WEEKLY CLIMATE NEWS

29 December 2014 - 2 January 2015

DataStreme Earth's Climate Systems will return for Spring 2015 with new Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 19 January 2015. All the current online website products, including updated issues of Weekly Climate News, will continue to be available throughout the winter break period.

Happy Holidays to you and yours from the AMS DS Earth's Climate Systems Central Staff!

Ed Hopkins

ITEMS OF INTEREST

It's Sure Dark in the morning! -- Have you noticed that if you are an early riser, that mornings remain dark and somewhat dreary although local sunsets are becoming noticeably later during the last week? During the last week of December and the first week of January, many locations throughout the country will experience their latest sunrise times of the year, even though the winter solstice occurred more than one week ago on Sunday, 21 December 2014. The exact day for the latest sunrise depends upon the latitude, so you may want to check the date in your locale from the sunrise tables appearing in an on-line, interactive service available for the entire year at most cities in the United States. The reason for the late sunrise now rather than on the winter solstice is because the sun is not as precise a timekeeper as our watches. Because of a combination of factors involved with Earth's elliptical orbit about the sun and the tilt of Earth's spin axis with respect to the plane of the ecliptic, the sun appeared to "run fast" by as much as 15 minutes as compared with clock time in November. In early December, most locations experienced their earliest sunsets. However, with the approach of the winter solstice and perihelion (the smallest earth-sun distance during the early morning of 4 January 2015), the apparent sun slows during December and finally lags the clock by 12 minutes in February. Consequently, a noticeable and welcome trend toward later sunsets can be detected by the end of December, especially by those residents in the northern part of the country. However, the latest sunrises occur at most locales in early January, meaning a continuation of the dark and dreary mornings for another week or two.
No "leap second" will lengthen 2014 -- The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS) has determined that no "leap second" would be inserted to lengthen the calendar year of 2014. Since 1972, "leap seconds" have been inserted on the last day of December 15 times, with the most recent occurrence on 31 December 2008 when the service's atomic clocks were stopped for one second just before midnight (2359Z, or 6:59 PM EST, 5:59 PM CST, etc) to readjust the time scale based on the atomic clock to the time scale based upon the rotation of the Earth with respect to the sun. At the time, tidal friction and other natural phenomena had slowed the Earth's rotation rate by approximately two milliseconds per day. In addition, a "leap second" has been inserted ten times at the end of June, with the most recent one added on 30 June 2012. [US Naval Observatory]
In Close --
Climatology of Southeast NCAA bowl games updated -- The Southeast Regional Climate Center has provided a listing of the weather history for twelve NCAA college bowl games that are to be played within the next two weeks across the Southeastern States. This climatology includes the warmest, coldest, wettest and snowiest days in the particular bowl's history.
High-quality maps of January temperature and precipitation normals across US available -- The PRISM Climate Group at Oregon State University's website has prepared high-resolution maps depicting the normal maximum, minimum and precipitation totals for January and other months across the 48 coterminous United States for the current 1981-2010 climate normals interval. These maps, with a 800-meter resolution, were produced using the PRISM (Parameter-elevation Regressions on Independent Slopes Model) climate mapping system.
January weather calendar for a city near you -- The Midwestern Regional Climate Center maintains an interactive website that permits the public to produce a ready to print weather calendar for any given month of the year, such as January, at any of approximately 270 weather stations around the nation. (These stations are NOAA's ThreadEx stations.) The entries for each day of the month includes: Normal maximum temperature, normal minimum temperature, normal daily heating and cooling degree days, normal daily precipitation, record maximum temperature, record minimum temperature, and record daily precipitation; the current normals for 1981-2010.

CURRENT CLIMATE STATUS

Review of Canada's top ten weather stories in 2014 -- During the last week, meteorologists with Environment Canada released a list of what they considered the top ten weather events across Canada during this calendar year of 2014. The top story was the long cold 2013-14 winter across Canada. Additional stories focused upon the flooding in the eastern provinces, wildfires across western and northern sections of their nation and the summer that was hot along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, but cool in the populated areas of Ontario and Quebec. [Environment Canada]

PALEOCLIMATE RECONSTRUCTION

Looking under the ice at the South Pole -- Scientists have created an image showing a vertical cross section of the Antarctic ice sheet in the vicinity of the South Pole in order to show the structure of this ice sheet. This image, which was based upon data collected by downward-pointing radar on aircraft, extends from the surface of the ice cap to a depth of approximately 3 kilometers and stretches several hundred kilometers on each side of the South Pole. The radar images obtained from the airborne campaign have been used to help in the selection of a drilling site near the South Pole where an ice core of approximately 1500-meter length is to be extracted that ultimately should provide a detailed history of the climate of Antarctica over approximately the last 40,000 years. [NASA Earth Observatory]

CLIMATE AND THE BIOSPHERE

Space age monitoring of giant kelp forests in global oceans -- NASA Earth Observatory recently produced a feature that highlights the large forests of kelp floating near the ocean surface at many locations. These giant kelp forests, which contain kelp (Macrocystis) growing to over 100 feet in length, are among Earth's most productive habitats as they contain a great diversity of plant and animal species that support many fisheries around the world. This feature includes images obtained from NASA satellites of the giant kelp forests off the coasts of California and Tasmania, Australia. Background information is also provided of the research being conducted by the Floating Forests Project and the University of California, Santa Barbara. [NASA Earth Observatory]

CLIMATE FORECASTS

Updated quarterly regional climate impacts and outlooks released -- During the last week NOAA and its partners released a set of regional quarterly climate impact and outlook reports for seven regions across the United States. These reports include descriptions of major climate events that occurred during the previous three months (September-November 2014) along with climate outlooks for the first quarter of 2015. [NOAA NCDC News]
Relative sea level changes along Pacific Northwest Coast complicated by plate tectonics and global sea-level rise -- Researchers with the Washington Sea Grant Program, the US Geological Survey, the University of Washington's Climate Impacts Group and Adaptation International have been probing into how coastal communities in western Washington State could be impacted by the complicated relationship between plate tectonics and sea-level rise. Vertical land movement (VLM) along this section of the West Coast has been caused by plate tectonics offshore where the Pacific and North American plates collide. The researchers are attempting to develop better VLM estimates for improved forecasts of future changes in relative sea level along the coast that can be used by community planners and others. [NOAA Sea Grant News]

CLIMATE FORCING

Sun's portrait in X-Rays -- A team of scientists recently produced a high-resolution image of the Sun from data collected by NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), an Earth-orbiting telescope that focuses upon high-energy X-rays from various sources in the Universe. This image shows X-rays streaming from the Sun's corona or its outer atmosphere. [NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory News]

CLIMATE AND SOCIETY

Funding to be awarded for climate change studies -- The US Secretary of the Interior, Sally Jewell, recently announced that her department's regional Climate Science Centers and the US Geological Survey (USGS) National Climate Change and Wildlife Science Center are awarding nearly $6 million to universities and other partners for 50 new research projects to better prepare communities for impacts of climate change. This research funding is part of the President's Climate Action Plan. [US Department of Interior Press release]

COMPARATIVE PLANETOLOGY

Active and ancient organic chemistry found on Mars -- NASA s scientists and their colleagues who have been analyzing a rock-powder sample collected by the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) laboratory onboard NASA's Mars Curiosity rover reported an order of magnitude increase in the organic chemical compound methane (CH₄). This discovery represents the first definitive detection of Martian organic chemicals in material on the surface of Mars. [NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory News] A discussion was also made of how the Curiosity instrument made the first detection of organic matter on the Martian surface. [NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory News]
Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com] Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Historical Events:

29 December 1917...Washta, IA dropped to 40 degrees below zero, the record low temperature for the Hawkeye State; this record has been broken by a 47 degree below zero reading in February 1996. (Intellicast)
29 December 1933...Ontario's coldest day on record as fourteen sites recorded their lowest-ever temperature, including Ottawa (-38?F) and Algonquin Park (-49?F). (The Weather Doctor)
29 December 1954...Fort Scott, KS was buried under 26 inches of snow in 24 hours to establish a state record. (28^th-29^th) (The Weather Channel)
29 December 1984...One hundred cities in the central and eastern U.S. reported record high temperatures. Southerly winds gusting to 50 mph helped Kansas City experience its warmest December day of record with a morning low of 60 degrees and an afternoon high of 71 degrees. (The National Weather Summary) (Sandra and TI Richard Sanders - 1987)
29 December 2004...The sea-level corrected atmospheric pressure rose to an unofficial world's record for highest sea level pressure reaching 1083.8 millibars (32.01 inches) at Agata, Siberia. At the time, Agata Lake reported a temperature of -46^o C (-50.8^oF). (The Weather Doctor) This world record has superceded a reading of 1085.6 mb millibars (32.06 inches of mercury) at Tonsontsengel, Mongolia on 19 December 2001.
30 December 1880...The temperature at Charlotte, NC plunged to an all-time record low reading of 5 degrees below zero, a record that was equaled on 21 January 1985. (The Weather Channel)
30 December 1917...A great cold wave set many records in the northeastern U.S. Temperatures of 37 degrees below zero at Lewisburg, WV and 32 degrees below zero at Mountain City, TN set all-time low temperature records for both the Mountain and Volunteer States. (NCDC)
30 December 1933...The temperature fell to 50 degrees below zero at Bloomfield, VT, marking the lowest reading in modern records for New England. (David Ludlum)
30 December 1955...Anchorage, AK reported an all-time record snow depth of 47 inches. (30^th-1^st) (The Weather Channel)
30 December 1968...A new record low temperature for the state of Washington was set in two towns on the same date. Mazama and Winthrop both dropped to 48 degrees below zero. (Intellicast)
30 December 1972...The 86-foot high wave measured by the ship Weather Reporter was the world's highest measured wave. The wave was measured in the North Atlantic Ocean at 59 degrees North latitude and 19 degrees West longitude. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
31 December 1917...The temperature at Lewisburg, WV plunged to 37 degrees below zero to set a state record. (Sandra and TI Richard Sanders - 1987)
31 December 1929...Greenland Ranch, in Death Valley, CA, went the entire year without measurable precipitation. (The Weather Channel)
31 December 1941...Snow that began on New Year's Eve became a major blizzard on New Year's Day, burying Des Moines, IA under 19.8 inches of snow in 24 hours, an all-time record for that location. (The Weather Channel)
31 December 1968...The sea-level corrected atmospheric pressure rose to a world's record for highest sea level pressure reaching 1083.8 millibars (32.01 inches) at Agata, Siberia. At the time, Agata Lake reported a temperature of -46^o C (-50.8^oF). (The Weather Doctor) This world record has since been superceded by a reading of 1085.7 millibars (32.06 inches of mercury) at Tonsontsengel, Mongolia on 19 December 2001.
31 December 1982...The year's total rainfall recorded at the rain gauge at Puu Kukui, at an elevation of approximately 5800 feet on the slope of the West Maui Mountains on Hawaii's Island of Kauai was 704.83 inches. This rainfall total represents the all-time greatest calendar year precipitation total in the United States. The rainfall total for that December was 42.00 inches. (Accord Weather Guide Calendar)
31 December 1989...The year and decade ended on a soggy note in the eastern U.S. Thunderstorm rains pushed precipitation totals for the year to 88.32 inches at Baton Rouge, LA and to 75.37 inches at Huntsville, AL, establishing all-time records for those two locations. Dry weather continued in California. Sacramento and San Francisco finished the month without any rain or snow, and Santa Maria reported their driest year of record with just 3.30 inches of precipitation. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
The highest air pressure ever recorded in United States was 1078.6 millibars (31.85 inches of mercury) at Northway, AK. (The Weather Doctor)
1 January 1886...Norway's coldest night on record occurred as the temperature at Karasjok dropped to 60.5 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (The Weather Doctor).
1 January 1979...The temperature at Maybell, CO plunged to 60 degrees below zero to tie the state record set back in 1951 at Taylor Park. (The Weather Channel)
2 January 1885...The lowest temperature ever recorded at Duluth, MN occurred on this date. The temperature plunged to 41 degrees below zero. (Intellicast)
2 January 1893...Little Rock, AR had its greatest 24-hour snowfall, with 13 inches that covered the ground. . (Intellicast)
2 January 1955...Hurricane Alice battered the Leeward Islands with sustained winds of 85 mph on this day. Alice was upgraded as a full tropical system on 31 December 1954, making Alice the latest and earliest hurricane on record in the Atlantic Ocean. (Intellicast)
2 January 1961...The lowest temperature of record for the state of Hawaii was established with a reading of 14 degrees atop Haleakala Summit. (David Ludlum) (This state record has been eclipsed in May 1979.)
3 January 1913...The barometer at Canton, NY read 28.20 inches of mercury (955.0 millibars), which is the lowest ever recorded at an inland station. (Intellicast)
3 January 1961...A three-day long ice storm was in progress over northern Idaho that produced an accumulation of ice eight inches thick, an U.S. record. Heavy fog, which blanketed much of northern Idaho from Grangeville to the Canadian border, deposited the ice on power and telephone lines causing widespread power outages. (David Ludlum) (The Weather Channel)
3 January 2006...The record 2005 North Atlantic hurricane season extended into the new year, as Tropical Storm Zeta reached its peak intensity with maximum sustained winds of 65 mph for the second time; the previous occurrence was on 1 January 2006. Never a threat to land as it traveled across the central North Atlantic, Tropical Storm Zeta was the 27th named tropical cyclone (including both tropical storms and hurricanes) of the season. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
4 January 1888...Sacramento, CA received 3.5 inches of snow, an all-time record for that location. The heaviest snow in recent history was two inches on 5 February 1976. (4th-5th) (The Weather Channel)

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