WEEKLY WEATHER & CLIMATE NEWS

WEEKLY WEATHER AND CLIMATE NEWS

6-10 October 2008

Celebrate Earth Science Week -- The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to include the National Weather Service, along with NASA, the US Geological Survey and several professional scientific organizations such as the American Geological Institute have recognized next week (12-18 October 2008) as Earth Science Week to help the public gain a better understanding and appreciation for the earth sciences and to encourage stewardship of the Earth. This year's theme for the 10th annual Earth Science Week is " No Child Left Inside", designed to encourage young people to learn about the geosciences, by going outdoors, leaving behind the indoor activities involving the television or computer. [American Geological Institute]
Eye on the tropics -- Several tropical cyclones formed last week over the Atlantic and Pacific:
- In the North Atlantic basin, Subtropical Storm Laura formed at the start of last week over the central North Atlantic as a hybrid storm, but gained tropical characteristics. This system traveled northward and while passing east of Newfoundland by late in the week, lost its tropical characteristics. The NASA Hurricane Center has a description along with satellite images of Tropical Storm Laura.
- In eastern North Pacific, a tropical depression became a tropical storm and eventually Hurricane Marie off the coast of Mexico last week. This category 1 hurricane (on the Saffir-Simpson Scale) was the sixth hurricane of the 2008 hurricane season in the eastern North Pacific basin. As of Sunday, the hurricane had weakened to a tropical storm that was continuing to the northwest, well off the coast. Several satellite images and a discussion of Marie are on the NASA Hurricane Page.
  Another named tropical cyclone formed this past weekend off the southwestern Mexican coast, to became Tropical Storm Norbert. As of Sunday, this tropical storm was traveling to the west.
- In western North Pacific, Supertyphoon Jangmi (category 4 on the Saffir-Simpson Scale) crossed the north end of Taiwan one week ago, then weakened as it curved to the north to pass just off the coast of mainland China before curving toward the northeast to dissipate just south of the southern Japanese islands. Satellite images of Jangmi and additional information on this system can be found on the NASA Hurricane Page.
  Tropical Storm Mekkhala organized over the South China Sea one week ago and traveled to the west-northwest before making landfall in northern Viet Nam by midweek.
  Tropical Storm Higos formed just east of the Philippines early last week, traveled across this island nation and continued to the west-northwest across the South China Sea. By Sunday, this storm had weakened to a tropical depression as it was about to make landfall along the southern China coast near Hong Kong. The NASA Hurricane Page has additional information and satellite images for Tropical Storm Higos.
Winter Weather Awareness -- Wyoming will observe Winter Weather Awareness Day this coming Wednesday (8 October 2008). Residents of Wyoming should become aware of the hazards associated with winter storms and other cold weather events by reviewing the material prepared by the local National Weather Service Office. Other states will be observing their own winter weather awareness events during subsequent weeks. Stay tuned for further announcements.
Air-drop targeting technology gets an award -- Four scientists at NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, CO recently won NOAA’s Technology Transfer Award for their successful design and development of a wind-forecast software system designed to improve the accuracy of hitting the target for cargo drops from aircraft . [NOAA News]
Record Arctic ice retreat noted - NASA scientists at the Goddard Space Flight Center report that during a four-week interval in August 2098, the Arctic sea ice melted at a rate faster than previously seen during the nearly 30 years of satellite surveillance; by mid September, the extent of the Arctic sea ice was the second smallest on record. [NASA GSFC] The European Space Agency recently reported that the annual freeze-up of the Arctic Sea ice was underway by the end of September. [ESA]
Effects of Ike still apparent -- Recent images obtained from the ASTER (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer) and the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) instruments on NASA’s Terra satellite from over the Upper Texas Gulf Coast help show the magnitude of the devastation from the storm surge and coastal flooding across the region when Hurricane Ike made landfall near Galveston in mid-September. [NASA Earth Observatory] [NASA Earth Observatory]
Tracking Alaskan fall colors from space -- An image from the MODIS instrument on NASA's Terra satellite in late August shows the beginning of the fall coloration from the vegetation along the northern slopes of Alaska's Brooks Range. [NASA Earth Observatory]
Ancient climates seen from space -- A photograph taken by an astronaut onboard the International Space Station of the Tifernine Dune Field in the Sahara Desert of eastern Algeria shows several distinct landforms including sand dunes that provide information on a past wet and cool climate in an region that is currently hot and arid. [NASA Earth Observatory]
Gas from ice cores help in climate reconstruction -- Geoscientists from Oregon State University who studied ice core samples obtained from the Antarctic ice at Byrd Station have found that the gas from bubbles entrained within the ice cores between 20,000 and 90,000 years ago indicates complex links between carbon dioxide levels, ocean currents and climate; the data from these ice cores are comparable to reconstructions from ocean sediment cores. [EurekAlert!]
Saharan aerosols used to study climate change -- Scientists at Spain's University of Granada have discovered that a new airborne aerosol type called "iberulites" could be used to study atmospheric reactions involving cloud formation in the troposphere as they are carried from the Sahara to the Americas and to Europe, which could be useful for the study of climate change. [EurekAlert!]
Gulf Coast bays are vulnerable to flooding -- An oceanography professor at Rice University and colleagues at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill warn that the bays along the Gulf Coast from Texas to Alabama could be flooded rapidly and often during this century because of a combination of rising sea levels and the sediments from the number of dammed rivers. They think that the bays could reach conditions similar to those experienced earlier in the Holocene (9600 to 7000 years ago). [EurekAlert!]
CAT forecasting developed -- A researcher at the University of Georgia and others from the US and the United Kingdom has developed a new method used to forecast clear air turbulence (CAT) that could help alert pilots to regions that could have this turbulence, thereby making commercial flights smooth. [EurekAlert!]
Role of land use in climate change addressed -- A scientific conference entitled "Tough Choices – Land Use under a Changing Climate" was recently held in Berlin, Germany for high-level German and American scientists that focused how the future use of land space around the world and of natural resources could affect climate change. [EurekAlert!]
Groundwater storage and drought relationships studied -- Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Germany's Bonn University have been studying how the amount of groundwater storage, as described by the depth of the water table, during a drought contributes to how the region responds to the changes in precipitation and temperature. These researchers also generated three simulations of future climate that were designed to study the response of the groundwater storage to variations in temperature and precipitation across central sections of North America. [EurekAlert!]
Air then ocean contributed to thinning of Greenland glacier -- Scientists from New York University, NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, Canada's Memorial University, the Danish Meteorological Institute, and the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources attribute the thinning of the Jakobshavn Isbræ glacier on Greenland to subsurface ocean warming that was preceded by changes in the atmospheric circulation pattern over the North Atlantic. [EurekAlert!]
Ice loss tracked on Greenland -- Researchers from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and the University of Texas at Austin have used data from the GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) satellites to track the contribution of the shrinking Greenland ice cap to the annual rise in global sea level. [Delft University of Technology]
Air capture "scrubber" could capture greenhouse gases -- A team of researchers from the University of Calgary claim that they are close to perfecting the technology for efficiently capturing and removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere anyplace in the world, thereby providing an air capture method for reducing the effects of these emissions, especially from the transportation industry. [EurekAlert!]
Back when the Sahara was green -- Scientists from Germany's Center for Marine Environmental Research in Bremen and the Alfred-Wegener-Institute in Bremerhaven report that their reconstruction of the vegetation cover and the hydrologic cycle of Africa's Sahara and Sahel regions from a marine sediment core obtained from off the coast of Northwest Africa indicate three episodes during the past 120.000 years when the region occupied by the current Sahara Desert contained extensive grasslands, lakes and other water bodies. [Kiel University]
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.