February 17-18, 2009
Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Tuesday afternoon:
Lihue, Kauai – 74
Honolulu, Oahu – 80
Kaneohe, Oahu – 76
Kahului, Maui – 79
Hilo, Hawaii – 76
Kailua-kona – 80
Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level, and on the highest mountains…at 4 p.m. Tuesday afternoon:
Barking Sands, Kauai – 78F
Hilo, Hawaii – 70
Haleakala Crater – missing (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 32 (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 Tuesday afternoon:
1.72 Mount Waialaele, Kauai
0.60 Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
0.00 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
0.07 Puu Kukui, Maui
0.09 Hilo airport, Big Island
Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a 1032 millibar high pressure system located to the north-northwest of the islands…we’ll see breezy trade winds both Wednesday and Thursday. The trade winds should turn more towards the northeast direction starting Thursday.
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. 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.
Aloha Paragraphs
Soaking rays on the beach…Hawaii
Photo Credit: flickr.com
The trade winds will continue, although will turn to the north and northeast over the next several days…then back to the east and ENE Friday into the upcoming weekend. We still have small craft wind advisory flags up over only part of the state Tuesday afternoon, as the NWS scaled them back recently. As we move further into the week, those generally east to ENE trade winds, will shift more to the north and NE direction. This new, more northerly flow, will bring somewhat cooler weather into our Hawaiian Islands weather picture during the second half of the work week.
Windward showers will be rather limited for the time being, although will increase modestly Wednesday into Thursday…before drier weather will arrive Friday into the weekend. The leeward sides in contrast, will remain dry, with good sunshine along those south and west facing beaches. Thus, this week looks pretty good overall. The models continue to try and make our weather wetter early next week, when we may see another increase in showers then. It’s still too early to nail down this potential wetter weather however, so for now…lets call it a 50/50 chance.
Monday evening I unexpectedly went to see a new film with my neighbors, along with a visiting brother and sister here from Switzerland. We saw The International (2009), starring Clive Owen, Naomi Watts, among many others. This film had great photography from Milan, Berlin, Luxembourg, and New York. There is plenty of mayhem, along with globetrotting shootouts, with no lack of action throughout. As many of you know, this kind of stuff is right down my alley. The folks I went with thought the film was interesting enough, but weren’t thrilled by any means. I give this film a good B grade, but my opinion was tainted a bit by the C grade my friends gave it. At any rate, here’s a trailer if you’re interested in getting a sneak preview.
It’s Tuesday evening as I start writing this last narrative paragraph from here in Kihei, Maui. Tuesday was a nice day here in the islands, especially if you were able to lay around down by the ocean…along our fairly warm sandy beaches. The trade winds were still our most influential weather feature, which remained on the strong and gusty side here and there. At 5pm, the strongest gust that I saw was the 38 mph at Kawaihae, on the Big Island. As far as temperatures go, it was quite warm, although only Honolulu and Kona were able to stretch up to 80F degrees for high temperatures today. At 5pm, the warmest place around the Aloha state was 78 at both Barking Sands, Kauai, and down at the Kona airport. As mentioned above, we should see a fairly minor cloud band, arriving tomorrow (Wednesday) along our windward sides, which will bring in some showery low clouds…lasting into Thursday. The leeward sides shouldn’t see much of this stuff, although there may be a few sprinkles being carried over into those south and west facing areas on the trade winds. Those winds, having a more northerly aspect, will cause somewhat cooler air temperatures, tropically speaking that is. ~~~ I’ll be back early Wednesday morning with your next new weather narrative from paradise, I hope you can meet me back here then! Aloha for now…Glenn.
Interesting: Global number two mobile phone maker Samsung launched five new phones on Monday including a model made from recycled plastic with a solar panel on the back for charging. Samsung said in a statement its "Blue Earth" solar-powered model had a touch screen and was made from plastic taken from used water bottles. It did not give pricing information or say when the phone would go on sale.
Interesting2: “Antarctica is a cradle of life for polar species,” said Rob Nicoll, WWF-Australia, Antarctica and Southern Ocean Initiative Manager. “In particular, the research shows it is an evolutionary garden for octopus, sea spiders and other bizarre deep sea creatures. “The fact that scientists found a number of species common to both Antarctica and the Arctic indicates that the polar oceans are effective safe havens for species that arrive by chance.” The study also found that the warming of the oceans due to climate change was forcing cold-ocean species to move towards the poles. The remarkable range of species has remained hidden for so long because many assumed the polar seas were like marine deserts. However it now appears that the harsh environment of the polar sea has been an engine of evolution offering the right ingredients of isolation and a wide range of habitats.
WWF believes these isolated habitats are threatened by climate change, which is driving ocean acidification and increasing temperatures around the poles. “It’s yet another reason why the world’s governments need to commit to deep emissions cuts at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen this December,” said Nicoll, “otherwise, scientific expeditions like this will simply create a list of species in our oceans that will perish due to climate change.” The threat of climate change comes on top of other threats to the Antarctic’s marine biodiversity from invasive species, oil spills and pollution through shipping activities and the actions of illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing vessels that flaunt international rules.
Interesting3: Water resources in three of South Asia’s largest river basins are highly vulnerable, with millions of people at risk of increasing water scarcity, a new report has found. The report – jointly released by the UN Environment Program and the Asian Institute of Technology- studied the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna (GBM), Indus and Helmand river basins, all of which span multiple countries within the region. It lists overexploitation, climate change, and inadequate distribution and use of water resources among the key threats to the three basins, calling for "a unique mix of policy interventions and preferred routes for future water resources development" to tackle these challenges. Jinhua Zhang, regional coordinator at the UNEP Division of Early Warning & Assessment told SciDev.Net that countries should cooperate more to improve how water resources are managed — particularly to control pollution and improve efficiency — to help stop further damage to these rivers. The report assigned each river basin a vulnerability index, based on resources stress, development pressure, ecological health and management challenges. The GBM basin is most vulnerable, but water resource systems in the Helmand and Indus basins are also highly vulnerable.
Extreme population growth in the basins over the last century has put pressure on the region’s water resources, while around two-thirds of the Himalayan glaciers that feed the basins are receding. Additionally, groundwater levels in the GBM and Indus basins are declining at a rate of two to four metres per year due to intense pumping. In India alone the amount of water per head has decreased from 4,000 to 1,869 cubic meters in the last twenty years. Zhang told SciDev.Net that further research is needed to identify the supply of glacial melt for a given area, the amount of wastewater generated by industry, and strategies for water treatment. "The per capita availability of freshwater is declining, and contaminated water remains the greatest single environmental cause of human illness and death," he says. Improving our knowledge of the vulnerability of freshwater resources "is therefore essential so that policymakers can manage this vital resource for the benefit of their people, their economies and the environment,” says Zhang.
Interesting4: Federal, state and local governments are about to pour tens of billions of dollars into the nation’s infrastructure. The big question: Will we simply spend the money the way we’ve been doing for decades — on more concrete and steel? Or will we use it to make our roads, bridges and other assets much more intelligent? Imagine highways that alert motorists of a traffic jam before it forms, or bridges that report when they’re at risk of collapse. Or an electric grid that fixes itself when blackouts hit. This vision — known as "smart" infrastructure — promises to make the nation more productive and competitive, while helping the environment and saving lives. Not to mention saving money by making what we’ve got work better and break down less often. But fail to upgrade, advocates warn, and the country may be locked into the old way of building for decades to come. "The goal is not just funding projects for short-term job gains," says Paul Feenstra, vice president of government affairs at the Intelligent Transportation Society of America, a group that promotes smart-road technologies. "It should be to create systems that are intelligent and improve productivity in the long run."
Interesting5: Scientists say that Australia can expect more of the scorching conditions that fanned the firestorms that killed at least 181 people this month, prompting a nationwide debate about how to prepare for a hotter, more fire-prone future. As investigators pick through the tangled wreckage left by Australia’s deadliest wildfires, which flattened townships and destroyed more than 1,000 homes starting Feb. 7, a wide-ranging discussion has begun about the way the country handles wildfires – from greenhouse-gas emissions standards to planning codes to an emergency protocol that encourages people to stay and defend their properties. Wildfires have been a feature of the Australian landscape for centuries; thousands of fires burn across the continent each year.
But scientists warn that the "Black Saturday" disaster is a sign of things to come as climate change brings hotter weather and less rain. The governmental Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization concluded in 2007 that average temperatures in Australia would increase by as much as 2 degrees Celsius by 2030 and 6 degrees Celsius by 2070 unless greenhouse emissions are drastically cut. That would be a difference of 3.6 degrees and 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit. Days of high or extreme fire danger are forecast to increase by 5 percent to 25 percent if the effects of climate change are low and by 15 percent to 65 percent if they are high, the report said.
Interesting6: If ever there was a superpower of the oceans, the North Atlantic, with its ability to control global weather systems, is it. The bad news is that this region also happens to be especially sensitive to the effects of climate change, so what is happening there could affect the world. The planet’s climate goes through periodic convulsions that affect every region simultaneously. The most recent were in the early 1940s and mid-1970s. The latter coincided with the start of more frequent El Niño events in the Pacific and a strong global warming trend. In past studies, Anastasios Tsonis and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee have shown statistically that climate features like El Niño and the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), which drives weather across Europe, become synchronized for a few decades, before the links abruptly break down and a new pattern emerges. They call it "synchronized chaos".
Now their modeling studies have shown the action is always driven from the North Atlantic. Tsonis says the NAO is "without exception the common ingredient… the pacemaker of major climate shifts." The findings may be seized on by deniers of man-made climate change as evidence of the scale of natural climate variability. Tsonis argued two years ago that accelerated global warming since the 1970s could be due partly to a natural climate shift. But the findings will leave most climate scientists more worried. Today’s climate is changing most dramatically in the far North Atlantic, with record warming and ice loss in recent years. If the climate’s "tipping point" resides in these waters, then nature’s synchronized chaos could unleash unexpectedly sudden and severe consequences.
Interesting7: A powerful snow storm has lashed eastern Russia over the last few days, bringing heavy snow and strong winds to the Sakhalin Islands. Visibility across much of the island dropped to less than 50m, with heavy snow adding to the disruption on the roads. The storm formed in the Sea of Japan before heading north, dumping heavy snow on the Russian island of Sakhalin. This type of storm formation and track is not unusual for the region, which frequently gets hit by such storms at this time of year. In western Russia, many places have been experiencing milder than average conditions over the past week. Daytime temperatures, which are normally around -7C (19F) in Moscow, have been between 1 and -2 over the past seven days. Winters are generally harsh in this region, with temperature rarely above freezing in the day. Forecasters at the Russian Hydrometeorological Centre expect a brief respite from the heavy snow in the east over the next couple of days. Further storms are expected on Friday and Sunday, bringing yet more heavy snow.
Interesting8: In a new research, scientists have determined that seven huge irregular boulders in an island in Tonga were deposited by a prehistoric mega tsunami thousands of years ago. The research was done by Cliff Frohlich and her colleagues from the Institute for Geophysics, John A. and Katherine G. Jackson School of Geosciences, University of Texas at Austin, in the US. The hugely puzzling coral limestone boulders sit 100200 meters from the shoreline on the island of Tongatapu in the southwest Pacific. In 2007, Frohlich studied these boulders, which have dimensions as large as 9 meters and weigh up to 1600 tons, and concluded that the boulders originated at the shoreline about 120,000 years ago and have since been displaced by a prehistoric tsunami. Frohlich and her team analyzed undersea volcanic calderas in the Tofua arc west of Tongatapu and local slump features just offshore from the boulders and concluded that a caldera collapse was the likely cause of a tsunami large enough to move the boulders. A systematic census and analysis of erratic boulders and other tsunamigenic features along shorelines elsewhere in the world may provide a means for extending the historic record and thus more accurately assessing tsunami hazard.
Interesting9: Can money make us happy if we spend it on the right purchases? A new psychology study suggests that buying life experiences rather than material possessions leads to greater happiness for both the consumer and those around them. The study demonstrates that experiential purchases, such as a meal out or theater tickets, result in increased well-being because they satisfy higher order needs, specifically the need for social connectedness and vitality — a feeling of being alive. "These findings support an extension of basic need theory, where purchases that increase psychological need satisfaction will produce the greatest well-being," said Ryan Howell, assistant professor of psychology at San Francisco State University.
Participants in the study were asked to write reflections and answer questions about their recent purchases. Participants indicated that experiential purchases represented money better spent and greater happiness for both themselves and others. The results also indicate that experiences produce more happiness regardless of the amount spent or the income of the consumer. Experiences also lead to longer-term satisfaction. "Purchased experiences provide memory capital," Howell said. "We don’t tend to get bored of happy memories like we do with a material object. "People still believe that more money will make them happy, even though 35 years of research has suggested the opposite," Howell said. "Maybe this belief has held because money is making some people happy some of the time, at least when they spend it on life experiences.
Interesting10: Scientists in Arizona and New Jersey are reporting that aerogels, a super-lightweight solid sometimes called “frozen smoke,” may serve as the ultimate sponge for capturing oil from wastewater and effectively soaking up environmental oil spills. In the new study, Robert Pfeffer and colleagues point out that the environmental challenges of oil contamination go beyond widely publicized maritime oil spills like the Exxon Valdez incident. Experts estimate that each year people dump more than 200 million gallons of used oil into sewers, streams, and backyards, resulting in polluted wastewater that is difficult to treat.
Although there are many different sorbent materials for removing used oil, such as activated carbon, they are often costly and inefficient. Hydrophobic silica aerogels are highly porous and absorbent material, and seemed like an excellent oil sponge. The scientists packed a batch of tiny aerogel beads into a vertical column and exposed them to flowing water containing soybean oil to simulate the filtration process at a wastewater treatment plant. They showed that the aerogel beads absorbed up to 7 times their weight and removed oil from the wastewater at high efficiency, better than many conventional sorbent materials.
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