WEEKLY WEATHER & CLIMATE NEWS

WEEKLY WEATHER AND CLIMATE NEWS

4-8 July 2016

Items of Interest:

Way out there!...The earth reaches aphelion, the point in its annual orbit when it is farthest from the sun during the midday hours of today (officially at 1624Z on Monday,4 July 2016, which is equivalent to 12:24 PM EDT or 11:24 AM CDT, etc.). At aphelion, the earth-sun distance is 152,089,000 km, or 3.4% greater than the distance at perihelion, the smallest earth-sun distance, which occurred earlier this year during the afternoon of 2 January 2016. [US Naval Observatory]
MOVE -- Extra "leap" second inserted into the year -- By international agreement, one second was added to last Tuesday (30 June 2015) at 23:59:59 UTC to account for the slowing of the Earth's rotation because of tidal forces between Earth and the Moon. [NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory]
update to end of June-early July --
Worldwide GLOBE at Night 2016 Campaign resumes -- The seventh in a series of GLOBE at Night citizen-science campaigns for 2016 will commence on Monday (27 June) and continue through 6 July. 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 (Hercules in the Northern Hemisphere and Scropius in the Southern Hemisphere) 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. The next series in the 2016 campaign is scheduled for 28 July-6 August 2016. [GLOBE at Night]
Worldwide GLOBE at Night 2016 Campaign is underway -- The seventh in the series of GLOBE at Night citizen-science campaigns for 2016 will continue through Wednesday, 6 July. 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 (Hercules in the Northern Hemisphere and Scropius in the Southern Hemisphere) 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. The next series in the 2016 campaign is scheduled for 28 July-6 August 2016. [GLOBE at Night]
Remembering IGY and the "Year of the Satellite" -- This past week NOAA's National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) commemorated the 58th anniversary of the start of the International Geophysical Year (IGY). During that year, the first artificial satellites were launched by the former Soviet Union (Sputnik 1 and 2) and the United States (Explorer 1). These satellites represented the start of the study of the Earth-atmosphere system from space. [NOAA NESDIS News Archive]

Weather and Climate News items:

Eye on the Tropics -- Tropical cyclone activity was found across the western sides of the North and South Pacific basins during the last week:

In the western North Pacific basin, Typhoon Chan-Hom formed near the midpoint of last week northeast of Pohnpei in the Federated States of Micronesia. This typhoon was classified as a category 1 typhoon on the Saffir-Simpson Scale. By the weekend, Typhoon Chan-Hom had weakened to a tropical storm as it was traveled in a direction to the north-northwest, passing close to Guam. This tropical storm was expected to ultimately dissipate during this week. See the NASA Hurricane Page for satellite imagery and additional information on Typhoon Chan-Hom.
Late last week,Tropical Depression 10W strengthened to become Tropical Storm Linfa over the Philippine Sea to the east of Luzon Island in the Philippines. This next tropical storm traveled to the west-northwest, reaching Luzon during this past weekend. After crossing northern Luzon, Linfa moved out into the South China Sea and began curving to the north. Forecasts indicate that Linfa should travel toward southern sections of Taiwan by midweek. The NASA Hurricane Page has additional information and satellite imagery on Tropical Storm Linfa.
Over the past weekend, Tropical Storm Nangka formed to the east-northeast of Kwajalein and intensified into a category 1 typhoon. Travel was to the west-northwest across the Marshall Islands. Current forecasts indicate that this typhoon would travel to the northwest during the early part of this week.
In the western South Pacific basin, Tropical Storm Raquel formed early last week to the north of the Solomon Islands. Taking a somewhat erratic path toward the south, Raquel passed through the Solomon Islands during the latter half of the week. By the start of this past weekend, Raquel had weakened as it moved to the south of the islands and dissipated. Satellite images and information concerning Tropical Storm Raquel appear in the NASA Hurricane Page.

Southern lights seen from space -- A "day-night" band image generated from data collected by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) onboard the NOAA/NASA Suomi NPP satellite shows the aurora australis, or "southern lights," over Antarctica approximately three days after the winter solstice in the Southern Hemisphere (or summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere). Several solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) from the Sun helped create aurora in the polar and subpolar latitudes of both hemispheres that were seen by observers on the Earth's surface. [NASA Earth Observatory]
Check -- Second-quarter 2015 Regional Climate Impacts and Outlooks reports released -- During the last week, NOAA and its partners released a series of two-page regional climate outlooks for seven regions around the nation that are designed to inform the public of recent climate impacts within their respective regions for the second quarter of 2015. Major climate events that occurred during the three months from March through May 2015 are discussed and historical seasonal assessments made. In addition, regional future climate outlooks are provided that span the upcoming three months of July through September 2015. [NOAA NDIS US Drought Portal]
Check
https://www.drought.gov/drought/dews/coastal-carolinas/reports-assessments-and-outlooks
Updated regional climate impacts and outlooks released -- During the last week NOAA scientists and their colleagues in other partner agencies released a set of "Quarterly Climate Impacts and Outlook" reports for March 2016. These reports outline historical climate trends and describe major climate events that occurred during the previous three months that constitute meteorological winter (December 2015 through February 2016). They also provide future climate outlooks for the next three months (April-June 2016) that spans the remainder of meteorological spring and the first month of summer for each of eight regions around the nation.
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update== Canadian national seasonal outlook issued -- Forecasters with Environment Canada issued their outlooks for temperature and precipitation across Canada for July, August and September 2015, which represents the last two months of meteorological summer and the first month of autumn. The temperature outlook indicates that large sections of western and eastern Canada along with the Prairie Provinces would experience above normal (1981-2010) summer-early fall temperatures. Scattered areas across northern Quebec and sections of Nunavut were expected to have below normal summer temperatures. Elsewhere, temperatures for the next three months should be close to normal.
The Canadian precipitation outlook for summer and early autumn 2015 indicates that below average precipitation could be expected across a large section of southern Canada, extending from western British Columbia eastward across the Prairie Provinces to Ontario. Scattered sections across northwestern and southeastern Canada could have above normal precipitation for these three months.
[Note for comparisons and continuity with the three-month seasonal outlooks of temperature and precipitation generated for the continental United States and Alaska by NOAA's Climate Prediction Center, one would need to use Environment Canada's probabilistic forecasts for temperature and precipitation.]
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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]

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