WEEKLY CLIMATE NEWS

WEEK 9: 31 October-4 November 2016

ITEMS OF INTEREST

Fifth anniversary of Suomi NPP satellite launch is hailed -- Last Friday marked the fifth anniversary of the launch of the polar orbiting environmental NOAA/NASA satellite that eventually became known as the NASA/NOAA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) mission. This satellite was named for the late Professor Verner Suomi of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Space Science and Engineering Center, who is considered by many to be the father of satellite meteorology. Launched in October 2011, this satellite and its onboard sensors was meant to be a prototype for NOAA's next generation Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) weather satellites, with JPSS-1 satellite scheduled to be launched in 2017. During its five years in orbit, the Suomi NPP has been helping extend measurement records for environmental variables obtained from other NOAA and NASA satellites. [NASA Feature]
High-quality maps of November temperature and precipitation normals across US available -- The PRISM Climate Group at Oregon State University's website has prepared high-resolution maps depicting the normal maximum, minimum and precipitation totals for November and other months 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.
November weather calendar for a city near you -- The Midwestern Regional Climate Center maintains an interactive website that permits the public to produce a ready to print weather calendar for any given month of the year, such as November, at any of approximately 270 weather stations around the nation. (These stations are NOAA's ThreadEx stations.) The entries for each day of the month includes: Normal maximum temperature, normal minimum temperature, normal daily heating and cooling degree days, normal daily precipitation, record maximum temperature, record minimum temperature, and record daily precipitation; the current normals for 1981-2010.
Time change does not affect climate records -- Daylight Saving Time ends this coming Sunday morning across essentially the entire nation -- the exceptions include Arizona, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and about 18 counties in Indiana. These changes have been mandated by the U.S. Congress in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which extended Daylight Saving Time across the nation, with the start on the second Sunday in March (13 March 2016) and end on the first Sunday in November (6 November 2016). Most of Canada also observes changes to Daylight Saving Time at the same time [National Research Council Canada]. In other words, following the old adage of "spring ahead, fall behind", you will need to turn your clocks ahead by one hour to conform with the local time observance. Next spring, Daylight Saving Time will start on Sunday morning, 12 March 2017.
What does this time change mean to you (other than earlier sunsets)? Contrary to a popular belief that has surfaced at times, the change from Standard to Daylight Saving Time does not add an extra hour of daylight to the day nor does it affect climate record keeping. The daily high and low temperatures, along with the 24-hour precipitation taken by essentially all stations across the nation are based upon local Standard time, not Daylight time. Therefore, the daily entries in the Preliminary Local Climate Data (CF6) for any of the more than 200 cities around the nation will remain on Standard time throughout the year. The daily climate data collected at those automatic weather stations operated by the National Weather Service and the Federal Aviation Administration, together with all the cooperative weather observing stations around the nation are always made according to local standard time. NOTE: You may check the correct current official time at http://www.time.gov/.
Reconstructing past climates -- Scientists from many disciplines have developed a variety of methods that use proxy indicators such as tree rings, ice cores and ocean cores to reconstruct past climates, some extending back thousands of years. For more details on paleoclimatology, or the study of past climates, and available data sets, please read this week's Supplemental Information...In Greater Depth.
Fun science activities next weekend-

The National Weather Center at Norman, OK will be holding its annual National Weather Festival ais coming Saturday (5 November 2016), highlighting the many weather related organizations and activities in central Oklahoma that are housed in Center on the University of Oklahoma campus, including the University, NOAA and several state organizations. The festival, which has been held for at least eight years, will feature hourly balloon launches, equipment displays, children's activities, local TV meteorologists and the "Weather Friends," weather super heroes, designed to improve the public's understanding of events occurring in Earth’s atmosphere over a wide range of time and space scales. [National Weather Center]
The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) will be holding its annual "Super Science Saturday" at its Mesa Laboratory on the south side of Boulder, CO. Coinciding with a major new climate exhibit, this year's theme will involve climate-related activities that include a presentation on ozone's effect on plants, a tree-ring activity demonstrating the living record of climate, a "flubber" glacier display by Boulder-based UNAVCO, and shows by NCAR Wizards that focus on changing temperatures. [NCAR/UCAR AtmosNews]

CURRENT CLIMATE STATUS

This season's Antarctic "ozone hole" found to be close to average -- Researchers with NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center report that their analysis of ozonesonde and satellite data shows the Antarctic "ozone hole," or the region of low ozone concentrations in the stratosphere that forms in austral spring over Antarctica, was slightly smaller than average as its size peaked during the last week of September 2016, which is close to the long-term average. At that time, the ozone hole had reached a size of approximately 8.9 million square miles, or nearly three times the size of the 48 contiguous United States. For comparison, the size of the hole last year was approximately 10.9 million square miles, which represented the fourth largest size in the 1991-2014 interval. In addition, this peak occurred in early October 2015, later in time than usual. [NOAA News] [NOAA Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research News]
According to scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and at NOAA, the size of the 2016 Antarctic ozone hole appears to be consistent with scientific expectations regarding the recovery efforts instituted by the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer. [NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Feature] An image of the size and intensity of the ozone hole over Antarctica on 1 October 2016 was generated from data collected by the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) onboard NASA's Aura satellite. [NASA Earth Observatory]

CURRENT CLIMATE MONITORING

Death Valley's world temperature record is questioned -- Several meteorologists and climatologists have been recently questioning the validity of the currently recognized world record high temperature of 134 degrees Fahrenheit at the Greenland Ranch observing station in California's Death Valley on 10 July 1913. In 2012, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) declared this reading to be the recognized record holder after disallowing the previously held record of 136.4 degrees Fahrenheit at El Azizia, Libya (13 September 1922). The current argument concerning the Death Valley record involves the possibility of observer error and instrument placement. [Wundeground Blog]
State of the climate in 2016 from a "Down Under" perspective -- During the last week the Bureau of Meteorology in Australia released its "State of the Climate 2016" report describing Australia's rising temperatures, its declines in regional rainfall and more frequent wildfires. These trends, which appear to be linked to climate change induced by increased greenhouse gas emissions, are expected to continue during the next several decades. [Australian Bureau of Meteorology]

CLIMATE FORECASTS

Additional thoughts on the official 2016-17 winter outlook -- During the last week, Mike Halpert, a project manager for the National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center (CPC) posted an ENSO blog that focuses upon the potential impacts that a La Niña event would have upon winter weather across the United States and how it influenced the CPC's official 2016-17 winter outlook. He also looked back at how well the CPC outlook performed for winter 2015-16, when an El Niño event was occurring. [NOAA News]
Gulf water temperatures could be good predictor of early summer tornado activity in nation's midsection -- NOAA-funded researchers at the University of Miami recently reported that they have found a link between above normal water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico and larger numbers of tornadoes associated with severe convective storm systems across the central United States. These findings were based upon a combination of observation data for a 30-year span and computer model simulations. Apparently, a pattern of high surface water temperatures in the Gulf represents a good predictor for the amount of energy available for convection as determined a parameter called CAPE (Convective Available Potential Energy) across the central US during May through July. These researchers claim that monitoring water temperatures in the Gulf should provide forecasters better advanced guidance to anticipate tornado outbreaks in the Southern Plains and Midwest. [NOAA Climate.gov News]

CLIMATE FORCING

Decadal climate variability has large impact upon Missouri River basin -- A team of researchers from the Center for Research on the Changing Earth System and Texas A&M University recently reported on the results of their computer simulations. These results indicated that climate variability on time scales on the order of a decade appear to greatly influence water availability in the Missouri River basin, especially involving extreme droughts and wet periods across the basin (including sections of Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa and Missouri). The team focused their simulations on the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the tropical Atlantic sea surface temperature gradient and the west Pacific warm pool sea surface temperature variability during the period running from 1949 through 2010. [NOAA Climate Program Office News]

PALEOCLIMATE RECONSTRUCTION

New website unveiled that details US Geological Survey's paleoclimate research around the world -- The US Geological Survey (USGS) recently unveiled its "USGS Paleoclimate Research: Lessons from the Past, Roadmap for the Future" website that permits the public the opportunity to explore many USGS paleoclimatic studies from around the world that provide information from the earth's climate history and which can be used to better forecast, plan, and adapt to future climate change. The paleoclimate information involving biological, physical and chemical proxies is obtained from a variety of marine, aquatic, and land settings. [USGS News]

CLIMATE AND SOCIETY

Climate appears to have helped guide early seafarers across the Pacific -- A multidisciplinary team of researchers from the University of Oregon, Ohio State University and the University of Calgary recently published their findings showing that colonization of a section of the western tropical Pacific Ocean known as Remote Oceania occurred approximately 3400 years ago by seafaring settlers who traveled across hundreds to thousands of miles across the region using pathways of least resistance to winds and ocean currents. The team used climatic data and computer simulations to analyze ocean routes across the Pacific, taking into account winds, ocean currents, land distribution and precipitation. El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) patterns were also included. Apparently, the early seafarers appear to have been knowledgeable about seasonal and ENSO variations in winds and ocean currents. [University of Oregon News]
Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com]

Concept of the Week: Extending the Historical North American Drought Record

Through history, drought has been a major concern for many people as the lack of adequate water can adversely affect agriculture, and in the extreme case, the availability of potable (drinkable) water. The Case in Point for Chapter 9 describes the migration of ancient peoples across the semiarid Southwest due to what may have been major drought conditions. During the last century, the "Dust Bowl" era drought in the 1930s created many problems in this country. The effects of this seven-year long drought were made worse by poor agricultural techniques and land management. The effect of the drought on the nation was also exacerbated by the coincident Great Depression. Drought remains a problem today across Texas and the West Coast as we can see from inspection of the current weekly US National Drought Monitor produced by the National Drought Mitigation Center.

How do the current drought events compare with earlier droughts? A time series of computed Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) values began in 1895 when a sufficiently dense climate network was established. During the 20th century, several episodes of drought have had a major national impact. The exceptional drought that developed in the early 1930s extended across much of the nation resulting in the "Dust Bowl" era. The PDSI time series shows that the 1930s drought was the worst in the last century, with nearly 80 percent of the nation experiencing moderate to extreme drought in 1934. During the 1950s, the southern Plains and the Southwest also experienced a major drought, when 50 to 60 percent of the nation was under drought conditions.

What about farther back in history? Sophisticated tree-ring analysis techniques allow researchers to extend the drought record across a large section of North America farther into the past. In 1998, Edward R. Cook at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory along with colleagues at Arizona and Arkansas reconstructed past drought conditions across the nation based upon annual tree-ring data obtained from a network of 388 climatically sensitive tree-ring sites. From these data, time series of annual summertime (June-August) PDSI values were determined back to 1700 at 155 grid points across the nation. These gridded tree-ring chronologies were calibrated with PDSI chronologies generated by instrumental records at selected Historical Climate Network stations commencing in the late 19th century. The researchers found that the 1930s drought was the most severe drought to hit the nation since 1700.

By 2004, the series was expanded to 835 tree-ring sites, primarily across the West, where exactly dated annual tree-ring chronologies were obtained. The new grid covered most of North America with a latitude-longitude spacing of 2.5 degrees. In addition to the 286 grid point PDSI time series, annual contour maps of PDSI were constructed that span much of the continent. This work permitted extension of the spatial and temporal coverage of the drought reconstruction not only into Canada and Mexico, but back 2000 years. From this more recent data set they produced an online "North American Drought Atlas." They found several "megadroughts" in North America were even more severe than the 1930s drought. In addition to being more severe, some droughts extended over several decades, considerably longer than those of the 20th century. One such megadrought was in the 16th century, an event that along with another megadrought into the early 17th century has been implicated by some researchers in the hardships encountered by British settlers in the Virginia area, such as the disappearance of the Roanoke Colony.

Concept of the Week: Questions

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

The 1930's Dust Bowl era drought [(does), (does not)] appear to be the most intense across the nation of any in the last two thousand years.
The "North American Drought Atlas" is based on 835 sites where trees in climatically sensitive areas produce [(monthly),(annual),(biennial)] growth rings.

Historical Events:

31 October 1987...Yakima, WA reported measurable rainfall for the first time since 18 July. The 103-day long dry spell was their longest of record. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
31 October 1991...A severe winter storm dubbed the "Great Halloween Mega Storm" struck the upper Midwest. Minnesota bore the brunt of the storm. By the time the storm finally ended on 2 November, Duluth received 37 inches of snow and Minneapolis 28 inches, which were new all time records for single storm totals. These two cities received nearly half their normal seasonal snows in this one storm. In Wisconsin, 35 inches of snow was reported at Superior and 30 inches at Iron River. (Intellicast)
31 October 1993...Corpus Christi, TX dropped to 28 degrees to set the October (and November) record. Brownsville dropped to a monthly record 35 degrees. (Intellicast)
2 November 1946...A heavy wet snow began to cover the Southern Rockies. Up to three feet of snow blanketed the mountains of New Mexico, and a three-day snowstorm began at Denver, CO. By the time it ended, this storm had dropped 31 inches, making it the second greatest snowfall ever in city history and causing roofs to collapse. (David Ludlum)
2 November 1961...The temperature at Atlanta, GA reached 84 degrees to establish a record for November. (The Weather Channel)
2 November 1966...A storm brought 18 inches of snow to Celia, KY in 24 hours. It tied the state 24-hour snowfall record first established at Bowling Green. (The Weather Channel)
2 November 1988...A very intense low pressure system brought heavy rain, snow, and high winds, to parts of the northeastern U.S. Portland, ME established a record for November with 4.52 inches of rain in 24 hours, and winds along the coast of Maine gusted to 74 mph at Southwest Harbor. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
3 November 1890...The temperature at Los Angeles, CA reached 96 degrees, a November record for 76 years. (David Ludlum)
3 November 1927...The "Great Vermont Flood" began as a two-day rain of up to 9 inches put rivers in western New England over their banks. Somerset, VT was deluged with 8.77 inches of rain to establish a 24-hour record for the state. (3^rd-4^th) (The Weather Channel) (Intellicast)
3 November 1989...Cold weather prevailed in the central U.S. The low of 7 above zero at Marquette, MI was their lowest reading of record for so early in the season. (The National Weather Summary)
4 November 1983...The temperature at Billings, MT soared to 77 degrees, a new record for the data and month. (Intellicast)
4-5 November 1966...The River Arno surged above flood stage and caused irreparable damage to much of the architectural and art treasure of Florence, Italy. Millions of historical library volumes were either damaged or destroyed. More than 15,000 vehicles were also destroyed. Roughly two-thirds of Florence was flooded, 113 people died and 30,000 were made homeless by the flooding on both the Arno and Po rivers. (Accord Weather Calendar) (Wikipedia)
5 November 1977...A slow moving storm produced five to nine inch rains across northern Georgia causing the Toccoa Dam to burst. As the earthen dam collapsed, the waters rushed through the Toccoa Falls Bible College killing three persons in the dorms. Thirty-eight persons perished at a trailer park along the stream. Eighteen bridges were washed out in Madison County. (David Ludlum)
5 November 1987...Heavy rains in California's Death Valley National Park washed out many park roads. As much as 1.20 in. of rain fell at Scotty's Castle, compared with the annual rainfall average of 2.28 in. Up to 8000 people attending a recreational encampment were stranded. (Accord Weather Calendar)
5 November 1991...Elkins, WV dropped to 8 degrees, the coldest so early in the season. Pittsburgh, PA dropped to 11 degrees also the coldest so early. Jackson, KY fell to 17 degrees, a daily record. (Intellicast)
6 November 1988...A powerful low-pressure system over the Great Lakes Region continued to produce snow across parts of the Ohio Valley and the Great Lakes Region. Snowfall totals along the shore of Lake Superior reached 24 inches, with three feet of snow reported in the Porcupine Mountain area of Upper Michigan. Marquette, MI established a November record with 17.3 inches of snow in 24 hours. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
6 November 1989...Unseasonably warm weather prevailed in the south central and southeastern U.S. The high temperature of 89 degrees at the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport in Texas equaled their record for November. (Storm Data) (The National Weather Summary)
6 November 1994...Downtown San Francisco, CA was drenched with 6.19 inches of rain in 24 hours to set an all-time record for the city.

Return to RealTime Climate Portal