14-18 June 2010

DataStreme Earth Climate Systems will return for Fall 2010 with new Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 30 August 2010. All the current online website products will continue to be available throughout the summer break period.

• Southwest monsoon season begins -- This coming Tuesday, 15 June 2010, is the typical date when the summer monsoon season begins in the Southwestern US. At that time, a dome of warm air expands northward across Arizona and New Mexico from the plateau of northern Mexico, with an attendant shift in the wind direction. Low level winds transport humid air northward from the Gulf of California and the eastern Pacific, while midlevel winds bring humid air from the Gulf of Mexico. A web briefing of the 2010 Southwest Monsoon was made by a meteorologist at the National Weather Service Forecast Office in Tucson, AZ. In addition, this forecast office has a webpage called "Tracking the Monsoon."

• World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought -- This Thursday, 17 June 2010 has been declared World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). This year, the Day's theme is "Enhancing soils anywhere enhances life everywhere." In December 1994, the United Nations General Assembly declared that World Day to Combat Desertification would be observed on 17 June of each year; this international observance would highlight the urgent need to curb the desertification process. In addition, the goal is to strengthen the visibility of the drylands issue on the international environmental agenda. [UNCCD]
• A full-disc thermal image of the Americas -- An infrared image made from data collected by sensors onboard a NASA-NOAA GOES satellite shows the thermal energy being emitted from the Western Hemisphere. [NASA Earth Observatory]

• Review of nation's weather and climate for May -- Scientists with the NOAA National Climatic Data Center recently released their preliminary statistics for the recently concluded month of May 2000, which showed that the nationwide temperature was slightly less than the 20th century average (from 1901-2000), while the national precipitation was above normal. Most of the Western States, from the Plains to the Pacific Coast had below to much below average statewide temperatures, while most of the states east of the Mississippi River and along the Gulf Coast reported above to much above average temperatures. Some of the states in the Midwest, the Southeast and the Northwest reported above average to much above May precipitation, while the Northeast and states in the Mid-South and Southwest had below average precipitation. The snow cover across North America during May was the smallest on record. [NOAA News]

• Space agency embarks on an Arctic voyage to probe ocean and climate changes -- NASA's ICESCAPE (Impacts of Climate on Ecosystems and Chemistry of the Arctic Pacific Environment) mission will commence this week as the US Coast Guard Cutter Healy, the nation's newest and most technologically advanced polar icebreaker, sails from Dutch Harbor, AK to investigate the impacts of climate change on the ecology and biogeochemistry of the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas along Alaska's northern coast. [NASA]
• Agreement extends GRACE mission --Last week, top officials with NASA and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) signed an agreement that would extend the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission through its expected life (approximately 2015). This mission, launched in 2002, monitors minute changes in the Earth's gravity field and has provided data for various studies involving changes in global sea level, polar ice mass, deep ocean currents and continental aquifers. [NASA JPL]
• 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]

• Dust and pollen numbers matter for precipitation and climate change -- Atmospheric scientists at Colorado State University and the US Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory report that the amount of dust and pollen particles suspended in the atmosphere has a direct bearing on the amount of precipitation formed in some clouds, as well as affecting the radiative properties of the clouds that have an impact upon the planet's climate. [Colorado State University]

• Changing climate put mountain birds at risk -- Researchers at Yale University have found that those mountain birds that occupy a narrow range of altitude are at a high risk of extinction due to climate change associated with increasing global temperatures. [Lab Spaces]
• Major vegetation shifts associated with climate change -- Ecological researchers from the University of California, Berkeley and the US Department of Agriculture's Forest Service have found evidence that indicates vegetation has been moving in response to climate change over the last century, shifting poleward and up mountain slopes to where temperatures are lower, but equatorward where rainfall is greater. These researchers estimate that one-tenth to one-half of the planet's land mass will experience climate-related vegetation shifts by the end of the 21st century, if current projections verify. [University of California-Berkley News]
• Climate adaptation lessons from tiny soil-dwellers – Researchers in Norway and South Africa are using springtails, tiny insect-like hexapods that inhabit sufficiently moist soil from polar to tropical latitudes, as model systems to study how different species respond when the climate changes and invasive species are introduced. [Science Daily]

• Tibetans are genetically adapted to high altitude -- Scientists from China, England, Ireland, and the US report that they have pinpointed a special version of a gene carried by Tibetans that is linked to low hemoglobin in the blood, which helps explain how Tibetans cope with low-oxygen conditions at high elevations without experiencing altitude sickness. [EurekAlert!]
• Early humans developed in a hot environment -- Researchers at Cal Tech have found evidence of early human existence in the Kenya's Turkana Basin, a region in Africa where the average soil temperature ranges between 86 and 95 degrees. This region would have average afternoon air temperatures in the mid 90s for the last four million years. This finding appears to support the "thermal hypothesis" of human evolution, where pre-humans gained an evolutionary advantage in walking upright and reducing the heat gain. [EurekAlert!]

• Model output vs. observational data -- The NASA Center for Climate Simulation at the Goddard Space Flight Center recently released two images that can be used to make comparisons between the output from a complex climate model and observational data from a satellite. Using a day in early February 2010 as a test, one of the images was generated by the Goddard Earth Observing System Model, Version 5 (GEOS-5), the highest-resolution global climate model available to date, while the other image was obtained from data collected from sensors onboard a NASA-NOAA GOES satellite. [NASA Earth Observatory]

• Long-term Asian monsoon record reconstructed -- Researchers at China's Southwest University (SWU) in Chongqing have created a high-resolution paleoclimatic reconstruction of the Asian summer monsoon dating from 16,200 to 7300 years ago based upon the isotopic dating of stalagmites obtained from a cave in Guizhou Province, China. [EurekAlert!]
• Revising the timing of the formation of Earth and moon -- Researchers at Denmark's University of Copenhagen and at the California Institute of Technology report that their dating of materials in the Earth's mantle using the radioactive Hafnium-182 isotope indicates that the Earth and moon appear to have formed approximately 150 million years after the formation of the solar system (4,567 million years ago), at a time more recent than previously thought. [EurekAlert!]

• Majority of Americans support governmental solutions to address global warming -- A new survey of 1000 Americans during the first week of June conducted by researchers at Stanford University's Woods Institute for the Environment indicates that three out of four Americans believe the Earth has been gradually warming due to human activity and want the government to institute regulations to stop it. [Woods Institute for the Environment]
• 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.

• 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)
• 15 June 1879...McKinney, ND received 7.7 inches of rain in 24 hours, a state record. This 24-hour state precipitation record has since been broken in June 1975 with an 8.10-inch reading. (The Weather Channel)
• 15 June 1887...Regina, Saskatchewan reported its wettest day to date as 6.31 inches rain fell. (The Weather Doctor)
• 15 June 1896...The temperature at Fort Mojave, CA soared to 127 degrees, the highest reading of record for June for the U.S. The low that day was 97 degrees. Morning lows of 100 degrees were reported on the 12^th, 14^th and 16^th of the month. (The Weather Channel)
• 15 June 1957...East Saint Louis, IL was deluged with 16.54 inches of rain in 24 hours, a record for the state of Illinois. In July 1996, this record was broken when 16.91 inches fell. (The Weather Channel)
• Month of June...According to a 1969 US Army technical report, the average dewpoint temperature at Ras Andahglie and Assab, Eritrea (Ethiopia) average slightly more than 84 degrees F. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
• 16 June 1917...The temperature soared to 124 degrees at Mecca, CA climaxing the most destructive heat wave of record in California history. (David Ludlum)
• 17 June 1965...Holly, CO was deluged with 11.08 inches of rain to establish a state 24-hour rainfall record. (The Weather Channel)
• 18 June 1991...Atlanta, GA set a new record for the amount of the rain in one hour as 3.47 inches fell between 6:52 and 7:52 PM EDT. (Intellicast)
• 19 June 240 BC...On the summer solstice, Eratosthenes estimated the circumference of the Earth using two sticks.
• 19 June 2004...An all-time record high temperature of 93 degrees was set: at Annette Island, Alaska. (The Weather Doctor)
• 20 June 1921...Circle, MT received 11.50 inches of rain in 24 hours, a record for the state. The town of Circle received a total of 16.79 inches of rain that month to establish a rainfall record for any town in Montana for any month of the year. (The Weather Channel)
• 20 June 1970...Norway's hottest day on record occurred, as the temperature at Nesbyen, Norway peaked at 96.1 degrees. (The Weather Doctor)
• 20 June 2000...The town of Barrow on Alaska's North Slope experienced its first recorded thunderstorm, which dropped 0.16 inches (4.1 mm) of rain in just a couple minutes. (The Weather Doctor)

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Prepared by Edward J. Hopkins, Ph.D., email hopkins@meteor.wisc.edu
© Copyright, 2010, The American Meteorological Society.