Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs / October 10-11, 2008

October 10-11 2008

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

Lihue, Kauai – 84
Honolulu, Oahu – 87
Kaneohe, Oahu – 83
Kahului, Maui – 87
Hilo, Hawaii – 83
Kailua-kona – 85

Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level, and on the highest mountains…at 5 p.m. Friday evening:

Port Allen, Kauai – 86F  
Hilo, Hawaii – 78

Haleakala Crater    – 48  (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 34  (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:

0.94 Mount Waialeale Kauai
1.23 Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
0.06 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.37 Kahoolawe
0.67 Puu Kukui, Maui
0.42 Pahoa, Big Island

Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing high pressure systems far to the NE and NW. At the same time we find a deep winter-like low far north, with its associated cold front swinging down southward. The high to our NE has a ridge to the north of our islands, which will provide light to moderately strong trade winds this weekend.

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

Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live webcam on the summit of near 14,000 foot Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. The tallest peak on the island of Maui is the Haleakala Crater, which is near 10,000 feet in elevation. These two webcams are available during the daylight hours here in the islands…and when there’s a big moon rising just after sunset for an hour or two! Plus, during the nights and early mornings you will be able to see stars, and the sunrise too…depending upon weather conditions.

Aloha Paragraphs

  The north coast of Kauai…shower in the background
Photo Credit: flickr.com

 

The trade winds will prevail through the weekend, coming our way in the light to moderately strong realms. A 1035 millibar high pressure center is evident on weather maps, far to our northeast. This high has a ridge extending southwest to points north of Hawaii. Our trade winds have increased as expected, and will remain active through the weekend. A low pressure system to our north, as we start off the new week, will swing our winds around to the southeast or even south. The winds may, and there is still some uncertainty about this weather solution, may become southeast, and then easterly again during the second half of next week. This suggests that there may be periods of volcanic haze carried across the island chain at times.

There is some lower level cloudiness being carried across our islands, thanks to the refreshed trade wind flow Friday evening. The bias for showers has shifted back over to the windward sides. At the same time, we see that there is high level cirrus clouds being carried overhead by the winds at higher levels of the atmosphere…at jet stream altitudes. We’ll find favorably inclined weather circumstances, for the most part, as we move into the weekend time frame. As we proceed into early next week, our weather will become more changable, with the chance of clouds and showers taking aim on the leeward upcountry sides of the islands…brought our way by the southeast to south Kona winds. The likelihood of increased showers remains in place for the first several days of the new week..especially on the Kauai and Oahu end of the chain.

Hurricane Norbert is a category 2 hurricane in the eastern Pacific, while tropical storm Odile will reaching hurricane strength this weekend. Norbert continues its bead on the southern part of the Baja Peninsula, along the west coast, bringing strong winds to that area on Saturday morning. Here’s a tracking map showing this tropical system in the eastern Pacific, as well as a satellite image of Norbert. All ships in the area should be giving a wide berth to this hurricane, while residents of central and southern Baja should be paying very close attention, making last minute preparations now! Meanwhile, tropical storm Odile continues its journey up the southern Mexican coast, and will be increasing to a hurricane as it parallels the central Mexican coast offshore. Here’s a tracking map, and you can see the storm just offshore from Mexico on this satellite image. By the way, none of this tropical cyclone activity will have any influence on our weather here in the north central Pacific.

It’s early Friday evening here in Kihei, Maui, as I begin writing this last section of today’s weather narrative from Hawaii.  Friday was another good day here in Hawaii, at least on the weather front…which is my bag. I certainly hear about the economic woes by looking at the search engines, and news sites…that’s for sure. I see less cars around, and fewer people in the shopping centers as well. I keep expecting the stock market to zoom upwards, although it seems to be on a near permanent downwards spiral. We have all heard the famous statement, "what goes down, must eventually come back up" of course! ~~~ We’ve also heard about how the weather shifts around, first its near perfect, and then especially as we dig deeper into our autumn season…it eventually goes that other way too. Things look set to change as we launch off into the new week ahead, although at this point, it looks like Kauai and Oahu may end up seeing the most showery weather, while the Big Island and Maui may see more volcanic haze than falling rain drops. I’ll have more about this as we get into the weekend, stay tuned as the old saying goes. ~~~ I think I’ll go see the new film called The Duchess (2008), starring Keira Knightley and Ralph Fiennes among others this evening. A consnsus by the critics says: "While The Duchess treads the now-familiar terrain of the corset-ripper, the costumes look great and Keira Knightley’s performance is stellar in this subtly feminist, period drama." One reviewer says this: "It’s a beautiful period piece that will send you to a bookstore for a better account of the dirt and vice at its core." I’ll give it a try, knowing that I also want to see Body of Lies with Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio…which I have a feeling will have more staying power, and still be around when I get back from my vacation. Here’s a trailer for The Duchess. ~~~ I’ll be back with you early Saturday morning with my movie review, and lots more about our local weather here in the islands. I hope you have a great Friday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting:

A new epoch is beginning at the top of the Earth, where the historic melting of the vast Arctic ice cap is opening a forbidding, beautiful, and neglected swath of the planet. Already, there is talk that potentially huge oil and natural gas deposits lie under the Arctic waters, rendered more accessible by the shrinking of ice cover. Valuable minerals, too. Sea lanes over the top of the world will dramatically cut shipping times and costs. Fisheries and tourism will shift northward. In short, the frozen, fragile north will never be the same.

The Arctic meltdown—an early symptom of global warming linked to the buildup of atmospheric greenhouse gases—heralds tantalizing prospects for the five nations that own the Arctic Ocean coastline: the United States, Canada, Russia, Norway, and Denmark (through its possession of Greenland). But this monumental transformation also carries risks quite aside from the climate implications for the planet—risks that include renewed great-power rivalry, pollution, destruction of native Inuit communities and animal habitats, and security breaches. "The world is coming to the Arctic," warns Rob Huebert, a leading Arctic analyst at the University of Calgary. "We are headed for a lot of difficulties."

The vast stakes, along with some political grandstanding, are inspiring predictions that a new great game among nations is afoot—a tense race for the Arctic. That scenario got a shot of drama last year when two Russian mini-submarines made a descent to the seabed beneath the North Pole and planted a titanium Russian flag. The operation lacked any legal standing but symbolized Moscow‘s claims to control the resources inside a mammoth slice of the Arctic, up to the North Pole itself. To calm the mood, the five Arctic coast countries gathered diplomats in Greenland this May to agree that boundary and other disputes would be handled peacefully under existing international law. "We have politically committed ourselves to resolve all differences through negotiation," Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Möller said at the time. "The race for the North Pole has been canceled."

Interesting2:

Cleaning air in Beijing and in other large cities suffering from pollution problems by limiting car and power-plant emissions may raise global temperatures instead of lowering them, a German scientist warns. Aerosols, or particles suspended in air, have a cooling effect on the Earth, countering global warming linked to carbon dioxide, said Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research. A drop in aerosols in the atmosphere could cause a "rapid" rise in temperatures, he said. Airborne pollutants act as an umbrella worldwide while CO2 provides insulation, trapping heat attempting to escape into the atmosphere. A rise in temperature because of declines in aerosols in the atmosphere can be offset by slashing CO2 emissions, he said. By not reducing carbon output, humanity "is closing the last door we have through which we can possibly influence the global climate," Schellnhuber said.













Interesting3:

Toxins in food often have a bad, bitter taste that makes people want to spit them out. New UC Irvine research finds that bitterness also slows the digestive process, keeping bad food in the stomach longer and increasing the chances that it will be expelled. This second line of defense in the gut against dietary toxins also triggers the production of a hormone that makes people feel full, presumably to keep them from eating more of the toxic food. This discovery has the potential to help scientists develop better therapies for ailments ranging from cancer to diabetes, and it may explain why certain isolated populations around the world have adapted to eat and enjoy local foods that taste bad to outsiders and make them sick.

The study, appearing online Oct. 9 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, was performed with mice, and the results probably translate to humans, said Timothy Osborne, molecular biology and biochemistry professor and study senior author. "We have evolved mechanisms to combat the ingestion of toxins in our food," Osborne said. "This provides a framework for an entirely new area of research on how our bodies respond to what is present in our diets." Mammals have evolved to dislike the bitter taste of toxins in food. This response is particularly important when they eat a lot of plant material, which tends to contain more bitter-tasting, potentially toxic ingredients than meat.

Interesting4:

Contrary to conventional wisdom, tropical plant and animal species living in some of the warmest places on Earth may be threatened by global warming, according to an article by University of Connecticut Ecologist Robert K. Colwell and colleagues the journal Science. As Earth’s climate has warmed in recent decades, the geographical ranges of well-studied bird, butterfly, and plant species in the US and Europe have moved northward, following the gradual northward shift of their familiar climates. Other studies have shown that species in the US and Europe have shifted to higher elevations, as temperature zones on mountains have moved upward. In contrast, surprisingly little attention has been given to the effects of warming climate on tropical plants and animals.

Colwell’s article in Science magazine this week may change that. The report points out that tropical climates have warmed too (more than 3/4 degrees Centigrade [1.4 degrees Fahrenheit] since 1975), and climate models predict an additional increase of more than 3 degrees Centigrade (nearly 6 degrees Fahrenheit) over the next century in the tropical forests of Central and South America. This much warming would shift temperature zones uphill about 600 m (nearly 2000 feet) in elevation above sea level. Tropical species, like those at higher latitudes, will likely be driven to higher elevations by these changes, following the climate zones they are suited for. Working their way up the forested slopes of a Costa Rican volcano rising nearly 3000 m (10,000 ft) above the coastal plain, Colwell and colleagues have collected data on the altitudinal ranges of nearly 2000 species of plants and insects.

Interesting5:

A small asteroid exploded over Africa this week following what astronomers said was the first firm prediction of an incoming space rock. It did not strike Earth. The asteroid was about the size of kitchen table, astronomers estimated, and they think the explosion (caused by the pressures of slamming into the atmosphere) left nothing but perhaps a few small bits to fall to the surface. No photographs of the explosion have been reported, owing to the remote location of the object’s path over Sudan. But the explosion was recorded by an infrasound array in Kenya. Peter Brown at the University of Western Ontario estimated, based on the infrasound data, that the asteroid exploded at 0243 UT with an energy of somewhere between 1.1 and 2.1 kilotons of TNT. On Monday, NASA researchers and other scientists announced that the space rock, named 8TA9D69, would enter the air at 10:46 p.m. ET (0246 UT) on Oct. 7 over northern Sudan. Such events occur a few times every year, but never before had one been predicted.

The object was expected to create a very bright fireball that, for anyone who might have seen it, would have been far more dramatic than the typical shooting star resulting when small debris streaks through Earth’s atmosphere. "A typical meteor comes from an object the size of a grain of sand," Gareth Williams of the Minor Planet Center explained just before the highly anticipated event. "This meteor will be a real humdinger in comparison!" There has been one visual confirmation of the exploding fireball, according to Spaceweather.com. Jacob Kuiper, a general aviation meteorologist at the National Weather Service in The Netherlands, told pilots to keep an eye out. "I have received confirmation that a KLM airliner, roughly 750 nautical miles southwest of the predicted atmospheric impact position, has observed a short flash just before the expected impact time 0246 UTC," Kuiper said. "Because of the distance it was not a very large phenomenon, but still a confirmation that some bright meteor has been seen in the predicted direction." The rock was discovered by an ongoing survey at Mt.Lemmon run by the University of Arizona as part of the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey for near-Earth objects.