6-10 December 2010

DataStreme Earth's Climate Systems will return for Spring 2011 with new Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 17 January 2011. All the current online website products, including updated issues of Weekly Climate News, will continue to be available throughout the winter break period.

ITEMS OF INTEREST

• It's Sure Dark! -- Have you noticed that the sun is setting early these days? During the first ten days of December, many locations throughout the country will experience their earliest sunset times of the year. The exact day for the earliest sunset depends upon the latitude, so you may want to check the date in your locale from the sunrise tables appearing in an on-line, interactive service available for the entire year at most cities in the United States. The reason for the earliest sunsets occurring in early December rather than on the winter solstice (during the early evening of Tuesday, 21 December 2010) is that the sun is not as precise a timekeeper as our watches. Because of a combination of factors involved with Earth's elliptical orbit about the sun and the tilt of Earth's spin axis with respect to the plane of the ecliptic, the sun appears to "run fast" by as much as 15 minutes as compared with clock time in November. However, with the approach of the winter solstice and perihelion (the smallest earth-sun distance during the afternoon of 3 January 2011), the apparent sun slows during December and finally lags the clock by 12 minutes in February. Consequently, a noticeable and welcome trend toward later sunsets can be detected by the end of December, especially by those residents in the northern part of the country. However, the latest sunrises occur at most locales in early January, meaning that early risers will continue seeing dark and dreary mornings for another month.

CURRENT CLIMATE STATUS

• Mapping rainfall from 2010 Atlantic hurricane season from space -- Scientists from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center have produced a season ending analysis of the rainfall that fell across the North Atlantic basin during the hurricane season based on satellite derived precipitation estimates. The maps were generated by the Center's Multisatellite Precipitation Analysis, which was based on data collected by the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite. [NASA Earth Observatory]

CURRENT CLIMATE MONITORING

• Review of Atlantic and eastern North Pacific hurricane seasons -- With the end of the official 2010 hurricane seasons in the North Atlantic and eastern North Pacific basins, NOAA forecasters assessed the season and the forecasts that they had made earlier. They noted that the 2010 Atlantic season was one of the most active over the last 150 years, but the lack of landfalling hurricanes in the US made the season appear as a "gentle giant." In view of the numbers of named tropical cyclones and hurricanes, they noted that their prediction for an active season was realized. The forecasters felt that several large-scale climate features, namely record warm Atlantic waters, combined with favorable prevailing winds and weak wind shear aided by La Niña contributed to an extremely active season. However, the position of the jet stream, together with short-term weather patterns helped keep the tropical cyclone tracks away from the United States. On the other hand, the forecasters noted that the 2010 eastern North Pacific season had the fewest named tropical cyclones since the satellite era began nearly 50 years ago. [NOAA News]
• Use of repeat photography helps monitor landscape change --
A book entitled "Repeat Photography: Methods and Applications in the Natural Sciences," was recently released that not only reviews the advancements made in the repeat photography techniques, but also commemorates the 50th anniversary of the US Geological Survey’s Desert Laboratory Repeat Photography Collection, the world's largest such collection. One of the uses of repeat photography is the detection of the impact of climate change on the landscape, such as the retreat of glaciers during the last century. [USGS Newsroom]
• 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

• Anaesthetic gases could be powerful greenhouse gases -- Atmospheric chemists from Denmark's University of Copenhagen and NASA in collaboration with anesthesiologists from the University of Michigan Medical School have found that three anaesthetic gases (isofluran, desflurane and sevoflurane) commonly used in surgery have a high global warming potential. [University of Copenhagen Chemistry Department]

CLIMATE AND THE BIOSPHERE

• A warm Earth could have helped accelerate life’s beginnings -- Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill report that their investigation of the effect of temperature on extremely slow chemical reactions suggests that the time required for evolution on an ancient warm Earth would have been shorter than what critics might expect. [UNC Health Care]
• El Niño events affect South Pacific reef fish --
Aided by satellite and oceanographic data, an international team of biologists who studied the arrival of young fish to an atoll in French Polynesia for four years have found that the intense 13-month El Niño event of 1997-8 caused a sudden collapse in the plankton community in the waters surrounding the atoll. This collapse in the plankton population led to a near absence of the young fish that are needed to replenish adult stocks. [EurekAlert!]
• Global maps of mangroves obtained from satellites --
Maps of the global distribution of mangroves have been made available from a study led by a US Geological Survey scientist in which more than 1000 images from NASA's Landsat satellites were analyzed. The mangroves are biologically important ecosystems that are common feature of tropical and sub-tropical coastlines. [NASA Earth Observatory]

CLIMATE FORECASTS

• Numerous coastal wetlands could disappear worldwide this century — An international team of scientists including those from the US Geological Survey recently released a report entitled "Limits on the Adaptability of Coastal Marshes to Rising Sea-Level," warning that many coastal wetlands around the world appear to be more sensitive to climate change than previously thought. Some of these coastal wetlands are along the US Atlantic coast. In addition, the possibility of a rapid global sea-level rise by the end of the 21st century would inundate these wetlands. [USGS Newsroom]

PALEOCLIMATE RECONSTRUCTION

• Global sea-level rose as last Ice Age ended -- Researchers at the United Kingdom’s National Oceanography Centre using about 400 high-quality sea-level markers from study sites around the globe have determined that sea-level rose by an average of approximately one meter per century at the end of the last Ice Age. This rise in sea-level was interrupted by several rapid "jumps" when the level rose at rates that reached 2.5 meters per century. [National Oceanography Centre]
• Ice cores used to reveal biomass burning --
Scientists from SUNY Stony Brook who analyzed the amount of carbon monoxide in an Antarctic ice core spanning a length of 650 years have found evidence for fluctuations in biomass burning in the Southern Hemisphere due to wildfires and human activity that differ substantially from the fluctuations in the corresponding fire record in the Northern Hemisphere. These differences suggest that changes may be needed in the input to several current climate models. [NSF]

CLIMATE AND SOCIETY

• Combating climate change by financially rewarding farmers -- In a study conducted by the University of Maryland's Center for Integrative Environmental Research, rewarding farmers financially for using the best available fertilizer management practices can simultaneously reduce fertilizer runoff benefiting water quality in the Chesapeake Bay basin and help combat climate change by capturing carbon dioxide destined for the atmosphere. [University of Maryland]
• Loss of biodiversity could be detrimental to human health --
In research funded by conducted by National Science Foundation-National Institutes of Health Ecology of Infectious Diseases Program, scientists found that biodiversity loss from plant and animal extinctions caused by global environmental change could result in the spread of infectious diseases, considered to be detrimental to human health. [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]

COMPARATIVE PLANETOLOGY

• Weather station created for next Mars Rover -- A set of weather sensors built by a Spanish scientific group will be placed on NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (also known as the "Curiosity rover") mission to be launched in late 2011 and to reach the planet Mars in August 2012. These sensors, which will be in the Rover Environmental Monitoring Station mounted on the rover, will monitor wind speed, wind direction and air temperature in the Martian atmosphere. [NASA JPL]
• Earthweek --
Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com] Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Historical Events:

• 6 December 1950...Duluth, MN had their greatest 24-hour snowfall when 25.4 inches fell. (Intellicast)
• 8 December 1938...The temperature at La Mesa, CA soared to 108 degrees to set a U.S. record for the month of December. Los Angeles reached 91 degrees, the only time a 90 degrees reading was reached in December in that city's history. (The Weather Channel) (Intellicast)
• 10 December 1919...A 28-inch snowfall for 24 hours at Bend, OR set a new 24-hour snowfall record for the state. (Intellicast)
• 10 December 1946...The temperature at New York City soared to 70 degrees, the highest ever for a December day. (David Ludlum) (Intellicast)
• 10 December 1949...The barometric pressure at Las Vegas, NV reached a record low reading of 29.17 inches (987.8 millibars). (The Weather Channel)
• 10 December 1995...Intense lake effect snow squalls buried Buffalo, NY under 37.9 inches in 24 hours, the city's greatest 24-hour snowfall and biggest snowstorm ever. Watertown, NY recorded 39 inches in just 12 hours and had 4 inches of snow an hour each hour for six consecutive hours. (Intellicast)
• 11 December 1932...Very cold weather prevailed along the West Coast. San Francisco received 0.8 inch of snow, and at the airport the temperature dipped to 20 degrees. At Sacramento, CA, the mercury dipped to 17 degrees to establish an all-time record low for that location. Morning lows were below freezing from the 9^th to the 15^th at Sacramento, and the high on the 11^th was just 34 degrees. The cold wave dealt severe damage to truck crops and orange groves in the Sacramento Valley. (David Ludlum) (The Weather Channel)
• 12 December 1882...Portland, OR was drenched with 7.66 inches of rain, a record 24-hour total for that location. (12^th-13^th) (The Weather Channel)
• 12 December 1995...A five-day lake-effect snowstorm came to an end at Sault Ste Marie, MI over which time 61.7 inches fell, by far the biggest snowstorm ever. In one 24-hour span, 27.8 inches fell to set the 24-hour record. The snow depth reached 50 inches at one time, tying the record. The storm brought the monthly total to 82.5 inches, the greatest monthly total ever. The city went on to set a new winter season record with well over 200 inches. (Intellicast)

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.