DataStreme ECS WEEK ELEVEN: 8-12 April 2013

ITEMS OF INTEREST

• Viewing planet Earth from space -- NASA has developed an interactive feature that provides the public with several sites to see spectacular images and visualizations of various features of planet Earth, many obtained from data collected by various sensors onboard the agency's orbiting spacecraft or output statistics obtained by simulations run on computer models at its various research centers. These interactive sites include:
  • "Earth Month 2013" -- Under the theme "understanding and sustaining our home planet," a collage of NASA Earth Science highlight topics range from changes in Arctic sea ice and global temperature to the first global map of the saltiness of the surface waters of the global oceans. [NASA Earth Month]
  • "Earth from Orbit in 2012" -- A 2-minute: 27-second video that provides some of the best views of Earth from space during 2012. [NASA Earth Month]
• First image from a meteorological satellite was 53 years ago -- Last Monday (1 April 2013) marked the 53rd anniversary of the first images that were produced from data collected by the sensor onboard TIROS-1 (for Television Infrared Observation Satellites), the Earth's first operational weather satellite that had been launched by NASA on 1 April 1960. Comparison is invited between the first TIROS-1 images showing clouds including those from a tropical cyclone and the variety of satellite images obtained from the recently launched Suomi NPP satellite. [CIMSS Satellite Blog, University of Wisconsin-Madison]
• Observatory marks 25 years monitoring Alaskan volcanoes -- At the start of last week, the Alaska Volcano Observatory marked its 25th anniversary for monitoring Alaska's volcanoes as part of a cooperative program involving the US Geological Survey, the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, and the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys. During this 25-year span, the Alaska Volcano Observatory has monitored and issued warnings for over 70 eruptive events from the state's 52 historically active volcanoes. The volcanic eruptions can endanger intercontinental aircraft traveling across the North Pacific and affect various aspects of human activity in Alaska involving fishing, oil production and human health. [USGS Newsroom]
• Masters climatology -- The 2013 Masters Golf Tournament, one of professional golf's four major championships, will begin this coming Thursday (11 April) at the Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, GA. The Southeast Regional Climate Center has produced a Masters Climatology for 1934-2012 that includes the daily maximum and minimum temperatures and the 24-hour precipitation totals for each day of the four-day event in early April, extending over the last 78 years.
• Accessing the national climatographies -- NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) has produced numerous climatographies that are quantitative descriptions of climate that include tables and charts portraying the characteristic values of selected climatic elements at a station or over an area. Some of these climatographies provide a variety of daily, monthly and annual normal climate data for agricultural, transportation and other interests. This week's Supplemental Information...In Greater Depth provides the links to selected climatographies from NCDC.

CURRENT CLIMATE STATUS

• While Arctic warmed, midlatitudes were chilly in March 2013 -- A global surface temperature anomaly chart for the third week of March 2013 obtained from data collected from the MODIS instrument onboard NASA's Aqua satellite shows Arctic regions of North America including Greenland and Canada's Nunavut Territory experiencing above average temperatures, while below average temperatures were found across much of south central Canada, the eastern United States, Europe and Russia. This apparent juxtaposition of temperature anomalies (or differences between observed and long-term average temperatures) is due to an atmospheric circulation pattern associated with an unusual atmospheric pressure pattern. Meteorologists track this atmospheric pressure pattern using the Arctic Oscillation (AO) index. For early March this AO index was negative, indicating a weakened pressure gradient across Arctic regions as the pressure across the Arctic was higher than usual. [NASA Earth Observatory]

CURRENT CLIMATE MONITORING

• Unmanned aircraft used to study volcanic plume -- Scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory used three re-configured former military unmanned aerial vehicles during March to gather data concerning volcanic ash and gases such as sulfur dioxide emanating from Costa Rica's Turrialba volcano. This project is designed to improve the remote sensing capability of satellites, such as obtained from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument on NASA's Terra spacecraft. In addition, improvement of the computer models of volcanic activity should help contribute to safeguarding the National and International Airspace System, mitigate environmental hazards and improve global climate predictions. [NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory]
• An insight into the preparation of the weekly US Drought Monitor -- During the last several years, the media, the public and policy-makers on the local, state and federal level have turned to the US Drought Monitor (USDM) to monitor and assess the severity of the drought across the nation. Often, great anticipation greets the release of this map each Thursday morning, as the classification of a drought category in a certain area may have important economic ramifications for that region. The national map, along with an accompanying narrative, is produced by a scientist from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln or the Western Regional Climate Center who serves as the weekly author on a rotating basis. A sequence of well-defined steps that spans the week is involved in the preparation of the USDM. [NCDC News]
  Editor's Note: An earlier article in this series describes the history and function of the US drought monitoring program. [NCDC News] EJH
• 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

• Low, thin Arctic clouds played a significant role in massive 2012 Greenland ice melt -- According to a study conducted by scientists at NOAA's National Severe Storms Laboratory, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Idaho and the University of Colorado-Boulder, the presence of low-lying clouds played an important role in the record-breaking melt of the Greenland Ice Sheet during the summer of 2012. Basing their analysis on data collected from the ICECAPS (Integrated Characterization of Energy, Clouds, Atmospheric state and Precipitation) Mobile Science Facility at Summit Station, the scientists claim that these low clouds were sufficiently thin to allow sunlight to penetrate and warm the Greenland ice surface, while preventing the escape of thermal radiation from the surface at the same time. [NOAA News]
• Increased interhemispheric temperature differences could shift tropical rainfall patterns -- Climatologists at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Washington claim that increased temperature differences between the Northern and Southern Hemisphere could significantly alter tropical precipitation patterns especially in areas such as the Amazon, sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia. As the Northern Hemisphere warms faster than its southern counterpart, the tropical rainfall pattern appears to be shifting northward along with the Intertropical Convergence Zone, which could result in increases in monsoon weather systems in Asia. [University of California, Berkeley News Center]

CLIMATE FORECASTS

• Increasing global temperatures should intensify extreme precipitation events -- A team of researchers from NOAA's National Climatic Data Center, North Carolina State, the Desert Research Institute, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and ERT, Inc. report that as global temperatures increase, the increased atmospheric humidity levels should make the most extreme precipitation events even more severe in terms of precipitation rates. Using information generated by a climate model, they claim that if greenhouse gases continue to rise at a high emissions rate, a 20 to 30 percent increase in the "probable maximum precipitation" across a large area of the Northern Hemisphere would be possible by the year 2100. [NOAA News]
• Seasonal Drought Outlook updated -- Late last week, forecasters at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center updated their US Seasonal Drought Outlook that is valid for the remainder of meteorological spring and the first month of meteorological June (April through June) 2013. This outlook indicates that drought conditions were expected to persist across nearly the entire western half of the nation, primarily across the southern Plains, the Rockies and the Great Basin westward to southern California. Some additional expansion of the drought conditions was anticipated across California and interior sections of the Northwest. Improvement was expected across the Southeast, the upper Midwest and the Ozark Plateau, with some slight improvement across the northern and central Plains.

PALEOCLIMATE RECONSTRUCTION

• Pool of warm ocean water in ancient times brings current climate models into question -- Scientists at the United Kingdom's University College London and Yale University claim that the presence of a huge pool of warm ocean water in the Pliocene era ocean approximately four million years ago would suggest current climate models may be too conservative in forecasting tropical changes. These researchers point that this warm pool, which stretched from Indonesia to African and South America, would have dramatically altered rainfall in the tropics, possibly even removing the monsoon. Furthermore, the decay of this warm pool and the consequential drying of East Africa may have been a factor in Hominid evolution. [University College London]

CLIMATE AND SOCIETY

• Achievable fuel and car standards proposed to slash air pollution and provide health benefits -- The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently released proposed sensible standards for cars and gasoline that would significantly reduce harmful pollution, prevent thousands of premature deaths and illnesses, while also enabling efficiency improvements in the motor vehicles that the public drive. [EPA Newsroom]
• 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.

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.)

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

Historical Events:

• 8-10 April 1958...A global 48-hour precipitation record was established at Aurere, La Reunion Island, when 97.1 in. of rain from a tropical cyclone fell on the Indian Ocean island. (The Weather Doctor)
• 8 April 1989...Two dozen cities in the southwestern U.S. reported new record high temperatures for the date. Phoenix, AZ equaled their record for April of 104 degrees established just the previous day. (The National Weather Summary)
• 9 April 1983...Hottest day in Malaysian historical record, as the temperature reached at Chuping, Malaysia reached 101 degrees, a record that was tied nine days later. (The Weather Doctor)
• 9 April 2000...A record April snowfall of 14.6 in. shut down Montreal, Quebec. Snow removal contracts had ended on 1 April. (The Weather Doctor)
• 9 April 1995...Glasgow, MT recorded 12.2 inches of snow in 24 hours, its greatest 24-hour snowfall on record. (Intellicast)
• 10 April 1985...A late season cold snap in the east set record low April temperatures in the following cities: Asheville, NC, 23 degrees; Beckley, WV, 11 degrees; Elkins, WV, 3 degrees. April record lows were tied in Raleigh-Durham, NC (23 degrees) and Roanoke, VA (20 degrees). (Intellicast)
• 10 April 1996...A wind gust of 253 mph was measured when the eyewall of Tropical Cyclone Olivia passed over Australia's Barrow Island. This gust became the highest surface wind speed record, replacing the 231-mph wind gust measured at New Hampshire's Mount Washington Observatory on 12 April 1934. (Accord Weather Guide Calendar)
• 12 April 1815...Massive eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia blew 400 cubic kilometers (100 cubic miles) of ash skyward. Eruption disrupted the global weather for several years, particularly noteworthy: the cold summer of 1816 in North America and Europe. (The Weather Doctor)
• 12 April 1934...Winds atop Mount Washington, NH (elevation 6288 feet) averaged a world record 186 mph for five minutes, with a peak gust from the southeast of 231 mph, which is the highest wind speed ever clocked in the world. (David Ludlum) On 10 April 1996, a wind gust of 253 mph was measured when the eyewall of Tropical Cyclone Olivia passed over Australia's Barrow Island and is now considered to be the highest surface wind speed record. (Accord Weather Guide Calendar)
• 12 April 1985...Key West, FL set a new record for April rainfall in a 24-hour period as 6.06 inches of rain were recorded, eclipsing the previous record of 6.04 inches which fell on 29 April 1941. In addition, the heavy rainfall shattered the old record for this date set back in 1931 when 1.49 inches of rain fell. (Intellicast)
• 12 April 1996...Duluth, MN recorded 1.7 inches of snow on this day to raise its seasonal snowfall total to 132.8 inches -- its snowiest winter on record. The old record was 131.6 inches set back in 1949-50. (Intellicast)
• 13 April 1955...The town of Axis, AL was deluged with 20.33 inches of rain in 24 hours establishing a state record. (The Weather Channel)
• 13 April 1985...The high temperature of 86 degrees for this date at Medford, OR was the highest ever so early in the spring season. (Intellicast)
• 14 April 1933...The state intensity record for snowfall for New Hampshire was set at Franklin Lake as 35 inches fell in 24 hours. (Intellicast)
• 14 April 1986...The world's heaviest hailstone, weighing 2.25 pounds, fell in the Gopalganj District of Bangladesh. This hailstone could have reached speeds in excess of 90 mph. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar) (Wikipedia)

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Prepared by Edward J. Hopkins, Ph.D., email hopkins@meteor.wisc.edu
© Copyright, 2013, The American Meteorological Society.