WEEKLY CLIMATE NEWS

DataStreme ECS WEEK TEN: 11-15 November 2013

ITEMS OF INTEREST

Free admission into the National Parks -- The National Park Service has been designated this Veterans Day Weekend (9-11 November 2013) as being a part of its fee-free days program, which in this case is to honor the nation's veterans. This fee waiver will cover entrance and commercial tour fees in many of the national parks and monuments administered by the Park Service. [National Park Service Fee Free Days] In addition, the US Forest Service will waive recreation fees in the national forests over the weekend. [US Forest Service News Release]
Watching a meteor shower -- This year's Leonid meteor showers should peak during the predawn hours of this coming Saturday night and Sunday morning (16-17 November 2013). The Leonid meteor showers, which appear to emanate from the constellation Leo, occur in November as Earth passes through the debris trail from Comet Tempel-Tuttle. As many as 15 dozen meteors per hour are expected this year. Unfortunately, a full moon will make viewing conditions should be fairly poor, even where city lights and clouds do not block the sky. The shower's radiant, or originating point, will be in the eastern sky after sunset and then will shift to the west after local midnight. [Astronomy]
Unique access to environmental data provided by new "NOAA View" website -- During the past week, NOAA's National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) unveiled a new data visualization tool called "NOAA View" for examining archived or recent environmental data such as precipitation, wind data, ice cover, vegetation. [NOAA's National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service]
Shadow from solar eclipse passes across western Africa -- An image made by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) onboard the NASA/NOAA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) satellite on Sunday (3 November 2013) shows a shadow cast by the Moon on sections of western Africa and adjacent sections of the equatorial Atlantic Ocean during a hybrid solar eclipse. This eclipse, which commenced as an annular eclipse and then became a total eclipse, occurred when the new Moon passed between the Sun and Earth. The Moon's shadow, which had a width of no more than 36 miles traveled, traveled for approximately 8500 miles from the western North Atlantic to eastern Africa. [NASA Earth Observatory]
State, national and global instrumental records -- Temperature and precipitation data have been collected around the world since the mid-19th century. Beginning in the 1890s, a sufficiently dense climate network has been established in the United States and its territories. The records from around the nation and from around the global have been collected and archived at several central locations, such as NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). Scientists at NCDC along with colleagues at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and in the United Kingdom have produced time series of area-average monthly and annual temperatures for over a century on state, national and global space scales. For more details on these records and how to access them, please read this week's Supplemental Information...In Greater Depth.

CURRENT CLIMATE MONITORING

Climate link to atmospheric river storms found -- A team of scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the University of California, Los Angeles and NOAA have been conducting research on atmospheric-river storms that move across the North Pacific Ocean and bring major winter snows and rain to California's Sierra Nevada Mountains and other mountain ranges along the West Coast. Studying the phases of the Arctic Oscillation (AO) and the Pacific/North American teleconnections (PNA), which represent atmospheric circulation patterns in the Northern Hemisphere, the researchers found that when those patterns align in a particular way, the atmospheric rivers aim a plume of high humidity tropical air straight to the Sierras. Data were used from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite, along with NOAA satellite data and snowpack data from the California Department of Water Resources. [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]

PALEOCLIMATE RECONSTRUCTION

Oldest ice core could provide a 1.5-million year climate record -- An international team of scientists from Europe, Asia and the United States who are part of the international effort called the International Partnerships in Ice Core Sciences (IPICS) recently identified several regions on the Antarctic continent that could provide a sufficiently long ice core yielding a record of the Earth's climate and greenhouse gases extending back 1.5 million years. This ice core would be nearly twice as old as the oldest ice core drilled to date. The researchers hope to gain additional information of the "Mid Pleistocene Transition" between 1.2 million and 900,000 years ago. [European Geosciences Union]

CLIMATE FORCING

New records reached in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations -- The recently released World Meteorological Organization's annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin indicates that the amount of greenhouse gases that are in the atmosphere reached a new record high in 2012. These gases include carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. The increase in these gases represents a 32 percent increase in radiative forcing, which causes a warming effect on planetary climate. Increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide accounted for most of the increases in radiative forcing. As of 2012, the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide was 41 percent higher than in the pre-Industrial Era. [World Meteorological Organization Media Centre]
Large flares recently seen on Sun -- An image made of the solar disc in extreme ultraviolet light that was obtained from data collected by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) early last week shows the largest X-class solar flare so far this year bursting from a large, active sunspot. This flare also broadcast a coronal mass ejection (CME), or a mass of charged particles and magnetic field energy that bursts from the Sun. [NASA Earth Observatory]
"Tiger stripes" show where flow slows in Antarctic glaciers -- Researchers from Princeton University and the British Antarctic Survey have found that a "tiger stripe" or narrow rib pattern of dirt and rock beneath massive Antarctic glaciers create friction zones that slow the flow of ice toward the sea. The researchers used mathematical modeling and data from satellites and ground-penetrating radar to infer the existence of these stripes indicating areas of high friction between the glacier and the underlying bedrock. [News at Princeton]

CLIMATE MODELING

Amazon deforestation could cause droughts across Western States -- Using high-resolution climate simulations, researchers from Princeton University and their colleagues from other research institutions have found that the total destruction of the rainforest in South America's Amazon basin may cause a significant reduction in the rain and snow in the western United States between December and February. The loss of the Amazon rainforest would result in warmer and drier conditions over South America along with a change in the atmospheric circulation regime that would be similar to an El Niño event. This precipitation reduction across the Western Stares would result lead to a 50-percent reduction in the Sierra Nevada snowpack, which could result in water and food shortages, along with an increased risk of wildfires. [News at Princeton University]

CLIMATE AND SOCIETY

Water quality in Chesapeake Bay watershed improved in part by Clean Air Act -- Researchers at the University of Maryland's Center for Environmental Science report that reductions of pollution emissions from power plants across the Middle Atlantic States have resulted in declines in atmospheric nitrogen pollution and ultimately to improved quality of the water entering the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The declines in the emissions of nitrogen oxide from coal-fired power plants, which resulted in reduced amounts of nitrogen pollution in streams along the Appalachians, have been in response to the Clean Air Act of 1990, the amount of nitrogen pollution found in the waterways of forested areas in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia fell as well. [University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science]
Climate preparedness research is essential -- An international team of climate and social scientists maintain that a new approach to climate preparedness is essential to help people adjust to coming changes in the Earth's environment due to human activity. The researchers claim that climate preparedness research needs to an interdisciplinary approach that integrates social and climate science, engineering, and other disciplines. They list four challenges that involve understanding the necessary information for decision-making; the identification of societal, economic and environmental vulnerabilities; improvement in climate models and forecasts; and the making of technology, management and policy options available for adapting. [Pacific Northwest National Laboratory News Center]
Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com] Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Concept of the Week: Developing a Quality Long-term Instrumental Climate Record

Systematic temperature and precipitation observations have been made at various locations across the nation for nearly two centuries. While only a handful of stations were available in the early 19th century, weather and climate observations currently are made from several hundred automatic weather sites operated by the National Weather Service and the Federal Aviation Administration as well as approximately 8000 stations in the Cooperative Observers Network administered by the National Weather Service. The weather data from these networks are also used to quantitatively assess changes of climate during the instrumental period of the past as well into the future. However, a variety of factors can affect the homogeneity of the record. For example, the locations of many of the stations have moved, from original downtown building roofs to current locations at airports. And the physical surroundings of the stations have changed, many becoming more urbanized.

In the late 1980s, the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) in conjunction with the US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory created the United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) of 1218 stations across the 48 coterminous states having long-term records of both daily temperature and precipitation. This network was designed to provide an essential baseline data set for monitoring the nation's climate commencing in the late 19th century. These stations were created from a subset of the Cooperative Observers Network, chosen based upon long-term data quality that included length of record, percent of missing data, spatial distribution and number of station changes. Many of the selected USHCN stations were rural in an attempt to reduce the influence of urbanization. Using statistical analyses, data for these stations have been adjusted to account for movement of stations, or when a different thermometer type was installed. An urban warming correction was applied based upon population of the surrounding area.

More recently, NOAA began the US Climate Reference Network (USCRN), a project designed to collect and analyze climate data of the highest possible quality for the next 50 to 100 years. Each USCRN station would have electronic sensors that would make routine measurements of air temperature, precipitation, IR ground surface temperature, solar radiation and wind speed with a frequency of every five minutes and transmit these data to both NCDC and to National Weather Service offices via orbiting satellites on nearly a real-time basis. In addition to these measurements, additional sensors could be added to the USCRN stations that would measure soil temperature and soil moisture. Conscientious and detailed site selection was made for all stations so that they would not only be spatially representative, but that they would be in locations where the surrounding physical conditions would have a high likelihood of remaining the same over the next 50 to 100 years. Many of the sites were placed on federal or state owned lands, helping minimize the contamination of the climate record by urbanization or other changes in local ground cover.

These long-term, comparative, spatially representative values are vital to detect and verify the subtle changes in climatic conditions before they become overwhelmingly obvious.

Concept of the Week: Questions

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

The majority of United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) stations were in [(rural), (urban)] settings.
The instruments in the US Climate Reference Network (USCRN) sample the atmosphere as frequently as [(5 minutes),(1 day),(1 month)].

Historical Events:

11-12 November 1911...The central U.S. experienced perhaps its most dramatic cold wave of record. During the early morning, temperatures across the Central Plains ranged from 68 degrees at Kansas City to 4 degrees above zero at North Platte, NE. In Kansas City, the temperature warmed to a record 76 degrees by late morning before the arctic front moved in from the northwest. Skies became overcast, winds shifted to the northwest, and the mercury began to plummet. By early afternoon, it was cold enough to snow, and by midnight the temperature had dipped to a record cold reading of 11 degrees above zero. Oklahoma City also established a record high of 83 degrees and record low of 17 degrees by midnight that same day (11/11/11), followed by 14 degrees, another record low, by the next morning. In southeastern Kansas, the temperature at Independence plunged from 83 degrees to 33 degrees in just one hour. (David Ludlum) (The Weather Channel) (The Kansas City Weather Almanac) (Intellicast)
12 November 1906...The mercury soared to 106 degrees at Craftonville, CA, a November record for the U.S. (The Weather Channel)
12 November 1959...Between noon on the 11th and noon on the 12th, a winter storm buried Helena, MT under 21.5 inches of snow, which surpassed their previous 24 hour record by seven inches. (The Weather Channel)
12 November 1980...A fringe rain band from Hurricane Jeannie in the Gulf of Mexico let loose a deluge of 23.38 inches of rain in 24 hours at Key West, FL, an all-time 24 hour record. (Intellicast)
12 November 1987...Heavy snow spread across much of New England. The seven inch total at the Logan Airport in Boston was their highest of record for so early in the season, and the 9.7 inch total at Providence, RI was a record for November. (Storm Data) (The National Weather Summary)
13 November 1933...The first dust storm of the Great Dust Bowl era of the 1930s occurred. The dust storm, which had spread from Montana to the Ohio Valley the day before, prevailed from Georgia to Maine resulting in a black rain over New York and a brown snow in Vermont. Parts of South Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa reported zero visibility on the 12^th. On the 13^th, dust reduced the visibility to half a mile in Tennessee. (David Ludlum) (The Weather Channel)
16 November 1958...More than six inches (6.4 inches) of snow fell at Tucson, AZ, one of the biggest ever for that location. (David Ludlum) (The Weather Channel)
16 November 1959...The most severe November cold wave in U.S. history was in progress. A weather observing station located 14 miles northeast of Lincoln, MT reported a reading of 53 degrees below zero, which established an all-time record low temperature for the nation for the month of November. Their high that day was one degree above zero. (David Ludlum) (The Weather Channel)
17 November 1953...The temperature at Minneapolis, MN reached 71 degrees, their warmest reading of record for so late in the autumn. (The Weather Channel)

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