December 31-January 1, 2009
Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Wednesday afternoon:
Lihue, Kauai – 76
Honolulu, Oahu – 78
Kaneohe, Oahu – 77
Kahului, Maui – 80
Hilo, Hawaii – 74
Kailua-kona – 79
Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level, and on the highest mountains…at 4 p.m. Wednesday afternoon:
Kailua-kona– 80F
Princeville, Kauai – 72F
Haleakala Crater – 39 (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 Wednesday afternoon:
8.81 Mount Waialaele, Kauai
6.40 Poamoho 2, Oahu
0.50 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.15 Kahoolawe
5.80 Kaupo Gap, Maui
2.01 Pahoa, Big Island
Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a 1030 millibar high pressure system far to the northeast of the Hawaiian Islands. This trade wind producing high pressure system, along with its associated ridge, will bring trade winds back through Friday.
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
Happy New Year!
When I read about the evils of drinking…I gave up reading
The southeast air flow made for lighter winds Wednesday, bringing up volcanic haze from the Big Island vents to Maui. These slack winds will be only briefly lighter, before they pick up into the light to moderately strong realms later Thursday or Friday. As we move into the weekend, they will increase into the moderately strong category. The computer models show our local winds becoming potentially lighter, and perhaps from the southeast again early next week…as a low pressure system moves by to the north of Hawaii. These breezes may carry some volcanic haze up over parts of the island chain, from the Big Island vents.
The weather remains unsettled and shower prone, with the chance of more heavy showers, and even a few more thunderstorms…although sunny at times too. The atmosphere remains unstable over the islands, with cold air aloft, and warm and moisture laden air, near the surface. These meteorological parameters can lead to showers, or heavy rains. As the trade winds increase some later Thursday onward, we should see an associated bias for windward showers along with them. Next week still isn’t completely clear, in terms of which way the weather will turn. It appears that our winds will become lighter, with a chance of more showers coming our way then.
It’s early Wednesday evening here in Kula, Maui, as I start writing this long last section of today’s narrative. It was actually quite sunny in some places during the day Wednesday, although cloudy in others…with locally generous showers sticking around locally. As this looping radar image shows, we aren’t out of the woods yet, with still showers, some heavy in the area. ~~~ The instability associated with the trough of low pressure near the islands, is enhancing the lower level shower clouds, which are combining forces, and keeping us locally wet in a few places. It’s not that its raining everywhere by any means, but there are some showers around. ~~~ As I drove home from Kihei, upcountry to Kula after work today, there was an amazing example of a anvil top thunderstorm, (which looked more or less like that) located right over the Haleakala Crater! At sunset, there were other areas of towering cumulus clouds, so that it wouldn’t surprise me to see more lightning after dark…along with the anticipated fireworks displays. Meanwhile, the southeast winds have brought a good amount of volcanic haze up over Maui, from the Big Island. ~~~ I got home just before 5pm, the beginning of New Years Eve. This evening I’ll be popping a bottle of Henriot Champagne, 1995 vintage, Brut Millesime…from Reims, France. I don’t often drink champagne, but when I do, I like the good stuff! I’m still not totally sure what I’ll be doing tonight, but whatever it turns out to be, it will include good music, which I love to listen to on this holiday. Will I still be up at midnight, that’s a good question!? Whatever you happen to be doing, here’s wishing you the very best Happy New Year, filled with all the things that you cherish the most in life! Aloha for now…Glenn.
A celestial show: A delightful display of planets and the moon will occur on New Year’s Eve for anyone wishing to step outside and look up just after sunset.
Venus, brighter than all other planets and stars, will dangle just below the thin crescent moon in the southwestern sky. It’ll be visible — impossible to miss, in fact — just as the sun goes down, assuming skies are cloud-free.
Soon thereafter, Mercury and Jupiter will show up hugging the south-southwestern horizon (just above where the sun went down) and extremely close to each other. Jupiter is very bright and easy to spot; Mercury is faint and harder to see, but it’ll be apparent by its location just to the left of Jupiter.
Jupiter and Mercury will set less than an hour after the sun, so timing your viewing just after sunset is crucial. You’ll also need a location with a clear view of the western horizon, unobstructed by buildings, trees or mountains.
All the planets, along with the moon and sun, traverse an arc across our sky called the ecliptic, which corresponds to the plane in space that they all roughly share. For this reason, you could draw an imaginary line from the general location of Venus and the moon, down through the other two planets, and the line would point to where the sun went down. This line could also initially help you find Jupiter and Mercury.
One last trick:
Venus is so bright you can see it during daylight if you know where to look. Given Venus’ proximity to the moon on New Year’s Eve, this would be an excellent moment — just before sunset — to use the moon to help you find Venus and gain bragging rights for being one of the few people to be able to claim seeing more than one planet during the daytime (Earth being the other one).
Interesting: Oregon may be known for the rain that feeds its rivers, but Oregonians are pessimistic there will be enough water to go around as the state’s population grows and climate change possibly makes summers even drier. That was the take-home message from five "Water Roundtables" held throughout the state in September and October as an initial step toward developing a strategy for how the state will meet rising demand on its limited water supplies. Two-thirds of those surveyed at the roundtables — held in cities from the rain-drenched coast to the high eastern deserts — do not think that Oregon in 2028 will have enough water to cover all its needs, including the needs of wildlife.
Oregon State University’s Institute for Water and Watersheds, which helped coordinate the roundtables, has released a report on the meetings and surveys of those attending. Oregon is one of only two Western states — Alaska is the other — without a water-supply plan outlining how it will meet future water demands. Oregonians may have assumed water wasn’t a limiting factor, but that’s likely to change, said Brenda Ortigoza Bateman, senior policy coordinator at the Oregon Water Resources Department, who attended all the roundtables. The results of the roundtables dovetail with a forecast developed by the Water Resources Department showing that water needs are expected to grow more than 10 percent by 2050, even as supplies may shrink in a warmer climate. Agriculture, industry, cities and residences all will need more water.
Interesting2: Maybe it’s the regime change in Washington, a phone call from Mayor Bloomberg, or perhaps green is testing better with focus groups, for whatever reason corporate America is edging towards green. Coca-Cola is leading the charge to make that canyon of brain-numbing advertising, Times Square, a little more energy efficient. When that new Waterford Crystal ball (now lit by 32,000 eco-friendly LED bulbs) drops in Times Square this New Year’s Eve it will be surrounded by a collection of billboards that will soon all be lit by wind power. The “greening” of the Coca-Cola billboard (Coke’s is the first) and the billboards on three neighboring buildings will save an estimated 1,866 metric tons of carbon dioxide each year. Building management and ConEdison’s Solutions are facilitating the change.
Interesting3: Coffee grounds — currently wasted or used as garden compost — could become a cheap and environmentally friendly source of biodiesel and fuel pellets, says a study. Spent coffee grounds contain 11—20 per cent oil, depending on their type. "This is competitive with other major biodiesel feed stocks such as rapeseed oil (37—50 per cent), palm oil (20 per cent), and soybean oil (20 per cent)," say researchers writing in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Scientists at the US-based University of Nevada, Reno, used an inexpensive process to extract oil from the leftovers of making espressos, cappuccinos and other coffee preparations from a multinational coffeehouse chain. This oil was then converted into biodiesel, which could be used to fuel cars and trucks.The world’s coffee production is more than 7.2 million tons per year, according to US Department of Agriculture figures cited in the study.
This could yield about 340 million gallons of biodiesel, say the researchers. "It is easy and economical to extract oil from used coffee grounds compared to traditional feed stocks," said Mano Misra, an author of the study. Further, coffee oil has some antioxidants which are required for bio-fuel stability," he told SciDev.Net. After the oil extraction the remaining solid waste from processed coffee can be used as garden compost or fuel pellets. The process "would be ideal for countries where coffee is produced. A lot of defective coffee beans are discarded into the landfills every year. Processing these beans as well as coffee grounds would be an economical approach," said Misra. The researchers calculate that in the United States an annual profit of more than US$8 million could be made from biodiesel and pellets from one major coffee chain alone.
Interesting4: Next year is set to be one of the top-five warmest on record, British climate scientists said on Tuesday. The average global temperature for 2009 is expected to be more than 0.4 degrees celsius above the long-term average, despite the continued cooling of huge areas of the Pacific Ocean, a phenomenon known as La Nina. That would make it the warmest year since 2005, according to researchers at the Met Office, who say there is also a growing probability of record temperatures after next year. Currently the warmest year on record is 1998, which saw average temperatures of 14.52 degrees celsius – well above the 1961-1990 long-term average of 14 degrees celsius. Warm weather that year was strongly influenced by El Nino, an abnormal warming of surface ocean waters in the eastern tropical Pacific.
Theories abound as to what triggers the mechanisms that cause an El Nino or La Nina event but scientists agree that they are playing an increasingly important role in global weather patterns. The strength of the prevailing trade winds that blow from east to west across the equatorial Pacific is thought to be an important factor. "Further warming to record levels is likely once a moderate El Nino develops," said Professor Chris Folland at the Met Office Hadley Center. "Phenomena such as El Nino and La Nina have a significant influence on global surface temperature." Professor Phil Jones, director of the climate research unit at the University of East Anglia, said global warming had not gone away despite the fact that 2009, like the year just gone, would not break records. "What matters is the underlying rate of warming," he said. He noted the average temperature over 2001-2007 was 14.44 degrees celsius, 0.21 degrees celsius warmer than corresponding values for 1991-2000.
Interesting5: Beijing, beset by choking traffic and heavy air pollution, will take more than 350,000 high-polluting vehicles off inner city streets from Thursday, local media reported. China’s capital has banned cars from the roads on one out of five weekdays based on the number of license plates as part of a six-month trial in the wake of broader restrictions during the Olympic Games in August that cleared skies and eased congestion. Drivers of high-emissions vehicles, known as "yellow-label" cars, would be fined $15 if found to be driving within the city’s Fifth Ring Road, a highway on Beijing’s outskirts, after a three-month grace period, the Beijing News said. The measure stands to take about 10 percent of the city’s cars off the road.
Beijing currently has about 3.5 million registered cars. The government had also drafted a compensation scheme that will give drivers up to $3,600 if they proactively give up their cars during 2009, the paper said. The city would also provide preferential loans to shipping and transport companies to upgrade their vehicle fleets to meet low-emission standards, the paper said, citing the city’s traffic bureau. Beijing authorities have credited cleaner skies above the capital in recent months in part due to the traffic restrictions, as well as decreased emissions from shuttered factories in the city’s outskirts. Car ownership along with rising incomes has skyrocketed in Chinese cities in recent years, posing head-aches for town planners already struggling to build roads and public transport to meet burgeoning urban populations.
Interesting6: Broad Beach has long been a scenic backdrop to Malibu’s public access wars. The tranquil rhythm of surf has been routinely shattered by security guards and sheriff’s deputies bouncing beachgoers who spread towels on the confusing mosaic of public and private sand. Today, Broad Beach has shrunk into a narrow sliver of its former self. And like other skinny Malibu icons, its slenderness qualified the beach for a different kind of trend-setting role: How California will deal with rising sea levels. Sandwiched between the advancing sea and coastal armor built to protect multimillion-dollar homes, the strip of sand is being swept away by waves and tides. Soon, oceanographers and coastal engineers contend, the rising ocean will eclipse the clash between the beach-going public and the private property owners: There will be no dry sand left to fight over. "If the latest projections of sea level rise are right, you can kiss goodbye the idea of a white sandy beach," said Bill Patzert, a climatologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge. "You are going to be jumping off the sea wall onto the rocks below." The rise of sea levels, which have swelled about eight inches in the last century, are projected to accelerate with global warming.
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