WEEKLY WEATHER & CLIMATE NEWS

WEEKLY WEATHER AND CLIMATE NEWS

26-30 July 2010

Eye on the tropics --- The tropical Atlantic and western North Pacific basins experienced tropical cyclone activity during the past week:

The second named tropical cyclone of the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season formed over the waters of the western North Atlantic near the Bahamas late last week, becoming Tropical Storm Bonnie. Moving to the northwest, this minimal tropical storm made landfall in South Florida near Miami last Friday and weakened to a tropical depression. This tropical depression continued traveling to the northwest across the Gulf of Mexico toward the Louisiana Gulf Coast over the weekend. For more information on Tropical Storm Bonnie, including satellite images, consult the NASA Hurricane Page.
In western North Pacific basin, Typhoon Chanthu formed at the start of last week from a tropical depression that was traveling across Luzon in the Philippines. This system intensified as it moved westward across the South China Sea, becoming a minimal category 1 typhoon (on the Saffir-Simpson scale) before making landfall along the southeastern Chinese coast late last week. Torrential rains that produced flooding along with strong winds resulted in at least two deaths in China. [USA Today] Additional information, along with satellite images are featured in the NASA Hurricane page.

Model on supercomputer simulates tropical cyclone's birth --A research scientist at the University of Maryland-College Park has run a numerical model on NASA's Pleiades supercomputer with appropriate atmospheric data to simulate the formation of tropical cyclone Nargis, which devastated Myanmar in 2008. This simulation represents the first replication of the formation of a tropical cyclone five days in advanced. [NASA's Earth Science News Team]
Increases in humid air leads to heavy rain --Researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research have been studying the increases in the water vapor content of the atmosphere as denoted by the precipitable water, a measure of the total water vapor in an air column as obtained from measurements made by a radiosonde, or a balloon-borne instrument package. The near record setting levels of precipitable water during this summer appear to explain in part the torrential rains that have caused flooding in sections of the Midwest and Northeast. [UCAR News]
Report made on air quality near the spill area --Early last week, NOAA scientists released a report on air quality measurements taken from a highly instrumented aircraft last month near the Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill, as well as along the Gulf Coast from Mississippi to Florida. The atmospheric concentrations of nearly 100 air pollutants were included in the report. [NOAA News]
Antenna system for geosynchronous satellites --NOAA officials recently announced that Harris Corporation has been selected to develop a ground-based antenna system including components and infrastructure designed to provide support for the agency's next generation series of geosynchronous satellites, commencing with GOES-R that is scheduled for launch in 2015. The new antenna system should increase the temporal resolution of viewing storm systems, including tornadic thunderstorm cells and hurricanes from 7.5 minutes to 30 seconds, resulting in faster forecasts of these systems. [NOAA News]
Key chemical compound that destroys ozone detected in polar upper atmosphere --Using balloon-borne spectrometers, scientists at Germany's Karlsruhe Institute of Technology have found the chlorine compound ClOOCl in the stratospheric ozone layer of the polar regions at altitudes exceeding 20 km. This unstable chlorine monoxide dimer plays an important role in the depletion of stratospheric ozone. [Karlsruhe Institute of Technology]
Information and communication needed for national response to climate change--A report, which is a part of a congressionally requested suite of studies known as America's Climate Choices, was released recently by the National Research Council. This report, entitled "Informing an Effective Response to Climate Change", recommends that improvements in availability of reliable data and the communication of information concerning climate science are needed to guide a comprehensive national response to climate change. Therefore, the federal government needs to establish information and reporting systems, such as climate services and a greenhouse-gas accounting system, designed to inform decision makers and assist them in managing climate-related risks. [National Academies News]
Monitoring global surface temperatures for early July 2010 from space --An image prepared by scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, shows the departures of the land surface temperature for the week of 4-11 July 2010 from the long-term averages for that week as obtained from data collected by the MODIS instrument on NASA's Terra satellite. While many of the large metropolitan areas in eastern North America, China and western Eurasia experienced near-record heat waves, other areas had below average temperatures. [NASA Earth Observatory]
A noted "climate warrior" passes --Professor Stephen Schneider of Stanford University died early last week at the age of 65. He had written numerous popular books on climate and climate change and had been influential in the public debate over climate change. Steve was a lead scientist on the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore. [NYTimes Dot Earth]
Unsettled seasonal weather patterns could put the squeeze on Florida's citrus crops --Using more than 50 years of climate and agricultural data, researchers at the University of Central Florida warn that more frequent winter frosts and larger swings between winter and spring temperatures could adversely affect subtropical crops across Florida, resulting in a shortening of the growing season that could potentially force the famed citrus crops from the Sunshine State. [University of Central Florida Newsroom]
Climate uncertainties tied to economies of the 48 states --A study conducted at the US Department of Energy's Sandia National Laboratories modeled the potential economic effects of varying precipitation in each of the nation's 48 contiguous states that could be associated with climate change over the next 40 years. This study suggested that while the economies of many of the states would languish due to less precipitation, California, the Pacific Northwest and Colorado could have positive net impacts. [Sandia National Lab News Releases]
Improvements made in winter climate forecasting --Atmospheric scientists at North Carolina State University claim that they have developed a new methodology capable of improving the accuracy of winter (December, January and February) precipitation and temperature forecasts over the continental US. [North Carolina State University Newsroom ]
Determining global forest canopy heights from space--A scientist at Colorado State University and his colleagues have collected data from NASA's ICESat, Terra, and Aqua satellites to produce the first uniform global maps that depict the forest canopy height on essentially all continents. Production of these maps provide an inventory of carbon sequestered in the world's forests and an estimate of how rapidly carbon cycles through the forest ecosystems and the atmosphere. In addition to the usefulness of the global map to the carbon inventory, the knowledge of forest canopy height has relevance to the study of the interaction between ground cover and winds, weather and climate. [NASA Earth Observatory] (Editor's Note: A detailed national map of forest canopy heights is also available. NASA GSFC EJH)
The solar eclipse from space and Easter Island--A composite image was recently constructed showing the 11 July 2010 solar eclipse from a photograph made by the Williams College Expedition to Easter Island that was superimposed upon an image of the outer solar corona made from data collected by Large Angle Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) on NASA's SOHO spacecraft. [NASA]
Violent storm killed half a billion trees in Amazon forest --Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Tulane University and Brazil's National Institute for Amazon Research report that their research indicates a major storm containing a squall line, or linearly arranged strong to severe thunderstorm cells, was responsible for killing approximately 500,000 trees in the Amazon forest in 2005. Previously, the trees were assumed to have been killed by drought. [NASA JPL]
Major collaboration on weather and climate research by US and UK centers -- Officials with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in the US and the United Kingdom's UK Met Office recently signed a memorandum of agreement that launched a major collaboration on weather and climate research between these two leading research centers. [UCAR/NCAR]
"Footloose" glaciers behave erratically --A glaciologist with Scripps Institution of Oceanography and his colleagues who studied several glaciers in Alaska report that those "footloose" glaciers that become detached from the seafloor appear to be more erratic in behavior, with bigger icebergs than those that remain grounded and attached. [USGS Newsroom]
Scientist discusses development of global landslide dataset-- A scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Dalia Kirschbaum, discussed her development of a global landslide inventory in a recent question-and-answer session. She claims that this inventory is important to assessing the historical trends and the seasonal patterns in those landslides that have been triggered by excessive rainfall events, especially in developing nations. [NASA Earth Observatory]
Moon may have widespread quantities of water--A team of scientists from the University of Tennessee, CalTech and the University of California, Los Angeles have discovered "lunar dew", a widespread layer of absorbed water in the upper layers of the lunar soil. [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, to include drought, floods and storms during the current month. [NCDC]
Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com] Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.

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