WEEKLY CLIMATE NEWS

27-31 July 2009

ITEMS OF INTEREST --

Saturday, 1 August 2009, is the ancient Celtic holiday of Lammas that corresponds to one of the cross quarter days, lying nearly halfway between the summer solstice (21 June 2009) and the autumnal equinox (22 September 2009). This holiday, also known as "loaf-mass" day, originally marked the first wheat harvest of the year in the British Isles. [Editor's note: Next Wednesday, 6 August 2009 represents the exact halfway point between the dates of the solstice and equinox. EJH]
Catching the march of the eclipse shadow -- A pair of visible images of the Eastern Hemisphere obtained last Wednesday from the Japanese geosynchronous satellite MTSAT shows the progression of the Moon's shadow cast across sections of southeastern China and the Pacific Ocean during this century's longest total solar eclipse. [NASA Earth Observatory]
Educational partnership announced for the City By the Bay -- A five-year partnership between NOAA and the Exploratorium in San Francisco, CA was announced last week that would develop hands-on interactive displays at the Exploratorium near Fisherman's Wharf designed to provide the public with state of the art climate and ocean science. [NOAA News]

CURRENT CLIMATE MONITORING

Below average precipitation marks this summer's Indian monsoon -- A map showing the precipitation anomaly patterns (the arithmetic difference between actual and long term average precipitation values) across south Asia in mid-July 2009 generated from data collected from NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite shows below average precipitation across sections of India and Bangladesh. Since the region is a primary crop area, fears of food shortages have been voiced. On the other hand, several areas of India and Pakistan received flooding rain that resulted in fatalities. The rainfall patterns appear to be consistent with the possible development of an El Niño episode. [NASA Earth Observatory]
Monitoring sea ice off northern Canada -- An image obtained from the MODIS sensor onboard NASA's Terra satellite in early July shows the sea ice remaining along the coast of Canada’s Baffin Island. Last week, the National Snow and Ice Data Center reported that during the first half of this current month, the sea ice extent had retreated at a faster rate than in 2008, but not as fast as during the record 2007 season. [NASA Earth Observatory]
A warm winter for Australian scientists -- Those scientists at Casey Station, a permanent base in Antarctica operated by the Australian Antarctic Division, experienced the warmest July in the 20 years of record, according to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. [Australian Broadcasting Corporation]
Watching the seasonal variations in aerosol loading from space - NASA scientists associated with the Earth Observatory mission have assembled a sequence of monthly false-color maps of aerosol concentrations around the globe generated from data collected from the MODIS sensor on NASA’s Terra satellite between January 2005 and June 2009. In addition to seasonal variations of the aerosol loading, the size of the aerosols depends upon the latitude. [NASA Earth Observatory]
New definition of seawater is adopted -- Meeting in Paris, France late last month, the General Assembly of UNESCO's Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) accepted a new international definition of seawater developed by Australian, German and US scientists, cast in terms of a new salinity variable called "Absolute Salinity." The commission, considered the world's foremost ocean science body, hopes that this new thermodynamic definition of seawater will increase the accuracy of climate projections. [CSIRO] [Editor's Note: For additional information concerning the determination of salinity, see A pinch of salt produced by IOC. 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

Assessing the role that the solar cycle plays in driving global climate -- NCAR researchers have used global climate computer models and ocean temperature data since 1890 in an attempt to determine the connection between solar activity and changes in global climate. They have found that maximum solar activity during a solar cycle appears to have impacts on Earth that resemble La Niña and El Niño events in the tropical Pacific Ocean. [NCAR/UCAR]
An African volcano is detected from space -- An image obtained from the Advanced Land Imager on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 satellite shows a small volcanic plume emanating from the Nyiragongo Volcano in the Democratic Republic of the Congo at the end of June 2009. [NASA Earth Observatory]
New information discovered on solar system's birth -- An international team of astrophysicists claim that they have discovered that the early composition of our solar system may have been the result of radioactive material delivered from a nearby giant star, approximately six times more massive than our current Sun. The type of radioactive nuclei in the protoplanets could help be the source of much Earth's water, an essential ingredient for life. [EurekAlert!]

CLIMATE AND THE BIOSPHERE

Studying annual phytoplankton bloom from space -- A phytoplankton ecologist and physiologist at Oregon State University has developed a theory that explains the timing and cause of the annual phytoplankton bloom across the North Atlantic Ocean using ten years of ocean color data from NASA's Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) instrument. [NASA Earth Science News Team]
A warmer California could threaten state's fruit and nut production -- Researchers from the University of California, Davis, and the University of Washington warn that a projected warmer California would result in a decrease in winter chill in the Golden State's Central Valley by nearly 50 percent during the 21st century, seriously jeopardizing the many of the fruit and nut tree crops that depend upon this winter chill as a vital climate trigger. [EurekAlert!]
Spring cold snap assists in climate-related aspects of ecosystem research -- Researchers at the US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory were provided an unexpected opportunity to see how climate change could have negative effects on stream and forest ecosystems by studying how a rare April 2007 freeze in East Tennessee impacted the productivity of a stream because of a small change in forest canopy cover associated with freezing conditions. [Oak Ridge National Laboratory]
Helping tree species survive climate change -- Geneticists are planting non-native tree species across western sections of the US and Canada in an experiment designed to see if tree species threatened by increased global temperatures in their native locales could thrive in a new location due to the changing climate. [CBS News]
Caribbean coral bleaching is likely -- Early last week, scientists from NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch Program released their Coral Bleaching Outlook that stated conditions appeared favorable for significant coral bleaching and infectious coral disease outbreaks in the waters of the Caribbean Sea, especially around the Lesser Antilles due to high water temperatures anticipated through October 2009. [NOAA News]

CLIMATE FORECASTS

Clouds play a clear role in climate change -- Using a half-century of climate data and many of the major climate models, researchers at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science and Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of San Diego recently reported that increasing ocean temperatures will likely lead to fewer lower level stratiform (layer-type) cloud formations, thereby enhancing warming of the oceans as more direct sunlight passes through the atmosphere. [EurekAlert!]
Precipitation could decrease across the Iberian Peninsula -- A team from Spain's Pyrenean Institute of Ecology who studied more than one-half century of rainfall data across Spain conclude that less precipitation will fall especially in spring and summer across the Iberian Peninsula during the next several decades, the result of higher temperatures associated with increasing greenhouse gas emissions. [EurekAlert!]

PALEOCLIMATE RECONSTRUCTION

A "motion picture" of a past warming event may give clue to future -- Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Center from Climatic Research and the National Center for Atmospheric Research have run a detailed computer simulation of the atmospheric and oceanic conditions over the last 21,000 years, focusing Bølling-Allerød warming event (approximately 14,500 years ago), which may provide some understanding to what abrupt climate shifts that could occur in the future with additional warming of the planet. [University of Wisconsin News] [NCAR/UCAR]
Discovery of tiny diamonds on the Channel Island point to comet impact -- Researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara, the University of Oregon and other institutions who found nano-sized diamonds on California's Santa Rosa Island claim that their discovery indicates strong evidence of a comet impact across North America approximately 12,900 years ago that may have resulted in the extinction of multiple species and the disappearance of the Clovis culture. This discovery fits with the cooling recorded by sediment cores obtained from the adjacent Santa Barbara Channel. [EurekAlert!]

CLIMATE AND SOCIETY

Climate change could threaten western water supply -- A new study entitled "Water Supply Risk on the Colorado River: Can Management Mitigate?" conducted by the University of Colorado at Boulder, NOAA and the US Bureau of Reclamation reports that as temperatures increase across the West during the next several decades, the water flowing through the Colorado River system would diminish, resulting in the depletion of several of the massive reservoirs on the river that provide water supply for 30 million people from the Rockies southwestward to Mexico's Gulf of California. [University of Colorado News]
Nation's wind power market is highlighted -- According to a report prepared by the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory entitled "2008 Wind Technologies Market Report", the US had the world's fastest-growing wind power market with wind power capacity additions increasing by 60 percent in 2008. [Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory]
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]
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]
Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com] Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Historical Events:

27 July 1897...Jewell, MD received 14.75 inches of rain, which was a 24-hour rainfall record for Maryland. (NCDC)
27 July 1939...The temperature at Lewiston, ID hit 117 degrees to establish an all-time record high for that location. (The Weather Channel)
27-28 July 1984...Unprecedented rainfall fell at Alvsbyn in Sweden (approximately 62 miles south of the Arctic Circle), which was remarkable for such a northern location that is at about the same latitude as Fort Yukon, AK. On the 26^th, 5.51 inches fell and on the 27^th, an additional 5.63 inches were recorded. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
27 July 1989...Thunderstorms produced locally heavy rains in the southwestern U.S. Yuma, AZ experienced their most severe thunderstorm of record. Strong thunderstorm winds, with unofficial gusts as high as 95 mph, reduced visibility to near zero in blowing dust and sand. Yuma got nearly as much rain in one hour as is normally received in an entire year. The storm total of 2.55 inches of rain was a record 24-hour total for July. Property damage due to flash flooding and high winds was in the millions. (Storm Data)
28 July 1930...The temperature at Greensburg, KY soared to 114 degrees to set a state record. (The Weather Channel)
28 July 1934...The temperature at Orofino, ID climbed to 118 degrees to establish a record for Idaho. (The Weather Channel)
28 July 1995...Yuma, AZ reached its all-time high temperature reading with 124 degrees. (Intellicast)
29 July 1898...The temperature at Prineville, OR soared to 119 degrees to establish a state record, which was tied on the 10^th of August of that same year at Pendleton. (The Weather Channel)
29 July 1930...Mississippi's record high temperature of 115 degrees was set at Holly Springs. (Intellicast)
30 July 1949...The state record temperature for Connecticut was established when the town of Greenville registered an afternoon high of 102 degrees. (The Weather Channel)
30 July 1965...The temperature at Portland, OR reached 107 degrees to equal their all-time record high. (The Weather Channel)
31 July 1861...Numerous world rainfall records were set at Cherrapunji, India as of this last day of July. These records include: 366.1 inches for a single 31-day month (during July 1861); 502.63 inches for two months (June-July 1861); 644.44 inches for three months (May-July 1861); 737.72 inches for four months (April-July 1861) and 1041.78 inches for 12 months (Aug. 1860-July 1861). (WMO, NWS)
31 July 1991...Roswell, NM closed out the month with a total of 6.68 inches of rain to set a new record for the month. (Intellicast)
31 July 1986...The temperature at Little Rock, AR soared to 112 degrees to establish an all-time record high for that location. Morrilton, AR hit 115 degrees, and daily highs for the month at that location averaged 102 degrees. (The Weather Channel)
1 August 1977...Excessive rains at Muduocaidang, China were responsible for establishing two world records, to include 33.07 inches in 6 hours and 55.12 inches in 10 hours. (WMO, NWS)
1 August 1985...A nearly stationary thunderstorm deluged Cheyenne, WY with rain and hail. Six inches of rain fell in six hours producing the most damaging flash flood of record for the state; a 24-hour precipitation record for the Cowboy State was also established with 6.06 inches. Two to five feet of hail covered the ground following the storm, which claimed twelve lives and caused 65 million dollars property damage. (Storm Data)
1 August 1993...San Francisco, CA hit 98 degrees, the hottest ever recorded for the city in August. (Intellicast)

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