WEEKLY CLIMATE NEWS

DataStreme ECS WEEK 7: 21-25 October 2013

ITEMS OF INTEREST

"ClimateChangeLive" distance learning adventure webinar scheduled for this week -- The third in a series of seven webinars will be available between 7:30 and 9:00 PM this coming Wednesday, 23 October 2013. The series of webinars is designed to raise awareness and understanding of climate change science and is aligned to national science education standards. The collection of science-based, climate education resources and programs have been gathered from at least 19 federal agency and NGO partners that include the US Forest Service, NOAA, the US Fish and Wildlife Service. The third webinar scheduled for this Wednesday is "Teaching and Communicating About Climate Change." Check http://climatechangelive.org/ for registration details.
Linking weather and climate -- Read this week's Supplemental Information.. In Greater Depth for a description the distinction between atmospheric conditions that can be considered as weather events, which may last for time spans of up to a week, from those events with longer time spans of a month to three months that can be considered within the ream of climate analysis or forecasting.
Nighttime picture from space shows the Big Apple and Long Island Sound -- A nighttime digital photograph made by an astronaut on the International Space Station on 20 September 2013 shows the lights of the New York City metropolitan area along with the waters of Long Island Sound and the nearby Atlantic Ocean that are devoid of lights. This recent photograph comes nearly 11 months after Hurricane Sandy slammed into the New Jersey coast and caused widespread destruction. In addition to the widespread array of lights, fog is visible in some of the river valleys. [NASA Earth Observatory]

CURRENT CLIMATE STATUS

Antarctic sea ice reached record maximum extent -- Scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center reported that in late September 2013, the ice surrounding Antarctica reached its annual winter maximum and set a new record in terms of the sea ice extent since satellite surveillance began in 1979. A map created from data collected from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) sensor on Japan's Global Change Observation Mission 1st-Water (GCOM-W1) satellite shows the sea ice extent around Antarctica on 22 September 2013. This year's record extent surpasses the previous record high winter maximum set last year (2012). [NASA Earth Observatory]

CLIMATE FORCING

Massive 13th-century volcanic eruption found to result in mass starvation in Europe -- An international team of researchers have recently discovered that the Samalas volcano that erupted on the Indonesian island of Lombok in 1257 AD appears to have been one of the greatest volcanic explosions in the past 7000 years, surpassing the immense 1883 eruption of Krakatoa. Apparently, the explosion of the Samalas volcano injected gigantic quantities of sulfate and ash into the atmosphere, which plunged Earth into a "volcanic winter" with a significant drop in temperatures. The journal kept by a Benedictine monk living at the St. Albans Abbey in Hertfordshire, England, described "unendurable cold" that resulted in the loss of crops and livestock and the deaths of thousands in the British Isles and northern Europe. Recently, a large gravesite in London was discovered that contained as many as 18,000 bodies that were dated by radiocarbon techniques to have been interred during the middle of the 13th century at about the time of the eruption. Ice cores collected over the last 30 years in both Antarctica and around the Arctic basin shows ash layers corresponding to an eruption in the tropics. [Inside Science] [Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA]
Pacific Ocean's temperature appears to influence US tornado activity -- Scientists at the University of Missouri examined the examined the relationship between tornadoes and a climate phenomenon called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), finding that the surface temperature of the Pacific Ocean could help predict the type and location of tornado activity in the United States. Using more than 56,000 tornado events from 1950 through 2011, they found that when sea surface temperatures in the Pacific were above average, approximately 20 percent more tornadoes occurred that were rated EF–2 to EF–5 on the Enhanced Fujita (EF) scale. They also found that when sea surface temperatures were above average, many of the tornadoes were located to the north and west of Tornado Alley across the nation's midsection, but with below average sea surface temperatures, more tornadoes tracked to the east and south of the traditional Tornado Alley. [Research at Mizzou News]
Lightning strikes help shape mountain landscapes -- Researchers at South Africa's University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg claim that lightning strikes appear to be responsible for shaping some of the angular rock formations in the Drakensburg, or Dragon Mountains, the highest mountain range in South Africa. The lightning strikes appear to cause rocks to explode. The researchers used a magnetic compass to assess the magnetic field of the rocks and mapped the distribution of lightning strikes in the Drakensburg. [Wits University News]
Outdoor cremation rituals seen as a source of carbon aerosol pollution in South Asia -- A researcher at the Desert Research Institute claims that his analysis of regional inventories of human-produced sources of carbon aerosol pollution in South Asia indicates that smoke emanating from open-air burning of funeral pyres in India and Nepal represents a significant regional source of carbon aerosols. These aerosols are atmosphere-warming airborne particles. [Desert Research Institute News]

CLIMATE FORECASTS

New Seasonal Climate Outlooks issued -- Late last week, forecasters at the NOAA Climate Prediction Center (CPC) released their new national Three-Month (Seasonal) Climate Outlooks for November 2013 through January 2014, corresponding to the last month of the meteorological autumn season (in the Northern Hemisphere) and the first two months of meteorological winter. Specific details of their outlooks include:
- Temperature and precipitation outlooks -- According to their temperature outlook, a large section of the coterminous United States extending from the southern Rockies northeastward to New England should experience a high chance of above average temperatures for these three upcoming months. The greatest probability of such an occurrence to be found across New Mexico and adjacent sections of west Texas, along with northern New England. The outlook indicates that the remainder of the nation would have nearly equal chances of warmer or cooler than normal conditions. These regions would extend along the Pacific Coast across the northern tier of states to the western Great Lakes and also across the Southeast.
  Their precipitation outlook calls for sections of the southern Plains centered on New Mexico and the Southeast especially over southern Georgia and northern Florida to have a better than even chance of below average precipitation for November 2013 through January 2014. On the other hand, the northern Rockies and the adjacent high Plains in Montana and Wyoming would have better than even chances of above average rainfall totals for these three months. Elsewhere, a large area of the coterminous states should have essentially equal chances of below and above average precipitation for the end of autumn and the start of winter.
  A summary of the prognostic discussion of the 3-month outlook for non-technical users is available from CPC. These forecasts were based in part that assuming that the current ENSO-neutral conditions (ENSO = El Niño/Southern Oscillation) should continue into the Northern Hemisphere's meteorological spring, where neither El Niño nor La Niña conditions should prevail. A description is also provided as how to read these 3-class, 3-month Outlook maps.
- Seasonal Drought Outlook -- The forecasters at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center also released their US Seasonal Drought Outlook last week that would run from late-October 2013 through January 2014. Their outlook would call for persistence of extensive drought conditions across a large section of the nation extending from sections of the upper Mississippi Valley westward to southern California's Pacific Coast. Drought conditions were expected to develop across sections of the Southwest and Southeast that were not currently under major drought conditions. However, sections of the Mid-South and southern Texas along with some areas across the interior Northwest could seem major improvement in drought conditions, with some areas possibly being removed from drought status. Note: a Seasonal Drought Outlook Discussion is included describing the forecasters' confidence.
The possibility of storms causing damage similar to Sandy is pondered -- A geologist at Tufts University foresees the possibility of major damage to sections of the Middle Atlantic Coast could occur from future storms that would be even smaller than Sandy. He warns that with rising sea levels, smaller and weaker storms approaching the coasts of New York and New Jersey could cause significant coastal flooding and associated damage. He along with colleagues has researched the change in sea level and the flooding that occurred with seven historically damaging hurricanes in New York since 1788. The researchers note two factors for the rising sea levels along the Middle Atlantic Coast: one being natural glacio-isostatic adjustment, while the second factor involves the melting of the ice-covered terrain of Greenland and Antarctic as well as the thermal expansion of ocean waters. [Tufts Now]

CLIMATE AND THE BIOSPHERE

Abundant quantities of oxygen does not necessarily lead to evolution of advanced life -- An international team of researchers from Denmark, Sweden and France has shown that the oxygen content of the oceans and atmosphere on planet Earth approximately 2.1 billion years ago had risen dramatically and was probably the same as at approximately 500 million years ago when life exploded across the planet as part of the Cambrian explosion. The lag between the earlier explosion in oxygen concentrations and that of life may be due to length of time for complex multicellular life forms to develop from simple single-cell forms of life. [University of Southern Denmark]
Plants help keep planet Earth cool -- Researchers from Princeton University claim that land-based ecosystems containing green plants have kept planet Earth cooler by absorbing billions of tons of carbon during the last 60 years that otherwise would have become atmospheric carbon dioxide, one of the greenhouse gases associated with rising global temperatures. They found that the planet's land-based carbon "sink" — or carbon-storage capacity — has kept 186 billion to 192 billion tons of carbon out of the atmosphere since the 1950s. The researchers point to a change in land use by humans that have helped, including restoring forests and adopting higher yield agricultural practices. If previous land use practices had continued, additional carbon would have remained in the atmosphere, causing the atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to reach 485 parts-per-million, past the scientifically accepted threshold of 450 (ppm) at which the Earth's climate could drastically and irreversibly change and well past the current concentration of approximately 400 ppm. [News at Princeton]
Role of animals underestimated by carbon models -- Researchers at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and their colleagues from nearly a dozen other academic and governmental research centers claim that animal populations can have a far more significant effect upon carbon storage and exchange in regional ecosystems than is typically recognized by global carbon models. They argue that in some regions, the magnitude of carbon uptake or release due to the effects of specific animal species can rival the impact of fossil fuel emissions for the same region. [Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies]
As oceans warm, ocean plankton and local fisheries could head for extinction -- Researchers from Australia's Deakin University and the United Kingdom's Swansea University have found that a species of cold water plankton in the North Atlantic, which represent a vital food source for fish such as cod and hake, is in decline as the oceans warm. Inevitably, this decline in plankton will put pressure on the fisheries that rely on abundant supplies of the ocean fish. The researchers based warning on their analysis of a 50-year time series from the North Atlantic on the distribution and abundance of two very common but contrasting species of ocean plankton, Calanus helgolandicus that lives in warmer water and Calanus finmarchicus that lives in cold water. [Deakin University News]
Climate change by end of 21st century could undermine world ocean systems -- Scientists at the University of Hawaii at Manoa are warning that ocean biogeochemical changes triggered by greenhouse gas emissions from human activity may cascade through marine habitats and organisms, penetrating to the deep ocean. The changes in climate by the year 2100 due to these emissions place marine ecosystems globally under a high risk of degradation and would create human hardships. [University of Hawaii Manoa News]

CLIMATE AND HUMAN HEALTH

Air pollution found to cause human cancer -- During the last week the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that it classified outdoor air pollution as a human carcinogen because it is a leading cause of lung cancer in humans globally. The organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified air pollution with its complex mixture of gases, fine particles and other pollutants as "carcinogenic to humans," the highest of the agency's four-level classification system. [Los Angeles Times]

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]

COMPARATIVE PLANETOLOGY

Martian Rover confirms some meteorites reaching Earth are from Mars -- Scientists have found that data from samples of the Martian atmosphere collected by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity have confirmed the notion that the Red Planet has been the source of some of the meteorites reaching the Earth's surface. The Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument on the rover made a new high-precision measurement of two isotopes of the inert gas argon (argon-36 and argon-38) in the Martian atmosphere, which could be used to check the source of some meteorites found on Earth. [NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory]
Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com] Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Concept of the Week: End of the Growing Season

As we move through autumn, we often contemplate the end of the growing season as daylight shortens and temperatures begin to fall across many areas of the nation. The length of the growing season depends upon the plant species, as well as the climate of the locale, meaning that several ways can be used to define the growing season.

Many crops, especially vegetables and fruits, are sensitive to relatively low air temperatures. In spring, when many crops are emerging and in various stages of development they are more vulnerable to air temperatures near 32 degrees Fahrenheit. But by fall, many of these plants have become hardy. Generally speaking, a killing frost would occur when the temperature around the plant would fall to a point that would kill all but the hardiest vegetation. Sometimes, other terminology is used. When air temperatures fall between 29 and 32 degrees Fahrenheit, a so-called "light freeze" occurs. While tender plants such as tomatoes, peppers, corn and cucumbers would be killed when temperatures fall to around 29 degrees, these conditions would have little destructive effect on other hardier vegetation. A "moderate freeze" typically occurs between 25 and 28 degrees, which would have a widely destructive effect upon most vegetation. For temperatures of 24 degrees or lower, a condition called a "severe freeze", heavy damage would occur with most plants that are not dormant. Apples are damaged when the temperature drops below 20 degrees. Under these conditions, the soil would have frozen solid to a depth dependent upon the duration of the freeze, as well as the soil type and soil moisture.

In most mid latitude climates, the growing season is often used synonymously with the frost-free season, loosely defined as the length of time between the last killing frost in spring and the first killing frost in the autumn. The National Climatic Data Center has produced climatological tables that identify those median dates (a 50 percent occurrence) during spring and fall when the temperature at a station falls to 36, 32, 28, 24 or 20 degrees Fahrenheit for the last time in spring or the first time in autumn. While the exact time span that a plant survives would vary by plant type, the growing season for climatological purposes is often related to the interval when the daily minimum temperature remains above 32 degrees. Check the map showing the median date of occurrence of the first 32-degree Fahrenheit temperature across the 48 coterminous United States. (The median date means that half of the occurrences of a 32-degree reading over the 30-year normal occur prior to this date, while the other half occur after this date.)

Across the continental U.S. the typical lengths of the frost free regions range from about 120 days along the Canadian border to about 220 days in Oklahoma and north Texas and over 320 days in southern sections of Florida and California. Mountainous areas provide a complex pattern, with some higher elevations having lengths that are less than 100 days. By accessing the NOWData (NOAA Online Weather Data) feature on the Climate page of your local National Weather Service, you can find the "first/last dates" for various climate reporting stations around your area.

Concept of the Week: Questions

(Place your responses on the Chapter Progress Response Form provided in the Study Guide.)

Many vegetable crops would succumb when autumn air temperatures fall to [(36),(33),(28)] degrees.
The frost-free season in states bordering Canada would probably be less than [(60),(90),(120)] days.

Historical Events:

21 October 1996...Portland, ME received 13.32 inches of rain to set a 24-hour maximum precipitation record for the Pine Tree State. (NCDC)
22 October 1987...Yakutat, AK surpassed their previous all-time yearly precipitation total of 190 inches. Monthly records were set in June with 17 inches, in September with 70 inches, and in October with more than 40 inches. (Sandra and TI Richard Sanders - 1987)
24 October 1951...Sacramento, CA reported a barometric pressure of 29.42 inches, to establish a record low for October. (The Weather Channel)
25 October 1977...Dutch Harbor in Alaska reported a barometric pressure reading of 27.31 inches (925 millibars) to establish an all-time record for the state. (The Weather Channel)
26 October 1859...New York City had their earliest substantial snow of record as four inches blanketed the city. (David Ludlum)
26 October 1919...The temperature at Bismarck, ND plunged to ten degrees below zero, the earliest subzero reading of record for the city, and a record for the month of October. (The Weather Channel)
26 October 1926...Barrow, AK received a record fifteen inches of snow, and also established a 24-hour precipitation record of 1.00 inch, which lasted until the 21st of July in 1987. (The Weather Channel)
26 October 1993...The temperature at Eureka, CA soared to 87 degrees to set an all-time high temperature record for the city. (Intellicast)
27 October 1929...A snowstorm dumped 27 inches upon Ishpeming, MI in 24 hours to establish a state record. (David Ludlum)

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