WEEKLY CLIMATE NEWS

5-9 November 2018

ITEMS OF INTEREST

Worldwide GLOBE at Night 2018 Campaign for November is underway -- eleventh in a series of GLOBE at Night citizen-science campaigns for 2018 will commence continue through Thursday, 8 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 with the seven magnitude/star charts of progressively fainter stars. These constellations are Perseus in the Northern Hemisphere and Grus for the Southern Hemisphere. Activity guides are also available. The GLOBE at night program is intended to raise public awareness of the impact of light pollution. The twelfth and last series in the 2018 campaign is scheduled for 29 November-8 December 2018. [GLOBE at Night]
Free admission into the National Parks -- The National Park Service has designated Veterans Day (Sunday, 11 November 2018) 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 military parks, battlefields and historic sites. [National Park Service Military Honor]
Snow climatology tools are available -- The Midwestern Regional Climate Center (MRCC) is providing the public with an interactive set of maps for the 48 contiguous U.S. that provide some important snow climatology information. The user can access a default map that shows the average number of days at more than 1800 individual climate-reporting stations nationwide for the 1960-61 through the 2016-17 "snow years" with at measurable snow (0.1 inches or greater) for any month. (A "snow year" runs from 1 July through 30 June.) Additional maps can be selected for two- or three-day snow events, for threshold snowfall totals ranging one to 24 inches, and for individual months. A corresponding set of maps can be accessed showing snow depth or the reported depth of snow cover on the ground. Detailed maps along with tabular data for individual stations are available. (Some scrolling, or panning, may be necessary be necessary to access other sections of the nation, including Alaska). Documentation is available. [MRCC Snow Climatology]
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 MONITORING

Preparation of NOAA's Monthly Global Climate Report is highlighted -- A member of the Climate Monitoring Branch of NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information recently posted a blog on the ClimateWatch Magazine that describes how colleagues have been preparing NOAA's Monthly Global Climate Reports that are released by around the 18th day of the following month. These climatologists compile and analyze observed temperature and precipitation data that have been collected by land-based stations, ships and buoys from around the globe during the previous month, producing their report in timely fashion. In addition to producing tabulated data sets, they create a variety of global anomalies and percentiles maps showing the departure of the observed monthly temperatures from a long-term average or the temperatures ranked in terms of percentiles. Attention was also given to the early portion of the global records that extend back to 1880, while the continental record only goes back to 1910. [NOAA NCEI News]
Warming of the deep Southern Ocean documented by research cruises -- A feature posted in the ClimateWatch Magazine describes how data collected by repeat cruises around the global ocean over the last three decades have been used to document the long-term heat storage trends at ocean depths between 2,000 and 6,000 meters associated with human-caused global warming. "CTD (conductivity, temperature, and depth) profilers" were lowered from the research ships traversing the oceans on predetermined routes to collect temperature data at depths of at least 2000 meters. Analysis of the data at the University of Washington indicated that the largest rates of warming have occurred in the deep waters of the Southern Ocean, where the rate of heat gain was as much as 1 watt per square meter between the mid-1990s and 2010. [NOAA Climate.gov News]
Europeans to launch new polar-orbiting satellite needed for predicting Earth's weather and climate -- The European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) is intending to launch a new polar-orbiting satellite identified as Metop-C on Tuesday, 6 November 2018 from French Guiana. Metop-C is a joint effort between EUMETSAT, the European Space Agency, NASA, and NOAA that is designed to collect valuable data about Earth's atmosphere, land, and oceans needed for the preparation of daily weather forecasts around the globe. Its predecessors in the EUMETSAT Polar System series include Metop-A launched in 2006 and Metop-B in 2012. Metop-C will be placed into an orbit that has an altitude of approximately 505 miles and will carry 14 instruments designed to make temperature humidity measurements, readings of wind speed and direction, and determine atmospheric ozone profiles. [NOAA National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service News]

CLIMATE FORCING

Antarctic "ozone hole" in 2018 slightly larger than average -- Researchers with NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center report that their analysis of ozonesonde and satellite data shows the Antarctic "ozone hole," or the region of low ozone concentrations in the stratosphere that forms in austral spring over Antarctica, reached its peak size on 12 October 2018, before beginning to decline in size. The peak size in mid-October was 8.83 million square miles (or nearly three times the size of the 48 contiguous United States), For comparison, the size of last year's ozone hole was only 7.6 million square miles, which was the smallest amount of ozone depletion since 1988. The scientists claim that this season's hole was somewhat larger due to very cold air in the polar stratosphere (at altitudes between 7 and 25 miles) that resulted in more ice crystals in stratospheric clouds. These ice crystals in the high-altitude clouds would serve as sites upon which ozone-destroying chlorine could attach. While the cold stratosphere would tend to expand the ozone hole size, chlorine levels in the stratosphere have been falling because of the Montreal Protocol, a 30-year-old global environmental treaty designed to phase out the production of numerous substances found to be responsible for ozone depletion. [NOAA News] [NOAA Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research News]
A 1:11-minute video made at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center shows the development of the 2018 Antarctic ozone hole beginning in August, along with an animation of the maximum extent of each year's Antarctic ozone hole beginning in 1979 and running through 2018. [NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Feature]
Earth's oceans absorb heat at a higher rate than previously thought -- Researchers at Princeton University, Scripps Institution of Oceanography and their colleagues recently reported that the Earth's ocean have absorbed an amount of heat energy each year between 1991 and 2016 approximately 150 times the energy humans produce as electricity annually, or 60 percent more heat per year than previously stated in the 2014 Fifth Assessment Report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The researchers base their findings of the amount of ocean heat uptake by using hydrographic temperature measurements and data from the Argo float program, which expanded its coverage after 2007. [Princeton University News]

CLIMATE FORECASTS

Animations show possible future October temperature patterns across the nation -- The editor of NOAA's ClimateWatch Magazine posted a blog that features an animated sequence of gif images showing how October average temperatures across the contiguous United States are projected to change over individual forthcoming decades based upon the output from climate model simulations using a high emissions scenario run on 32 separate global climate models. These graphical simulations that were run through 2100 are compared with the observed October average temperatures for the current 1981-2010 normals interval. Most of the contiguous United States currently has average temperatures that are below 60 degrees Fahrenheit, but over the next eight decades, more than half the nation is expected to experience October average temperatures exceeding 60 degrees. [NOAA Climate.gov News]
Canadian national seasonal outlook issued -- Forecasters with Environment Canada issued their outlooks for temperature and precipitation across Canada for November 2018 through January 2019, which represents the last month of meteorological autumn and the first two months of meteorological winter. The temperature outlook indicates that a large section of western and southern Canada should experience above normal (1981-2010) temperatures for these three months. This region would extend from the Yukon Territory and British Columbia eastward across the Prairie Provinces, Ontario and sections of the Maritime Provinces. A portion of the Canadian Archipelago in the Nunavut Territory could also be warmer than average. Sections of northern Labrador and Baffin Island could experience below average temperatures for the November through January span. Elsewhere, near normal temperatures are forecast.
The Canadian precipitation outlook for late autumn 2018 and the start of the 2018-19 winter season indicates above average precipitation should be anticipated across southwestern section of Canada, extending from British Columbia northward into the southern Yukon Territory and eastward into Alberta and Saskatchewan. Sections of southwestern Ontario and the St. Lawrence Valley, the Maritimes and Newfoundland in eastern Canada also should experience above average precipitation for the upcoming three months. Below drier than normal conditions could occur in sections of eastern Canada to the north of Quebec and Labrador. Elsewhere, near average precipitation should be expected.
[Note for comparisons and continuity with the three-month seasonal outlooks of temperature and precipitation generated for the continental United States and Alaska by NOAA's Climate Prediction Center, one would need to use Environment Canada's probabilistic forecasts for temperature and precipitation.]

PALEOCLIMATE RECONSTRUCTIONS

Investigating how marine life recovered after a major mass extinction event -- Researchers at the China University of Geosciences and the United Kingdom's University of Leeds recently reported on their investigations into how life recovered on Earth after the historic Permian-Triassic (PT) mass extinction using a new global fossil database. This mass extinction, which occurred approximately 252 million years ago, resulted in more than 95 percent of the marine species being killed in less than 100,000 years. Massive volcanism in present day Siberia appears to be the trigger of the PT extinction, especially in the oceans, as greenhouse gases (such as carbon dioxide) were emitted from the volcanoes; the increased levels of these greenhouse gases resulted in a warming of the oceans to the point where the amount of dissolved oxygen became insufficient to sustain life. However, the researchers found that some of the marine organisms at the top of the food chain appeared to have been faster at emerging in the oceans and starting the re-population of the marine ecosystem during the Triassic following the extinction event. Some of the animals at the top of the chain emerged in 5 million years as compared with 50 million years for the underlying ecosystem. [EOS Earth & Space Science News]

CLIMATE AND SOCIETY

Investigating the persistent gap in natural gas methane emissions estimates -- A team of researchers from Colorado State University and colleagues from the University of Colorado and NOAA recently conducted a study that explains the differences between the two types of estimates of methane emissions from a natural gas production region in Arkansas. One method is called the "bottom-up" (BU) emission estimate is an accounting method that involves the multiplying of average emission factors for each known source category by an activity factor for that source category to estimate the annual emissions from a facility or emission source. The other method is the "top-down" (TD) method that involves the regional scale with atmospheric methane concentrations measured from aircraft being used in models to infer emission rates. Usually, most of the estimates using the TD method have been statistically higher than those obtained using the BU method. [NOAA Research 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.

Historical Events:

5 November 1977...A slow moving storm produced five- to nine-inch rains across northern Georgia causing the Toccoa Dam to burst. As the earthen dam collapsed, the waters rushed through the Toccoa Falls Bible College killing three persons in the dorms. Thirty-eight persons perished at a trailer park along the stream. Eighteen bridges were washed out in Madison County. (David Ludlum)
5 November 1987...Heavy rains in California's Death Valley National Park washed out many park roads. As much as 1.20 in. of rain fell at Scotty's Castle, compared with the annual rainfall average of 2.28 in. Up to 8000 people attending a recreational encampment were stranded. (Accord Weather Calendar)
5 November 1991...Elkins, WV dropped to 8 degrees, the coldest so early in the season. Pittsburgh, PA dropped to 11 degrees also the coldest so early. Jackson, KY fell to 17 degrees, a daily record. (Intellicast)
6 November 1988...A powerful low-pressure system over the Great Lakes Region continued to produce snow across parts of the Ohio Valley and the Great Lakes Region. Snowfall totals along the shore of Lake Superior reached 24 inches, with three feet of snow reported in the Porcupine Mountain area of Upper Michigan. Marquette, MI established a November record with 17.3 inches of snow in 24 hours. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
6 November 1989...Unseasonably warm weather prevailed in the south central and southeastern U.S. The high temperature of 89 degrees at the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport in Texas equaled their record for November. (Storm Data) (The National Weather Summary)
6 November 1994...Downtown San Francisco, CA was drenched with 6.19 inches of rain in 24 hours to set an all-time record for the city.
7 November 1986...Temperatures reached a daily record 86 degrees at New Orleans, LA, equaling the highest ever for November. (Storm Data) (Intellicast)
8 November 1914...On this date the longest "official" rain-free time span on record for the U.S. of 767 days ended in Bagdad, CA. Some meteorologists question the accuracy of this record kept by railroad employees at that time. (Accord Weather Guide Calendar)
8 November 1966...The temperature in downtown San Francisco reached a November record of 86 degrees. (The Weather Channel)
8 November 1991...The first week of November ended in Iowa with the average temperature for the state of 18.3 degrees, a full 24.7 degrees below normal. Easily this was the coldest first week of November ever. (Intellicast)
8 November 1999...The temperature reached 89 degrees at Kennebec, South Dakota, breaking the all time record for the warmest November maximum temperature ever recorded in the state. (The Weather Doctor)
9 November 1913...The "Freshwater Fury", a rapidly deepening cyclone, caused unpredicted gales on the Great Lakes. Cleveland, OH reported 17.4 inches of snow in 24 hours, and a total of 22.2 inches, both all-time records for that location. During the storm, winds at Cleveland averaged 50 mph, with gusts to 79 mph. (David Ludlum) (The Weather Channel)
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)

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