Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs / August 21-22, 2008

August 21-22 2008

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

Lihue, Kauai – 86
Honolulu, Oahu – 88
Kaneohe, Oahu – 84
Kahului, Maui – 86
Hilo, Hawaii – 87
Kailua-kona – 86

Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level, and on the taller mountains…at 5 p.m. Thursday evening:

Barking Sands, Kauai – 84F  
Princeville, Kauai – 77

Haleakala Crater- 45 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 36 (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 Thursday afternoon:

0.39 Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.47 Palisades, Oahu
0.03 Molokai
0.01 Lanai
0.07 Kahoolawe
0.75 Puu Kukui, Maui
0.13 Glenwood, Big Island

Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a pair of 1026 millibar high pressure systems located north and northwest of Hawaii. Our local trade winds will remain active, blowing generally in the moderately strong range, locally stronger in those windiest areas.

Satellite and Radar Images: To view the cloud conditions we have here in Hawaii, please use the following satellite links, starting off with the 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. 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.

Aloha Paragraphs

 

  Black sand beach near Hana, Maui
   Photo Credit: flickr.com

 

As is typical during the later summer season, our trade winds continue to be the main driver in our Hawaiian Island weather picture. The most recent computer forecast models show the trade winds continuing through this week, right on into next week. This weather map, shows a pair of moderately strong 1026 millibar high pressure systems, located to the north and northwest of our islands…keeping moderately strong winds in our area, locally stronger and gusty. The trades have increased a notch, enough so that the NWS forecast office in Honolulu has issued a small craft wind advisory for the windiest spots around Maui County, down through the Big Island.

The trade winds will continue to carry showers our way at times, favoring the windward sides during the nights and mornings. The leeward sides will remain quite sunny for the most part during the days, with generally dry conditions prevailing. The influence of an upper level trough of low pressure, with its shower enhancing cold air aloft, will keep incoming showers along the windward sides. These showers will remain more active than normal through the next couple of days. There may be a few briefly heavy showers, with the chance of a few afternoon showers along the Kona coast of the Big Island as well. As this satellite image shows, there is no lack of clouds coming our way on the trade winds.

It’s early Thursday evening here in Kula, Maui, as I begin writing this last paragraph of today’s narrative. I started this day writing about how normal it was, and as soon as I left the house, I realized that I had underestimated the influence of cold air aloft, associated with an upper level trough of low pressure. There were much more than the normal amount of showers that fell around Maui, which then moved up the island chain later in the morning. It showered up here in Kula, all along the windward sides from Hana along the coast to Kapalua and Napili. It even reached over the West Maui Mountains into Lahaina town, where drizzle fell for a time. This shower enhancing trough will keep the chance of showers in the forecast for the next several days, falling most generously during the night and early morning hours. During the day Thursday though, once those morning showers ended, we had plentiful sunshine beaming down. Looking over towards the windward side at the time of this writing, before sunset, there is a nice rainbow shining in the clouds…with a light mist making its way all the way over here into the lee of the Haleakala Crater in Kula. Friday may very well be a repeat of Thursday, which may continue on into Saturday…generally nice weather, punctuated by those passing showers at times. I’ll be back very early Friday morning with your next new narrative, I hope you have a great Thursday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting:

The impact of global warming in the Arctic may differ from the predictions of computer models of the region, according to a pair of Penn State biologists. The team — which includes Eric Post, a PennState associate professor of biology, and Christian Pederson, a PennState graduate student — has shown that grazing animals will play a key role in reducing the anticipated expansion of shrub growth in the region, thus limiting their predicted and beneficial carbon-absorbing effect. The team’s results will be published in the online Early Edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Most computer models indicate that shrubs will thrive and spread as a result of global warming. And because shrubs have an increased ability over grasses and other small plants to absorb the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, many scientists believe that shrubs will absorb some of this carbon dioxide and, thereby, lessen the impact of climate change.

While Post and Pederson agree that global warming will promote the growth of shrubs, they argue that grazing by muskoxen and caribou will reduce the carbon-mitigating benefit of the plants. "If you imagine a chessboard on which the dark squares are shrubs and the light squares are grasses, warming alone would tend to increase the size of the dark squares until the chess board is completely filled in," said Post. "Our experiment suggests that herbivores, like caribou and muskoxen, will slow this process, inhibit it, or perhaps even increase the size of the white squares on the chessboard."

Interesting2:

Lead wheel weights, widely used to balance vehicle tires but considered a threat to drinking water, will be phased out in California by the end of next year under a court settlement approved Wednesday. The settlement ends a lawsuit filed in May by the Oakland-based Center for Environmental Health against Chrysler and the three largest makers of lead wheel weights for the U.S. market. Some observers see the settlement as a first step toward a broader ban on the products.

Interesting3

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Mayor Michael Bloomberg has proposed a renewable energy program for



New York City that would include placing windmills on city bridges, solar panels on skyscrapers, and the use of tidal, geothermal and nuclear energy.  Bloomberg unveiled the outlines of his plan late Tuesday at a major clean energy summit in Las Vegas organized by the University of Nevada. "Just five years ago last week — on August 14th, 2003 — this country got an object lesson in how big a gamble we’re taking with our future if we don’t change course," said Bloomberg, referring to the giant blackout that cut off power for 50 million people across the northeastern United States and Canada. Hundreds of people were rescued from high-rise elevators, and thousands more were rescued from stalled trains in the city’s subway system. "We learned that this time, the enemy was us and our failure to take care of our infrastructure," he said.

"The world’s greatest nation was shown to have a power grid that was seriously over-strained and out-of-date." Bloomberg said he is determined to keep the city’s energy usage at or near its current level even as the population grows. But the city has to increase production of clean energy, he said. "I believe that we’ve got to be willing to do what some other nations — such as France — have already done, and increase our capacity of safe and clean nuclear-generated power," he said. Clean energy projects could also "draw power from the tides of the Hudson and EastRivers — something we’re already doing on a pilot basis," he said. Bloomberg proposed increasing rooftop solar power production, "which we’ve estimated could meet nearly 20 percent of the city’s need for electricity."

Interesting4: Penguin guano isn’t usually considered an environmental hazard. Yet, according to new research, it is the main source of arsenic accumulation in Antarctic soil. Zhouqing Xie of the Institute of Polar Environment at the University of Science and Technology of China and colleagues looked at how much arsenic was found in the droppings of three bird species and two seal species that live on ArdleyIsland, off the Antarctic peninsular. The droppings of the gentoo penguin contained far more than those of the other species – nearly twice as much as the droppings of the southern giant petrel and up to three times more than the local seals. What’s more, sediments from another Antarctic island that has no resident penguins but has a similar geology contained half the levels of arsenic compared with sediment sampled on ArdleyIsland.

So Xie’s team tried to find out how arsenic levels change with the number of penguins in the area. They took a 34 centimetre mud core from the bottom of a lake on ArdleyIsland. This allowed them to measure how arsenic levels have fluctuated over the past 1,800 years and also to estimate how the local penguin population changed: a study published in 2000 (Nature) showed that penguin droppings alter the geochemical composition of lake sediments. Xie found that changes in the local penguin population were followed by changes in the arsenic levels in the lake. More penguins means more arsenic. Arsenic is an environmental contaminant that is naturally present. It is there in the water, which is absorbed by krill and then accumulates in the food chain, passing to predators such as penguins.

 

Interesting5:

Glider pilots harness upward-moving thermal air currents to keep them aloft for hours, while soaring birds use them to save energy. Uncrewed aerial vehicles may soon borrow the same technique to save precious fuel, using software that identifies regions of rising air. "It could increase the vehicles’ endurance during surveillance missions," says Rhys Watkin of Roke Manor Research in Hampshire, UK, a member of the team that developed the system. To seek out nearby thermal currents, the software first analyses video of the sky taken by an on-board camera. It searches for the telltale grey, dome-shaped clouds that are formed by rapidly rising hot air. The system combines this with real-time weather forecasts and computer simulations of air flow across the local terrain to predict the locations of further thermal currents.

The team also fed the software information from anecdotal reports by expert gliders, highlighting areas of rising air in specific locations and in various weather conditions. During a mission, the software uses all of this data, together with the aircraft’s GPS coordinates, to plan a route that passes through as many thermals as possible. So far, the system has only been used to suggest the path for a glider pilot to follow, but the team is developing software to enable an autonomous vehicle to fly solo. In the future, Watkin hopes to add further software that will analyse maps of the local area and estimate how well ground surfaces emit heat, which also helps predict the location of thermals.

Interesting6:

A man-sized grouper that trolls the tropical waters of the Eastern Pacific Ocean for octopuses and crabs has been identified as a new fish species after genetic tests. Called the goliath grouper, the fish can grow to six feet (1.8 meters) in length and weigh a whopping 1,000 pounds (454 kg). Until now, scientists had grouped this species with an identical looking fish (also called the goliath grouper, or Epinephelus itajara) living in the Atlantic Ocean. "For more than a century, ichthyologists have thought that Pacific and Atlantic goliath grouper were the same species," said lead researcher Matthew Craig of the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, "and the argument was settled before the widespread use of genetic techniques."  Once upon a time, about 3.5 million years ago — before the Caribbean and the Pacific were separated by present-day Panama — they were, in fact, the same species.

Now, DNA tests have revealed the two populations have distinct genes, indicating they likely evolved into two separate species after their ocean homes were divided by Central America. Scientists disagree about how to define the term "species" and what separates species from one another biologically, though some say that a species is a group that can mate with one another and produce offspring that are not sterile. However, this biological definition doesn’t always hold up, for instance, with coyotes and wolves (considered separate species), which can successfully produce fertile offspring. In this study, the scientists relied on differences in the fishes’ genetic codes to establish the separate grouper species.

Interesting7:

The male peacock’s tail was a vexing problem for the father of evolutionary theory, Charles Darwin, who struggled to explain why the bird should have such a seemingly burdensome trait. Darwin finally struck upon the idea of sexual selection, which posits that extravagant traits like the peacock’s colorful fan of feathers provided an advantage in the competition for mates that outweighed other disadvantages. Biologists think that certain physical characteristics are signals to potential mates that the individual they’re scoping out is healthy and vigorous; the process even works in humans, who are attracted to symmetrical faces and other outward signs of fitness.

Some researchers are now turning their attention from why showy traits evolved, to how they evolved and why they tend to do so more often in males. To help answer these questions, scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison studied fruit fly derrieres and found that ancient genetic switches have evolved to  manipulate the appearance of animals in a way that favored their selection as mates, providing a possible explanation for how peacocks evolved their spectacular tails.