WEEKLY CLIMATE NEWS

6-10 May 2019

ITEMS OF INTEREST

NOAA's 2019 Resilience Webinar Series continues -- NOAA’s Southeast and Caribbean Regional Collaboration Team (SECART) has announced the schedule for its 2019 Resilience Webinar Series, which focuses upon hurricanes and additional topics related to disaster resilience in the Southeast and Caribbean Region of the nation. The third in this seven-part webinar series is entitled “NOAA Hurricane Awareness Series: Hurricane Michael analysis and findings” will be held between 11:00 AM and noon Eastern Time on Tuesday 7 May 2019. Registration is needed. [NOAA Regional Collaboration]
Becoming AWARE -- The month of May is Volcano Preparedness Month in Washington state.
California has declared this week (5-11 May 2019) as Wildfire Preparedness Week.
Land of the Midnight Sun -- Barring clouds, the sun should rise at Barrow, AK early next Saturday morning (2:34 AM AKDT on 11 May 2019) after spending 22 minutes below the horizon. The sun should then remain above the local horizon for the next 12 weeks, before going below the horizon for 52 minutes on 2 August 2019 (at 2:08 AM AKDT). [US Naval Observatory]

CLIMATE MONITORING

Comparisons made between polar sea ice extent in the Arctic and Antarctic -- A member of the staff at the National Snow & Ice Data Center wrote a feature article entitled "Understanding Climate: Antarctic Sea Ice Extent." She notes that the range between the smallest summer sea ice extent and the largest late winter ice extent is larger in the waters surrounding Antarctica than in the Arctic, due to geography. Furthermore, the fluctuations in the Arctic sea ice are less complicated than those of the Antarctic, which is a much bigger ice sheet. Antarctic trends are less apparent, ice extents swinging between record highs and record lows during the past decade. The reasons behind the complicated picture of sea ice in the Southern Hemisphere are explained. [NOAA Climate.gov News]
Tool is available to graph sea ice and snow cover extent -- NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information has made a tool available that generates bar graphs showing monthly extent of sea ice in the Northern or Southern Hemisphere, or bar graphs of snow cover by month for the entire Northern Hemisphere or subregions within it. The data used for construction of the sea ice extent graphs are obtained from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), while snow cover data are provided by the Rutgers University Global Snow Laboratory. Each graph includes the long-term average extent and the trend over the full period of record that runs from 1979 to present for sea ice extent and since 1967 for snow cover. Tabular data are also available. [NOAA Climate.gov News]
Climate Prediction Center's African Desk turns 25 years old -- In response to the ongoing severe drought across Africa in the early 1990s, NOAA's Climate Prediction Center (CPC) established the African Desk in 1994 that was intended to help improve meteorological services so that African governments could develop plans to mitigate the impacts of drought on society. This effort represents the U.S. contribution to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Voluntary Cooperation Program. The CPC's African Desk team works with all 54 African countries, as well as elsewhere, to help international colleagues build the capacity to access weather and seasonal forecast information and real-time, operational model guidance. The team contributes rainfall and climate products to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Office for Foreign Disaster Assistance and the USAID Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS Net) to help plan for and respond to disasters and humanitarian crises in Africa. [NOAA National Weather Service News]

CLIMATE FORCING

Humans appear to have influenced global droughts for over a century -- In a study conducted by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, greenhouse gases and atmospheric particles generated by humans were found to have been affecting global drought risk as far back as the early 20th century. The researchers linked human activities with patterns of drought around the world using tree ring atlases, historical rain and temperature measurements, and modern satellite-based soil moisture measurements. [NASA Goddard Space Flight Center News]

CLIMATE AND THE BIOSPHERE

Excessive rainfall could be as damaging to corn yield as extreme heat and drought -- An interdisciplinary team from the University of Illinois and China's Beijing Normal University has concluded that excessive rainfall can affect crop yield as much as excessive heat and drought. The researchers came to these conclusions based upon the linking of historical crop insurance, climate, soil and corn yield data from 1981 through 2016. They found that excessive rainfall reduced U.S. corn yield by as much as 34 percent relative to the expected yield in some years, while drought and excessive heat caused a yield loss of up to 37 percent during other years. [University of Illinois News]

CLIMATE FORECASTS

Canadian national seasonal outlook issued -- Forecasters with Environment Canada issued their outlooks for temperature and precipitation across Canada for the three months of May, June and July 2019, which represents the last month of meteorological spring and the first two months of meteorological summer. The temperature outlook indicates that most of Canada should experience near normal (1981-2010) spring and early summer temperatures for these next three months. However, scattered areas across the Prairie Provinces (Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba), Newfoundland and Nunavut Territory could expect below average temperatures. Conversely, several areas where above average temperatures could be anticipated were scattered across western Canada (British Columbia and the Yukon Territory) and across the Canadian Archipelago, including Baffin and Ellesmere Islands.
The Canadian precipitation outlook for May through July 2019 indicates that a large section of Canada running from interior British Columbia eastward across the Canadian Rockies and the Prairie Provinces to Ontario and western Quebec could experience above average precipitation for May through July. A few scattered areas across western Canada including coastal British Columbia and the southern Yukon, the Maritime Provinces, eastern Quebec and interior Labrador could have below average rainfall. Elsewhere, close to average precipitation should be anticipated through July.
[Note for comparisons and continuity with the three-month seasonal outlooks of temperature and precipitation generated for the continental United States and Alaska by NOAA's Climate Prediction Center, one would need to use Environment Canada's probabilistic forecasts for temperature and precipitation.]
Nearly half of the World Heritage site glaciers could be lost by 2100 -- Scientists from the International Union for Conservation of Nature warn that according to their predictions, glaciers could become extinct in 21 of the 46 natural World Heritage sites where glaciers are currently found. They based their prediction on a combination of data collected from a global glacier inventory, a review of existing literature and sophisticated computer modeling using a high emission scenario to analyze the current state of World Heritage glaciers, their recent evolution, and their projected mass change over the 21st century. Under a low emission scenario, eight of the 46 World Heritage sites would become ice-free by 2100. [American Geophysical Union News]

CLIMATE AND SOCIETY

Assessment of nation's coastal resilience aided by reports and interactive mapping tool -- The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation recently released a series of multiple reports and an interactive online mapping tool that focus on assessing resilience along the coastline of the contiguous U.S. These products are the result of a partnership that the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation has with NOAA, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the National Environmental Modeling and Analysis Center at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and NatureServe, a non-profit conservation science organization. Assessment of the coastal resilience to coastal storms, sea-level rise and flooding events was conducted in five regions and eight watersheds along the Pacific, Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts. The interactive mapping tool called “Coastal Resilience Evaluation and Siting Tool” (CREST) allows planners, stakeholders, and the public to visualize the assessment results from each of the regions and watersheds. [NOAA Fisheries News]
Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com]

Historical Events:

6 May 1933...Charleston, SC was deluged with 10.57 inches of rain, an all-time 24-hour record for that location. (The Weather Channel)
6 May 1978...A record late season snowstorm struck Colorado. Denver checked in with 14 inches for its greatest May snowstorm on record. (Intellicast)
7 May 1964...The temperature at White Mountain 2, located in California, dipped to 15 degrees below zero to set a low temperature record for May for the continental U.S. (The Weather Channel)
8 May 1784...Eight people were killed in what may have been the U.S.'s deadliest hailstorm. Hail nine inches in circumference also killed sheep and birds when it fell along the Wateree River in South Carolina. (National Weather Service files)
8 May 1902...On the previous day, Martinique's Mount Pelee began the deadliest volcanic eruption in the 20th century. On this day, the city of Saint Pierre, which some called the Paris of the Caribbean, was virtually wiped off the map. The volcano killed an estimated 30,000 people. (National Weather Service files)
10 May 1910...A meteorograph ascent of an instrumented Weather Bureau kite to 23,835 feet from Mount Weather, VA set the altitude record for the site. The ascent, which had a kite with instruments to measure atmospheric conditions aloft, used 10 kites in tandem and 8.5 miles of kite wire. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
10 May 1966...Morning lows of 21 degrees at Bloomington-Normal and Aurora established an Illinois state record for the month of May. Snow flurries were reported at Kansas City, MO and Chicago, IL (The Weather Channel) (Intellicast)
10-11 May 1986...Bangkok, Thailand received 15.79 inches of rain in 24-hours, which was a national record. (The Weather Doctor)
11 May 1934...A tremendous dust storm affected the Plains as the Dust Bowl era was in full swing. According to The New York Times, dust "lodged itself in the eyes and throats of weeping and coughing New Yorkers," and even ships some 300 miles offshore saw dust collect on their decks. (National Weather Service files)
11 May 1966...The 1.6 inch-snow at Chicago, IL was their latest measurable snow of record. Previously the record was 3.7 inches on the 1^stand 2^nd of May set in 1940. (The Weather Channel)
11 May 2003...A total of 4.63 inches of rain fell at Nashville, TN, breaking the previous 24-hour record for the month. (The Weather Doctor)
12 May 1916...Plumb Point, Jamaica reported 17.80 inches of rain in 15 minutes, which set a world record. (The Weather Doctor)

Return to RealTime Climate Portal