Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs / March 17-18, 2011

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

Lihue, Kauai –                   80
Honolulu airport, Oahu –   84
Kaneohe, Oahu –               79
Molokai airport –                82
Kahului airport, Maui –        83
Kona airport –                    82
Hilo airport, Hawaii –          82

Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountain tops…as of 5pm Thursday evening:

Barking Sands – 81F
Kaneohe, Oahu – 76

Haleakala Crater –     missing (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 36 (under 14,000 feet on the Big Island)

Precipitation Totals – The following numbers represent the largest precipitation totals Thursday evening:

0.45    Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.14    Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
0.02    Molokai
0.00    Lanai
0.00    Kahoolawe
0.39    West Wailuaiki, Maui
0.35    Glenwood, Big Island

Marine Winds – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a moderately strong 1033 millibar trade wind maintaining high pressure system to the north of Hawaii…which is slowly moving east. Our trade winds will be locally strong and gusty through Friday and Saturday.

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 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 web cams 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. Of course, as we know, our hurricane season ended November 30th here in the central Pacific…and begins again June 1st.

 Aloha Paragraphs

Blustery trade winds continuing Friday
 
 
 

Happy St. Patrick's Day! 

The trade winds will be locally blustery through Friday, easing up slightly this weekend…before picking up again towards the middle of next week onwards.  According to this weather map, we find a moderately strong 1033 millibar trade wind producing high pressure system to the north-northeast of the islands Thursday night. The outlook shows the trade winds perhaps easing up in strength slightly this weekend. The longer range forecast shows the strong and gusty trade winds continuing into next week, with another surge in strength around the middle of the week or so.      

Strong trade winds…the following numbers represent the strongest gusts, along with directions early Thursday evening:

28 mph       Port Allen, Kauai – ENE
30              Waianae, Oahu – E
28              Molokai – NE
42                Kahoolawe – ESE
35              Kahului, Maui – ENE
10              Lanai Airport – SW    
40                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 Thursday night. This large University of Washington satellite image shows major late winter storms to the far northeast and north. At the same time we find scattered high clouds to our north, which are moving our islands at times. Looking at this NOAA satellite picture, we see patches of low level clouds surrounding the islands, most of which are located upstream of the state moving in our direction. We can use this looping satellite image to see low clouds are moving westward in the trade wind flow. At the same time we find those high cirrus clouds moving into the state from the north and northwest. Checking out this looping radar image, shows that despite the rather abundant clouds, there aren’t many showers falling in our area. The darker blue areas coming off the south side of Kauai, and the southeast side of the Big Island, isn’t precipitation…but rather salt spray off the ocean being picked up by the low level radar beam.

Late winter trade winds continue to rake the Hawaiian Islands…which will be around well into the future.  These winds are cranked-up pretty tightly now, having caused property damage, and even some minor injuries on Oahu Thursday morning. The predictions show more of the same through Friday into the weekend, and well beyond. There will be day to day variations in their strength, although it looks very doubtful that they will ease back much below the strong side of the wind spectrum anytime soon, likely through the end of next week. 

~~~ Here in Kihei, Maui early this Thursday evening, skies are partly cloudy, much of which consists of the high level cirrus. These should light up nicely at sunset, and then again by Friday sunrise again too. Otherwise, there are just a few lower level clouds, which are providing pretty minor coverage. If it weren't for the cirrus, our skies would be mostly clear. The atmosphere remains dry and stable for the most part, which has been the case for the last several days. Sooner or later we should see some modest increase in showers along our windward sides, towards the windward sides at least. I'll be back early Friday morning with your next new weather narrative from windy Hawaii. I hope you have a great Thursday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting: Low concentrations of radioactive particles are heading eastwards from Japan's disaster-hit nuclear power plant and are expected to reach North America in days, a Swedish official said on Thursday. Lars-Erik De Geer, research director at the Swedish Defense Research Institute, a government agency, was citing data from a network of international monitoring stations established to detect signs of any nuclear weapons tests.

Stressing that the levels were not dangerous for people, he predicted the particles would continue across the Atlantic and eventually also reach Europe. "It is not something you see normally," he said by phone from Stockholm. But, "it is not high from any danger point of view." He said he was convinced it would eventually be detected over the whole northern hemisphere.

"It is only a question of very, very low activities so it is nothing for people to worry about," De Geer said. "In the past when they had nuclear weapons tests in China … then there were similar clouds all the time without anybody caring about it at all," he said.

Before he spoke, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission advised any Americans living near Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant to move at least 50 miles away but it played down the risks of contamination to the United States.

"All the available information continues to indicate Hawaii, Alaska, the U.S. Territories and the U.S. West Coast are not expected to experience any harmful levels of radioactivity," it said in a statement on Wednesday.

Interesting2: The earthquake disaster on 11 March 2011 was an event of the century not only for Japan. With a magnitude of Mw = 8.9, it was one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded worldwide. Particularly interesting is that here, two days before, a strong foreshock with a magnitude Mw = 7.2 took place almost exactly at the breaking point of the tsunami-earthquake.

The geophysicist Joachim Saul from the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences (Helmholtz Association) created an animation which shows the sequence of quakes since March 9. The animated image is available on the Helmholtz Centre Potsdam website:

http://www.gfz-potsdam.de/portal/gfz/Public+Relations/M40-Bildarchiv/001_+Japan

It shows the earthquake activity in the region of Honshu, Japan, measured at the GFZ since 8 March 2011. After a seismically quiet 8th March, the morning (coordinated universal time UTC) of the March 9 began with an earthquake of magnitude 7.2 off the Japanese east coast, followed by a series of smaller aftershocks.

The morning of March 11 sees the earthquake disaster that triggered the devastating tsunami. This earthquake is followed by many almost severe aftershocks, two of which almost reach the magnitude 8.

In the following time period the activity slowly subsides, and is dominated today (March 16) by relatively small magnitude 5 quakes, though several earthquakes of magnitude 6 are being registered on a daily basis. The activity of aftershocks focuses mainly on the area of the March 11 earthquake.

Based on the distribution of the aftershocks, the length of the fraction of the main quake can be estimated at about 400 km. Overall, 428 earthquakes in the region of Honshu were registered at the GFZ since March 9.

By analyzing over 500 GPS stations, the GFZ scientists Rongjiang Wang and Thomas Walter have found that horizontal displacements of up to five meters in an eastern direction occurred at the east coast of Japan. The cause lies in the earthquake zone, i.e. at the contact interface of the Pacific plate with Japan.

Computer simulations of this surface show that an offset of up to 25 meters occurred during the earthquake. Calculations of the GFZ modeling group headed by Stephan Sobolev even yielded a displacement of up to 27 meters and a vertical movement of seven meters.

This caused an abrupt elevation in the deep sea, and thus triggered the tsunami. The images of the GPS displacement vectors and the computer simulations can also be found among the online material provided by the GFZ. Already shortly after the quake Andrey Babeyko and Stephan Sobolev of the GFZ modeled the propagation and wave heights of the tsunami in the Pacific over the first 16 hours.

The tremendous force of the earthquake is highlighted here, too: in the open Pacific, relatively large wave heights of over one meter were calculated, which agrees very well with the observations. How high the tsunami is piled up on the coast is largely determined by water depth and the shape of the coastline. The GFZ material also contains an image and an animation regarding this work.

Interesting3: The psychological impact of natural disasters such as the Japan earthquake can be revealed in the way people inherently respond to unpredictable situations, according to a psychology expert at Queen Mary, University of London. Dr Magda Osman, Psychology Lecturer at Queen Mary, University of London, and author of Controlling Uncertainty: Decision-making and Learning in Complex Worlds, said the disaster had a devastating immediate effect on tens of thousands of people in Japan but the true psychological impact will be felt "for some time to come."

"A disaster like the Japan earthquake has such wide-ranging implications, especially on the psychological well-being of those affected," Dr Osman said. "After a disaster, typically small communities become incredibly co-operative and pull together to help each other and start the rebuilding process.

There's an immediate response where people start to take control of the situation, begin to deal with it and assess and respond to the devastation around them. "The problem is that we aren't very good at calculating the long-term effects of disasters. After about two months of re-building and cleaning up we tend to experience a second major slump when we realize the full severity of the situation in the longer term.

This is what we need to be wary of because this triggers severe depression." Dr Osman, who works in Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, said as soon as there is a disaster, there is often a rapid increase of mental health problems in the people who have been affected.

This is because natural disasters threaten our sense of control in the world. "Our sense of control is like a mental engine, it's like an adaptive driving force that helps us stay motivated. When bad, unpredictable events happen we don't feel we have any effect over anything and this is when we start to lose self esteem," she said.

People who live in areas which are prone to disasters such as in Japan are often prepared through simulation exercises. The importance of this is not only to rehearse what to do in the event of a disaster, but also to increase our sense of control over the situation. This is can be a powerful way to create resilience, according to Dr Osman.

The lab experiments Dr Osman has conducted show that even when a situation is unpredictable and seems to be spiraling out of control, and when people are encouraged to believe they have control over the situation, they tend to be better able to exert control. She said: "Ironically, the illusion of control can actually help to generate a real sense of control."

"Setting goals is the best way of helping to exert or take back control. Working towards goals helps us to gain a lot of information about a situation. Goals act like a yardstick to compare future events against. This helps to reduce our feelings of insecurity because it gives us a way of interpreting the good and bad experiences that happen.

"Evidence from the lab suggests that we don't always do what is best to gain information and gain control in the long term; typically we overreact to massive changes, when the best thing to do is be steadfast."

Interesting4: If you have time to quickly swipe your pager or cell phone three times, that would be your best bet to get rid of most of the bacteria. And a simple tissue moistened with saline would do the trick. But if you only have time for a single swipe of a 'dirty' phone — you'd be better off reaching for a disinfectant wipe.

Those are the highlights of a recently published research study that appeared online in PubMed, with the discoveries having been made by a team of researchers in the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry at the University of Alberta.

"It was the mechanical removal, not the actual act of the disinfectant that was key," says Dr. Sarah Forgie, a Pediatric Infectious Diseases Specialist in the Department of Pediatrics. Medical student Andrea Berendt, who was working with Forgie at the time, liked the idea so Berendt came up with the protocol and conducted all the experiments in a lab over two months.

The duo worked with Dr. Robert Rennie, a Professor in Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, Pediatric Epidemiologist Donald Spady and technologist LeeAnn Turnbull. Three types of bacteria — Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), Enterococci (VRE) and Pseudomonas aeruginosa — were each prepared in a mixture and streaked onto sterile plastic Petri dishes, then allowed to dry.

Numerous bacteria contaminated plates were prepared throughout the summer — all in the same manner — so each type of bacteria could be tested with five different types of wipes and then again with varying amounts of swipes — one swipe, three swipes and five swipes.

Each 10 cm diameter plate was wiped for one second and in a manner that the entire surface was swiped, using a flat baton. The plates were then allowed to dry for 10 minutes. Afterwards, bacteria samples were put onto special lab plates, incubated for at least 24 hours at 35 degrees C and then the bacteria colonies were counted.

Research results demonstrated that bacterial counts dropped significantly the more often a plate was swiped — regardless of the type of wipe used. Swiping the contaminated plates 3x decreased the bacterial load by 88% on average, compared to just swiping a plate once. Swiping a plate 5x vs. 3x didn't result in an additionally significant decrease in bacteria.

And a simple saline wipe appeared to be just as effective as disinfectant wipes when the plates were swiped 3x or more. However, if the plate was swiped just once — disinfectant wipes were better at reducing bacteria than simple saline wipes.

Interesting5: Shipped to Ireland as a slave, it must have been a cold, hungry journey for Patrick. But through her researches, Irish food expert Regina Sexton from University College Cork, has been able to recreate the diet available in 5th century Ireland to a young saint-in-the-making.

It is safe to say that obesity was not a problem in those days, and that the fare was seasonal, wholesome and modest by today's standards. Dairy produce and cereals were everyday staples and St Patrick would have consumed lots of fresh milk, sour milk, thickened milk, colostrum, curds, flavoured curd mixtures, butter and soft and hard cheeses.

Cereals, most commonly oats and barley, a little rye together with more prestigious and high-ranking wheat, were used in the production of flat breads and it is also likely that leavened wheat loaves were on offer.

Various wet preparations such as porridge, gruel, meal pastes and pottages as well as cereal-milk and fruit-nut combinations were also being eaten on the island when the young Patrick arrived.

A wide range of wild foods, notably watercress and wild garlic, nature's way of garnishing the delights of the countryside, was also on the menu, and if this didn't whet his appetite, there were hen and goose eggs, honey, fish, butter, curds, seaweeds, apples and dairy as well as several varieties of soft and hard cheeses.

The rivers were flush with salmon, trout and eel, and hard-cured pork as well as other meats, were to be had too. This was neither a throw-away nor a take-away society and people took good care to preserve and conserve for future use, foods that could not be consumed immediately.

Much of this is known, according to Sexton, because with the coming of Christianity, monastic settlements encouraged learning and record keeping and those records have come down to us.

Ironically, much of the food available then, is what we call 'health food' now, which comes of course, at a premium price. Little wonder then that even after his daring escape from Ireland, Patrick returned to become the island's patron saint. He did it for the good of his health!

Interesting6: Scientists have long been aware of a link between naval sonar exercises and unusual mass strandings of beaked whales. Evidence of such a link triggered a series of lawsuits in which environmental groups sued the U.S. Navy to limit sonar exercises to reduce risk to whales.

In 2008, this conflict rose to the level of the US Supreme Court which had to balance potential threat to whales from sonar against the military risk posed by naval forces inadequately trained to use sonar to detect enemy submarines.

The court ruled that the Navy could continue training, but that it was essential for the Navy to develop better methods to protect the whales. The knowledge most critical to protecting these whales from risk of sonar involves measuring the threshold between safe and risky exposure levels, but until now it has not been known how beaked whales respond to sonar, much less the levels that pose a problem.

"We know so little about beaked whales because they prefer deep waters far offshore, where they can dive on one breath of air to depths of over a mile for up to an hour and a half," said Peter Tyack, a senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).

Now, an international team of researchers reports in a paper led by Tyack the first data on how beaked whales respond to naval sonar exercises. Their results suggest that sonar indeed affects the behavior and movement of whales.

Tyack and his colleagues used two complementary methods to investigate behavioral responses of beaked whales to sonar: "an opportunistic approach that monitored whale responses to multi-day naval exercises involving tactical mid-frequency sonars, and an experimental approach using playbacks of simulated sonar and control sounds to whales tagged with a device that records sound, movement, and orientation," the researchers report in the current issue of the online journal PLoS ONE, published by the Public Library of Science.

That research team developed experiments to slowly increase the level of sonar at a tagged whale, to stop exposure as soon as the whale started responding, to measure that exposure, and to define the response.

The experimental approach used tags to measure acoustic exposure and behavioral reactions of beaked whales to one controlled exposure each of simulated military sonar, killer whale calls, and band-limited noise. "These experiments were very difficult to develop, and it was a major breakthrough simply to be able to develop a study that could safely study these responses," Tyack said.

"All three times that tagged beaked whales were exposed experimentally to playback of sounds when they were foraging at depth, they stopped foraging prematurely and made unusually long and slow ascents to the surface, moving away from the sound. Beaked whales use their own biosonar to find prey when they are foraging; this means that one can monitor cessation of foraging by listening for when they stop clicking.

Once the researchers found that beaked whales responded to sonar by ceasing clicking, they were able to monitor reactions of beaked whales during actual sonar exercises on the range. The research was conducted on a naval testing range where an array of underwater microphones, or hydrophones, covered the seafloor, allowing whale sounds to be monitored over 600 square miles.

"During actual sonar exercises, beaked whales were primarily detected near the periphery of the range, on average 16 km away from the sonar transmissions. Once the exercise stopped, beaked whales gradually filled in the center of the range over 2-3 days," they report. A satellite tagged whale moved outside the range during an exercise, returning over 2-3 days post-exercise.

"The combined results indicate similar disruption of foraging behavior and avoidance by beaked whales in the two different contexts, at exposures well below those used by regulators to define disturbance," the scientists report. "This suggests that beaked whales are particularly sensitive to sound.

Their behavior tended to be disrupted at exposure levels around 140 decibels (dB), so they may require a lower threshold than many current regulations that anticipate disruption of behavior around 160 dB, " said Tyack. "But the observations on the naval range suggest that while sonar can disrupt the behavior of the whales, appropriate monitoring and management can reduce the risk of stranding."