WEEKLY WEATHER & CLIMATE NEWS

WEEKLY WEATHER AND CLIMATE NEWS

Major winter storm causes pre-holiday woes -- A major winter storm that moved across the country late last week was responsible for blizzard conditions along the Front Range of the Rockies in Colorado, where up to 50 inches of snow fell near Denver.

Major Interstate highways in Colorado, western Kansas and southern Wyoming were closed. The heavy snow and blizzard conditions forced the Denver International Airport, the nation's sixth busiest, to close, stranding thousands of holiday travelers at the airport and causing disruptions of air travel across much of the nation into the weekend. [USA Today]
The blizzard resulted in delayed deliveries of the US Mail during the busy holiday season. [USA Today]
An image obtained from sensors on NOAA's GOES-12 satellite made Thursday morning shows clouds associated with the storm across the Plains. [NOAA OSEI] An image made later in the afternoon from the NOAA-18 polar orbiting satellite shows some of the snow cover across the central Rockies along with lingering clouds from the storm. [NOAA OSEI]
At least five inches of rain fell across coastal Louisiana late last week from the storm, taxing the pumps that are used to keep the city of New Orleans dry. Some flooding resulted in the Big Easy. [USA Today]

Deadly flooding hits Malaysia -- Torrential rains last week resulted in flash flooding that claimed at least two lives and displaced more than 60,000 people in southern Malaysia. [USA Today]

London fog seen from space -- Trans-Atlantic and European air traffic was disrupted last week as dense fog enveloped the airports serving London, England. An image from the MODIS sensor on NASA's Aqua satellite shows the widespread dense fog that resulted in the stranding of at least 40,000 holiday travelers at Heathrow Airport. [NASA Earth Observatory]

International cooperation leads to new satellite receiving station in India -- NOAA officials and their counterparts in the Indian Space Research Organisation recently announced plans that the SafetyNet™ satellite receiving station would be built in India, designed to collect data obtained from sensors onboard NOAA's planned National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS). [NOAA News]

Tracking "ozone hole" recovery becomes easier -- The NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory recently unveiled a new online "Ozone Depleting Gas Index" designed to allow the public as well as researchers to monitor the current status of stratospheric ozone depletion and its recovery from what is often dubbed, the "ozone hole" that was first noticed over Antarctica approximately 20 years ago. [NOAA News]

National tsunami warning capability is increased -- Last week, NOAA officials announced that six new DART (Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunami) stations have been deployed in the southwest Pacific Ocean, which are meant to help detect tsunamis that could develop in the western Pacific and propagate toward the coasts of Hawaii, Alaska and the US mainland. [NOAA News]

Eye on the tropics -- In the Southern Indian Ocean, a tropical cyclone (the counterpart of a hurricane in the North Atlantic basin) developed early last week and intensified as it moved westward. A visible satellite image made by the MODIS sensor on NASA's Terra satellite shows Tropical Cyclone Bondo to the northeast of Madagascar as the system reached Category 4 status on the Saffir-Simpson Intensity Scale. By this past weekend, Tropical Cyclone Bondo was moving to the southwest into the Mozambique Channel. [NOAA OSEI]

Volcano watch -- Satellites offer an excellent vantage for monitoring volcanoes as images obtained from onboard sensors show the plume of ash and aerosols injected into the atmosphere from the volcanic eruptions:

An image made by the MODIS instrument on NASA's Terra satellite at the start of last week shows the plume from the Karymsky Volcano on Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula. [NOAA OSEI]
A false-color image from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA’s Terra satellite shows a plume of volcanic ash emanating from the Tungurahua Volcano in Ecuador in October 2006. [NASA Earth Observatory]

Recent rains help greening process in eastern Africa -- An image of the anomalies between the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) for November 2006 and the six-year (2000-2005) November average NDVI generated from data collected by the MODIS sensor on NASA's Terra satellite shows that the torrential rains across eastern Africa has caused the region's vegetation to green-up following an extended drought. However, these recent rains also caused flooding resulting in deaths. [NASA Earth Observatory]

Offshore wind farms to be built -- Permission was given to build two offshore wind farms in the Thames Estuary off the coast of England that would produce enough electricity to power approximately one million households. [BBC News]

Wildfire threats monitored by satellites -- Fire science researchers have been using data collected from a variety of NOAA and NASA satellites to locate wildfires precisely and to monitor their spread in an attempt to calculate fire potential across the nation and develop wildfire prediction models. [NASA Earth Observatory] The Goddard Space Flight Center has images and additional discussion. [NASA GSFC]

Oceanic tides affect ice flow in West Antarctica -- Researchers with the British Antarctic Survey report that the astronomical tides in the Southern Ocean influence the rate of flow of the Rutford Ice Stream that drains into the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, thereby modulating the size of the ice sheet and ultimately affecting global sea level. [EurekAlert!]

Glaciers would produce a greater impact than ice sheets to global sea rise -- Scientists at the University of Colorado-Boulder report that meltwater from glaciers and ice caps would contribute more to rises in global sea level than would shrinking Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. Currently, worldwide sea level is rise at approximately three millimeters per year. [EurekAlert!]

International Polar Year commences -- The Swedish icebreaker Oden recently departed from Punta Arenas, Chile with an international team of scientists and teachers for a two-week research cruise of the Southern Ocean and the coast of Antarctica as the first activity associated with the International Polar Year (IPY) 2007-2008. [EurekAlert!]

Air is rich with bacteria -- Scientists at the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory have completed the first census of airborne microbes and have determined that at least 1800 types of bacteria can be found in the air, based upon DNA testing of the microbes collected in air samples. [Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory]

Improved weather forecasts and climate monitoring due to new satellite system -- Researchers analyzing data collected from COSMIC (Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere and Climate), a set of six micro-satellites launched last spring, report that the system could significantly boost the accuracy of weather forecasts and improve the monitoring of climate change. [NCAR/UCAR]

Gauging wetland water levels with satellite radar -- Researchers at Ohio State University demonstrated their use of data from a radar system onboard the TOPEX/Poseidon satellite to determine the water levels in vegetated wetlands in Louisiana estimate the [Ohio State University Research]

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]

Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com] Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.