WEEKLY CLIMATE NEWS

8-12 June 2009

DataStreme Earth Climate Systems will return for Fall 2009 with new Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 31 August 2009. All the current online website products will continue to be available throughout the summer break period.

ITEMS OF INTEREST --

World Ocean Day to be celebrated -- World Ocean Day or a "Celebration of the Sea" will be celebrated Monday, 8 June 2009 in an effort to increase public awareness and to foster public involvement in the management of the ocean and its resources. Although this date was created at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, it had not been officially recognized by the United Nations until this year. This year's theme is "one ocean, one climate, one future" with a special focus on the interconnection between the oceans and the Earth's climate, as well as how marine life is vulnerable to climate change. A partial listing is provided for events across the US and other nations that will celebrate World Ocean Day. [The Ocean Project]
"Break the Grip of the Rip®" -- NOAA and National Park Service officials have designated this upcoming week of 7-13 June 2009 as national Rip Current Awareness Week. Using the theme, Break the Grip of the Rip®, efforts are meant to heighten public awareness of rip currents at surf beaches that claim the lives of as many as 100 people in the United States annually. [NOAA News] [NWS Rip Current Safety]

CURRENT CLIMATE MONITORING

Salinity sensor developed for new satellite -- Scientists and technicians at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory recently shipped the Aquarius sensor to the Space Agency of Argentina (Comisión Nacional de Actividades Espaciales, CONAE). This sensor will be placed onboard the Aquarius/SAC-D satellite that is scheduled to be launched in 2010 as a joint NASA/CONAE mission to measure sea surface salinity and its effects on ocean circulation, the water cycle and climate. [NASA JPL]
Alaskan satellite operations facility to be built -- NOAA and the US Army Corps of Engineers recently selected a local builder to construct a new NOAA satellite operations facility in Fairbanks, AK that would receive data from satellites for use in weather and climate monitoring and forecasting operations. This project represents the first one that NOAA has funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. [NOAA News]
New radar system built for upper atmospheric research in Alaska -- SRI International, an independent nonprofit research institute, recently made available some preliminary results from two years of monitoring small-scale upper atmospheric phenomena such as aurora and solar storms over Alaska using a new radar system called the Advanced Modular Incoherent Scatter Radar (AMISR). [SRI International]
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

Changes in Antarctic "ozone hole" seen over three decades -- Comparison of images made by NASA’s Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) instrument aboard the Nimbus-7 satellite in 1979 and the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on NASA’s Aura satellite in 2008 reveals changes in the area and concentration of low stratospheric ozone concentrations over Antarctica often dubbed the "ozone hole." [NASA Earth Observatory]
Magnetic tornadoes found in Mercury's rarefied atmosphere -- Scientists at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center studying data obtained from NASA's MESSENGER flyby mission to Mercury have discovered "magnetic tornadoes" or vortices of plasma in the magnetic field surrounding that planet, which has a tenuous atmosphere. [NASA GSFC]

CLIMATE AND THE BIOSPHERE

Monitoring biosphere changes from space -- NASA scientists have been monitoring the changes in the biosphere over the last few years from data collected by various satellites, such as the maps showing the detected ocean chlorophyll data obtained from the SeaWiFS Project and vegetation data courtesy of the Global Mapping and Modelling & Mapping Studies (GIMMS) project. Two maps are provided showing the annually averaged data in 2002 and 2008. [NASA Earth Observatory]
Tracking penguins from space -- Scientists with the British Antarctic Survey have used satellite imagery, such as that obtained from the Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus on NASA’s Landsat 7, to map the existence of emperor penguin colonies from guano stains left on sea ice. [NASA Earth Observatory] [EurekAlert!]

CLIMATE FORECASTS

Eye on the tropics -- NASA scientists at the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory who have been monitoring atmospheric and oceanic data obtained from the fleet of satellites managed by NASA report that some recent oceanic signals appear to provide a hint of forthcoming tropical cyclone (hurricane) activity. Sea surface temperatures across the tropical Atlantic are currently below the long-term average, which could result in reduced hurricane activity. In the eastern Pacific, the recent La Niña event appears to be fading, but the Pacific Decadal Oscillation remains in a cool phase, while warm waters remain across the western tropical Pacific, which would result in more western Pacific typhoons. [NASA JPL/GSFC]
Improvements made to predictions of worldwide famine -- NASA is funding several new projects that will use the latest computer models along with satellite data to better understand famine around the world and the economic impacts of food crises as part of the worldwide Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET). [NASA LRC]
Climate models used to predict epidemics in American tropics -- Researchers from the University of Miami and the University of Costa Rica have used global climatological data and vegetation indices from Costa Rica, to predict Dengue Fever (DF) and Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever outbreaks in Central America. [EurekAlert!]
African farmland could suffer from climate change -- In a recently released study, researchers from Nairobi-based International Livestock Research Institute and the United Kingdom's Waen Associates who ran climate models warn changes in climate across Africa by 2050 would result making up to one million square kilometers of marginal African farmland unable to support subsistence level of food crops due to increased temperatures and shifting rainfall patterns. However, the researchers felt that the land could still support livestock. [EurekAlert!]

CLIMATE AND SOCIETY

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 June 1966...Hurricane Alma made landfall over the eastern Florida Panhandle -- the earliest land falling hurricane on the U.S. mainland on record. (Intellicast)
9 June 1988...The temperature at Del Rio, TX soared to an all-time record high of 112 degrees. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
9 June 1990...San Diego, CA set a new record rainfall amount on this date, as 0.38 inches of rain fell breaking the old record of 0.13 inches established in 1892. Moisture from the remains of Hurricane Boris was responsible for this rare rain event. (Intellicast)
10 June 1995...The temperature at Yakutat, AK soared to 87 degrees for its highest temperature on record. (Intellicast)
11 June 1877...The temperature at Los Angeles, CA reached 112 degrees during a heat wave. It would have been the all-time record for Los Angeles but official records did not begin until twenty days later. Over a century later, Los Angeles would again reach this temperature on 26 June 1990. (The Weather Channel) (The Weather Doctor)
11 June 1972...Heavy showers brought 1.64 inches of rain to Phoenix, AZ, a record for the month of June. (The Weather Channel)
12 June 1991…The largest volcanic eruption of the 20th Century began as Mt Pinatubo in the Philippines injected 15 to 30 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere. Global dust cloud cooled the planet, reversing for a time the global warming trend, as 1992 was globally one of the coolest since the 1970s. On the same day that Mt Pinatubo awakens from its 635-year slumber, Typhoon Yunya crossed Luzon province. Mudslides and flooding caused many deaths and added with impacts of Pinatubo leaving more than a million homeless. (The Weather Doctor)
13 June 1907...The temperature at Tamarack, CA dipped to 2 degrees above zero, the lowest reading of record for June for the U.S. The high that day was 30 degrees. Tamarack received 42 inches of snow between the 10^thand the 13^th. On the 13^th the snow depth was 130 inches. (The Weather Channel)
13 June 1977…Masirah, Oman received 16.95 inches of rain this day, a national record. (The Weather Doctor)
14 June 1876…Cherrapunji, India recorded 1036.3 mm (40.8 inches) of rain in 24 hours. (The Weather Doctor)
14 June 1961...The temperature in Downtown San Francisco, CA soared to 106 degrees to establish an all-time record for that location. (The Weather Channel)

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