WEEKLY CLIMATE NEWS

10-14 August 2009

ITEMS OF INTEREST --

The "Dog Days" officially come to an end on 11 August, having begun the third day in July. Superstition has it that dogs tend to become mad during that time of the year. (The Weather Channel)

CURRENT CLIMATE MONITORING

Western wildfires monitored from space -- Hot and dry weather due to a persistent ridge of high pressure along the western coast of North America, extending from California north to Alaska has exacerbated the wildfire situation across the Western States and British Columbia.
Images from the MODIS instrument on NASA's Terra satellite at the start of last week show the smoke plumes from several large wildfires burning across central Alaska. [NASA Earth Observatory] This sensor also captured an image of the smoke plumes emanating from wildfires in central British Columbia early last week. [NASA Earth Observatory]
Summertime Northeastern haze seen from space -- An image obtained last week from the MODIS sensor onboard NASA's Terra satellite shows a large area of haze across sections of the Northeastern States. Cold air from off the neighboring western North Atlantic Ocean penetrated inland and helped maintain stable atmospheric conditions that resulted in the trapping of large amounts of aerosols across the region. This haze, along with ground-level ozone from industrial factories, power plants and motor vehicles, was responsible for the typical summertime haze frequently found across the Northeast. The US Environmental Protection Agency indicated that air quality ranged from moderate to good during the early week. [NASA Earth Observatory]
Monitoring nation's "bad ozone" ingredients from space -- Images obtained data collected from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on NASA’s Aura satellite during July and September 2005 shows the relative amounts of the volatile organic compound formaldehyde and nitrogen dioxide across the continental United States during these two months. These volatile chemicals are associated with lower tropospheric ozone levels generated from human activity. [NASA Earth Observatory]
Data from new ocean satellite available to public -- NASA and the French Space Agency recently announced that following a year of calibration and validation by an international team of scientists following the launch of the NASA/French Space Agency Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason-2 satellite in June 2008, research-quality sea surface height data from this satellite are now to the public. These products, to be distributed jointly by NOAA and France's Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales will be used primarily by climate researchers for climate monitoring and modeling, including the time series of changes in sea surface height originally monitored by the NASA/French Space Agency Jason-1 satellite. [NASA JPL]
Aura satellite reaches fifth anniversary -- NASA officials at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory recently celebrated the fifth anniversary of the Laboratory's Aura satellite, which orbits around Planet Earth in a near polar, sun-synchronous orbit with a period of approximately 100 minutes as the "caboose" of NASA's "A-train afternoon constellation of satellites", currently orbiting about seven minutes behind EOS Aqua, CloudSat, and CALIPSO. Aura, which has fulfilled its initial five-year lifetime, contains for four instruments that continuously monitors the composition and dynamics of the planetary atmosphere, focusing upon those species that affect the planetary climate, specifically, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, cloud cover, water vapor and aerosols. [NASA JPL]
Editor's note: Additional detailed material concerning this NASA satellite mission can be found on the NASA Global Climate Change page. EJH
Record high water temperatures off Australia -- Oceanographers from Australia's Wealth from Oceans Flagship, a large-scale multidisciplinary research partnership involving CSIRO, have found that the winter water temperatures in the oceans marking the Leeuwin Current curling around the southern tip of Tasmania are the highest for the past three months considered as Southern Hemisphere winter. [CSIRO]
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

Debate over cause for periodic ice ages put to rest -- Scientists from the US, Canada, Sweden and the United Kingdom recently claim that rhythmic changes in the solar radiation intercepted by Earth because of slight variations in the Earth's orbital elements (orbital eccentricity, precession of the equinoxes and the obliquity of the ecliptic) are responsible for the periodic growth and demise of the large scale ice ages during the last 2.5 million years. [EurekAlert!]
Air quality can be affected by epoxides emitted by trees -- Using air samples that they collected above the Canadian boreal forests in NASA's DC8 aircraft, scientists at the California Institute of Technology and their colleagues in New Zealand and Denmark have determined that organic chemicals called epoxides emitted as isoprene from trees and other plants undergo atmospheric chemical reactions that produce aerosols, which ultimately affect air quality. [EurekAlert!]
Ocean acidification documented in central North Pacific -- As part of the Hawaii Ocean Time-series program, researchers from the University of Hawaii at Manoa have developed a detailed 20-year record of ocean acidification from the ocean samples that they have taken at Station ALOHA, which is located north of the Hawaiian Island of Oahu. During this 20-year span, the pH of the ocean water has decreased due to increased uptake of atmospheric carbon dioxide from fossil fuel combustion, resulting in increased acidity that could affect marine ecosystems. [EurekAlert!]

CLIMATE FORECASTS

Official hurricane season outlook is lowered -- Forecasters with NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, along with those from the National Hurricane Center recently released an updated Atlantic hurricane season outlook last week. These forecasters believe that the effects of the El Niño that is beginning should result in fewer tropical cyclone activity in the North Atlantic Basin, with the total number of tropical cyclones being at or below long-term averages. While the forecasters believe that a 50-percent probability of a near-normal season, which is lower than their earlier May outlook, they warn that the public should become prepared for a possible landfalling hurricane or tropical storm. [NOAA News]
Likewise, the hurricane forecasters at Colorado State University, including Philip Klotzbach and William Gray, have also reduced their forecast of named tropical cyclone activity in the North Atlantic basin due to the development of El Niño conditions. [USA Today]

PALEOCLIMATE RECONSTRUCTION

Climate played key roll in biodiversity swings -- Researchers from the University of Michigan's Museum of Paleontology, the Museum of Northern Arizona and the Denver Museum of Nature & Science who examined records of ancient temperatures and information on fossil plant and animal species across North America report that changes in climate were responsible for increases and decreases in biodiversity. They claim that increases in temperature during the Eocene epoch (53 million to 47 million years ago) resulted in a biodiversity boom across western North America. [University of Michigan News Service]

CLIMATE AND SOCIETY

Slow public response to global warming issues due to psychological barriers -- A task force from the American Psychological Association chaired by a faculty member from Penn State University has found that while many Americans believe that climate changes is an important issue, they do not feel that it poses an immediate threat and therefore are slow to respond to changes in their behavior that would ameliorate the changes in climate associated with human activity. This report urges psychologists to play larger role in helping the public overcome these psychological barriers and limit climate change effects. [EurekAlert!]
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:

10 August 1898...The temperature at Pendleton, OR climbed all the way to 119 degrees to tie the state record set two weeks previously at Prineville. (The Weather Channel)
10 August 1936...The temperature soared to 114 degrees at Plain Dealing, LA, and reached 120 degrees at Ozark, AR, to establish record highs for those two states. (The Weather Channel)
10 August 1988... The temperature reached 102 degrees at Ely, NV breaking the all-time record there. (Intellicast)
10 August 2003…A heat wave continued across the British Isles. At Gravesend in southern England, a new national heat record was set as the mercury soared to 100.58 degrees. The heat forced rail service officials across Britain to limit train speeds to 60 mph because of fears the tracks could buckle. Londoners experience their hottest recorded day in the London's history when the temperature hit 100.22 degrees, which was the first ever time that the temperature went over 100 degrees at Heathrow Airport. (The Weather Doctor)
11 August 1914…The temperature at Northwest River, Labrador soared to an all-time Labrador record high of 107 degrees. (The Weather Doctor)
11 August 1933…The unofficial shade temperature at San Luis, Mexico reached 58°C (136.4°F), for share of the world record with Aziziyah, Lybia. (The Weather Doctor)
11 August 1944...The temperature at Burlington, VT soared to an all-time record high of 101 degrees. (The Weather Channel)
11 August 2003….The temperature at Turin, Italy hit 107 degrees, marking the hottest day in over the 250 years that temperature readings have been recorded. (The Weather Doctor)
11 August 2004…The temperature at Reykjavík, Iceland reached 76.6 degrees, the hottest day ever recorded in the city where record have been kept since the 19th century. (The Weather Doctor)
11 August 2007…Dutch Harbor/Unalaska Airport, AK set its all-time high temperature with a reading of 81 degrees. (The Weather Doctor)
12 August 1891...An 80-minute deluge, possibly related to a tropical storm system, pelted Vampo, CA with between 11.5 and 11.8 inches of rain. The observer measured, then emptied the rain gauge several times as it filled. No other U.S. storm has come close to producing this much precipitation in an 80-minute span. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
12 August 1933...The temperature at Greenland Ranch in Death Valley, CA hit 127 degrees to establish the officially recognized U.S. record for the month of August. (The Weather Channel)
12 August 1936...The temperature at Seymour, TX hit 120 degrees to establish a state record. This Lone Star State record was later tied in June 1994. (The Weather Channel)
12 August 1985...With the span of two hours, 17.32 inches of rain fell at Gajo, Gansu, China, marking a worldwide record rainfall event for such a length of time. (NWS)
12 August 2001…The temperature at Osoyoos, British Columbia: rocketed to an all-time August record high for the province of 107 degrees. (The Weather Doctor)
13 August 1991…The first rainfall recorded on this date in Stockton, CA since weather records began in 1906, when 0.05 inches of rain fell. (The Weather Doctor)
13-14 August 1987...Slow-moving thunderstorms deluged northern and western suburbs of Chicago, IL with torrential rains. O'Hare Airport reported 9.35 inches in 18 hours, easily exceeding the previous 24-hour record of 6.24 inches. The airport was closed due to extensive flooding, the first time ever for a non-winter event. Flooding over a five-day period resulted in 221 million dollars damage. It was Chicago's worst flash flood event, particularly for northern and western sections of the city. Kennedy Expressway became a footpath for thousands of travelers to O'Hare Airport as roads were closed. The heavy rains swelled the Des Plaines River above flood stage, and many persons had to be rescued from stalled vehicles on flooded roads. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data) (The Weather Channel) (Intellicast)
14 August 1936…Temperatures across much of eastern Kansas and western Missouri soared above 110 degrees. Kansas City, MO hit an all-time record high of 113 degrees. It was one of sixteen consecutive days of 100-degree heat for Kansas City. During that summer there were a record 53 days of 100-degree heat, and during the three summer months Kansas City received just 1.12 inches of rain. (The Kansas City Weather Almanac)
14-17 August 2003…Residents of Bismarck, ND wilted under a record string of four consecutive days with temperatures greater than 100 degrees. (The Weather Doctor)
15 August 1946...Saint Louis, MO was deluged with a record 8.78 inches of rain in 24 hours. (The Weather Channel)
15 August 1995...Apalachicola, FL soared to 103 degrees to set all-time high temperature. (Intellicast)
15 August 2004…The weather station at Yakutat, AK reported its all-time maximum temperature: 88 degrees. (The Weather Doctor)
16 August 1909...A dry spell began in San Bernardino County of southern California that lasted until the 6th of May in 1912, a stretch of 994 days! Another dry spell, lasting 767 days, then began in October of 1912. (The Weather Channel)

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