WEEKLY CLIMATE NEWS

5-9 May 2014

DataStreme Earth Climate System will return for Fall 2014 with new Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 25 August 2014. All the current online website products will continue to be available throughout the summer break period.

ITEMS OF INTEREST

May is National Wetlands Month -- The US Environmental Protection Agency, along with other federal agencies and environmental groups, has designated May as American Wetlands Month in an effort to increase public awareness of the importance of protecting and preserving the nation's wetlands. This year's observance is the 24th annual National Wetlands Month. [EPA-Wetlands]
Land of the Midnight Sun -- Barring clouds, the sun should rise at Barrow, AK early this Saturday morning (3:00 AM AKDT on 10 May 2014) after spending one hour and 14 minutes below the horizon. The sun should then remain above the local horizon for the next 12 weeks, before going below the horizon for 62 minutes on 2 August 2014 (at 2:03 AM AKDT). [US Naval Observatory]

CURRENT CLIMATE STATUS

Spring comes to interior Alaska -- The ice on the Tanana River at Nenana officially went out on the afternoon of Friday, 25 April 2014 at 3:48 PM, Alaska Standard Time). This date represents the seventh earliest breakup on record in the famous 98-year old Nenana Ice Classic Ice Classic, occurring one year after the latest breakup on record (20 May 2013). The earliest breakup occurred on 20 April 1998. The median date for ice-breakup is 5 May. [Nenana Ice Classic] As of this past weekend, 25 winners will share the record jackpot for this year's annual Nenana Ice Classic of $363,627. [Fairbanks Daily News-Miner] NOTE: A graph of the date of ice-out for each year since the Classic was started in 1917 has been plotted by this editor. EJH

CURRENT CLIMATE MONITORING

Field campaign begins to measure precipitation patterns in southern Appalachians -- At the beginning of May, NASA launched a field campaign across the southern Appalachian Mountains designed to help scientists better understand the weather and precipitation patterns across these mountain regions in the Southeastern US. Rain gauges and other precipitation monitoring equipment have been deployed across the Smoky Mountains in western North Carolina as part of the six-week Integrated Precipitation and Hydrology Experiment field campaign. This campaign will serve as ground truth for measurements made by the Core Observatory satellite launched last February as part of the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM), an international satellite mission designed to observe rain and snow around the world. [NASA Goddard Space Flight Center]
The NOAA/NASA Suomi NPP satellite becomes nation's primary polar-orbiting weather satellite -- NOAA officials recently reported that the NOAA/NASA Suomi NPP (National Polar-orbiting Partnership) satellite has now become the primary operational polar-orbiting spacecraft for NOAA's operational weather forecasting mission, replacing the NOAA-19 satellite that had been the primary satellite. The NOAA/NASA Suomi NPP satellite, which was named for Verner Suomi of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was launched in October 2011 and has five onboard instruments that have gained operational status: Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS), Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS), the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS) and Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES). [NOAA NESDIS News]
New carbon-monitoring satellite reaches launch pad -- The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, a new NASA spacecraft designed to make precise measurements of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere, arrived at California's Vandenberg Air Force Base last week to begin final preparations for a launch on 1 July 2014. This observatory is NASA's first satellite mission dedicated to studying carbon dioxide, a critical component of Earth's carbon cycle, the leading human-produced greenhouse gas driving changes in Earth's climate. In addition to measuring carbon dioxide, OCO-2 will monitor solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence, or the "glow" of the chlorophyll contained within green plants. [NASA Global Climate Change News]
US and France agree to "Surface Water and Ocean Topography" mission -- Late last week, the NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and France's Centre National d'Études Spatiales (CNES) President Jean-Yves Le Gall signed an agreement that will implement the joint development and launch of the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission, which will represent the first global survey of Earth's surface water and the topography of ocean height. The spacecraft to be used in the SWOT mission is scheduled to be launched in 2020 and will employ wide swath altimetry technology to produce high-resolution elevation measurements of the surface of lakes, reservoirs and wetlands and of the ocean surface. [NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory]
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]

CLIMATE FORCING

NOAA's Annual Greenhouse Gas Index increases in 2013 -- Scientists at NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory recently reported that the NOAA Annual Greenhouse Gas Index (AGGI) increased by 1.5 percent between 2012 and 2013 to a value of 1.34. The AGGI is a dimensionless index, based on measurements of the concentrations of various greenhouse gases from the agency's global air sampling network. The AGGI determines the direct climate influence of many long-lived greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide that are added to the atmosphere by human activity, measured as a percentage of the base or "index" year of 1990. Consequently, the 2013 AGGI value of 1.34 means the combined heating effect of long-lasting/human-caused emissions with that of existing gases trapped in the atmosphere has increased by 34 percent since 1990. [NOAA Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research News]

CLIMATE FORECASTS

An El Niño event could be developing across Pacific -- The slow eastward movement of a pool of warm water across the equatorial Pacific Ocean beginning in early 2014 and continuing through April appears to indicate that an El Niño event could be developing by the second half of 2014. Therefore, forecasters with NOAA's Climate Prediction Center have issued an El Niño watch that indicates atmospheric and oceanic conditions across the tropical Pacific appear favorable for an El Niño event in the next six months [NOAA Climate.gov News]
Canadian national seasonal outlook issued -- Forecasters with Environment Canada issued their outlooks for temperature and precipitation across Canada for the three months of May, June and July 2014, which represents the last month of meteorological spring and the first two months of meteorological summer. The temperature outlook indicates that western Canada, most of the Canadian Arctic and sections of the Maritime Provinces would experience above normal (1981-2010) spring and early summer temperatures. On the other hand, the Prairie Provinces along with western Ontario would have below average temperatures for the next three months. Elsewhere across Canada, near normal temperatures were anticipated.
The Canadian precipitation outlook for May through July 2014 indicates that sections of western Canada extending from British Columbia into the Yukon and Northwest Territories could experience below average precipitation. Likewise, below average precipitation was also anticipated in northern sections of Labrador and Quebec. Conversely, sections of southern Canada that included sections of the Prairie Provinces and the Maritime Provinces could have above normal 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.]

CLIMATE AND HUMANS

"State of the Air 2014" report released -- Just before the start of Air Quality Awareness Week, the American Lung Association released its 15th annual "State of the Air Report" for the United States, which uses data compiled and analyzed by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) obtained from air quality monitors around the nation. The EPA data involve the two most widespread types of pollution - ozone (smog) and particle pollution (PM 2.5, also known as soot). The current report indicates approximately half of the nation's residents still live in counties where ozone or particle pollution levels make the air unhealthy to breath, although some progress has continued to reduce particle pollution. Poor air quality appears to remain a significant public concern and changing climate conditions could make efforts to protect human health harder to achieve. An interactive website permits the public to view the "Report Card: What's the Grade for Your Air?" by entering either a postal zip code or a state's name. [American Lung Association]

CLIMATE AND SOCIETY

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

Historical Events:

6 May 1933...Charleston, SC was deluged with 10.57 inches of rain, an all-time 24-hour record for that location. (The Weather Channel)
6 May 1978...A record late season snowstorm struck Colorado. Denver checked in with 14 inches for its greatest May snowstorm on record. (Intellicast)
7 May 1964...The temperature at White Mountain 2, located in California, dipped to 15 degrees below zero to set a record for May for the continental U.S. (The Weather Channel)
10 May 1910...A meteorograph ascent of an instrumented Weather Bureau kite to 23,835 feet from Mount Weather, VA set the altitude record for the site. The ascent, which had a kite with instruments to measure atmospheric conditions aloft, used 10 kites in tandem and 8.5 miles of kite wire. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
10 May 1966...Morning lows of 21 degrees at Bloomington-Normal and Aurora established an Illinois state record for the month of May. Snow flurries were reported at Kansas City, MO and Chicago, IL (The Weather Channel) (Intellicast)
10-11 May 1986...Bangkok, Thailand received 15.79 inches of rain in 24-hours, which was a national record. (The Weather Doctor)
11 May 1966...The 1.6 inch-snow at Chicago, IL was their latest measurable snow of record. Previously the record was 3.7 inches on the 1^stand 2^nd of May set in 1940. (The Weather Channel)
11 May 2003...A total of 4.63 inches of rain fell at Nashville, TN, breaking the previous 24-hour record for the month. (The Weather Doctor)

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