WEEKLY WATER NEWS

WES WEEK TWELVE: 23-27 April 2001

Water in the News:

Flooding along the Mississippi River continues-- The river levels along the Mississippi River remain at near record high levels between XXX and XXX at the beginning of this week. [Source to be determined early Monday AM since Disaster Relief Organization link will be too old.]

Florida wildfire threat continues-- The cold Canadian air mass that moved into the Southeast last week brought record low temperatures to Florida and it also meant more dry weather for a region that has been experiencing drought conditions. Wildfires continue to rage across the Florida Peninsula. [NOAA News]

A major tropical system could strike nation this year -- The director of the National Hurricane Center told attendees at the recent National Hurricane Conference that a major tropical storm or hurricane could make landfall along the coast of the US during this upcoming hurricane season that starts in the Atlantic Basin on 1 June. This landfall could produce catastrophic results. [USA Today]

Thawing permafrost poses increased danger to buildings -- According to scientists, the thawing of the permafrost in Siberia, Alaska and Canada as a result of large-scale climatic change could cause costly damage to buildings and other infrastructure built on the permafrost. [ENN]

Heavy metals removed from water--Researchers at Temple and Philadelphia universities have used flyash, a waste product from furnaces, to reduce the concentration of heavy metals in contaminated water. [Temple University]

Increased stratospheric water vapor could affect ozone concentrations -- Using data from obtained from the Halogen Occultation Experiment (HALOE) onboard an Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite together with a climate model, researcher at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) reports that increased amounts of water vapor in the stratosphere (at altitudes of 20 to 30 miles) could be responsible for stratospheric cooling and reduced ozone concentrations. The reasons for increased stratospheric water vapor are being considered. [NASA GSFC]

Robotic floats launched to study oceanic carbon -- The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory deployed two SOLO (for Sounding Oceanographic Lagrangian Observer) floats last week into the North Pacific Ocean to study the role of plankton and other marine life on the ocean's carbon cycle. These instrumented floats contain carbon biomass, temperature and salinity sensors and are designed to sink to a depth of 1000 meters then return to the surface on the same day. [EurekAlert!]

Earth diary -- A summary of the week's major environmental events on Planet Earth. [CNN]

Concept of the Week: Change in the Earth System

In 1881, Henri Louis Le Chátelier (1850-1936) formulated a general law of chemistry: "If a system at equilibrium is subjected to a stress, the equilibrium will shift in attempt to reduce the stress." This reasoning provides insight into the behavior of systems. Subsystems within the Earth system interact with the transfer of mass and energy between them. A stress or disturbance in a subsystem will thus affect the other subsystems in varying degree.

The final week of the course is an appropriate occasion for us to revisit and reflect on the paradigm that guided our investigation of water in the Earth system and to consider how this system will react to stresses that result from both natural and human disturbances.

The global water cycle encompasses the flow of water, energy, and water-borne materials, and their interactions with organisms in the Earth system. Water's unique combination of physical and chemical properties, its co-existence as vapor, liquid, and solid within the temperature and pressure ranges found on Earth, and its role as an essential ingredient of life, places it center stage in the interactive functioning of the planet's sub-systems. As the principal atmospheric greenhouse gas, water vapor brings temperatures into the range required for life on Earth. Powered by the sun, the water cycle couples the living and non-living components of Earth into an evolving system. Human activity is an integral and inseparable part of the water cycle, impacting and impacted by both the quantity and quality of water.

The burning of fossil fuels appears to be a major contributor to the increased amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere. Le Chátelier would describe this anthropogenic increase as a stress to the system. By altering the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, human activity may be modifying climate on a global scale. The Earth system and its various interdependent subsystems may respond to this disturbance by shifting to a new climate state. The interdependency of Earth's various subsystems and biogeochemical cycles implies that such a shift will have implications for the distribution of water within the global water cycle and for fresh water resources (e.g., changes in glacial ice cover, sea level, drought frequency).

Concept of the Week: Questions

After completing WES, I now understand the global water cycle as a flow of [(mass)(energy) (both mass and energy)].
After completing WES, I now understand that human activity [(may) (may not)] impact the Earth system with implications for the water cycle and water resources.

Historical Events:

24 April 1987...Showers and thunderstorms produced heavy rain in the Middle Atlantic Coast Region. Up to seven inches of rain drenched Virginia in three days. Morgantown, WV received 4.27 inches in 24 hours, and flooding was reported in south central West Virginia. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
24 April 1990...The Bogan River forced many residents to the second floors of two story buildings as the river topped sandbags protecting Nyngan, New South Wales, Australia. All of Nyngan flooded to a depth of up to 20 feet in 4 to 6 hours and all 2500 residents were removed by helicopter or bus on the 25^th. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
24 April 1995...Up to 6 inches of snow fell on the summits of Mauna Kea (13,796 feet elevation) and Mauna Loa (13,680 feet) on Hawaii's Big Island. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
25 April 1984...A late season snowstorm struck the Northern Rockies and the Northern Plains. The four day storm that ended on the 28th produced some unusually high snowfall totals. The town of Lead, located in the Black Hills of western South Dakota, was buried under 67 inches of snow. Red Lodge, located in the mountains of southern Montana, reported 72 inches of snow. Up to 60 inches blanketed the mountains of northern Wyoming. This storm was rated the worst late season storm of record for much of the affected area. (25th-28th) (Storm Data) (The Weather Channel)
26 April 1978...An unusually strong occluded front swept out of the Gulf of Alaska and produced the first April thunderstorm of record at Fairbanks. Pea size hail fell northeast of Fairbanks from thunderstorms whose tops were less than 8000 feet. (The Weather Channel)
26 April 1990...Thunderstorms dropped 16.05 inches of rain on Brownwood, TX in 13 hours. Some 50 city blocks in Brownwood were extensively damaged by the floodwaters. At one point the Pecan Bayou was estimated at 4 miles wide. Only the disastrous flood in 1900 rivaled this event in Brownwood. (Intellicast)
27 April 1988...Mount Washington, NH reported seven feet of snow in ten days, pushing their snowfall total for the month to 89.9 inches, surpassing the previous record of 89.3 inches set in 1975. Records have been kept at the Observatory on the summit since December 1932.(The National Weather Summary) (Intellicast)
27 April 1989...Thunderstorms produced severe weather from the Lower and Middle Mississippi Valley to Virginia and the Carolinas. Hail up to four and a half inches in diameter caused five million dollars damage around Omaha, NE. Three inches of rain in a relatively short period of time caused flooding of streets with 3 feet of water reported at some intersections. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data) (Intellicast)
28 April 1973...The all-time record crest of the Mississippi River at St. Louis, MO was recorded at 43.3 feet, exceeding the former 1884 mark by 1.9 feet. (Intellicast)
29 April 1905...A thunderstorm dumped 2 inches of rain in ten minutes on the town of Taylor, in southeastern Texas, with a total of 2.35 inches of rain in fifteen minutes. (The Weather Channel) (Intellicast)
29 April 1910...North America's deadliest rock slide was caused by snowmelt followed by temperatures near zero degrees Fahrenheit that caused water in the rock joints under Turtle Mountain in the Canadian Rockies to freeze and expand. Ninety million tons of limestone fell some 3000 feet onto Frank, AB. As many as 70 people died as the result of the rockslide. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
29 April 1973...The Mississippi River reached a crest of 43.4 feet, breaking the previous record of 42 feet established in 1785. (David Ludlum)

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Prepared by AMS WES Central Staff and Edward J. Hopkins, Ph.D., email hopkins@meteor.wisc.edu
ã Copyright, 2001, The American Meteorological Society.