23-27 January 2012

• Eye on the tropics --- During the last week, several tropical cyclones (low-pressure systems that form over a tropical ocean basin) were detected over the tropical South Pacific Ocean. Tropical Cyclone Zelia traveled southeastward from the waters of the Coral Sea northeast of Australia past New Caledonia, before dissipating near the northern sections of New Zealand at the start of last week. Earlier, Tropical Cyclone Zelia had become a category-2 cyclone on the Saffir-Simpson Intensity Scale. Satellite images and additional information on this tropical cyclone can be found on the NASA Hurricane Page.
  A tropical cyclone, identified as Tropical Storm 8 formed over the waters of the South Pacific near Fiji over the weekend.

• December drought report -- The National Climate Data Center has posted its December 2010 drought report online. Using the Palmer Drought Severity Index, approximately six percent of the coterminous United States experienced severe to extreme drought conditions at the end of December, while 23 percent of the area had severely to extremely wet conditions.
• New seasonal climate outlooks for late winter-early spring -- Late last week, forecasters at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center (CPC) released their seasonal climate outlooks for the three months of February, March and April 2011, which covers the last month of meteorological winter (February) and the first two months of meteorological spring (March and April). The forecasters foresee a greater than average chance of above average temperatures across the Southwest extending from southern Arizona to the lower Mississippi Valley. On the other hand, they anticipate a better than average chance of below average temperatures from the Pacific Northwest eastward across the northern tier of states to the western Great Lakes, as well as south of along the West Coast to California. Elsewhere, they indicate nearly equal chances of below and above average temperatures for this three-month span. They also foresee that the southern tier of states from southern California eastward to Florida would have a good chance of having below average conditions, while the eastern Great Lakes and the northern high Plains and northern Rockies stand a better than average chance of experiencing a wet three-month period. [NOAA CPC]
  At the same time, CPC also released its US Seasonal Drought Outlook that will run through April 2011. This outlook indicates the current drought conditions across the southern Plains and the Southeast should either persist or become more intense through mid to late spring. Some improvement in the drought conditions were anticipated across sections of the Midwest and the Mid-South, including the lower Ohio and Mississippi Valleys. This outlook is based upon the forecast of a continuation of the current La Niña event, an anomalous atmospheric and oceanic circulation regime that usually recognized by colder than normal waters in the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean. In strong La Niña events, storms and their associated precipitation typically remain across the northern tier of states, leaving the South drier than normal. [NOAA News]

• New Greenland ice sheet melt record set -- A researcher at the City College of New York and colleagues have found that new records for the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet were set in 2010. After analyzing surface temperature anomalies (differences between observed and average) over the Greenland ice, along with estimates of surface melting from satellite and ground based data, they said the "exceptional" melt season stretched nearly 50 days longer than average. [City College of New York]

• Global warming intensified by shrinking snow and ice cover -- After analyzing approximately three decades of snow and ice cover across the Northern Hemisphere from satellite data, scientists at the University of Michigan, Oregon State University and the US Army Corps of Engineers' Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory claim that the observed decreases in the snow and ice cover appear to have exacerbated global warming at rates greater than what models have predicted. [University of Michigan News Service]

• Animation of six years of global aerosol monitoring -- An animation of monthly global maps of the relative sizes of aerosols collected from January 2005 through November 2010 has been produced by the Earth Observatory mission at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. The monthly maps, obtained from data collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite, shows the global distribution of aerosols, expressed as relative percentage of small particles. [NASA Earth Observatory]

• A 102-month animation of sea surface temperatures produced -- The Earth Observatory mission at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center recently assembled a sequence of global maps of sea surface temperature beginning in June 2002 and running through November 2010 that were obtained from data collected by the by the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-EOS (AMSR-E) onboard NASA's Aqua satellite. The temperature data are displayed in terms of temperature anomalies (arithmetic differences between observed and long-term average temperatures). Long term anomalies in the sea surface temperatures such as El Niño and La Niña events can be discerned. [NASA Earth Observatory]

• Mission to study important climate components readied for launch -- Engineers at California's Vandenberg Air Force Base are preparing the Glory satellite for next month's launch. Glory is NASA’s next Earth-observing mission and will contains two instruments designed to the airborne particulate matter (aerosols) in the atmosphere and the intensity of the incident sunlight (total solar irradiance) outside the Earth's atmosphere, both key components of the planetary climate system. [NASA Glory Mission]

• Simulations show California could be inundated by heavy precipitation event -- Researchers at the US Geological Survey have developed a computer simulation of a possible winter storm sequence that could bring as much as ten feet of rain to California, resulting in extensive flooding. Dubbed the "ARkStorm Scenario," prehistoric geologic California flood history was combined with modern flood mapping and climate-change projections to produce a hypothetical, but plausible, scenario designed to help prepare emergency response officials. [USGS Newsroom]

• Better turbine spacing designed for wind farms -- Turbulence experts at Johns Hopkins University and Belgium's Katholieke Universiteit Leuven have devised a new formula that would permit optimal spacing for a large array of massive wind turbines that would provide more cost-efficient wind power generation. [EurekAlert!]

• Three-dimensional model of ionosphere's F-region developed -- Researchers at the US Naval Research Laboratory's Plasma Physics Division have developed a fully three-dimensional model of the F-layer in the low- to mid-latitude ionosphere that provides a realistic simulation of motions of ions in the geomagnetic field of the ionosphere (at an altitude of approximately 300 km). [Naval Research Laboratory]

• Deforestation dwarfs war and plague for impacting global carbon cycle -- Researchers that the Carnegie Institution for Science claim that the long term trend for increased deforestation around the world appears to present a greater impact on the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere and the global climate than the effects of historical wars and plagues. [Carnegie Institution for Science]

• Recent European climate influenced by humans, volcanoes and the Sun -- An international team of researchers from the United Kingdom, Spain, Germany and Switzerland discovered that seasonal temperatures in Europe have been affected over the past 500 years by natural factors, including volcanic eruptions and solar activity, and by human activities through the emission of greenhouse gases. These changes were most evident in the winter season. [EurekAlert!]

• 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]
• 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.

Prepared by Edward J. Hopkins, Ph.D., email hopkins@meteor.wisc.edu
© Copyright, 2012, The American Meteorological Society.