DataStreme ECS WEEK SIX: 11-15 October 2010

Climate in the News

ITEMS OF INTEREST

• Celebrate Earth Science Week -- The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, including the National Weather Service, along with NASA, the US Geological Survey and several professional scientific organizations such as the American Geological Institute have recognized this week (10-16 October 2010) as Earth Science Week to help the public gain a better understanding and appreciation for the earth sciences and to encourage stewardship of the Earth. This year's theme for the 12th annual Earth Science Week is "Exploring Energy", designed to "engage young people and the public in learning about Earth's energy resources." [American Geological Institute]

CURRENT CLIMATE STATUS

• US Weather and climate reviewed for September 2010 -- Basing their report on preliminary data, scientists at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center indicate that September 2010 was the fourteenth warmest September across the coterminous United States since sufficiently reliable climate records began in 1895. The September 2010 nationwide average temperature was 1.7 Fahrenheit degrees above the 1901-2000 average September temperature. Thirty-three states had above to much above average temperatures. Ten of these states ranked within the tenth warmest in the 116 year record: Florida, Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Maine in the East, along with Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona in the West. On the other hand, several northern states, namely, North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin had below average statewide temperatures. Nationwide precipitation for September 2010 was approximately 0.21 inches above the 20th century average, with Minnesota reporting its wettest September on record. Statewide precipitation in North Dakota, Wisconsin, Washington, South Dakota and Missouri also was in the top ten of their respective states. On the other hand, Wyoming had its driest September in 116 years, with Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida and Indiana within the top dozen dry Septembers on record. [NOAA News]
• Arctic sea ice shrinks to 2010 summer minimum --
Researchers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center who have been analyzing data on the Arctic sea ice obtained by the AMSR-E instrument onboard NASA's Aqua satellite claim that the sea ice covering the Arctic Ocean reached its annual minimum extent on Wednesday, 29 September 2010. Scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center noted that the extent of the sea ice coverage at its minimum was the third lowest extent since satellite surveillance of the sea ice began in 1979, with 2007 and 2008 summers having smaller areal extents of ice. [NASA's Earth Science News Team]
• Comparing circulation regimes in dry and wet summers --
Scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and its Scientific Visualization Studio have performed data reanalysis of the weather patterns across the United States during the nation's extremely dry and hot summer of 1988 and the relatively wet summer of 1993. Their Modern Era Retrospective-analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) project involved combining satellite measurements of temperature, atmospheric humidity, and winds in a high resolution global atmospheric model called GEOS to calculate the atmospheric dynamics and produce images that can be animated. These animations can be used to show how the differences in the circulation regimes at three different levels in the troposphere led to two distinctly different summers in terms of precipitation availability. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• Improved wind forecasts could influence coal markets --
The Bloomberg Businessweek reports that a Minnesota-based utility company is working with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) to use improved wind forecasts that would allow the utility to switch from coal-fired power generation plants to wind turbines along the Rocky Mountain foothills. The wind forecasts would use data collected from surface weather stations, aircraft and satellites, which would then help the utility to make the decision to switch from coal to wind generated power. Current estimates indicate that more accurate wind forecasts would lessen the more than $500 billion spent per year by the nation's utilities for burning coal for power generation. [Bloomberg News]

CURRENT CLIMATE MONITORING

• Earth science satellite data sent to Africa -- More than30 terabytes of free Earth science data obtained from NASA satellites is being sent to researchers in a unique partnership between NASA, the South African National Space Agency and the European Commission Joint Research Centre Institute for Environment and Sustainability. This shipment is designed to support sustainable development and environmental applications in Africa. [NASA JPL]
• Nations in the Hindu-Kush-Himalaya region get high tech SERVIR support --
NASA and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) are working with the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development to expand SERVIR-Himalaya, a tool developed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, across the Hindu-Kush-Himalaya region of south Asia in an effort to help map the recent flooding in Pakistan. Countries in the involved with program include Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Nepal and Pakistan. The SERVIR tool provides access to data and models, as well as training to help local decision-makers address problems and find solutions to issues involving climate change, environmental monitoring and assessment of extreme events. [NASA Marshall Space Flight Center]
• A shift in the GRIP mission emphasis --
While the portion of NASA's six-week Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes (GRIP) experiment that involved data-collection on using aircraft and an autonomous drone ended one week ago, the data analysis phase is now underway for this highly successful field experiment designed to study how hurricanes can rapidly form from tropical disturbances. During the experiment, 15 science flights were conducted by NASA's DC-8 research aircraft and the Global Hawk, the autonomous drone. Flights above Hurricane Karl were highly successful, helping fulfill the mission's stated objectives. [NASA GSFC]

CLIMATE FORCING

• New light shed on how sun affects Earth's climate -- Researchers from the United Kingdom's Imperial College London and the University of Colorado who have been studying the Sun's activity between 2004 and 2007 claim that a decline in the Sun's activity does not necessarily mean that the Earth becomes cooler. [EurekAlert!]
• Improvement in combustion efficiency seen from air quality measurements in China --
Atmospheric scientists and environmental engineers from Harvard University and China's Tsinghua University in Beijing who have been conducting a six-year study of atmospheric carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide levels in Beijing and surrounding provinces of northeastern China have found that combustion efficiency has improved across the region. [EurekAlert!]
• Wind farms affect local temperatures --
A team of researchers from the University of Illinois and other institutions recently found that wind farms appear to lower the local daytime temperatures, but increase the nighttime temperatures. The effects are depend on the attributes of the local climate (continental versus coastal) and could enhance the length of the frost-free season. These researchers have proposed strategies designed for mediating those effects, which would increase the potential for wind farm expansion. [University of Illinois]

CLIMATE AND THE BIOSPHERE

• A warmer and wetter climate assisting US farmers -- An Iowa State University agriculture economist and a US Department of Agriculture meteorologist report that warmer and wetter weather across many areas of the nation during the last several decades have helped many farmers to grow corn, soybeans and other crops in some regions that only a few decades ago were too dry or cold to support these cash food crops. [USA Today]
• While warming is greatest in north, its impact on life is in tropics --
Researchers at the University of Wyoming, the University of Washington and Germany's Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology claim that while temperatures during the recent several decades have been increasing most rapidly across northern latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere's temperate zone, the greatest impact upon life appears to be in the tropics, where slight changes in temperature due to changing climate have a greater impact upon the metabolisms of cold-blooded creatures of the tropics than those creatures farther north. [University of Washington News]
• Changes in climate could increase crop failures --
Researchers at the United Kingdom's University of Leeds, the Met Office Hadley Centre and University of Exeter have found that large-scale crop failures could become more common due to projected changes in climate, as these changes would cause an increased frequency of extreme weather events. [EurekAlert!]

PALEOCLIMATE RECONSTRUCTION

• Investigating the oxygenation of Earth -- An international team of scientists from Arizona State University, Harvard University and research institutions in Denmark, Sweden and the United Kingdom have developed techniques for studying the process of oxygenation, where the levels of free oxygen in the early Earth's oceans and atmosphere rose quickly during the Phanerozoic era approximately 550 million years ago. These researchers claim that plants played a dominant role in the process. [Arizona State University News]

CLIMATE AND SOCIETY

• Neanderthals may have been done in by volcanoes -- Researchers at Russia's ANO Laboratory of Prehistory in St. Petersburg claim that evidence they have discovered in a cave in the Caucasus Mountains of southern Russia appears to indicate that massive volcanic eruptions approximately 40,000 years ago may have been responsible for a change in the climate that could have driven Neanderthals to extinction, while clearing the way for the rise of modern humans in Europe and Asia. [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.

Concept of the Week: Tropospheric westerly winds, north and south

The theoretical existence of upper tropospheric jet stream winds were not confirmed until being encountered by World War II bomber pilots when heading west into strong headwinds at altitudes of approximately 30,000 feet (10,000 m). Wind speeds sometimes exceeded 170 mph causing their relatively slow, heavily laden aircraft to almost stand still. Subsequently, westerly jet stream winds were found to encircle the planet in midlatitudes of both hemispheres above regions of strong temperature contrasts.

The explanation for these winds involves atmospheric mass distributions and forces on a rotating planet. Air in tropical latitudes is warmed, rises and then flows poleward, both north and south. On a rotating planet, moving air is deflected by the Coriolis effect, to the right in the Northern Hemisphere (and left in the Southern). The greater the temperature differences between warm lower and cold higher latitudes, the stronger the air motions and the faster the jet streams. The vertical temperature patterns result in the highest wind speeds near the top of the troposphere.

So Northern Hemisphere air headed northward, deflected to the right ends up headed east, a "westerly wind." In the Southern Hemisphere, southward moving air, deflected left will also go east, as a westerly wind. These "rivers" of strong upper-level winds steer surface weather systems as they move generally eastward across midlatitudes. They also provide boosts for jet aircraft headed eastward with them, but need to be avoided for going west! Of course, the full story is complex as land (especially mountains) and water surfaces interact with the heating of the air and eddies form in the turbulent flows, so jet streams wander. And with them go the storms and the weather patterns that form our short-term climate.

Concept of the Week: Questions

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

1. The Northern Hemisphere jet stream winds would be directed such that cold air is [(to the left),(to the right),(directly ahead)] of their forward motion.
2. In the Southern Hemisphere, the jet stream winds to be directed generally toward the [(south), (east), (west)].

Historical Events:

• 11 October 1977...The wet community of Ketchikan, AK experienced its wettest day: 8.71 inches. (The Weather Doctor)
• 11 October 2005...A tropical depression, the former Hurricane Vince, became the first tropical cyclone on record to make landfall in Spain. (The Weather Doctor)
• 12 October 1979...The lowest observed sea-level barometric pressure (870 mb or 25.69 inches of mercury) was recorded approximately 300 miles west of Guam in the western Pacific Ocean at the center of Typhoon Tip. (The Weather Doctor)
• 12 October 1982...Angoon, AK received 15.20 inches of precipitation, to set a 24-hour maximum precipitation record for the 49th State. (NCDC)
• 12 October 2006...With 0.3 inches of snow falling at O'Hare International Airport, Chicago, IL set a new record for the earliest measurable snowfall since record-keeping began in 1871. The previous earliest date was 18 October in both 1972 and 1989. An unusually-early and intense lake-effect snow storm, resulted in 8.3 inches of snow that was measured at the official Buffalo, NY weather station on the 12th set a record for the snowiest October day in the station's 137-year history. The record did not last long, however, as the measurement on the morning of the 13th totals 10.9 inches. The two-day event totaled 22.6 inches (57.4 cm), breaking the October record for a single snowfall event. The storm was the sixth heaviest snowfall on record. (The Weather Doctor)
• 15-17 October 2005...The summit of Mount Washington, NH, the highest peak in the Northeast received 34 inches of snow between Saturday and Monday. The 24-hour record for the most snowfall was broken when 25.5 inches of snow piles up between noon Sunday and noon Monday. (The Weather Doctor)
• 16 October 1913...The temperature in Downtown San Francisco soared to 101 degrees to equal their record for October. (The Weather Channel)
• 16 October 1988...The afternoon high temperature of 100 degrees at Red Bluff, CA was the latest such reading of record for so late in the autumn season. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
• 17-18 October 2005...Heavy rain fell on Las Vegas, NV over the two-day period, with a rainfall total of 1.42 inches, which broke the full month record for October set in 1992. (The Weather Doctor)
• 17-19 October 2007...According to NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center, 87 tornadoes were reported in the United States on these three days – a new record outbreak for the month. With the outbreak, the monthly total of confirmed tornado reached 105, the second highest for October, behind the 117 in October 2001 since records began in 1950. Over 300 reports of severe weather were filed on 18 October across the lower and mid-Mississippi Valleys. (The Weather Doctor)

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.