25-29 April 2011

DataStreme Earth Climate System will return for Fall 2011 with new Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 29 August 2011. All the current online website products will continue to be available throughout the summer break period.

ITEMS OF INTEREST

• National Science Bowl set for next weekend --
  The US Department of Energy (DOE) National Science Bowl®, a nationwide academic competition for middle and high school students will be held this coming weekend (28 April-3 May 2011) in Washington, DC. This event will test students' knowledge in all areas of science and is meant to encourage high school students to excel in science and math and to pursue careers in those fields. [DOE Office of Science]
• Celebrating Arbor Day --
This coming Friday, 29 April 2011, many locations across the nation will celebrate Arbor Day, a day when the planting of trees is encouraged. Arbor Day was originally proposed in 1872 by J. Sterling Morton, Nebraska's first newspaper editor, and continues to be most often celebrated by individual states on the last Friday in April. However, since planting conditions vary greatly due to the state's climate it may occur from September to May. In Arkansas, Arbor Day is celebrated on the third Monday in March, but in Alaska, the date is the third Monday in May. For your state's observance (and name of the official state tree), please consult the National Arbor Day Foundation.
• Between equinox and solstice --
Next Sunday (1 May 2011) will be May Day, which had its origins as a great Celtic festival Beltane. This date is close to the traditional "cross quarter" day, roughly halfway between the vernal equinox (20 March 2011) and the summer solstice (21 June 2011). (Note that Friday 6 May 2011 is closer to the halfway point between the equinox and solstice. EJH)
• The Great Central US ShakeOut --
On Thursday 28 April 2011 at 10:15 AM CDT, many families, schools, businesses and local governments across the Midwest and the South Central States will be participating in the first Great Central US ShakeOut, a drill designed to educate the public about how to protect themselves during a large earthquake, This drill, designed to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the New Madrid earthquakes in 1811 and 1812, is expected to be the largest earthquake drill to ever take place in the Central US. [Great Central US ShakeOut]

CURRENT CLIMATE STATUS

• State and city weather extremes for February 2011 --
  The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) has posted "Selected U.S. City and State Extremes for February 2011" that contains a listing of some of the notable extremes in temperature, precipitation and other weather elements across the nation for the month of February 2011. Note that this site may be updated during the following several weeks as more data are received and analyzed.
• March drought report --
The National Climate Data Center has posted its March 2011 drought report online. Using the Palmer Drought Severity Index, approximately eight percent of the coterminous United States experienced severe to extreme drought conditions at the end of March, while 20 percent of the area had severely to extremely wet conditions.
• Australian cyclone season rainfall estimated by satellites --
A map of the precipitation accumulated across Australia between January and April 2011 was generated by the Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis at NASA's Goddard Space Flight using data from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite. Most of the precipitation across northern Australia was from several tropical cyclones that traveled across the region and that had storm tracks plotted on the map. [NASA Hurricane Mission]

CURRENT CLIMATE MONITORING

• US joins effort to track black carbon across the Arctic basin --
  NOAA scientists are joining their colleagues from Norway, Russia, Germany, Italy and China in the Coordinated Investigation of Climate-Cryosphere Interactions (CICCI) project designed to track black carbon or soot in the Arctic in an attempt to see the potential impact of this soot upon Arctic climate. NOAA's contribution to this project is called the Soot Transport, Absorption, and Deposition Study (STADS) and is currently being conducted using two of the agency's instrumented aircraft. [NOAA News]
• Large-scale ice making at bottom of Antarctic ice sheets --
An international research team mapping the topography of the ice surface and of the buried mountain range at the bottom of the ice sheet in East Antarctic have found evidence that large-scale ice formation can occur at the bottom of the Antarctic ice sheets. They mapped the ice during the International Polar Year using a Twin Otter aircraft equipped with ice-penetrating radar, magnetometers, laser ranging systems and gravity meters. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• 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

• Scattering effect of clouds on Earth's energy budget is wavelength-dependent --
  Atmospheric scientists at the US Department of Energy's Department of Energy's Northwest National Laboratory have found that the amount of wavelength-dependent solar radiation scattered by clouds is an important component in the Earth's energy budget and including these contributions would increase the accuracy of climate models. [Pacific Northwest National Laboratory]
• "Ozone Hole" linked to broader climate change --
Researchers at Columbia University and the Canadian Centre for Climate Modeling and Analysis claim that the depletion of stratospheric ozone over the South Pole, often called the "ozone hole," appears to have affected the atmospheric circulation pattern of the entire Southern Hemisphere, including increased rainfall over tropical latitudes of that hemisphere. [Columbia University]

PALEOCLIMATE RECONSTRUCTION

• Estimating ancient climates from plant leaves --
  Geologists at Baylor University and Wesleyan University have developed a new method to reconstruct temperature and precipitation over the last 120 million years using the different size and shape traits of leaves. [Baylor University]
• Earth's recovery from prehistoric global warming is studied --
Scientists from Purdue University and the University of California, Santa Cruz, recently reported that their study of the end of the 170,000-year-long Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (approximately 56 million years ago) appears to indicate that the Earth may be able to recover from rising carbon dioxide emissions faster than previously thought. [Purdue University]
• Fossil sea cows help provide view of ancient climate --
Scientists from the University of Wyoming and Kutztown University using isotopic analysis of sirenian (sea cows) fossils along with output from a climate simulation model have been able to ascertain the temperature and composition of sea water, and hence the climate, during the Eocene Epoch (approximately 50 million years ago) when the first modern mammals emerged. [NSF]

CLIMATE AND SOCIETY

• Political views lead to disagreements in why climate changes --
  In research polls conducted by the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire, disagreement as to why climate is changing tends to be based on political views. The researchers found that Republicans tend to view climate change is based on natural causes, while Democrats generally believe human activities are the cause. [University of New Hampshire]
• 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]

COMPARATIVE PLANETOLOGY

• Martian orbiter reveals large dry ice deposits that could affect the Red Planet's atmosphere --
  Using data collected from the Shallow Subsurface Radar (SHARAD) instrument on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have produced a map detailing the thickness of the buried solid carbon dioxide (dry ice) deposited in the Martian soil near the planet's south pole. Over time scales of no more than 100,000 years, the size of these deposits could change, resulting in a significant change in the composition and mass of the Martian atmosphere. [NASA JPL]
• Earthweek --
Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com] Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Historical Events:

• 25 April 1875...New York City received three inches of snow, the latest measurable snow of record for that location. (David Ludlum)
• 25 April 1898...The temperature at Volcano Springs, CA hit 118 degrees to establish an U.S. record for the month of April. (The Weather Channel)
• 27 April 1915...The temperature at Washington, DC hit 92 degrees, the highest ever in April. New York City hit 92 degrees as well. (Intellicast)
• 27 April 1931...The temperature at Pahala, located on the main island of Hawaii, soared to 100 degrees to establish a state high temperature record. (The Weather Channel)
• 27 April 1960...The highest temperature ever recorded in Thailand reached 112 degrees at Uttaradit, Thailand . (The Weather Doctor)
• 27 April 1988...Mount Washington, NH reported seven ft of snow in ten days, pushing their snowfall total for the month to 89.9 in., surpassing the previous record of 89.3 in. set in 1975. Records have been kept at the Observatory on the summit since December 1932. (The National Weather Summary) (Intellicast)
• 27 April 2003...The largest hail storm ever recorded at Key West, FL was reported between 4:10 and 4:20 PM, hailstones ranging in size from one-half inch up to one and three-quarter inches fell. It is the eleventh recorded hail event (since 1871) at Key West. (The Weather Doctor)
• 28 April 1973...The all-time record crest of the Mississippi River at St. Louis, MO was recorded at 43.3 ft, exceeding the former 1884 mark by 1.9 ft. (Intellicast) This record has since been exceeded by a record flood level of 49.6 feet on 1 August 1993. (National Weather Service)
• 29 April 1910...The temperature at Kansas City, MO soared to 95 degrees to establish a record for the month of April. Four days earlier the afternoon high in Kansas City was 44 degrees, following a record cold morning low of 34 degrees. (The Weather Channel) (The Kansas City Weather Almanac)
  North America's deadliest rockslide was caused by snowmelt followed by temperatures near zero degrees Fahrenheit that caused water in the rock joints under Turtle Mountain in the Canadian Rockies to freeze and expand. Ninety million tons of limestone fell some 3000 ft onto Frank, AB. As many as 70 people died as the result of the rockslide. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
• 29 April 1912...The highest temperature ever recorded in Oceania was 108 degrees that occurred on this date at Tuguegarao, Philippines. (The Weather Doctor)
• 29 April 1973...The Mississippi River reached a crest of 43.4 ft at St. Louis, MO, breaking the previous record of 42 ft established in 1785. (David Ludlum)
• 30 April 1888...World's deadliest hailstorm occurred at Moradabad, India as enormous hailstones killed 230 persons and many livestock. An additional 16 people died in another town. (The Weather Doctor)
• 30 April 1991...Memphis, TN set a new monthly rainfall record for April with 17.13 inches of rain. The old record was 13.90 inches set back in 1877. (Intellicast)
• 30 April 1994...The rain finally stopped on the Kaneohe Ranch on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, ending a streak of 247 consecutive days of rain that began 27 August 1993. (The Weather Doctor)
• 1 May 1854...After 66 hours of steady rain, the Connecticut River reached a level of nearly twenty-nine feet (28 feet 10.5 inches) at Hartford, CT (the highest level of record until that time). The record height was reached in the midst of a great New England flood that followed sixty-six hours of steady rain. (David Ludlum) (Intellicast)
• 1 May 1935...Snow, ice and sleet brought winter back to parts of southeast Minnesota. Minneapolis received three inches of snow to tie their May record that was established in 1892. (1^st-2^nd) (The Weather Channel)
• 1 May 1954...The temperature at Polebridge, MT dipped to 5 degrees below zero to establish a state record for the month of May. (The Weather Channel)

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Prepared by Edward J. Hopkins, Ph.D., email hopkins@meteor.wisc.edu
© Copyright, 2011, The American Meteorological Society.