23-27 April 2012

DataStreme Earth Climate System will return for Fall 2012 with new Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 27 August 2012. All the current online website products will continue to be available throughout the summer break period.

ITEMS OF INTEREST

• National Science Bowl set for next weekend -- The US Department of Energy (DOE) National Science Bowl®, a nationwide academic competition for middle and high school students will be held this coming weekend (26-30 April 2012) in Washington, DC. This event will test students' knowledge in all areas of science and is meant to encourage high school students to excel in science and math and to pursue careers in those fields. [DOE Office of Science]
• Celebrating Arbor Day -- This coming Friday, 27 April 2012, many locations across the nation will celebrate Arbor Day, a day when the planting of trees is encouraged. Arbor Day was originally proposed in 1872 by J. Sterling Morton, Nebraska's first newspaper editor, and continues to be most often celebrated by individual states on the last Friday in April. However, since planting conditions vary greatly due to the state's climate it may occur from September to May. In Arkansas, Arbor Day is celebrated on the third Monday in March, but in Alaska, the date is the third Monday in May. For your state's observance (and name of the official state tree), please consult the National Arbor Day Foundation.
• National Park Week -- The US Department of the Interior's National Park Service has designated the week commencing on this coming week (21-29 April 2012) as National Park Week. The focus for this year's observance is "Picture Yourself in a National Park." In observance of this event, free entry can be made to any of the 397 national parks in the system. [National Park Service Fee Free Days]

CURRENT CLIMATE STATUS

• Current La Niña event is fading -- In the April 2012 ENSO Diagnostic Discussion, NOAA scientists at the Climate Prediction Center report that sea surface temperatures across the eastern equatorial Pacific have warmed during the last two months, indicating the current La Niña event of the last two winters is weakening. The La Niña event is anomalous large scale atmospheric and oceanic circulation pattern that favors lower than average sea surface temperatures across the equatorial Pacific off the South American coast. The scientists feel that ENSO (El Niño-Southern Oscillation)-neutral conditions could return within the next month. [NOAA Climate Services]
• Global temperatures for March 2012 reviewed -- Using preliminary data collected from the global network of surface weather stations, scientists at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center report that the combined global land and ocean surface temperature for March 2012 was the 16th highest for any March since global climate records began in 1880, or approximately 0.8 Fahrenheit degrees above the 20th century (1901-2000) average. While this past month was the warmest Mach across the continental United States since 1895, the month was the coolest March since 1999, as below average temperatures were found across Alaska, Australia, eastern and western Russia, and parts of New Zealand. The scientists also reported that when considered separately, the average land temperature was the 18th highest for any March since 1880, while the temperature over the oceans was the 14th highest for March. Sea-surface temperatures were increasing across the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean in March, indicating the general demise of La Niña conditions.
  The researchers also noted the areal extent of the Arctic sea ice reached its annual maximum extent in mid March, approximately 12 days later than average. In addition, the areal extent for March 2012 was the ninth smallest since satellite surveillance began in 1979. On the other hand, the extent of the Antarctic sea ice was the fourth largest in the 34-year record. [NOAA/NCDC State of the Climate] [NOAA Environmental Visualization Laboratory]

CURRENT CLIMATE MONITORING

• NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) celebrates second anniversary -- Officials with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center recently celebrated the second anniversary of the "first light" from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), which represents the release of the first images released from this orbiting spacecraft that had been launched in February 2010. The SDO spacecraft carries three instruments designed to support the mission that is designed to understand the complex magnetic motions with the sun that can create active regions on the solar surface and ultimately affect the Earth's weather and climate. During its two years of operation, SDO has observed more than 1000 solar outbursts. [NASA GSFC]
• Himalayan glaciers shrinking at slower rate than predicted -- Glaciologists from the Swiss University of Zurich and their international colleagues report that while Himalayan glaciers are shrinking, the rate is less rapid than what has been predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The shrinkage could produce more glacial lakes that could be a major hazard to various cultures occupying low-lying regions. [University of Zurich News]
• Surface lake melt may help Greenland "slip-sliding away" -- Using satellite images to monitor nearly 1000 lakes on the Greenland Ice Sheet, scientists from the University of Colorado-Boulder report that this ice sheet may be sliding faster into the ocean due to massive releases of melt water from these "supraglacial" lakes that are collections of liquid water on top of a glacier. [University of Colorado Boulder]
• 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

• New Seasonal Climate Outlooks released -- During the last week, forecasters at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center released their Three-Month (Seasonal) Climate Outlooks for the three-months running from May through July 2012, which contains the last month of meteorological spring and the first two months of two months of meteorological summer. Their outlook for the temperature over these three months indicates a high chance of above average temperatures across the Southwest, the Gulf Coast States and the Southern Atlantic States, extending from southern Arizona eastward to the Carolinas. Conversely, the northern Rockies and the adjacent high Plains appeared to stand a good chance of having below average temperatures. Elsewhere, near equal chances of warmer or cooler than normal conditions were foreseen. The forecasters also indicated that the interior Northwest, extending from eastern Washington to western Montana and southeastward into Wyoming should experience a better than even chance for drier than average conditions in the next three months. The balance of the nation appear to have equal chances of below or above average precipitation. [NOAA Climate Prediction Center] One-Month Outlooks of temperature and precipitation for May are also available.
  These outlooks are based on El Niño/La Niña correlations, recent time series trends in climate and the soil moisture anomaly across the region. A transition from the current La Niña event to an ENSO-neutral situation is underway.
• Seasonal Drought Outlook released -- The forecasters at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center also released their US Seasonal Drought Outlook that would run from mid April through July 2012 in which drought would persist or expand across the Southwest, the Great Basin and Southeast. Slight to marked improvement in the drought conditions was envisioned across the Florida Peninsula, together with scattered sections of coastal New England, the Middle Atlantic States, the upper Midwest and the northern Plains.

CLIMATE FORCING

• Viewing the ash cloud from Mexican volcano from space -- Technicians at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center assembled an animation of an ash cloud that was being carried by the winds from the eruption of Mexico's Popocatepetl Volcano last week from data collected by sensors on NOAA's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES-13. This volcano is located 34 miles east of Mexico City. [NASA GSFC] A high resolution image of the volcanic eruption was also obtained from the polar orbiting Suomi NPP satellite. [NOAA Environmental Visualization Laboratory]
• Implications of ocean acidification addressed -- A YouTube video produced by NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory entitled "Ocean Acidification: The Other Carbon Dioxide Problem" describes the fundamental changes in seawater chemistry leading to increased acidification that are occurring throughout the world's oceans due to increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide caused by human activity since 1880, along with the effects that increased ocean acidity have had on marine life. Ocean acidity levels in 2094 are projected. [NOAA Environmental Visualization Laboratory]

CLIMATE AND HUMANS

• Research conducted on Mount Everest for high altitude effects -- A team of scientists and researchers from Minnesota's Mayo Clinic have gone to a base camp in Katmandu, Nepal near the foot of Mount Everest last week to establish a laboratory that will study the physiological effects of high altitude on humans. Nine climbers who will be scaling Everest, the world's tallest peak, will be monitored in order to help patients with heart conditions and other ailments. [USA Today]
• Air pollution and early death linked in the UK -- Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology report that emissions from motor vehicles, aircraft and power plants cause as many as 13,000 premature deaths in the United Kingdom each year The air pollution from combustion emissions not only originates from the British Isles, but also from those emissions originating from other European nations. For comparison, the researchers found that fewer than 3000 Britons were killed in highway accidents in 2005. [MIT News]

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

• Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com] Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Report from the Field --George Rausch, a LIT Leader from Benton Harbor, MI reported on his precipitation observations for this past winter as a weather spotter for the National Weather Service Office in North Webster, IN. He noted that the total snow accumulation for the months of November 2011 through March 2012 was 47.53 inches, while the total rainfall accumulation was 15.76 inches. In comparison, he measured 91.28 inches of snow between November 2010 and March 2011, while the total rain accumulation was only 7.78 inches. The relatively warm winter obviously limited the lake effect snow.

Historical Events:

• 23 April 1910...The temperature at the Civic Center in Los Angeles, CA hit 100 degrees to establish an April record for the city. (The Weather Channel)
• 23 April 1989...Salina, KS was the hot spot in the nation with a high of 105 degrees. The high of 105 degrees established an April record for the state of Kansas. A total of eighteen cities in the central U.S. reported record high temperatures for the date. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data) (The Weather Channel)
• 23 April 1996...One inch of snow on this day at Cleveland, OH brought its seasonal snowfall to 101.1 inches -- the city snowiest winter ever. The old record was 100.5 inches set in 1981-82. (Intellicast)
• 24 April 2003...The temperature at Juneau, AK soared to a maximum of 70 degrees, the earliest occurrence of a 70-degree reading for the period of record in Alaska's capital city. (The Weather Doctor)
• 25 April 1875...New York City received three inches of snow, the latest measurable snow of record for that location. (David Ludlum)
• 25 April 1898...The temperature at Volcano Springs, CA hit 118 degrees to establish an U.S. record for the month of April. (The Weather Channel)
• 27 April 1915...The temperature at Washington, DC hit 92 degrees, the highest ever in April. New York City hit 92 degrees as well. (Intellicast)
• 27 April 1931...The temperature at Pahala, located on the main island of Hawaii, soared to 100 degrees to establish a state high temperature record. (The Weather Channel)
• 27 April 1960...The highest temperature ever recorded in Thailand reached 112 degrees at Uttaradit, Thailand . (The Weather Doctor)
• 27 April 1988...Mount Washington, NH reported seven ft of snow in ten days, pushing their snowfall total for the month to 89.9 in., surpassing the previous record of 89.3 in. set in 1975. Records have been kept at the Observatory on the summit since December 1932. (The National Weather Summary) (Intellicast)
• 27 April 2003...The largest hail storm ever recorded at Key West, FL was reported between 4:10 and 4:20 PM, hailstones ranging in size from one-half inch up to one and three-quarter inches fell. It is the eleventh recorded hail event (since 1871) at Key West. (The Weather Doctor)
• 28 April 1973...The all-time record crest of the Mississippi River at St. Louis, MO was recorded at 43.3 ft, exceeding the former 1884 mark by 1.9 ft. (Intellicast) This record has since been exceeded by a record flood level of 49.6 feet on 1 August 1993. (National Weather Service)
• 29 April 1910...The temperature at Kansas City, MO soared to 95 degrees to establish a record for the month of April. Four days earlier the afternoon high in Kansas City was 44 degrees, following a record cold morning low of 34 degrees. (The Weather Channel) (The Kansas City Weather Almanac)
  North America's deadliest rockslide was caused by snowmelt followed by temperatures near zero degrees Fahrenheit that caused water in the rock joints under Turtle Mountain in the Canadian Rockies to freeze and expand. Ninety million tons of limestone fell some 3000 ft onto Frank, AB. As many as 70 people died as the result of the rockslide. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
• 29 April 1912...The highest temperature ever recorded in Oceania was 108 degrees that occurred on this date at Tuguegarao, Philippines. (The Weather Doctor)
• 29 April 1973...The Mississippi River reached a crest of 43.4 ft at St. Louis, MO, breaking the previous record of 42 ft established in 1785. (David Ludlum)

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Prepared by Edward J. Hopkins, Ph.D., email hopkins@meteor.wisc.edu
© Copyright, 2012, The American Meteorological Society.