WEEKLY CLIMATE NEWS

10-14 June 2013

DataStreme Earth Climate Systems will return for Fall 2013 with new Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 2 September 2013. All the current online website products will continue to be available throughout the summer break period.

ITEMS OF INTEREST

Southwest monsoon season begins -- This coming Saturday (15 June 2013) is the typical date when the summer monsoon season begins in the Southwestern US. At that time, a dome of warm air expands northward across Arizona and New Mexico from the plateau of northern Mexico, with an attendant shift in the wind direction. Low level winds transport humid air northward from the Gulf of California and the eastern Pacific, while mid-level winds bring humid air from the Gulf of Mexico. The National Weather Service Forecast Office in Tucson, AZ has a webpage called "Tracking the Monsoon" that provides links to satellite imagery and climate data for the region. Arizona and New Mexico will observe Monsoon Awareness Week during this week, 9-14 June 2013. If you live in either of these two states, you should take time to become familiar with the various public affairs announcements issued by your local National Weather Service Office.
Agriculture Secretary outlines vision of agricultural solutions to environmental challenges -- In a speech last week to the National Press Club, Tom Vilsak, the Secretary of the US Department of Agriculture outlined his vision for agricultural solutions to increased environmental challenges. He said that the Federal government needs to increase collaboration with producers, researchers and industry that will help agriculture adapt to challenges associated with changing climate. His recommendations included establishment of seven regional climate hubs, the development of new research tools including the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) Tools customized for producers and the creation of a uniform policy guidelines designed to help producers mitigate threats and adapt for the future. [US Department of Agriculture]

CURRENT CLIMATE MONITORING

Field campaign to study how human and natural emissions affect atmospheric composition and climate --A large and relatively complex airborne science campaign will be conducted this summer in an effort to investigate how human and natural emissions into the at mops here affect atmospheric composition and climate. This field campaign, which is called "Studies of Emissions, Atmospheric Composition, Clouds and Climate Coupling by Regional Surveys (SEAC4RS) campaign" will have more than 250 scientists, engineers and flight personnel and involve aircraft and spacecraft. [NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory]
New map of Antarctica contains NASA data -- A new dataset called Bedmap2 provides a higher resolution depiction of the Antarctica Ice Sheet from the ice surface down to the bedrock below. The Bedmap2 data contains surface elevation measurements from NASA's Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) and ice thickness data collected by Operation IceBridge. [NASA Goddard Space Flight Center]
New and highly sophisticated sensor built for upcoming satellite -- A team of NASA scientists and engineers at the Goddard Space Flight Center recently built a sophisticated microwave radiometer to be used on an Earth science satellite mission that is designed to measure the intensity of microwaves. This instrument will be integrated with a synthetic aperture radar system developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to form the agency's Soil Moisture Active Passive spacecraft to be launched in late 2014. These instruments will globally map soil moisture levels, providing data that will benefit climate models and help in the prediction of droughts as it would help in the understanding of the global water cycle. [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

Pollen records help describe climate -- Researchers at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) have detailed how pollen count records collected from around the world are organized and stored within the Center's Paleoclimatology Program for use by climate scientists. These pollen records can be use as proxy climate records. All of NCDC's available fossil and surface pollen data can be found on the Paleoclimatology Program's Fossil and Surface Pollen Data web page. [NOAA NCDC News]
Ancient Irish chronicles reveal links between cold weather and volcanic eruptions -- An international group of researchers searching through 40,000 written entries in the historic Irish Annals from 431 to 1649 AD have found a a relationship between 38 volcanic eruptions and 37 extreme cold weather and climate events in Irish history. These events included unusual snowfalls, frosts, and ice cover on lakes. They compared these written entries with the deposition of volcanic sulfate found in ice cores. [Institute of Physics]

CLIMATE FORCING

Air pollution in Los Angeles basin declining -- Researchers with NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory and NOAA's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado Boulder have conducted a comprehensive study of air pollution in the Los Angeles metropolitan area of southwestern California, finding that the cleanup of tailpipe emissions over the last several decades not only reduced ozone pollution in the region but also the "organic nitrate" component of air pollution, peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN), which causes eyes to sting. The research team analyzed data collected using a NOAA research aircraft, along with archived data extending back over a half-century. [NOAA Office of Oceanic & Atmospheric Research]
Clean Air Act assisted in increased Atlanta rainfall -- A geoscientist at Georgia State University claims that the Clean Air Act of 1970 was responsible for a rebound in rainfall in Atlanta, GA, as atmospheric pollution levels decreased after implementation of the Act. Using precipitation data from nine weather stations in the Atlanta metropolitan area from 1948 through 2009, he found that summer precipitation fell in the 1950s and 1960s because of increased air pollution, before increasing after 1970. [Georgia State University News]
Northern Hemisphere pollution contributed to 1980s African drought -- Researchers at the University of Washington claim that contributed to the expansion of the drought across central Africa during the 1980s. These researchers feel that aerosols produced by coal-burning factories in the United States and Europe from the 1960s through the 1980s helped cool the entire Northern Hemisphere sufficiently to result in the southward shift in the tropical rain bands. This southward migration of the rain left the Sahel region to the south of the Sahara desert dry. Following clean-air legislation instituted in these Northern Hemisphere industrialized countries, the rain band shifted back north, lessening the drought. [University of Washington Today]

CLIMATE FORECASTS

Seasonal drought outlook posted -- Last week, forecasters at the NOAA Climate Prediction Center issued their seasonal drought outlook for the nation that would run from mid-May through August 2013. Their outlook would call for development or persistence of drought conditions across most of the western third of the nation, extending from the California and Oregon coasts eastward across the Intermountain West and the Rockies to the southern and central high Plains. Only areas of the Northwest along the Canadian border would not experience significant drought conditions. On the other hand, the forecasters foresaw improvement of the drought conditions across the eastern half of the nation, which would include sections of New England, the Florida Peninsula and the eastern sections of the Plains, including the upper Midwest. They also envisioned some slight improvement across sections of the central Plains. [NOAA CPC Drought Outlook]
Hurricane season outlook is updated -- During the last week Philip Klotzbach and William Gray, hurricane forecasters at Colorado State University, issued their updated June forecast for the 2013 Atlantic hurricane season. They foresee a continued very warm tropical Atlantic Ocean with no significant El Niño developing. Therefore, they did not modify their April forecast that calls for 18 named tropical cyclones (hurricanes and tropical storms), with nine potentially becoming hurricanes. As many as four of these hurricanes could become severe, reaching category 3 or higher on the Saffir-Simpson Scale. They also anticipate an above-average probability of a major Atlantic hurricane making landfall somewhere along the coast of the coterminous US and in the Caribbean. [The Tropical Storm Project] For comparison, forecasters with NOAA's Climate Prediction Center issued their Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook in which they anticipated an active or extremely active hurricane season. [NOAA News]

CLIMATE IMPACTS ON THE BIOSPHERE

Biological processes involved with coral formation may help predict future of coral reefs -- Scientists at Rutgers University have described the biological processes involved with how corals create their skeletons, showing in the laboratory how certain proteins secreted by corals precipitate carbonate as a limestone that forms the corals' characteristic skeleton. These skeletons form the massive coral reefs in the world's oceans. The researchers found that the reaction involved with coral reef formation occurs regardless of water acidity, which suggests that these organisms will survive in coming centuries when the world's oceans are predicted to become more acidic. [Rutgers Media Relations]

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

Historical Events:

10 June 1995...The temperature at Yakutat, AK soared to 87 degrees for its highest temperature on record. (Intellicast)
11 June 1877...The temperature at Los Angeles, CA reached 112 degrees during a heat wave. It would have been the all-time record for Los Angeles but official records did not begin until twenty days later. Over a century later, Los Angeles would again reach this temperature on 26 June 1990. (The Weather Channel) (The Weather Doctor)
11 June 1972...Heavy showers brought 1.64 inches of rain to Phoenix, AZ, a record for the month of June. (The Weather Channel)
12 June 1991...The largest volcanic eruption of the 20th Century began as Mt Pinatubo in the Philippines injected 15 to 30 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere. Global dust cloud cooled the planet, reversing for a time the global warming trend, as 1992 was globally one of the coolest since the 1970s. On the same day that Mt Pinatubo awakens from its 635-year slumber, Typhoon Yunya crossed Luzon province. Mudslides and flooding caused many deaths and added with impacts of Pinatubo leaving more than a million homeless. (The Weather Doctor)
13 June 1907...The temperature at Tamarack, CA dipped to 2 degrees above zero, the lowest reading of record for June for the U.S. The high that day was 30 degrees. Tamarack received 42 inches of snow between the 10^thand the 13^th. On the 13^th the snow depth was 130 inches. (The Weather Channel)
13 June 1977...Masirah, Oman received 16.95 inches of rain this day, a national record. (The Weather Doctor)
14 June 1876...Cherrapunji, India recorded 1036.3 mm (40.8 inches) of rain in 24 hours. (The Weather Doctor)
14 June 1961...The temperature in Downtown San Francisco, CA soared to 106 degrees to establish an all-time record for that location. (The Weather Channel)
15 June 1879...McKinney, ND received 7.7 inches of rain in 24 hours, a state record. This 24-hour state precipitation record has since been broken in June 1975 with an 8.10-inch reading. (The Weather Channel)
15 June 1887...Regina, Saskatchewan reported its wettest day to date as 6.31 inches rain fell. (The Weather Doctor)
15 June 1896...The temperature at Fort Mojave, CA soared to 127 degrees, the highest reading of record for June for the U.S. The low that day was 97 degrees. Morning lows of 100 degrees were reported on the 12^th, 14^th and 16^th of the month. (The Weather Channel)
15 June 1957...East Saint Louis, IL was deluged with 16.54 inches of rain in 24 hours, a record for the state of Illinois. In July 1996, this record was broken when 16.91 inches fell. (The Weather Channel)
Month of June...According to a 1969 US Army technical report, the average dewpoint temperature at Ras Andahglie and Assab, Eritrea (Ethiopia) average slightly more than 84 degrees F. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
16 June 1917...The temperature soared to 124 degrees at Mecca, CA climaxing the most destructive heat wave of record in California history. (David Ludlum)

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