WEEKLY CLIMATE NEWS

WEEKLY CLIMATE NEWS

WEEK TEN: 10-14 April 2017

ITEMS OF INTEREST

A Pascal full moon and religious celebrations-- The moon will reach the full moon phase early Tuesday (11 April 2017) at 0608 Z (2:08 AM EDT or 1:08 AM CDT, etc.). Since this full moon is the first following the spring equinox (20 March 2017), it is called the "Pascal Moon," an event that is important to the timing of important religious observances in both the Jewish and Christian religions. The Jewish festival of Passover will begin at sundown on Monday evening (10 April) and run through the following evening. The Christian festival of Easter will be this coming Sunday (16 April).
Teachers are invited to explore NOAA's updated "Data in the Classroom" website -- NOAA Office of Education has recently announced that its popular "Data in the Classroom" website has been updated and is back online with modern interactive, classroom-ready resources. Using this website, students will be able to use real-time data to explore today's most pressing environmental issues and develop problem-solving skills employed by scientists. "Data in the Classroom" has five curriculum modules, intended for middle and high school classes: El Niño, Sea Level, Coral Bleaching, Water Quality, and Ocean Acidification. [NOAA News]
List made of ten interesting items about planet Earth -- A list has been prepared by NASA Earth System Science that includes ten items about our planet, such as the Earth not being perfectly round, the days are growing longer, and past sea levels have been very different that today. [NASA Global Climate Change News Feature]
Public is encouraged to "#AdoptThePlanet" for Earth Day -- As a means of celebrating the upcoming Earth Day 2017 (Saturday, 22 April) NASA is inviting people from around the world to virtually "adopt" one of 64,000 individual pieces of Earth as seen from space. By clicking on go.nasa.gov/adopt and adopting a piece of the planet, the visitor to this site will receive a personalized adoption certificate for a unique numbered piece of Earth (on average 55 miles wide) to print and share on social media. Four data layers for this location will be provided that include data on chlorophyll, relative humidity, sea surface temperature and cloud top height. [NASA Goddard Feature]
Free admission into the National Parks and Monuments-- In observance of National Park Week (15-23 April 2017), the National Park Service will waive entrance fees this coming weekend (15-16 April) and the following weekend (22-23 April). This fee waiver will cover entrance and commercial tour fees in many of the national parks and monuments administered by the Park Service. [National Park Service Fee Free Days]
Linking weather and climate -- Read this week's Supplemental Information.. In Greater Depth for a description the distinction between atmospheric conditions that can be considered as weather events, which may last for time spans of up to a week, from those events with longer time spans of a month to three months that can be considered within the ream of climate analysis or forecasting.

CLIMATE FORCING

California droughts and floods are linked to distinctive atmospheric wave patterns -- Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) have found that flow pattern in the mid and upper troposphere that features five waves encircling the globe at midlatitudes appears to be responsible for both the severe wintertime droughts in California running from 2013 to 2015 and the unusually wet winter of 2016-17 across the Golden State. This atmospheric wave pattern with five waves, called a wavenumber-5 pattern, was positioned in such a manner that a high-pressure ridge was anchored off the North American West Coast, which effectively blocked winter storms and the onshore of precipitation into California during the 2013-14 and 2014-15 winters, compounding the drought across the state. During this past winter, the wavenumber-5 pattern was sufficiently displaced, which allowed for high and low pressure features in such a position as to permit atmospheric rivers to transport abundant quantities of atmospheric humidity onshore, resulting in flooding rainfall near the coast and an abundant snowpack for the Sierras. [NOAA Climate Program Office News]
Images of three recent solar flares released -- Images of three mid-level solar flares that erupted at the start of April were recently released. These images were obtained from data collected by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). [NASA Goddard Media Studios]
(Editor's note:Watch the 1-minute, 23-second video representing an animation of individual images that shows the flares arching above the solar surface. EJH)
Rossby-like waves discovered on Sun-- Scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Yale University, Texas Tech and the University of Maryland have discovered the large scale waves could exist on the Sun with long wavelengths similar to the Rossby or planetary waves found in the Earth's atmosphere. These magnetized long-waves on the rotating Sun may be tied to solar activity, including the formation of sunspots, solar flare eruptions. If these Rossby-like waves influence space weather, they could potentially offer a source of predictability. The scientists were able to obtain a view of the Rossby-like waves on the Sun using observations from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), and NASA's Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO) mission between 2011 and 2014. [UCAR/NCAR AtmosNews]
Forests appear to fight global warming in several important ways -- An international team of researchers report that forests appear to play an even more important role in combating global warming than previously understood. Using a model they created that combined locally collected meteorological data with data from satellites and other Earth observation systems, the researchers discovered important differences between heat exchange at the surface in forests and farm land. Therefore, the researchers found that trees go beyond absorbing carbon dioxide, as they impact the climate by regulating the exchange of energy and water between Earth's surface and the atmosphere. Forests were found to help cooling the surface in almost all regions of the Earth, to an amount that is more than was previously thought. [Ohio State University News]
Satellites can make high accuracy maps of carbon sequestered by forests -- The EU North State project led by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland has developed a new method of using satellite images to evaluate the forest carbon balance, which indicates how much carbon is sequestered or released by forests each year. These satellite data, provided by the European Sentinel satellites, can permit the display of digital carbon sequestration maps with an accuracy of up to ten meters. [VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland News]
Isotopic fingerprints of nitrous oxide emissions uncovered from Arctic tundra -- Scientists and the University of Eastern Finland, the Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Research and the University of California, Berkeley report finding the isotopic fingerprint of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide (N2O) produced by Arctic soils. This powerful greenhouse gas, which is produced naturally by soils primarily in agricultural areas and tropical rainforests, is also the second largest contributor to stratospheric ozone depletion. Their finding of nitrous oxide in the Arctic should help in predicting future trends in atmospheric nitrous oxide as well as in identifying climate change mitigation actions in the Arctic, a region particularly sensitive to climate change. [University of Eastern Finland News]

CLIMATE FORECASTS

Early hurricane season forecast -- Last week, the hurricane forecast team from Colorado State University headed by Dr. Phil Klotzbach released its initial "Extended Range Forecast of 2017 Atlantic Seasonal Hurricane Activity" that provides projected estimates of the number of named tropical cyclones (hurricanes and tropical storms) during the upcoming hurricane season that officially begins on 1 June 2017. The team, which had been formed by the late Professor William Gray, foresees slightly below-average tropical cyclone activity during this upcoming hurricane season. The team's initial April forecast envisions eleven named tropical cyclones, which include four hurricanes. Of these hurricanes, the forecasters foresee two major hurricanes (category 3 or higher on the Saffir-Simpson Scale). A below-average probability is anticipated for major hurricanes making landfall along the United States coastline and in the Caribbean. The team bases their outlook on the likelihood that the current ENSO-neutral conditions would evolve into either weak or moderate El Niño conditions by early autumn during the peak in the Atlantic hurricane season. Furthermore, the waters of the tropical Atlantic have anomalously cooled over the past month and the far North Atlantic is relatively cold, potentially indicative of a negative phase of the Atlantic Multi-Decadal Oscillation. [The Tropical Meteorology Project]
In mid-May, forecasters with NOAA's Climate Prediction Center (CPC) also should provide their outlook for the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season.

CLIMATE AND HUMAN HEALTH

Mental health of humans may be harmed by global warming -- A report released last week by the American Psychological Association, Climate for Health and ecoAmerica links climate change and mental health, going beyond the physical harm to humans due to extreme weather events. This report indicates that changing climate and associated extreme weather events can cause trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and an abundance of other mental health problems. [International Business Times News]

CLIMATE AND SOCIETY

A link found between state wealth and carbon emissions -- Researchers at Boston College recently reported that they found state-level carbon emissions to be higher in states across the nation where income is more highly concentrated among the wealthiest residents. State-level emissions between 1997 and 2012 were positively associated with the income share of the top 10 percent of a state's population. These results are in line with findings on the global level, where a connection has been found between national wealth and carbon emissions. [Boston College News]
Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com]

Concept of the Week: Evolution of Climate Models

Climate scientists have been building increasingly sophisticated, mathematical climate models to serve two main purposes: test the sensitivity of the climate to altered conditions and simulate climate over time, either back into the past or forward into the future. The simplest, early type of climate model (zero dimensional) was the "energy balance model", which provides an average planetary temperature from incoming and outgoing radiation. A one-dimensional energy balance model determines the surface temperature from the energy balance at individual latitude belts.

More complex models involve the physical equations of motion (gas laws, thermodynamics and radiation interactions) subject to climate forcings, the boundary conditions of solar radiation, surface properties and atmospheric composition. As computers improved, models have included a three-dimensional oceanic circulation ("atmosphere-ocean coupling"), then interactions between the atmosphere, cryosphere and geosphere, with climate feedback mechanisms involving the exchanges of heat and water. Finally, models have been able to incorporate the improved knowledge of the biogeochemical processes. Climate models calculate variables such as temperature at individual points within the three-dimensional grid of cells across the Earth's surface and vertically through the atmosphere, ocean, ice and land. A tradeoff exists between the number of grid points (the spatial resolution) and the number of numerical computations. Time and space accuracy costs increased computational time and expense.

The development of numerical weather prediction models during the 1960s and 1970s spurred the development of General Circulation Models (GCMs) for climate. One of the early atmospheric GCMs was developed at Princeton University's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL). By the 1990s, comprehensive climate models were being perfected with three-dimensional oceanic circulation. Ultimately, the term GCM could be used to refer to a Global Climate Model that represents the major climate system components (atmosphere, ocean, land surface and polar ice) and their interactions. The Community Climate Model at the National Center for Atmospheric Research is one of the most comprehensive climate models currently available. This model has been used to determine the future temperature response for several scenarios concerning the release of greenhouse gases through the 21st century as proposed by the IPCC reports.

Concept of the Week: Questions

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

General circulation models are generally [(less), (more)] sophisticated than energy balance models.
Increasing the spatial resolution of a global climate model causes the computational time to [(increase),(decrease),(remain the same)].

Historical Events:

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)
12 April 1815...Massive eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia blew 400 cubic kilometers (100 cubic miles) of ash skyward. Eruption disrupted the global weather for several years, particularly noteworthy: the cold summer of 1816 in North America and Europe. (The Weather Doctor)
12 April 1934...Winds atop Mount Washington, NH (elevation 6288 feet) averaged a world record 186 mph for five minutes, with a peak gust from the southeast of 231 mph, which is the highest wind speed ever clocked in the world. (David Ludlum) On 10 April 1996, a wind gust of 253 mph was measured when the eyewall of Tropical Cyclone Olivia passed over Australia's Barrow Island and is now considered to be the highest surface wind speed record. (Accord Weather Guide Calendar)
12 April 1985...Key West, FL set a new record for April rainfall in a 24-hour period as 6.06 inches of rain were recorded, eclipsing the previous record of 6.04 inches which fell on 29 April 1941. In addition, the heavy rainfall shattered the old record for this date set back in 1931 when 1.49 inches of rain fell. (Intellicast)
12 April 1996...Duluth, MN recorded 1.7 inches of snow on this day to raise its seasonal snowfall total to 132.8 inches -- its snowiest winter on record. The old record was 131.6 inches set back in 1949-50. (Intellicast)
13 April 1955...The town of Axis, AL was deluged with 20.33 inches of rain in 24 hours establishing a state record. (The Weather Channel)
13 April 1985...The high temperature of 86 degrees for this date at Medford, OR was the highest ever so early in the spring season. (Intellicast)
14 April 1933...The state intensity record for snowfall for New Hampshire was set at Franklin Lake as 35 inches fell in 24 hours. (Intellicast)
14 April 1986...The world's heaviest hailstone, weighing 2.25 pounds, fell in the Gopalganj District of Bangladesh. This hailstone could have reached speeds in excess of 90 mph. The hailstorm killed 92 people. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar) (Wikipedia) (National Weather Service files)
15 April 1921...Two-mile high Silver Lake (elevation 10,220 ft) in Boulder County, Colorado received 75.8 in. of snow in 24 hrs, the largest 24-hr total of record for North America. The storm left a total of 87 in. in twenty-seven and a half hours. (David Ludlum)
15 April 1927...New Orleans, LA was drenched with 14.01 inches of rain, which established a 24-hour rainfall record for the state. This record was eclipsed in August 1962, when 22.00 inches fell in a 24-hour span. (The Weather Channel)
16 April 1975...A single storm brought 119 inches of snow to Crater Lake, OR, establishing a state record. (Intellicast)
16 April 2007...An intense nor'easter raging along the New England Coast caused the barometric pressure reading at Albany, NY to fall to 28.84 inches of mercury (976.68 mb), the lowest barometric pressure reading ever recorded in April in the Empire State's capital city. (The Weather Doctor)

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