DataStreme ECS WEEK 7: 18-22 October 2010

Climate in the News

ITEMS OF INTEREST

• Construction of NOAA's supercomputing center started -- Last week, a ribbon-cutting ceremony marked the start of construction for the NOAA Environmental Security Computing Center in Fairmont, WV, a new state-of-the-art supercomputer center that is designed to develop and improve the accuracy of global and regional climate and weather model predictions. [NOAA News]

CURRENT CLIMATE STATUS

• September drought report -- The National Climate Data Center has posted its September 2010 drought report online. Using the Palmer Drought Severity Index, approximately five percent of the coterminous United States experienced severe to extreme drought conditions at the end of August, while 20 percent of the area had severely to extremely wet conditions.
• Review of September 2010 global temperatures --
Preliminary data analyzed by scientists at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center indicated that the global combined land and ocean average surface temperature for the September 2010 was 0.9 Fahrenheit degrees above the 20th century average for the month. Last month's temperature tied for the eighth highest September temperature since global temperature records began in 1880. When considered separately, the monthly temperatures of the land surface and the ocean surface for this recently concluded month were the ninth highest September temperature on record. A La Niña event had developed, which may have reduced the September ocean temperatures. Furthermore, when considering the combined land-ocean global temperature for the year to date, this temperature would tie 1998 for the highest nine-month global temperature since 1880. Arctic sea ice coverage during September was the third lowest for any September since satellite surveillance began in 1979. [NOAA News]

CURRENT CLIMATE MONITORING

• Regional sea surface temperature rise and coral bleaching event detected in western Caribbean -- Researchers at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute's Bocas del Toro Research Station and Galeta Point Marine Laboratory have reported an anomalous sea temperature rise and a major coral bleaching event in the western Caribbean during the last several months. [EurekAlert!]
• 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

• Role of greenhouse gases in controlling Earth's temperature studied -- Researchers at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies have run a climate forcing experiment to examine how water vapor, clouds and the other "non-condensing greenhouse gases" such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone, and chlorofluorocarbons affect the terrestrial greenhouse effect, which result in elevated surface temperatures. These researchers claim that without these non-condensing greenhouse gases, water vapor and clouds would be unable to provide the feedback mechanisms that amplify the greenhouse effect, even though water vapor, a major greenhouse gas constituent, and clouds contribute nearly 75 percent of the contribution. Carbon dioxide accounts for approximately 20 percent. [NASA GISS]
• Atmospheric aerosols from organic compounds could have climatic effects --
A group of scientists from Finnish and German universities and institutes have been studying the role that biogenic volatile organic compounds play in new particle formation processes within the atmosphere. Some of these compounds include secondary organic aerosol particles that may be solids and could result in lowering the air temperature, resulting in a cooler climate. [EurekAlert!]
• Coral records document rise in Pacific Ocean thermocline --
Researchers at Ohio State University and the University of Toronto report that their analysis of coral records from the western tropical Pacific Ocean indicates that the thermocline, a boundary between warm surface water and the colder deep water, has become shallower over the last several decades in response to the increase in global temperatures. These researchers also indicate that this change in thermocline depth has an important relationship with the subsurface oceanic circulation patterns. [Ohio State University Research]

CLIMATE FORECASTS

• Higher heating bills foreseen for upcoming winter -- Officials with the US Department of Energy recently reported that based upon their analysis of NOAA seasonal forecasts, households across the Northeast should pay more for heating this winter due to a combination of rising fuel prices and colder weather conditions across the region than last year. [USA Today]

PALEOCLIMATE RECONSTRUCTION

• Royal Navy ship logbooks used to chart past climate -- Researchers at the United Kingdom's Oxford University and colleagues are undertaking a project in which the weather information and other significant events are being transcribed from logbooks obtained from approximately 280 British Royal Navy ships. They are inviting the public's participation in this project. Ultimately, these transcriptions should help climate scientists determine how the climate changed over the last century, especially over the oceans. [BBC News]
• Ancient animal urine could be a proxy climate indicator --
Scientists at the United Kingdom's University of Leicester and colleagues from other institutions have found that "middens" formed from prehistoric animal urine can be used to investigate ancient climates in southern Africa beginning approximately 30,000 years ago. They used these middens from the rock hyrax, a guinea pig-sized animal that is common in countries such as Namibia and Botswana. [EurekAlert!]

CLIMATE AND SOCIETY

• White House releases interagency report on climate change adaptation -- Late last week, a report was released from the Interagency Task Force on Climate Adaptation outlining recommendations on various policies and programs that the federal government can undertake to better prepare the nation's response to the impacts of climate change. This task force was co-chaired by the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the Office of Science and Technology Policy and NOAA [The White House]
• Assessing Americans' knowledge of climate change
-- Early last week, the Project on Climate Change Communication released the results of their most recent national survey made to assess the US public's knowledge of climate change. The summary, entitled "Americans' Knowledge of Climate Change," indicates that 63 percent of the citizens sampled believe that "global warming" is currently occurring, but many do not know why. project[Yale Project on Climate Change Communication]
• Demographics trends could influence climate change --
In research conducted by an international team from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis and NOAA, future trends in the population growth and composition involving aging and urbanization were found to potentially have a significant effect upon global carbon dioxide emissions over the next 40 years, which would impact climate change. The influences would depend upon where the rate of population growth occurs, especially in the United States, the European Union, China and India. [UCAR/NCAR]
• 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]

COMPARATIVE PLANETOLOGY

• Device on a lander used to study Martian atmosphere and climate history -- A professor at the University of Texas at Dallas has designed instruments that were placed on NASA's Phoenix Lander, which was deployed to Mars in 2008. One of these instruments, a mass spectrometer, is capable of measuring the atmospheric components in the soil samples gathered from the surface of Mars. The study also showed how carbon dioxide isotopes have reacted to volcanic activity, water and weathering, thereby helping scientists form a more complete picture of the current Martian atmosphere. [University of Texas at Dallas]
• Earthweek --
Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com] Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Concept of the Week: End of the Growing Season

As we move through autumn, we often contemplate the end of the growing season as daylength shortens and temperatures begin to fall across many areas of the nation. The length of the growing season depends upon the plant species, as well as the climate of the locale, meaning that several ways can be used to define the growing season.

Many crops, especially vegetables and fruits, are sensitive to relatively low air temperatures. In spring, when many crops are emerging and in various stages of development they are more vulnerable to air temperatures near 32 degrees Fahrenheit. But by fall, many of these plants have become hardy. Generally speaking, a killing frost would occur when the temperature around the plant would fall to a point that would kill all but the hardiest vegetation. Sometimes, other terminology is used. When air temperatures fall between 29 and 32 degrees Fahrenheit, a so-called "light freeze" occurs. While tender plants such as tomatoes, peppers, corn and cucumbers would be killed when temperatures fall to around 29 degrees, these conditions would have little destructive effect on other hardier vegetation. A "moderate freeze" typically occurs between 25 and 28 degrees, which would have a widely destructive effect upon most vegetation. For temperatures of 24 degrees or lower, a condition called a "severe freeze", heavy damage would occur with most plants that are not dormant. Apples are damaged when the temperature drops below 20 degrees. Under these conditions, the soil would have frozen solid to a depth dependent upon the duration of the freeze, as well as the soil type and soil moisture.

In most mid latitude climates, the growing season is often used synonymously with the frost-free season, loosely defined as the length of time between the last killing frost in spring and the first killing frost in the autumn. The National Climatic Data Center has produced climatological tables that identify those median dates (a 50 percent occurrence) during spring and fall when the temperature at a station falls to 36, 32, 28, 24 or 20 degrees Fahrenheit for the last time in spring or the first time in autumn. While the exact time span that a plant survives would vary by plant type, the growing season for climatological purposes is often related to the interval when the daily minimum temperature remains above 32 degrees.

Across the continental U.S. the typical lengths of the frost free regions range from about 120 days along the Canadian border to about 220 days in Oklahoma and north Texas and over 320 days in southern sections of Florida and California. Mountainous areas provide a complex pattern, with some higher elevations having lengths that are less than 100 days. By accessing the NOWData (NOAA Online Weather Data) feature on the Climate page of your local National Weather Service, you can find the "first/last dates" for various climate reporting stations around your area.

Concept of the Week: Questions

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

1. Many vegetable crops would succumb when autumn air temperatures fall to [(36),(33),(28)] degrees.
2. The frost-free season in states bordering Canada would probably be less than [(60),(90),(120)] days.

Historical Events:

• 18 October 1984...Heavy snow began falling late on the 17^th at Salt Lake City and when it ended, 18.4 inches fell, setting a new 24-hour snowfall record. (Intellicast)
• 20 October 2004...Rain at two stations in Nevada broke the state's previous 24-hour maximum precipitation record of 7.13 inches set previously at Mt. Rose Highway Station (31 January 1963). The new state record of 9.78 inches was established at Mt. Charleston, while Kyle Canyon also broke the old record with 8.75 inches. (Accord Weather Guide Calendar)
• 21 October 1996...Portland, ME received 13.32 inches of rain to set a 24-hour maximum precipitation record for the Pine Tree State. (NCDC)
• 22 October 1987...Yakutat, AK surpassed their previous all-time yearly precipitation total of 190 inches. Monthly records were set in June with 17 inches, in September with 70 inches, and in October with more than 40 inches. (Sandra and TI Richard Sanders - 1987)
• 24 October 1951...Sacramento, CA reported a barometric pressure of 29.42 inches, to establish a record low for October. (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.