WEEKLY WEATHER & CLIMATE NEWS

WEEKLY WEATHER AND CLIMATE NEWS

5-9 January 2015

This site is under construction!

Items of Interest:

AWARE -- Montana will observe Ice Awareness Day on Thursday, 9 January 2014. If you live in the Treasure State, consult your local National Weather Service Forecast Office for additional information.

Weather and Climate News Items:

Eye on the tropics -- The Indian Ocean was the only ocean basin to experience tropical cyclone activity during the last week.
In the South Indian Ocean Basin, Tropical Cyclone Christine made landfall at the start of last week along the northern coast of Western Australia slightly more than 100 miles to the west-southwest of Port Hedland, Australia. Earlier, Christine had become a major category 3 tropical cyclone. The NASA Hurricane Page has satellite images and additional information on Tropical Cyclone Christine.
The second tropical cyclone to develop in the South Indian basin during the last week was Tropical Cyclone Bejisa. This system intensified quickly from a tropical storm that had formed early last week approximately 700 miles to the north-northwest of La Reunion Island. By New Year's Eve, Tropical Cyclone Bejisa had become a major category 3 tropical cyclone as it traveled southward, passing off the eastern coast of Madagascar. Maximum sustained surface winds had reached 125 mph, with wind-driven sea waves reaching 35 feet in height. The strong winds, high seas and torrential rain associated with this system resulted in widespread power outages, uprooted trees and damaged homes on La Reunion Island. By late in the week, Tropical Cyclone Bejisa dissipated to the south of La Reunion and Mauritius. Additional information and satellite images on Tropical Cyclone Bejisa can be found on the NASA Hurricane Page.
In the North Indian Ocean basin, Tropical Storm 1B formed this past weekend to the east-northeast of Sri Lanka. As of late Sunday (local time), Tropical Storm 1B was traveling toward the west-southwest and could pass across northern sections of Sri Lanka as a tropical storm on Monday. (Note: The designation 1B means that this system is the first tropical cyclone of 2014 in the Bay of Bengal sector of the North Indian Ocean.)
Canadian national seasonal outlook issued -- Forecasters with Environment Canada issued their outlooks for temperature and precipitation across Canada for the first three months of 2014, which represent the remainder of meteorological winter (January and February) and the first month of meteorological spring (March). Their temperature outlook indicates that most of Canada, could experience below normal (1981-2010) temperatures for these three months. On the other hand, a few sections of Baffin Island and southern Nova Scotia could have above average winter and early spring temperatures. Elsewhere, near normal temperatures were to be expected for the next three months.
The Canadian precipitation outlook for January through March 2014 indicates that most of the Canadian Arctic including northern sections of the Yukon, Northwest and Nunavut Territories could experience below average precipitation. Conversely, above normal precipitation was projected for a large area extending across most of the Prairie Provinces along with a large section of Ontario to the north of Lake Superior and coastal sections of Atlantic Canada.
[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.]
An optical phenomenon captured by satellite imagery -- A natural-color image obtained by the MODIS sensor onboard NASA's Terra satellite on 21 December 2013, the Southern Hemisphere's summer solstice catches an optical phenomenon called a "glory" in the deck of marine stratocumulus clouds over the coastal waters of the South Pacific Ocean off Peru. A glory, which is the result of a diffraction and reflection of light from tiny liquid cloud droplets, can be seen as a set of concentric rings of colors around the subsolar point. [NASA Earth Observatory]
Tropical mangroves advance northward due to fewer hard freeze events -- Using 28 years of NASA's Landsat 5 satellite data, a team of researchers from the University of Maryland and the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center has determined that cold-sensitive mangrove forests have advanced northward along Florida's Atlantic Coast to the vicinity of St. Augustine as the frequency of killing frosts between 1984 and 2011 decreased in this region. [University of Maryland Right Now]
Melting of Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier tied to El Niño event -- Researchers from the University of Washington and the British Antarctic Survey along with colleagues from Korea and Germany claim that the melting of the ice sheet along the coast of Antarctica that includes the much studied Pine Island Glacier depends upon the local wind direction, which is tied to changes in weather patterns across the tropics associated with El Niño events. The researchers used data on winds and topography from the Antarctic coast and from observations and numerical simulations of climate conditions across the tropical Pacific Ocean basin. While observations show that the Pine Island ice shelf has been thinning nearly continuously for the last 40 years, the melting rate has changed, with the summer of 2013 having the lowest melt rate. This reduced melt rate was due to less warm, deep water flowing across an underwater ridge that separates Pine Island Glacier from the Southern Ocean, which was linked to changes in prevailing wind direction related to changes in the tropical Pacific associated with El Niño events. [University of Washington]
Future climate could be hotter than previously estimated -- Scientists warn that the global average temperatures could rise by at least 4 Celsius degrees by 2100 if carbon dioxide emissions are not reduced. The researchers claim that climate models are not correctly simulating cloud formation processes that affect planetary climate and thereby project a lower temperature response to the doubling of carbon dioxide since preindustrial times. [University of New South Wales Newsroom]
Outgassing of methane hydrate deposits not caused by global warming -- An international team of scientists including those from Germany's GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel explain that that the observed outgassing of methane from gas hydrate deposits off the Svalbard Archipelago in the Arctic Ocean is most likely caused by natural processes and cannot be attributed primarily to global warming. [GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research]
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]
Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com] Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Return to AMS Weather Studies RealTime Weather Portal