30 May-4 June 2011

DataStreme Earth Climate Systems will return for Fall 2011 with new Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 29 August 2011. All the current online website products will continue to be available throughout the summer break period.

• Change in season -- Meteorological spring in the Northern Hemisphere, the three-month span from March through May, concludes on Tuesday (31 May 2011), while meteorological summer (June, July and August) will commence on the following day.
• Atlantic Hurricane Season begins -- The official 2011 hurricane season for the North Atlantic Basin will begin on Wednesday, 1 June. The National Hurricane Center maintains a hurricane preparedness website that provides information and educational material for the various hurricane hazards including storm surge, high winds, tornadoes and flooding. (A Spanish version of this website is also available.) In the Eastern North Pacific basin, the hurricane season began on 15 May. The season will run until 30 November in both basins.
• World Environment Day -- This Sunday, 5 June 2011, has been declared World Environment Day by the United Nations in an effort to stimulate worldwide awareness of the environment and to enhance political attention and action. This observance was established initially by the UN General Assembly in 1972 to mark the opening of the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment. Various activities are being planned. [World Environment Day]

• State and city weather extremes for March 2011 -- The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) has posted a listing of some of the notable extremes in temperature, precipitation and other weather elements across the nation for the month of March 2011 at "Selected U.S. City and State Extremes for March 2011." Note that this site may be updated during the following several weeks as more data are received and analyzed.

• Assessment made of Alaskan glaciers -- A researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute recently outlined the complexity and influence of Alaska glaciers, noting the need to integrate field observations with glacier simulation models. [University of Alaska Fairbanks]
• Monitoring ice loss from Greenland glaciers -- Using new monitoring techniques that included satellite surveillance, researchers from Ohio State University, the University of Washington and Utrecht University tin the Netherlands have determined that during the last decade, two of Greenland's three largest glaciers have lost enough ice to fill Lake Erie, if the ice melted. [Ohio State University Research]
• NASA's GRIP campaign reviewed -- Some of the aspects of NASA's Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes (GRIP) experiment have been recently highlighted. This six-week field campaign that was held last year was one of the agency's largest hurricane research efforts. [NASA Global Climate Change]
• Large West Coast radar network serves many purposes -- A radar network consisting of 78-high-frequency radar units operated by a consortium of oceanographers is being used to map ocean surface currents along the US West Coast and provide a detailed description of the coastal ocean dynamics. The radar network has also been used in search-and-rescue, oil spill response and maritime transportation operations. The researchers envision that this network will provide long-term, high-quality records of ocean climate signals. [Scripps News]
• 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]

• Live bacteria found in Montana hailstones -- Researcher at Montana State University reported finding high concentrations of bacteria inside several large hailstones collected in southwestern Montana following a thunderstorm last June. They maintain that their findings support the role that airborne organisms play as nuclei in condensation and freezing processes in the atmosphere. [Montana State University]

• Capacity of trees to store carbon could be affected by increased global temperatures -- Scientists at the Marine Biological Laboratory claim that the increased global temperatures could alter the forest nitrogen cycling and increase the capacity of trees to store the carbon from atmospheric carbon dioxide in the woody material. [Marine Biological Laboratory]
• Gourmet northern abalone appear doomed by ocean acidification -- Researchers at the University of British Columbia claim that the dwindling populations of the prized northern abalone, a large edible sea snail found in the waters off the western coast of North America, appear doomed by increasing levels of ocean acidity. Earlier, poaching of this species forced British Columbia's northern abalone commercial fisheries to close. [University of British Columbia]

• Determining effect of melting glaciers on ocean currents -- Sciences at the United Kingdom's University of Sheffield and Bangor University used a computer climate model to study how freshwater entering the oceans at the end of the previous Ice Age approximately 140,000 years ago affected the parts of the ocean currents that control climate. They found that freshwater entering the ocean from melting ice sheets could weaken the climate controlling part of the large-scale ocean circulation, resulting in a drop in global temperature by up to two Celsius degrees over a few centuries. [University of Sheffield]
• Oceans played major role in onset of ancient global cooling -- Researchers claim that their analysis of ocean cores indicates development of the oceanic Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) appears to have played a significant role in shifting the warm climate of the early Eocene (nearly 38 million years ago) to cooler glaciated climates by 30 million years ago. [RPI News] [National Science Foundation]
• Theory on end of "Snowball Earth" ice age debunked -- A team of scientists from Cal Tech and other research institutions claim that the abrupt end of the Marinoan or "Snowball Earth" ice age approximately 600 million years ago was not caused by the currently accepted theory where large quantities of the greenhouse gas methane escaped from ocean sediments and permafrost to heat the atmosphere. They based their conclusions on isotopic analysis on rocks obtained from south China. [California Institute of Technology]

• Tornado fatalities in 2011 reaches a modern record -- As of this past Saturday, the death toll for last Sunday's monster EF-5 tornado that devastated Joplin, MO reached 142. Consequently, 2011 had become the deadliest year for tornadoes since 1950 when reliable tornado statistics became available nationally as 523 fatalities have occurred, surpassing the 519 people killed in 1953, the previous record for a single year. Sunday's tornado in Joplin was also the deadliest single tornado since 1950. [USA Today]
• Tornado science unable to keep death toll low -- Although strides in weather science permitted greatly improved tornado warnings that preceded the recent tornadoes with at least 20-minute lead times, the death tolls from these tornadoes have been staggering because of several factors that may involve lack of adequate storm shelters, time of occurrence (on weekends or at night) and the recent propensity for tornadoes to strike large metropolitan areas. [USA Today]
• 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.

• 30 May 1948...The Columbia River reached its highest stage since 1894. A railroad bed acting as a dam gave way during a flood along the Columbia River destroying the town of Vanport, OR. The nearly 18,700 residents escaped with little more than the clothes on their backs. Damage was estimated at 101 million dollars and 75 lost their lives. (David Ludlum) (Intellicast) Twenty carloads of glass were needed in Denver, CO to replace that destroyed by a severe hailstorm. (The Weather Channel)
• 30 May 1985...The temperature in Oklahoma City, OK reached a sizzling 104 degrees, making it the highest ever for so early in the season. This also marked the very first time the temperature had reached the 100-degree plateau in the month of May at Oklahoma City. (Intellicast)
• 30 May 1986...Hanford, WA hit a scorching 104 degrees, breaking the all-time record high temperature for May for Eastern Washington. Yakima, WA hit 102 degrees, a record high for the month of May for Yakima. Records also fell at Boise, ID and Reno, NV. (Intellicast)
• 31 May 1889...The Johnstown, PA disaster occurred, the worst flood tragedy in U.S. history. Heavy rains totaling 4 to 10 inches over the previous 36 hours collapsed the South Fork Dam sending a thirty-foot wall of water rushing down the already flooded Conemaugh Valley. The wall of water, traveling as fast as twenty-two feet per second, swept away all structures, objects, and people, practically wiping out Johnstown. About 2100 persons perished in the flood. (David Ludlum)
• 31 May-1 June 1941...Thunderstorms deluged Burlington, KS with 12.59 inches of rain to establish a 24-hour rainfall record for the Jayhawk State. (The Weather Channel)
• 31 May 1973...Canada's sunniest month ends as Eureka, Northwest Territories recorded 621 hours of bright sunshine. (The Weather Doctor)
• 31 May 1983...Albany, NY experienced its wettest spring (March-May) in 109 years of records as 19.54 inches of precipitation was recorded. (Intellicast)
• 31 May 1986...The Weather Service Office in Washington, DC reported its driest spring on record with only 3.47 inches of precipitation from 1 March to 31 May. (Intellicast)
• 31 May 1988...Hot and humid weather prevailed in the eastern U.S. Thirteen cities reported record high temperatures for the date. Cape Hatteras, NC reported their first ninety-degree day in May in 115 years of records. (The National Weather Summary)
• 31 May 1991...Norfolk, VA hit 100 degrees, setting a new all-time record high for the month of May. (Intellicast)
• 31 May 1992...This May was the driest on record for Chicago, IL and Rockford, IL. Only 0.30 inches of rain fell at Chicago and Rockford had a paltry 0.48 inches. The total rainfall at El Paso, TX of this past month was 4.22 inches, making this the wettest May ever for the city. The normal rainfall for May is only 0.24 inches, which means that this month rainfall total was 1758 percent of normal! (Intellicast)
• 1 June 1907...Sarmiento, Argentina reported a temperature of 29 degrees below zero, the lowest temperature ever recorded in South America. (The Weather Doctor)
• 1 June 1941...Burlington, KS received 12.59 inches of rain, which set a 24-hour precipitation record for the Jayhawk State. (NCDC)
• 1-17 June 2001...The deadliest and costliest tropical storm in US history, Tropical Storm Allison, wandered westward across the tropical Atlantic and crossed over into the Pacific before reversing and moving back into the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. On 1 June the tropical wave, which eventually evolved into TS Allison, moved into the Gulf of Tehuantepec on the Pacific coast of Mexico after moving westward across the tropical Atlantic and the Caribbean from the west coast of Africa on 21 May. On the 2^nd, a cyclonic (counterclockwise) circulation developed to the south-southeast of Salma Cruz, Mexico, but the low-level circulation became ill defined as the system moved inland on the 3^rd over southeastern Mexico and western Guatemala. This system intensified again and eventually moved northward to the Texas Gulf Coast and then eastward to the Atlantic before turning into an extratropical storm in mid-June. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
• 1 June 2005...The UV (ultraviolet) Index in Toronto, Ontario reached 11 or Extreme on the 5-category UV scale, marking the first time the new extreme category has ever been attained in Canada. (The Weather Doctor)
• 2 June 1917...The temperature at Tribune, KS dipped to 30 degrees to establish a state record for the month of June. (The Weather Channel)
• 3 June 1905...Seattle, WA received its heaviest ever 24-hour June rainstorm with 1.42 inches falling. (Intellicast)
• 4-5 June 1908...Helena, MT was deluged with 3.67 inches of rain to establish their all-time 24-hour rainfall record. (The Weather Channel)
• 5 June 1993...A strong, late season spring storm moved into California. The 0.76 inches of rain at Los Angeles set a new daily rainfall record for June. Lake Gregory was deluged with 3.24 inches of rain in 24 hours and a foot of snow fell at the Mammoth Mountain ski area. (Intellicast)

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Prepared by Edward J. Hopkins, Ph.D., email hopkins@meteor.wisc.edu
© Copyright, 2011, The American Meteorological Society.