friday. As we move into the weekend the winds will become stronger and gusty.  These trade winds will continue blowing through next week at least, which is very normal for this time of year.

Our winds will be light to moderately strong for the time being…the following numbers represent the strongest gusts, along with directions Tuesday evening:

23                 Port Allen, Kauai – ESE 
24                 Waianae, Oahu – ESE 
08                 Molokai – SW
25                 Kahoolawe – ESE  
24                 Kapalua, Maui – ENE 
09                 Lanai – W  
25                 South Point – NE  

We can use the following links to see what’s going on in our area of the north central Pacific Ocean Tuesday night.  Looking at this NOAA satellite picture we see variable clouds over and around the islands. We can use this looping satellite image to see a counterclockwise rotating upper level low pressure system far to our west. Checking out this looping radar image shows a few showers being carried across the islands by the trade winds…most notably towards the Big Island and Oahu at the time of this writing.

Sunset Commentary: The trough of low pressure to our west is still out there, and may remain there through the next several years, not really…although it has been around for quite some time this spring. It’s far enough away now that its influence is fading, with the threat of heavy showers now completely out of our weather picture. Even the high cirrus clouds it has been sending us…have pulled further away to the west now. 

The next weather influence that we’ll experience will be from a weak cold front passing by to our north. This weather map shows the blue tail-end of this front just touching the 30 degree line of latitude to our northwest. Despite the fact that it will stay well north of us, it is pushing our trade wind producing high pressure system to our northeast…towards the southeast. At the same time it’s helping to erode the ridge of high pressure to our north, thus the easing up in our trade wind speeds through Thursday morning. They won’t falter for long however, not this time of year, and will already zip right back later Thursday through the rest of the week and well beyond.

As the trade winds mellow out, the clouds will increase over and around the mountains during the afternoons, especially on the larger islands Wednesday. Although there may be a few small cauliflower type cumulus clouds over the smaller islands too. The local air mass remains rather dry and stable however, with downward flowing air over the islands, rather than shower enhancing rising air currents.  High pressure aloft over the islands will provide this downward flow, capping the rising clouds from getting all that tall. The most precipitation from this brief convective weather pattern will likely occur Wednesday afternoon. As the trade winds rebound Thursday onward, the bias for showers will migrate back over to the windward coasts and slopes.

Here in Kihei, Maui at around 530pm, it's quite cloudy, most of those slid off the Haleakala Crater slopes, where they formed during the afternoon hours. Those clouds dropped a few showers up there, but nothing significant. I expect a nice morning Wednesday giving way to more of those afternoon clouds…with a few more showers as well. This pattern will likely express itself once again statewide at mid-week. As noted above, as we push into Thursday onwards, we'll find a fairly typical, albeit it fairly breezy trade wind weather pattern. I'm leaving for the drive back upcountry now, and will meet you here again early in the morning with your next new weather narrative. I hope you have a great Tuesday night until then, and be prepared to be flooded with more of that just past full moon light tonight as well! Aloha for now…Glenn.l

Interesting: America's craft beer market has grown rapidly in recent years, seemingly outpaced only by its niche organic segment, thanks in part to growing consumer fears about genetically modified foods. While a few of the largest regional breweries currently enjoy widespread distribution, craft brewing remains fundamentally an industry devoted to its local followers, and the results are undeniable.

After growing 7.2% in 2009, the craft brewing industry expanded by 11% in 2010, bringing its share of the U.S. beer market to 4.9%. However, given craft brewers' generally higher price points than those of macro brewers like Anheuser-Busch Inbev and MillerCoors, this accounted for 7.6% of all sales in dollars.

This reflects a growth in retail value of $600 million over the previous year, despite a 1% drop in volume of the entire industry. The number of breweries in the U.S. jumped concurrently to 1,759, the highest such total since the late 1800s. Of these, 1,716 were identified as craft brewers by the Brewers Association.

This dramatic increase in craft beer sales during the recession indicates that consumers' tastes are evolving so much that they have become willing to accept the higher costs of a premium good like craft beer over cheaper, macro-brewed substitutes, even when their wallets are pinched, leading some analysts to project that craft beer's share of the domestic market could even climb from 5% to 20% over the next ten years.

While organic beer still makes up only a fraction of the craft beer market, it is gaining ground very quickly. Between 2003 and 2009, U.S. organic beer sales spiked from $9 million to $41 million.

However, with the correspondingly low supply of organic ingredients currently available on the market, organic brewers are subject to higher costs for their inputs than ordinary craft brewers.

Suppliers are aware that organic brewers are willing to absorb these higher costs in order to make their beer organic, but these costs are subject to a low ceiling because organic brewers generally refuse to offset their variable costs with higher price points.

Instead, they sell their products at prices comparable to the craft beer industry average. While these practices serve to minimize organic brewers' bottom lines, it simultaneously limits suppliers' ability to further manipulate prices.

Interesting2: France has imposed limits on water consumption in 28 of its 96 administrative departments, the environment ministry said Monday, amid signs that a prolonged dry spell that has hit grain crops would continue. "We are already in a situation of crisis. The situation is like what we would expect in July for groundwater levels, river flows and snow melting," Environment Minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet told a press conference.

The government had previously put 27 departments under water consumption limits, and Kosciusko-Morizet said Monday that similar measures could be extended to three more — effectively affecting a third of the country.

One of the hottest and driest Aprils on record in France has parched farmland and cut water reserves, stoking worries of a drought similar to that experienced in 1976 and fuelling concern harvests will suffer in the European Union's top grain producer.

No substantial rainfall is expected in the next two weeks, weather expert Michele Blanchard told Monday's press conference. In an interview with Reuters Insider, Meteo France forecaster Michel Daloz said that temperatures would also rise sharply in the next week, boosting groundwater evaporation.

"It would really need a miracle, which is three weeks of heavy rain after the coming 8-10 days (of a dry spell), to hope to make up for some of the deficit," Daloz said. Total rainfall in April amounted to barely 29 percent of the average established over the 1971-2000 period, the ministry said in a report, adding that soils in the northern part of the country were experiencing the driest conditions in 50 years.

"Rainfalls in coming weeks will be crucial," Kosciusko-Morizet said, adding that a wet month of July alone would not be enough to turn the situation around.

Interesting3: The mass extinction of marine life in our oceans during prehistoric times is a warning that the same could happen again due to high levels of greenhouse gases, according to new research. Professor Martin Kennedy from the University of Adelaide (School of Earth & Environmental Sciences) and Professor Thomas Wagner from Newcastle University, UK, (Civil Engineering and Geosciences) have been studying 'greenhouse oceans' — those that have been depleted of oxygen, suffering increases in carbon dioxide and temperature.

Using core samples drilled from the ocean bed off the coast of western Africa, the geologists studied layers of sediment from the Late Cretaceous Period (85 million years ago) across a 400,000-year time span.

They found a significant amount of organic material — marine life — buried within de-oxygenated layers of the sediment. Professor Wagner says the results of their research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), has relevance for our modern world: "We know that 'dead zones' are rapidly growing in size and number in seas and oceans across the globe," he said.

"These are areas of water that are lacking in oxygen and are suffering from increases of CO2, rising temperatures, nutrient run-off from agriculture and other factors." Their research points to a mass mortality in the oceans at a time when Earth was going through a greenhouse effect.

High levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and rising temperatures led to a severe lack of oxygen (hypoxia) in the water that marine animals depend upon. "What's alarming to us as scientists is that there were only very slight natural changes that resulted in the onset of hypoxia in the deep ocean," said Professor Kennedy.

"This occurred relatively rapidly — in periods of hundreds of years, or possibly even less — not gradually over longer, geological time scales, suggesting that Earth's oceans are in a much more delicate balance during greenhouse conditions than originally thought, and may respond in a more abrupt fashion to even subtle changes in temperature and CO2 levels."

Professor Kennedy said that the doubling of the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere over the past 50 years is "like hitting our ecosystem with a sledge-hammer" compared to the very small changes in incoming solar energy (radiation) which was capable of triggering these events in the past.

"This could have a catastrophic, profound impact on the sustainability of life in our oceans, which in turn is likely to impact on the sustainability of life for many land-based species, including humankind," he added. However, the geological record offers a glimmer of hope thanks to a naturally occurring response to greenhouse conditions.

After a hypoxic phase, oxygen concentration in the ocean seems to improve, and marine life returns. This research has shown that natural processes of carbon burial kick in and the land comes to the rescue, with soil-formed minerals collecting and burying excess dissolved organic matter in seawater.

Burial of the excess carbon ultimately contributes to CO2 removal from the atmosphere, cooling the planet and the ocean. "This is nature's solution to the greenhouse effect and it could offer a possible solution for us," said Professor Wagner. "If we are able to learn more about this effect and its feed backs, we may be able to manage it, and reduce the present rate of warming threatening our oceans."

Interesting4: One in three of all types of amphibians may yet to be found by scientists and remote tropical forests should get extra protection as the likely homes of such "unknown" creatures, a study said on Wednesday. Despite centuries of research by biologists, the report estimated that 3,050 types of amphibians — a group that includes frogs, toads, salamanders and newts — were still to be described, compared to 6,296 species known to science. Likewise, it estimated that at least 160 types of land mammals were yet to be found, about 3 percent of a known total of 5,398 ranging from elephants to tiny shrews.

"Most of these species are likely to be found in tropical forests," Xingli Giam, of Princeton University in the United States and lead author of the report, told Reuters. The Amazon, the Congo basin and Papua island were among likely sites. The study estimated the number of unknown species from factors including past rates of discovery of new animals and the extent of unexplored habitats.

As a rule, creatures found in recent years tended to be ever rarer, limited to small ranges. "Many of the undescribed species…are probably in danger of extinction and could well disappear before they are discovered," according to the study in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B by experts in the United States, Mexico and Singapore.

They urged conservation policies to target the least-disturbed tropical forests — few of which were now set aside as formal protected areas. FORESTS VANISH Past studies have shown that human destruction of habitats — such as forest clearance to make way for farms and towns, climate change, pollution and introduction of new species — is a mounting threat to the diversity of life.

"Today's 'hidden' biodiversity need not vanish without a trace. It is up to us to try to prevent such a tragedy," they wrote. Amphibians, living both in water and on land and breathing through their skin, are often important in food chains ranging from fish to birds.

"They link the terrestrial and aquatic habitats," Giam said. There were likely to be more undiscovered amphibians than mammals because they were often harder to spot — living in swamps, or sitting immobile in trees. Mammals were often more active. The study did not consider other types of creatures. Among recent discoveries, scientists found three new species of amphibian in Colombia last year including a toad with ruby-colored eyes.

Among mammals, experts identified a snub-nosed monkey in remote forests in Myanmar in 2010. And some vanishing species may have valuable genes. The Australian gastric brooding frog, which incubated its young in its stomach, went extinct in the 1980s before scientists could study how it did not simply digest its young. Its trick might have given clues to help people suffering from stomach ulcers.

Amphibians may also have clues for developing anti-microbial drugs or controlling malaria-spreading mosquitoes, Giam said. Giam acknowledged that it may be hard to focus public attention on unknown species. "Here we try to make the unknowns more known," Giam said.