WEEKLY CLIMATE NEWS

WEEK THREE: 12-16 September 2016

Report from the Field:

Dr. Steve LaDochy, a DataStreme LIT Leader and meteorology professor from Cal State University, Los Angeles, reported on the continuation of the 16-year drought in his area. Furthermore, he noted that the weather station at nearby Ontario, CA had its warmest summer in the last 50 years. However, August and early September, which are typically the hottest part of the year, has been on the cool side this year. He also drew attention to Governor Brown signing two pieces of legislation involving climate change, as noted below.

ITEMS OF INTEREST

September is National Preparedness Month -- The upcoming month of September has been declared National Preparedness Month (NPM), which is aims to educate and empower Americans to prepare for and respond to all types of emergencies, including natural disasters. NPM is sponsored by the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), which has provided a toolkit of marketing materials to help promote the month, is the lead on this campaign that was originally launched in 2004. The theme for 2016 NPM is "Don't Wait. Communicate. Make Your Emergency Plan Today," with an emphasis on preparedness for youth, older adults, and people with disabilities and others with access and functional needs. During Week 3 (11-17 September), the weekly hazard-focused theme is "Preparing Through Service." [FEMA's Ready.gov]
NOAA's National Weather Service is working with FEMA to communicate the importance of emergency preparedness as a key component of its Weather-Ready Nation campaign. [NOAA Weather Ready Nation]
Monitoring the seasonal motions of the sun -- If you would like more background information concerning how the sun appears to across your local sky, along with the times of local sunrise and local sunset, for your hometown on any day throughout year, please read this week's Supplemental Information…In Greater Depth.

CLIMATE MONITORING

West's oldest weather observer is featured -- An article was written that features Anna Mae Wright, the National Weather Service (NWS) cooperative weather observer near Redrock in southwestern New Mexico, who at 89 years old is the oldest weather observer in the western United States. This farm wife has been recording temperature, precipitation and snow data on a daily basis for more than 70 years, which also means she is the West's longest serving member of the NWS Cooperative Observer Program. [High Country News]
Satellites detect crack advancing across Antarctic Ice Shelf -- With the end of continuous darkness across the Antarctic Peninsula, natural-color satellite images of the Antarctic Ice Shelf are available once again. Images made from data collected by the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer onboard NASA's Terra satellite in late August show a considerable lengthening in the rift along Larsen C, Antarctica's fourth-largest ice shelf. [NASA Earth Observatory]

CLIMATE FORCING

Linking African drought with the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation -- A senior scientist from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, who is focusing upon fire, drought and famine across the Sahel and other neighboring sections of West and Central Africa, has been investigating the alternating wet and dry periods of years to decades that are occur across the region. A possible reason for these alternating occurrences may be found in the cyclic shifting of ocean temperatures in the North Atlantic in what is called the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO), which has an estimated periodicity ranging from 60 to 80 years. When the North Atlantic is warm, large-scale weather patterns shift and bring more rain to the Sahel, such as since 1990, but when the North Atlantic is in a cool phase, the rains remain just to the south of the Sahel, leading to drought conditions, such as between 1960 and 1980. [NASA Earth Observatory]
Changing climate helped increased intensity of devastating August rains in Louisiana -- A rapid assessment of the devastating rains across Louisiana this past August was made by scientists at NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Princeton University, the Royal Netherlands Meteorological institute, and Climate Central's World Weather Attribution project. Their analysis of three-day rainfall totals across the region indicates that the higher global temperatures due to increased greenhouse gases has made excessive rainfall events like the one along the Gulf Coast in mid-August to be at least 40 percent more likely and ten percent more intense than those that would have occurred at the start of the 20th century. [NOAA Climate.gov News]
Landfalling typhoons in east and southeast Asia are becoming more frequent and more intense -- Using 37 years of data collected by the US Navy/US Air Force Joint Typhoon Center and the Japan Meteorological Agency, researchers from Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill typhoons (tropical cyclones with hurricane intensity) in the northwestern Pacific Ocean basin have intensified over the four decades by an average of 12 to 15 percent, with the proportion of major category 4 and 5 typhoons (on the Saffir-Simpson Scales) having doubled or even tripled in some regions. A warming of the coastal waters could be contributing to the increase in intensity of typhoons striking eastern mainland China, Taiwan, Korea and Japan. [International Business Times]

CLIMATE FORECASTS

El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) Diagnostic Discussion -- NOAA's Climate Prediction Center (CPC) and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) recently released their El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) Diagnostic Discussion that showed ENSO-neutral conditions were observed during the month of August 2016, meaning meaning that neither an El Niño or La Niña event was underway as near -average sea surface temperatures (SST) were found across most of the central equatorial Pacific during this past month.
Forecast models indicate that borderline ENSO-La Niña conditions were slightly favored (between 55 and 60%) during the meteorological fall and winter seasons of 2016-17 across the Northern Hemisphere. Consequently, forecasters at CPC have dropped their La Niña watch that they had posted over this past summer. An ENSO blog written by a CPC contractor describes the ENSO-neutral conditions that continue into early September and the borderline La Niña conditions that are envisioned for the upcoming autumn and winter months. [NOAA Climate.gov News] A detailed and more technical El Niño/Southern Oscillation Diagnostic Discussion with supporting maps and charts is available from CPC.
Determining the amount of geoengineering needed to limit global temperature rise -- Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research conducted a study designed to assess how much sulfate particulate matter would have to be injected into the atmosphere in a "geoengineering" approach to keep the global average temperature from exceeding the 2-Celsius degree increase by the end of the 21st century; this target was proposed by representatives from 195 countries at last year's Paris Agreement. The research team ran computer simulations of climate conditions with different levels of greenhouse gases as well as stratospheric sulfates using the NCAR-based Community Earth System Model and the Integrated Science Assessment Model at the University of Illinois. The amount needed to maintain this 2-degree target would require a peak rate of 18 megatons of sulfur dioxide being injected into the atmosphere per year, or about 1.5 times the amount emitted by the massive eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in 1992. [UCAR/NCAR AtmosNews]

CLIMATE AND THE BIOSPHERE

Modeling the effect of household gardens on greenhouse gas emissions -- Scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara have modeled the effect that household gardens would have upon greenhouse gas emissions. In their modeling efforts, a given area of lawn was converted to garden and some household organic waste and gray water from processing facilities would be used as compost and water for the garden. In addition, vegetables from the garden would replace some of the conventionally produced purchased vegetables. The researchers found that greenhouse gas emissions could be cut by 2 kilograms for every kilogram of homegrown vegetable when compared to the store-bought counterpart. [University of California Santa Barbara News]
Lack of data may hinder forecasting effects of climate change on biodiversity -- An international team of biologists recently warned that a critical lack of data on key biological mechanisms involving how plants and animals migrate and evolve in response to changes in their environment appears to be a main obstacle in improving the modeling efforts designed to forecast the response of species to a changing climate. Therefore, the group is calling for data collection on a global scale to improve forecasts of how disturbances such as climate change affect plants and animals in order to protect biodiversity. [Purdue University Agriculture News]
Increased ocean acidification due to human activities is found -- Oceanographers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution report that the near-surface ocean waters of the northeast Pacific Ocean are absorbing an increasing amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide over the last decade at a rate that mirrors the increase of human-generated carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere. The researchers report an increased acidification with the regional average pH decreasing by approximately 0.002 pH units per year over the past 10 years. Increased ocean acidification in the northeast Pacific would result in weaker shells for many marine species. [MIT News]
Sensitivity of different California Current species to ocean acidification is examined -- Researchers at NOAA's Northwest Fisheries Science Center and colleagues have estimated the sensitivity of different marine species groups to ocean acidification within the California Current ecosystem found in the eastern North Pacific Ocean off the West Coast of North America. Ocean acidification results from increased amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide being absorbed in ocean waters; increased ocean acidification has been expected to increase with projected changing climate conditions. In the study, marine species were grouped into 34 groups based on similar functions in the ecosystem. Most functional groups of species (26 of 34) responded negatively to increasing acidification, but when uncertainty in sensitivity was considered, the negative correlations dropped to 11 of 34. [NOAA National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science News]

CLIMATE AND SOCIETY

California's climate change law extended -- Late last week, California Governor Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 32 into law that would extend the state's historic Assembly Bill 32 signed by Governor Arnold Swartznegger in 2006 by 10 years. The new law requires the state to reduce emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by the year 2030, which extends the original bill that mandated reductions of greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by 2020. The law, which is considered to the nation's most ambitious climate bill to date, could give the Governor leverage to extend California's embattled cap-and-trade program. In addition, Governor Brown signed Senate Bill 197 that creates a legislature committee to oversee the regulators in charge of bringing the state into compliance (now the CA Air Resources Board). [Vox Energy & Environment]
Assessing the human cost of climate change -- After reviewing over 100 different studies, researchers from the University of California, Berkley reaffirm previous conclusions concerning how climate change increases the risk of conflict and impacts the global economy, but they also claim that the social and economic impacts could be just as severe. The researchers based their conclusions through the exploration of lesser-known consequences ranging from higher infant mortality rates to the "adaptation gap" in agriculture. [University of California, Berkeley News]
Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com]

Concept of the Week: Developing a Quality Long-term Instrumental Climate Record

Systematic temperature and precipitation observations have been made at various locations across the nation for nearly two centuries. While only a handful of stations were available in the early 19th century, weather and climate observations currently are made from several hundred automatic weather sites operated by the National Weather Service and the Federal Aviation Administration as well as approximately 8000 stations in the Cooperative Observers Network administered by the National Weather Service. The weather data from these networks are also used to quantitatively assess changes of climate during the instrumental period of the past as well into the future. However, a variety of factors can affect the homogeneity of the record. For example, the locations of many of the stations have moved, from original downtown building roofs to current locations at airports. And the physical surroundings of the stations have changed, many becoming more urbanized.

In the late 1980s, the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), the predecessor to the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), in conjunction with the US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory created the United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) of 1218 stations across the 48 coterminous states having long-term records of both daily temperature and precipitation. This network was designed to provide an essential baseline data set for monitoring the nation's climate commencing in the late 19th century. These stations were created from a subset of the Cooperative Observers Network, chosen based upon long-term data quality that included length of record, percent of missing data, spatial distribution and number of station changes. Many of the selected USHCN stations were rural in an attempt to reduce the influence of urbanization. Using statistical analyses, data for these stations have been adjusted to account for movement of stations, or when a different thermometer type was installed. An urban warming correction was applied based upon population of the surrounding area.

More recently, NOAA began the US Climate Reference Network (USCRN), a project designed to collect and analyze climate data of the highest possible quality for the next 50 to 100 years. Each USCRN station would have electronic sensors that would make routine measurements of air temperature, precipitation, IR ground surface temperature, solar radiation and wind speed with a frequency of every five minutes and transmit these data to both NCDC and to National Weather Service offices via orbiting satellites on nearly a real-time basis. In addition to these measurements, additional sensors could be added to the USCRN stations that would measure soil temperature and soil moisture. Conscientious and detailed site selection was made for all stations so that they would not only be spatially representative, but that they would be in locations where the surrounding physical conditions would have a high likelihood of remaining the same over the next 50 to 100 years. Many of the sites were placed on federal or state owned lands, helping minimize the contamination of the climate record by urbanization or other changes in local ground cover.

These long-term, comparative, spatially representative values are vital to detect and verify the subtle changes in climatic conditions before they become overwhelmingly obvious.

Concept of the Week: Questions

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

The majority of United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) stations were in [(rural), (urban)] settings.
The instruments in the US Climate Reference Network (USCRN) sample the atmosphere as frequently as [(5 minutes),(1 day),(1 month)].

Historical Events

12 September 1987...Peak sustained winds in Hurricane Max reached 155 mph, the highest observed for an Eastern Pacific hurricane. (The Weather Doctor)
13 September 1922...The temperature at El Azizia in Libya soared to 136 degrees to establish a world record at a surface weather station. To make matters worse, a severe ghibi (dust storm) was in progress. (The Weather Channel) (NCDC) [Note: In September 2012, a World Meteorological Organization panel disqualified this world record temperature due to errors made in recording the temperature at that location. The currently recognized world record high temperature is 134 degrees made at Greenland Ranch in Death Valley, CA on 10 July 1913.]
13 September 1988...Hurricane Gilbert smashed into the Cayman Islands, and as it headed for the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico strengthened into a monster hurricane, packing winds of 175 mph. The barometric pressure at the center of Gilbert reached 26.13 inches (888 mb), an all-time record for any hurricane in the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, or the Atlantic Ocean. Gilbert covered much of the Gulf of Mexico, producing rain as far away as the Florida Keys. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
14 September 1937...The mercury soared to 92 degrees at Seattle, WA, a record for September. (The Weather Channel)
14 September 1970...The temperature at Fremont, OR dipped to 2 degrees above zero to equal the state record for September set on the 24th in 1926. (The Weather Channel)
14 September 1987...Barrow, AK received 5.1 inches of snow, a record for September. (Sandra and TI Richard Sanders - 1987)
14 September 1988...Pressure in the eye of Hurricane Gilbert moving across the Caribbean Sea fell to 885 millibars (26.17 inches of mercury), the lowest recorded barometric pressure in the Western Hemisphere. Ultimately, 318 died in seven countries across the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico.
15 September 1939...The temperature at Detroit, MI soared to 100 degrees to establish a record for September. (The Weather Channel)
15 September 1982...A snowstorm over Wyoming produced 16.9 inches at Lander to establish a 24-hour record for September for that location. (13th-15th) (The Weather Channel)
16 September 1881...Iowa's earliest measurable snow of record fell over western sections of the state. Four to six inches were reported between Stuart and Avoca. (The Weather Channel)
16 September 1964...The temperature at Concord, NH dropped to 27 degrees ending the shortest growing season on record (100 days). (Intellicast)
16 September 1988...Hurricane Gilbert made landfall 120 miles south of Brownsville, TX in Mexico during the early evening. During its life span, Gilbert established an all-time record for the Western Hemisphere with a sea-level barometric pressure reading of 26.13 inches. Winds approached 200 mph, with higher gusts. Gilbert devastated Jamaica and Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data) (The Weather Channel)
16 September 2004, Birmingham, Alabama: Birmingham, AL set two all-time records for the city as Hurricane Jeanne crossed the city: Lowest sea level pressure on record, 986.8 millibars (29.14 inches of mercury), and the greatest 24-hour rainfall event on record, 9.75 inches. (The Weather Doctor)
17 September 1829...The Siebold Typhoon, Japan's most catastrophic typhoon, inflicted widespread damage over much of Japan. On the southern island of Kyushu, the storm surge off the Ariake Sea kills 10,000. (The Weather Doctor)
17 September 1932...Westerly, RI received 12.13 inches of rain, which set a 24-hour precipitation record for the state. (NCDC)
17 September 1963...Nearly 2.5 inches of rain fell in 24 hours, the most intense rain for Yuma, AZ during the period between 1909 and 1977. (The Weather Doctor)
18 September 1991...2.4 inches of snow fell at Duluth, MN to set a new record for September. (Intellicast)

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