Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs / February 11-12, 2011

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

Barking Sands, Kauai –       73
Honolulu airport, Oahu –     78
Kaneohe, Oahu –               78
Molokai airport –                76
Kahului airport, Maui –        81
Kona airport –                     82
Hilo airport, Hawaii –          81

Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountain tops…as of 5pm Friday evening:

Port Allen, Kauai – 79
Lihue, Kauai – 70F

Haleakala Crater –     missing (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 36 (near 14,000 feet on the Big Island)

Precipitation Totals – The following numbers represent the largest precipitation totals (inches) during the last 24 hours on each of the major islands, as of Friday afternoon:

1.72 Mount Waialeale, Kauai  
3.82 Schofield South, Oahu
0.30 Molokai 
0.73 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
0.21 Kula, Maui
0.03 Waikii, Big Island

Marine Winds – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a 1031 millibar high pressure system far to our northeast. This high pressure cell has a ridge extending from its center, into the area just east of the Big Island. At the same time we find a dissipating cold front stalled over our islands. Our winds will be turning northeast in its wake…becoming easterly Sunday.

Satellite and Radar Images: To view the cloud conditions we have here in Hawaii, please use the following satellite links, starting off with this Infrared Satellite Image of the islands to see all the clouds around during the day and night. This next image is one that gives close images of the islands only during the daytime hours, and is referred to as a Close-up visible image. This next image shows a larger view of the Pacific…giving perspective to the wider ranging cloud patterns in the Pacific Ocean. Finally, here's a Looping IR satellite image, making viewable the clouds around the islands 24 hours a day. To help you keep track of where any showers may be around the islands, here’s the latest animated radar image.

Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live web cam on the summit of near 14,000 foot Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. The tallest peak on the island of Maui is the Haleakala Crater, which is near 10,000 feet in elevation. These two web cams 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.

Tropical Cyclone activity in the eastern and central Pacific – Here’s the latest weather information coming out of the National Hurricane Center, covering the eastern north Pacific. You can find the latest tropical cyclone information for the central north Pacific (where Hawaii is located) by clicking on this link to the Central Pacific Hurricane Center. Here’s a tracking map covering both the eastern and central Pacific Ocean. A satellite image, which shows the entire ocean area between Hawaii and the Mexican coast…can be found here. Of course, as we know, our hurricane season ends November 30th here in the central Pacific.

 Aloha Paragraphs

Showers generally on Kauai and Oahu…Maui at times too

A cold front passed down as far as Oahu and close to Maui Friday…breezes have been light which will then swing around to the northeast and east this weekend. This weather map shows a 1031 millibar high pressure system far to our northeast.  Winds will blow from the south and southwest near the Big Island, and northeast over Maui to Oahu and Kauai.  These slightly cooler northeast winds will come in over the state in the wake of the cold front, becoming stronger and gusty trade winds later this weekend.  Winds will calm down and veer back to the southeast later Monday or Tuesday, remaining from that direction much of the new work week ahead. This will likely bring volcanic haze back into our weather picture…until the next cold front arrives towards the end of the week.

Winds will remain on the light side for the time being…the following numbers represent the strongest gusts, along with directions Friday evening:

15 mph        Lihue, Kauai – NNE
13              Waianae, Oahu – NE     
09              Molokai – NNW 
07              Kahoolawe – NW 
10              Kapalua, Maui – NNE 
07              Lanai Airport – W        
15                South Point, Big Island – NE

We can use the following links to see what’s going on in our local skies Friday afternoon. This large University of Washington satellite image shows lots of clouds over the ocean to our west through northwest…along with the cold front near Oahu and Maui at the time of this writing. Looking at this NOAA satellite picture, we see an area of lower level clouds, most of which are over the ocean to the southeast of the Big Island. There are also lots of high cirrus clouds around too. We can use this looping satellite image to see that there are high and middle level clouds coming our way from the west. The associated cold front continues to push slowly through the state from the northwest, and seems to be nearly stalled near Maui County at this time. Checking out this looping radar image, it shows a few showers over Oahu, and over the ocean to the southwest of Niihau and Kauai. There are some showers falling over Maui County too.

The cold front moved over Kauai during the night, and was over Oahu this morning...and as far as Maui during the afternoon. We’ll find showers continuing in an off and on manner over the islands near the cold front.  As the northeast winds fill in behind the cold front, whatever moisture that's left around then will stream back over the islands…most generously along the windward coasts and slopes…perhaps becoming more widespread on Sunday. As the winds veer around to the southeast again later Monday, we should see diminishing showers, although some may continue to impact the south and east facing coasts and slopes. Those southeast winds will bring locally thick volcanic haze to many parts of the island chain. The next cold front is being shown by the models to arrive later in the new week ahead.



Rain was falling across most parts of the state Friday…while the Big Island were mostly dry in contrast. The NWS forecast office in Honolulu issued flood advisories for Oahu and Maui County at times, where locally heavy showers were falling. Today was quite a day in terms of all the various weather elements that were happening. The Big Island remained mostly cloudy, but dry. The rest of the state had lots of rain at various times during the day. ~~~ I'm in a bit of a rush to make my film now, although in sum: more showers around the state this weekend, mainly over Kauai and Oahu Saturday…then more widespread along the windward sides Sunday. I'll meet you back here Saturday morning with your next new weather narrative, along with a movie review too. I hope you have a great Friday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Extra: Funnel clouds were reported over Oahu Friday morning…and several were reported around Maui during the afternoon hours too. The Maui Police Department reported one funnel touched down in Kihei…qualifying it as a small tornado!

Interesting: Severe drought could turn the Amazon rainforest into a source of carbon emissions contributing to climate change, rather than a carbon sink absorbing emissions. This is one of the alarming findings of a new study featured in Science, which has found that drought has again damaged the world’s largest rainforest.

Unfortunately severe droughts like the one that occurred last year, and previously in 2005, fit the predictions of the climate change impacts we can expect for the Amazon. As climate change takes hold, we may see more extreme weather and more damaging droughts in the Amazon region, but we can also act to boost the resilience of the rainforest to these events.

The key to increasing the strength of forests to withstand drought and other climate impacts is to maintain and protect intact areas of forest. This means stopping deforestation, which makes the impacts of drought worse. Numerous studies show that deforestation chops forest into smaller and smaller fragments, and the edges of these fragments are drier than the interiors.

The more fragmentation there is, the more dry edges there are and therefore the forest becomes even more vulnerable to drought and fire. Drought and fire then further fragment the forest, increasing its vulnerability even further – in a vicious cycle that weakens the forests ability to withstand the impacts of climate change. It doesn’t stop there.

Severe drought and resulting fires release carbon previously stored by the forest, thereby fueling change. And the loss of forest makes the Amazon less effective in soaking up carbon from the atmosphere, a crucial role that forests play in slowing climate change. The impacts of climate change – such as severe drought – combined with deforestation threaten to transform the Amazon rainforest from a valuable asset in the fight to stop climate change – into a source of emissions that speed it up.

Stopping deforestation will help to protect the Amazon and ensure it remains a valuable carbon sink that will help us mitigate the consequences of climate change. Scientists agree that large continuous areas of intact forest are more resistant to climate change than small areas of degraded forests. They have more moisture to withstand extreme drought, and also act as better buffers against other climate impacts like severe storms.

And, of course protecting the Amazon is also crucial to protecting biodiversity, since intact forest is also important for animals – especially for large mammals that need extensive areas to forage or hunt – and aids in the migration of species. Roughly 80% of the Amazon forest remains intact. The alarming findings of this latest study only make it more clear how vital it is for us to protect this intact rainforest from deforestation and lessen the climate impacts, like severe droughts, that damage forests by reducing carbon emissions contributing to climate change.

Interesting2: It's not the heat that might get us with climate change—it's the humidity, so to speak. The risk of sea level rise due to melting land ice is one of the most recognized—if controversial and hard to predict—threats posed by global warming. Other potential impacts from global warming include increasingly powerful storms and floods of the sort that have ravaged Australia this past month and a half (while recognizing scientists can't yet fingerprint individual weather events as caused by warming).

But as climate change create havoc from too much water, parts of the world could end up suffering from too little water. That's the conclusion of a new study released today by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), an environmental research organization based, unsurprisingly, in Stockholm.

The report found that the already dry states of the American Southwest—Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah—will face a major water shortfall over the next century just based on population and income growth alone. (The region has long been one of the fastest-growing in the U.S., in part because of the hot and dry weather.)

But climate change could make the situation much, much worse. According to the SEI study, global warming could increase the long-term water shortfall by a quarter, adding an additional 282 million to 439 million acre feet of water to the 1.815 billion acre feet shortfall already expected.

Based on the price of adding reservoir capacity in California, meeting the baseline water shortage could cost $2.3 trillion—yes, that's "trillion" with a "t"—plus $353 billion to $549 billion if climate change is factored in. Higher water prices would make adaptation even more expensive—assuming additional water could be found at all in a drier future. As Frank Ackerman, the director of the Climate Economics Group at SEI-U.S. and a co-author of the study, said in a statement:

Climate change is affecting Americans in many areas; the water crisis in the Southwest is one of the clearest examples. Climate policy choices we make today are not just about exotic environments and far-future generations – they will help determine how easy or hard it is to create a sustainable water system in the most arid region of the country.

As the report points out, water shortages in the Southwest aren't anything new, and so far we've managed to adapt to a dry climate even as cities like Las Vegas and Phoenix essentially rise out of the desert. But even before climate change has really become a factor, water supplies have already dropped to scary levels throughout the region.

Water levels at Lake Mead, the manmade reservoir that feeds Las Vegas, have fallen drastically in recent months, while California has endured a three year-long drought that only recently has shown signs of ending. The Southwest has been accustomed to unlimited growth in cities and exurbs along with unlimited water for irrigated agriculture, but the day may come soon when a choice will have to be made between the city and the farm. I visited Lake Mead myself in 2008, and even then, the falling water levels did not bode well for the future of Las Vegas and the rest of the Southwest:

Through air that shimmers in the blast furnace of a July day, you can see how far Mead's water level has fallen. White bathtub rings of mineral deposits, measuring high-water marks that grow less high every year, circle the edges of the reservoir. Today Mead's water level is 1,108 ft., down from more than 1,200 ft. in 2000. (The official drought level is 1,125 ft.)

If the water continues to decline, says marine geophysicist Tim Barnett of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, "buckle up." Barnett co-authored a study estimating a 50% chance that a combination of climate change and increased demand could render Mead effectively dry by 2021.

[Las Vegas water manager Pat] Mulroy doubts Barnett's dire conclusion, but she knows Las Vegas–and the world beyond–faces an existential crisis over water. "This is about being able to survive as a human being," she says. Lake Mead's level is currently at 1,093 ft.—below the official drought point.

Even scarier might be the impact of climate drying on agriculture. Food prices are already at a record high—thanks to extreme weather events, rising demand in developing nations and likely some speculation—but in the decades to come farmers will need to feed billions more, many of them wealthier and demanding more meat. (One lb. of animal protein can require 100 lbs. of grain to produce, and thousands of gallons of water.)

70% of the world's freshwater is used for irrigation, so when we talk about water-related climate problems, we're really talking about farming. Even more worrying, agriculture in much of the world has already been propped up by groundwater pumped from aquafiers—but half the planet lives in areas where water tables are falling due to over-depletion.

According to the World Bank, 15% of India's food supply is grown with water produced by aquafiers—and they don't recharge quickly. "That means 175 million people in India are being supported by food grown with groundwater," says Lester Brown, the founder of the Earth Policy Institute and a long-time pessimist on farming and climate. In China, that figure could be as high as 130 million.

What happens if agriculture begins to wilt and food prices rise? Governments can fall—as Egypt's nervous government knows, where high food prices have been one factor in that country's unprecedented mass protests. Other Middle Eastern countries—already under stress by the combined effect that population growth and climate change may be having on local agriculture—are rightfully worried that they could be next. "You could see governments falling left and right, food riots and instability on a scale we have not seen before," says Brown. "Desperate people do desperate things."

I doubt you're likely to see the sunburned citizens of San Diego or Reno take to the streets any time soon over the price of bread. The U.S., after all, should have no trouble feeding itself—even though over 50 million Americans live in food insecure households, that has more to do with structural problems than lack of production. But an ever drier Southwest is one that truly will face an existential threat in the decades ahead—and the rest of us might not be far behind.

Interesting3: Led by Professor Chris Clark from the University´s Department of Geography, a team of experts developed the maps to understand what effect the current shrinking of ice sheets in parts of the Antarctic and Greenland will have on the speed of sea level rise. The unique maps record the pattern and speed of shrinkage of the large ice sheet that covered the British Isles during the last Ice Age, approximately 20,000 years ago.

The sheet, which subsumed most of Britain, Ireland and the North Sea, had an ice volume sufficient to raise global sea level by around 2.5 meters when it melted. Using the maps, researchers will be able to understand the mechanisms and rate of change of ice sheet retreat, allowing them to make predictions for our polar regions, whose ice sheets appear to be melting as a result of temperature increases in the air and oceans.

The maps are based on new information on glacial landforms, such as moraines and drumlins, which were discovered using new technology such as remote sensing data that is able to image the land surface and seafloor at unprecedented resolutions. Experts combined this new information with that from fieldwork, some of it dating back to the nineteenth century, to produce the final maps of retreat.

It is also possible to use the maps to reveal exactly when land became exposed from beneath the ice and was available for colonization and use by plants, animals and humans. This provides the opportunity for viewers to pinpoint when their town/region emerged. Professor Chris Clark, from the University of Sheffield´s Department of Geography, said: "It took us over 10 years to gather all the information in order to produce these maps, and we are delighted with the results.

It is great to be able to visualize the ice sheet and notice that retreat speeds up and slows down, and it is vital of course that we learn exactly why. With such understanding we will be able to better predict ice losses in Greenland and Antarctica. "In our next phase of work we hope to really tighten up on the timing and rates of retreat in more detail, by dropping tethered corers from a ship to extract seafloor sediments that can be radiocarbon dated."