WEEKLY CLIMATE NEWS

4-8 June 2012

DataStreme Earth Climate Systems 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

Early Sunrise -- Within the next week, many locations in the continental United States will experienced the date of earliest sunrise. While the longest daylight at each locale in the Northern Hemisphere will occur in over two weeks on the summer solstice (late afternoon on Wednesday, 20 June 2012), the occurrence of earliest local sunrise occurs before this date because the apparent sun now "leads" the clock time. This time discrepancy, which now amounts to approximately 2 minutes, occurs because of a combination of factors that result from the earth moving more slowly in its elliptical orbit because the earth presently is near its farthest point from the sun (aphelion on late evening of 4 July 2012) and the effect of the tilt of the earth's spin axis (near the summer solstice). For reference, the latest sunsets of the year will occur later in June as the apparent sun slows and by the first week of July "lags" clock time by about 4 minutes.
Transit of Venus focus of Sun-Earth Day 2012 -- View a "once in a lifetime" celestial event tomorrow evening or late afternoon (5 June 2012) and help celebrate Sun-Earth Day: Shadows of the Sun. The planet Venus will appear to pass slowly across the solar disc as a small dot over the span of several hours in what astronomers call the "transit of Venus." While the previous transit was on 8 June 2004, the next occurrence of this celestial event will not be until the year 2117 and then in 2125. The entire transit event, which starts at 2209 UTC on 5 June and ends at 0449 UTC on 6 June, should be visible to those across the western Pacific, eastern Asia, and eastern Australia, while residents across a large section of North America should see the beginning of the transit before local sunset, while those in Europe and western Asia could see the end of the transit event just after local sunrise on 6 June. See the Global Visibility Map. CAUTION! Do not look directly at the solar disc. Use proper precaution to protect your eyes. Editor's note: The transits of Venus has great historical significance in science, as the first one to be observed in 1639 helped provide the best estimate of the Earth-Sun distance to that time. Captain James Cook, RN made observations of the 1769 transit from Tahiti during his first voyage to the Pacific. EJH
World Environment Day -- This Tuesday, 5 June 2012, is World Environment Day, a day that has been created by the United Nations in an effort to stimulate worldwide awareness of the environment and to enhance political attention and action. This observance was established initially by the UN General Assembly in 1972 to mark the opening of the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment. Various activities are being planned. This year's theme is " Green Economy: Does it include you?" [World Environment Day]
"Break the Grip of the Rip®" -- NOAA, the United States Lifesaving Association and the National Park Service have designated this upcoming week of 3-9 June 2012 as national Rip Current Awareness Week. Using the theme, Break the Grip of the Rip®, efforts are meant to heighten public awareness of rip currents at surf beaches that claim the lives of as many as 100 people in the United States annually. [NWS Rip Current Safety]
World Ocean Day to be celebrated -- World Ocean Day or a "Celebration of the Sea" will be celebrated Friday, 8 June 2012 in an effort to increase public awareness and to foster public involvement in the management of the ocean and its resources. Although this date was created at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, it had not been officially recognized by the United Nations until 2009. This year's theme is Youth: the Next Wave for Change. A partial listing is provided for events across the US and other nations that will celebrate World Ocean Day. [The Ocean Project]
Free admission into the National Parks -- In observance of National Get Outdoors Day this coming Saturday (9 June 2012), the US Department of the Interior's National Park Service has designated next Saturday will provide free entry to any of the 397 national parks in the system. 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]

CURRENT CLIMATE MONITORING

Watching long-lived contrails evolve from space -- Visible images made over a two-hour span early last week from the MODIS sensors onboard NOAA's Aqua and Terra satellites show the development and spread of contrails (condensation trails) into cirrus clouds off the Newfoundland coast. These long-lived and spreading contrails along aircraft routes pose a concern for climate scientists. [NASA Earth Observatory]
A nighttime view of the Northeast from space -- An image of the nighttime lights across the Northeastern States and sections of eastern Canada was recently produced from data collected by an instrument on the new polar-orbiting NOAA-NASA NPP satellite. The sensor that produced the image was the VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imager/Radiometer Suite) day-night band sensor that produces an image similar to those obtained from regular cameras. The NOAA National Geophysical Data Center has used nighttime satellite images from the NPP satellite and from predecessor satellites such as the DMSP (Defense Meteorological Satellite Program) satellite to example urbanization and population changes. [NOAA Environmental Visualization Lab]
Pilot-less research aircraft to fly over hurricanes this season -- With the start of the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season, NASA announced that it will use two of its "Global Hawks" pilot-less aircraft to fly to altitudes of 60,000 feet and for up to 28 hours over hurricanes to obtain atmospheric measurements that will be used to investigate those processes involved with the life cycle of hurricanes. Six different instruments will be used. This mission, which includes NASA and other federal and university partners, is called the Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel (HS3) airborne mission. [NASA Goddard Space Flight Center]
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]

PALEOCLIMATE RECONSTRUCTION

Medieval megadroughts in Sierras confirmed -- From evidence collected from around a small lake in the Lake Tahoe Basin of California and Nevada, researchers at the University of Nevada, Reno and at Scripps Institution of Oceanography have found that the Sierra Mountains and the area around Lake Tahoe and present-day Reno, NV experienced severe and extended droughts every 650 to 1150 years during the mid and late Holocene period. One of the drought episodes was what is called the Medieval megadrought that lasted from 800 to 1250 AD, when annual precipitation was approximately 65 percent of what is currently considered annual normal precipitation. [University of Nevada, Reno]
Changing climate led to collapse of ancient Indus civilization -- A geologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and colleagues from the US, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, India and Romania report that archaeological evidence along with images and topographic data collected by satellites indicates climate change appears to be a key factor in the collapse of the great Indus or Harappan Civilization in South Asia nearly 4000 years ago. Beginning at that time, the rivers that provided water to this civilization began to diminish as the rains from the Indian monsoons declined and the region became arid. [Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution]

CLIMATE FORCING

Geoengineering would yield a whiter sky -- Using advanced radiative transfer models, researchers at the Carnegie Institution for Science report that geoengineering attempts to minimize the effects of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions by increasing the amount of atmospheric aerosols would create a whiter and brighter sky because of increased scattering of the incoming sunlight. Geoengineering refers to those large-scale engineering efforts designed to manipulate the planetary environment in an attempt to counteract those anthropogenic changes in greenhouse gases. [Carnegie Institution for Science]
Super-eruptions may be on a short fuse -- An earth scientist at Vanderbilt University and his colleagues claim that some of the enormous volcanic eruptions called super-eruptions that would be capable of causing major changes in climate due to decade-long volcanic winters and end civilizations may form relatively quickly. The researchers suggest that new evidence indicates that large magma pools may only exist from centuries to a few millennia before erupting. [Vanderbilt University Research News]
New theories needed for understanding terrestrial formation -- A scientist at Denmark's University of Copenhagen has found that the current theory of continental drift and plate tectonics may be adequate for explaining terrestrial processes during the last 3 billion years, it is not sufficient to explain the dynamics involved with the formation of the Earth's crust when the planet formed approximately 4.6 billion years ago. [University of Copenhagen News]

CLIMATE AND SOCIETY

US-European Union agreement signed to strengthen climate, weather and ocean science activities -- At a meeting held last week in Brussels, Belgium, officials from NOAA and the European Commission's Joint Research Centre signed a landmark agreement that would strengthen cooperative science activities between the US and the European Union (EU) in several environmental areas involving weather, climate, oceans and coasts. The meeting also marked the start of the first four environmental monitoring projects under this agreement. [NOAA News]
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.

Historical Events:

4-5 June 1908...Helena, MT was deluged with 3.67 inches of rain to establish their all-time 24-hour rainfall record. (The Weather Channel)
5 June 1993...A strong, late season spring storm moved into California. The 0.76 inches of rain at Los Angeles set a new daily rainfall record for June. Lake Gregory was deluged with 3.24 inches of rain in 24 hours and a foot of snow fell at the Mammoth Mountain ski area. (Intellicast)
6-10 June 1816...The temperature reached 92 degrees at Salem, MA during an early heat wave, but then plunged 49 degrees in 24 hours to commence the famous "year without a summer". Late season snow fell across New England and eastern Canada. The editor of the Bangor (ME) Register observed that individual snowflakes that fell on Bangor during the afternoon of the 6^th covered areas up to two inches in diameter. Snow fell near Quebec City, Quebec over a 5-day period accumulating to 12 inches with "drifts reaching the axel trees of carriages" during this infamous Year Without a Summer. The Montreal Gazette reported that this "Extraordinary Season" gave snow squalls to the city on the 6^th and 8^th. On the 7^th, a famous June snow fell in the northeastern U.S. Danville, VT reported drifts of snow and sleet twenty inches deep. The Highlands were white all day, and snow flurries were observed as far south as Boston MA. Waltham, MA reported a low temperature of 33 degrees and New Haven, CT had a low of 35 degrees (David Ludlum) (Intellicast) (The Weather Doctor) (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
6 June 1894...One of the greatest floods in U.S. history occurred as the Willamette River overflowed to inundate half of the business district of Portland, OR. (David Ludlum)
7 June 1972...Richmond, VA experienced its worst flood of record as rains from Hurricane Agnes pushed the water level at the city locks to a height of 36.5 feet, easily topping the previous record of thirty feet set in 1771. (The Weather Channel)
9 June 1966...Hurricane Alma made landfall over the eastern Florida Panhandle -- the earliest land falling hurricane on the U.S. mainland on record. (Intellicast)
9 June 1988...The temperature at Del Rio, TX soared to an all-time record high of 112 degrees. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
9 June 1990...San Diego, CA set a new record rainfall amount on this date, as 0.38 inches of rain fell breaking the old record of 0.13 inches established in 1892. Moisture from the remains of Hurricane Boris was responsible for this rare rain event. (Intellicast)
10 June 1995...The temperature at Yakutat, AK soared to 87 degrees for its highest temperature on record. (Intellicast)

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