Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Sunday afternoon: Lihue, Kauai – 84 Honolulu, Oahu – 91 Kaneohe, Oahu – 83 Kahului, Maui – 89 Hilo, Hawaii – 84 Kailua-kona – 87 Air Temperaturesranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level, and on the highest mountains…at 8 p.m. Sunday evening:
Honolulu, Oahu – 79F Hilo, Hawaii – 73
Haleakala Crater – 46 (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 Sunday evening: 0.47 Mount Waialeale Kauai
0.42 Poamoho 2, Oahu
0.02 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe 0.32 Puu Kukui, Maui
0.06 Kealakekua, Big Island Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather mapshowing a 1022 millibar high pressure system to the northeast 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 theInfrared 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 animatedradar image.
Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live webcam on the summit of near 14,000 footMauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. The tallest peak on the island of Maui is theHaleakala 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.
The typical trade wind weather pattern continues here in the islands.High pressure to the northeast of Hawaii, will keep light to moderately strong trade winds blowing across our tropical latitudes. There will be little change in this pleasant reality into at least the first part of the new week ahead. Our winds will finally begin to ease up over the next several days.
These trade winds will carry a few showers our way, although they will be restricted to the windward sides for the most part. The leeward sides will continue to be dry and sunny to partly sunny during the days. All things considered, our local weather will remain nice, with no major changes expected through the next several days…at least.
Tropical storm Marie, and tropical storm Norbet remain active in the eastern Pacific.Marie will is moving over cooler sea surface temperatures…bringing her down into the tropical storm category now. Well before Marie gets anywhere near our central Pacific, she will have fizzled out. Here’s atracking mapshowing these tropical storms in relation to our Hawaiian Islands, as well as asatellite imageof both of these tropical cyclones.
It’s Sunday evening here in Kula, Maui, as I begin writing this last section of today’s weather narrative from Hawaii. As you can see from the two paragraphs above, our weather here in the Hawaiian Islands will remain favorably inclined. I see nothing in the immediate future to interrupt these pleasant, autumn weather circumstances. The prevailing trade wind flow will dominate our Hawaiian islands weather picture well into the future. ~~~I will be back early Monday morning with your next new weather narrative. I hope you have a great Sunday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.
Interesting:
The world’s largest biomass power plant running exclusively on chicken manure has opened in the Netherlands. The power plant will deliver renewable electricity to 90,000 households. It has a capacity of 36.5 megawatts, and will generate more than 270 million kWh of electricity per year. The biomass power plant is more than merely “carbon neutral”. If the chicken manure were to be spread out over farm land, it would release not only CO2, but also methane, a very potent greenhouse gas. By using the manure for power generation, the release of methane is avoided. The biomass power plant will utilize approximately 440,000 tons of chicken manure, roughly one third of the total amount produced each year in the Netherlands. Many European countries, including the Netherlands, suffer under an excess of different types of animal manure that pollute the environment.
Interesting2:
Thanks to a genetic breakthrough, a large portion of Earth’s now-inhospitable soil could be used to grow crops — potentially alleviating one of the most pressing problems facing the planet’s rapidly growing population. Scientists at the University of California, Riverside made plants tolerant of poisonous aluminum by tweaking a single gene. This may allow crops to thrive in the 40 to 50 percent of Earth’s soils currently rendered toxic by the metal. "Aluminum toxicity is a very limiting factor, especially in developing countries, in South America and Africa and Indonesia," said biochemist Paul Larsen. "It’s not like these areas are devoid of plant life, but they’re not crop plants.
Among agriculturally important plants, there aren’t mechanisms for aluminum tolerance." The planet is rapidly running out of room to grow food, and scientists say that the world’s booming population — expected to swell by half in the next 50 years — will outstrip food production. There’s no more room for farms in the developed world; demand for cropland is fueling deforestation in the rain forests of Latin America and Africa; and the limits of the Green Revolution, which increased global food production through the use of pesticides and industrial farming techniques, have been reached. Another revolution, say agronomists, is needed.
Interesting3:
A paleontologist whose beachfront home in Texas was destroyed during Hurricane Ike has found a football-size tooth in the debris. Dorothy Sisk and Jim Westgate are scientists at LamarUniversity. They discovered the fossil tooth in the front yard of Sisk’s home in Caplen on the devastated BolivarPeninsula. Westgate believes the fossil is from a Columbian mammoth common in North America until around 10,000 years ago. The tooth looks like a series of boot soles or slices of bread wedged together. It is expected to be sent to the TexasMemorialMuseum in Austin. More than 1 million people fled the Texas coast because of Hurricane Ike.
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.
Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Friday afternoon: Lihue, Kauai – 85 Honolulu, Oahu – 89 Kaneohe, Oahu – 83 Kahului, Maui – 88 Hilo, Hawaii – 82 Kailua-kona – 87 Air Temperaturesranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level, and on the highest mountains…at 5 p.m. Friday evening:
Port Allen – 86F Hilo, Hawaii – 74
Haleakala Crater – 46 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 37 (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 Friday afternoon: 0.82 Mount Waialeale Kauai
0.24 Manoa Valley, Oahu
0.00 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe 0.10 Puu Kukui, Maui
0.25 Hilo airport, Big Island Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather mapshowing a 1024 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 theInfrared 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 animatedradar image.
Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live webcam on the summit of near 14,000 footMauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. The tallest peak on the island of Maui is theHaleakala 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
Iao Stream and Needle on Maui Photo Credit: flickr.com
There are plenty of things that don’t seem normal at the moment, but our local Hawaiian weather picture isn’t one of them.We find all the necessary ingredients to qualify as routine now, with light to moderately strong trade winds, and the obligatory few passing showers along the windward sides. There will be no shortage of daytime sunshine, especially along those warm to very warm leeward beaches. The nights will be getting longer slowly, although air temperatures will remain seasonably warm under the influence of air brought in by the easterly trade winds.
Looking at the latest GFS computer model, we find trade wind producing high pressure systems parked generally to the north through the next several days, which eventually shift to the northeast away from Hawaii. This migration of the high pressure cell is induced by the approach of a storm moving along in the mid-latitudes next week. This low, with its associated cold front don’t get close to our islands. This allows the trade winds to continue blowing through at least the next week, keeping favorably inclined weather over the Aloha state.
Glancing eastward, we see hurricane Marie spinning the waters of the eastern Pacific, located approximately 2000 miles away.Marie will sport these hurricane force winds only briefly before moving over cooler sea surface temperatures…bringing her down into the tropical storm category again. Well before Marie gets anywhere near our central Pacific, all the winds will have left her sails. Here’s atracking mapshowing this hurricane in relation to our Hawaiian Islands…asatellite imagetoo. A new tropical system named 15E has spun up Friday evening, which are shown on both the links above.
It’s early Friday evening here in Kihei, Maui, as I begin writing this last section of today’s weather narrative from Hawaii. As you can see from the two paragraphs above, our weather here in the Hawaiian Islands will remain really nice. I see nothing in the immediate future to interrupt this these pleasant, autumn weather circumstances. The prevailing trade wind flow will dominate our Hawaiian islands weather picture well into the future. ~~~ The haze problem that we saw Thursday afternoon into Friday morning, got blown away by the trade winds, so our air visibilities have improved markedly during the day. ~~~I’m about ready to leave Kihei, for the drive to Kahului. I’m going to see the new western out called Appaloosa (2008), starring Ed Harris, Jeremy Irons, Robert Knott, Viggo Mortensen, and Renee Zellweger, among others. The Western genre continues its resurgence with this drama from actor-director Ed Harris. Based on Robert B. Parker’s novel, Appaloosa follows a pair of lawmen (played by Harris and Viggo Mortensen) who must unite over their town’s crisis, as they’re divided over their mutual love of a woman (Renée Zellweger). One critic writes this about the film: "A warmly made, slightly offbeat movie about friendly devotion. It also happens to be a western, and every man in it is grizzled or wizened or both." At any rate, I’m certainly drawn to it, and perhaps you will be too, here’s atrailer for your perusal. ~~~I’ll be back early Saturday morning with your next new weather narrative, along with a movie review of my own. I hope you have a great Friday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.
Interesting:
The world’s largest biomass power plant running exclusively on chicken manure has opened in the Netherlands. The power plant will deliver renewable electricity to 90,000 households. It has a capacity of 36.5 megawatts, and will generate more than 270 million kWh of electricity per year. The biomass power plant is more than merely “carbon neutral”. If the chicken manure were to be spread out over farm land, it would release not only CO2, but also methane, a very potent greenhouse gas. By using the manure for power generation, the release of methane is avoided. The biomass power plant will utilize approximately 440,000 tons of chicken manure, roughly one third of the total amount produced each year in the Netherlands. Many European countries, including the Netherlands, suffer under an excess of different types of animal manure that pollute the environment.
Interesting2:
Thanks to a genetic breakthrough, a large portion of Earth’s now-inhospitable soil could be used to grow crops — potentially alleviating one of the most pressing problems facing the planet’s rapidly growing population. Scientists at the University of California, Riverside made plants tolerant of poisonous aluminum by tweaking a single gene. This may allow crops to thrive in the 40 to 50 percent of Earth’s soils currently rendered toxic by the metal. "Aluminum toxicity is a very limiting factor, especially in developing countries, in South America and Africa and Indonesia," said biochemist Paul Larsen. "It’s not like these areas are devoid of plant life, but they’re not crop plants.
Among agriculturally important plants, there aren’t mechanisms for aluminum tolerance." The planet is rapidly running out of room to grow food, and scientists say that the world’s booming population — expected to swell by half in the next 50 years — will outstrip food production. There’s no more room for farms in the developed world; demand for cropland is fueling deforestation in the rain forests of Latin America and Africa; and the limits of the Green Revolution, which increased global food production through the use of pesticides and industrial farming techniques, have been reached. Another revolution, say agronomists, is needed.
Interesting3:
A paleontologist whose beachfront home in Texas was destroyed during Hurricane Ike has found a football-size tooth in the debris. Dorothy Sisk and Jim Westgate are scientists at LamarUniversity. They discovered the fossil tooth in the front yard of Sisk’s home in Caplen on the devastated BolivarPeninsula. Westgate believes the fossil is from a Columbian mammoth common in North America until around 10,000 years ago. The tooth looks like a series of boot soles or slices of bread wedged together. It is expected to be sent to the TexasMemorialMuseum in Austin. More than 1 million people fled the Texas coast because of Hurricane Ike.
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.
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 Temperaturesranged 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 mapshowing 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 theInfrared 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 animatedradar image.
Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live webcam on the summit of near 14,000 footMauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. The tallest peak on the island of Maui is theHaleakala 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.
Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Wednesday afternoon: Lihue, Kauai – 84 Honolulu, Oahu – 88 Kaneohe, Oahu – 83 Kahului, Maui – 86 Hilo, Hawaii – 83 Kailua-kona – 87 Air Temperaturesranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level, and on the highest mountains…at 4 p.m. Wednesday afternoon:
Port Allen, Kauai – 88F Lihue, Kauai– 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 Wednesday afternoon:
0.31 Mount Waialeale Kauai
0.18 Wilson Tunnel, Oahu
0.03 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe 0.23 West Wailuaiki, Maui 1.81 Honaunau, Big Island Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather mapshowing a 1021 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 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 theInfrared 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 animatedradar image.
Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live webcam on the summit of near 14,000 footMauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. The tallest peak on the island of Maui is theHaleakala 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.
The first cold front of the autumn season is now to the south of the Hawaiian Islands.The truth is that even if this frontal cloud band waited until October to arrive, it still would have been an early one…qualifying for the label unusual. The fact that it arrived during the month of September puts it into more rarified air! At any rate, the front is now in the area to our south, as shown on thissatellite image. As can be seen, the linear integrity of the band is now falling apart, grading into just the scattered clouds that surround it generally to the north. The remnant clouds are down in the easterly trade wind belt of winds, which will pull and stretch what’s left of it into oblivion soon. Here in the islands, and to the north and northeast, our winds are still coming in from the northeast direction.
The airflow is dry and stable in the wake of the frontal passage.This in turn will put a good cap on the ability for our local cumulus and stratocumulus to grow vertically. These rather shallow clouds will be limited in their shower producing capabilities. These are all the qualities of a fairly routine trade wind weather pattern. The current NE breezes will gradually turn clockwise towards the east. Trade winds this time of year signify good weather, actually, some of the best of the autumn season…before we see more frequent cold fronts with their blustery Kona winds. That, or light and variable winds, with the associated haze and muggy weather that accompanies slack wind conditions.
It’s early Wednesday evening here in Kihei, Maui, as I begin writing this last section of today’s weather narrative from Hawaii.Looking out the next five days, I don’t see any new cold fronts coming our way from the northwest. High pressure systems remain parked more or less to the north of the state through the rest of this week. Looking east, over in the eastern Pacific, we find newly formed tropical stormMariechurning the waters there. Just eastward of Marie, as shown on that satellite picture, there may be a second storm brewing, which if it were to spin-up…would take the name Norbert. Marie isn’t expected to reach hurricane status, and by the end of the week, will still be located in the eastern Pacific, well east of the all important 140W line of longitude, separating the central and eastern Pacific Ocean. There’s always that chance that Marie, or whatever is left of her, might eventually bring an increase in showers to our windward sides.~~~ Wednesday was one of those near perfect days here in the islands…why wasn’t it perfect, well, I’m not exactly sure! I have no reason to believe that Thursday, and for that matter, all the rest of the days this week won’t remain firmly planted on the positive side of the weather spectrum. I’ll be back very early Thursday morning with your next new weather narrative from paradise, I hope you have a great Wednesday night! Aloha for now…Glenn.
Interesting:
Wind turbines do not drive birds from surrounding areas, British researchers said on Wednesday, in findings which could make it easier to build more wind farms. Conservation groups have raised fears that large birds could get caught in the turbines and that the structures could disturb other species. But scientists found only one of the 23 species studied, the pheasant, was affected during their survey of two wind farms in eastern England. The findings published in the Journal of Applied Ecology could help government and business efforts to boost the number of wind farms as a way to increase production of renewable energy. "This is the first evidence suggesting that the present and future location of large numbers of wind turbines on European farmland is unlikely to have detrimental effects on farmland birds," Mark Whittingham, whose team from NewcastleUniversity carried out the research, said in a statement.
"This should be welcome news for nature conservationists, wind energy companies and policy makers." The survey studied the impact of two wind farms on about 3,000 birds in the area, including five species of conservation concern — the yellowhammer, the Eurasian tree sparrow, the corn bunting, the Eurasian skylark and the common reed bunting. The researchers recorded the density of birds at different distances from the turbines and found that aside from the pheasant, the structures posed no problems. The new findings are important because the European Union is committed to generating 20 percent of its energy from renewable resources by 2020 and is also seeking to boost biodiversity. The study did not look at the danger of the birds colliding with the turbines, which has been a worry of conservationists, Whittingham said.
Interesting2:
Will there be another "dust bowl" in the Great Plains similar to the one that swept the region in the 1930s? It depends on water storage underground. Groundwater depth has a significant effect on whether the Great Plains will have a drought or bountiful year. Recent modeling results show that the depth of the water table, which results from lateral water flow at the surface and subsurface, determines the relative susceptibility of regions to changes in temperature and precipitation. "Groundwater is critical to understand the processes of recharge and drought in a changing climate," said Reed Maxwell, an atmospheric scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, who along with a colleague at BonnUniversity analyzed the models that appear in the Sept. 28 edition of the journal Nature Geoscience.
Maxwell and Stefan Kollet studied the response of a watershed in the southern Great Plains in Oklahoma using a groundwater/surface-water/land-surface model. The southern Great Plains are an important agricultural region that has experienced severe droughts during the past century including the "dust bowl" of the 1930s. This area is characterized by little winter snowpack, rolling terrain and seasonal precipitation. While the onset of droughts in the region may depend on sea surface temperature, the length and depth of major droughts appear to depend on soil moisture conditions and land-atmosphere interactions.
Interesting3:
Thousands of feet below the bottom of the sea, off the shores of Santa Barbara, single-celled organisms are busy feasting on oil. Until now, nobody knew how many oily compounds were being devoured by the microscopic creatures, but new research led by David Valentine of UC Santa Barbara and Chris Reddy of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts has shed new light on just how extensive their diet can be. In a report to be published in the Oct. 1 edition of the journal Environmental Science & Technology, Valentine, Reddy, lead author George Wardlaw of UCSB, and three other co-authors detail how the microbes are dining on thousands of compounds that make up the oil seeping from the sea floor.
"It takes a special organism to live half a mile deep in the Earth and eat oil for a living," said Valentine, an associate professor of earth science at UCSB. "There’s this incredibly complex diet for organisms down there eating the oil. It’s like a buffet." And, the researchers found, there may be one other byproduct being produced by all of this munching on oil – natural gas. "They’re eating the oil, and probably making natural gas out of it," Valentine said. "It’s actually a whole consortium of organisms – some that are eating the oil and producing intermediate products, and then those intermediate products are converted by another group to natural gas."
Interesting4:
Nearly 200 million people now live outside their country of birth. But the patterns of migration that got them there have proven difficult to project. Now scientists at RockefellerUniversity, with assistance from the United Nations, have developed a predictive model of worldwide population shifts that they say will provide better estimates of migration across international boundaries. Because countries use population projections to estimate local needs for jobs, schools, housing and health care, a more precise formula to describe how people move could lead to better use of resources and improved economic conditions. The model, recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, improves existing ways to estimate population movement between individual countries and is being considered by the United Nations as an approach all nations can utilize, says the study’s lead investigator, Joel E. Cohen, Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor and head of the Laboratory of Populations.
"From year to year, it has been difficult to calculate how the world’s population ebbs and flows between countries other than guessing that this year will resemble last year. But that is critical information in so many ways, and this model offers a new and unified approach that, we hope, will be of global benefit," Cohen says. Formulas used until now were so flawed that they sometimes estimated that net emigration away from a particular country was greater than the country’s original population, Cohen says, with a result that a nation was left with a predicted population of fewer than zero. "This has been a very inexact science," Cohen says.
Interesting5:
Some breakfast cereals marketed to U.S. children are more than half sugar by weight and many get only fair scores on nutritional value, Consumer Reports said on Wednesday. A serving of 11 popular cereals, including Kellogg’s Honey Smacks, carries as much sugar as a glazed doughnut, the consumer group found. And some brands have more sugar and sodium when formulated for the U.S. market than the same brands have when sold in other countries. Post Golden Crisp made by Kraft Foods Inc and Kellogg’s Honey Smacks are more than 50 percent sugar by weight, the group said, while nine brands are at least 40 percent sugar.
The most healthful brands are Cheerios with three grams of fiber per serving and one gram of sugar, Kix and Honey Nut Cheerios, all made by General Mills, and Life, made by Pepsico Inc’s Quaker Oats unit. "Be sure to read the product labels, and choose cereals that are high in fiber and low in sugar and sodium," Gayle Williams, deputy editor of Consumer Reports Health, said in a statement. Honey Smacks has 15 grams of sugar and just one gram of fiber per serving while Kellogg’s Corn Pops has 12 grams of sugar and no fiber. Consumer Reports studied how 91 children aged 6 to 16 poured their cereal and found they served themselves about 50 to 65 percent more on average than the suggested serving size for three of the four tested cereals.
Interesting6:
The federal government took a new, ecosystem-based approach to the endangered species list on Tuesday, proposing an all-at-once addition of 48 species, including plants, two birds and a fly, that live only on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. The action by the Interior Department would designate about 43 square miles as critical habitat for all the species rather than considering each species’ habitat separately, which has been the practice for three decades. Officials said considering the species all at once should save time and resources and would help the whole ecosystem. The same approach is planned to help protect rare species on Oahu, the Big Island and Maui over the next several years, and it could be considered for the Arctic, big river systems of the Southwest and areas of the mountain West, according to department officials.
"For more than three decades, we’ve been struggling with one species at a time," said Dale Hall, Fish and Wildlife Service director, in a conference call with news media. "This gives us a chance to look at groups of species and at the same time be economical in the way we designate critical habitat." Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, in Honolulu for an island health conference, said the new "holistic approach" will benefit not only the listed species but also the rest of the ecosystem. "By addressing the common threats that occur across these ecosystems, we can more effectively focus our conservation efforts on restoring the functions of these shared habitats," Kempthorne said. The species include 45 plants, two birds and an insect, the Hawaiian picture-wing fly. The Endangered Species Coalition hailed the action as "an end to the drought," noting that the Interior Department has added only one species to the endangered list in the past two years, the polar bear.
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 Temperaturesranged 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 mapshowing 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 theInfrared 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 animatedradar image.
Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live webcam on the summit of near 14,000 footMauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. The tallest peak on the island of Maui is theHaleakala 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.
Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Monday afternoon: Lihue, Kauai – 85
Honolulu, Oahu – 85 Kaneohe, Oahu – 84 Kahului, Maui – 86 Hilo, Hawaii – 83 Kailua-kona – 85 Air Temperaturesranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level, and on the highest mountains…at 4 p.m. Monday afternoon:
Port Allen, Kauai – 88F Barking Sands, Kauai– 79
Haleakala Crater – 57 (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 Monday afternoon:
0.08 Kalaheo, Kauai
0.06 Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
0.00 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe 0.21 Kaupo Gap, Maui
0.13 Kealakekua, Big Island Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather mapshowing a dissipating cold front pushing through the state Tuesday. At the same time we find a new high pressure system following the front, which will bring northeast winds our way…gradually turning to classic trade winds into Wednesday.
Satellite and Radar Images: To view the cloud conditions we have here in Hawaii, please use the following satellite links, starting off with theInfrared 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 animatedradar image.
Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live webcam on the summit of near 14,000 footMauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. The tallest peak on the island of Maui is theHaleakala 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
Great sunset colors from the Kona coast Photo Credit: flickr.com
Light northerly breezes will remain in place Monday night, under the influence of an early season cold front passing down through the state slowly. A brief period of cool (tropically speaking) north to northeast breezes will fill-in with this weak frontal cloud band into Tuesday.Winds will pick up some later Tuesday into Wednesday from the NE, increasing some from the more traditional ENE to easterly trade wind direction Thursday through the end of the week.
The leading edge of the cold front passed over Kauai Monday afternoon…and is in the process of moving over Oahu in the early evening hours. The band of clouds will work its way southward to Maui Monday night, then on to the Big Island early Tuesday. Here’s a looping radar image of the showers embedded in the front. Showers will remain in place along the windward sides, as the north to northeast winds keep clouds banked-up against those areas.
This is not a strong front, although it is bringing a period of light showers with it. The windward sides of the islands will find the most generous rainfall from this front, although a few showers should find their way over into the leeward sides in places. The windward sides will remain quite cloudy, with leftover showers falling there for a day or two. The leeward sides will clear out rather quickly during the day Tuesday.
It’s Early Monday evening here in Kihei, Maui, as I begin writing this last section of today’s tropical weather narrative from Hawaii. The slightly cool north breezes blew through the islands Monday, keeping modestly cooler air temperatures than normal, which should remain the case for the next day or two. Looking at the latest satellite image, we can see this cold front migrating down through the island chain. As the clouds associated with the frontal boundary move over each individual island, clouds will increase, with showers falling. This is exceptionally early in the autumn season for such a cold front to arrive. It would be more typical to see a front like this coming our way during the later part of October or November. ~~~ Looking out the window here in Kihei, I can see the first sign of the frontal cloud band, or at least the prefrontal clouds, showing up over the ocean to our north. I’ll have a better view of these clouds, once I get home to Kula. Tuesday should be a tad cooler than it was Monday, with the cooler air, from more northern latitudes, following in the wake of the cold frontal passage. I’ll be back very early Tuesday morning with your next new weather narrative, with updates about the front, and where it is located then. I hope you have a great Monday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.
Interesting:In South Korea, wind power would be a likely resource to help the world’s tenth largest energy consumer meet government goals to lower fossil fuel dependency through greater investment in renewable energy. Yet efforts to build wind turbines in South Korea have met fierce opposition, even among environmentalists, due to the lack of open land in the densely populated country. Only about 100 megawatts (MW) of wind power are installed nationwide despite plentiful wind resources and government price controls that keep renewable power competitive with traditional energy sources. The solution might be found off the Korean peninsula’s shores, and South Korea is not alone.
As more countries seek to increase their renewable energy ratios, many consider off-shore wind a potential solution to provide clean energy without affecting local landscapes and communities. Off-shore wind has so far taken a back seat to on-shore wind farms during the current boom in wind energy development. Off-shore turbines are more difficult to maintain, and they cost $.08-$0.12 per kilowatt-hour, compared to $.05-$.08 for on-shore wind. But off-shore wind farms offer several benefits over their land-based counterparts. Strong ocean winds allow one off-shore turbine to generate substantially more power than one on-shore turbine. Also, if an off-shore wind farm is located near a coastal city, clean energy would be available without dedicating land to new transmission lines.
Interesting2:Following a record-breaking season of arctic sea ice decline in 2007, NASA scientists have kept a close watch on the 2008 melt season. Although the melt season did not break the record for ice loss, NASA data are showing that for a four-week period in August 2008, sea ice melted faster during that period than ever before. Each year at the end of summer, sea ice in the Arctic melts to reach its annual minimum. Ice that remains, or "perennial ice," has survived from year to year and contains old, thick ice. The area of arctic sea ice, including perennial and seasonal ice, has taken a hit in past years as melt has accelerated. Researchers believe that if the rate of decline continues, all arctic sea ice could be gone within the century.
"I was not expecting that ice cover at the end of summer this year would be as bad as 2007 because winter ice cover was almost normal," said Joey Comiso of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "We saw a lot of cooling in the Arctic that we believe was associated with La Niña. Sea ice in Canada had recovered and even expanded in the Bering Sea and Baffin Bay. Overall, sea ice recovered to almost average levels. That was a good sign that this year might not be as bad as last year." The 2008 sea ice minimum was second to 2007 for the record-lowest extent of sea ice, according to a joint announcement Sept. 16 by NASA and the University of Colorado’s National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colo. As of Sept. 12, 2008, the ice extent was 1.74 million square miles. That’s 0.86 million square miles below the average minimum extent recorded from 1979 to 2000, according to NSIDC.
Interesting3: Flushed with the success of Olympic traffic controls and struck by the painful return to congested normality, Beijing on Saturday unveiled plans for smaller-scale but permanent controls on its drivers. Cars will be banned from the roads one out of five weekdays, in a system based on the number of their license plate, and 30 percent of government cars will be taken off the road entirely, the official Xinhua agency reported. The new rules will kick in for a six-month trial on October 11. Department stores will open and close an hour later and the government will encourage companies to allow flexible working hours or change their shifts to ease the rush hour traffic that brings parts of the city to a near standstill. It is also considering raising downtown parking fees. After the clearer skies and smooth roads of the Olympics the city has been buzzing with discussions of whether the traffic controls that grounded cars on alternate days for two months could be extended. Under the new system all cars will be free to circulate at weekends. On Mondays cars with license plates ending with 1 or 6 will be banned, on Tuesdays those ending with 2 or 7, on Wednesdays 3 and 8, on Thursdays 4 or 9 and on Friday 5 or 0.
Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Sunday afternoon:
Lihue, Kauai – 85
Honolulu, Oahu – 85 Kaneohe, Oahu – 84 Kahului, Maui – 85 Hilo, Hawaii – 85
Kailua-kona – 85 Air Temperaturesranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level, and on the highest mountains…at 4 p.m. Sunday afternoon:
Kapalua, Maui – 86F Lihue, Kauai– 81
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 Sunday afternoon:
0.11 Kapahi, Kauai 0.15 Hakipuu Mauka, Oahu
0.00 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe 0.07 Puu Kukui, Maui
0.05 Kealakekua, Big Island Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather mapshowing a weak 1017 millibar high pressure system far to the east-northeast of Hawaii. A slowly approaching cold front has pushed this high’s ridge down to the east of the islands. This pressure configuration will keep light northerly breezes in place Monday, increasing some in strength Tuesday.
Satellite and Radar Images: To view the cloud conditions we have here in Hawaii, please use the following satellite links, starting off with theInfrared 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 animatedradar image.
Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live webcam on the summit of near 14,000 footMauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. The tallest peak on the island of Maui is theHaleakala 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
View of Molokai from Maui Photo Credit: flickr.com
Light winds will remain in place through Monday, under the influence of anapproaching early season cold front…which continues pushing in our direction from the north. A brief period of cool (tropically speaking) north to northeast breezes will fill in ahead of and with this weak frontal cloud band later Monday into Wednesday.Winds will pick up some later Wednesday from the NE to ENE trade wind direction, lasting into the weekend.
Showers have been few and far between Sunday, with little change expected through most of Monday. As the leading edge of the cold front arrives over Kauai Monday evening, then Oahu during the night, those islands will find increasing clouds and generally light showers. The band of clouds will work its way southward to Maui Tuesday, and then finally to the Big Island later in the day. Showers will remain in place along the windward sides as the trade winds keep clouds banked up against the windward slopes.
This rather meager cold front will push down into the state later Monday into Tuesday. This is not going to be a strong front, although it will bring a period of light showers with it. Relatively cool north to NE breezes will ride in with the frontal boundary. This will bring our first slight touch of autumn weather, as high temperatures drop a few degrees lower than what they would otherwise Monday through Wednesday.
It’s Early Sunday evening here in Kula, Maui, as I begin writing this last section of today’s tropical weather narrative from Hawaii. Looking at the latest satellite image, we can see the well advertised cold front to the north of the islands. This first cold front of the autumn season won’t be a big deal…with little resemblence to what we would expect during the wilder winter months. Nonetheless, it is unusual to find a cold front arriving during the month of September! We’ll move right back into a fairly normal summer-like trade wind weather pattern after the frontal passage, called a fropa in the weather business. The trade winds will fill back into the Hawaiian Islands weather picture during the second half of the ucoming week. ~~~ I made a great dish this afternoon, starting off by heating up a whole onion in extra virgin olive oil. I then added fresh mushrooms, aspargus spears, okra, corn off the cob…along with fresh red tomatoes and a whole hot (small one of course) pepper from the garden…I’ll put grating cheese on that when plated. Oh yeah, I amost forgot, I added four slices of organic, hickory smoked Sunday (I don’t why its called that…does anyone?) bacon in for added flavor and protein. I made enough to have this delicous dish for dinner each night of the upcoming week, at least through Thursday. Friday nights I most often just have a bag of unbuttered popcorn for dinner, as I go to the movies after work. ~~~ I’ll be back very early Monday morning with your next new weather narrative. I hope you have a great Sunday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn. Interesting:
Rather than building stronger ocean-based structures to withstand tsunamis, it might be easier to simply make the structures disappear. A collaboration of physicists from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and Aix-Marseille Universite in France and the University of Liverpool in England have conducted laboratory experiments showing that it’s possible to make type of dike that acts as an invisibility cloak that hides off-shore platforms from water waves. The principle is analogous to the optical invisibility cloaks that are currently a hot area of physics research. Tsunami invisibility cloaks wouldn’t make structures disappear from sight, but they could manipulate ocean waves in ways that makes off-shore platforms, and possibly even coastlines and small islands, effectively invisible to tsunamis. If the scheme works as well in the real world as the lab-scale experiments suggest, a tsunami should be able to pass right by with little or no effect on anything hidden behind the cloak.
Interesting2: Barack Obama and John McCain are promising voters a Tomorrowland of electric cars and high-speed trains and solar panels, a vision of American life without a drop of imported oil. But their plans to get there look more like Fantasyland. A host of energy policy experts agree that true "energy independence"—a key catch phrase of this presidential campaign—would be far more expensive and disruptive than either candidate is telling you. Our oil addiction hamstrings America‘s foreign policy and military, contributes to global warming and has robbed the nation of trillions of dollars. One of the country’s leading energy modelers estimates that foreign-oil dependence cost our economy $750 billion this year, a little more than the daunting price tag of the proposed Wall Street bailout. The main culprit sits in your driveway: Due largely to massive increases in highway fuel consumption, our oil imports doubled in the last 30 years.
But petroleum is everywhere—in asphalt, ink pens, burger wrappers. Replacing it won’t be nearly as easy as it sounds on the campaign trail. In speech after speech, McCain and Obama extol energy independence and rip the federal government’s failure to achieve it. McCain promises to secure "strategic independence" from foreign sources by 2025, with a plan that includes a $300 million prize for a super-efficient electric car battery. Obama pledges to effectively replace oil imports from the Middle East within a decade, largely by investing $150 billion in alternative fuels. Experts suggest the candidates are wildly understating the cost and time that true independence would require. The transition to a national life without imported oil appears so expensive that none of more than a dozen scientists and scholars interviewed by the Tribune could calculate a price tag. Only one even ventured a ballpark guess: $1 trillion to $2 trillion.
Interesting3:The discovery of rocks as old as 4.28 billion years pushes back age of most ancient remnant of Earth’s crust by 300 million years.McGillUniversity researchers have discovered the oldest rocks on Earth – a discovery which sheds more light on our planet’s mysterious beginnings. These rocks, known as "faux-amphibolites", may be remnants of a portion of Earth’s primordial crust – the first crust that formed at the surface of our planet. The ancient rocks were found in Northern Quebec, along the Hudson‘s Bay coast, 40 km south of Inukjuak in an area known as the Nuvvuagittuq greenstone belt. The discovery was made by Jonathan O’Neil, a Ph.D. candidate at McGill’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Richard W. Carlson, a researcher at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., Don Francis, a McGill professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, and Ross K. Stevenson, a professor at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM).
O’Neil and colleagues estimated the age of the rocks using isotopic dating, which analyzes the decay of the radioactive element neodymium-142 contained within them. This technique can only be used to date rocks roughly 4.1 billion years old or older; this is the first time it has ever been used to date terrestrial rocks, because nothing this old has ever been discovered before. "There have been older dates from Western Australia for isolated resistant mineral grains called zircons," says Carlson, "but these are the oldest whole rocks found so far." The oldest zircon dates are 4.36 billion years. Before this study, the oldest dated rocks were from a body of rock known as the Acasta Gneiss in the Northwest Territories, which are 4.03 billion years old. The Earth is 4.6 billion years old, and remnants of its early crust are extremely rare—most of it has been mashed and recycled into Earth’s interior several times over by plate tectonics since the Earth formed.
Interesting4: An area of the Pacific Ocean once thought to be cold and barren is warmer than scientists thought, a new study finds. The seafloor there might be teeming with life. A group of researchers dropped probes down to a flat region of the Pacific Ocean floor off the coast of Costa Rica and about the size of Connecticut to gauge the water temperature and flow there. To their surprise, the water spewing out of the typically cold ocean floor was warmer and faster than expected in this area. "It’s like finding Old Faithful in Illinois," said study team member Carol Stein of the University of Illinois at Chicago. "When we went out to try to get a feel for how much heat was coming from the ocean floor and how much sea water might be moving through it, we found that there was much more heat than we expected." The sea floor in this region, which lies some 2 miles below the ocean surface, is marked by 10 widely separated outcrops or mounts that rise from sediment covering the ocean crust made of volcanic rock about 20 to 25 million years old.
Large amounts of water gush through cracks and crevices in the ocean crust like geysers and pick up heat as they move through the insulated volcanic rock. While not as hot as water that runs through mid-ocean ridges formed by rising lava, the water is still much warmer than expected. This warmth opens up the possibility that the area could support life, such as bacteria, clams and tubeworm species recently found to be living near hot water discharges along mid-ocean ridges. "It’s relatively warm and may have some of the nutrients needed to support some of the life forms we see on the sea floor," Stein said. The researchers hope to follow up this study, detailed in the September 2008 issue of Nature Geoscience, by examining other areas of the ocean floor to see if they can find any similar to the one off the coast of Costa Rica.
Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Saturday afternoon:
Lihue, Kauai – 85
Honolulu, Oahu – 87 Kaneohe, Oahu – 83 Kahului, Maui – 90 Hilo, Hawaii – 84
Kailua-kona – 84 Air Temperaturesranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level, and on the highest mountains…at 4 p.m. Saturday afternoon:
Honolulu, Oahu – 86F Hilo, Hawaii– 79
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 Saturday afternoon: 0.97 Wailua, Kauai
0.57 Manoa Valley, Oahu
0.10 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.01 Kahoolawe 0.06 Oheo Gulch, Maui
0.07 Waiakea Uka, Big Island Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather mapshowing high pressure systems located to the northeast and northwest of Hawaii. A slowly approaching cold front will push our high pressure ridge close to the islands, causing our local winds to become lighter this weekend…with a tendency to be from the southeast.
Satellite and Radar Images: To view the cloud conditions we have here in Hawaii, please use the following satellite links, starting off with theInfrared 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 animatedradar image.
Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live webcam on the summit of near 14,000 footMauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. The tallest peak on the island of Maui is theHaleakala 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
The beauty of Kauai…like a postcard! Photo Credit: flickr.com
The trade winds have calmed down now, with light winds taking over through Monday. An approaching early season cold front pushing in our direction, is why these lighter winds have settled in our the state. Our local atmosphere will likely become somewhat hazy under this light wind influence…some of which could be of the volcanic variety. Cool (tropically speaking) north to northeast breezes will fill in behind an early season cold front Monday night intoTuesday.Winds will pick up some Wednesday from the NE to ENE direction, lasting for at least several days going forward.
As the lighter breezes are in place now, the bias for showers will be over the interior sections during the afternoon hours…especially on the Kauai end of the island chain. This convective weather pattern will provide generally nice weather during the morning hours, with quite a bit of sunshine in most areas. As the daytime heating of the islands takes place, clouds will form over and around the mountains during the late morning through the afternoon hours…leading to a few localized showers.
An early season cold front will push down into the state late Monday into Tuesday. This is not going to be a strong frontal cloud band, although it will bring light to moderate showers with it. It will bring showers to Kauai and Oahu Monday night, and then drop down to Maui or the Big Island Tuesday…where it will dissipate in place. Relatively cool north to NE breezes will ride in with the frontal boundary. This will bring our first slight touch of autumn weather, as high temperatures drop a few degrees lower than what they would otherwise be. Moisture brought in by the cold front will bank up against the north and NE coasts and slopes…keeping passing shower activity going for several days thereafter.
It’s late Saturday afternoon here in Kula, Maui, as I begin writing this last section of today’s tropical weather narrative from Hawaii. Looking down towards the beaches, it still looks clear and sunny. In contrast, the mountains were the gathering place for afternoon cumulus clouds. This cloudiness dropped a few showers, although I didn’t have any here in Kula. If you look close, you’ll see the weak outline of the cold front, to the upper left of the islands…which will migrate down through the state Monday night into early Tuesday. I’m finding it interesting that this weak cloud band, with its origins in the middle latitudes of the north Pacific, will slip down over us. Perhaps even more interesting, will be the ever so slightly cooler winds that arrive…whose source is over colder waters, in the higher latitudes of the north central Pacific. I know it may be somewhat of a stretch, for most of you, to get all worked up over autumn’s first cold front, but that’s how it gets to me. I love any weather changes, and for some reason, especially those that are associated with cold fronts, and its cooler air coming down into the tropics. I’ll be back early, although not very early Sunday morning, with your next new weather narrative. I hope you have a fun Saturday night, and that you will meet me here again on the final day of rest before Monday arrives. Aloha for now…Glenn.
~~~ Friday evening after work I went to see the new film called Eagle Eye (2008), starring Shia LaBeouf, Billy Bob Thorrnton, and Michelle Monaghan, among others. This action adventure film is a race against time, with two strangers thrown together by a mysterious phone call from a woman they have never met. Threatening their lives and family, she pushes these strangers into a series of increasingly dangerous situations – using the technology of everyday life to track and control their every move. As the situation escalates, these two ordinary people become the country’s most wanted fugitives, who must work together to discover what is really happening – and more importantly, why. This was a fast paced film, which picked you up from the first scene, and never let you go until the last moment…some two hours later! It was the kind of film that I enjoy very much, which was exceptionally entertaining…to the point you lose yourself in the suspense. If you have any interest, here’s a trailer. Interesting:
Rather than building stronger ocean-based structures to withstand tsunamis, it might be easier to simply make the structures disappear. A collaboration of physicists from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and Aix-Marseille Universite in France and the University of Liverpool in England have conducted laboratory experiments showing that it’s possible to make type of dike that acts as an invisibility cloak that hides off-shore platforms from water waves. The principle is analogous to the optical invisibility cloaks that are currently a hot area of physics research. Tsunami invisibility cloaks wouldn’t make structures disappear from sight, but they could manipulate ocean waves in ways that makes off-shore platforms, and possibly even coastlines and small islands, effectively invisible to tsunamis. If the scheme works as well in the real world as the lab-scale experiments suggest, a tsunami should be able to pass right by with little or no effect on anything hidden behind the cloak.
Interesting2: Barack Obama and John McCain are promising voters a Tomorrowland of electric cars and high-speed trains and solar panels, a vision of American life without a drop of imported oil. But their plans to get there look more like Fantasyland. A host of energy policy experts agree that true "energy independence"—a key catch phrase of this presidential campaign—would be far more expensive and disruptive than either candidate is telling you. Our oil addiction hamstrings America‘s foreign policy and military, contributes to global warming and has robbed the nation of trillions of dollars. One of the country’s leading energy modelers estimates that foreign-oil dependence cost our economy $750 billion this year, a little more than the daunting price tag of the proposed Wall Street bailout. The main culprit sits in your driveway: Due largely to massive increases in highway fuel consumption, our oil imports doubled in the last 30 years.
But petroleum is everywhere—in asphalt, ink pens, burger wrappers. Replacing it won’t be nearly as easy as it sounds on the campaign trail. In speech after speech, McCain and Obama extol energy independence and rip the federal government’s failure to achieve it. McCain promises to secure "strategic independence" from foreign sources by 2025, with a plan that includes a $300 million prize for a super-efficient electric car battery. Obama pledges to effectively replace oil imports from the Middle East within a decade, largely by investing $150 billion in alternative fuels. Experts suggest the candidates are wildly understating the cost and time that true independence would require. The transition to a national life without imported oil appears so expensive that none of more than a dozen scientists and scholars interviewed by the Tribune could calculate a price tag. Only one even ventured a ballpark guess: $1 trillion to $2 trillion.
Interesting3:The discovery of rocks as old as 4.28 billion years pushes back age of most ancient remnant of Earth’s crust by 300 million years.McGillUniversity researchers have discovered the oldest rocks on Earth – a discovery which sheds more light on our planet’s mysterious beginnings. These rocks, known as "faux-amphibolites", may be remnants of a portion of Earth’s primordial crust – the first crust that formed at the surface of our planet. The ancient rocks were found in Northern Quebec, along the Hudson‘s Bay coast, 40 km south of Inukjuak in an area known as the Nuvvuagittuq greenstone belt. The discovery was made by Jonathan O’Neil, a Ph.D. candidate at McGill’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Richard W. Carlson, a researcher at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., Don Francis, a McGill professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, and Ross K. Stevenson, a professor at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM).
O’Neil and colleagues estimated the age of the rocks using isotopic dating, which analyzes the decay of the radioactive element neodymium-142 contained within them. This technique can only be used to date rocks roughly 4.1 billion years old or older; this is the first time it has ever been used to date terrestrial rocks, because nothing this old has ever been discovered before. "There have been older dates from Western Australia for isolated resistant mineral grains called zircons," says Carlson, "but these are the oldest whole rocks found so far." The oldest zircon dates are 4.36 billion years. Before this study, the oldest dated rocks were from a body of rock known as the Acasta Gneiss in the Northwest Territories, which are 4.03 billion years old. The Earth is 4.6 billion years old, and remnants of its early crust are extremely rare—most of it has been mashed and recycled into Earth’s interior several times over by plate tectonics since the Earth formed.
Interesting4: An area of the Pacific Ocean once thought to be cold and barren is warmer than scientists thought, a new study finds. The seafloor there might be teeming with life. A group of researchers dropped probes down to a flat region of the Pacific Ocean floor off the coast of Costa Rica and about the size of Connecticut to gauge the water temperature and flow there. To their surprise, the water spewing out of the typically cold ocean floor was warmer and faster than expected in this area. "It’s like finding Old Faithful in Illinois," said study team member Carol Stein of the University of Illinois at Chicago. "When we went out to try to get a feel for how much heat was coming from the ocean floor and how much sea water might be moving through it, we found that there was much more heat than we expected." The sea floor in this region, which lies some 2 miles below the ocean surface, is marked by 10 widely separated outcrops or mounts that rise from sediment covering the ocean crust made of volcanic rock about 20 to 25 million years old.
Large amounts of water gush through cracks and crevices in the ocean crust like geysers and pick up heat as they move through the insulated volcanic rock. While not as hot as water that runs through mid-ocean ridges formed by rising lava, the water is still much warmer than expected. This warmth opens up the possibility that the area could support life, such as bacteria, clams and tubeworm species recently found to be living near hot water discharges along mid-ocean ridges. "It’s relatively warm and may have some of the nutrients needed to support some of the life forms we see on the sea floor," Stein said. The researchers hope to follow up this study, detailed in the September 2008 issue of Nature Geoscience, by examining other areas of the ocean floor to see if they can find any similar to the one off the coast of Costa Rica.
Comments Off on Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs / September 26-27, 2008
September 26-27 2008
Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Friday afternoon:
Lihue, Kauai – 85
Honolulu, Oahu – 85 Kaneohe, Oahu – 83 Kahului, Maui – 90 Hilo, Hawaii – 83
Kailua-kona – 85 Air Temperaturesranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level, and on the highest mountains…at 4 p.m. Friday afternoon:
Kahului, Maui – 87F Kaneohe, Oahu– 79
Haleakala Crater – 57 (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 Friday afternoon: 0.87 Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.45 Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
0.10 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.01 Kahoolawe 0.34 West Wailuaiki, Maui
0.42 Pahoa, Big Island Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather mapshowing high pressure systems located to the northeast and northwest of Hawaii. A slowly approaching cold front will weaken the high pressure ridge to our north, causing our local winds to become lighter this weekend…with a tendency to be from the southeast.
Satellite and Radar Images: To view the cloud conditions we have here in Hawaii, please use the following satellite links, starting off with theInfrared 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 animatedradar image.
Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live webcam on the summit of near 14,000 footMauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. The tallest peak on the island of Maui is theHaleakala 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
The Kohala coast on the Big Island of Hawaii Photo Credit: flickr.com
The trade winds will finally give way to light and variable winds this weekend. These long lasting trade winds were already winding down in speed Friday. As we move into the weekend time frame, an approaching early season cold front will help weaken our trade wind producing ridge, with our local winds going light and variable in direction as a result. If the light air flow takes on a southeast orientation, we could see hazy conditions in some parts of the island chain…some of which would have volcanic origins. Cool (tropically speaking) north to northeast breezes will fill in behind an early season cold front Tuesday.
As light and variable breezes develop this weekend, the emphasis for showers will be over the interior sections during the afternoon hours. This convective weather pattern will provide decent weather during the morning hours, with quite a bit of sunshine in most areas. As the daytime heating of the islands takes place, clouds will form over and around the mountains during the late morning through the afternoon hours…leading to localized showers.
The computer models show an early season cold front pushing down into the state late Monday into Tuesday. This is not going to be a strong frontal cloud band, although it will bring some showers with it. The expectations are that it will bring showers to Kauai Monday night, and then drop down across Oahu and Maui during the day Tuesday…perhaps not quite reaching the Big Island. Relatively cool north to NE breezes riding in with the frontal boundary. This will bring our first touch of autumn weather, as high temperatures drop a few degrees lower than what they would otherwise be.
Satellite imagery continues to show a dissipating tropical disturbance to the south-southwest of the islands. During the last 24 hours it has lost some of its well defined organization however. Here’s a satellite image of that area of thunderstorms. The threat of its developing into a tropical cyclone has diminished. Nonetheless, the tops of the associated thunderstorms, in the form of high cirrus clouds, are being carried up over the southern part of the island chain. This area of disturbed weather will keep moving westward…and away from us.
We continue to set our sights on what will be a weekend of light and variable winds…with its afternoon cloudiness and localized upcountry showers, along with potentially hazy weather. Then, and this is where it gets more interesting, we’re expecting an early autumn cold front to arrive early in the new week ahead! It’s certainly not rare to have a weak cold front during the last few days of September, but then again, it’s not common either. Perhaps as noteworthy as the showers will be the cool air (in the tropical sense of the word) that will sweep into the state with its arrival. This may be a mark of the end of our summer season, even more so than than the calender oriented summer solstice, which we went through several days ago.
It’s early Friday evening here in Kihei, Maui, as I begin writing this last section of today’s tropical weather narrative from Hawaii. I’m about ready to leave Kihei, for the short drive over to Kahului. I’ll be taking in a new film called Eagle Eye (2008), starring Shia LaBeouf, Billy Bob Thorrnton, and Michelle Monaghan, among others. This action adventure film is a race against time, with two strangers thrown together by a mysterious phone call from a woman they have never met. Threatening their lives and family, she pushes these strangers into a series of increasingly dangerous situations – using the technology of everyday life to track and control their every move. As the situation escalates, these two ordinary people become the country’s most wanted fugitives, who must work together to discover what is really happening – and more importantly, why. I’ll of course let you know early Saturday morning what I thought about this just released film, but until then, here’s a trailer to give you a sneak peek. I hope you have a great Friday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn. Interesting:
Rather than building stronger ocean-based structures to withstand tsunamis, it might be easier to simply make the structures disappear. A collaboration of physicists from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and Aix-Marseille Universite in France and the University of Liverpool in England have conducted laboratory experiments showing that it’s possible to make type of dike that acts as an invisibility cloak that hides off-shore platforms from water waves. The principle is analogous to the optical invisibility cloaks that are currently a hot area of physics research. Tsunami invisibility cloaks wouldn’t make structures disappear from sight, but they could manipulate ocean waves in ways that makes off-shore platforms, and possibly even coastlines and small islands, effectively invisible to tsunamis. If the scheme works as well in the real world as the lab-scale experiments suggest, a tsunami should be able to pass right by with little or no effect on anything hidden behind the cloak.
Interesting2: Barack Obama and John McCain are promising voters a Tomorrowland of electric cars and high-speed trains and solar panels, a vision of American life without a drop of imported oil. But their plans to get there look more like Fantasyland. A host of energy policy experts agree that true "energy independence"—a key catch phrase of this presidential campaign—would be far more expensive and disruptive than either candidate is telling you. Our oil addiction hamstrings America‘s foreign policy and military, contributes to global warming and has robbed the nation of trillions of dollars. One of the country’s leading energy modelers estimates that foreign-oil dependence cost our economy $750 billion this year, a little more than the daunting price tag of the proposed Wall Street bailout. The main culprit sits in your driveway: Due largely to massive increases in highway fuel consumption, our oil imports doubled in the last 30 years.
But petroleum is everywhere—in asphalt, ink pens, burger wrappers. Replacing it won’t be nearly as easy as it sounds on the campaign trail. In speech after speech, McCain and Obama extol energy independence and rip the federal government’s failure to achieve it. McCain promises to secure "strategic independence" from foreign sources by 2025, with a plan that includes a $300 million prize for a super-efficient electric car battery. Obama pledges to effectively replace oil imports from the Middle East within a decade, largely by investing $150 billion in alternative fuels. Experts suggest the candidates are wildly understating the cost and time that true independence would require. The transition to a national life without imported oil appears so expensive that none of more than a dozen scientists and scholars interviewed by the Tribune could calculate a price tag. Only one even ventured a ballpark guess: $1 trillion to $2 trillion.
Interesting3:The discovery of rocks as old as 4.28 billion years pushes back age of most ancient remnant of Earth’s crust by 300 million years.McGillUniversity researchers have discovered the oldest rocks on Earth – a discovery which sheds more light on our planet’s mysterious beginnings. These rocks, known as "faux-amphibolites", may be remnants of a portion of Earth’s primordial crust – the first crust that formed at the surface of our planet. The ancient rocks were found in Northern Quebec, along the Hudson‘s Bay coast, 40 km south of Inukjuak in an area known as the Nuvvuagittuq greenstone belt. The discovery was made by Jonathan O’Neil, a Ph.D. candidate at McGill’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Richard W. Carlson, a researcher at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., Don Francis, a McGill professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, and Ross K. Stevenson, a professor at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM).
O’Neil and colleagues estimated the age of the rocks using isotopic dating, which analyzes the decay of the radioactive element neodymium-142 contained within them. This technique can only be used to date rocks roughly 4.1 billion years old or older; this is the first time it has ever been used to date terrestrial rocks, because nothing this old has ever been discovered before. "There have been older dates from Western Australia for isolated resistant mineral grains called zircons," says Carlson, "but these are the oldest whole rocks found so far." The oldest zircon dates are 4.36 billion years. Before this study, the oldest dated rocks were from a body of rock known as the Acasta Gneiss in the Northwest Territories, which are 4.03 billion years old. The Earth is 4.6 billion years old, and remnants of its early crust are extremely rare—most of it has been mashed and recycled into Earth’s interior several times over by plate tectonics since the Earth formed.
Interesting4: An area of the Pacific Ocean once thought to be cold and barren is warmer than scientists thought, a new study finds. The seafloor there might be teeming with life. A group of researchers dropped probes down to a flat region of the Pacific Ocean floor off the coast of Costa Rica and about the size of Connecticut to gauge the water temperature and flow there. To their surprise, the water spewing out of the typically cold ocean floor was warmer and faster than expected in this area. "It’s like finding Old Faithful in Illinois," said study team member Carol Stein of the University of Illinois at Chicago. "When we went out to try to get a feel for how much heat was coming from the ocean floor and how much sea water might be moving through it, we found that there was much more heat than we expected." The sea floor in this region, which lies some 2 miles below the ocean surface, is marked by 10 widely separated outcrops or mounts that rise from sediment covering the ocean crust made of volcanic rock about 20 to 25 million years old.
Large amounts of water gush through cracks and crevices in the ocean crust like geysers and pick up heat as they move through the insulated volcanic rock. While not as hot as water that runs through mid-ocean ridges formed by rising lava, the water is still much warmer than expected. This warmth opens up the possibility that the area could support life, such as bacteria, clams and tubeworm species recently found to be living near hot water discharges along mid-ocean ridges. "It’s relatively warm and may have some of the nutrients needed to support some of the life forms we see on the sea floor," Stein said. The researchers hope to follow up this study, detailed in the September 2008 issue of Nature Geoscience, by examining other areas of the ocean floor to see if they can find any similar to the one off the coast of Costa Rica.
Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Thursday afternoon:
Lihue, Kauai – 84 Honolulu, Oahu – 87 Kaneohe, Oahu – 82 Kahului, Maui – 87 Hilo, Hawaii – 82
Kailua-kona – 86 Air Temperaturesranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level, and on the highest mountains…at 4 p.m. Thursday afternoon:
Barking Sands, Kauai – 84F Port Allen, Kauai– 77
Haleakala Crater – 52 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 39 (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: 2.40 Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.67 Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
0.02 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe 0.60 Oheo Gulch, Maui
0.15 Pahoa, Big Island Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather mapshowing high pressure systems located to the northeast and northwest of Hawaii. This pressure configuration will keep trade winds blowing in the light to moderately strong category Friday. Saturday will find lighter trade winds.
Satellite and Radar Images: To view the cloud conditions we have here in Hawaii, please use the following satellite links, starting off with theInfrared 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 animatedradar image.
Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live webcam on the summit of near 14,000 footMauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. The tallest peak on the island of Maui is theHaleakala 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
Dolphins in Hawaiian waters Photo Credit: flickr.com
The ever present trade winds will continue through Friday. These long lasting, early autumn trade winds will blow in the light to moderately strong range, although somewhat stronger in those typically windier areas around the state. As we move into the weekend time frame, an approaching early season cold front will help push our trade wind producing ridge down closer to the state, perhaps turning our local winds around to the southeast. If this happens, we would see lighter winds, and the chance of hazy weather overlapping some parts of the state.
An upper level trough of low pressure is still just to the north of Kauai Thursday evening. This will help to destabilize our atmosphere to some degree, making our local clouds more shower prone, especially on the Kauai end of the island chain. As clouds, carried by the trade winds, come under the influence of the trough, we’ll see some enhancement of the showers along the windward sides…with a few heavier showers falling here and there. The daytime heating could cause upcountry afternoon showers on the leeward sides in places too. There were reports of random thunderstorms over the waters between Molokai and Maui at mid-day Thursday, so we could see one or two more roaming around here and there.
Satellite imagery continues to show a well defined tropical disturbance to the south of the islands. If it were to develop, as some of the models suggest, we could see a tropical depression forming, moving in a general west direction. The models don’t show this tropical cyclone, if it were to form…moving towards Hawaii. It does however warrant watching, in case it decides to wander off in an unexpected direction. Perhaps the main influence we’ll notice from it will be the at times, thick high clouds streaming off the tops of thunderstorms in the tropics to our south and southwest.
It’s early Thursday evening here in Kihei, Maui, as I begin writing this last paragraph of today’s tropical weather narrative from Hawaii. As you were reading in the paragraph above, there’s something that continues to try and take shape to the south of the Hawaiian Islands now. This satellite image shows this rather impressive tropical disturbance to the south of Hawaii…along with the thick high cirrus clouds that are streaming over the southern islands now too. ~~~ Meanwhile, the models go on to show an early season cold front pushing down towards the Hawaiian Islands early next week. The latest model runs show it moving right down into the islands early next week, bringing early autumn showers with it. ~~~ Thursday got quite cloudy in many areas, totally cloudy at times. There was an unusual multi-layered canopy of clouds, which kept the day from being anything near mostly sunny! As mentioned in one of the paragraphs above, there were even a couple of thunderstorms that popped-up over the ocean between Maui and Molokai! Looking at this looping radar image, we see that most of the precipitation remains centered over and around Maui County, and western side of the Big Island. It appears that we may see somewhat unusual weather circumstances continuing through the next week, as we edge gradually deeper into the early autumn season. ~~~ 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 oldest ice ever found in North America shows that ancient permafrost withstood periods of warming, a new study says. Scientists fear that modern permafrost—soil that remains frozen in the polar regions—may melt and release potentially huge reservoirs of carbon that would speed global warming, scientists say. But the new study suggests that such a thaw could take much longer than previously believed, according to study leader Duane Froese, a geology professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. Estimated to be at least 740,000 years old, the wedges of Canadian ice illustrate the longevity and resiliency of deeper permafrost during warmer climates of the past, they say. The findings counter previously held theories that permafrost in Alaska and in Canada’s central Yukon Territory thawed about 120,000 years ago, during a period warmer than today. The study appears tomorrow in the journal Science.
Ice wedges are formed in frigid dry areas when temperatures get so cold that the ground cracks open. Water runoff from spring thaws fills the vertical cracks in the earth and then freezes, creating a vein of ice that builds outward with each passing year. The ancient ice wedge studied by Froese and his team was found buried under layers of volcanic ash and sediment in a mining area in Canada‘s central Yukon Territory. When gold miners exposed the ancient ice vein, they also uncovered a layer of volcanic ash immediately covering the ice wedge, the researcher explained. "What was unique about this situation is we had volcanic ash we could date," Froese said. Volcanic ash can help scientists determine the age of ice that is older than the range of radiocarbon dating, which spans about 50,000 years, Froese explained. It’s a strategy often used in volcanic regions, such as New Zealand, Alaska, and Iceland, he added.
Interesting2:
Scientists studying the Martian landscape said yes, a river ran through it — and not just one. The ancient red planet also seems to have experienced rain, they say. The rivers may have cut the deep valleys in the Martian highlands near the equator, and also left calling cards elsewhere. Three Mars spacecraft spotted signs of fan-shaped river deltas inside ancient craters which some valleys clearly flow into. "We can see layered sediments where these valleys open into impact craters," said Ernst Hauber, a geologist at the DLR (German space agency) Institute of Planetary Research in Berlin-Adlershof.
"The shape of certain sediments is typical for deltas formed in standing water." Rivers carry sediment downstream until the currents become too weak and let the material fall to the river bottom. The flow almost drops to zero at places where rivers empty into a larger body of water, such as a lake-filled crater. Hauber and other researchers focused on possible ancient river valleys crisscrossing the Xanthe Terra highland region. They examined crater images taken by the European Mars Express, NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor, and NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Interesting3:
Federal wildlife officials have asked a judge to put gray wolves in the Northern Rockies back on the endangered species list — a sharp reversal from the government’s prior contention that the animals were thriving. Attorneys for the Fish and Wildlife Service asked U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy in Missoula to vacate the agency’s February finding that more than 1,400 wolves in the region no longer needed federal protection. The government’s request Monday follows a July injunction in which Molloy had blocked plans for public wolf hunts this fall in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho pending resolution of a lawsuit by environmentalists. "What we want to do is look at this more thoroughly," Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman Sharon Rose said.
"We definitely have a lot of wolves out there, but we need to address some of (Molloy’s) concerns in a way that people feel comfortable with." At issue is whether a decade-long wolf restoration program has reversed the near-extermination of wolves, or if — as environmentalists claim — their long-term survival remains in doubt due to proposed hunting. "This hit everybody really cold," said John Bloomquist, an attorney for the Montana Stockgrowers Association. "All of a sudden the federal defendants are going in the other direction." The government’s request to remand, or reconsider, the issue was filed in response to an April lawsuit from a dozen environmental and animal rights groups.
Interesting4:
An analysis of the gut contents from an exceptionally well-preserved juvenile dinosaur fossil suggests that the hadrosaur’s last meal included plenty of well-chewed leaves digested into tiny bits. The fossil, Brachylophosaurus canadensis aka "Leonardo," is the second well-substantiated case in which the gut contents of a plant-eating dinosaur have been revealed, said Justin S. Tweet, who was a graduate student at the University of Colorado at Boulder when he studied the fossil with colleagues there including paleontologist Karen Chin. The dino, found in what geologists call the Judith River Formation, in Montana, will go on display to the public Friday at the Houston Museum of Natural Science’s "Dinosaur Mummy CSA: Cretaceous Science Investigation" exhibition.
"Our interpretation suggests that the subadult Judith River Formation brachylophosaur had a leaf-dominated diet shortly before its death," the authors write in the September issue of PALAIOS, the journal of the Society for Sedimentary Geology. Leonardo is a 77-million-year-old duckbilled dinosaur whose remains are covered with patterned fossilized skin. The specimen has given scientists a rare peek inside a dinosaur. Digital technology and X-ray scans, some of which were conducted at NASAJohnsonSpaceCenter‘s Ellington Field facility in Texas, has helped paleontologists reconstruct what Leonardo looked like in life, what it ate, its muscle mass and its limb movements. An analysis of pollen found in the specimen’s gut region revealed a variety of plants, including ferns, conifers and flowering plants. Although the pollen could have been ingested when the dinosaur drank water, the tiny leaf bits, under 5 millimeters (a quarter-inch) in length, indicate that Leonardo was a big browser of plants, Chin said.
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