Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Wednesday:
Lihue, Kauai – 81
Honolulu airport, Oahu – 87 (record for Wednesday – 90 in 1982)
Kaneohe, Oahu – 80
Molokai airport – 83
Kahului airport, Maui – 86
Kona airport 84
Hilo airport, Hawaii – 81
Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountain tops…as of 5pm Wednesday evening:
Barking Sands, Kauai – 85
Kapalua, Maui – 75
Haleakala Crater – 52 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 45 (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:
0.24 Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.04 Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
0.00 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
0.24 West Wailuaiki, Maui
0.70 Kawainui Stream, Big Island
Marine Winds – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map howing a 1034 millibar high pressure system…to the northeast of our islands. Our local winds will be increasing a notch Thursday into 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.
Aloha Paragraphs
June Full Moon Tonight!
The trade winds will increase a notch later today into Thursday onwards. Glancing at this weather map, we find a 1034 millibar high pressure system located to our northeast. This high pressure cell has an elongated ridge of high pressure running southwest, putting it to the north and northwest of our islands. The placement of this high and its ridge will keep our trade winds around well into the future. We have small craft wind advisories active over those windiest coasts and channels around Maui and the Big Island…which will last through the rest of this week. The computer forecast models are now pointing out that we could see a slight downward trend, in terms of wind speeds…occurring next Tuesday for a few days.
Our trade winds will increase in strength over the next 24 hours…the following numbers represent the strongest gusts, along with directions Wednesday evening:
29 Port Allen, Kauai – ENE
25 Kahuku, Oahu – NE
30 Molokai – NE
29 Kahoolawe – ESE
30 Kahului, Maui – NE
15 Lanai – SSE
31 South Point, Big Island – NNE
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 see high and middle level clouds to the south and east of the state…which have stretched over the Big Island and Maui County and now Oahu at the time of this writing. We can use this looping satellite image to see a counterclockwise spinning upper level low pressure system to the north-northwest of Kauai…moving west slowly. There had been a few towering cumulus forming near the center of this departing upper level low. Checking out this looping radar image we see showers being carried along in the trade wind flow…impacting the windward sides of the islands.
Sunset Commentary: We’ve finally dropped back into a fairly normal, if not completely normal late spring trade wind weather pattern. It seems like it’s been a long time coming, after going through many false starts. The recent bout of colder than normal air aloft is now gone, so that a strong inversion cap will overly the state, limiting showers to some degree. As usual, the windward sides will find the most frequent showers, falling most often during the cooler night and early morning hours. It doesn’t look likely for many showers will be able to sneak over into the leeward sides, although can’t be considered an impossibility.
Other than the above, we’ll see high cirrus and some middle level altocumulus clouds streaming overhead from the south, at least at times. These clouds don’t precipitate, although do dim and filter our sunshine during the days…and can light up nicely at the beginning and ending of the day. Once the night falls this evening, we’ll be able witness this month’s full moon too. These more or less typical trade winds, and the accompanying conditions should remain in place through next Monday or so. Thereafter, there’s a chance of increased windward showers, and lighter winds returning…time will tell.
Here in Kihei, Maui at 530pm Wednesday evening, skies were partly to mostly cloudy. Looking up towards the Haleakala Crater slopes, I don't see any showers around, at least from my somewhat limited vantage point. I'll be heading back upcountry now, and will meet you here early Thursday morning, when I'll have your next new weather narrative waiting for you, around 530am HST. Now that I'm home in Kula, I see lots of showers falling along our windward sides. Don't forget to check out the full moon tonight, that is if you're out from under clouds where you are. I hope you have a great Wednesday night from wherever you're reading! Aloha for now…Glenn.
Interesting: The world's largest rainforest is ravaged by deforestation and two recent droughts. If they continue, says one expert, the Amazon risks entering a period where it can no longer be relied upon to absorb more greenhouse gas emissions than it produces. The Amazon rainforest is facing the combined threat of increasingly severe droughts and continuing deforestation that could wipe out large areas of the forest, warned a respected forest scientist this week.
In a groundbreaking study published in the journal Science earlier this year, Dr Simon Lewis, of Leeds University, found the 2010 drought in the Amazon was more widespread than the 2005 one, previously thought of as a once-in-a-century event.
In an interview with the Ecologist he now says if greenhouse gases are the cause of the severe droughts and such droughts are repeated three or more times a decade it could set in motion a vicious cycle by which droughts would lead to higher emissions of carbon dioxide from rotting trees and, in turn, potentially more frequent and severe droughts.
"If the climate changes in the Amazon to a regime with more severe and frequent droughts, then the dead trees may be numerous enough to cancel-out all the usual carbon uptake, and perhaps even add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere…our current emission pathways are, to be blunt, playing Russian roulette with a substantial portion of the world's largest rainforest," he says.
Interesting2: No system is 100% effective. There is always some energy wasted. One of the more common examples is the automobile engine which gets quite hot. Some of the waste is recovered by heating the car for example. With the completion of a successful prototype, engineers at Oregon State University have made a major step toward addressing one of the leading problems in energy use around the world today — the waste of half or more of the energy produced by cars, factories and power plants.
New technology is being developed at the university to capture and use the low-to-medium grade waste heat that’s now going out the exhaust pipe of millions of automobiles, diesel generators, or being wasted by factories and electrical utilities. The new systems now being perfected at the university should be able to use much of that waste heat either in cooling or the production of electricity.
Waste heat sometimes called secondary heat or low-grade heat refers to heat produced by machines, electrical equipment and industrial processes for which no useful application is found. Energy is often produced by a heat engine, running on a source of high-temperature heat. A heat engine can never have perfect efficiency, according to the second law of thermodynamics, waste heat is regarded as a waste by-product of this process.
More than half of the heat generated by industrial activities is now wasted and even very advanced electrical power plants only convert about 40 percent of the energy produced into electricity. For example it is common practice to estimate in engineering that only 70% of the usable fuel energy is applied to the industrial engine.
The internal combustion engines of automobiles are even worse — they generally operate around 25-40 percent conversion efficiency. The very function of an automobile radiator is to dissipate wasted heat. Various approaches have been attempted, and are sometimes used, to capture and use at least some of that waste heat to produce cooling.
The new system being developed at OSU may do that as, or more efficiently than past approaches, be more portable, and also have one major advantage — the ability to also produce electricity. It’s called a thermally activated cooling system that gains much of its efficiency by using extraordinarily small microchannels which help to better meet the performance, size and weight challenges. It effectively combines a vapor compression cycle with an organic Rankine cycle.
The Rankine cycle is a cycle that converts heat into work. The heat is supplied externally to a closed loop, which usually uses water. This cycle generates about 80% of all electric power used throughout the world, including virtually all solar thermal, biomass, coal and nuclear power plants. The new prototype completed at OSU succeeded in turning 80 percent of every kilowatt of waste heat into a kilowatt of cooling capability.
Researchers say the conversion efficiency would not be nearly as high if the goal is to produce electricity — about 15-20 percent — but it’s still much better than the current approach, which is to waste the energy potential of all of the heat. However, the OSU scientists said that may be just the beginning. Factories often produce enormous amounts of wasted heat in their operations.
The systems could also be incorporated into alternative energy technologies such as solar or geothermal, scientists say, in addition to fossil fuel use. Conceptually, it should also be possible for such systems to be used in hybrid automotive technology, taking waste heat from the gasoline engine and using it not only for air conditioning but also to help recharge the battery that powers the vehicle.
"There continues to be significant potential for reducing energy consumption and greenhouse gas emission by improving overall energy efficiency for various energy systems. One route toward satisfying both paths is to develop technology able to recover waste heat that would be otherwise rejected to the atmosphere without usage."
Interesting3: Local populations rely on birds, reptiles and mammals including apes in the vast Congo Basin for food, but overhunting for so-called bush meat is leading to 'empty forest syndrome', according to a statement issued by a panel of environmental experts following a meeting on the issue in Nairobi. "Tackling the impact of unsustainable and illegal trade in bush meat is critical for protecting the livelihoods of rural people and conserving wildlife in biodiversity-rich areas," said John Scanlon, secretary-general of the Convention on International Trade on Endangered Species (CITES).
Legitimate subsistence hunting is being replaced by commercial hunting and trade in endangered species including elephants and primates, said Ahmed Djoghlaf, executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The statement said that replacing bush meat with locally produced beef would require up to 80 percent of the Democratic Republic of Congo to become pasture.
"Therefore, there is no alternative to making the use of wildlife for food more sustainable." The Democratic Republic of Congo, which is the size of western Europe, is home to more than 370 million acres of forest, one of the largest stretches left in Africa.
Experts say over-hunting is undermining food security and also poses a threat to the forest itself, as 75 percent of tropical tree species depend on animals to spread their seeds. Measures proposed by the experts include the promotion of beekeeping to produce honey for trade and subsistence, the introduction of community wildlife management programs, and farming cane rats for food.
Interesting4: A new study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change looks at the cost to the Chinese economy of lax air quality regulations between 1975 and 2005. The MIT researchers found that air pollutants produced a substantial socio-economic cost to China over the past three decades. China has experienced unprecedented development over the past three decades, but this growth has come at a substantial cost to the country's environment and public health.
China is notorious for extremely high levels of air pollution. As the country faces continuous environmental challenges that mirror its continuing development, there is a need to measure the health impacts of air pollution. What makes this study unique is that researchers looked at long-term economic impacts that arise from health damages, and how pollution-induced morbidity and mortality cases may have had ripple effects on the Chinese economy beyond the time period when those cases actually occurred. This method creates a comprehensive picture of the cumulative impacts of air pollution on a dynamic, fast-developing country.
Interesting5: Often, when you think about food production, it is only the carbon emissions in terms of fertilizer use, transportation etc. that is accounted for. However, food production also has a steep water footprint. The water footprint is yet another environmental yardstick that measures how much water goes into the making of something. In 2009, the Food Ethics Council (FEC) declared in a report that food products should come with water footprint information in addition to carbon information.
Because water scarcity is such a growing problem, they argued that such information will make consumers more aware of the impact of their buying habits. As a general rule of thumb, crops like sugar and vegetables are more water-intensive than cereals. Meat and dairy are even more water intensive.
One cup of fresh coffee needs 140 liters of water to produce while the production of one kilogram of beef requires 16,000 litres of water. According to the FEC report, in order to understand how to reduce our use of water, we need to measure this "embedded" or "virtual" water.
Another recently released report by WRAP and WWF examined how much water is wasted in the UK when food is thrown away. It found that nearly two-thirds of this wasted embedded water originated outside the UK. For example, most 'summer' vegetables like tomatoes, melons etc. are imported from Spain.
It takes 24,000 liters of water to produce one kilogram of chocolate, most of which comes from Ghana. According to the Water Footprint Network, a kilogram of tomatoes requires 160 liters of water in comparison.
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