WEEKLY CLIMATE NEWS

DataStreme ECS WEEK TEN: 9-13 November 2015

ITEMS OF INTEREST

Worldwide GLOBE at Night 2015 Campaign continues -- The eleventh in a series of GLOBE at Night citizen-science campaigns for 2015 will continue its 10-night campaign through Wednesday 11 November. 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 (Perseus in the Northern Hemisphere and Grus 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. This year's campaign will continue next month between 2 December and 11 December 2015. [GLOBE at Night]
Free admission into the National Parks -- The National Park Service has been designated Veterans Day (Wednesday, 11 November 2015) 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] Special observances for veterans will be held at several miltary parks, battlefields and historic sites. [National Park Service Military Honor].
App available for locating NASA's "Eyes on the Earth" -- An applications software (app) called "Eyes on the Earth" is available for public download that displays the real-time location of all of NASA's Earth-observing spacecraft. With this app, the user can view geo-located satellite images of recent Earth events, including algal blooms, super storms and wildfires. The display will also permit comparison of the size of the orbiting satellite with that of a person or a school bus. [NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory]
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.

CURRENT CLIMATE STATUS

Historic flooding in California's Death Valley monitored from various perspectives -- A series of unusual storms from off the eastern North Pacific Ocean in October 2015 brought historic rain to the normally arid regions of the Southwest that includes Death Valley in southeastern California and the adjacent Amargosa Valley in southwestern Nevada. One of the storms, resulted in nearly three inches of rainfall in five hours at Scotty's Castle in Death Valley, could be considered to be a 1000-year rain event for that region. A variety of images are available that show the rainfall totals across the Southwest, including the satellite-based estimates of rainfall from the particularly large storm on 18 October 2015 made from NASA's Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission. Radar images are also available. In addition, "before and after" natural-color images made from the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on NASA's Landsat 8 satellite show the effect of the flooding in the Amargosa Valley. A 3-minute video shows some of the destruction in Death Valley National Park from a ground-level perspective as the inaugural episode of the "Death Valley Exposed" video podcast series. [NASA Earth Observatory]

CURRENT CLIMATE MONITORING

Space agency to study plankton climate change connection -- Late last week NASA began a five-year field project called "The North Atlantic Aerosols and Marine Ecosystems Study (NAAMES)" that will involve ships and aircraft to study the annual cycle of phytoplankton and the impact that small airborne particles emitted from the ocean have on the climate-sensitive North Atlantic. During the next week, NASA's C-130H Hercules airborne laboratory will begin research flights from St. Johns, Newfoundland, while the research vessel (R/V) Atlantis, operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution will provide detailed ship-based measurements of plankton in the North Atlantic. [NASA Press Release]
"Wind watcher" instrument marks one year on Space Station -- NASA's ISS-RapidScat instrument, a scatterometer placed upon the International Space Station (ISS) in October 2014, has spent one year making measurements of the winds over the ocean surface that are designed to enhance weather forecasting and the understanding of climate. Data collected by RapidScat on numerous tropical cyclones and winter storms over the global oceans have been used by many meteorological agencies to include NOAA, the US Navy and the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites. [NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory]
The NOAA-NASA Suomi NPP satellite launched four years ago -- Four years ago on 28 October 2011, the NOAA/NASA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) satellite was launched as the first of the satellite in NOAA's next generation Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) weather satellite fleet. Named for the late Verner Suomi, a meteorology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison considered to be the father of satellite meteorology, the polar-orbiting Suomi NPP satellite collects environmental data using a variety of instruments that include the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), the Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS), the Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS), the Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS) and the Cloud and Earth Radiant Energy System (CERES). [NOAA NESDIS News Archive]

CLIMATE FORCING

Human-caused climate change appears to have increased severity of many extreme events in 2014 -- A report produced by 32 groups of scientists from around the world claims that human activities, such as greenhouse gas emissions and land use, have influenced specific extreme weather and climate events in 2014. These scientists investigated 28 individual extreme events in 2014 that included tropical cyclones in the central Pacific, heavy rainfall in Europe, drought in East Africa, and stifling heat waves in Australia, Asia, and South America. They considered various factors that led to these extreme events, including the degree to which natural variability and human-induced climate change played a role. Their report, "Explaining Extreme Events of 2014 From a Climate Perspective," appears in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. [NOAA News]
Volcanic plume from an Indonesian volcano monitored from space -- Natural-color images using data collected from the MODIS sensors on NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites last week show the plume of volcanic ash emanating from the eruption of Mount Rinjani on the Indonesian island of Lombok. The plume from this 12,224-foot volcano was carried westward on easterly winds. Numerous airports were closed because of the hazards posed to operating aircraft by volcanic ash. An eruption of Mt. Rinjani in 1257 CE was one of the largest in history according to the Smithsonian's Global Volcanism Program. [NASA Earth Observatory] A satellite image of the volcanic plume is available from the VIIRS sensor onboard a NOAA polar-orbiting satellite. [NOAA National Environmental Visualization Laboratory]

CLIMATE AND HUMAN HEALTH

Identifying the nation's fall "Allergy Capitals" for 2015 -- The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America recently released its annual rankings of the top 100 cities across the nation identified as the "most challenging places to live with allergies" for the fall allergy season based upon measured pollen levels airborne grass/tree/weed pollen and mold spores), allergy medications administered per capita and the number of allergists per capita for each major city. Louisville, KY was identified as the #1 Fall Allergy Capital for a second year. A similar tabulation is also made for the spring allergy season. [Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America]

COMPARATIVE PLANETOLOGY

Solar wind may have stripped Martian atmosphere -- NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission has identified the solar wind as possibly playing a key role in the transition of the Martian climate from an early, warm and wet environment that may have supported surface life to the current cold, arid planet Mars. Scientists who analyzed the MAVEN data determined the rate at which the Martian atmosphere currently is losing gas to space via stripping by the solar wind is approximately 100 grams per second. During solar storms, this rate of stripping increases significantly during solar storms. [NOAA News]
Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com]

Concept of the Week: Evolution of Climate Models

Climate scientists have been building increasingly sophisticated, mathematical climate models to serve two main purposes: test the sensitivity of the climate to altered conditions and simulate climate over time, either back into the past or forward into the future. The simplest, early type of climate model (zero dimensional) was the "energy balance model", which provides an average planetary temperature from incoming and outgoing radiation. A one-dimensional energy balance model determines the surface temperature from the energy balance at individual latitude belts.

More complex models involve the physical equations of motion (gas laws, thermodynamics and radiation interactions) subject to climate forcings, the boundary conditions of solar radiation, surface properties and atmospheric composition. As computers improved, models have included a three-dimensional oceanic circulation ("atmosphere-ocean coupling"), then interactions between the atmosphere, cryosphere and geosphere, with climate feedback mechanisms involving the exchanges of heat and water. Finally, models have been able to incorporate the improved knowledge of the biogeochemical processes. Climate models calculate variables such as temperature at individual points within the three-dimensional grid of cells across the Earth's surface and vertically through the atmosphere, ocean, ice and land. A tradeoff exists between the number of grid points (the spatial resolution) and the number of numerical computations. Time and space accuracy costs increased computational time and expense.

The development of numerical weather prediction models during the 1960s and 1970s spurred the development of General Circulation Models (GCMs) for climate. One of the early atmospheric GCMs was developed at Princeton University's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL). By the 1990s, comprehensive climate models were being perfected with three-dimensional oceanic circulation. Ultimately, the term GCM could be used to refer to a Global Climate Model that represents the major climate system components (atmosphere, ocean, land surface and polar ice) and their interactions. The Community Climate Model at the National Center for Atmospheric Research is one of the most comprehensive climate models currently available. This model has been used to determine the future temperature response for several scenarios concerning the release of greenhouse gases through the 21st century as proposed by the IPCC reports.

Concept of the Week: Questions

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

General circulation models are generally [(less), (more)] sophisticated than energy balance models.
Increasing the spatial resolution of a global climate model causes the computational time to [(increase),(decrease),(remain the same)].

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)

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