WEEKLY WEATHER & CLIMATE NEWS

WEEKLY WEATHER AND CLIMATE NEWS

2-6 August 2010

Welcome to attendees at the 26th Annual Conference to be held 4-6 August 2010 in Madison, WI.

Eye on the tropics --- The tropical ocean basins of the Northern Hemisphere remained relatively quiet during the last week, with only a few areas of distributed weather and no organized tropical cyclones.
In the North Atlantic basin, two areas of low pressure with clouds and showers were found near the end of last week. For more information and satellite imagery, consult the NASA Hurricane Page.
In the eastern North Pacific basin, a diffuse area of low pressure formed late last week off the western coast of Central America. The NASA Hurricane Page has several satellite images along with additional information of this low.
Geosynchronous weather satellite captures recent severe weather in nation's capital --Researchers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center assembled an animation from a sequence of images obtained from NOAA's GOES-13 satellite that show the development of severe thunderstorms that traveled across the Washington, DC metropolitan area at the start of last week. [NASA GSFC]
Instruments integrated into an upcoming climate/weather satellite --Scientists and engineers from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and Ball Aerospace recently integrated the last of five instruments that are to be carried into space on the upcoming polar-orbiting NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP) climate and weather satellite scheduled to be launched in late 2011. The last instrument to be placed on this NPP satellite is a Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS), an advanced atmospheric sensor that will join four other instruments that are the Visible/Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS); Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS); Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS); Clouds and the Earth Radiant Energy System (CERES). [NASA GSFC]
High altitude aircraft to study hurricanes --Text Scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), NASA and NOAA will be participating in a project called PREDICT, collecting data from several high altitude aircraft in the vicinity of hurricanes. They will attempt to determine why some thunderstorms develop into hurricanes, thus assisting NOAA's National Hurricane Center (NHC)in its goal of extending long-range forecasts from five to seven days. [SunSentinel.com]
Black carbon implicated in global warming--Scientists at the University of Iowa, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Korea's Seoul National University report that increases in the ratio of black carbon to sulfate in air pollutants appears to cause global warming. [LabSpaces]
July 2010 may be nation's hottest month on record --Even before the month of July ended, meteorologists with the National Weather Service were suggesting that preliminary and incomplete data indicated the nationwide temperature for July 2010 could be the highest since relatively reliable and sufficiently dense climate records began in 1895. Until now, July 1936 was the hottest month, with a nationwide temperature of 77.43 degrees Fahrenheit. [USA Today]
Review of global climate for first half of 2010 --Relying upon preliminary data, scientists at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center have noted that the combined global land and ocean temperatures for the first six months of the year (January through July 2010) were the highest since reliable global climate records began in 1880. Likewise, the global temperatures for land and ocean for April through June and for June were also the highest on record. Furthermore, the land surface temperatures were record setters for June and April-June, but second highest for the first half of 2010. The worldwide June ocean surface temperature was the fourth highest on record.
The extent of the Arctic sea ice was below-average, while Antarctic sea ice extent in June was above average [NOAA News]
Great Lakes approach record warmth --Temperature data collected from the instrumented buoys operated by NOAA's National Data Buoy Center that are moored indicate that the water temperatures of essentially all the Great Lakes have reached the highest temperatures for the 30 years that lake temperatures have been collected by the buoys. [Minneapolis Star-Tribune]
Last ten years warmest decade in the global climate record --Scientists from 48 countries who produced the recently released "2009 State of the Climate" report claim that the recently completed decade than ran through 2009 was the warmest on record. These scientists also stated that data for ten key climate indicators all point to the finding that that the Earth was unmistakably warming over the last 50 years. These ten indicators were: air temperature over the continents, sea-surface temperature, air temperature over oceans, sea level, ocean heat, humidity and tropospheric temperature in the "active-weather" layer of the atmosphere closest to the Earth's surface, along with the extent of Arctic sea ice, glaciers and spring snow cover in the Northern hemisphere. [NOAA News]
A picture of Earth from a different perspective --Text An image of Earth was obtained approximately six weeks ago from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera onboard NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter that was orbiting the Moon at an altitude of approximately 50 km above the lunar surface. [NASA Earth Observatory]
Drought detected in Russia --An image of the Vegetation Anomaly, an indicator of plant health, generated from data collected by the MODIS sensor on NASA's Terra satellite shows the extent and the impact of the severe drought that has persisted across southern Russia during the first two months of meteorological summer (June and July 2010). [NASA Earth Observatory]
New York City could face more frequent and more intense heat waves --Climate scientists at The City College of New York (CCNY) warn that the data they collected from their New York City Meteorological Network (NYCMetNet)indicate that some areas of New York City, such as Manhattan, could experience more frequent and more intense heat waves in the next several years, in part due to the urban heat island effect. [City College of New York News]
President still supports national climate bill -- At a bipartisan meeting held last week at the White House, President Barack Obama stated that he is continuing to push for Congressional approval of a comprehensive national energy policy that addresses climate change. In addition, he said he sees the need for broad climate legislation. [USA Today]
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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