WEEKLY CLIMATE NEWS

PREVIEW WEEK: 27-31 August 2012

ITEMS OF INTEREST

Accessing and interpreting climate data -- If you would like to obtain a variety of climate data for your home town or state that are available from the National Weather Service, please read this week's Supplemental Information…In Greater Depth. This Supplemental not only identifies some of the sites to find the data, but also provides you with a brief explanation of the terminology used to identify the climate data.
A change in seasons -- Friday, 31 August 2012, marks the end of Northern Hemisphere's meteorological summer, the three-month span of June, July and August that meteorologists frequently use for record keeping processes. Meteorological autumn (September, October and November) for the Northern Hemisphere starts the following day, 1 September 2012, Meteorologists frequently use these three-month meteorological seasons for record keeping processes. Additional information will be presented in the next several weeks concerning meteorological seasons and the astronomical seasons, such as the familiar autumn that begins on the autumnal equinox in three weeks (Saturday, 22 September 2012).
Remembering the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Andrew -- Last Friday marked the 20th anniversary of the landfall of Hurricane Andrew along Florida's Atlantic Coast at Homestead, a community just south of Miami. At landfall Hurricane Andrew had maximum sustained surface winds that were estimated to be 165 mph, which has it to be reclassified as a category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale. After making its initial landfall, Hurricane Andrew traveled westward across the Florida Peninsula and then curved to the northwest, making a second landfall along the Louisiana coast. The National Weather Service Forecast Office in Miami has a webpage that contains links to additional information on Hurricane Andrew. From their video summary, Hurricane Andrew remains the second costliest hurricane in US history at $45.5 billion (adjusted to 2010 dollars) and it was responsible for 65 fatalities, with 40 deaths in Miami-Dade County. [NWSFO Miami-South Florida] A mosaic that contains three images obtained from NOAA's geosynchronous GOES-7 satellite shows the path that Hurricane took as it approached Florida, moved across the Florida Peninsula and over the Gulf of Mexico [NASA Earth Observatory] An image obtained from data collected by sensors onboard the NOAA-12 polar-orbiting satellite shows the clouds surrounding Hurricane Andrew on the day before this hurricane made landfall near Homestead, FL. [NOAA Environmental Visualization Laboratory]
Policy Statement on "climate services" issued by AMS -- Earlier this month, the American Meteorological Society issued a policy statement on the benefits of "climate services", or the assemblage of scientifically based information on climate and associated products that enhance users' knowledge and understanding of climate and its changes. The purpose of the policy statement is "to characterize the benefits of climate services to the United States and the international community, and to foster improved climate services and delivery of those services to users by encouraging: 1) communication, cooperation, and collaboration among all sectors; 2) the scientific, operational, and financial success of all of the sectors involved in climate services; and 3), the leveraging wherever possible of resources among all sectors." [American Meteorological Society]

CURRENT CLIMATE STATUS

Arctic sea ice shrinks toward record low -- Researchers at the National Snow & Ice Data Center reported last week that the Arctic sea ice could shrink to a new record low level during this upcoming week, breaking the previous record of only 1.66 million square miles at the end of summer 2007. An unseasonably warm early spring coupled with a very warm summer helped create the loss in Arctic sea ice. An intense summer storm that crossed over the central Arctic Ocean to the north of Alaska in early August may have also contributed to the loss. [National Snow & Ice Data Center]
Drought causes problems along the Mississippi -- The widespread and severe to exceptional drought that has gripped a large section of the nation this summer has caused a reduction in the river flow in the Mississippi River basin. As a result, river levels are below long-term averages and are also affecting barge traffic along the river. Images from the NASA Landsat-7 satellite show the low river level this summer as compared with last summer when levels were much higher. [NASA Earth Observatory] An image obtained from NASA's Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite shows a barge backup along the lower Mississippi River due to low river levels. [NASA Earth Observatory] Early last week, the US Army Corps of Engineers reported that they expected the low river levels would continue into October, leading to restricted shipping traffic and harbor closures. [CBS News]

CURRENT CLIMATE MONITORING

Committee selected to advise officials on integrating ocean observation systems -- The new 13-member US Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS®) Federal Advisory Committee will meet at near the end of this week to advise federal leaders on integrating the nation's ocean observing systems that collect and deliver ocean information. IOOS® is a federal, regional, and private-sector partnership formed to enhance the nation's ability to collect, deliver, and use ocean information. [NOAA News]
Changing Arctic Ocean explored -- Scientists were to embark this past weekend on a four-week research cruise from Barrow, AK to study the effects of ocean acidification upon the Arctic Ocean. This mission is being led by the US Geological Survey. The scientists will travel onboard the US Coast Guard Cutter Healey and collect water and ice samples. [USGS Newsroom]
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]

CLIMATE FORCING

Tracking smoke from western wildfires from space -- Several images were generated at the start of last week that shows the spread of smoke across the Rockies and the Plains from the intense wildfires that were burning earlier across California and Idaho. These images, which show relative concentrations of aerosols (airborne particulate matter), were produced from data collected by the Ozone Mapper Profiler Suite (OMPS) on the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi-NPP) satellite. [NASA Earth Observatory]
Recent stabilization of atmospheric methane levels explained -- Scientists at the University of California Irvine, NOAA and the University of Colorado conclude that the recent stabilization of the amount of the greenhouse gas methane in the atmosphere during the last several decades may be explained by the increased capture of natural gas from oil fields. [UC Irvine Today]
Ancient Mayan deforestation efforts may have worsened droughts -- Climate scientists at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and at Swiss and French research centers conclude from their data analysis that the collapse of ancient Maya in southern Mexico and in Central America beginning in AD 695 may have been the result of extended drought that was exacerbated by the intentional clearing of forests for crops and cities. This clearing of the forests appears to have changed the reflectivity of the surface, making the climate drier. [Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory]
Past changes in climate linked to ocean circulation patterns -- Climate scientists from Texas A&M University and their colleagues from other research institutions have found evidence that the Earth's climate is sensitive to ocean circulation patterns, based on geochemical analysis of foraminifera in a sediment core from the coastal waters off northern Venezuela that resulted in a 22,000 year record of ocean and salinity changes in the upper layers of the western tropical Atlantic Ocean. [Geosciences News Texas A&M University]
Cold central European winters could be linked to solar activity -- Scientists at Germany's Johannes Gutenberg University-Mainz and Switzerland's ETH Zurich suggest that unusually cold winters in central Europe can be related to the occurrence of low solar activity. They base their findings on analysis of the ice cover on the Rhine River over the last 230 years and solar activity data. [AGU News]
Some vehicle-related pollutants have declined in Los Angeles Basin over last 50 years -- A researcher from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado Boulder reports that levels of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), or air pollutants associated with vehicles, in California's Los Angeles Basin have dropped by over 90 percent since the 1960s. However, more than three times the quantity of gasoline and diesel fuel is being burned currently as compared with a half century ago. The decrease in VOCs appears to be cleaner running vehicles. Air quality has improved in the Los Angeles Basin. [AGU News]
Monitoring of quakes on Antarctic ice sheet useful for ice movement and earthquake studies -- Penn State University geoscientists have found that their analysis of the small and frequent quakes in the Antarctic ice sheet detected during the Transantarctic Mountains Seismic Experiment appears to not only help in understanding glacial movement, but also in those stick slip earthquakes such as those on the San Andreas fault or in Haiti. [Penn State University Live]
Experiment to test cloud geoengineering as a way to slow global warming trend -- A group of 25 scientists from the US and the United Kingdom recently described an experiment that would test a method that would create clouds in an effort to reflect incoming sunlight as a means of countering current increases in global temperature. This experiment, which is called "marine cloud brightening", would entail the shooting of saltwater from a remotely controlled ship high into the atmosphere above an ocean basin, where clouds would be created. As a test, this experiment would be run on a small scale. [University of Washington Today]

CLIMATE AND THE BIOSPHERE

Nation's drought contributes to small Gulf "Dead Zone" -- Researchers from Texas A&M University and their colleagues claim that while the current drought has been devastating across a large section of the nation, its presence has created the smallest "dead zone" or area suffering no dissolved oxygen (hypoxia) in the waters of the northern Gulf of Mexico in years. Little river runoff with high nutrient loading has occurred this year from the Mississippi River watershed because of the drought. [wistv.com]

PALEOCLIMATE RECONSTRUCTION

New climate reconstruction provides prospective on recent Antarctic Peninsula warming -- A team of polar scientists from the United Kingdom, Australia and France have created the first comprehensive reconstruction of the climate history over the last 15,000 years from an ice core collected from James Ross Island along the Antarctic Peninsula. From this reconstruction, they note a rapid warming of the region over the last 100 years, which follows on a slower warming trend that commenced approximately 600 years ago. [British Antarctic Survey]
Climate changes leading to an ancient swift desertification event are explored -- Researchers from Germany's University of Bonn and Israel's Geological Services have discovered that climate changes in the Dead Sea region over the last 10,000 years appear to have led to a swift and drastic desertification (the degradation of dryland that leads to desert conditions) within several decades. They base their findings upon the analysis of pollen in sediments from an oasis on the west bank of the Dead Sea and from fluctuations in sea levels. [University of Bonn]

CLIMATE AND SOCIETY

Most Canadians convinced that climate is changing -- A survey of Canadians recently conducted by the environmental organization IPAC-CO2 Research Inc. (the International Performance Assessment Centre for Geologic Storage of Carbon Dioxide) indicates that approximately 98 percent of Canadian respondents believe that the climate is currently changing, with slightly more than half believing that this change is due human activity and partially due to natural climate variation. [IPAC CO2]
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.

Concept of the Week: Touring the DataStreme Earth's Climate System Website

Welcome to DataStreme Earth's Climate System (ECS)! The Earth's Climate System website is an integral component of the DataStreme ECS (Earth's Climate System) course. The website is intended to deliver a wealth of climate information that is both pertinent to the course as well as being a reference site for you as you study Earth's climate system. The webpage is arranged in several sections. On Monday of each week of the course, we will post the current Weekly Climate News that includes Climate in the News (a summary listing of recent events related to climate), Concept of the Week (an in-depth analysis of some topic related to climate in the Earth system), and Historical Events (a list of past events important in the understanding of climatology). When appropriate, Supplemental Information...In Greater Depth will be provided on some topic related to the principal theme of the week.

You will use the DS Climate Studies website to access and download the "Current Climate Studies" that complement your Climate Studies Investigations Manual. These materials should also be available by noon (Eastern Time) on Monday. Click the appropriate links to download and print these electronic components of the investigations as well as your Chapter, Investigations and Current Climate Studies Response forms.

Beyond these course Learning Files, sections include Climate Information, Climate Variability, Climate Change, Societal Interactions and Climate Policy, and Extras. As the titles suggest, there are multiple uses for climate data and their interpretation. Here we explore some examples of the information provided in the various sections of the webpage.

The Climate Information section includes access to weather data, the raw material of climate synthesis, from the United States and the world under the heading "Observations and Data." Under this heading, click on "U.S. and World Weather Data." This National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) page first directs you to "United States Weather" and provides channels to current weather data as well as radar graphics, weather maps, and aviation and marine weather. It then leads you to International Weather Conditions.

The second major subdivision of the course website encompasses Climate Variability. Climatic variability refers to the fluctuations and oscillations that may occur within the climate system at temporal and spatial scales beyond that of individual weather events. Select the link, "NOAA El Niño Page". The page that appears provides access to a wealth of background and information on El Niño and La Niña, including the animation showing sea surface temperatures (SST) in the tropical Pacific during recent months. To the left of the animation, click on "What's happening today?" The page of current tropical Pacific conditions that appears shows a small map to the right. Click on that map and again anywhere on the subsequent set of map panels to get an enlarged view of the latest conditions of SST and anomalies.

The third major section of the course website is termed Climate Change. Here we provide links to information and analyses that primarily focus on anthropogenic (human-made) change processes and results in the climate system. That prominently includes the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's ("IPCC") latest classic report on atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions and their effects. Also linked are modeling results ("Models") based on those studies.

The last major section of the website is titled Societal Interactions and Climate Policy. This block contains information on the impacts of projected change on human societies around the world, beyond that listed in the IPCC report, and the international actions and debates regarding those issues. Select and click on "US Global Change Impacts Report" to the left in this section. This webpage introduces you to the latest comprehensive and authoritative report on climate change and its impacts in the United States, now and in the future. You will be directed to this report several times in this course.

Completing the course website is the Extras section of additional handy information for the course and individual study such as dictionaries of terms, maps and materials. Choose and examine one of the Climate Literacy links, either a PDF or the Word version. This document has recently been developed and released by NOAA to provide an overview of general concepts and information the general public and especially students should be aware of regarding the climate and the climate debate.

Concept of the Week: Questions

The first Climate Information link, "NOAA Climate Services", shows the Global Climate Dashboard where several graphs display Earth's temperature, atmospheric carbon dioxide level, spring snow cover, etc. with a time slider than can be set to display from [(1800)(1880)(1940)] to the latest data in 2010.
Under the Societal Interactions and Climate Policy section, click the "U.S. Global Change Impacts Report" link. On their page, click the Home tab of the Menu bar along the top. Midway down the resulting page are two selector bars that show the climate impacts in the report are categorized by [(only regional)(only sectoral)(both regional and sectoral)] climate information.

Historical Events:

27 August 1948...Buffalo, NY hit its all-time maximum temperature of 99 degrees. (Intellicast)
27 August 1970...Elko, NV was deluged with 3.66 inches of rain in just one hour, establishing a state record. (The Weather Channel)
27 August 1973...The largest documented Canadian hailstone fell at Cedoux, Saskatchewan. The stone weighed 0.55 pounds and measured 4.5 inches across. (The Weather Doctor)
27 August 1986...A mix of snow, ice pellets and rain fell on Sault Ste. Marie, MI during the evening, the first time snow was observed in August since records started in 1888. (Intellicast)
27 August 1995...Remains of Tropical Storm Jerry unloaded 12.32 inches of rain in 24 hours in Greer, SC, a record for 24 hours, for a rain event and for August. At Antreville, 17.00 inches fell in 24 hours, setting a 24-hour rainfall record for the Palmetto State. (Intellicast)
28 August 1911...Saint George, GA was deluged with 18.00 inches of rain in 24 hours to establish a state record that was subsequently broken by the current record of 21.10 inches in July 1994. (The Weather Channel)
28-29 August 1962...Hackberry, LA was deluged with 22 inches of rain in 24 hours, establishing a state record. (The Weather Channel)
29 August 1876...A torrential downpour inundated St John's Newfoundland with 173.2 mm (6.8 inches) of rainfall, the greatest single daily accumulation ever recorded in the province. (The Weather Doctor)
29 August 1965...The observatory on top of Mount Washington NH reported a snowfall of 2.5 inches of snow, a national record for the month of August. (The Weather Doctor)
29 August 2005...As Hurricane Katrina traveled across the northern Gulf of Mexico toward the Louisiana Coast, a reconnaissance aircraft determined that Katrina's minimum central pressure was 902 millibars (or 26.64 inches of mercury), the fifth lowest pressure ever recorded in an Atlantic hurricane. Katrina was also the third most-intense land-falling hurricane in US history based on a minimum landfall pressure of 920 millibars (or 27.17 inches of mercury). (The Weather Doctor)
29 August 2007...With its high temperature pegged at 113degrees, Phoenix, AZ set a new record of 29 days with 110 degree or higher temperatures. (The Weather Doctor)
30 August 2000...The temperature rose to 111 degrees at the North Little Rock Airport, setting a new record for the highest temperature ever observed at that location. (The Weather Doctor)
31 August 1885...A record 71-day dry period began at Calgary, Alberta. (The Weather Doctor)
31 August 1889...Los Angeles, CA set two local rainfall records as 0.61 inches fell, the maximum 24-hour and monthly records for August. (Intellicast)
31 August 1915...The temperature at Bartlesville, OK dipped to 38 degrees to establish a state record for the month of August. (The Weather Channel)
31 August 1971...The low of 84 degrees and high of 108 degrees at Death Valley, CA were the lowest of the month. The average daily high was 115.7 degrees that August, and the average daily low was 93.4 degrees. (The Weather Channel)
31 August 1987...Frost was reported in South Dakota. Aberdeen, SD established a record for the month of August with a morning low of 32 degrees, and Britton, SD dipped to 31 degrees. (The National Weather Summary)
1 September 1914...The town of Bloomingdale, MI was deluged with 9.78 inches of rain in 24 hours to establish a state record for the Wolverine State. (31^st-1^st) (The Weather Channel) (NCDC)
1 September 1955...The temperature at Los Angeles, CA soared to an all-time high of 110 degrees during an eight-day string of 100-degree weather. (David Ludlum)
2 September 1935...Perhaps the most intense hurricane ever to hit the U.S. struck the Florida Keys with sustained winds of over 155 mph with gusts exceeding 200 mph. The "Labor Day Hurricane" produced a fifteen-foot tide and waves thirty feet high. More than 400 persons perished in the storm on that Labor Day, including many World War I veterans building a bridge from the Keys to the mainland. The barometric pressure at Matecumbe Bay, FL hit a record low for the U.S. of 26.35 inches of mercury (or 892.3 millibars). (David Ludlum)
2 September 1950...The temperature at Mecca, CA soared to 126 degrees to establish the U.S. record high temperature for the month of September. The low that morning was 89 degrees. (The Weather Channel)
2 September 1961...Denver, CO received 4.2 inches of snow, the earliest measurable snow on record for this city. (Intellicast)

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