1-5 August 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.

• NOTE: This entry is for College level Climate Science News -- Remove from this DataStreme file
  Welcome to attendees at the 27th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching & Learning to be held 3-5 August 2011 in Madison, WI.
• A celebration -- Monday, 1 August 2011, 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 2011) and the autumnal equinox (23 September 2011). 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 Sunday, 7 August 2011 represents the exact halfway point between the dates of the solstice and equinox. EJH]
• In the Land of the Midnight Sun -- The sun will set at Barrow, AK early Tuesday morning (2:10 AM AKDT on 2 August 2011), marking the first time in nearly 12 weeks (since 11 May 2011) that the sun has gone below the local horizon. However, the sun remained below the horizon for less than one hour before rising at 2:58 AM on Tuesday. On each day until mid-November, the length of night will increase at Barrow. On the afternoon of 19 November 2011, the sun will remain below the horizon for a stretch of two months.
• How the NOAA Administrator was "smitten by science" -- Recently, the NOAA Administrator Dr. Jane Lubchenco addressed attendees the National Science Youth Foundation Camp Annual Senate Luncheon, describing how she was "bitten by the science bug" as a student in high school. Ultimately, her interest in science led her to become a marine ecologist. She also described how NOAA is involved with science. [NOAA News]
• NOAA Administrator awarded the 2011 Blue Planet Prize -- Last week, Dr. Jane Lubchenco, US Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and the NOAA Administrator, was awarded one of the two Blue Planet Prizes for 2011. For the 20th year, this international environmental award sponsored by the Asahi Glass Foundation is given annually to individuals or organizations that make outstanding achievements in scientific research and its application, which help solve global environmental problems [NOAA News]

• Tracking an ice island off Labrador -- An image obtained from the MODIS sensor on NASA's Aqua satellite late last week shows the Petermann Ice Island-A that continues to drift southward in the waters of the western North Atlantic Ocean off Canada's Labrador coast. [NASA Earth Observatory]

• Severity of African drought tracked by satellite -- A map was recently prepared from nine-years of surface relative humidity data collected from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument onboard NASA's Aqua spacecraft showing the severity of the drought currently across northeastern Africa. [NASA JPL]
• Pollution from Ontario wildfires spreads southeastward -- Recent satellite images obtained from the MODIS instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite shows two views of the air pollution that has been spreading from large wildfires in Ontario eastward and southeastward to the Northeastern US and the Maritime Provinces of Canada. One of the images made over one week ago shows the aerosol optical depth data, an index that represents the amount of reduction in the transmission of light by the airborne smoke particles. The other image is a visible image that shows the brown smoke plumes being carried toward the Great Lakes. [NASA GSFC]
• Ice loss following collapse of Antarctic ice shelves are detailed -- An international team of scientists from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, the University of Colorado and France's University of Toulouse have been combining data from satellite and aircraft observations to determine the amount of glacial ice that surges into the ocean following the collapse of Antarctic ice shelves. They hope that their research will help improve predictions of future ice loss and sea level rise likely to result from ongoing changes along the Antarctic Peninsula. [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]

• Sun's intense heat driven by wave power -- Solar physicists including those from the National Center for Atmospheric Research's High Altitude Observatory have been using observations obtained from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory to study solar processes. They found that magnetic oscillations carrying energy from the Sun's surface outward to the solar corona help create temperatures in the corona that are approximately 200 times higher than on the Sun's surface. These magnetic oscillations also help drive the solar wind that disperses charged particles out through the entire solar system and affect the Earth's upper atmosphere. [UCAR/NCAR News Center]
• Effects of global erosion evaluated -- A geologist at the University of Vermont and colleague have assembled data sets pertaining to soil erosion over a twenty-year period from eighty-seven sites around the world to form a coherent and standard measure of erosion. A measurement technique involved a rare radioactive element—beryllium-10. They hope that these data can be used to compare erosion rates from different landscapes and climates around the world, which can be used to ascertain how these rates have over time. [University of Vermont]

• Higher temperatures could give edge to exotic grasses -- Biologists from the University of California, Berkeley warn that as temperatures increase and precipitation decreases along the West Coast, invasive exotic grasses will push aside some of California’s native grasses. Based upon an inventory of 258 native and 177 exotic grasses in the Golden State, the researchers concluded that exotic grasses had traits that permitted them to be more successful than native species to temperature changes. [UC Berkley]
• Yellowstone wildfires could dramatically increase due to higher temperatures -- In a study of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem conducted by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of California, Merced, an increase in the frequency of large wildfires in this ecosystem could be anticipated in the future because of projected increases in temperature associated with changes in climate. Shifts from mature conifer forests to younger stands with more open vegetation could occur. [University of Wisconsin-Madison News]

• Assessing Greenland and Antarctic ice contributions to sea level during last interglacial -- Analysis of ocean cores have led researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Oregon State University researchers to determine that the contribution from the ice sheet on Greenland to rising sea levels during the last warm interglacial (approximately 125,000 years ago) was less than expected, but more from Antarctica. They conclude that Greenland's ice sheet may have been more stable, while Antarctica's ice sheet could have been less stable. Global sea levels during this last interglacial were approximately 20 feet higher than they are currently. [University of Wisconsin-Madison News]

• Choices made to reforest could counter global warming -- Researchers from the Carnegie Institution for Science and their colleagues from Germany's Max Planck Institute for Meteorology and the University of Hamburg claim that farmers in the past who reforested agricultural lands in northern latitudes have enhanced the potential for these regrowth forests to counteract the effects of increased global temperatures. [Carnegie Institution for Science]
• Annual record tied for most billion dollar weather disasters in United States -- NOAA officials recently reported that as of the end of the first half of 2011, nine billion dollar weather events hit the United States, which ties 2008 for the year with the most billion dollar weather events on record since 1980. [Washington Post Capital Weather Gang] Editor' note: The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) maintains a detailed listing and maps of the billion dollar weather events in the United States since 1980. EJH
• Ensuring weather readiness in budgeting for disaster assistance -- Late last week, Dr. Kathryn D. Sullivan, the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Environmental Observation and Prediction for NOAA provided testimony in front of a subcommittee of the US Senate Committee on Appropriations. Her written remarks focused on the Federal government's role in mitigating the economic impact of severe weather events, ranging from short-lived tornadoes and tropical cyclones to longer term events, such as droughts and floods. NOAA's role in short-term weather forecasts and long-term climate outlooks were highlighted. She discussed the impacts upon the nation's economy wrought by the extreme weather events during this current calendar year of 2011. [NOAA News]
• 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.

• 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)
• 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)

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