WEEKLY CLIMATE NEWS

DataStreme ECS WEEK TEN: 5-9 November 2012

ITEMS OF INTEREST

"Falling back" this past weekend -- Early this past Sunday morning most of the nation will revert back to Standard time after nearly 8 months of observing Daylight Saving Time. Since Arizona, Hawaii and Puerto Rico do not observe Daylight Saving Time, no time change will be needed in those parts of the country. The U.S. Congress has mandated time changes. Following the old adage of "spring ahead, fall behind", you will need to turn your clocks back by one hour to conform with the local time observance. Note:A recent Energy Policy Act has extended Daylight Saving Time, with the start on the second Sunday in March (11 March 2012) and the end on the first Sunday in November (4 November 2012). Next spring, Daylight Saving Time will start on Sunday morning, 10 March 2013.
A change from Daylight Saving to Standard Time does not deduct an extra hour of daylight from the day nor does it affect weather and climate patterns. The daily climate data collected at those automatic weather stations operated by the National Weather Service and the Federal Aviation Administration, together with all the cooperative weather observing stations around the nation are always made according to local standard time. NOTE: You may check the correct current official time at http://www.time.gov/
Free admission into the National Parks -- This coming weekend, Saturday, 10 November 2012 through Monday 12 November 2012, has been designated by the National Park Service as fee-free days in honor of Veterans Day. This fee waiver will cover entrance and commercial tour fees in many of the national parks and monuments administered by the Park Service. [National Park Service Fee Free Days]
State, national and global instrumental records -- Temperature and precipitation data have been collected around the world since the mid-19th century. Beginning in the 1890s, a sufficiently dense climate network has been established in the United States and its territories. The records from around the nation and from around the global have been collected and archived at several central locations, such as NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). Scientists at NCDC along with colleagues at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and in the United Kingdom have produced time series of area-average monthly and annual temperatures for over a century on state, national and global space scales. For more details on these records and how to access them, please read this week's Supplemental Information...In Greater Depth.

CURRENT CLIMATE STATUS

Overview of the new US climate normals made -- Scientists from NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) have published a peer-reviewed article that provides a general overview of the suite of the 1981-2010 US Climate Normals that NCDC released to the public in July 2011. This suite included daily and monthly normals of temperature, precipitation, snowfall and degree day units for approximately 9800 stations across the nation. Maps are provided that compare the 1981-2010 temperature and precipitation normals with corresponding normals for 1971-2000. [NOAA National Climatic Data Center]
Review of Canadian national weather and climate for summer 2012 -- Scientists at Environment Canada reported that Canada experienced its warmest meteorological summer since comprehensive nationwide records began in 1948. The national average temperature for the three months of June through August 2012 was approximately 1.9 Celsius degrees above the long-term average. Most of the nation had above average temperatures, with the Arctic and sections of Manitoba experiencing the largest temperature anomalies or departures from normal, with summer temperatures that were more than 3 Celsius degrees above average. Only sections of British Columbia, the southern Prairie Provinces and the Maritime Provinces had temperatures that were close to average. Nationwide, Canada experienced a slightly wetter summer (approximately 4 percent) above the 1961-1990 normal. Equivalently, summer 2012 was the 19th wettest summer in the last 65 years. Scattered sections of British Columbia, the Prairie Provinces and the central Arctic had above average precipitation, while eastern Canada that included the Maritimes along with scattered areas of the Arctic recorded precipitation totals that were below the long-term average. [Environment Canada]

CURRENT CLIMATE MONITORING

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 AND THE BIOSPHERE

Flow of nutrients affecting plant productivity is mapped -- A research team that included scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have used nearly two decades of data collected by sensors onboard NASA, NOAA and other international satellites to assess the maximum possible growth of vegetation around the world based upon available water and light conditions. They found that the worldwide growth of plants is limited by available soil nutrients in the soil. These maps should be valuable in the study of the global carbon cycle for evaluating the amount of carbon compounds Earth's ecosystems could sequester as atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane levels increase. [NASA JPL]
High mountain meadows in Pacific Northwest are declining due to changing climate -- Researchers at Oregon State University have found that some high mountain meadows in the Cascade Mountain Range in the Pacific Northwest have been dwindling rapidly since 1950 due to changes in climate that have reduced the snowpack, lengthened the growing season and have created other factors that allow trees to invade the mountain meadow ecosystems previously carpeted with grasses, shrubs and wildflowers. [Oregon State University News]

CLIMATE FORCING

Dust warms as well as cools the atmosphere -- Scientists from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and the University of Maryland, College Park and other research institutions used combined data collected from the ground-based sensors during a dust storm in China with computer models to determine that over half of dust's cooling effect is compensated for by its warming effect. This warming effect, at least locally, is greater than previously thought and needs to be considered as most climate models tend to underestimate it or do not consider it. The data were from NASA's Surface-based Mobile Atmospheric Research & Testbed Laboratories (SMARTLabs). [NASA's Earth Science News Team]
Extreme weather can affect California's water availability -- Researchers from the University of California, Merced who have been monitoring precipitation and snowpack in California warn that changing climatic conditions would be affecting overall weather conditions across the state that could affect water availability for state residents. [University of California, Merced News]
Excess use of nitrogen fertilizers linked with increased temperatures in China -- Researches claim that in the last ten years, the warming effect caused by nitrous oxide (N₂O) emissions has been significantly greater than the cooling effects from croplands storing carbon dioxide. They propose that if the amount of nitrogen fertilizers applied to crops in certain areas of China such as sections of the Yangtze River Basin and the North China Plain were reduced by 60 percent, the greenhouse gases would be substantially decreased without affecting crop productivity or the area's natural carbon sink. [Institute of Physics]

CLIMATE FORECASTS

Updated national drought outlook issued -- Forecasters at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center recently released their updated Seasonal Drought Outlook that is to cover the last month of meteorological autumn and the first two months of meteorological winter that will run through the end of January 2013. These forecasters foresee a persistence of drought conditions across a large area of the nation extending from sections of the mid-Mississippi Valley westward across the Plains and the Rockies into the Intermountain West and Great Basin. They feel that some improvement in the drought conditions should occur across sections of the Mississippi Valley, the northern Plains, the northern Plains and sections of California. Improvement was also anticipated across sections of the Midwest and the Middle Atlantic States. Some of the improvement appears to be associated with recent rainfall across the East from former Hurricane Sandy and across the Pacific Northwest, along with anticipated precipitation patterns that would accompany a possible weak El Niño episode. [NOAA Climate Prediction Center] Note: a Seasonal Drought Outlook Discussion is included describing the forecasters' confidence.
Sea level may be rising ahead of projections -- A geologist at the University of Colorado claims that global sea levels appear to be rising faster than expected due to increased temperatures because he believes that the models used to forecast the increase in height have not included critical feedback mechanisms that include Arctic sea ice, the Greenland ice cap and one involving soil moisture and groundwater mining. [Geological Society of America]

CLIMATE AND SOCIETY

International study of open-fire cooking and air quality launched -- A diverse team of experts on pollution, climate, and health from the National Center for Atmospheric Researches (NCAR), the University of Colorado Boulder, University of Ghana School of Public Health, and Ghana Health Services recently launched a study focusing primarily on northern Ghana that will analyze the effects of smoke from traditional cooking methods upon the air quality and human health of villages and the entire region. Data collected from newly developed sensors along with computer and statistical models will be used in this study. The researchers hope that their findings will provide information to policy makers and health officials in other developing countries where open-fire cooking or inefficient stoves are common. [UCAR/NCAR AtmosNews]
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.)

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:

5 November 1977...A slow moving storm produced five to nine inch rains across northern Georgia causing the Toccoa Dam to burst. As the earthen dam collapsed, the waters rushed through the Toccoa Falls Bible College killing three persons in the dorms. Thirty-eight persons perished at a trailer park along the stream. Eighteen bridges were washed out in Madison County. (David Ludlum)
5 November 1987...Heavy rains in California's Death Valley National Park washed out many park roads. As much as 1.20 in. of rain fell at Scotty's Castle, compared with the annual rainfall average of 2.28 in. Up to 8000 people attending a recreational encampment were stranded. (Accord Weather Calendar)
5 November 1991...Elkins, WV dropped to 8 degrees, the coldest so early in the season. Pittsburgh, PA dropped to 11 degrees also the coldest so early. Jackson, KY fell to 17 degrees, a daily record. (Intellicast)
6 November 1988...A powerful low-pressure system over the Great Lakes Region continued to produce snow across parts of the Ohio Valley and the Great Lakes Region. Snowfall totals along the shore of Lake Superior reached 24 inches, with three feet of snow reported in the Porcupine Mountain area of Upper Michigan. Marquette, MI established a November record with 17.3 inches of snow in 24 hours. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
6 November 1989...Unseasonably warm weather prevailed in the south central and southeastern U.S. The high temperature of 89 degrees at the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport in Texas equaled their record for November. (Storm Data) (The National Weather Summary)
6 November 1994...Downtown San Francisco, CA was drenched with 6.19 inches of rain in 24 hours to set an all-time record for the city.
7 November 1986...Temperatures reached a daily record 86 degrees at New Orleans, LA, equaling the highest ever for November. (Storm Data) (Intellicast)
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)

Return to DataStreme ECS website