Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs / December 5-6, 2009

December 5-6, 2009

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

Lihue, Kauai –  78
Honolulu, Oahu – 80
Kaneohe, Oahu – 80
Kaunakakai, Molokai – 82
Kahului, Maui – 84
Hilo, Hawaii – 78
Kailua-kona – 84

Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level around the state – and on the highest mountains…at 4pm Saturday afternoon:

Kailua-kona – 82F
Hilo, Hawaii – 74

Haleakala Crater – 45 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 39 (near 14,000 feet on the Big Island)

Precipitation Totals – The following numbers represent the largest precipitation totals (inches) during the last 24 hours on each of the major islands, as of Saturday afternoon:

0.06 Kokee, Kauai  
0.05 Punaluu Pump, Oahu
0.00 Molokai 
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
0.92 West Wailuaiki, Maui
1.79 Laupahoehoe, Big Island

Marine Winds – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a weak high pressure system to the northeast. Light and variable breezes through Sunday….turning south later Sunday into Monday.

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 the state 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 webcam on the summit of near 14,000 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 webcams are available during the daylight hours here in the islands…and when there’s a big moon rising just after sunset for an hour or two! Plus, during the nights and early mornings you will be able to see stars, and the sunrise 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

 

  Very large surf…north and west shores!

The Hawaiian Islands remain in a light and variable wind field…with a trend towards southeast to southerly breezes.  We’ll see clear to partly cloudy conditions, although there will be cloudy periods, especially around the mountains, stretching down towards the coasts locally. The air mass will remain slightly more shower prone on the Big Island side of the island chain…with a few more showers there, than elsewhere. This satellite image shows moisture south of the Big Island of Hawaii…along with some brighter high cirrus clouds, shifting south over the state as well.

Winds will remain quite light from the southeast, gradually turning south to southwest Sunday…with returning light trade winds starting later Monday. This keeps us in a mild convective weather pattern, with cool mornings, and seasonably warm days. The leeward beaches will have the great weather, with warm daytime sunshine beaming down. The windward sides will find light winds, with generally good weather there too. The air flow will carry some volcanic haze (vog) up the islanc chain to Maui and perhaps Oahu. The main concern along the north and west shores will be dealt with two paragraphs down this page.

Looking further ahead, another cold front comes towards us Sunday night into Monday…bringing a few showers to Kauai and perhaps Oahu.  The computer models suggest that we’ll have more light winds moving forward…from the trade wind direction. This should ensure pleasant weather in general, with just a few windward biased showers, especially during the night and early morning hours. The leeward beaches will very likely be quite sunny and mostly dry…with good swimming and snorkeling conditions. A second weak cold front will work its way towards us around mid-week, with trade winds returning by Friday into the weekend.

We will find a very large waves breaking along our north and west shores both Saturday and Sunday. The storm that generated this swell, had hurricane force winds revolving around its center. These swells will be something to photograph, but almost all of us will need to stay out of the ocean on the north and west facing beaches while they’re breaking. Perhaps only those most expert surfers, towed by jet skis, will be able to take full advantage of these rough conditions. A second NW swell is forecast to arrive Monday, which will be even larger than the big today. We could call this Monday surf episode giant!

It’s Saturday evening here on Maui, as I begin writing this last section of today’s narrative. Saturday was a good day, with sunny skies in the morning. The daytime heating, in conjunction with the light and variabile winds, prompted cloud production during the late mornings through the afternoon hours locally. Skies became volcanically haze too, with the light southeast breezes carrying vog up from the Big Island vents. ~~~ Today I went with my neighbors, yes all of them, to the Haleakala Waldorf School crafts faire. We walked around and visited with friends there for a couple of hours. As I got in at 2am Saturday morning, after dancing late Fright night, I had to come home, and after having a nice lunch with my neighbors…layed down for a nap. I’m up again now, obviously, and getting ready for the evening activities. I’m heading down to Paia with my astro-physicist neighbor Jeff, where we’ll have dinner at a pizza place on the Hana highway. Then it’s next door to that, to an art opening, where we’ll mill around and talk with some folks, and take in the art exhibition. I don’t imagine that I’ll be up all that late, but if I can help it, we’ll hit the dance floor across the street at a club where Saturday night has good music playing. ~~~ I’ll catch up with you on Sunday, when I’ll have my next new weather narrative from paradise available for the reading. I hope you have a great Saturday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting: Man-made U.S. greenhouse gas emissions fell last year as record oil prices and a weak economy reduced demand for fossil fuels, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said on Thursday. Output of the gases scientists blame for warming the planet fell 2.2 percent in 2008 from the prior year to 7,053 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent, the EIA said.

Emissions of energy-related carbon dioxide decreased by 2.9 percent in 2008, having risen at an average annual rate of 1.0 percent per year from 1990 to 2007. Since 1990, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, which include carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, have increased at an average annual rate of 0.7 percent, the agency said.

Interesting2: Hawaii may be paradise for vacationers, but for geologists it has long been a puzzle. Plate tectonic theory readily explains the existence of volcanoes at boundaries where plates split apart or collide, but mid-plate volcanoes such as those that built the Hawaiian island chain have been harder to fit into the theory.

A classic explanation, proposed nearly 40 years ago, has been that magma is supplied to the volcanoes from upwellings of hot rock, called mantle "plumes," that originate deep in the Earth’s mantle. Evidence for these deep structures has been sketchy, however.

Now, a sophisticated array of seismometers deployed on the sea floor around Hawaii has provided the first high-resolution seismic images of a mantle plume extending to depths of at least 932 miles.

This unprecedented glimpse of the roots of the Hawaiian "hot spot" is the product of an ambitious project known as PLUME, for Plume-Lithosphere Undersea Melt Experiment, which collected and analyzed two years of data from sea floor and land-based seismometers.

"One of the reasons it has taken so long to create these kinds of images is because many of the major hot spots are located in the middle of the oceans, where it has been difficult to put seismic instruments," says study co-author Sean Solomon, director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism.

"The Hawaiian region is also distant from most of the earthquake zones that are the sources of the seismic waves that are used to create the images. Hawaii has been the archetype of a volcanic hotspot, and yet the deep structure of Hawaii has remained poorly resolved. For this study we were able to take advantage of a new generation of long-lived broad band seismic instruments that could be set out on the seafloor for periods of a year at a time."

The PLUME seismic images show a seismic anomaly beneath the island of Hawaii, the chain’s largest and most volcanically active island. Critics of the plume model have argued that the magma in hot spot volcanoes comes from relatively shallow depths in the upper mantle (less than 660 kilometers), not deep plumes, but the anomaly observed by the PLUME researchers extends to at least 1,500 kilometers.

Rock within the anomaly is also calculated to be significantly hotter than its surroundings, as predicted by the plume model. "This has really been an eye-opener," says Solomon. "It shows us that the anomalies do extend well into the lower mantle of the Earth." Erik Hauri, also of Carnegie’s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, led the geochemical component of the research.

"We had suspected from geochemistry that the center of the plume would be beneath the main island, and that turns out to be about where the hot spot is centered," he says. "We also predicted that its width would be comparable to the size of island of Hawaii and that also turned out to be true.

But those predictions were merely theoretical. Now, for the first time, we can really see the plume conduit." Has the question of hot spots and mantle plumes been settled at last? "We believe that we have very strong evidence that Hawaii is underlain by a plume that extends at least to 1,500 kilometers depth," says Solomon.

"It may well extend deeper, we can’t say on the basis of our data, but that is addressable with global datasets, now that our data have been analyzed. So it’s a very strong vote in favor of the plume model."

Interesting3: In the US, Ford is still behind the 5 major foreign auto makers in fuel efficiency, surpassing only GM and Chrysler. Yet Ford of Europe already achieves dazzling mileage that we Americans can only dream of.

Imagine a gas-fueled car that gets 62 miles to the gallon: "With start-stop, regenerative brakes and an Eco Mode system, the new Focus gets 62 MPG (U.S.) on the European scale and emits just 99 grams of CO2 per kilometer" Available in Europe next Spring.

What is even more startling about this achievement by European Ford is that this mileage is achieved with just good old-fashioned tweaks on the traditional ICE gas car. There is no major technological breakthrough. Why doesn’t Ford make cars like that here?

Interesting4: The rising level of atmospheric carbon dioxide may be fueling more than climate change. It could also be making some trees grow like crazy. That is the finding of a new study of natural stands of quaking aspen, one of North America’s most important and widespread deciduous trees.

The study, by scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Minnesota at Morris (UMM) and published December 4 in the journal Global Change Biology, shows that elevated levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide during the past 50 years have boosted aspen growth rates by an astonishing 50 percent.

"Trees are already responding to a relatively nominal increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide over the past 50 years," says Rick Lindroth, a UW-Madison professor of ecology and an expert on plant responses to climate change. Lindroth, UW-Madison colleague Don Waller, and professors Christopher Cole and Jon Anderson of UMM conducted the new study.

The study’s findings are important as the world’s forests, which cover about 30 percent of the Earth’s land surface, play an important role in regulating climate and sequestering greenhouses gases. The forests of the Northern Hemisphere, in particular, act as sinks for carbon dioxide, helping to offset the increase in levels of the greenhouse gas, widely viewed as a threat to global climate stability.

What’s more, according to the study’s authors, the accelerated growth rates of aspen could have widespread unknown ecological consequences. Aspen is a dominant tree in mountainous and northern forested regions of North America, including 42 million acres of Canadian forest and up to 6.5 million acres in Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Aspen and their poplar cousins are considered "foundation species," meaning they exert a strong influence on the plant and animal communities and dynamics of the forest ecosystems where they reside. "We can’t forecast ecological change. It’s a complicated business," explains Waller, a UW-Madison professor of botany.

"For all we know, this could have very serious effects on slower growing plants and their ability to persist." Carbon dioxide, scientists know, is food for plants, which extract it from the air and through the process of photosynthesis convert it to sugar, plant food.

Interesting5: A heat wave in Australia, which has given the country the hottest temperatures of the year, has also caused an unusual pest to invade a town in the Outback. Around 6,000 wild camels have entered the small community of Docker River in the Northern Territory.

The extreme drought affecting the area has led the camels to the town of 350 people to seek water, damaging water mains, pipes and even air conditioners attached to houses, according to Earth Week.

The Australian Broadcasting Corp. reports that many of the town’s residents have been forced to stay indoors. The government in Northern Territory plans to draw the camels out of the town using helicopters.

The animals will then be shot and left to decompose in the desert. This decision has sparked controversy with animal-rights groups. The Australian government’s Bureau of Meteorology reported a serious to severe rainfall deficiency across much or Northern Territory from July to November 2009.

AFP also reports that scores of decomposing camels that have died of thirst in the Outback are contaminating water sources. Camels are not native to Australia. They were brought to the country in the late 19th century to assist with transportation across the Outback.

When railroads and roads replaced the need for them, the camels were let free, leading to an explosion in population. An estimated one million camels currently live in Australia, and officials say these non-indigenous animals cause damage to the ecosystem, as reported by Earth Week.

Interesting6: If you think there’s less smog this year, you are probably right. Thanks in large part to cooler temperatures and more rain, the number of dirty-air days for smog nationwide has dropped by almost half in 2009 compared to last year, according to a survey by the non-profit Clean Air Watch. The survey by Clean Air Watch volunteers is the first comprehensive snapshot of smog in the United States in 2009.

It found that the national health standard for smog, technically ozone, was breached more than 2,600 times through August 31 at monitoring stations in 37 states and the District of Columbia. During the same period last year, there were more than 5,000 such events, known in the jargon of the bureaucracy as "exceedences."

There were several key factors in the smog drop, according to Frank O’Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch: cooler, wetter weather, less use of coal-burning electric power plants to run air conditioners, the general decline in the economy, and the continuing turnover of cars and trucks to new models that meet tougher clean-air requirements.

"Despite the improvement, we can’t afford to drop our efforts to reduce smog-forming pollution," O’Donnell said. "We can’t count on rain to wash the pollution away. Scientists warn that global warming could make it harder to achieve clean-air standards in the future. And, obviously, a sick economy is not the right cure for dirty air."