DataStreme ECS WEEK TEN: 4-8 April 2011

ITEMS OF INTEREST

• Masters climatology --
  The 2011 Masters Golf Tournament will begin this coming Thursday in at the Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, GA. The Southeast Regional Climate Center has produced a Masters Climatology for 1934-2010 that includes the daily maximum and minimum temperatures and the 24-hour precipitation totals for each day of the four-day event in early April, extending over the last 77 years.
• Historic close-up image of Mercury --
NASA released the first-ever image of the surface of Mercury made last week from the agency's MESSENGER spacecraft orbiting the closest planet to the Sun. [NASA]
• Development of long-term global instrumental climate records --
Learn about the various globally averaged instrumental temperature records that scientists with the National Climatic Data Center along with their colleagues at NASA and in the United Kingdom have produced in this week's Supplemental Information…In Greater Depth.

CURRENT CLIMATE STATUS

• State and city weather extremes for January 2011 --
  The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) has posted a listing of some of the notable extremes in temperature, precipitation and other weather elements across the nation for the month of January 2011 "Selected U.S. City and State Extremes for January 2011." Note that this site may be updated during the following several weeks as more data are received and analyzed.

CURRENT CLIMATE MONITORING

• Monitoring ozone loss over the Arctic --
  Animated maps of the total column ozone concentration (measured in Dobson Units) over the Arctic basin made from data collected by the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on NASA’s Aura satellite shows the loss of ozone during the past March compared with concentration levels in 2010. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• Salinity monitoring satellite arrives at launch site --
Early last week, the instrument designed to measure ocean surface salinity from the Aquarius/SAC-D spacecraft arrived at Vandenberg AFB in California, the launch site for this mission scheduled for launch in June. The Aquarius instrument on the spacecraft represents collaboration between NASA and Argentina's space agency, with participation from Brazil, Canada, France and Italy. In addition to measuring ocean surface salinity, the mission should help provide information on ocean circulation, the global balance of freshwater and climate. [NASA JPL]
• 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

• Warm ocean water responsible for cold winters in North America and Asia --
  Researchers at the California Institute of Technology claim that warm ocean waters off the eastern coasts of North America and Asia have been responsible for the unseasonably cold winters experienced across northeastern North America and northeastern Asia. At the same time, above average temperatures were reported across northwestern sections of Europe and North America. They attribute this temperature pattern to the development of a persistent wavelike pattern in the atmospheric circulation caused by the oceanic heating of the atmosphere off the eastern coasts of the continents. [California Institute of Technology]
• Heat transport processes to Greenland glaciers studied --
A research team led by a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution oceanographer has found that ocean circulation plays an important role in transporting heat to Greenland glaciers, which have been rapidly loosing ice mass through melting during the last decade. They base their findings on measured heat fluxes they made in a fjord at the base of a Greenland glacier [Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution]
• Wind erosion can limit mountain growth --
Researchers from the University of Arizona, California State University, Northridge and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing have found that wind erosion has been a powerful force in the evolution of mountains, being 10 to 100 times more effective in mountain erosion than previously thought. They claim that winds during glacial times carried dust from central Asia's Qaidam Basin to the Loess Plateau, where it was deposited. However, during interglacial times, winds carry the dust from the Gobi Desert to the Loess Plateau. [University of Arizona News]

CLIMATE IMPACTS ON THE BIOSPHERE

• Effects of 2010 drought on Amazon forests documented by satellites --
  Using data collected by the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) and TRMM (Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission) sensors on NASA satellites, researchers at Boston University, NASA's Ames Research Center and Brazil's Federal University in Vicosa have shown widespread reduction in the greenness of Amazon rainforests caused by the record-breaking drought during 2010. [American Geophysical Union]
• Declining precipitation could influence migrating birds --
Researchers at the Smithsonian Institution's Conservation Biology Institute claim that reduced and more variable rainfall over the tropical wintering grounds of migratory birds could be just as disruptive to the bird population as the warming trends found in their breeding grounds in temperate latitudes. [Smithsonian Newsdesk]
• Russian boreal forests undergoing climate-induced change --
Researchers at the University of Virginia claim that a large-scale shift in the vegetation types in Russia's boreal forest is accelerating due to increases in regional and global temperatures. Tree species more tolerant of warmer conditions are spreading northward. The researchers also warn that this change in vegetation types could also serve to create an even warmer regional climate. [University of Virginia Today]
• Canadian salmon populations likely to survive climate change --
A new study conducted by University of British Columbia scientists indicates that some populations of Fraser River sockeye salmon are sufficiently adapted to their environment that they will be less affected by further environmental changes caused by climate change than some other populations that could disappear. [University of British Columbia]

PALEOCLIMATE RECONSTRUCTION

• Novel technique employed to reconstruct glacial valley shapes --
  Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, and Berkeley Geochronology Center have developed a technique called helium-4/helium-3 thermochronometry to reconstruct the landform history of an area in New Zealand containing glacial valleys beginning with the cooling in the early Pleistocene (2.5 million years ago) and running through the present warm interglacial period. [University of California, Berkley]

CLIMATE AND SOCIETY

• Human and environmental benefits seen from stricter vehicle emissions standards --
  Scientists at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies using a comprehensive computer model and climate simulator to assess the role of nitrogen oxides (NOx), black carbon (BC), sulfur dioxide (SO2), carbon monoxide, and organic carbon in motor vehicle emissions claim that implementing stricter vehicle emission standards would yield major benefits to human health, agriculture and the climate. [NASA GISS]
• Climate change communication analyzed --
In the wake of recent shifts in public opinion to climate change, a social and decision scientist at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University and an environmental psychologist at the United Kingdom's Cardiff University have addressed the challenges faced by climate scientists in communicating the risks and the uncertainties involving potential climate change to the public. [NSF]
• Pollutants released in spring snowmelt --
An environmental chemist at Canada's University of Toronto Scarborough warns that the contaminants accumulated in the snow during the winter are released into the environment as a "peak contaminant flush" at the start of the spring melt season. [University of Toronto]
• 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]
• Earthweek --
Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com] Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.

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) 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.)

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

Historical Events:

• 4 April 1933...Pigeon River Bridge, MN reported 28 inches of snow, which established the state 24-hour snowfall record. (4th-5th) (The Weather Channel)
• 4 April 1955...A severe 3-day spring snowstorm ended over north central Wyoming and south central Montana. Sheridan, WY had near blizzard conditions for 43 hours and recorded 22.7 inches of snow in 24 hours on the 3^rd to set a new 24-hour snowfall record. Billings, MT had a storm total of 42.3 inches, a new single storm snowfall record. (Intellicast)
• 4 April 1973...Sandia Crest, NM reported a snow depth of 95 inches, a record for the state of New Mexico. (The Weather Channel)
• 5 April 1926...A reported 0.65 inches of rain fell in one minute at Opid's Camp, CA (Intellicast)
• 5 April 1945 ...The temperature at Eagles Nest, NM plunged to 36 degrees below zero to establish an April record for the continental United States. (Sandra and TI Richard Sanders - 1987)
• 5 April 1989...Unseasonably hot weather prevailed in the southwestern U.S. Afternoon highs of 100 degrees at Santa Maria, CA and 105 degrees in Downtown Los Angeles established records for the month of April. (The National Weather Summary)
• 6 April 1886...Detroit, MI recorded its biggest snowfall in 24 hours when 25.4 inches fell. (Intellicast)
• 6 April 1989...Unseasonably hot weather prevailed in California. Afternoon highs of 91 degrees in Downtown San Francisco, 93 degrees at San Jose, 98 degrees at San Diego, 103 degrees at Santa Maria, 104 degrees at Riverside, and 106 degrees in Downtown Los Angeles established records for the month of April. (The National Weather Summary)
• 6 April 1990...The last measurable snowfall of the 1989-90 season occurred at Valdez, AK. This brought the season snowfall to a whopping 560.2 inches, breaking the old record of 517 inches set back in the 1928-29 season. (Intellicast)
• 8-10 April 1958...A global 48-hour precipitation record was established at Aurere, La Reunion Island, when 97.1 in. of rain from a tropical cyclone fell on the Indian Ocean island. (The Weather Doctor)
• 8 April 1989...Two dozen cities in the southwestern U.S. reported new record high temperatures for the date. Phoenix, AZ equaled their record for April of 104 degrees established just the previous day. (The National Weather Summary)
• 9 April 1983...Hottest day in Malaysian historical record, as the temperature reached at Chuping, Malaysia reached 101 degrees, a record that was tied nine days later. (The Weather Doctor)
• 9 April 2000...A record April snowfall of 14.6 in. shut down Montreal, Quebec. Snow removal contracts had ended on 1 April. (The Weather Doctor)
• 9 April 1995...Glasgow, MT recorded 12.2 inches of snow in 24 hours, its greatest 24-hour snowfall on record. (Intellicast)
• 10 April 1985...A late season cold snap in the east set record low April temperatures in the following cities: Asheville, NC, 23 degrees; Beckley, WV, 11 degrees; Elkins, WV, 3 degrees. April record lows were tied in Raleigh-Durham, NC (23 degrees) and Roanoke, VA (20 degrees). (Intellicast)
• 10 April 1996...A wind gust of 253 mph was measured when the eyewall of Tropical Cyclone Olivia passed over Australia's Barrow Island. This gust became the highest surface wind speed record, replacing the 231-mph wind gust measured at New Hampshire's Mount Washington Observatory on 12 April 1934. (Accord Weather Guide Calendar)

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Prepared by Edward J. Hopkins, Ph.D., email hopkins@meteor.wisc.edu
© Copyright, 2011, The American Meteorological Society.