WEEKLY CLIMATE NEWS

8-12 June 2015

DataStreme Earth Climate System will return for Fall 2015 with new Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 24 August 2015. All the current online website products will continue to be available throughout the summer break period.

ITEMS OF INTEREST

World Ocean Day is celebrated -- World Ocean Day or a "Celebration of the Sea" will be celebrated Monday, 8 June 2015 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 Healthy oceans, healthy planet. A partial listing is provided for events across the US and other nations that will celebrate World Ocean Day. [The Ocean Project]
New collection of hurricane science animations released -- At the start of the 2015 Atlantic hurricane season, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center released a new collection of scientific animations generated from data collected by NASA satellites that are intended to provide scientists and other interested parties the ability to look inside hurricanes. The 50-minute "Hurricane Resource Reel" is available online at the website for Scientific Visualization Studio of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. [NOAA News]

CURRENT CLIMATE STATUS

South Asia experiences a deadly heat wave -- The South Asian nations of India Pakistan, southern Iran, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman experienced two weeks of above average temperatures in late May and early June. As of late last week, the heat wave in India, which had been ranked as the fifth deadliest on record, had claimed more than 2500 people. High atmospheric humidity along with much-average temperatures contributed to the high death toll. A false-color map of south Asia displaying the observed outgoing long-wave radiation from the top of the Earth's atmosphere as measured by the Clouds and Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) sensor onboard NASA's Terra satellite over a nearly two-week span in late May shows the widespread nature of the heat wave. [NASA Earth Observatory]
Upon further review, recent global warming "hiatus" is refuted -- Using the latest global surface temperature dataset, a team of scientists from NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) has found that global temperature over the last several decades has been increasing at a rate that is as fast or even faster as compared with the rate during the second half of the 20th century, thereby refuting the notion of a recent slowdown or "hiatus" in global warming. The director of NCEI, previously known as the National Climatic Data Center, claimed that adding two additional years of global surface data and the improvements made in the quality of the observed record has provided sufficient evidence that contradicts the notion that a hiatus had occurred in the increase in global temperatures over the last decade. [NOAA News]

CURRENT CLIMATE MONITORING

NASA's IceBridge Arctic field campaign concludes for the season -- On 21 May, NASA's C-130 research aircraft left Thule Air Base, Greenland and returned to Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia signaling the conclusion of the 10-week field campaign of NASA's Operation IceBridge in the Arctic. This campaign was the seventh Arctic deployment, where researchers used the aircraft on 33 flights to collect data on Arctic sea and land ice. In addition, the campaign released two sea ice data products and researchers participated in live in-flight chats with students in 35 classrooms in eleven states in the US and in Mexico. [NASA Goddard Space Flight Center]
Satellite monitors atmospheric carbon monoxide for over 14 years -- The Measurements of Pollution in the Troposphere (MOPITT) sensor onboard NASA's Terra satellite has been measuring the global distribution of carbon monoxide gas (CO) in the Earth's atmosphere since 2000. Global maps show the spatial distribution of CO in 2000 and in 2014. The MOPITT data set shows a decrease in global CO over this 14-year span. [NASA Earth Observatory]
Wildfires across northwestern Canada seen from space -- A natural-color image made from data collected by the MODIS sensor on board NASA's Aqua satellite at the end of May shows smoke plumes emanating from numerous wildfires burning across sections of Canada's Northwest Territories, along with northern British Columbia and Alberta. [NASA Earth Observatory]

CLIMATE FORCING

Will current El Niño cause 2015 to reach record warmth? -- NOAA climate scientist Deke Arndt discusses the possibility that the current El Niño event that developed earlier this year could continue and even strengthen through the rest of 2015, which could result in the calendar year of 2015 supplanting the previous year (2014) as the warmest year since the period of reliable and widespread global climate records began in 1880. Comparisons were made with several previous El Niño and La Niña episodes. [NOAA News]
Role that ENSO plays on spring tornadoes and hailstorms explored -- A team of researchers from Columbia University recently published their analysis of how El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) affects the frequency of tornadoes and hailstorms for meteorological spring (May, April and May) across the contiguous United States. Grouping these severe weather events in terms of El Niño and La Niña episodes, the researchers found that springtime tornadoes and hailstorms typically are less frequent in the southern central United States during El Niño events, but more frequent during La Niña events. El Niño weakens surface winds that carry warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico over Texas and neighboring states, while La Niña concentrates hot, humid air over the region. [NOAA Climate.gov News]
Trigger for fast-draining lakes atop Greenland ice sheet is found -- Scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the University of Washington have found that large cracks can develop in the bed of large supraglacial lakes that are perched atop the Greenland glaciers. These "hydrofractures" (or cracks) can cause large quantities of water to flow from the bottom of these lakes downward through the ice to the bedrock within a few hours. The researchers hypothesize that the weight of the water can cause fissures in the ice that develop into hydrofractures. These fast-draining supraglacial lakes could accelerate the rise of global sea level. [Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Oceanus Magazine]

CLIMATE FORECASTS

Hurricane season outlook is updated -- At the start of June Philip Klotzbach and William Gray, hurricane forecasters at Colorado State University, issued their updated June forecast for the 2015 Atlantic hurricane season. They foresee a season that would have below-average activity due to the potential development of a strong El Niño event and the continuation of unfavorable conditions for hurricane formation across the tropical Atlantic basin. However, they modified their April forecast by calling for eight named tropical cyclones (hurricanes and tropical storms) because of the early development of Tropical Storm Ana in early May. The forecast also calls for three of these tropical cyclones potentially becoming hurricanes. At least one of these hurricanes could become severe, reaching category 3 or higher on the Saffir-Simpson Scale. They also anticipate a below-average probability of a major Atlantic hurricane making landfall along the coast of the contiguous US and in the Caribbean. [The Tropical Storm Project]
Satellite data used to predict occurrence of famine across the globe -- A scientist with the US Geological Survey had developed a numerical model that uses data from NOAA satellites and from other sources to produce a global thermal stress product that diagnoses crop conditions around the world in an effort to predict the possibility of famine.[NOAA NESDIS News Archive]

CLIMATE AND THE BIOSPHERE

Marine habitats shift with warmer and lower-oxygen oceans -- Researchers at the University of Washington s and colleagues from California, Rhode Island and Germany warmer ocean waters not only increase marine animals' metabolic demand of oxygen, but the warm water also decreases the availability of oxygen to the animals due to lower solubility levels of oxygen gas. The researchers warn that higher ocean temperatures due to changing climate would push marine animals away from the equator. [University of Washington Today]

CLIMATE AND SOCIETY

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

Historical Events:

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)
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)
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)

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