December 29-30 2008
Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Monday afternoon:
Lihue, Kauai – 77
Honolulu, Oahu – 80
Kaneohe, Oahu – 77
Kahului, Maui – 81
Hilo, Hawaii – 76
Kailua-kona – 80
Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level, and on the highest mountains…at 4 p.m. Monday afternoon:
Port Allen, Kauai – 79F
Hilo, Hawaii – 72F
Haleakala Crater – 45 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – missing (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
0.90 Mount Waialaele, Kauai
1.35 Poamoho 2, Oahu
0.00 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
1.47 West Wailuaiki, Maui
4.57 Hilo airport, Big Island
Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a high pressure system far to the east-northeast of the Hawaiian Islands. This trade wind producing high pressure system, along with its associated ridge, will keep trade winds active through Wednesday.
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
Aloha Paragraphs
The Kona coast…a great sunset
Photo Credit: flickr.com
The trade winds will blow in the light to moderately strong realms through most of the rest of this week…although stronger at times locally. The trade winds may very well continue for quite some time, which is something we haven’t experienced lately. The winds became strong enough locally Monday afternoon, that a NWS issued small craft advisory went up across Hawaiian waters, stretching from the Molokai Channel down across the Big Island leeward side. The models show another wind shift occurring early next week, as they take on a south to southeast orientation…as a cold front pushes in our direction then.
The trade winds will continue to carry some moisture in our direction, although less than we’ve seen lately…almost certainly. The windward sides have been wet for the last several days, very wet at times, and will continue to find a few passing showers arriving at times. There’s still some areas of low pressure aloft hanging around, so it wouldn’t be out of the question to have a few more downpours. The leeward sides will find some high clouds filtering the daytime sunshine, although will remain quite dry…if not totally dry in many areas.
It’s early Monday evening here in Kihei, Maui, as I start writing this last paragraph. The Hawaiian Islands finally got a break from the recent rain showers. Looking at the latest looping radar image, we find less showers falling everywhere. Most of the showers seem to be active over the waters offshore from the islands. The atmosphere is still not stable enough, to rule out a few heavier showers here and there. The other situation seems to be the high clouds that streamed over the islands during the day Monday, as shown on this looping satellite image. ~~~ Looking further ahead, including the upcoming holiday celebrations, the trade winds will prevail. These early winter trade winds will remain active through the rest of this week, carrying some showers towards the windward coasts and slopes periodically. ~~~ The fact that our ventilating trade winds will extend through the week, bodes well for ventilating away any fireworks smoke. We aren’t moving back into perfect conditions, but at least it will be better in general, especially along the leeward beaches. ~~~ Looking out the window here in Kihei, there are quite a few gray clouds around, although they don’t appear to be dropping rain, at least in my view. There are those high level clouds too, which have dimmed our sunshine as well. I expect a few showers, here and there, but at the same time, will be looking for relatively clear skies returning overnight, into the day Tuesday. ~~~ I must admit, that I am enjoying the extra time in the mornings, when I would usually be up getting ready to do the tv weather show…although at the same time, I miss doing it! I’ve taken to meditating early in the mornings now, which I’m savoring. I’ll be back early Tuesday morning with your next new weather narrative from paradise, I hope you greatly enjoy your Monday night! Aloha for now…Glenn.
Interesting: The federal government is taking steps that may open California’s fabled coast to oil drilling in as few as three years, an action that could place dozens of platforms off the Sonoma, Mendocino and Humboldt coasts, and raises the specter of spills, air pollution and increased ship traffic into San Francisco Bay. Millions of acres of oil deposits, mapped in the 1980s when then-Interior Secretary James Watt and Energy Secretary Donald Hodel pushed for California exploration, lie a few miles from the forested North Coast and near the mouth of the Russian River, as well as off Malibu, Santa Monica and La Jolla in Southern California. "These are the targets," said Richard Charter, a lobbyist for the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund who worked for three decades to win congressional bans on offshore drilling.
"You couldn’t design a better formula to create adverse impacts on California’s coastal-dependent economy." The bans that protected both of the nation’s coasts beginning in 1981, from California to the Pacific Northwest to the Atlantic Coast and the Straits of Florida, ended this year when Congress let the moratorium lapse. President-elect Barack Obama hasn’t said whether he would overturn President Bush’s lifting last summer of the ban on drilling, as gas prices reached a historic high. Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Col., Obama’s pick as interior secretary and head of the nation’s ocean-drilling agency, hasn’t said what he would do in coastal waters.
Interesting2: A team of scientists has come up with a new definition of seawater which is set to boost the accuracy of projections for oceans and climate. Oceans help regulate the planet’s weather by shifting heat from the equator to the poles. Changes in salinity and temperature are major forces driving global currents as well as circulation patterns from the surface to the seabed. Understanding exactly how much heat the ocean can absorb and accounting for tiny differences in salinity are crucial for scientists to figure how oceans affect climate and how that interaction could change because of global warming. "Getting these circulations right is central to the task of quantifying the ocean’s role in climate change," said Trevor McDougall of Australia’s state-backed research body the CSIRO, who is part of the international team that updated the methods to define sea water. He said the new definition allows for the first time to accurately calculate ocean heat content and take into account small differences in salinity. Previous methods assumed the composition of seawater was the same around the globe.
Seawater is a mixture of 96.5 percent pure water with the remainder comprising salts, dissolved gases and other matter. McDougall said data from about 1,000 seawater samples showed global variations. There were small but significant differences in the composition of seawater between the North Pacific and North Atlantic, for example. "We’ve got along quite well for 30 years without delving deeper into what the sea salt is composed of," said McDougall, of the CSIRO’s Wealth from Oceans Flagship in Hobart in the southern Australian state of Tasmania. But ever more complex computer models and greater demands to project how oceans and climate will behave in a warmer world mean an increasing need for more precise data. McDougall said salinity affects ocean density, and changes in density help drive huge vertical ocean circulation patterns. "Water sinks to the bottom and rises to the top in a very slow circulation that accounts for about half of the heat that the globe needs to transport from the equator to the poles." The constant circulation of heat by the oceans and atmosphere keeps the planet livable.
Interesting3: Anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has said it achieved its aim of forcing Japan’s whaling fleet out of Antarctic waters claimed by Australia. In a statement on its website, the U.S.-based group said its ship, the Steve Irwin, had forced the fleet into waters off the Ross Dependency, which is a New Zealand possession. Australia has declared an ‘economic exclusion zone’, known by the letters "EEZ," in waters off the coast of its Antarctic territories, and an Australian court order bans whaling there. Sea Shepherd has said it is enforcing that order by pursuing Japan’s whaling fleet, which is in the area for an annual hunt to kill around 900 whales. However, Japan does not recognize the zone and says its whaling fleet is in international waters.
In the statement, dated Saturday, Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson promised his organization would continue its pursuit of the Japanese fleet. "The good news is that they are no longer whaling in Australian waters and they only managed to hunt in the waters of the Australian Antarctic Territory for about a week before being forced to flee the Australian EEZ," the statement said. "They are now in the waters of the Ross dependency and the Steve Irwin is in pursuit." Watson said this was "bad news" for whales in waters south of New Zealand. Japan’s Institute of Cetacean Research, which runs the hunt, has accused Sea Shepherd of "eco-terrorism" and of ramming its vessel the Kaiko Maru during a protest action last Friday. Sea Shepherd has blamed the Japanese for the collision.
Interesting4: The frequency of extremely high clouds in Earth’s tropics — the type associated with severe storms and rainfall — is increasing as a result of global warming, according to a study by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. In a presentation today to the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, JPL Senior Research Scientist Hartmut Aumann outlined the results of a study based on five years of data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on NASA’s Aqua spacecraft. The AIRS data were used to observe certain types of tropical clouds linked with severe storms, torrential rain and hail. The instrument typically detects about 6,000 of these clouds each day. Aumann and his team found a strong correlation between the frequency of these clouds and seasonal variations in the average sea surface temperature of the tropical oceans.
For every 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit increase in average ocean surface temperature, the team observed a 45-percent increase in the frequency of the very high clouds. At the present rate of global warming of 0.23 degrees Fahrenheit per decade, the team inferred the frequency of these storms can be expected to increase by six percent per decade. Climate modelers have long speculated that the frequency and intensity of severe storms may or may not increase with global warming. Aumann said results of the study will help improve their models. "Clouds and rain have been the weakest link in climate prediction," said Aumann. "The interaction between daytime warming of the sea surface under clear-sky conditions and increases in the formation of low clouds, high clouds and, ultimately, rain is very complicated. The high clouds in our observations—typically at altitudes of 12 miles and higher—present the greatest difficulties for current climate models, which aren’t able to resolve cloud structures smaller than about 155 miles in size."
Interesting5: It’s no simple matter to figure out how regional changes in precipitation, expected to result from global climate change, may affect water supplies. Now, a new analysis led by MIT researchers has found that the changes in groundwater may actually be much greater than the precipitation changes themselves. For example, in places where annual rainfall may increase by 20 percent as a result of climate change, the groundwater might increase as much as 40 percent. Conversely, the analysis showed in some cases just a 20 percent decrease in rainfall could lead to a 70 percent decrease in the recharging of local aquifers — a potentially devastating blow in semi-arid and arid regions.
The exact effects depend on a complex mix of factors, the study found — including soil type, vegetation, and the exact timing and duration of rainfall events — so detailed studies will be required for each local region in order to predict the possible range of outcomes. The research was conducted by Gene-Hua Crystal Ng, now a postdoctoral researcher in MIT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE), along with King Bhumipol Professor Dennis McLaughlin and Bacardi Stockholm Water Foundations Professor Dara Entekhabi, both of CEE, and Bridget Scanlon, a senior researcher at the University of Texas.
Interesting6: It’s Wall Street’s version of an early warning system. We’re talking about January, seasonally one of the best months for stocks. How stocks fare in the first month of the year could offer a clue as to whether the battered market will rebound in 2009, whether investors have regained their confidence, and whether cash sitting safely on the sidelines is put back to work in stocks. Historically, stock performance in the first five days of a new year, and January overall, has been a good predictor of how the full year will go. Since 1950, an up January has led to annual gains more than 90% of the time, the Stock Trader’s Almanac says. But every down January has "preceded a new or extended bear market, or flat market." So it’s no surprise that with the stock market down 40.6% and on track for its worst year since 1931, investors will be scrutinizing stocks more closely than usual this January, says Kevin Lane, director of research at Fusioninvest.com. "January has always been important for setting the tone for the year," Lane says.
"A strong month would suggest that investors have come to the conclusion that the bailout plans and stimulus programs are working. A bad month would suggest they don’t believe enough has been done." It would be "disheartening if stocks start 2009 like they did in January 2008, when the S&P 500 index slid 6.1%, says Paul Hickey of Bespoke Investment Group. "From a psychological standpoint, investors will start thinking, ‘Uh oh, more of the same.’ "But because so many unprecedented forces are in play that can affect stocks, it will be hard to pin a losing year on a weak January, Hickey says. Wall Street expects the recession to end in mid-2009 and stocks to rebound. Investors aren’t particularly scared or aggressive now, and that could mean they could be easily swayed by how stocks perform early in the year, says Richard Bernstein, chief investment strategist at Merrill Lynch. How stocks fare in the first five trading days of January is key. The last 36 times stocks rose at the start of the month, they were higher at year’s end 31 times, the Almanac says. "If the seasonally bullish pattern doesn’t occur, it would be a red flag."
Interesting7: Natural disasters killed more than 220,000 people in 2008, making it one of the most devastating years on record. The world’s number two insurer, says the figure confirms a global climate deal is badly needed. Although the number of natural disasters was lower than in 2007, the catastrophes in 2008 were more destructive in terms of the number of victims and the financial cost of the damage caused, Germany-based Munich Re said in its annual assessment. Most devastating was Cyclone Nargis, which battered Burma in May to kill more than 135,000 people, and the earthquake that shook China’s Sichuan province the same month which left 70,000 dead, 18,000 missing and almost five million homeless, Munich Re said. "This continues the long-term trend we have been observing," Munich Re board member Torsten Jeworrek said. "Climate change has already started and is very probably contributing to increasingly frequent weather extremes and ensuing natural catastrophes. The world needed "effective and binding rules on CO2 emissions, so that climate change is curbed and future generations do not have to live with weather scenarios that are difficult to control."
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