WEEKLY CLIMATE NEWS

6-10 June 2016

DataStreme Earth Climate System will return for Fall 2016 with new Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 22 August 2016. 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 Wednesday, 8 June 2016 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]
Celebrating National Ocean Month -- A Presidential Proclamation has designated June as National Ocean Month. NOAA's National Ocean Service and the US Geological Survey have web portals that provide links to a variety of websites containing facts, images and video designed to highlight both the beauty and importance of the nation's oceans and marine environment. [NOAA National Ocean Service] and [US Geological Survey]
New collection of hurricane science animations released -- At the start of the 2016 Atlantic hurricane season, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center released an updated 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. [PRNewswire] [NASA Goddard Space Flight Center]
Worldwide GLOBE at Night 2016 Campaign is underway -- The sixth in the series of GLOBE at Night citizen-science campaigns for 2016 will continue through Tuesday, 7 June. 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 (Bootes in the Northern Hemisphere and Crux in the Southern Hemisphere) with the seven magnitude/star charts of progressively fainter stars. Activity guides are also available. The GLOBE at night program is intended to raise public awareness of the impact of light pollution. The next series in the 2016 campaign is scheduled for 27 June-6 July 2016. [GLOBE at Night]
Investigating link between climate change and the phenology of plants and animals -- Michigan State University's W.K. Kellogg Biological Station has a GK-12 Bioenergy Sustainability Project that has developed a classroom activity to help K-12 students understand the link between changing climate and phenology such as bird migrations or the flowering times of plants. A lesson plan for this activity entitled "Why Fly South?", a student worksheet and other educational material are available on their web site. This project was awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation's GK-12 (Graduate STEM Fellows in K-12) Education Program. [Kellogg Biological Station GK-12 Bioenergy Sustainability Project]

CURRENT CLIMATE MONITORING

Unreported sources of toxic air pollution found by satellite -- Scientists at NASA, Environment and Climate Change Canada, the University of Maryland, College Park and Nova Scotia's Dalhousie University have located 39 unreported and major human-generated sources of toxic sulfur dioxide (SO₂)emissions using data obtained from sensors onboard NASA's Aura satellite between 2005 and 2014. These sources of anthropogenic-produced sulfur dioxide included sources medium-size power plants and oil-related activities. [NASA Headquarters]
NOAA's 2016 hurricane research mission focuses on improving hurricane track and intensity predictions -- Scientists with NOAA's Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research will use a variety of unmanned aircraft, including NASA's Global Hawk and NOAA's smaller Coyote, during this upcoming hurricane season to study hurricane behavior as they collaborate with NASA through a program called Sensing Hazards with Operational Unmanned Technology (SHOUT). In addition, a new Doppler Wind Lidar system is being developed by NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory. The high resolution data collected by these high-tech instruments will help the National Weather Service as it continues to upgrade its operational Hurricane Weather Research and Forecast system (HWRF) with the goal of improving forecasts of hurricane track and intensity. [NOAA Office of Oceanic & Atmospheric Research News]
"Greening" of the Arctic detailed -- Scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center who analyzed vegetation data collected from the NASA/USGS Landsat 5 and Landsat 7 satellites between 1984 and 2012 report that northern sections of North America, extending from western Alaska across northern Canada to Quebec have become greener during the 29 years due to a warming climate that has changed the land cover especially in the Arctic tundra. [NASA Goddard Space Flight Center]

CLIMATE FORCING

Sea ice loss not a likely factor cold Northern Hemisphere winters -- Scientists at the NOAA's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder claim that melting sea ice is probably not a factor behind recent cold winters in parts of Europe, Asia, and eastern North America, refuting earlier suggestions made by several other scientists who claimed that large areas of open water in the Arctic Ocean were in part responsible for the atmospheric circulation pattern that created the unseasonably cold winters of recent times. [NOAA Office of Oceanic & Atmospheric Research News]
Remembering the "Year without a summer" 200 years later -- An interesting article was recently posted that describes how the eruption of several large volcanoes such as Indonesia's Tambora Volcano in April 1815 produced a haze in the stratosphere sufficiently thick as to reduce the incoming solar radiation causing a marked change in the climate across the Northern Hemisphere. Since this change in climate during the subsequent year was characterized by reduced air temperatures, a short growing season and snow even in summer, 1816 has been frequently dubbed the "Year without a summer." According to some reports, the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815 contained the largest quantity of ejecta in recorded human history. [USA TODAY]
Cool surface waters in eastern tropical Pacific emerge as El Niño weakens -- The managing editor of NOAA Climate.gov News & Features, Rebecca Lindsey, has written an article that describes how the sea surface waters across the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean have cooled over the last several months. She provides a map of the sea surface temperature anomalies (or differences in monthly temperature for May 2016 and 1981-2010 average May temperatures) across the region, noting a region of water along the Equator that has cooled since the height of the El Niño event at the end of calendar year 2015. This observed cooling appears to be signaling the dwindling of the El Niño event and the possible development of a La Niña episode by late summer in the Northern Hemisphere. [NOAA Climate.gov News]

CLIMATE FORECASTS

Billion-dollar water decisions in Colorado River basin aided by climate models -- Water managers with the US Bureau of Reclamation and other stakeholders in the seven Colorado River Basin States extending from Wyoming and Colorado to southern California have been using climate models to plan for more effective use of Colorado River water and to mitigate the risks of diminished water supply due to a higher frequency of drought conditions across the Colorado River basin. [NOAA Climate.gov News]
Hurricane season outlook is updated -- At the start of June Philip Klotzbach and fellow hurricane forecasters at Colorado State University, issued their updated June forecast for the 2016 Atlantic hurricane season that contained changes to their April forecast to reflect the inclusion of Hurricane Alex in January and Tropical Storm Bonnie in May. They continued to foresee a season that would have near average activity due to the anticipated transition from the weakening El Niño to ENSO neutral and then weak La Niña conditions by the typical peak of the Atlantic hurricane season in September. Their new forecast calls for fourteen named tropical cyclones (hurricanes and tropical storms with sustained surface winds of at least 39 mph), along with six hurricanes (maximum sustained winds of 74 mph or higher). Of these hurricanes, the forecasters foresee two major hurricanes, reaching category 3 or higher on the Saffir-Simpson Scale. They also anticipate a near-average probability of a major Atlantic hurricane making landfall along the coast of the contiguous US and in the Caribbean. [The Tropical Storm Project]
One week ago scientists with NOAA's Climate Prediction Center released their outlook for the Atlantic hurricane season that indicates a 70-percent chance of a near-normal hurricane season in 2016, with 10 to 16 named tropical cyclones, including four to eight hurricanes . As many as four of these hurricanes could become major hurricanes [NOAA News]
Canadian national seasonal outlook issued -- Forecasters with Environment Canada issued their outlooks for temperature and precipitation across Canada for the three months of June, July and August of 2016, which constitutes meteorological summer. The temperature outlook indicates nearly all of Canada should experience above normal (1981-2010) temperatures. In addition, sections of the Canadian Archipelago also could have above average summer temperatures. On the other hand, a few sections along the US-Canadian border running from British Columbia to Manitoba and northward into the region around Hudson Bay should have near normal temperatures, while a region near Baffin Island could have below average temperatures for the next three months.
The Canadian precipitation outlook for summer 2016 indicates that large areas extending across British Columbia, Alberta, the Yukon and Northwest Territories and the Maritime Provinces could experience above average precipitation. Conversely, above average summer precipitation was possible across a few scattered sections of the nation, running from the Yukon Territory in the northwest to sections of Quebec in eastern Canada. Near normal precipitation for June through August was anticipated elsewhere.
[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 THE BIOSPHERE

Coral gardens in central equatorial Pacific Ocean becoming a graveyard due to warming ocean waters -- Scientists from NOAA's Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Rutgers University recently released a report showing that approximately 95 percent of the coral colonies at Jarvis Island in the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument have died following a massive coral bleaching event. The island is on the Equator roughly 1500 miles south of the Hawaiian Islands. The recent intense El Niño event was responsible for the ocean waters to become extremely warm, resulting in the coral bleaching. [NOAA News]

CLIMATE AND SOCIETY

"Cool roofs" could reduce energy consumption year-around -- Researchers at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec recently reported that the use of more reflective roofing materials would reduce the heat load on buildings due to heating by the sun, leading to "cool roofs" that would provide energy and monetary saving benefits not only in subtropical latitudes, but also in those locales in "cold climates." Based upon simulations of energy consumption for several prototype office and retail buildings in typical cold climate cities (Anchorage, AK; Milwaukee, WI; Montreal, Quebec and Toronto, Ontario), they found that cool roofs on these buildings limited the summertime solar heat gain sufficiently to result in annual energy expenditure savings in all of the selected municipalities. Such measures on a broad scale could actually diminish the effects of "urban heat islands." [Concordia University News]
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)
6 June 1912...The largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century occurred as Novarupta Volcano erupted in Alaska near Mt. Katmai. (National Weather Service files)
7 June 1816...A June snow punctuated the Year Without A Summer in the northeastern U.S. Danville, VT reported drifts of snow and sleet 20 inches deep. Flurries were observed as far south as Boston. .(National Weather Service files)
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)
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 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)

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