Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs / May 3-4, 2011

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

Lihue, Kauai –                    82
Honolulu airport, Oahu –      85
Kaneohe, Oahu –                80
Molokai airport –                 83
Kahului airport, Maui –        86   (Record high temperature for Tuesday: 88 – 1972, 1974)
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 Tuesday evening:

Honolulu, Oahu – 82
Hilo, Hawaii – 77

Haleakala Crater –     41 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 32 (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:

6.23     Mount Waialeale, Kauai
2.43     Manoa Valley, Oahu
0.01     Molokai
0.05     Lanai
0.04     Kahoolawe
0.65     Kaupo Gap, Maui
1.76     Pohakuloa Kipuka Alala, Big Island

Marine Winds – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a 1039 millibar high pressure system far to the northeast of the Hawaiian Islands. At the same time we find a trough of low pressure to the west of our western islands. Our local trade winds will continue to be moderately strong…although stronger locally at times through 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. 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 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. Of course, as we know, our hurricane season ended November 30th here in the central Pacific…and begins again June 1st.

 Aloha Paragraphs

Strengthening trade winds…generally fine weather
 
 
 
 

Our winds will be moderately strong…picking up Wednesday onwards.  Glancing at this weather map, we find a strong 1039 millibar high pressure system located far to the northeast of the Hawaiian Islands.  An upper level trough of low pressure over the state will move further away…gradually losing most of its local influence…although not all. As the trough shifts away, our trade wind speeds will increase as we move into Wednesday…through the remainder of the week. As the trade winds pick up, we now have a small craft wind advisory active around Maui County and the Big Island. The computer models continue to show lighter winds starting up after this weekend.

Our local winds will blow from the trade wind direction…the following numbers represent the strongest gusts, along with directions Wednesday evening:

24 mph       Port Allen, Kauai – NE
42                Waianae, Oahu – NW 
28              Molokai – NE    
30              Kahoolawe – ESE   
27              Kahului, Maui – NE
04              Lanai Airport – SW
31              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 Tuesday night.  Looking at this NOAA satellite picture we find clouds over the ocean around the islands, with most of the heavy showers or thunderstorms offshore to our southwest through northwest.  We can use this looping satellite image to see a stream of high and middle level clouds to our south…curling up to the east of the Big Island.  At the same time we find lots of vertical growth to the clouds generally over the ocean to our west and southwest.  Checking out this looping radar image shows several areas of moderately heavy showers, west of the Big Island, south of Oahu, and southwest of Kauai, also to the northeast of Maui County…at the time of this writing.

Sunset Commentary: The local atmosphere is still unstable, although will soon become more stable. There are still lots of thunderstorms over the ocean to our southwest and west. This threat of heavy showers and thunderstorms will fade away as we get into the middle of the week. There may still be a few heavier showers around Tuesday evening into the night…although most of them will stay safely offshore over the ocean.

The heaviest showers today occurred on the Big Island, where a flood advisory was in effect through much of the afternoon hours. The rest of the state was considerably less intense in terms of rainfall, although there were spotty showers, some of which were quite generous. The showers won't go away completely, although should migrate over to the windward sides as the trade winds quicken their pace now.

As noted above, the NWS office in Honolulu has issued a small craft wind advisory for those windiest areas around Maui County and the Big Island. Maalaea Bay is one of these gusty places, as is the Alenuihaha Channel between east Maui and the Kohala coast on the Big Island. Winds will be stronger and gusty just about everywhere, topping 30 or even 40 mph in a couple of those windiest sections on the Big Island and around Maui County.

Today at lunch here in Kihei, Maui, I spotted numerous towering cumulus clouds, which I consider very beautiful…and not all that common here in the trade wind belt around Hawaii. Looking out the window here in Kihei before I take the drive back upcountry to Kula, I see that most of those cumulus clouds are now gone. There are mostly clear skies out now as a matter of fact. Looking to the south I do see some high cirrus clouds however, which could light up colorfully at sunset. I'll be back with you again early Wednesday morning with your next new weather narrative from paradise. I hope you have a great Tuesday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting: Scientists have shed new light on the origins of rice, one of the most important staple foods today. A study of the rice genome suggests that the crop was domesticated only once, rather than at multiple times in different places. Tens of thousands of varieties of rice are known, but these are represented by two distinct sub-species.

The work published in PNAS journal proposes that rice was first cultivated in China some 9,000 years ago. Another theory proposes that the two major sub-species of rice – Oryza sativa japonica and O. sativa indica – were domesticated separately and in different parts of Asia.

This view has gained strong support from observations of large genetic differences between the two sub-species, as well as from several efforts to reconstruct the evolutionary history of the crop. The japonica type is sticky and short-grained, while indica rice is non-sticky and long-grained. In the latest research, an international team re-examined this evolutionary history, by using genetic data.

Using computer algorithms, the researchers came to the conclusion that japonica and indica had a single origin because they had a closer genetic relationship to one other than to any wild rice species found in China or India. They then used a so-called "molecular clock" technique to put dates on the evolutionary story of rice. Depending on how the researchers calibrated their clock, the data point to an origin of domesticated rice around 8,200 years ago.

The study indicates that the japonica and indica sub-species split apart from each other about 3,900 years ago. The team says this is consistent with archaeological evidence for rice domestication in China's Yangtze Valley about 8,000 to 9,000 years ago and the domestication of rice in India's Ganges region about 4,000 years ago.

"As rice was brought in from China to India by traders and migrant farmers, it likely hybridised extensively with local wild rice," said co-author Michael Purugganan, from New York University (NYU). "So domesticated rice that we may have once thought originated in India actually has its beginnings in China."

The single-origin model suggests that indica and japonica were both domesticated from the wild rice O. rufipogon. Several years ago, researchers said they had found evidence for 15,000-year-old burnt rice grains at a site in South Korea, challenging the idea that rice was first cultivated in China. However, the evidence remains controversial in the academic community.

Interesting2: Almost half of all adults worldwide suffer from headache disorders such as migraines and tension headaches and the problem has huge economic and societal costs, the World Health Organisation said on Tuesday. Yet headaches are widely under-recognised, under-diagnosed and under-treated, and the scant knowledge about them and the burdens they impose must be improved, the WHO said.

Publishing its first global atlas on headaches, the Geneva-based United Nations health body said it found that 47 percent of all adults have a headache disorder and "the financial costs to society through lost productivity are enormous". In the European Union (EU) alone, 190 million days are lost from work every year because of migraine, it said.

"Headache and migraine disorders are greatly underrated and underreported by health systems and receive too little attention," Dr Shekhar Saxena, the WHO's director of mental health and substance abuse disorders, said in an emailed statement about the report. "Headaches can be debilitating for many people, rendering them unable to work.

During migraine attacks, 90 percent of people postpone household chores, almost three-quarters have limited ability to work and half of them miss work entirely." Migraine affects around one in six women and one in 12 men, and has been estimated to be the most expensive brain disorder to society in the EU and the United States.

The WHO report found that most importantly, headache disorders are very disabling: Worldwide, migraine alone is the cause of 1.3 percent of all disability due to illness, it said, and experts estimate that taken together, all headache disorders account for double this burden.

Migraine alone is the cause of an estimated 400,000 lost days from work or school every year per million of the population in developed countries, and in the EU, the total annual cost of all headache has recently been estimated at $229 billion.

"Governments must take the issue more seriously, train health personnel in headache disorder diagnosis and treatment, and ensure appropriate medication is available and used properly," Saxena said. An international scientific team said last year it had for the first time identified a genetic risk factor linked with common migraines — a finding that could open the way for new treatments to prevent migraine attacks.

Interesting3: Radiation readings that are 100-1,000 times the normal level have been found on the Pacific seabed near the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, local media reported Tuesday. The high levels of radioactive materials were detected from samples taken Friday from the seabed at points 20-30 meters deep, Kyodo News reported, citing the plant's operator Tokyo Electric Power Co.

The Japanese government and the utility have been battling to keep the plant crippled by the devastating earthquake and tsunami in March under control. It is still leaking radioactive substances into environment.

Interesting4: An asteroid will fly past Earth this fall at a close approach that will allow a close-up view of one of Earth's good-sized space rocks, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) announced on Monday. "On November 8, asteroid 2005 YU55 will fly past Earth and at its closest approach point will be about 325,000 kilometers away," said Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at the JPL in Pasadena, Los Angeles.

"This asteroid is about 400 meters wide — the largest space rock we have identified that will come this close until 2028." Despite the relative proximity and size, "YU55 poses no threat of an Earth collision over, at the very least, the next 100 years, " Yeomans said in a press release. "During its closest approach, its gravitational effect on the Earth will be so miniscule as to be immeasurable.

It will not affect the tides or anything else." "While near-Earth objects of this size have flown within a lunar distance in the past, we did not have the foreknowledge and technology to take advantage of the opportunity," said Barbara Wilson, a scientist at JPL. "When it flies past, it should be a great opportunity for science instruments on the ground to get a good look."

"The best resolution of the radar images was 7.5 meters per pixel," said JPL radar astronomer Lance Benner. "When 2005 YU55 returns this fall, we intend to image it at 4-meter resolution with our recently upgraded equipment at the Deep Space Network at Goldstone, California. Plus, the asteroid will be seven times closer. We're expecting some very detailed radar images."

Asteroid 2005 YU55 was discovered in December 2005 by Robert McMillan, head of the NASA-funded Spacewatch Program at the University of Arizona, Tucson. The space rock has been in astronomers' crosshairs before. In April 2010, Mike Nolan and colleagues at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico generated some ghostly images of 2005 YU55 when the asteroid was about 2.3 million kilometers from Earth.

Interesting5: The most often heard victims of climate change are the polar bears in the far north losing their hunting grounds to the melting polar ice. Maps show the greatest area of warming temperatures are at the north and south poles. However, equally important are the effects of climate change in the tropical regions of the world. As temperatures rise here, poorly adaptable species may be lost forever.

It may also encourage the spread of diseases and unprecedented heat waves which may lead to forest fires. Studies of climate changes effects in the tropics have been conducted by William Laurance, Distinguished Research Professor at James Cook University in Queensland, Australia.

His research has covered the entire world, from the Amazon to Africa, to tropical Australia. He notes prior research conducted by biologist, Justin Welbergen, who made observations on an Australian day where temperatures reached 109 F. The extreme heat caused the deaths of 1,453 flying foxes along the northeastern Australian coastline. Since then, tens of thousands more have died.

Prior to 1994, few mass die-offs were ever recorded. Tropical species are perfectly suited for their climate. There are no seasons like in the northern latitudes, so these species have never experienced any serious deviations in temperature. In the tropics the only way to experience different temperatures is to change elevation. Generally, the temperature drops 11 F for every thousand meters up.

Therefore, tropical species are also perfectly suited for their elevation. This means trouble for mountaintop species because they are effectively on an island and have nowhere else to go. As temperatures rise, these high elevation species will be the first in danger. Laurance's colleague, Steve Williams, has created a model which suggests that extinctions will increase if temperatures rise more than three degrees.

If they rise by 5-6 degrees, most endemic life in north Queensland will be exterminated. Another concern for the tropics is global warming's effects on cloud cover in tropical mountain regions. The rainforests in these areas depend on persistent cloud cover to keep them cool and protect them from solar radiation. Rising temperatures can change the condensation point for cloud formation, drying out these areas.

It will also affect the evapotranspiration of plants. Rainforest plants release massive amounts of water vapor when they absorb CO2. But in a CO2-rich world, plants do not have to release water vapor to absorb CO2. The reduction in water vapor released will result in fewer or smaller clouds. There are still many uncertainties when predicting climate change in the tropics. Will there be more floods or droughts in a warming world?

The El-Nino weather phenomenon may cause droughts in the Amazon, but will this be the dominant climate dynamic for the region? Will undisturbed rainforests grow or shrink due to rising temperatures? We simply do not know the answers to many of these questions. The hope is that tropical ecosystems will find the resilience to withstand the rapid warming that is unleashed on them.