WEEKLY WEATHER & CLIMATE NEWS

WEEKLY WEATHER AND CLIMATE NEWS

11-15 January 2016

Items of Interest:

Worldwide GLOBE at Night 2015 Campaign commences -- The series of GLOBE at Night citizen-science campaigns for 2015 will begin with a 10-night campaign that runs from 11 January through 20 January. GLOBE at Night is a worldwide, hands-on science and education program designed to encourage citizen-scientists worldwide to record the brightness of their night sky by matching the appearance of a constellation (Orion in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres) with the seven magnitude/star charts of progressively fainter stars. Activity guides are also available. The GLOBE at night program is intended to raise public awareness of the impact of light pollution. [GLOBE at Night]
Approaching coldest time of the year -- This upcoming week is the third week of January, which for many locations across the nation typically marks the coldest week of the year, as indicated by the daily normal high and low temperatures. Usually, those stations located away from the moderating influences of the oceans reach their lowest temperatures during the third week of January, or a roughly one month after the winter solstice, when the Northern Hemisphere receives the fewest hours of daylight and the smallest amounts of solar radiation. During that month, temperatures continue to fall to their lowest typical values as cooling continues. However, the increased length of daylight and increased sunshine during this month begins to warm the ground and overlying atmosphere as normal daily temperatures begin to rise toward their highest levels in mid to late July.
Free admission into the National Parks and Forests-- Next Monday, 19 January 2015, has been designated by the National Park Service as a fee-free day in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. This fee waiver will cover entrance and commercial tour fees in many of the national parks and monuments administered by the Park Service. [National Park Service Fee Free Days]

Weather and Climate News Items:

Eye on the tropics -- Only one organized tropical cyclone formed across the major ocean basins of either the Northern or Southern Hemispheres during the last week. Tropical Storm 5S formed over the South Indian Ocean on this past Sunday several hundred miles north of Saint-Denis de la Réunion. This tropical storm could intensify to become a category 1 cyclone on the Saffir-Simpson Scale during the early part of this week as it was projected to travel to the east-southeast.
Investment made for increasingly powerful new generation computers -- Early last week NOAA officials that their agency was starting the next phase of efforts designed to increase supercomputer capacity in order to provide increasingly more accurate, detailed and reliable weather forecasts on a timely basis. By October 2015, the capacity of the supercomputers was scheduled to increase by nearly one order of magnitude (ten-fold) from the current capacity. With this increased capacity, NOAA's National Weather Service should be able to run an upgraded version of their Global Forecast System forecast model from 11 to 16 days with increased spatial resolution. [NOAA News]
New instrument on Space Station displays recent wind chill event off East Coast -- A map was produced last week of the region of relatively low wind chills that developed off the Middle Atlantic Coast as an arctic air mass along with strong winds followed a cold front as it moved off the coast. The map was generated from wind data collected from NASA's International Space Station (ISS)-RapidScat instrument. Surface winds over the ocean were determined by this instrument to range from 33 to 45 mph. With ambient air temperatures estimated to 15 degrees Fahrenheit, wind chill temperatures across this region were estimated to have fallen to near zero degrees Fahrenheit. [NASA Space Flight Center]
Updated El Niño outlook released -- Late last week forecasters at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center released their monthly El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) Diagnostic Discussion in which they still maintained their El Niño watch as above-average sea surface temperatures persisted across the equatorial Pacific Ocean in December How they lowered the odds of an El Niño event during the remainder of this upcoming Northern Hemisphere winter (Jan through February) to between 50 and 60 percent. The forecasters envisioned that ENSO-neutral conditions would be favored during the following three months (March-May 2015), which constitutes Northern Hemisphere spring. An ENSO-neutral (El Niño/Southern Oscillation) event means that neither an El Niño or La Niña event would occur. A description of the forecasters' reasoning for the slightly reduced probability levels is provided. [NOAA Climate Prediction Center]A blog entitled "January ENSO update: The little engine that couldn't quite" written by scientists from NOAA's Climate Prediction Center provide background information as to why the potential El Niño event is having a difficult time developing. [NOAA Climate.gov News]
Calendar year of 2014 was warm across the nation -- Near the end of last week NOAA's National Climatic Data Center released a preliminary narrative that noted that the calendar year of 2014 was the 34th warmest year across the 48 contiguous states since 1895. A full report will be forthcoming during this week. [NOAA/NCDC State of the Climate]
NOTE: A description is provided of the climatological rankings employed by NCDC for their monthly, seasonal and annual maps. [NOAA/NCDC]
Extreme weather/climate events in US during 2014 -- Last week NOAA's National Climatic Data Center reported that eight weather and climate disaster events occurred during 2014 that each produced at least $1 billion in losses. These events included five severe thunderstorm/tornado outbreaks across the Plains, the Midwest and Southeast; one major flood event in Michigan and the Northeast; a winter storm event across the Midwest and Atlantic Seaboard and the major drought across California. Furthermore, these eight events appear to have caused 53 deaths across the nation. Note that the eight "billion-dollar" events in 2014 were less than the 11 weather and climate extreme events that occurred during 2012 and claimed 349 lives. Further updates to this tentative list for 2014 will be made in the next several months. [NOAA NCDC News]
New climate data record for vegetation has been released -- Scientists at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) recently released "the Leaf Area Index (LAI) and Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (FAPAR) Climate Data Record" that was developed by colleagues at University of Maryland. The daily vegetation data in this high-resolution record have been obtained from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer Global Area Coverage data collected by the instruments onboard the NOAA POES series of polar-orbiting environmental satellites extending back to 1981. The compiled data can be used by climate modelers, meteorologists and agriculturists. [NOAA National Climatic Data Center News]
Improvements to be made on wind forecasting -- The US Department of Energy recently announced that it is providing $2.5 million to improve wind forecasting efforts by NOAA's numerical weather prediction models. These intended improvements are for short-term wind forecasts in complex terrain especially for the wind energy industry. Previous work by Department of Energy and NOAA scientists showed that new wind measurements and simulations have substantially improved these forecasts. [NOAA Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research News]
Thunderstorms bring stratospheric ozone down to Earth's surface -- Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and their colleagues have documented the role that large thunderstorm cells play in transporting significant quantities of ozone from the stratosphere down to the lower troposphere. These findings. The scientists feel that their findings, which were from the Deep Convective Clouds and Chemistry Experiment (DC3) conducted on the Great Plains in 2012, could have implications for climate change and air quality, as ozone is considered to be a greenhouse gas and a pollutant that can affect human health. Climate models that involve ozone transport will have to be re-evaluated. [NCAR/UCAR AtmosNews]
New toolkit helps make coastal communities more resilient -- During the last week NOAA's National Sea Grant program unveiled the "National Sea Grant Resilience Toolkit," which represents an online portal to the various tools and resources that have been developed by the Sea Grant Network. This compilation of over 100 tools is designed to assist coastal communities across the nation become more resilient to a variety of natural hazards, water quality challenges, severe weather, and the effects of climate change. [NOAA Sea Grant News]
Genetics indicates polar bears shifting to areas with more sea ice -- Researchers with the US Geological Survey and their colleagues from the US, Canada, Greenland, Norway and Russia report that their genetic studies of four clusters of polar bears in the Arctic basin indicate recent generations of polar bears moving toward those areas that contain more persistent year-round sea ice. This movement could affect the genetic diversity and the populations of polar bears around the Arctic basin. [USGS Newsroom]
Fossils on tropical island reveal changes in polar ice -- Researchers from the University of Florida and other research institutions have found evidence from fossil corals on the Seychelles, a tropical island group in the Indian Ocean, indicating global mean sea level being 20 to 30 feet higher approximately 125,000 years ago than at present. The average global temperatures during the last interglacial period was slightly above current levels. The researchers concluded that a rapid retreat of an unstable part of the Antarctic ice sheet may have been a major contributor to sea-level rise during these earlier times. They also warn that a partial collapse of the Antarctic ice sheet in the future could result in an increase in sea level. [University of Florida News]
An All-Hazards Monitor -- This Web portal provides the user information from NOAA's National Weather Service, FAA and FEMA on current environmental events that may pose as hazards such as tropical weather, fire weather, marine weather, severe weather, drought and floods. [NOAA/NWS Daily Briefing]
Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com] Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.

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