Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Wednesday:
Lihue, Kauai – 84
Honolulu airport, Oahu – 87 (record for Wednesday – 91 in 1987)
Kaneohe, Oahu – 81
Molokai airport – 83
Kahului airport, Maui – 84
Kona airport 85
Hilo airport, Hawaii – 84
Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountain tops…as of 5pm Wednesday evening:
Port Allen, Kauai – 86
Kaneohe, Oahu – 79
Haleakala Crater – 52 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea Summit – 39 (over 13,500 feet on the Big Island)
Here are the 24-hour precipitation totals (inches) for each of the islands as of Wednesday evening:
0.36 Kilohana, Kauai
0.71 Manoa Lyon Arboretum, Oahu
0.04 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
0.43 West Wailuaiki, Maui
0.65 Kawainui Stream, Big Island
Marine Winds – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a strong 1038 millibar high pressure system to the north of our islands. Our local trade winds will remain active through Friday.
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. A satellite image, which shows the entire ocean area between Hawaii and the Mexican coast…can be found here. Here's a tropical cyclone tracking map for the eastern and central Pacific.
Aloha Paragraphs
Trade winds, just a few passing windward
showers…generally nice weather prevails
The trade winds will prevail through the rest of this week…becoming slightly lighter Sunday into early next week. Glancing at this weather map, we find a strong 1038 millibar high pressure system located to the north-northeast of the islands Wednesday afternoon. This huge high pressure cell dominates the Pacific, from the western Pacific, across the central into the eastern Pacific…to the Baja California coast of Mexico. We still have limited small craft wind advisories covering those windiest channels and coasts around Maui County and the Big Island.
Our trade winds will remain active…the following numbers represent the strongest gusts (mph), along with directions early Wednesday evening:
28 Port Allen, Kauai – NE
25 Honolulu, Oahu – NE
31 Molokai – NE
30 Kahoolawe – ESE
38 Kahului, Maui – ENE
17 Lanai – ENE
33 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 Wednesday night. Looking at this NOAA satellite picture we find a loose line of lower level clouds, which are generally heading towards the Big Island and Maui County. At the same time we find an area of high cirrus clouds just to our southwest and west…spreading into the state. We can use this looping satellite image to see lower level clouds being carried along in the trade wind flow, and the area of cirrus southwest and west. There's also a counterclockwise rotating upper level low pressure system to our west, producing some thunderstorms. Checking out this looping radar image we see light showers being carried along in the trade wind flow, reaching into the windward sides locally at times.
Sunset Commentary: A strong 1038 millibar high pressure system remains in a nearly stationary position to our north-northeast of the islands Wednesday night. This trade wind producing high pressure cell has been planted, more or less to our north for the last week or so. Despite the size and heft of this high, the pressure gradient across our islands, to its south, hasn’t been all that tight. The trades have been rather breezy this week, although not exceptionally so. The last couple of days have seen winds gusting up to the 40 mph mark, at least at the Kahului, Maui airport. Winds in general have been at least moderately strong during the days, although small craft wind advisories have been limited to just those windiest channels and coastal zones around Maui County and the Big Island. There doesn’t appear to be very much change up ahead, with more moderately strong winds blowing across our latitudes of the north central Pacific…with those stronger gusts.
The diurnal changes in precipitation from day to night…has been pretty typical for the current trade wind weather pattern. The rainfall tends to increase during the cooler nights, that is if there’s moisture available upstream. This varies however, with some showery clouds arriving during the warmer daylight hours at times too. The computer models are still pointing out the chance of some additional enhancement to our showers later this weekend into early next week. This doesn’t look like it will add all that much extra precipitation to our islands, although this time of year, it’s all welcome
As an aside, we now have tropical storm Ma-on active in the western Pacific, major hurricane Dora in the eastern Pacific, and tropical storms Bret and Cindy in the Atlantic. None of these tropical cyclones has any bearing on our rather placid weather here in the Hawaiian Islands, which is a good thing.
Here in Kihei, Maui, at around 530pm HST Wednesday evening, skies were partly cloudy, with a mix of high and lower level clouds. It would be a good idea to check out the sunset this evening, as I anticipate that it will be a colorful one. If you're up early Thursday morning, like I will be, it wouldn't surprise me to see some nice pink and orange colors again then. The trade winds are blowing at a pretty good clip like they have all this week, and will continue through the next several days, if not longer. I must admit that I'm chompin' on the bit to get on the road home, to get back upcountry to Kula. I'm anxious to get back on the road for my evening walk then, before watching the sunset, eating dinner, talking on the phone a little, and then to bed to read. I'll be up again very early Thursday morning, so that I can get back online to prepare your next new weather narrative. I hope you have a great Wednesday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn. I always write that don't I, I'm so regular.
Interesting: The largest known remaining population of the northern white-cheeked gibbon has been discovered in Vietnam, bringing new hope for this Critically Endangered primate. Scientists from Conservation International made the discovery in Pu Mat National Park, near the Vietnam-Laos border, in an area of remote, dense forest that has been largely isolated from human activity.
By recording the gibbons' loud, territorial 'songs', the team were able to confirm a population of 130 groups, or 455 gibbons in total. Previous work by Conservation International in other parts of north-central Vietnam had found no population of the northern white-cheeked gibbon larger than a dozen groups.
The newly discovered population at Pu Mat National Park is therefore all the more important, as it represents over two thirds of the total population of this species in Vietnam and may be the only viable population left in the world.
Interesting2: A new documentary, Cool It, may be able to help some of us in our quest to settle arguments about climate change. Most readers of this publication probably accept that climate change is a real phenomenon. But there are still people out there, usually politically charged, who think climate change is nonsense.
Although Cool It was released in theaters late last year, it recently screened at the Anthem Film Festival, part of FreedomFest 2011, in Las Vegas, NV — a libertarian gathering. It was a surprise to see such a pro environmental documentary given the leanings of this particular event.
Cool It assumes that global warming is real, but may not be as catastrophic as it is said to be. Furthermore, it critiques the fashionable plans of fixing the problem, namely cap and trade. Rather, Bjorn Lomborg is shown picking brains and brainstorming innovative ideas of how to stop and/or alleviate global warming.
Lomborg also has a different take on how climate change has been presented to the public. "Fear has been ruling the climate debate. It’s about time that we realize the current approach is broken," says Lomborg. The FreedomFest crowd seemed a lot more receptive to Lomborg's approach than that of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.
Interesting3: Climate and food production is a subject that needs more study in coming years but for now even the U.S. Agriculture Department finds it almost impossible to estimate the effects of one on the other. "They are very elaborate models," said USDA's chief economist Joseph Glauber, referring to climate-crop forecasting in an interview on Tuesday on the sidelines of a farm lending conference at the Kansas City Federal Reserve.
"Take into account all the fundamentals on crops and yields. You also have to build in all this climate variability and predictions about climate variability. The range of potential outcomes is pretty large," Glauber said. "We just don't consider that in our 10-year baseline.
We assume some trend growth, we really don't even look at variabilities. That's probably proper for a 10-year forecast horizon." The USDA's crop reports, such as the monthly World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) and its 10-year baseline crop outlooks, are key benchmarks for the world food and farming industries, given the vast domestic and world data gathering the agency employs.
"To take our crop forecasting models — they are what they are — and try to marry in a lot of climate stuff, it's pretty cumbersome," Glauber said. "With climate comes looking at land use — forest versus pasture versus cropland," Glauber said. "We are just beginning to see some of the modeling on that."
Glauber cited studies by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) as important models to build upon. "Climate doesn't make a difference much over 10 years. There is a lot more variability now relative to say 10, 15 years ago. But the real changes we are talking about here start manifesting themselves over 30, 40, 50 years," Glauber said.
"World food needs will increase by 70 percent by 2050. By 2050, you can have climate issues," he added. "The important thing in looking at these longer run forecasts is things like water availability. These are big stressors when you talk about food production needing to increase by 70 percent."
Interesting4: Researchers have devised a model to anticipate drought and forest fires in the Amazon rainforest. The research, which used precipitation records dating back to 1970 and hotspots tracked by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA satellites, finds a strong correlation between sea surface temperatures in the tropical North Atlantic and subsequent drought in the western Amazon.
Drought in the Amazon is increasingly associated with forest fires due to land-clearing fires set by agricultural developers and cattle ranchers. The researchers, led by Katia Fernandes of Columbia University, conclude that their model could be used to forecast drought up the three months in advance, giving authorities a window to alert ranchers and farmers about the increased risk of using fire to clear land during the dry season, which typically runs from July-September.
Coupled with its existing satellite-based deforestation monitoring capabilities, the warning system could prove useful to Brazil as it aims to reduce deforestation rates under its national climate action plan. The study, which is published in Geophysical Research Letters, comes on the heels of another paper, published in the same issue, that reports an increase in droughts in the Amazon.
That research — led by Jose Marengo of Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE) — identifies the 2005 and 2010 droughts in the Amazon as the worst on record. It finds that since the mid-1970s droughts have increased in the Amazon region, while the length of the typical dry season has expanded. The study says droughts are "aggravated" when there was low rainfall in the previous wet season.
Interesting5: It's exotic and beautiful, a 15-foot tall plant with clusters of dainty white flowers and human-sized leaves — resembling, it is often said, Queen Anne's Lace on steroids. But giant hogweed is an invasive species that is spreading around much of the northern United States. Even worse, its sap is extremely poisonous, with the potential to cause blistering burns and even blindness.
Now that the giant hogweed's flowering season is here again, experts are taking the opportunity to draw people's attention to the plant — for the sake of human health as well as for the health of the environment. "It's one of the few invasive species that has such a severe human health impact, and people should really know about it," said Chuck O'Neill, coordinator of the Cornell Cooperative Extension Invasive Species Program in Ithaca, NY.
"Unfortunately, I'd say 80 or 90 percent of people hiking have no idea what these plants look like." "Like the zebra mussel, they can be a poster child for invasive species," he added. "There's a certain appeal to a plant that's this big with that cringe factor of what it can do to you that gives you an opening to start talking about a lot more plants, animals and insects that are invasive."
The giant hogweed's story of invasion began in 1892, when two European brothers went on a botanical expedition to the Caucuses region of Eurasia, where they saw the plant for the first time, said botanist Naja Kraus, manager of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation's Giant Hogweed Program. Wowed by its height and beauty, they brought its seeds back to Europe, along with a variety of other species.
Interesting6: The health implications of polluting the environment weigh increasingly on our public consciousness, and pharmaceutical wastes continue to be a main culprit. Now a Tel Aviv University researcher says that current testing for these dangerous contaminants isn't going far enough. Dr. Dror Avisar, head of the Hydro-Chemistry Laboratory at TAU's Department of Geography and the Human Environment, says that, when our environment doesn't test positive for the presence of a specific drug, we assume it's not there.
But through biological or chemical processes such as sun exposure or oxidization, drugs break down, or degrade, into different forms — and could still be lurking in our water or soil in different forms. In his lab, Dr. Avisar is doing extensive testing to determine how drugs degrade and identify the many forms they take in the environment. He has published his findings in Environmental Chemistry and the Journal of Environmental Science and Health.
The use of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) is on the rise with an estimated increase from 2 billion to 3.9 billion annual prescriptions between 1999 and 2009 in the United States alone. PPCPs enter into the environment through individual human activity and as residues from manufacturing, agribusiness, veterinary use, and hospital and community use. Individuals may add PPCPs to the environment through waste excretion and bathing as well as by directly disposing of unused medications to septic tanks, sewers, or trash.
Because PPCPs tend to dissolve relatively easily and do not evaporate at normal temperatures, they often end up in soil and water bodies. Some PPCPs are broken down or processed easily by a human or animal body and/or degrade quickly in the environment . However, others do not break down or degrade easily. The likelihood or ease with which an individual substance will break down depends on its chemical makeup and the metabolic pathway of the compound.
A study by the U.S. Geological Survey report published in 2002 found detectable quantities of PPCPs in 80 percent of a sampling of 139 susceptible streams in 30 states. The most common pharmaceuticals detected were steroids and nonprescription drugs as well as detergents, fire retardants, pesticides, natural and synthetic hormones, and an assortment of antibiotics and prescription medications.
Drug products have been in our environment for years, whether they derive from domestic (residential)waste water, hospitals, industry or agriculture. But those who are searching for these drugs in the environment are typically looking for known compounds — parent drugs — such as antibiotics, pain killers, lipid controllers, anti-psychotic medications and many more. Dr. Avisar explains. "We may have several degradation products with even higher levels of bioactivity."
Not only do environmental scientists need to identify the degraded products, but they must also understand the biological-chemical processes that produce them in natural environments. When they degrade, compounds form new chemicals entirely, he cautions. Dr. Avisar and his research group have been working to simulate environmental conditions identical to our natural environment, down to the last molecule, in order to identify the conditions under which compounds degrade, how they degrade, and the resulting chemical products.
Among the factors they consider are sun exposure, water composition, temperatures, pH levels and organic content. Currently using amoxicillin, a common antibiotic prescribed for bacterial infections such as strep throat, as a test case, Dr. Avisar has successfully identified nine degradation products with different levels of stability. Two may even be toxic, he notes. According to Dr. Avisar, who will soon expand his research to include the degraded products of chemotherapy drugs, his research is breaking new ground, extending past research.
Email Glenn James: 
