Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures (F) were recorded across the state of Hawaii Tuesday…along with the minimums Tuesday:
83 – 74 Lihue, Kauai
85 – 72 Honolulu, Oahu
82 – 69 Molokai AP
84 – 72 Kahului, Maui
84 – 72 Kailua Kona
82 – 68 Hilo, Hawaii
Here are the latest 24-hour precipitation totals (inches) for each of the islands, as of Tuesday evening:
0.15 Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.04 Kamananui Stream, Oahu
0.05 Puu Alii, Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
0.06 Pukalani, Maui
1.35 Kawainui Stream, Big Island
The following numbers represent the strongest wind gusts (mph)…as of Tuesday evening:
16 Poipu, Kauai – NE
25 Kuaokala, Oahu – NE
25 Molokai – NE
24 Lanai – NE
28 Kahoolawe – NE
22 Kahului AP, Maui – NE
25 South Point, Big Island – NE
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.
Aloha Paragraphs
High cirrus streaming over us from the southwest…
with an approaching cold front to the northwest
Clear to partly cloudy, cirrus Maui County to the Big Island-
here’s the looping version of the satellite photo above
Showers are falling over the nearby ocean…arriving along
the windward sides on the trade wind flow locally
Here’s the looping radar image for the Hawaiian Islands
~~~ Hawaii Weather Narrative ~~~
Trade winds will continue through mid-week, light and variable Thursday and Friday…then rebounding gradually through the weekend into next week. Here’s the latest weather map, showing the Hawaiian Islands, and the rest of the North Pacific Ocean, along with a real-time wind profiler of the central Pacific. We find high pressure systems located to the north through northeast of the state. As a result of these high pressure features, and low pressure well to the south in the deeper tropics, our winds will continue to come in from the trade wind direction. The models continue showing the trade winds stopping Thursday and Friday, bringing sultry and hazy weather our way…with returning trade winds later in the weekend into next week. This unusual break in our trade winds will be brought about by an approaching cold front, which is very late in the season to influence our islands. This front bucks climatology, although as the models continue to predict this happening…its difficult to suggest it won’t.
Some showers at times…most frequent during the nights and early morning hours. The windward sides will generally see whatever showers that arrive on the trade wind flow. There will be a few showers carried over into the leeward sides on the smaller islands locally…in addition to localized upcountry afternoon showers. These interior showers will be most prevalent on the Big Island. As we move Wednesday, a fairly normal trade wind weather pattern will prevail. As we get into the second half of this work week, and as a cold front pushes the trade winds away…we’ll see more clouds forming during the afternoons…with localized showers. The models continue to insist that this cold front will push down into the state. It will be interesting to see if this actually happens, and whether it will in fact, bring showers into our Aloha state. I’ll be back with more updates on all of the above, I hope you have a great Tuesday night wherever you’re spending it! Aloha for now…Glenn.
Here on Maui...early Tuesday morning before sunrise, skies are mostly clear, although with beautiful streaks of high cirrus…which lit up a very pretty pink at sunrise! There are clouds along the windward sides too, being carried our way on the trade wind flow. The air temperature here in Kula at 535am was 49.6 degrees, with a 73 degree reading out in Hana. / It’s now 9am under partly cloudy skies, with some sugar cane smoke down in the Central Valley. The majority of the cloudiness continues to be the higher level cirrus, which will dim and filter our sunshine at times.
– It’s now early evening, under mostly cloudy skies, with just some faint sunshine trying to beam down through the thick cirrus clouds. It looks to me like we could get some pretty good color, as these cirrus clouds light up at sunset. As I noted above, our trade winds will begin toning down in strength Wednesday through Friday, which is not common during the second half of May. If this cold front makes it down as far as Maui County, before stalling somewhere between Kauai and Oahu, I won’t be shocked…although I’d be surprised.
World-wide tropical cyclone activity:
>>> Atlantic Ocean: The last regularly scheduled Tropical Weather Outlook of the 2014 Atlantic hurricane season…has occurred. Routine issuance of the Tropical Weather Outlook will resume on June 1, 2015. During the off-season, Special Tropical Weather Outlooks will be issued as conditions warrant.
Here’s a satellite image of the Atlantic Ocean
>>> Caribbean Sea: The last regularly scheduled Tropical Weather Outlook of the 2014 Atlantic hurricane season…has occurred. Routine issuance of the Tropical Weather Outlook will resume on June 1, 2015. During the off-season, Special Tropical Weather Outlooks will be issued as conditions warrant.
>>> Gulf of Mexico: The last regularly scheduled Tropical Weather Outlook of the 2014 Atlantic hurricane season…has occurred. Routine issuance of the Tropical Weather Outlook will resume on June 1, 2015. During the off-season, Special Tropical Weather Outlooks will be issued as conditions warrant.
Here’s a satellite image of the Caribbean Sea…and the Gulf of Mexico.
>>> Eastern Pacific: There are no active tropical cyclones
TROPICAL WEATHER OUTLOOK
NWS NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL
For the eastern North Pacific…east of 140 degrees west longitude:
Tropical cyclone formation is not expected during the next 5 days.
Here’s a wide satellite image that covers the entire area between Mexico, out through the central Pacific…to the International Dateline.
Here’s the link to the National Hurricane Center (NHC)
>>> Central Pacific: The central north Pacific hurricane season has officially ended. Routine issuance of the tropical weather outlook will resume on June 1, 2015. During the off-season, special tropical weather outlooks will be issued as conditions warrant.
Here’s a link to the Central Pacific Hurricane Center (CPHC)
>>> Northwest Pacific Ocean: There are no active tropical cyclones
>>> South Pacific Ocean: There are no active tropical cyclones
>>> North and South Indian Oceans: There are no active tropical cyclones
Here’s a link to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC)
Interesting: US Exposure to Extreme Heat is on the Rise – U.S. residents’ exposure to extreme heat could increase four- to six-fold by mid-century, due to both a warming climate and a population that’s growing especially fast in the hottest regions of the country, according to new research.
The study, by researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the City University of New York (CUNY), highlights the importance of considering societal changes when trying to determine future climate impacts.
“Both population change and climate change matter,” said NCAR scientist Brian O’Neill, one of the study’s co-authors. “If you want to know how heat waves will affect health in the future, you have to consider both.”
Extreme heat kills more people in the United States than any other weather-related event, and scientists generally expect the number of deadly heat waves to increase as the climate warms. The new study, published May 18 in the journal Nature Climate Change, finds that the overall exposure of to these future heat waves would be vastly underestimated if the role of population changes were ignored.
The total number of people exposed to extreme heat is expected to increase the most in cities across the country’s southern reaches, including Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, Houston, Oklahoma City, Phoenix, Tampa, and San Antonio.
The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, which is NCAR’s sponsor, and the U.S. Department of Energy.
CLIMATE, POPULATION, AND HOW THEY INTERACT
For the study, the research team used 11 different high-resolution simulations of future temperatures across the United States between 2041 and 2070, assuming no major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. The simulations were produced with a suite of global and regional climate models as part of the North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program.
Using a newly developed demographic model, the scientists also studied how the U.S. population is expected to grow and shift regionally during the same time period, assuming current migration trends within the country continue.
Total exposure to extreme heat was calculated in “person-days” by multiplying the number of days when the temperature is expected to hit at least 95 degrees by the number of people who are projected to live in the areas where extreme heat is occurring.
The results are that the average annual exposure to extreme heat in the United States during the study period is expected to be between 10 and 14 billion person-days, compared to an annual average of 2.3 billion person-days between 1971 and 2000.
Of that increase, roughly a third is due solely to the warming climate (the increase in exposure to extreme heat that would be expected even if the population remained unchanged). Another third is due solely to population change (the increase in exposure that would be expected if climate remained unchanged but the population continued to grow and people continued to moved to warmer places). The final third is due to the interaction between the two (the increase in exposure expected because the population is growing fastest in places that are also getting hotter).
“We asked, ‘Where are the people moving? Where are the climate hot spots? How do those two things interact?'” said NCAR scientist Linda Mearns, also a study co-author. “When we looked at the country as a whole, we found that each factor had relatively equal effect.”
At a regional scale, the picture is different. In some areas of the country, climate change packs a bigger punch than population growth and vice versa.
For example, in the U.S. Mountain region—defined by the Census Bureau as the area stretching from Montana and Idaho south to Arizona and New Mexico—the impact of a growing population significantly outstrips the impact of a warming climate. But the opposite is true in the South Atlantic region, which encompasses the area from West Virginia and Maryland south through Florida.
Exposure vs. vulnerability
Regardless of the relative role that population or climate plays, some increase in total exposure to extreme heat is expected in every region of the continental United States. Even so, the study authors caution that exposure is not necessarily the same thing as vulnerability.
“Our study does not say how vulnerable or not people might be in the future,” O’Neill said. “We show that heat exposure will go up, but we don’t know how many of the people exposed will or won’t have air conditioners or easy access to public health centers, for example.”
The authors also hope the study will inspire other researchers to more frequently incorporate social factors, such as population change, into studies of climate change impacts.
“There has been so much written regarding the potential impacts of climate change, particularly as they relate to physical climate extremes,” said Bryan Jones, a postdoctoral researcher at the CUNY Institute for Demographic Research and lead author of the study. “However, it is how people experience these extremes that will ultimately shape the broader public perception of climate change.”
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