Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Monday:
Lihue, Kauai – 79
Honolulu airport, Oahu – 82 (record high temperature for the date…88F degrees – 1995)
Kaneohe, Oahu – 78
Molokai airport – 78
Kahului airport, Maui – 81
Kona airport – 80
Hilo airport, Hawaii – 78
Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountain tops…as of 5pm Monday evening:
Barking Sands, Kauai – 81
Hilo, Hawaii – 70
Haleakala Crater – 39 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea – 30 (near 13,800 feet on the Big Island)
Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live web cam on the summit of near 13,800 foot Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. This web cam is 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. Here's the Haleakala Crater webcam on Maui…which is working only sometimes lately.
Aloha Paragraphs
Strong and gusty trade winds, windward
showers…most frequent on the Big Island
As this weather map shows…we have a near 1033 millibar high pressure system located far to the northeast of the Hawaiian Islands Monday evening…located well offshore from the northwest coast of California. This high pressure system has a ridge that runs southwest from its center, into the area well north of the state. At the same time a weak cold front, extending far southwest from a storm low pressure system in the Gulf of Alaska…which is moving quickly inland over western Canada. Finally, there is a trough of low pressure to the south of the Big Island, which is helping to enhance the strength of our local trade wind speeds for the time being.
The following numbers represent the strongest wind gusts (mph), along with directions Monday evening:
31 Lihue, Kauai – NE
42 Waianae Valley, Oahu – N
35 Molokai – NE
38 Kahoolawe – E
32 Lipoa, Maui – SE
39 Lanai – NNE
39 Waikaloa, 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 evening. Looking at this NOAA satellite picture we find that the high and middle level clouds are located just to the south through southeast through east of the islands at this hour. We can use this looping satellite image to see lots of towering cumulus and thunderstorms developing to the south and east over the ocean, associated with a counter-clockwise rotating upper level low pressure system…to the south of the islands. Checking out this looping radar image we see showers over the ocean, most of which are light to moderately heavy, although some are heavier coming into the east through south sides of the Big Island…with a lesser amount arriving along the windward sides on the other islands.
Here are the 24-hour precipitation totals (inches) for each of the islands as of Monday evening:
2.46 Kilohana, Kauai
1.07 Moanalua, Oahu
0.05 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
4.63 Puu Kukui, Maui
3.85 Waiakea Uka, Big Island
Sunset Commentary: The Hawaiian Islands will continue to find locally strong and gusty trade winds through the next several days. Small craft wind advisories have been extended across all of the island chain this evening. The strongest gusts will be up into the 30-40 mph range through Wednesday…or even a bit higher than that in a few of those windiest locations.
As far as precipitation goes, there will continue to be windward biased showers falling. Some of these showers will be heavy, with the chance of a few thunderstorms popping-up over or near the Big Island. Looking ahead, the upper level low pressure system, now to the south of the state, and its associated trough, should move away after mid-week…with easing rainfall along the Big Island coasts and slopes then.
Here in Kihei, Maui at around 515pm Monday evening, it was clear to partly cloudy. As noted above, the trade winds will prevail, accentuated by the spread of air pressure between a high pressure system to our northeast…and low pressure to the south of Hawaii. Meanwhile, this upper trough of low pressure, with its cold air aloft, will keep a good amount of instability present in our atmosphere near the Big Island. This will enhance showers wherever they fall on that island, providing localized heavy rainfall at times. Up high, the summits on the Big Island will likely see more snow falling at times into Tuesday as well. Looking at this looping radar image, we see no lack of showers streaming across the Big Island at this hour. The weather across the state from Maui up through Kauai will be less showery, although with still the strong and gusty trade winds. These windy, but rather normal weather conditions in terms of rainfall will continue, with just the Big Island still having those heavier showers. Once again, the small island of Lanai had the strongest winds today, reaching up to 47 mph at one point…which may occur again on Tuesday. ~~~ I'm just about ready to head back upcountry to Kula, where I have homemade vegetable soup, chips, cheese, and avocado waiting for dinner. I'll look forward to catching up with you again early Tuesday morning, when I'll have your next new weather narrative waiting, by 530am HST or so. I hope you have a great Monday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.
Interesting: Cause and effect are not easy to distinguish. Dust avalanches around impact craters on Mars appear to be the result of the shock wave preceding the actual impact, according to a study led by an undergraduate student at the UA. When a meteorite careens toward the dusty surface of the Red Planet, it kicks up dust and can cause avalanching even before the rock from outer space hits the ground, a research team led by an undergraduate student at the University of Arizona has discovered.
When a meteorite careens toward the dusty surface of the Red Planet, it kicks up dust and can cause avalanching even before the rock from outer space hits the ground, a research team led by an undergraduate student at the University of Arizona has discovered.
Landslides are common features in canyons on both Earth and Mars, and they happen the same way. Erosion undermines a canyon wall until abruptly millions of tons of rock come crashing down. The event causing a landslide may be quite small: a trickle of water in the right place or even winds from a storm tipping a precarious balance.
Or the impulse may come from a more substantial kick: seismic waves from an earthquake or a meteorite that shake the wall-rock, widening cracks until gravity starts the slide moving. "We expected that some of the streaks of dust that we see on slopes are caused by seismic shaking during impact," said Kaylan Burleigh, who led the research project.
"We were surprised to find that it rather looks like shockwaves in the air trigger the avalanches even before the impact." Because of Mars' thin atmosphere, which is 100 times less dense than Earth's, even small rocks that would burn up or break up before they could hit the ground here on Earth crash into the Martian surface relatively unimpeded.
Each year, about 20 fresh craters between 1 and 50 meters (3 to 165 feet) show up in images taken by the HiRISE camera on board NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE, is operated by the UA's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory.
For this study, the team zoomed in on a cluster of five large craters, which all formed in one impact event close to Mars' equator about 512 miles south of the boundary scarp of Olympus Mons, the tallest mountain in the solar system. Previous observations by the Mars Global Surveyor orbiter, which imaged Mars for nine years until 2006, showed that this cluster was blasted into the dusty surface between May 2004 and February 2006.
The results of the research, which Burleigh first took on as a freshman under former UA Regents Professor H. Jay Melosh, are published in the planetary science journal Icarus. The authors interpret the thousands of downhill-trending dark streaks on the flanks of ridges covering the area as dust avalanches caused by the impact. The largest crater in the cluster measures 22 meters, or 72 feet across and occupies roughly the area of a basketball court.
Most likely, the cluster of craters formed as the meteorite broke up in the atmosphere, and the fragments hit the ground like a shotgun blast. Narrow, relatively dark streaks varying from a few meters to about 50 meters in length scour the slopes around the impact site.
When Burleigh looked at the distribution of avalanches around the impact site, he realized their number decreased with distance in every direction, consistent with the idea that they were related to the impact event. But it wasn't until he noticed a pair of peculiar surface features resembling a curved dagger, described as scimitars, extending from the central impact crater, that the way in which the impact caused the avalanches became evident.
"Those scimitars tipped us off that something other than seismic shaking must be causing the dust avalanches," Burleigh said. As a meteor screams through the atmosphere at several times the speed of sound, it creates shockwaves in the air. Simulating the shockwaves generated by impacts on Martian soil with computer models, the team observed the exact pattern of scimitars they saw on their impact site.
In the absence of plate tectonic processes and water-caused erosion, the authors conclude that small impacts might be more important in shaping the Martian surface than previously thought. "This is one part of a larger story about current surface activity on Mars, which we are realizing is very different than previously believed," said Alfred McEwen, principal investigator of the HiRISE project and one of the co-authors of the study.
Interesting2: Neanderthals had bigger noses than we do, but tracking a scent was never one of their specialties (maybe for the best). New three-dimensional medical imaging scans of fossil human skulls reveal that the so-called olfactory bulbs, the part of the brain that processes odors, are 12% larger in Homo sapiens than they were in Neanderthals.
Markus Bastir and Antonio Rosas of the Spanish Natural Science Museum and their colleagues carefully assessed the shape of the base of cranium to quantify the volume of gray matter that would have filled in above. Their research, reported this week in Nature Communications, divulged another size difference: the temporal lobes, the part of the brain involved in language, memory and social functions, are also larger in Homo sapiens.
That latter finding may not come as a surprise, considering how modern humans have evolved linguistically and socially. But the researchers say that the fact that both the temporal lobes and olfactory bulbs are larger in modern humans suggests that our species evolved a combined use of brain functions related to cognition and olfaction that may not have been true for Neanderthals. Evidence has been accumulating that Neanderthals and modern humans developed their large brains independently, and so the expectation, then, is that their brains might have worked differently.
Interesting3: Perhaps the largest impact of global climate change will be on agriculture, and there is no crop more sensitive to changes in climate than wine grapes. As temperatures rise and average precipitation levels change, the signature wine-making regions such as those in France and California will be forced to adapt. There have been studies conducted analyzing the influence of weather and climate on wine since long before climate change made the headlines.
Recently, studies have modeled climate change's effects up to 100 years into the future. The expected impacts are not bad at first, but in the end, they are not good. In 2005, Gregory Jones, climatologist from the University of Southern Oregon, led a study which found that higher temperatures are good for wine. He examined 27 wine-making regions including France, Spain, Portugal, and parts of California and Washington state.
The average growing-season temperature for the past 50 years has gone up 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit, and even up 4.5 degrees in some areas. In general, the quality of wine rose with the average temperature. This is because higher temps produce a better quality harvest and faster ripening. It also produces grapes which contain more sugars which translate into more alcohol.
The downside is that regions that were already much warmer than others are already reaching the threshold where higher temperatures do not help. In fact, higher temperatures can cause a reduction in grape quality. Spain in particular is worried how this will affect its wine industry. The largest winemaker, Bodegas Torres headquartered in Catalonia, is preparing to move its vineyards to keep up.
"In the last four years, temperatures have increased 1 degree [Celsius] in the vineyards," says president of the company, Miguel Torres. "The quality has not changed so far. Our concern is for the future. They say the temperature could go up 2 degrees — or 5 degrees. So we are moving vineyards from sea level to central valley, and from central valley to mountain areas."
Different regions will be forced to cope in different ways. Europe has a thousand year tradition of growing wines. Each variety has been perfectly matched to a particular geography, soil, landscape, etc. The wine making culture is deeply ingrained, in that a certain type of wine is expected to come from a specific area. For example, a genuine French Sauvignon Blanc must come from Bordeaux.
A genuine Pinot Noir must come from Burgundy. Newer wine making regions will have an easier time coping because the traditions are not nearly as codified. Plus, unlike Europe which is almost fully developed, there is still room to expand in California, Oregon, Chile, Argentina, and Australia. Nations are regions in Europe take great pride in the quality of their wine. It is perhaps climate change's challenge to traditional wine culture which may be the most difficult to overcome.
Interesting4: NASA officials have released a pair of new studies showing that global warming could lead to a major transformation for Earth’s plants and animals over the next century. New research into the Earth’s paleoclimate history by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies director James Hansen suggests the potential for rapid climate changes this century, including multiple meters of sea level rise, if global warming is not abated.
“The paleoclimate record reveals a more sensitive climate than thought, even as of a few years ago. Limiting human-caused warming to two degrees [Celsius] is not sufficient,” Mr. Hansen said. “It would be a prescription for disaster.” The NASA official warn that an increase in temperature would likely lead to widespread destruction of ecological habitats, mainly by the introduction of invasive species drawn to warmer or cooler climates.
By looking at how the Earth’s climate responded to past natural changes, Mr. Hansen noted that the recent study sought insight into a fundamental question raised by ongoing human-caused climate change. The NASA climatologist said the study focused on determining the level at which climate change became dangerous, noting that a number of international leaders have suggested a goal of limiting warming to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit from pre-industrial times in order to avert catastrophic change.
However, Mr Hansen said at a press briefing at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco that a warming of two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) would lead to drastic changes, such as significant ice sheet loss in Greenland and Antarctica. In recent research, Mr. Hansen and co-author Makiko Sato, also of Goddard Institute for Space Studies, compared the climate of today, the “Holocene”, with previous similar “interglacial” epochs — periods when polar ice caps existed but the world was not dominated by glaciers.
In studying cores drilled from both ice sheets and deep ocean sediments, Mr. Hansen found that global mean temperatures during the “Eemian” period, which began about 130,000 years ago and lasted about 15,000 years, were less than 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than today.
If temperatures were to rise two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial times, global mean temperature would far exceed that of the Eemian, when sea level was four to six meters higher than today, said Mr. Hansen.
Meanwhile, researchers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, investigated how Earth’s plant life is likely to react over the next three centuries as Earth’s climate changes in response to rising levels of human-produced greenhouse gases. Study results are published in the journal Climatic Change.
“For more than 25 years, scientists have warned of the dangers of human-induced climate change,” said Jon Bergengren, a scientist who led the study while a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech. “Our study introduces a new view of climate change, exploring the ecological implications of a few degrees of global warming.
While warnings of melting glaciers, rising sea levels and other environmental changes are illustrative and important, ultimately, it’s the ecological consequences that matter most.” In addition to altering plant communities, the study predicts climate change will disrupt the ecological balance between interdependent and often endangered plant and animal species, reduce biodiversity and adversely affect Earth’s water, energy, carbon and other element cycles.
The study comes as scientists have warned that increases in temperature could cause large areas of permafrost to melt, resulting in the released of large amounts of methane gas.
Email Glenn James: