DataStreme ECS WEEK TEN: 8-12 November 2010

ITEMS OF INTEREST

• NOAA Education website gets new look and content -- NOAA officials recently unveiled an updated website http://www.education.noaa.gov that represents their agency's is education primary education resource portal. This site, which is intended to better connect students and educators with NOAA’s education and science resources, has the themes of Oceans and Coasts, Climate, Weather and Atmosphere, Marine Life, and Freshwater. [NOAA News]
• Environmental literacy grants for science education announced --
Early last week, NOAA’s Office of Education announced that more than $8 million in Environmental Literacy Grants were made to seventeen of the institutions with the intention to engage the public in science education activities that improve understanding and stewardship of the local and global environment. [NOAA News]
• Indonesian volcanic eruption is monitored --
A natural-color image made early this past Saturday morning (local time) by the MODIS sensor on NASA's Terra satellite shows a volcanic plume emanating from Mount Merapi, a volcano in Indonesia that has been erupting for the last week. As of late last week, at least 122 people had been killed by the volcano, while more than 100,000 were evacuated. [NASA Earth Observatory]
An image obtained last weekend from thermal data collected by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA’s Terra satellite shows the hot lava dome, along with the hot ash and rock along the slopes of the cone-shaped Mount Merapi volcano. [NASA Earth Observatory]  

CURRENT CLIMATE MONITORING

• Monitoring global wildfires from space -- Scientists at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center have assembled a set of monthly global images of the locations of active wildfires extending for slightly more than a decade. These fire maps were from data collected by the MODIS sensor on NASA's Terra satellite. The global patterns appear to be related to a combination of natural seasonal cycles in rainfall, dryness and lightning and to annual cycles of human activity. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• Upper atmosphere satellite mission is extended --
NASA scientists have extended the life of the agency's NASA’s Thermosphere Ionosphere Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics (TIMED) mission for the fourth time. This satellite has collected more upper atmospheric data in the mesosphere and low thermosphere than any other satellite during its current nine-year life. These data include pressure, temperature and winds. [NASA GSFC]
• Monitoring marine phytoplankton patterns from space --
A set of monthly global maps showing the chlorophyll concentration in surface seawater in the world's oceans has been prepared for a span of slightly more than eight years. These data were collected from the MODIS sensor on NASA's Aqua satellite. In essence, these chlorophyll maps are equivalent to the concentrations of algae and phytoplankton in the oceans that are near the base of the ocean food web. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• A view of last year's wandering "ozone hole" shown --
An animation was prepared by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center of the variation in the extent and location of the Southern Hemisphere's "ozone hole", a region of reduced stratospheric ozone, during November 2009 from data collected by the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on NASA’s Aura satellite. This animation shows an elongated ozone hole that was centered over the Southern Ocean off South America's Cape Horn for three weeks during last November, which resulted in increased ultra-violet radiation dosages for residents of Tierra del Fuego. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• 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

• Cropland expansion reduces global carbon stocks -- Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Minnesota, Stanford University, Arizona State University and the Nature Conservancy report that expansion of croplands around the globe appears to reduce the planet's ability to store carbon in native ecosystems such as forests. They used a combination of satellite data and government reports to determine the extent of global cultivation and the estimates of global carbon stocks in natural vegetation from a recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report to produce maps with a resolution of 10 kilometers. [University of Wisconsin News]
• Volcanic eruptions appear to affect Asian monsoonal rain patterns --
In developing a 1000-year tree-ring atlas for Asian climate, Columbia University researchers have shown that volcanic eruptions can cause shifts in precipitation patterns during the Asian monsoon season. Large eruptions tend to cause drying conditions over central Asia, but wetter conditions over the Indochina Peninsula. [NSF]

CLIMATE MODELING

• Warming of ice sheets accelerated by water flowing through the ice -- Scientists from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado-Boulder and NOAA have developed a new model with improved heat exchange accounting procedures that shows water flowing through ice sheets, such as that found in Greenland, can increase warming of the ice sheet and accelerate ice flow faster than what was previously modeled with conventional thermal models. These scientists warn that the Greenland Ice Sheet could respond to increasing global temperatures on the order of decades rather than in terms of centuries. [University of Colorado News Center]

PALEOCLIMATE RECONSTRUCTION

• Changes in climate during Pleistocene reversed Atlantic Ocean's circulation -- An international team of researchers from Spain's Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona and the University of Seville, along with those from the United Kingdom's Oxford and Cardiff Universities have determined that changes in the Earth's climate approximately 20,000 years ago reversed the circulation of the Atlantic Ocean. Their investigation of the isotopes distributed on the floor of the Atlantic showed a change in the meridional overturning circulation (MOC) that may have accelerated climate change during the last Pleistocene Ice Age. [EurekAlert!]
• "Snowball Earth" appears to have triggered early animal evolution --
Biogeochemists from the University of California Riverside, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the University of Manitoba and the University of Alberta have analyzing the composition of iron-rich chemical precipitates accumulated on the ocean floor have concluded that the oceans in the mid-Neoproterozoic (from 750 to 635 million years ago) were rich in phosphorous. This discovery led these scientists to conclude that the severe glaciations between 750 to 580 million years ago may be linked to the rise of early animals, giving credence to the "Snowball Earth" hypothesis. [NSF]

CLIMATE AND SOCIETY

• Top Ten List of thirsty American Cities -- A recent study by a financial news organization provided listing of ten of the nation's largest cities that appeared to be in danger of running out of usable water in the near future. This news group used a report prepared by the Natural Resources Defense Council that considered projected water demands upon available precipitation and the region's susceptibility to drought. [24/7WallStreet]
• Ecological degradation occurs as nation's river flows are altered by land and water management --
A team of US Geological Survey scientists has produced a report finding that the flow in most of the nation's streams and rivers has been altered by land and water management activities, which has led to degradation of the ecology of the river basin. [USGS Newsroom]
• 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.

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.)

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

Historical Events:

• 8 November 1914...On this date the longest "official" rain-free time span on record for the U.S. of 767 days ended in Bagdad, CA. Some meteorologists question the accuracy of this record kept by railroad employees at that time. (Accord Weather Guide Calendar)
• 8 November 1966...The temperature in downtown San Francisco reached a November record of 86 degrees. (The Weather Channel)
• 8 November 1991...The first week of November ended in Iowa with the average temperature for the state of 18.3 degrees, a full 24.7 degrees below normal. Easily this was the coldest first week of November ever. (Intellicast)
• 8 November 1999...The temperature reached 89 degrees at Kennebec, South Dakota, breaking the all time record for the warmest November maximum temperature ever recorded in the state. (The Weather Doctor)
• 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)

Return to DataStreme Earth Climate Systems website

Prepared by Edward J. Hopkins, Ph.D., email hopkins@meteor.wisc.edu
© Copyright, 2010, The American Meteorological Society.