WEEKLY CLIMATE NEWS

9-13 February 2009

CURRENT CLIMATE MONITORING

A heat wave Down Under -- An image of surface temperature anomalies (differences between actual and average temperatures) across Australia generated from data collected during the last week of January from the MODIS sensor on NASA's Terra satellite shows significantly above average temperatures across southern sections of that continent associated with an "exceptional" heat wave and a major drought. On the other hand, below average temperatures were found across northern sections of Australia associated with above average precipitation. [NASA Earth Observatory]
New polar orbiting satellite is launched for environmental surveillance -- At the end of last week, NASA launched a new polar-orbiting environmental satellite identified as NOAA-N Prime from Vandenberg AFB, CA into a 102-minute polar orbit around the earth. By late February, operational control of this newly-designated NOAA-19 satellite will be switched to NOAA as the satellite will collect weather and oceanic data to support NOAA's weather and climate monitoring and forecasting missions. [NASA Earth Observatory] [NOAA News]
NOAA ship returns to homeport after servicing buoy network -- The NOAA Ship Ronald H. Brown recently returned to Charleston, SC, its homeport, after a four-month mission in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean that involved servicing the 70 instrumented moored buoys that form part of the Tropical Atmosphere Ocean Array and provide meteorological and oceanographic data for climate studies. [NOAA News]
How satellites monitor global sea surface heights -- A background article prepared by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center describes some of the features used by NASA's Jason-1, Topex/Poseidon, and OSTM/Jason-2 satellites to collect sea surface heights from all the global oceans. [NASA GSFC]
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]
Global and US Hazards/Climate Extremes -- A review and analysis of the global impacts of various weather-related events, including drought, floods and storms during the current month. [NCDC]

CLIMATE FORCING

Stratospheric winds could impact winter weather at the surface -- Researchers with the Goddard Modeling and Assimilation Office at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center have produced a series of graphics that show the temperatures and the vorticity (a measure of the spin in the wind pattern) at altitudes of approximately 20 km within the lower stratosphere from January through early February. These researchers point to a dramatic change in these patterns, including a rapid stratospheric warming and a reversal in the winds that they claim were associated with unseasonably cold weather across Europe and the US. [NASA Earth Observatory]
Delays in stratospheric ozone recovery foreseen -- Researchers at Johns Hopkins University and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center who ran simulations using the Goddard Earth Observing System Chemistry-Climate Model warn that the recovery of stratospheric ozone could be delayed or indefinitely postponed because of changes in the atmospheric circulation patterns caused by increasing global temperatures. [EurekAlert!]

CLIMATE AND THE BIOSPHERE

Ancient mass extinction still felt in modern organism census -- Paleontologists at the University of Chicago and the University of California, Berkley, who examined the lineage of living marine bivalves as part of an international biological census claim that the evolutionary pattern of these organisms is still influenced by the mass extinction caused by an asteroid at approximately 65 million years ago, which marked the demise of the dinosaurs and signaled the end of the Cretaceous Period. [EurekAlert!]
Antarctic sea life appears threatened by higher global temperatures -- A biology professor at Florida Institute of Technology warns that increased global temperatures could warm the shallow waters surrounding Antarctica, resulting in a major disruption in the primeval marine ecosystem communities. [EurekAlert!]

CLIMATE FORECASTS

A new La Niña/El Niño alert system unveiled -- Late last week, forecasters at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center released a La Niña advisory under the new El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) Alert System as part of their monthly ENSO Diagnostic Discussion. A La Niña event is associated with anomalous atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns that result in significantly below average sea surface temperatures the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, as well as other anomalous weather patterns elsewhere around the globe. The La Niña advisory indicates that La Niña conditions were expected to continue through April, with anticipated warm and dry conditions across southwestern and southeastern sections of the US, along with cooler than average weather across the Pacific Northwest and wetter conditions across the Ohio Valley. [NOAA News]
Major spring flooding foreseen along the Red River of the North -- NOAA forecasters at the North Central River Forecast Center are alerting residents of eastern North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota to anticipate significant spring flooding across the Red River Valley during the next several months because of the above average autumn and winter precipitation, along with the above average water content of the snowpack across the watershed that saw major catastrophic flooding during the spring of 1997. [NOAA News]
Amplified sea-level rise could follow West Antarctica Ice Sheet collapse -- Geophysicists from the University of Toronto and Oregon State University warn that projected increases in global temperature could cause the collapse and melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, resulting in an amplification of the rise in sea level across the Northern Hemisphere to levels not previously anticipated. [University of Toronto] [EurekAlert!]

PALEOCLIMATE RECONSTRUCTION

Earliest evidence of animal life is found -- An international team of scientists including those from the University of California, Riverside and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology claims that finding the oldest evidence for multi-cellular animals in sedimentary rock strata in Oman dating back to 635 million years ago, or approximately 100 million years prior to the Cambrian explosion when animal life rapidly diversified. One of the researchers claims that climatic conditions concurrent with extensive glacial episodes between 1000 and 542 million years ago could have been responsible for causing a major altering of marine ecosystems. [EurekAlert!]

CLIMATE AND SOCIETY

Economies dependent upon fisheries could suffer from climate change -- A team of scientists at the WorldFish Center, the University of East Anglia, Simon Fraser University, the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, the University of Bremen, and the Mekong River Commission has identified those nations in primarily in Asia, Africa and South America that are extremely vulnerable to projected changes in global climate as their fishery-dependent economies could suffer greatly due to adverse environmental impacts place upon their fisheries by the environmental changes. [EurekAlert!]
Worst drought in China in half a century -- Chinese officials have raised the drought-emergency-alert level to red and released money in emergency aid as China continues to experience the worst drought in half a century, with some locations have had less than half the precipitation than what they had received last year. [CNN News] Cloud seeding operations were conducted to stimulate precipitation as chemicals were injected into the atmosphere by rockets and cannon shells. [USA Today]
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]
Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com] Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Historical Events:

9 February 1899…Norway House, Manitoba reported a temperature of 63 degrees below zero to set the province's record for lowest temperature. (The Weather Doctor)
9 February 1933...The temperature at Moran, WY, located next to Teton National Park, plunged to 63 degrees below zero to establish a state record. The temperature at the Riverside Ranger Station in Montana near West Yellowstone, MT dipped to 66 below zero to establish a record for the state, and a record for the nation, which stood until 1954. (David Ludlum)
9 February 1934...The mercury dipped to 51 degrees below zero at Vanderbilt to establish a record for the state of Michigan. The temperature at Stillwater Reservoir plunged to 52 degrees below zero to establish a record for the state of New York; this record was subsequently tied in February 1979. (David Ludlum) (NCDC)
10 February 1899...The record low temperature for the state of Ohio was set at Milligan when the mercury dipped to 39 degrees below zero. The record low temperature for Virginia was also set at Monterey with 29 degrees below zero; this record has been broken in January 1985. (Intellicast) (Sandra and TI Richard Sanders - 1987)
11 February 1895…Braemar (Grampian), Scotland reported a temperature of 17 degrees below zero, the lowest temperature ever measured in the United Kingdom. (The Weather Doctor)
11 February 1899...Perhaps the greatest of all arctic outbreaks commenced on this date. The record low temperature for Washington, DC was set when the temperature fell to 15 degrees below zero. (David Ludlum) (Intellicast)
11 February 1935…Temperature of 11 degrees below zero at Ifrane, Morocco was the lowest temperature ever in Africa. (The Weather Doctor)
11 February 1970...Mount Washington, NH, the highest point in New England, recorded 10.38 inches during a 24-hour span (10^th-11^th) to set a statewide 24 hour maximum precipitation record. (NCDC)
11 February 1999…Tahtsa Lake, located in the Whitesail Range of the Coast Mountains of British Columbia reported 57 inches of snow, which set a new 24-hour snowfall record for Canada, eclipsing the old record of 46.5 inches of snow that fell at Lakelse, BC on 17 January 1974. This former record replaced a 44.0 inch summertime snowfall on 29 June 1963 at Livingston Ranger Station, AB. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar) (The Weather Doctor)
12 February 1899...Texas and the eastern Great Plains experienced their coldest morning of modern record. The temperature at Camp Clarke, NE plunged to 47 degrees below zero to establish a record for the Cornhusker State; this record has been tied in December 1989. (David Ludlum)
13 February 1784...Ice floes blocked the Mississippi River at New Orleans, then passed into the Gulf of Mexico. The only other time this occurred was during the "Great Arctic Outbreak" of 1899. (David Ludlum)
13 February 1899...It was the coldest morning of record along the Gulf Coast. The mercury dipped to 2 degrees below zero at Tallahassee, the lowest reading of record for the state of Florida. The record low temperature for the state of Louisiana was set at Minden, when the thermometer fell to 16 degrees below zero. A trace of snow fell at Fort Myers, FL. This was the farthest south snow has ever been observed in the U.S. until 1977 when snow fell in Miami. The lowest temperature ever recorded at Dayton, OH occurred when it dropped to 28 degrees below zero. (David Ludlum) (Intellicast)
13 February 1905...Morning lows of 29 degrees below zero at Pond, AR, 40 degrees below at Lebanon, KS, and 40 below at Warsaw, MO established all-time records for those three states. (The Weather Channel)
15 February 1936...The temperature at Parshall, ND plunged to 60 degrees below zero to establish a state record low temperature. On the 6^th of July that same year, the temperature at Steele, ND hit 121 degrees, also a state record high temperature. (David Ludlum)

Return to DataStreme ECS website