WEEKLY CLIMATE NEWS

18-22 June 2012

DataStreme Earth Climate Systems will return for Fall 2012 with new Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 27 August 2012. All the current online website products will continue to be available throughout the summer break period.

ITEMS OF INTEREST

HAPPY SUMMER SOLSTICE! The summer solstice will occur early Wednesday evening (officially, 20 June 2012 at 2309 Z, or 7:09 PM EDT, 6:09 PM CDT, etc.). At that time, the earth's spin axis is oriented such that the sun appears to be the farthest north in the local sky of most earth-bound observers. While most of us consider this event to be the start of astronomical summer, the British call the day the "Midsummer Day", as the apparent sun will begin its southward descent again. For essentially all locations in the northern hemisphere, daylight today will be the longest and the night will be the shortest of the year. Starting Thursday, the length of darkness will begin to increase as we head toward the winter solstice on 21 December 2012 at 1112 Z. However, because the sun is not as perfect a time-keeper as a clock, the latest sunsets of the year at many mid-latitude locations will continue through about the first week of July -- a consequence of the earth being near aphelion (on 5 July 2012) and the apparent sun moving across the sky well to the north of the celestial equator.
World Hydrography Day celebration -- The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) will celebrate its annual World Hydrography Day on Thursday 21 June 2012, the 91st anniversary date on which the IHO was created in 1921. The theme for this year's celebration is "International Hydrographic Cooperation - Supporting safe navigation, " which is designed to provide member states with the opportunity to promote their involvement in international activities involving hydrography that promote cooperation between these states. [International Federation of Hydrographic Societies]
Hurricane expert approaches the century mark -- Dr. Robert H. Simpson, one of the first directors of NOAA's National Hurricane Center and a co-originator of the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale, was recently interviewed for an article in USA Today as his 100th birthday approaches this November. Dr. Simpson discussed the history of the hurricane scale that he developed with the late Herbert Saffir, a wind engineer, and how it has been used in hurricane forecasting. [USA Today]
NOAA administrator addresses National Climate Assessment meeting -- Dr. Jane Lubchenco addressed the meeting of lead authors and scientists for the National Climate Assessment early last week in Washington, DC. Her opening remarks are available. [NOAA News]
EPA climate change website overhauled -- The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently overhauled its climate change website, making it more user friendly. The site contains information of the science of climate change, what the public can do and what EPA is doing to adapt to the effects of changing climate. [http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/]

CURRENT CLIMATE STATUS

May drought report -- The National Climate Data Center has posted its May 2012 drought report online. Using the Palmer Drought Severity Index, approximately 24 percent of the coterminous United States experienced severe to extreme drought conditions at the end of May, while three percent of the area had severely to extremely wet conditions.
Review of global weather and climate for May 2012 -- Scientists at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center report that the recently concluded month of May was the second warmest May since global climate records began in 1880. They based their report on preliminary calculations of the combined global land and ocean surface temperature for May 2012, which tied the temperature for May 2010. The worldwide average land surface temperature for this past May was the all-time highest for May since 1880, while the monthly global ocean surface temperature was the tenth highest on record, due to the onset of ENSO (El Niño-Southern Oscillation)-neutral conditions. Furthermore, the combined global land and ocean surface temperature was the seventh highest for the last three months (March through May 2012), considered meteorological spring in the Northern Hemisphere (fall in the Southern Hemisphere).
Snow cover extent across the Northern Hemisphere during May was the second smallest in the 46-year period of record. Arctic sea ice was also the 12th smallest for any May since satellite records began in 1979. On the other hand, the sea ice around Antarctica was above average, resulting in the fifteen largest extent for any May on record. [ NOAA/NCDC State of the Climate]
Thin ice could signal ice-free North-East Passage -- Ice physicists at Germany's Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research are predicting that the North-East Passage, the sea route from the Atlantic to the Pacific running along the northern coast of Russia, should be relatively ice-free this summer. They made their prediction after analyzing ice thickness in the Laptev Sea off Siberia obtained from the European Space Agency's SMOS (Soil Moisture Ocean Salinity) satellite and from flights. Their analysis showed the presence of thin ice that would lead to early and large-scale summer melt. [Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research]

CURRENT CLIMATE MONITORING

Aquarius, the salt monitoring satellite instrument, marks first anniversary -- During the last week, NASA scientists and engineers noted the first anniversary of the successful launch of the Aquarius instrument onboard the Argentine Space Agency's Satélite de Aplicaciones Científicas (SAC-D) observatory spacecraft. Aquarius, which is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, was designed to monitor changes in the salinity (or amount of saltiness) of the global ocean's top layer from space. Long-term monitoring of the global salinity patterns by this instrument should be able to increase understanding of the planetary water cycle and variations in climate. A new interactive feature http://climate.nasa.gov/Aquarius/index.cfm is available on NASA's Global Climate Change website that provides more information on the Aquarius mission and its measurements. [NASA JPL]
Identifying the states with the largest statewide temperature rises -- Climate Central, a nonprofit news and research organization that analyzes and reports on climate science, recently released a report and posted an interactive map that shows how the statewide temperature of each of the 48 coterminous United States has changed over the last four decades and over the last century. The report, based upon data obtained by NOAA's National Climatic Data Center, indicates that the temperature across the continental United States increased by approximately 1.3 Fahrenheit degrees in the last 100 years (1912-2011). Furthermore, since 1970, the rate of temperature increase has been approximately three times the century average, with ten of the fastest warming states reporting an average temperature increase of 0.6 Fahrenheit degrees per decade. These states are found across the Southwest (Arizona, New Mexico and Texas) and from the Upper Midwest eastward to New England (Minnesota and Michigan to Vermont and Maine). The researchers warn that the warming trend would worsen droughts, increase wildfire risk and alter growing seasons across the nation. [Climate Central]
Map of tornado tracks over last half century produced -- A map has been generated by a private data visualization software company that shows the tornado tracks across the 48 coterminous United States from 1950 through 2006, broken down by strength according to the Fujita Scale. The data used to generate the map were obtained from NOAA via the Data.gov website. The map shows that most of the tornadoes form and traverse the nation's midsection, since topography along with the influx of humid air masses helps influence the formation of the tornadoes. [NOAA Environmental Visualization Laboratory]
Large uncertainties found in the global water budget -- Researchers from Germany's Karlsruhe Institute of Technology report finding large uncertainties in global water budget estimates from their analysis of several global climate models. They warn that the uncertainties are increasing as the number of measuring stations in the worldwide network is decreasing. [Karlsruhe Institute of Technology]
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

Soil could play role in Earth's future atmosphere -- Researchers at Brigham Young University, Duke University and the US Department of Agriculture claim that soil plays an important role in controlling the Earth's atmospheric composition. They found that interaction between plants and soils have affected the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Plants also help influence the amount of atmospheric nitrogen. [Brigham Young University News]
Two historically warm months in the Midwest studied -- A team of atmospheric scientists at the University of Missouri recently completed an analysis and comparison of the weather across the Midwest during two winter and early spring months that experienced the largest temperature departures from long-term averages. The months considered were December 1889 with an average temperature that was almost 18 Fahrenheit degrees above average and March 2012, which had a monthly average of 15 Fahrenheit degrees above average. The researchers found that the months preceding each of these warmest months were also unusually warm and dry across most of North America. They found that both 1889 and 2012 were both La Niña years and both also featured a strong Arctic Oscillation that maintained low barometric pressure and cold air over the Arctic. [University of Missouri's College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources News]

CLIMATE FORECASTS

New seasonal climate outlooks issued -- Near the end of last week, forecasters at the NOAA Climate Prediction Center released their new three-month seasonal national climate outlooks for July through September 2011, corresponding to the last two months of the meteorological summer season and the first month of meteorological autumn. The forecasters call for a better than equal chance for above average temperatures across the southern tier of states, extending from the Southwest to the Florida Peninsula. On the other hand, they foresaw better than even chances of below average temperatures across the northern Rockies and the northern Plains to the upper Midwest. Elsewhere, equal chances of below or above average summer temperatures can be anticipated. The forecasters also expected the northern Rockies and northern Plains, together with the Southern Atlantic coastal states to have a better than even chance of above average precipitation for the next three months. However, the forecasters felt that much of the country could experience equal chances of above and below average summer rainfall. [NOAA Climate Prediction Center]
Seasonal drought outlook posted -- Forecasters at the NOAA Climate Prediction Center issued their three-month seasonal drought outlook for the nation last week, which would run from mid-June through September. Their outlook would call for persistence of the drought across south central sections of the nation, primarily in central and north Texas, western Oklahoma, northern Louisiana and neighboring sections of Arkansas and Mississippi. However, they foresaw improvement of the drought conditions across the Florida Peninsula, along the Atlantic Coast and over the southern Rockies, with some slight improvement across sections of west Texas and sections of the Gulf Coast States. [NOAA CPC Drought Outlook]

CLIMATE IMPACTS ON THE BIOSPHERE

Extinction of woolly mammoths could provide modern climate change lessons -- Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles and their colleagues claim that the disappearance of woolly mammoths between 10,000 and 4000 years ago was due to a combination of factors involving a warming climate, encroachment by humans and changing habitat. The researchers warn that the demise of the mammoths because of increased global temperatures following the last Ice Age could have implications for current times. [UCLA Newsroom]
Current projections of sea level rise could underestimate habitat loss from climate change -- Researchers from Austria's University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna and Denmark's Aarhus University warn that secondary and hidden impacts on humans and global diversity can occur from projected sea level rises in this century that would be beyond the direct primary consequences due to flooding and inundation, resulting a serious underestimation of the consequences of global climate change. They base their warning upon their examination of the ecological consequences of projected sea level rise on habitat availability on at least 1200 islands in the Southeast Asian and Pacific region. [University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna]
Global fire risk patterns could change rapidly with changing climate -- Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and their colleagues warn that projected changes in climate over the next 30 years could disrupt fire patterns around the world, with some locations such as across western North America expected to experience more frequent wildfires. However, fire activity frequency could decrease in the tropical rainforests due to increased precipitation in equatorial regions. The researchers used 16 different climate change models to project how climate change could affect future global fire patterns. [UC Berkley News Center]

CLIMATE AND SOCIETY

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.

Historical Events:

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)
21 June 1942...The temperature at Tirat Tsvi, Israel reached 129 degrees, the highest temperature ever recorded in Asia. (The Weather Doctor)
22 June 1947...Heavy rains deluged Holt, MO as a foot of rain fell in 42 minutes, still a world's record rainfall rate for the fastest foot of rain accumulation. (The Weather Doctor)
22 June 1987...Thunderstorms in New York State produced 5.01 inches of rain in 24 hours at Buffalo, an all-time record for that location.
The temperature at Fairbanks, AK soared to 92 degrees, establishing a record for the date. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
22 June 1988...Tucson, AZ reported an all-time record high of 114 degrees, surpassing the previous record of 112 degrees established a day earlier. Highs of 98 degrees at Pittsburgh, PA and 100 degrees at Baltimore, MD tied records for the month of June. (The National Weather Summary)
22 June 2003...The largest recorded hailstone in the United States fell on Aurora, NE. The diameter of this hailstone was 7 inches, and its circumference was 18.75 inches. (Northern Indiana NWSFO) The National Weather Service reported this hailstone was the largest ever documented in the U.S. by size, but the second largest hailstone by weight.
The mercury peaked at 95 degrees in the northern community of Moosonee, Ontario, the hottest June day ever recorded here. (The Weather Doctor)
23 June 1902...The temperature at Volcano Springs, CA soared to 129 degrees to set a June record high temperature for the U.S. (Sandra and TI Richard Sanders)
23 June 1982...The temperature fell to all-time record low of 117 degrees below zero for Antarctica's South Pole Weather Station. (The Weather Doctor)
24 June 1946...Mellen, WI received 11.72 inches of rain, setting a 24-hour maximum precipitation record for the Badger State. (NCDC)
24 June 1972...Rainier Park Ranger Station in Washington State had 4.4 inches of snow on this day. This turned out to be the last snowfall for the 1971-72 season and brought the seasonal total to 1122 inches -- a new single season snowfall record for the U.S. (Intellicast)
24 June 1988...Forty-three cities reported record high temperatures for the date. Valentine, NE reported an all-time record high of 110 degrees, and highs of 102 degrees at Casper, WY, 103 degrees at Reno, NV, and 106 degrees at Winnemucca, NV were records for the month of June. Highs of 98 degrees at Logan, UT and 109 degrees at Rapid City, SD equaled June records. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)

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