Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs / October 2-3, 2008

October 2-3 2008

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

Lihue, Kauai – 83
Honolulu, Oahu – 88
Kaneohe, Oahu – 82
Kahului, Maui – 88
Hilo, Hawaii – 82
Kailua-kona – 86

Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level, and on the highest mountains…at 4 p.m. Thursday afternoon:

Honolulu, Oahu – 86F  
Hilo, Hawaii – 77

Haleakala Crater    – 55  (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 43  (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:

1.59 Mount Waialeale Kauai
1.32 Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
0.03 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
0.28 West Wailuaiki, Maui
0.27 Kealakekua, Big Island

Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a 1023 millibar high pressure system to the north of the islands. The location and strength of this high pressure cell will keep light to moderately strong trade winds blowing across our islands…locally 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

  Rainbow Falls, Hilo, Hawaii
Photo Credit: flickr.com

A typical autumn trade wind weather pattern is well established here in the Hawaiian Islands Thursday evening. Light to moderately strong trade winds will continue, with those locally windier areas finding somewhat strong and gusty conditions. There is no end to the trade winds in sight, which may strengthen some as we move into next week. The winds are now coming out of the east, bringing in relatively warm air from over the tropical ocean.

These balmy breezes will carry a few showers to our windward coasts and slopes, leaving the leeward sides dry and sunny to partly cloudy during the days. The one exception Thursday night will be increased clouds and showers on the Big Island. Daytime temperatures will remain warm to very warm, with the warmest areas rising nto the upper 80F’s. Nights in contrast, will drop down into the lower 70F’s for the most part at sea level..cooler in the upcountry areas.

It’s early Thursday evening here in Kihei, Maui, as I begin writing this last section of today’s weather narrative from Hawaii. Our weather through the rest of this week, as noted in the two paragraphs above, will be just the kind that the Chamber of Commerce likes to promote! I don’t see anything that will interrupt our gorgeous weather conditions on the horizon. There is a tropical storm, named Marie, in the eastern Pacific, but it won’t be bothering us anytime soon. It should be noted however, that some of the computer models bring whatever is left of this tropical system towards our islands late next week…or early the following week. Whether its remnant moisture will bring an increase in showers to Hawaii then, is still uncertain at this point. ~~~ Thursday way yet another one of those near perfect days, that is if you didn’t mind some fresh trade winds whipping around in places. The Big Island’s windward side saw those trade winds bringing quite a big of cloudiness, associated with the leftover moisture from a cold front cloud band earlier this week. At any rate, and as is often the case, here on Maui had the strongest wind gusts early in the evening, with both the Kahului airport, and Maalaea Bay both showing 31 mph. Looking out the window, before leaving Kihei for Kula, I see mostly blue skies, with just the usual capping cloud over the West Maui Mountains, and a few clouds stretching along the windward sides…along with what looks a lot like fairly thick volcanic haze in the air too. As this satellite image shows, there are the most numerous clouds, and showers, around the Big Island as we move into the night. ~~~ I’ll be back very early Friday morning with your next new weather narrative, I hope you have a great Thursday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting:

The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the busiest U.S. cargo complex, launched a landmark clean-air program on Wednesday banning some 2,000 older trucks blamed for half the pollution spewed by the ports’ diesel haulers. The port complex ranks as the biggest air polluter in Southern California — more than the region’s cars — and heavy-duty trucks operating there generate more than a third of its overall diesel emissions, port officials say. Despite weeks of court wrangling and worries that cargo deliveries would be slowed, at least 15,000 newer-model trucks — more than enough to keep terminal traffic flowing smoothly — registered on time to comply with the new requirements at each port, port authorities said. The two adjacent shipping centers, which together account for 40 percent of U.S. container imports, have banned all pre-1989 model-year diesel trucks as part of larger plans to reduce air pollutants from the ports by nearly half in the next five years. Approval of those plans were crucial to paving the way for port expansions long stalled over concerns about pollution-linked illnesses in nearby communities.

"Cleaner air is on the way," Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa proclaimed at a harbor-side news conference kicking off the clean trucks program. "Ports across the world have their eyes on us as a model for the future because today the cornerstone of the world’s most comprehensive plan to clean up a major port hits the road." The nearly 17,000 trucks regularly serving the ports produce more smog and soot than all 6 million cars in the region and cause 1,200 premature deaths annually, according to the California Air Resources Board. Asthma rates among children living in the vicinity are double the national average, while dock workers and truck drivers face significantly higher risks of lung and throat cancer, various studies have shown. The ban on pre-1989 trucks immediately excludes more than 2,000 vehicles — roughly 14 percent of the ports’ combined fleet of diesel haulers — that account for about half of the port area’s total truck pollution, port officials say. Supporters say scrapping those 2,000-plus trucks will remove more than 350 tons of harmful emissions.

Interesting2:

Almost every major auto manufacturer has now announced plans to offer a plug-in hybrid vehicle that can run on electricity for 20-40 miles before switching to gasoline. Since half of American cars travel under 25 miles a day, plug-ins allow people to do most of their driving on electricity, but still have a car for long-distance trips that can be easily and quickly refuelled with gasoline. The most highly anticipated of all the plug-ins is the Chevy Volt, whose new design was recently rolled out by GM. It will be offered to the public by the end of 2010, and, soon after that, GM expects to be selling 60,000 a year. One key advantage of electricity as an alternative fuel is that it is much, much cheaper per mile than gasoline at current prices. GM says it will cost $0.02 per mile to drive the Volt less than 40 miles per day, versus $0.12 per mile for gasoline at a price of $3.60. If gas prices continue to rise over the next decade, as many think, the fuel savings from plug-ins will only grow. Another advantage is that electricity can come from pollution-free sources that do not contribute to global warming. There simply is no other alternative fuel that offers a more affordable and practical path to sharply reducing the transportation sector’s greenhouse gas emissions.

That said, the lithium-ion batteries required for plug-ins have never been used for this application before. As one battery expert told me: "There are only pilot production of various Li-Ion batteries" around the world. An alternative fuel vehicle expert told me that GM has "already sunk at least $1bn into the Volt and cannot reasonably expect a profit from a $45,000 new car in an economy which is imploding. The actual cost of the vehicle may be higher." So to succeed, plug-ins like the Volt will require several years of sustained government support. But that should not be a surprise. No country in the world has achieved significant market penetration of an alternative-fuel vehicle without major government incentives and mandates. Yet while Barack Obama strongly believes in such incentives and mandates, John McCain has a quarter-century record in Congress strongly opposing them. Indeed, he has voted with oil-patch senator James Inhofe and against clean energy and alternative fuels a remarkable 42 out of 44 times since the mid-1990s, not even counting the last eight consecutive votes on renewable energy incentives that he didn’t bother to show up for.

Interesting3:

The shorelines of ancient Alberta, British Columbia and the Canadian Arctic were an important refuge for some of the world’s earliest animals, most of which were wiped out by a mysterious global extinction event some 252 million years ago. U of C scientists have solved part of the mystery of where marine organisms that recovered from the biggest extinction on earth were housed. A team of researchers, including Charles Henderson, a geoscience professor at the U of C, Tyler Beatty, a PhD candidate at the U of C and J-P Zonneveld, an associate professor at the U of A, discovered that the shorelines of ancient Canada provided a refuge for marine organisms that escaped annihilation during the Permian-Triassic extinction event. "The boundary between the end of the Permian and beginning of the Triassic period saw unparalleled species loss in the marine realm, and biotic recovery was delayed relative to other mass extinctions," says Henderson, in a paper published in the October edition of Geology. "A major unresolved question has been discovering where the marine organisms that recovered from the extinction were housed." Henderson adds that this may not be the only refuge where life survived after the mass extinction, but it is the only area discovered to date.

Interesting4:

Arctic sea ice extent during the 2008 melt season dropped to the second-lowest level since satellite measurements began in 1979, reaching the lowest point in its annual cycle of melt and growth on Sept. 14, according to researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder‘s National Snow and IceDataCenter. Preliminary data also indicate 2008 may represent the lowest volume of Arctic sea ice on record, according to the researchers. The declining Arctic sea ice is due to rising concentrations of greenhouse gases that have elevated temperatures across the Arctic and strong natural variability in Arctic sea ice, according to scientists. Average sea ice extent during September, a benchmark measurement in the scientific study of Arctic sea ice, was 1.8 million square miles.

The record monthly low, set in 2007, was 1.65 million square miles. The third lowest monthly low was 2.15 square miles in 2005, according researchers at the center. The 2008 low strongly reinforces the 30-year downward trend in Arctic sea ice extent, said CU-Boulder Research Professor Mark Serreze, an NSIDC senior scientist. The 2008 September low was 34 percent below the long-term average from 1979 to 2000 and only 9 percent greater than the 2007 record. Because the 2008 low was so far below the September average, the negative trend in the September extent has been pulled downward, from a minus 10.7 percent per decade to a minus 11.7 percent per decade, he said. "When you look at the sharp decline we have seen over the past 30 years, a recovery from lowest to second lowest is no recovery at all," Serreze said. "Both within and beyond the Arctic, the implications of the decline are enormous."

Interesting5:

Bluefin tuna from both sides of the Atlantic get together as juveniles, a discovery that could affect how the tuna fishery is managed. While North American and Mediterranean bluefin return home to spawn, a study published in Friday’s edition of the journal Science reveals that as youngsters the fish travel long distances to intermix. The researchers found that while the largest tuna — sought by commercial fishermen off North America — tend to be local fish, the smaller ones caught by sport fishermen often have originated in the Mediterranean. The team, led by Jay Rooker of TexasA&MUniversity and David Secor of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, was able to identify the origins of fish by examining the chemical composition of the otolith, or ear stone, of the tuna. "Juveniles are not conforming to the principal premise of how they’ve been managed — that fish keep to their own side of the Atlantic," Secor said in a statement. "This could be particularly troubling if North American juveniles head to the Mediterranean. High exploitation there might mean that few make it back. Evaluating where Mediterranean juveniles originate should be our next highest priority." The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas meets next month in Morocco to discuss declining tuna stocks and ways to better manage species.