Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs / September 30-October 1, 2008

September 30-October 1 2008

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

Lihue, Kauai – 85
Honolulu, Oahu – 88
Kaneohe, Oahu – 82
Kahului, Maui – missing
Hilo, Hawaii – 78
Kailua-kona – 86

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 – 85F  
Hilo, Hawaii – 76

Haleakala Crater    – 54  (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 45  (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:

1.37 Mount Waialeale Kauai
1.34 Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
0.42 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
1.48 West Wailuaiki, Maui
0.81 Honokaa, Big Island

Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a 1022 millibar high pressure system to the north-northwest of the islands. The placement and strength of this high pressure cell will keep light to moderately strong northeast trade winds coming our way…locally a bit stronger.

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

  Spouting Horn blow hole on Kauai
Photo Credit: flickr.com

Our local winds will be shifting from northeast, back towards the more customary easterly trade winds soon. Wind speeds will pick up some Wednesday through the rest of the week. As usual, the winds will strongest during the heat of the days, calming back down after dark. The computer forecast models suggest that these early autumn trade winds will continue blowing right on into next week.

The quickly dissipating cold front has moved through the entire state…and continues on its way south and southeast away from the state. The remnant cloudiness remains hung up along the windward sides of both Maui and the Big Island Tuesday enening. These leftover frontal clouds will drop a few showers, leaving clearing skies and mostly dry conditions in the leeward areas. Now that the trade winds are back with us, we’ll see the usual off and on passing showers.

It’s early Tuesday evening here in Kihei, Maui, as I begin writing this last section of today’s tropical weather narrative from Hawaii. Tuesday was an interesting day, which started off on the cloudy side, cleared up in many places, and then got cloudy again during the afternoon hours locally. Looking at the latest satellite image,we can see the sagging frontal cloud band becoming more and more ragged and disorganized. Nonetheless, it still has the characteristic cloud band, stretched-out U shape. There are more clouds heading our way, although the air streaming into the state now is relatively dry and stable. This will limit the amount of showers arriving, although there will still be some around at times…most generous of which will fall along the windward sides during the night and early morning hours. ~~~ I’m about ready to leave Kihei, for the 35-40 minute drive home to Kula, in what’s called the upcountry area. Kula, at least where I live on the western slope of the Haleakala Crater, is 3,100 feet in elevation. The first thing I’ll do when I arrive home, as I do most days, is put on a long sleeve turtle neck, as its definitely cooler up there compared to down here at sea level. ~~~ I’ll be back very early Wednesday morning with your next new weather narrative, I hope you have a great Tuesday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting:

In 1991 Norway became one of the first countries in the world to impose a stiff tax on harmful greenhouse gas emissions. Since then, the country’s emissions should have dropped. Instead, they have risen by 15%. Although the tax forced Norway‘s oil and gas sector to become among the greenest in the world, soaring energy prices led to a boom in offshore production, which in turn boosted overall emissions. So did drivers. Norwegians, who already pay nearly $10 a gallon, took the tax in stride, buying more cars and driving them more. And numerous industries won exemptions from the tax, carrying on unchanged. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. By making it more expensive to pollute, carbon taxes should spur companies and individuals to clean up. Norway’s sobering experience shows how difficult it is to cut emissions in the real world, where elegant theoretical solutions are complicated by economic changes, entrenched behaviors and political realities.

Europe struggled with a similar dilemma as it set up its "cap-and-trade" system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by utilities and heavy industry. Regulators cushioned industry in the early years of the system, giving them little incentive to improve. As a result, emissions have crept up 1% a year since 2005. In the U.S., the Senate voted down cap-and-trade legislation in July, won over by arguments that the system would hurt industry and boost consumer prices. But the measure could be revived, since both presidential candidates support it. A few countries have cut emissions without injuring their economies. Sweden and Denmark, both of which introduced a carbon tax, have reduced their greenhouse gas emissions by 14% and 8% respectively since 1990 while maintaining growth. Their emission reductions can’t be attributed to the tax alone, economists say. Additional moves to encourage energy efficiency and renewable energy, which are government-subsidized, played a part.

Interesting2:

The Chinese government, which has done quite a lot for the Yangtze River’s endangered freshwater dolphins, last week decided it needed to do more. The key initiative of the new Yangtze Dolphin Network is to connect existing reserves established for the Baiji dolphin, the world’s most endangered member of the whale family, and the finless porpoise. The network was initiated by the aquatic and wildlife protection office of the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture and is funded by donors including WWF-China. “WWF started working on Yangtze dolphin conservation as early as 2002 and I am very happy to join the Yangtze Dolphin Network today,” said Dr. Wang Limin, WWF-China’s deputy director of conservation operations. “It is of big significance to dolphin protection efforts in China and around the world.” Human activities such as illegal fishing, pollution and shipping have hit the Baiji dolphin and finless porpoise hard, causing their numbers to dramatically decline over the last few years. 

During a Yangtze Freshwater dolphin expedition in 2006 no Baiji dolphins were found, while the population of the finless porpoise has dropped to an estimated 1,800, half the number found in the 1990s. “It is necessary to integrate each nature reserve to effectively protect the Baiji dolphin and finless porpoise,” said Fan Xiangguo, director of aquatic wildlife protection at the Ministry of Agriculture. Over the past few decades the Chinese government has made considerable efforts to protect the freshwater dolphin by setting up nature reserves. The Yangtze Dolphin Network includes six nature reserves and two monitoring sites. “Dolphins are the indicator species of river health,” said Li Lifeng, Freshwater Programme Director, WWF International. “If they are gone, the river will not be able to support human development. The Yangtze Dolphin Network is a great step towards protecting the river for both species and people.”

Interesting3:

Westport, Conn., this month became the latest of a handful of communities to ban some plastic bags. The bags, which have only a brief, useful life, can survive forever in landfills and are of enormous concern to not only environmentalists but local officials who are running out of places to put their trash. Westport’s ordinance will take effect in six months and applies to bags dispensed at checkout counters. Others, like dry cleaning bags, will be exempted. The aim is to reduce litter and encourage customers to tote their groceries in reusable cloth bags. The town’s stand is laudable but will have only a limited effect on what is, after all, a statewide problem.

The Connecticut Legislature rebuffed a proposed statewide ban last year. Massachusetts and Maine considered similar bans and also backed down. Americans use and dispose of at least 100 billion bags every year. Although the plastics industry points out that plastic grocery bags are made more from natural gas than petroleum, natural gas is not a renewable resource and contributes to global warming. And about only 5 percent of all plastic bags are recycled nationwide. The rest end up in the trash, hanging in trees or floating in water where they menace marine life.

Interesting4:

Reconstructing the climate of the past is an important tool for scientists to better understand and predict future climate changes that are the result of the present-day global warming. Although there is still little known about the Earth’s tropical and subtropical regions, these regions are thought to play an important role in both the evolution of prehistoric man and global climate changes. New North African climate reconstructions reveal three ‘green Sahara’ episodes during which the present-day SaharaDesert was almost completely covered with extensive grasslands, lakes and ponds over the course of the last 120.000 years. The findings of Dr. Rik Tjallingii, Prof. Dr. Martin Claussen and their colleagues will be published in the October issue of Nature Geoscience.

Scientists of the MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Research in Bremen (Germany) and the Alfred-Wegener-Institute in Bremerhaven (Germany) studied a marine sediment core off the coast of Northwest Africa to find out how the vegetation cover and hydrological cycle of the Sahara and Sahel region changed. The scientists were able to reconstruct the vegetation cover of the last 120.000 years by studying changes in the ratio of wind and river-transported particles found in the core. “We found three distinct periods with almost only river-transported particles and hardly any wind dust particles, which is remarkable because today the SaharaDesert is the world’s largest dust-bowl,” says Rik Tjallingii.

Interesting5:

It’s snowing on Mars, or to be more precise, in the clouds above Mars. NASA on Monday reported that its Phoenix Mars Lander had detected snow falling from Martian clouds. The Phoenix Mars Lander is equipped with a laser instrument that measures how the Martian atmosphere and surface interact. The device detected snow at an altitude of 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) above the Phoenix‘s landing site, according to NASA. Future Mars visitors won’t have to worry about bringing skis, however: Data shows that the snow turns to vapor before reaching the planet’s surface.  NASA spokesperson Guy Webster said that NASA scientists and others working on the news briefing were excited about the observations. "They were also excited about sharing the information with the public, fully appreciating that snow is something most people have stronger feelings about than effects of liquid water on minerals," he said in an e-mail.  Jim Whiteway, an associate professor at YorkUniversity in Toronto and the lead scientist for the Canadian-supplied Meteorological Station on Phoenix, said in a statement,

"Nothing like this view has ever been seen on Mars. We’ll be looking for signs that the snow may even reach the ground." Since its landing on May 25, Phoenix has determined that ice is present in subsurface soil on Mars. NASA scientists are currently trying to determine whether water exists in liquid form on Mars, which would make the Martian environment far more conducive to life. Phoenix‘s mission is to study the history of water in the Martian arctic, to search for evidence of a habitable area, and to determine whether the ice-soil boundary area has the potential to support life.  The mission was originally planned to last three months. It is currently in its fifth month. The declining availability of solar energy in the months ahead is expected to put an end to the lander’s exploration before the year’s end.  "For nearly three months after landing, the sun never went below the horizon at our landing site," said Barry Goldstein, JPL Phoenix project manager, in a statement. "Now it is gone for more than four hours each night, and the output from our solar panels is dropping each week. Before the end of October, there won’t be enough energy to keep using the robotic arm." 

Interesting6:

How much is $700,000,000,000 dollars? The short answer: a lot. The long answer: depends on how you look at it. Whatever your viewpoint, here’s how $700 billion — the figure inked in the initial dead-in-the-water government bailout bill for Wall Street — compares to other vast sums. NASA in fiscal year 2009 will launch several missions into space and pay for hundreds of people to operate a host of space telescopes and even remote robots on Mars and run a PR and media department that puts most large corporations to shame. The agency’s budget: $17.6 billion, or 2.5 percent of the bailout sum. The National Science Foundation (NSF) has an annual budget of $6.06 billion to support research and education on astronomy, chemistry, materials science, computing, engineering, earth sciences, nanoscience and physics (among others) at more than 1,900 universities and institutions across the United States. You have to turn to much bigger initiatives, like war and defense, to get beyond this chump change and approach the bailout figure. From 2003 through the end of fiscal year 2009, Congress has appropriated $606 billion for military operations and other activities associated with the war in Iraq, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The entire military budget for fiscal 2008 is $481.4 billion.

Social Security is a $608 billion annual program. Many analysts fear the bailout because the cost must ultimately be borne by taxpayers. Based on the U.S. Census Bureau’s estimate of the current population of about 305 million people, each person would have to pay $2,300 to fund the $700,000,000,000. If each American (including children) paid a dollar a day, it would take more than six years to pay the money in full. One might argue, however, that this $700 billion would be a modest splash in the bucket of national debt, which already stands at well over $9 trillion (which means you already owe $31,642 each). Even the New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez would lose sleep over all those zeroes. Currently the top paid major league baseball player, Rodriguez takes home $28 million a year, meaning it would take 25,000 A-Rod salaries to carry the $700 billion. Nobody is rich enough to pay back this $700 billion by himself. In fact, the Forbes 400 richest list recently came out. It would take most of what these 400 people collectively have — a combined net worth of $1.57 trillion — to dig out of this mess.