6-10 June 2011

DataStreme Earth Climate Systems will return for Fall 2011 with new Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 29 August 2011. All the current online website products will continue to be available throughout the summer break period.

• Early Sunrise -- Within the next week, many locations in the continental United States will experienced the date of earliest sunrise. While the longest daylight at each locale in the Northern Hemisphere will occur in over two weeks on the summer solstice (midday on Tuesday, 21 June 2011), the occurrence of earliest local sunrise occurs before this date because the apparent sun now "leads" the clock time. This time discrepancy, which now amounts to approximately 2 minutes, occurs because of a combination of factors that result from the earth moving more slowly in its elliptical orbit because the earth presently is near its farthest point from the sun (aphelion on Monday morning, 4 July 2011) and the effect of the tilt of the earth's spin axis (near the summer solstice). For reference, the latest sunsets of the year will occur later in June as the apparent sun slows and by the first week of July "lags" clock time by about 4 minutes.
• "Break the Grip of the Rip®" -- NOAA, the United States Lifesaving Association and the National Park Service have designated this upcoming week of 5-11 June 2011 as national Rip Current Awareness Week. Using the theme, Break the Grip of the Rip®, efforts are meant to heighten public awareness of rip currents at surf beaches that claim the lives of as many as 100 people in the United States annually. [NWS Rip Current Safety]
• World Ocean Day to be celebrated -- World Ocean Day or a "Celebration of the Sea" will be celebrated Wednesday, 8 June 2011 in an effort to increase public awareness and to foster public involvement in the management of the ocean and its resources. Although this date was created at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, it had not been officially recognized by the United Nations until 2009. This year's theme is "Our oceans: greening our future." A partial listing is provided for events across the US and other nations that will celebrate World Ocean Day. [The Ocean Project]
• Recent auroral activity -- Solar activity over one week ago produced minor to moderate geomagnetic storms over the Memorial Day weekend that generated aurora in both hemispheres that were visible in Tasmania, New Zealand, Antarctica, Alberta, Wisconsin and Minnesota. NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center had predicted the geomagnetic storm to continue through this past weekend with a continuing possibility of radio blackouts through the first half of the upcoming week. [NASA GSFC]

• Improved climate forecasts foreseen with new NASA salinity satellite -- Climate scientists are anticipating improved predictive capabilities of climate computer models once global evaporation and precipitation data become available from Aquarius, a new NASA salinity-measurement instrument that will be onboard the Satélite de Aplicaciones Científicas (SAC)-D spacecraft slated for launch in June 2011. Aquarius contains sensors that will make comprehensive measurements of ocean surface salinity with the precision needed to help researchers better determine how Earth's ocean interacts with the atmosphere to influence climate. [NASA JPL]
• Giant fiords revealed under East Antarctic Ice Sheet -- An international team of scientists from the US, the United Kingdom and Australia have created a high-resolution topographic map of surface of the Aurora Subglacial Basin under the East Antarctic Ice Sheet using ice-penetrating radar. The map reveals giant ice cut channels or fjords under this ice sheet. [University of Texas at Austin]
• 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
• Thunderstorms modified by cities cause problems of downwind areas -- A scientist at Purdue University who is the Indiana State Climatologist claims that urban areas tend to modify thunderstorms, causing them to become more violent as they travel away from the cities and move across downwind areas. He based his claim on a radar-based climatology analysis that he and his students performed on ten years of data obtained from thunderstorms that traveled across the Indianapolis metropolitan area. [Purdue University News]
• New map made of tropical forest carbon storage -- Using data obtained from a variety of NASA satellites, researchers with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and their colleagues in the US, the United Kingdom and France have produced a detailed map that displays the location and amount of carbon matter stored in the Earth's tropical rainforests. The researchers expect that this map will not only serve as a baseline for ongoing carbon monitoring and research, but also as a useful resource for managing the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. [NASA JPL]

• Warmer world would affect land and sea access to Arctic oppositely -- In a study conducted at the University of California, Los Angeles, researchers warn that projected increases in global temperature over the next four decades should have opposite affects on accessibility to the Arctic basin, with improved access by sea, but diminished access over land. [UCLA Newsroom]
• Climate projections are inadequate due to poor handling of soil carbon release -- Scientists from Oregon State University, the US Geological Survey, and the National Ecological Observatory Network caution that numerical climate forecasts of future atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations may not be correct as they do not accurately reflect soil carbon release. Their study used data from the Long Term Ecological Network Program. [Oregon State University]

• Climate changes helped drive Vikings from Greenland -- Researchers at Brown University used cores from two lakes in Greenland to create a 5600-year reconstruction of the climate for a region that is near the "Norse Western Settlement." They have found that this temperature record indicates that the region's climate turned colder over several decades at approximately 1100 CE, well before the beginning of the Little Ice Age in the 1400s, usually considered to have contributed to the demise of the Norse settlements in Greenland. They also researched how climate may have affected the Dorset and Saqqaq cultures between 2500 and 50 BCE. [Brown University]

• Invasive weeds out-compete local species with aid of climate change -- Researchers at Purdue University, the University of Massachusetts Boston, Stanford University and the Carnegie Institution for Science report that an invasive weed species in Western North America called yellow starthistle have grown to as much time their size when exposed to increased carbon dioxide, precipitation, nitrogen and temperature, much more than local grassland species. Their experiments were designed to simulate expected environmental changes associated with projected changes in climate. [Purdue University News]
• Diversity and resiliency in coral reef ecosystems could be reduced by ocean acidification -- A research team from the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science, the Australian Institute of Marine Science and Germany's Max-Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology recently reported on their studies of three volcanoes that seep carbon dioxide in the waters around Papua New Guinea to see how ocean acidification can impact coral reef ecosystems. They found that ocean acidification, along with increased ocean temperatures, will likely severely reduce the diversity and resilience of coral reef ecosystems. at University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science. [Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science]

• Impacts of rising ocean levels could extend well inland -- Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison warn that the human impact of rising sea levels due to changing climate appears to be complex and could extend well inland away from the current coasts. These researchers are attempting to increase alignment of population and climate data in both space and time domains. [University of Wisconsin-Madison]
• 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.

• 6-10 June 1816...The temperature reached 92 degrees at Salem, MA during an early heat wave, but then plunged 49 degrees in 24 hours to commence the famous "year without a summer". Late season snow fell across New England and eastern Canada. The editor of the Bangor (ME) Register observed that individual snowflakes that fell on Bangor during the afternoon of the 6^th covered areas up to two inches in diameter. Snow fell near Quebec City, Quebec over a 5-day period accumulating to 12 inches with "drifts reaching the axel trees of carriages" during this infamous Year Without a Summer. The Montreal Gazette reported that this "Extraordinary Season" gave snow squalls to the city on the 6^th and 8^th. On the 7^th, a famous June snow fell in the northeastern U.S. Danville, VT reported drifts of snow and sleet twenty inches deep. The Highlands were white all day, and snow flurries were observed as far south as Boston MA. Waltham, MA reported a low temperature of 33 degrees and New Haven, CT had a low of 35 degrees (David Ludlum) (Intellicast) (The Weather Doctor) (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
• 6 June 1894...One of the greatest floods in U.S. history occurred as the Williamette River overflowed to inundate half of the business district of Portland, OR. (David Ludlum)
• 7 June 1972...Richmond, VA experienced its worst flood of record as rains from Hurricane Agnes pushed the water level at the city locks to a height of 36.5 feet, easily topping the previous record of thirty feet set in 1771. (The Weather Channel)
• 9 June 1966...Hurricane Alma made landfall over the eastern Florida Panhandle -- the earliest land falling hurricane on the U.S. mainland on record. (Intellicast)
• 9 June 1988...The temperature at Del Rio, TX soared to an all-time record high of 112 degrees. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
• 9 June 1990...San Diego, CA set a new record rainfall amount on this date, as 0.38 inches of rain fell breaking the old record of 0.13 inches established in 1892. Moisture from the remains of Hurricane Boris was responsible for this rare rain event. (Intellicast)
• 10 June 1995...The temperature at Yakutat, AK soared to 87 degrees for its highest temperature on record. (Intellicast)
• 11 June 1877...The temperature at Los Angeles, CA reached 112 degrees during a heat wave. It would have been the all-time record for Los Angeles but official records did not begin until twenty days later. Over a century later, Los Angeles would again reach this temperature on 26 June 1990. (The Weather Channel) (The Weather Doctor)
• 11 June 1972...Heavy showers brought 1.64 inches of rain to Phoenix, AZ, a record for the month of June. (The Weather Channel)
• 12 June 1991...The largest volcanic eruption of the 20th Century began as Mt Pinatubo in the Philippines injected 15 to 30 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere. Global dust cloud cooled the planet, reversing for a time the global warming trend, as 1992 was globally one of the coolest since the 1970s. On the same day that Mt Pinatubo awakens from its 635-year slumber, Typhoon Yunya crossed Luzon province. Mudslides and flooding caused many deaths and added with impacts of Pinatubo leaving more than a million homeless. (The Weather Doctor)

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Prepared by Edward J. Hopkins, Ph.D., email hopkins@meteor.wisc.edu
© Copyright, 2011, The American Meteorological Society.