WEEKLY CLIMATE NEWS

2-6 August 2010

ITEMS OF INTEREST

In the Land of the Midnight Sun -- The sun will set at Barrow, AK early Monday morning (1:04 AM AKDT on 2 August 2010), marking the first time in nearly 12 weeks that the sun has gone below the local horizon since 10 May 2009. However, the sun remained below the horizon for one hour before rising at 2:04 AM on Monday. On each day until mid-November, the length of night will increase at Barrow. On the afternoon of 18 November 2010, the sun will remain below the horizon for a stretch of two months.
Welcome to attendees at the 26th Annual Conference to be held 4-6 August 2010 in Madison, WI.
High altitude aircraft to study hurricanes --Text Scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), NASA and NOAA will be participating in a project called PREDICT, collecting data from several high altitude aircraft in the vicinity of hurricanes. They will attempt to determine why some thunderstorms develop into hurricanes, thus assisting NOAA's National Hurricane Center (NHC)in its goal of extending long-range forecasts from five to seven days. [SunSentinel.com]
National Ocean Council established by executive order --On 19 July 2010, President Barack Obama signed an executive order that established the National Ocean Council as part of a comprehensive and integrated national policy focusing upon the stewardship of the ocean, the nation's coasts and Great Lakes. [The White House]
President still supports national climate bill -- At a bipartisan meeting held last week at the White House, President Barack Obama stated that he is continuing to push for Congressional approval of a comprehensive national energy policy that addresses climate change. In addition, he said he sees the need for broad climate legislation. [USA Today]
A picture of Earth from a different perspective --Text An image of Earth was obtained approximately six weeks ago from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera onboard NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter that was orbiting the Moon at an altitude of approximately 50 km above the lunar surface. [NASA Earth Observatory]

CURRENT CLIMATE STATUS

July 2010 may be nation's hottest month on record --Even before the month of July ended, meteorologists with the National Weather Service were suggesting that preliminary and incomplete data indicated the nationwide temperature for July 2010 could be the highest since relatively reliable and sufficiently dense climate records began in 1895. Until now, July 1936 was the hottest month, with a nationwide temperature of 77.43 degrees Fahrenheit. [USA Today]
Drought detected in Russia --An image of the Vegetation Anomaly, an indicator of plant health, generated from data collected by the MODIS sensor on NASA's Terra satellite shows the extent and the impact of the severe drought that has persisted across southern Russia during the first two months of meteorological summer (June and July 2010). [NASA Earth Observatory]
Great Lakes approach record warmth --Temperature data collected from the instrumented buoys operated by NOAA's National Data Buoy Center that are moored indicate that the water temperatures of essentially all the Great Lakes have reached the highest temperatures for the 30 years that lake temperatures have been collected by the buoys. [Minneapolis Star-Tribune]
Review of global climate for first half of 2010 --Relying upon preliminary data, scientists at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center have noted that the combined global land and ocean temperatures for the first six months of the year (January through July 2010) were the highest since reliable global climate records began in 1880. Likewise, the global temperatures for land and ocean for April through June and for June were also the highest on record. Furthermore, the land surface temperatures were record setters for June and April-June, but second highest for the first half of 2010. The worldwide June ocean surface temperature was the fourth highest on record.
The extent of the Arctic sea ice was below-average, while Antarctic sea ice extent in June was above average [NOAA News]
Last ten years warmest decade in the global climate record --Scientists from 48 countries who produced the recently released "2009 State of the Climate" report claim that the recently completed decade than ran through 2009 was the warmest on record. These scientists also stated that data for ten key climate indicators all point to the finding that that the Earth was unmistakably warming over the last 50 years. These ten indicators were: air temperature over the continents, sea-surface temperature, air temperature over oceans, sea level, ocean heat, humidity and tropospheric temperature in the "active-weather" layer of the atmosphere closest to the Earth's surface, along with the extent of Arctic sea ice, glaciers and spring snow cover in the Northern hemisphere. [NOAA News]

CURRENT CLIMATE MONITORING

Instruments integrated into an upcoming climate/weather satellite --Scientists and engineers from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and Ball Aerospace recently integrated the last of five instruments that are to be carried into space on the upcoming polar-orbiting NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP) climate and weather satellite scheduled to be launched in late 2011. The last instrument to be placed on this NPP satellite is a Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS), an advanced atmospheric sensor that will join four other instruments that are the Visible/Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS); Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS); Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS); Clouds and the Earth Radiant Energy System (CERES). [NASA GSFC]
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

Black carbon implicated in global warming--Scientists at the University of Iowa, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Korea's Seoul National University report that increases in the ratio of black carbon to sulfate in air pollutants appears to cause global warming. [LabSpaces]
New York City could face more frequent and more intense heat waves --Climate scientists at The City College of New York (CCNY) warn that the data they collected from their New York City Meteorological Network (NYCMetNet)indicate that some areas of New York City, such as Manhattan, could experience more frequent and more intense heat waves in the next several years, in part due to the urban heat island effect. [City College of New York News]

CLIMATE AND SOCIETY

Climate change research projects on freshwater systems receives interagency support --Recently, the Secretaries of the US Department of Interior and the Department of Agriculture announced joint multi-year scientific research projects to be conducted by the US Geological Survey (USGS) and US Forest Service (USFS) that are designed to address the effects of climate change on freshwater systems and sensitive aquatic species in the northwestern and southeastern United States. The intent of this research is to gain a better understanding of the effects of climate change on aquatic ecosystems, with the information gained used to help guide science-based land-use decisions by federal agencies and others engaged in long-term planning for climate adaptation. [US Department of Interior]
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:

3 August 1898...Philadelphia, PA had one of its worst thunderstorms ever when 5.84 inches fell in just 2 hours. The hydraulic pressure in the city sewers due to the force of the accumulated runoff caused overflows in toilets, basins and sinks to rise to second-floor levels in some cases. (Intellicast) (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
3 August 1914...Temperature reached an all-time August high of 96 degrees for Calgary, Alberta. (The Weather Doctor)
3 August 1970...Hurricane Celia made landfall near Port Aransas on the Texas coast, producing wind gusts to 161 mph at Corpus Christi, and estimated wind gusts of 180 mph at Arkansas Pass. Even at Del Rio, 250 miles inland, Celia produced wind gusts to 89 mph. The hurricane was the most destructive of record along the Texas coast causing 454 million dollars damage as 8950 homes were destroyed on the Coastal Bend. Celia also claimed eleven lives and injured 466 people. (David Ludlum) (The Weather Channel) (Intellicast)
3 August 1987...Beckley, WV established an all-time record with an afternoon high of 93 degrees. (The National Weather Summary)
3 August 1990...Highest temperature recorded in the United Kingdom prior to 2003 heat-wave was 98.8 degrees at Cheltenham, England: (The Weather Doctor)
3 August 1995...South Bend, IN received 4.83 inches of rain in 24 hours to set the city's greatest daily rainfall record. (Intellicast)
4 August 1881...The highest temperature recorded anywhere in Europe was 122 degrees Fahrenheit reported at Seville, Spain. (NCDC)
4 August 1930...The temperature at Moorefield, WV soared to 112 degrees to establish a state record, having reached 110 degrees the previous day. This new record for the Mountain State was subsequently tied in July 1936. (The Weather Channel)
4 August 1960...The Vostok station in Antarctica recorded a record low temperature of 127 degrees below zero on the Fahrenheit scale, which remained the lowest recorded global temperature until 1983. (The Weather Doctor)
4 August 1961...Spokane, WA reached an all-time record high temperature of 108 degrees. Kalispell, MT set an all-time record with a reading of 105 degrees. (The Weather Channel)
5 August 1843...A spectacular cloudburst at Chester Creek, near Philadelphia, PA turned the small creeks and streams entering the Delaware River into raging torrents. As much as sixteen inches of rain fell in just three hours at Concord, which still stands as the greatest amount of precipitation in a three-hour span in the U.S. (David Ludlum) (Intellicast)
5 August 1961...The temperature at Ice Harbor Dam, WA soared to 118 degrees to equal the state record established at Wahluke on 24 July 1928. The afternoon high of 111 degrees at Havre, MT was an all-time record for that location. (The Weather Channel)
5 August 1988...Floods ravaged parts of Sudan during August, the result of 8.27 inches of rain that fell in Khartoum in 13 hours on the 4^th and 5^th. The previous 24-hour record at Khartoum was 3.46 inches. More than one million people were made homeless. At least 96 died in Sudan's worst flooding since 1946. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
5 August 1994...Fairbanks, AK soared to 93 degrees for the highest ever August temperature. (Intellicast)
5-6 August 1959...A bucket survey showed that thunderstorms dropped 16.70 inches of rain on parts of Decatur County, IA. The total was accepted as Iowa's 24-hour rainfall record. (The Weather Channel)
6 August 1905...Princeton, IN received 10.50 inches of rain, which established a 24-hour maximum precipitation record for the Hoosier State. (NCDC)
6 August 1918...Unusually hot weather began to overspread the Atlantic Coast States, from the Carolinas to southern New England. The temperature soared to an all-time record high of 106 degrees at Washington, DC, and Cumberland and Keedysville hit 109 degrees to establish a state record for Maryland. (David Ludlum)
6 August 1947...Sault Ste. Marie, MI hit 98 degrees, equaling the highest temperature ever recorded at that location. (Intellicast)
6 August 1987...Afternoon thunderstorms deluged Milwaukee, WI, breaking all previous rainfall records for the city. Among the records: 1.10 inches in 5 minutes, 3.06 inches in 1 hour, 5.24 inches in 2 hours, 6.24 in 6 hours and 6.84 inches in 24 hours. Floodwaters were four feet deep at the Milwaukee County Stadium, and floodwaters filled the basement of the main terminal at the airport. Flooding caused 5.9 million dollars damage, and claimed the life of one person. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
7 August 1918...Philadelphia, PA established an all-time record with a high of 106 degrees. New York City experienced its warmest day and night with a low of 82 degrees and a high of 102 degrees. Afternoon highs of 108 degrees at Flemington, NJ and Somerville, NJ established state records for the month of August. (The Weather Channel) (Sandra and TI Richard Sanders - 1987)
7 August 1949...The hottest day on record for Winnipeg, Manitoba occurred when the temperature reached 105 degrees. (The Weather Doctor)
7 August 1969...Cuba's hottest day on record when the temperature reached 101.5 degrees at Guantánamo, Cuba. (The Weather Doctor)
7 August 1983...The temperature at Thunder Bay, Ontario reached an all-time record high of 104 degrees. (The Weather Doctor)
7-8 August 1995...Lockington Dam, OH recorded 10.75 inches of rain, establishing a 24-hour maximum precipitation record for the Buckeye State. (NCDC)
7 August 2004...Iceland's hottest August day on record as the temperature at Skaftafell, Iceland reached 84.4 degrees. (The Weather Doctor)
8 August 1878...The temperature at Denver, CO soars to an all-time record high of 105 degrees. (The Weather Channel)
8 August 1983...The temperature at Big Horn Basin, WY reached 115 degrees to establish a state record for the Cowboy State. (The Weather Channel)

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