WEEKLY CLIMATE NEWS

WEEKLY CLIMATE NEWS

5-9 March 2018

ITEMS OF INTEREST

Worldwide GLOBE at Night 2018 Campaign for March commences -- The third in a series of GLOBE at Night citizen-science campaigns for 2018 will commence this Thursday (8 March) and continue through Saturday, 17 March. GLOBE at Night is a worldwide, hands-on science and education program designed to encourage citizen-scientists worldwide to record the brightness of their night sky by matching the appearance of a constellation with the seven magnitude/star charts of progressively fainter stars. These constellations are Leo for latitudes equatorward of 30 degrees latitude in the Northern Hemisphere and Canis Major for all latitudes in the Southern Hemisphere. Activity guides are also available. The GLOBE at night program is intended to raise public awareness of the impact of light pollution. The fourth series in the 2018 campaign is scheduled for 6-15 April 2018. [GLOBE at Night]
Time change -- Daylight Saving Time will go into effect next Sunday morning (11 March 2018) for 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 and end on the first Sunday in November (4 November 2018). 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. Most of Canada also observes Daylight Saving Time changes at the same time [National Research Council Canada].
What does this time change mean to you (other than later 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.
While many people want additional daylight after work, some health experts say that the change to Daylight Saving Time is hard on human health, as it affects the natural sleep cycle and circadian rhythms. Increases in sleep disorders, traffic accidents and heart attacks have been seen during the first several days after the time change.
Viewing atmospheric circulation in three-dimensions -- Read this week's Supplemental Information.. In Greater Depth for information concerning the average circulation in the lower and upper troposphere.
A Reminder -- Next week (beginning Monday, 12 March 2018) is Spring vacation week for this course. All the familiar products will be available throughout the week. The Investigation and Supplemental Information files from this week will remain on the RealTime Climate Portal for those who are on spring break.

CURRENT CLIMATE MONITORING

Future GOES-West satellite launched -- On last Thursday afternoon (1 March 2018), the new Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-S (GOES-S) satellite was launched from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket and was successfully placed into a highly elliptical geosynchronous transfer orbit. The solar panel arrays were deployed to allow the spacecraft to operate on its own power. The spacecraft should reach a geosynchronous orbit at 22,300 miles above Earth in approximately two weeks. Once in this orbit, GOES-S will be renamed GOES-17 and later this year, should become GOES-West when it takes over for GOES-15 currently monitoring the western US and the Pacific Ocean. [NOAA News] or [NASA Press Release]
The sensors on GOES-S will bring new information to forecasters in a timelier manner and should therefore improve forecasting for some areas, especially related to fog formation and formation of tropical cyclones in the eastern Pacific. It will also be capable of detecting wildfires across western North America and volcanic eruptions in Alaska. [NOAA NESDIS News]
Dramatic decline in snowpack is seen across western states - Researchers from Oregon State University and their colleagues, report that the average snowpack in western states has declined by between 15 and 30 percent since 1915. Additionally, the amount of water lost from that snowpack reduction is comparable in volume to Lake Mead, the largest reservoir constructed in the West. More than 90 percent of the 1766 long-term snow monitoring sites in the western states experienced declines in snowpack, with one-third of the declines deemed significant. The snowpack decline was attributed to higher temperatures, not a lack of precipitation. [Oregon State University News]
Employing seismic records to detect long-term trends in hurricane strength and frequency -- A team of scientists including those from Princeton and Columbia Universities have employed a method for estimating tropical cyclone strength from seismic records alone, which could provide more information on tropical cyclone activity over many decades. During the life of a tropical cyclone, large and powerful ocean waves swirl and collide as the winds spiral in different directions, creating seismic signals on seismometers that rise just enough above the ambient noise normally found on seismometer traces. The seismic signals can be analyzed to determine tropical cyclone strength. This method may reveal previously hidden trends that would help predict how hurricane seasons may change in the future. [NOAA Climate.gov News]
Drought returns to a large area of the nation due to a dry winter -- The most recent edition of the familiar U.S. National Drought Monitor indicates widespread drought conditions across the Southwest along with the southern and northern Plains. The drought assessment is based upon measurements of climate, soil, and water conditions from more than 350 federal, state, and local observers across the nation, usually reflecting the availability of soil moisture in the root zone near the surface that is accessible to plants. Below average precipitation across large sections of the nation this past autumn and winter have contributed to these drought conditions that have been the largest since the spring of 2014. For the last several years, scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center have been generating groundwater and soil moisture drought indicators each week to determine the relative amount of water stored in underground aquifers across the contiguous United States. These indicators are based on terrestrial water storage observations derived from GRACE satellite data and integrated with other observations from ground-based gauges, using a sophisticated numerical model of land surface water and energy processes. A map of groundwater and soil moisture conditions from the GRACE data assimilation for last week shows large areas of below average groundwater across the Southwest as depicted by low values of the shallow groundwater wetness percentile. [NASA Earth Observatory]
Flooding seen along lower Ohio and Mississippi Rivers -- A false-color image generated from data collected at the beginning of last week by the MODIS sensor on NASA's Terra satellite shows the widespread flooding across the Midwest and Mid-South due to the melting snow and recent torrential rains that fell across the region. A comparison of this image with one made by the companion MODIS sensor on NASA's Aqua satellite slightly more than one year ago reveals the swollen Ohio and Mississippi Rivers along with several of their tributaries. [NASA Earth Observatory]
Scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center have generated a rainfall analysis chart from precipitation data collected by several of the agency's satellite-borne precipitation-related sensors using the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA). The rainfall anomaly chart shows the precipitation that fell across the nation from 21 December 2017 through 23 February expressed as an anomaly, or the arithmetic difference between the observed precipitation and the twelve-year average from 2001 to 2012. Above average precipitation was detected across the northeastern quadrant of the nation, especially in the upper Ohio Valley. [NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Feature]

CLIMATE FORECASTS

Canadian national seasonal outlook issued -- Forecasters with Environment Canada issued their outlooks for temperature and precipitation across Canada for meteorological spring, or the three months of March through May 2018. Their temperature outlook indicates that nearly three-quarters of Canada, could experience above normal (1981-2010) temperatures for these three months. Only western sections of the nation, extending from the British Columbia coast eastward through Alberta and northward across the Yukon and Northwestern Territories, could have near average temperatures.
The Canadian precipitation outlook for Spring 2018 indicates that most of the nation could experience close to average precipitation for the next three months. However, above average spring precipitation was anticipated for a few scattered sections of western and northern Canada. extending from the northern Prairie Provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan northward into the Canadian Archipelago. A few smaller areas that were widely scattered across Canada could have below average March through May precipitation.
[Note for comparisons and continuity with the three-month seasonal outlooks of temperature and precipitation generated for the continental United States and Alaska by NOAA's Climate Prediction Center, one would need to use Environment Canada's probabilistic forecasts for temperature and precipitation.]

PALEOCLIMATE RECONSTRUCTION

Climate information is unearthed from ancient soils by new method -- Researchers at the University of Connecticut have developed a new method for reconstructing ancient climates using analyses of organic compounds in sediments and soils. This new method involves using organic compounds found in the waxy, lipid-rich cuticles of plants to extract information about the plants' growing environment. The different distributions of lipids in the leaf wax of plants are the result of how plants can respond to stressful situations, such as a shortage of water during the growing season. These organic compounds can be preserved over tens to hundreds of millions of years if incorporated into the soil. Once the leaf wax lipids are extracted from soils and sediments and analyzed, a record of changes to regional and global moisture budgets can be made on geologic timescales from the distribution of organic compounds in the plant leaf wax. [University of Connecticut News]

CLIMATE AND THE BIOSPHERE

Springs are occurring earlier, especially in polar regions -- Researchers from the University of California Davis, the University of Minnesota Duluth and Pennsylvania State University reported that their analysis of phenological observations (such as bird migration and flower bloom dates) indicates that for every 10 degrees of latitude one moves northward from the equator, spring arrives about four days earlier than it did a decade ago. Therefore, spring is arriving earlier across the planet, with the Arctic experiencing greater advances of spring than at lower latitudes because of more rapid springtime warming of the Arctic. The researchers analyzed 743 previously published estimates of the rate of springtime advance from studies spanning 86 years across the Northern Hemisphere, as well as rates of springtime warming over the same range of years and latitude. The northward increase in the rate of springtime advance estimated in the current study is roughly three times greater than what previous studies had indicated. [University of California Davis News]
Dying reefs appear to pose bigger threats to coasts than rising sea water -- An international team of scientists recently reported that tropical coastlines are at a greater immediate risk of erosion from increases in wave heights due to the loss of live corals than from rising sea levels associated with a changing climate. Wave processes at coral reefs in Moorea and Tahiti in French Polynesia were examined and future wave heights near the coastline were modeled by changing variables such as coral reef health and sea level. [Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory News]

CLIMATE AND SOCIETY

Most of nation's electricity needs could be met by wind and solar power -- Energy experts associated with the Carnegie Institution claim that their analysis of 36 years of weather data indicates that wind and solar power could generate most, but not all, electricity in the United States. These resources tend to have a complementary effect as the nation's solar power resources typically reach peak generating ability in June and July, while wind resources peak in March and April before slumping during July and August. Reliable electricity generation with 80 percent solar and wind would require a continent-scale transmission grid with at least 12 hours of storage to overcome ordinary day-to-day variation. In addition, the researchers found that as the amount of electricity produced by solar and wind increases, avoidance of major blackouts becomes increasingly challenging. [Carnegie Science]
Use of humor may inspire climate change activism -- Second City Works, a marketing offshoot of the legendary improvisational theater troupe in Chicago, Cornell University and the Environmental Defense Fund collaborated in a study that indicates humor may be a vehicle to stimulate young people to take more action in responding to climate change. An article entitled "Pathways of Influence in Emotional Appeals: Benefits and Tradeoffs of Using Fear or Humor to Promote Climate Change-Related Intentions and Risk Perceptions" describes the study and results. [Cornell University News]
Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com]

Concept of the Week: Tropospheric westerly winds, north and south

The theoretical existence of upper tropospheric jet stream winds were not confirmed until being encountered by World War II bomber pilots when heading west into strong headwinds at altitudes of approximately 30,000 feet (10,000 m). Wind speeds sometimes exceeded 170 mph causing their relatively slow, heavily laden aircraft to almost stand still. Subsequently, westerly jet stream winds were found to encircle the planet in midlatitudes of both hemispheres above regions of strong temperature contrasts.

The explanation for these winds involves atmospheric mass distributions and forces on a rotating planet. Air in tropical latitudes is warmed, rises and then flows poleward, both north and south. On a rotating planet, moving air is deflected by the Coriolis effect, to the right in the Northern Hemisphere (and left in the Southern). The greater the temperature differences between warm lower and cold higher latitudes, the stronger the air motions and the faster the jet streams. The vertical temperature patterns result in the highest wind speeds near the top of the troposphere.

So Northern Hemisphere air headed northward, deflected to the right ends up headed east, a "westerly wind." In the Southern Hemisphere, southward moving air, deflected left will also go east, as a westerly wind. These "rivers" of strong upper-level winds steer surface weather systems as they move generally eastward across midlatitudes. They also provide boosts for jet aircraft headed eastward with them, but need to be avoided for going west! Of course, the full story is complex as land (especially mountains) and water surfaces interact with the heating of the air and eddies form in the turbulent flows, so jet streams wander. And with them go the storms and the weather patterns that form our short-term climate.

Historical Events:

5 March 1972...Palm Springs, CA recorded a high temperature of 100 degrees, the earliest the city has ever hit the century mark. (National Weather Service files)
5 March 2000...The Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, MN established a new record for the fewest number of days between 70-degree Fahrenheit temperature reading from the last date in the autumn to the first date in the spring, with only 113 days passed. The previous record was 131 days, while the average has been 175 days. (The Weather Doctor)
6 March 1900...A chinook wind blowing down the slopes of the Rockies through Havre, MT raised the temperature 31 degrees in just three minutes. (The Weather Channel)
6 March 1954...Florida received its greatest modern-day snowfall of record, with 4.0 inches at the Milton Experimental Station. Pensacola, FL equaled their 24-hour record with 2.1 inches of snow. (The Weather Channel)
6 March 1962...Forty-two inches of snow fell at Big Meadows, located in the mountains of Virginia, for a state record as part of the Great Atlantic Coast Storm of 1962. (Intellicast)
6 March 1971...The temperature at Palteau Rosa, Italy fell to 30.2 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, Italy's lowest temperature on record. (The Weather Doctor)
6 March 1977...The highest recorded wind gust in the United Kingdom was 144 mph at the Cairngorm Weather Station in Scotland. (National Weather Service files)
7 March 1932...A severe coastal storm set barometric pressure records from Virginia to New England. Block Island, RI reported a barometric pressure reading of 955.0 millibars (28.20 inches of mercury). (David Ludlum)
7 March 1996...6.5 inches of snow fell at Boston, MA on this date to bring its seasonal total to 96.4 inches -- the city's snowiest winter in 105 years of record keeping. The old record was 96.3 inches set in the 1993-94 winter season. Now all major cities along this East Coast had broken their seasonal snowfall records in the 1995-96 winter season. (Intellicast)
7 March 2000...The temperature at Duluth, MN reached 70 degrees, which was the earliest that a 70-degree reading was reported in Duluth; the previous earliest date was 22 March 1945 when the temperature reached 72 degrees. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
7 March 1999...Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada's snowiest major city set a new record for a one-day snowfall of 45.7 inches, but prior to that date the winter's total had been a meager (for the city) 46 inches of snow. (The Weather Doctor)
8 March 1971...A snowstorm dropped 10 to 20 inches of new snow across Vermont to raise snow depths to record levels. A snow cover of 116 inches was measured on the ground on top of Mount Mansfield, the second highest snow depth ever recorded on the mountain up to the time. The town of Orange measured 88 inches on the ground for a new state low-elevation snow depth record. (Intellicast)
8 March 1992...In the first 8 days of March, Las Vegas, NV recorded 1.87 inches of rain, setting a new monthly record for rainfall in March. The previous record was 1.83 inches set in 1973. (Intellicast)
8 March 1994...A major snowstorm buried sections of Oklahoma, Missouri, and Arkansas. Ozark Beach, MO recorded 19 inches of snow, while Harrison, AR checked in with 18 inches. Tulsa, OK had 12.9 of snow, for its greatest single storm snowfall ever. (Intellicast)
8 March 1996...Elkins, WV received 2.1 inches of snow on this day to bring its seasonal snowfall to 125.8 inches -- its snowiest winter on record. (Intellicast)
9 March 1911...Aibonito, Puerto Rico had temperature of 40 degrees Fahrenheit, the lowest temperature recorded on that island. (The Weather Doctor)
9 March 1943...The temperature at Lac Frontiere, ME fell to 40 degrees below zero, the lowest reading ever in March in New England. (Intellicast)
9 March 1956...A whopping 367 inches of snow was measured on the ground at the Rainier Paradise Ranger Station in Washington. The snow depth was a state record and the second highest total of record for the continental U.S. (The Weather Channel)
10 March 1912...The barometric pressure reached 990.9 millibars (29.26 inches) at Los Angeles, CA, and 997.7 millibars (29.46 inches) at San Diego, CA, setting all-time records for those two locations. (David Ludlum)
10 March 1922...Dodge City, KS reported an all-time record 24-hour total of 17.5 inches of snow. (The Weather Channel)
10-11 March 1972, The temperature at Chicago, IL rose from 15 degrees on the 10th to 73 degrees on the 11th. The 58-Fahrenheit degree temperature rise tied the city's largest day-to-day rise on record. The city experienced a similar jump in temperature in February 1887. (The Weather Doctor)
11 March 1911...Tamarack, CA reported 451 inches of snow on the ground, a record for the U.S. (David Ludlum)
11 March 1948...Record cold followed in the wake of a Kansas blizzard. Lows of 25 degrees below zero at Oberlin, Healy, and Quinter established a state record for the month of March. Lows of 15 degrees below zero at Dodge City, 11 degrees below zero at Concordia, and 3 degrees below zero at Wichita were records for March at these locations. The low of 3 degrees below zero at Kansas City, MO was their latest subzero reading of record. (The Weather Channel) (Intellicast)
11 March 2006...The record run for dry days in Phoenix, AZ finally ended at 143 at 12:07 AM MST. The last measured rain in the city fell on 18 October 2005. The last time the region had significant precipitation was 2 August when 0.59 inch (15 mm) fell. Not only did the rain break the dry spell, the 1.40-inch total was a record amount for the date: The previous consecutive dry-day mark, set in 1998-99, was 101 days. (The Weather Doctor)

Return to RealTime Climate Portal