WEEKLY CLIMATE NEWS

DataStreme ECS WEEK TEN: 9-13 November 2009

ITEMS OF INTEREST

Applications for a prestigious scholarship invited -- NOAA is accepting applications from qualified college undergraduate students interested in pursuing degrees in ocean and atmospheric sciences and education to the Ernest F. Hollings Undergraduate Scholarship. As many as 100 undergraduates could each receive up to $29,050 for their academic studies related to NOAA science, research, technology, policy, management, and education activities. Applications will be accepted through 30 January 2009. [NOAA News]

CURRENT CLIMATE STATUS

Wet and cold October across Midwest -- The Midwest Climate Center recently reported that at least 192 climate stations across the nine-state Midwest reported record-setting precipitation during October 2009. In addition, five of the states had statewide average monthly temperatures that were among the ten lowest since 1895. [Midwestern Regional Climate Center]

CURRENT CLIMATE MONITORING

Pole-to-pole measurement of greenhouse gases commences -- Last week, scientists from NOAA, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Scripps Institution of Oceanography and several universities began the second phase of HIPPO (HIAPER Pole-to-Pole Observations of Greenhouse Gases) Mission that will provide a detailed view of the global distribution of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. They will take a pole to pole flight climbing to 47.000 feet and descending to 1000 feet altitude on HIAPER (the High-performance Instrumented Airborne Platform) a modified Gulfstream aircraft containing instruments. [NOAA News]
Recently launched environmental satellite becomes a "star" -- Last week, the European Space Agency successfully launched a new environmental satellite called SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) that will collect microwave radiation from the earth that should provide data on soil moisture and ocean salinity across the planet. A large antenna array was deployed for the Microwave Imaging Radiometer with Aperture Synthesis (MIRAS) instrument, forming what appears as a large three-pointed "star in the sky" to earthbound observers. [ESA] [Discovery Channel] [EurekAlert!]
New satellite sensor to make space weather observations -- A new instrument designed to remotely sense the Earth's the ionosphere and thermosphere from space, the Special Sensor Ultraviolet Limb Imager (SSULI), was recently tested from a launch vehicle. The SSULI, developed by the Naval Research Laboratory, will be used on the future US Air Force Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) F18 (flight 18) satellite. [EurekAlert!]
Atlanta area floods were extremely rare -- Hydrologists with the US Geological Survey report that the flooding that hit the Atlanta (GA) metropolitan area in September was an extremely rare event, with a probability of occurrence of less than 0.2 percent, which could be considered as a 500-year flood. [USGS Newsroom]
An All-Hazards Monitor--This Web portal provides the user information from NOAA on current environmental events that may pose as hazards such as tropical weather, fire weather, marine weather, severe weather, drought and floods. [NOAAWatch]
Global and US Hazards/Climate Extremes -- A review and analysis of the global impacts of various weather-related events, including drought, floods and storms during the current month. [NCDC]

CLIMATE FORCING

Common plants can combat indoor air pollution through "phytoremediation" -- A research team from the University of Georgia has identified five common ornamental plants as having "phytoremediation" or the ability to eliminate a variety of indoor air pollutants including volatile organic compounds (VOCs), improving the indoor air quality. [EurekAlert!]
Air pressure changes found to trigger landslides -- A geologist with the US Geological Survey has found that the daily variations in air pressure across the San Juan Mountains in southwest Colorado produce a sufficient "air tide" along the mountain slopes that cause movement of the rocks and soil on the 2.5- mile long and 1000-foot wide Slumgullion landslide. [Discovery News] (Editor's Note: Special thanks are extended to Bruce Smith, an AMS Atmospheric Education Resource Agent from Appleton, WI who found this item. EJH)
Tracking atmospheric water vapor -- A climate researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and his colleagues have a map showing the movement of water vapor through the atmosphere, obtained by measuring the ratio of the "heavy water" isotope to the normal isotope using data from the European Space Agency's Environmental Satellite (ENVISAT) to follow the "age" of water as it travels through the atmosphere. [Scripps Explorations]

CLIMATE IMPACTS ON THE BIOSPHERE

Desert plant life threatened by nitrogen loss driven by climate change -- Researchers at Cornell University have found that increases in temperature and shifting precipitation patterns caused by climate change may cause nitrogen losses in arid ecosystems that result in reduced desert plant life. [Cornell University News]
Air pollution affects nutrient levels of pristine alpine lakes -- In research conducted on alpine and subalpine lakes in Colorado, Norway and Sweden, a researcher from the University of Colorado and her colleagues report that airborne nitrogen compounds from fossil fuel combustion and widespread application of agricultural fertilizers have increased the amount of nutrients deposited in these pristine lakes, affecting the aquatic phytoplankton. [EurekAlert!]
Investigation how climate change would affect organisms -- A paleoecologist at Lehigh University and colleagues urge that a wide range of approaches need to be applied when predicting the potential impact that future climate change on organisms, citing examples of various limitations associated with current prediction models. [EurekAlert!]
Fish populations shift as North Atlantic warms -- Researchers at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center have found that nearly half of three dozen North Atlantic fish species have shifted northward during the last four decades as the waters off the coast of the Northeastern States have warmed. [Northeast Fisheries Science Center]
Climate change affect deep-sea ecosystems -- Based upon their analysis of deep-sea sediments in the Pacific off the Central California coast and the Atlantic off Ireland, a marine ecologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and colleagues have found that changes in the Earth's climate appear to have caused unexpectedly large changes in deep-sea ecosystems over a variety of time scales ranging from weeks to decades. [Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute]

CLIMATE MODELING EFFORTS

Land-use changes affect US climate -- Researchers from Purdue University, University of Maryland, and University of Colorado have found that most of the land use changes across the 48 coterminous states have caused reduced vegetative cover and increased air temperature. However, they noted that where land use conversion was to agriculture, a net cooling effect occurred with a reduction in surface temperature, due to increased evapotranspiration. The researchers also recommended incorporation of improved land use data into climate models to better estimate future climate. [Purdue Newsweek]

CLIMATE FORECASTS

Shrinking snows of Kilimanjaro could disappear within two decades -- A noted paleoclimatologist from Ohio State University and his colleagues warn that the data they collected from the ice fields on top of Africa's Mount Kilimanjaro indicate that the ice is waning at an increasing rate and that it could be lost within the next two decades. [EurekAlert!]
Mapping global climate impacts -- Scientists from the United Kingdom's Met Office Hadley Centre and their colleagues plotted a new global map that highlights some of the impacts that may occur if the global average temperature were to rise by 4 Celsius degrees above the pre-industrial climate average. [UK Met Office]

PALEOCLIMATE RECONSTRUCTION

Long ice cores retrieved from tropical Andes -- Researchers from the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University recently returned with two ice cores that they drilled from an ice field at 17,598 feet above sea level in the Peruvian Andes. These two cores, which range from 620 to 643 feet in length, are the longest ever drilled from ice fields in the tropics and should be able to provide an annual record of climate conditions at the site. [Ohio State University]

CLIMATE AND SOCIETY

Air pollution can impact health of southern California communities -- Researchers at the University of Southern California have found that a significant portion of the preventable childhood asthma appears to have occurred along the heavy traffic corridors in the southern California cities of Long Beach and Riverside, indicating that the impact of air pollution on the disease has been underestimated in the past. [EurekAlert!]
Innovative plan to save rainforests would reduce greenhouse gas emissions -- Environmental researchers from the University of Maryland, the World Resources Institute and Save America's Forests are hailing the Yasuní-ITT Initiative, an innovative proposal by the Ecuadorian government to protect an untouched, oil rich region of Amazon rainforest as a precedent-setting and potentially economically viable approach. They also claim that this would also reduce greenhouse emissions. [University of Maryland]
Projected changes in climate could affect agriculture in East Africa -- A new study by various groups supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) indicates that potential changes in climate across Africa by 2050 could result in highly variable impacts on agriculture across East Africa, resulting in both winners and losers. However, the researchers claim that adequate investment could permit the region to achieve food security for all groups. [EurekAlert!]
Website for human dimensions of climate change -- An interagency effort within the US federal government that included NOAA, the Bureau of Land Management and the US Forest Service, has resulted in a website called HD.gov (for HumanDimensions.gov) that provides users, such as natural resource managers, with information on the human dimensions on a variety of topics of interest such as climate change. [HD.gov]
Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com] Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Reports from the Field

Lucky Greenleaf, Ocean LIT from Maine provided an update on climate change and sea level rise from a Downeast Maine perspective:

"Many coastal cities and towns along the coast of Maine are having meetings and conferences of citizens, local officials, and emergency personal concerning impending sea level rise and the effects of inundation and erosion. It no longer is a question of "if" but how much, when, and how do we prepare. The discussions recognize a changing environment and a need to adapt. The Maine Geological Survey, U of Maine Sea Grant Program, and NOAA have worked together to produce documents, maps, and a free DVD for use by officials and citizens. The DVD describes Maine's climate, coastal conditions, and effects such as storms and sea level rise, construction techniques, and strategies for safeguarding persons and property, including elevating and moving structures. Tide gauge data show a current rise rate which is expected to increase. In fact, Maine already requires any coastal development to assume a 2-foot rise in sea levels. There is also a state climate change adaptation task
force in the Legislature."

Joseph Zabransky, a retired meteorology professor at Plymouth State University and a long time associate with the AMS Education Program reported on his trip to the homecoming weekend at his alma mater, Penn State University in mid October. He said that record snow fell the day before the game against the University of Minnesota. This snow was the earliest on record by three days. Tailgating and parking were cancelled in the area (cow pastures) surrounding Beaver Stadium for the game, but the Maine-New Hampshire PSU Alumni chapter was still able to tailgate at the State College Airport before and after the game.

Concept of the Week: Developing a Quality Long-term Instrumental Climate Record

Systematic temperature and precipitation observations have been made at various locations across the nation for nearly two centuries. While only a handful of stations were available in the early 19th century, weather and climate observations currently are made from several hundred automatic weather sites operated by the National Weather Service and the Federal Aviation Administration as well as approximately 8000 stations in the Cooperative Observers Network administered by the National Weather Service. The weather data from these networks are also used to quantitatively assess changes of climate during the instrumental period of the past as well into the future. However, a variety of factors can affect the homogeneity of the record. For example, the locations of many of the stations have moved, from original downtown building roofs to current locations at airports. And the physical surroundings of the stations have changed, many becoming more urbanized.

In the late 1980s, the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) in conjunction with the US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory created the United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) of 1218 stations across the 48 coterminous states having long-term records of both daily temperature and precipitation. This network was designed to provide an essential baseline data set for monitoring the nation's climate commencing in the late 19th century. These stations were created from a subset of the Cooperative Observers Network, chosen based upon long-term data quality that included length of record, percent of missing data, spatial distribution and number of station changes. Many of the selected USHCN stations were rural in an attempt to reduce the influence of urbanization. Using statistical analyses, data for these stations have been adjusted to account for movement of stations, or when a different thermometer type was installed. An urban warming correction was applied based upon population of the surrounding area.

More recently, NOAA began the US Climate Reference Network (USCRN), a project designed to collect and analyze climate data of the highest possible quality for the next 50 to 100 years. Each USCRN station would have electronic sensors that would make routine measurements of air temperature, precipitation, IR ground surface temperature, solar radiation and wind speed with a frequency of every five minutes and transmit these data to both NCDC and to National Weather Service offices via orbiting satellites on nearly a real-time basis. In addition to these measurements, additional sensors could be added to the USCRN stations that would measure soil temperature and soil moisture. Conscientious and detailed site selection was made for all stations so that they would not only be spatially representative, but that they would be in locations where the surrounding physical conditions would have a high likelihood of remaining the same over the next 50 to 100 years. Many of the sites were placed on federal or state owned lands, helping minimize the contamination of the climate record by urbanization or other changes in local ground cover.

These long-term, comparative, spatially representative values are vital to detect and verify the subtle changes in climatic conditions before they become overwhelmingly obvious.

Concept of the Week: Questions

(Place your responses on the Chapter Progress Response Form provided in the Study Guide.)

The majority of United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) stations were in [(rural), (urban)] settings.
The instruments in the US Climate Reference Network (USCRN) sample the atmosphere as frequently as [(5 minutes),(1 day),(1 month)].

Historical Events:

9 November 1913...The "Freshwater Fury", a rapidly deepening cyclone, caused unpredicted gales on the Great Lakes. Cleveland, OH reported 17.4 inches of snow in 24 hours, and a total of 22.2 inches, both all-time records for that location. During the storm, winds at Cleveland averaged 50 mph, with gusts to 79 mph. (David Ludlum) (The Weather Channel)
12 November 1911...The central U.S. experienced perhaps its most dramatic cold wave of record. During the early morning, temperatures across the Central Plains ranged from 68 degrees at Kansas City to 4 degrees above zero at North Platte, NE. In Kansas City, the temperature warmed to a record 76 degrees by late morning before the arctic front moved in from the northwest. Skies became overcast, winds shifted to the northwest, and the mercury began to plummet. By early afternoon, it was cold enough to snow, and by midnight the temperature had dipped to a record cold reading of 11 degrees above zero. Oklahoma City also established a record high of 83 degrees and record low of 17 degrees by midnight that same day (11/11/11), followed by 14 degrees, another record low, by the next morning. In southeastern Kansas, the temperature at Independence plunged from 83 degrees to 33 degrees in just one hour. (David Ludlum) (The Weather Channel) (The Kansas City Weather Almanac) (Intellicast)
12 November 1906...The mercury soared to 106 degrees at Craftonville, CA, a November record for the U.S. (The Weather Channel)
12 November 1959...Between noon on the 11th and noon on the 12th, a winter storm buried Helena, MT under 21.5 inches of snow, which surpassed their previous 24 hour record by seven inches. (The Weather Channel)
12 November 1980...A fringe rain band from Hurricane Jeannie in the Gulf of Mexico let loose a deluge of 23.38 inches of rain in 24 hours at Key West, FL, an all-time 24 hour record. (Intellicast)
12 November 1987...Heavy snow spread across much of New England. The seven inch total at the Logan Airport in Boston was their highest of record for so early in the season, and the 9.7 inch total at Providence, RI was a record for November. (Storm Data) (The National Weather Summary)
13 November 1933...The first dust storm of the Great Dust Bowl era of the 1930s occurred. The dust storm, which had spread from Montana to the Ohio Valley the day before, prevailed from Georgia to Maine resulting in a black rain over New York and a brown snow in Vermont. Parts of South Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa reported zero visibility on the 12^th. On the 13^th, dust reduced the visibility to half a mile in Tennessee. (David Ludlum) (The Weather Channel)

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