WEEKLY CLIMATE NEWS

3-7 December 2012

DataStreme Earth's Climate Systems will return for Spring 2013 with new Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 14 January 2013. 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 morning hours of Thursday, 21 December 2012) 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 early morning of 2 January 2013), 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

Global temperature datasets indicate warmth of 2012 -- The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) recently noted that the calendar year of 2012 is currently headed to be the ninth warmest since 1850 when a widespread comprehensive global climate was established. The WMO based their projection based upon the analysis of three global datasets that ran through October 2012. These data sets include one from the United Kingdom's Meteorological Office, NOAA's National Climatic Data Center and from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. The projection of the year's global surface temperature also included a range of uncertainty that would make 2012 range from fourth to fourteenth warmest. Currently, the year's global average surface temperature is 14.45 degrees Celsius or 0.45 Celsius degrees above the 1961-1990 average. Since a La Niña event ran through the early part of the year, the annual temperature would be slightly below the average for the last decade. [UK Met Office]
High-quality maps of December temperature and precipitation normals across US available -- The PRISM Climate Group at Oregon State University has prepared high-resolution maps depicting December's normal maximum temperature, minimum temperature and precipitation totals across the 48 coterminous United States for the current 1981-2010 climate normals interval. These maps, with a 800-meter resolution, were produced using the PRISM (Parameter-elevation Regressions on Independent Slopes Model) climate mapping system.
Review of Atlantic hurricane season -- As the official 2012 North Atlantic hurricane season ended, NOAA forecasters assessed this season. They noted that the 2012 Atlantic season continued a decade long period of activity, as 19 named tropical cyclones and seven hurricanes, including three major hurricanes, matched their earlier predictions. [Note: A short-lived, unnamed tropical storm that formed in early September between Bermuda and Nova Scotia was recently added to the list.] The 19 named tropical cyclones represent the third highest total (tied with 1887, 1995, and 2010) over the last 161 years. While only one hurricane (Irene) hit the United States, NOAA officials feel that it helped break "hurricane amnesia" that appeared to develop by the public especially in the Northeast because of the length of time since the last land-falling hurricane. [NOAA News]
The TRMM (Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission) team at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center has recently assembled an animation displaying the rainfall from the 19 tropical cyclones that traversed the western Atlantic basin using data collected by sensors onboard the TRMM satellite. This animation commences in May with Tropical Storm Alberto and ends in late October with Hurricane Sandy. [NASA GSFC]

CURRENT CLIMATE MONITORING

Increasing loss of polar ice documented in both hemispheres -- An international team of 47 researchers from the US and Europe recently completed the Ice Sheet Mass Balance Inter-comparison Exercise (IMBIE), a comprehensive and accurate assessment of losses in the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica and the contribution of these ice sheet losses to the rise in global sea level. The researchers, supported by NASA and the European Space Agency, combined data from multiple satellites and space craft to determine that the combined rate of melting for the ice sheets covering Greenland and Antarctica has increased during the last 20 years. About two-thirds of the loss is coming from Greenland, with the rest from Antarctica. [NASA JPL]
Nation's next generation geosynchronous satellite program undergoes successful review -- An external team of aerospace experts recently gave the NASA/NOAA GOES-R Series program a favorable appraisal; GOES stands for Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites. This next generation of satellites will replace and upgrade NOAA's current fleet of geosynchronous satellites beginning in late 2015. NOAA's current fleet of GOES satellites not only monitor weather patterns across a large section of the Western Hemisphere, but also monitor solar activity and relay environmental data. [NASA GSFC]
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 FORECASTS

Canadian national winter outlook issued -- Forecasters with Environment Canada issued their outlooks for temperature and precipitation across Canada for meteorological winter, the three months of December 2012 through February 2013. The temperature outlook indicates that many of the highly populated areas of Canada extending across southern sections of Ontario and Quebec and the Maritime Provinces would experience above normal (1981-2010) temperatures. Above average temperatures were also anticipated across sections of the Canadian Archipelago. On the other hand, below average temperatures were foreseen across sections of the northwestern Canada and the waters of the eastern North Pacific and Gulf of Alaska.
The Canadian precipitation outlook for Winter 2012-13 indicates that sections of British Columbia, the Yukon Territory and the Canadian Archipelago would have below normal winter precipitation, while a large section of the nation extending eastward from the Northwest Territories to Labrador and across sections of the Prairie Provinces and Ontario Yukon would have above normal precipitation.
[Note for comparisons and continuity with the three-month seasonal outlooks of temperature and precipitation generated for the continental United States and Alaska by NOAA's Climate Prediction Center, one would need to use Environment Canada's probabilistic forecasts for temperature and precipitation.]
More intense North Atlantic tropical cyclones predicted -- Researchers at the University of Iowa and at NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory predict that tropical cyclones developing in the North Atlantic basin could become more intense during the remainder of the 21st century. They base their prediction upon the projected changes in the "North Atlantic Power Dissipation Index (PDI)" computed for three different potential scenarios using 17 global climate models. The PDI represents an index of storm intensity, duration, and frequency. The three different scenarios involved varying amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide and aerosol loadings that would affect the radiation received or emitted by the planet. [University of Iowa Now]

CLIMATE AND SOCIETY

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

Evidence of water ice on Mercury revealed -- Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory recently report that data collected by instruments onboard NASA's MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft appear to confirm the hypothesis that abundant water ice and other frozen volatile materials reside within the polar craters of the Planet Mercury. Since Mercury has a small axial tilt, the polar craters are essentially in a year-round shadow from the nearby Sun and temperatures remain quite low, despite high surface temperatures elsewhere on this planet that preclude an atmosphere. The researchers report that the amount of ice would be more than two miles thick if spread over an area the size of Washington, DC. [NASA JPL]
Regional dust storms on Mars seen to dissipate -- A global mosaic of images made by the Mars Color Imager on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter one week ago shows a contraction in the size of a regional dust storm that had developed in the southern hemisphere of Mars earlier in November. Concurrent measurements by the Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity also detected the effects of the storm on the air pressure patterns at the Martian surface. [NASA JPL]
Storms seen on Saturn -- NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory recently released an image recently made by an instrument on NASA's Cassini spacecraft showing a large swirling vortex and storm clouds at the center of Saturn's north polar region. This storm was seen during a change in season on Saturn as sunlight was beginning to spread across the planet's north pole. [NASA JPL]
An abrupt change in seasons seen in Titan's atmosphere -- An international team of scientists have found that data collected from NASA's Cassini spacecraft show a abrupt change in the observed effects in the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan before, during and after the equinox on that moon in 2009. They point to a large scale reversal in the circulation of Titan's atmosphere due to a certain slant in the incoming light. Sinking air was found in locations where upwelling had been observed earlier in the mission. Titan, Earth, Venus and Mars are the only four members of our solar system to have both a solid surface and a substantial atmosphere. [NASA JPL]
Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com] Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Historical Events:

3-10 December 1926...Record rain fell on Yuma, AZ over a one-week period. On the 4^th 1.10 inches of rain fell, and by the 10^th a total of 4.43 inches had fallen, to set an all-time December monthly record. The mean annual precipitation for Yuma is only 3.38 inches. (Accord Weather Guide Calendar)
3 December 1982...Big Fork, AR received 14.06 inches of rain, setting a 24-hour maximum precipitation record for the state. (NCDC)
4 December 1982...The temperature in New York City's Central Park reached 72 degrees to establish a record high for December. The month as a whole was also the warmest of record. (The Weather Channel)
5 December 1941...The temperature at Enosburg Falls soared to 72 degrees to establish a state record for Vermont for the month of December. (The Weather Channel)
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)

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