WEEKLY CLIMATE NEWS

5-9 February 2018

ITEMS OF INTEREST

Nation celebrates 60 years in space -- Last Wednesday (31 January 2018) marked the 60th anniversary of the successful launch of Explorer 1, the first artificial satellite launched by the United States, which followed by four months the former Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite. NOAA and NASA officials celebrated the 60th anniversary of Explorer's launch, as it paved the way to the development of the nation's weather and other environmental satellites, with the launch of the first weather satellite called Television Infrared Observation Satellite (or TIROS-1) in April 1960 and continuing through the recent launch of the NOAA-20 polar orbiting satellite last November. [NOAA NESDIS]
Worldwide GLOBE at Night 2018 Campaign for February commences -- The second in a series of GLOBE at Night citizen-science campaigns for 2018 will commence this Monday (5 February) and continue through Thursday, 15 February. 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 with the seven magnitude/star charts of progressively fainter stars. These constellations are Orion for latitudes equatorward of 30 degrees latitude in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres; Gemini for latitudes north of 30 degrees in the Northern Hemisphere and Canis Major for latitudes poleward of 30 degrees in the Southern Hemisphere. Activity guides are also available. The GLOBE at night program is intended to raise public awareness of the impact of light pollution. The third series in the 2018 campaign is scheduled for 8-17 March 2018. [GLOBE at Night]
Climatology facts for 2018 Winter Olympics are available -- The 2018 Winter Olympics, officially known as the XXIII Olympic Winter Games is scheduled to open this Friday, 9 February 2018, and run through Sunday, 25 February 2018, in Pyeongchang County, South Korea. A mountain cluster located in Pyeongchang, in South Korea's Taebaek Mountains region, will feature skiing and other sliding events, while the coastal cluster in the city of Gangneung on the east coast of South Korea will feature indoor venues, such as speedskating, hockey and curling. A 52-second video provides several climatological facts for the month of February for the Pyeongchang and Gangneung venues. [Accuweather] Graphs displaying the average annual cycle for a variety of weather elements are also available. [World Weather & Climate Information]
Note: The 2018 Winter Paralympics (officially known as the XII Paralympic Winter Games) will be held in held in Pyeongchang, South Korea, 9 to 18 March 2018.
One for the record books -- If you would like more background information concerning how various temperature and precipitation extremes are identified as record events from a station's climate record, please read this week's Supplemental Information...In Greater Depth.

CURRENT CLIMATE MONITORING

Explanation provided for why California received abundant precipitation during last year's La Niña -- A meteorologist with NOAA's Climate Prediction Center (CPC)recently posted an ENSO (El Niño/Southern Oscillation) blog that addresses the question "why did it rain so much in California during last year's La Niña?" He reminds the audience of what CPC forecasters had written in their 2016-2017 Winter Outlook for the United States prior to the start of the season. Their forecast called for a good chance for below average winter precipitation across southern California, which is often typical during a La Nina winter. (La Niña is an anomalous atmospheric and oceanic circulation event that features below average sea surface temperatures across the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean.) However, above average winter precipitation was reported across southern California, while farther north, some areas around San Francisco Bay area had one of their wettest water years (1 October through 30 September) on record. Apparently, last year's La Niña was not particularly strong and eventually deteriorated by early 2017, a situation that permitted a series of storms traveling across the North Pacific to provide abundant precipitation across California. Attention was also turned to the role that a stronger La Niña this year is having upon the lack of significant winter precipitation across California during this current 2017-2018 winter. [NOAA Climate.gov News]
Private weather station records 199-mph wind gust in Hurricane Irma -- Jeff Masters of the Weather Channel's WeatherUnderground recently reported on the high wind speeds recorded during the passage of category 5 hurricane Irma (on the Saffir-Simpson Scale) over the Leeward Islands on 6 September 2017. The highest wind speeds recorded by NOAA instruments at a National Ocean Service station were sustained winds of 118 mph and gusts to 155 mph, but a private weather station on the island of St Barts (officially, Saint Barthélemy) recorded a wind gust of 199 mph before the instrument was destroyed by flying debris. This 199-mph wind gust, which was measured during passage of Irma's eyewall, represents the highest wind gust ever recorded by a personal weather station on the Weather Underground network. The official world record wind gust is 253 mph at Barrow Island, Australia, during Tropical Cyclone Olivia in 1996, while the second highest wind speed ever measured was 231 mph on the top of Mt. Washington, NH on 12 April 1934 during passage of an extratropical storm. [Weather Underground cat6]

CLIMATE FORCING

Waters along continental shelves are absorbing more atmospheric carbon dioxide -- An international team of scientists from the United States, Belgium and Switzerland recently reported that the ocean waters residing over the continental shelves are sequestering increasing quantities of atmospheric carbon dioxide. These results are based upon analysis of the long-term trends in the differences in the concentrations of carbon dioxide in the air and in the shelf water spanning a 35-year period. Increased uptake of atmospheric carbon dioxide would counter the increases due to increased greenhouse gas emissions. [University of Delaware Daily]
Landscape disturbances in permafrost could make Arctic ponds a potential significant source of carbon emissions -- Researchers from the University of Toronto Scarborough, Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario and Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec have found that carbon released by some ponds in the Canadian High Arctic could potentially be a hidden source of greenhouse gas emissions. Dissolved organic carbon that has been stored in Arctic permafrost is being released into Arctic watersheds as a result of physical disturbances that relocate nutrients across the landscape. The Arctic permafrost is thawing at an accelerated rate due to climate change, resulting in "active layer detachments." [University of Toronto Scarborough News]

CLIMATE FORECASTS

Canadian national seasonal outlook issued -- Forecasters with Environment Canada issued their outlooks for temperature and precipitation across Canada for February, March and April of 2018, which represent the remainder of meteorological winter (February) and the first two months of meteorological spring (March and April). Their temperature outlook indicates that most of Canada could experience below average or normal (1981-2010) temperatures for these three months. Only northern sections of the Canadian Archipelago and sections of Nova Scotia could have above average temperatures.
The Canadian precipitation outlook for February through April 2018 indicates that scattered areas of central Canada, especially running from the Northwest Territories and Nunavut to northern Quebec and Baffin Island could have below average precipitation for the next three months. Several scattered areas across southern Canada could experience above average precipitation. The largest areas for wetter than average conditions would be along the US-Canadian border, primarily across along the Canadian Rockies in eastern British Columbia and across the western Prairie Provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. Areas from the eastern Great Lakes and St. Lawrence into the Maritime Provinces should also have above average precipitation. Elsewhere, near-normal precipitation was anticipated.
[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.]
UK Met Office issues 5-year forecast showing increase in global temperature -- Scientists at the United Kingdom's Met Office (formerly called the Meteorology Office) recently released their decadal forecast that indicates the annual global average temperature calculated relative to a baseline of 1850-1900 is likely to exceed 1 Celsius degree above pre-industrial levels (defined as the 1850-1900 interval) during the next five years, or between 2018 and 2022. They indicated that the temperature by 2022 could temporally reach 1.5 Celsius degrees higher than the 1850-1900 levels due to increased greenhouse gas emissions and natural variability. [UK Met Office News]
Viewing changes in nation's average daytime high temperatures projected through remainder of the century -- A contractor with NOAA's Climate Project Office wrote an article for the ClimateWatch Magazine that describes the collection of monthly average daily high temperature maps for the 48 contiguous United States for each decade over the remainder of the 21st Century for two possible future energy paths. These maps are found in the "Data Snapshot" section. The climate models that produced these maps use two different energy use projection scenarios and the maps show the disparity in the temperature increase among states. [NOAA Climate.gov News]

PALEOCLIMATE RECONSTRUCTION

Link found between rainfall and ocean circulation, now and in the past -- Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, the U.S. Geological Society and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found that a linkage has existed for thousands of years between changes in the near surface ocean currents in the Atlantic Ocean and rainfall patterns across the Western Hemisphere, especially over the continents. Their conclusions were based upon their analysis of the changes in Atlantic Ocean circulation using 30-year time segments over the past 4400 years obtained from information obtained from three sediment cores extracted from the Gulf of Mexico's seafloor, which were then compared with precipitation data obtained from proxy indicators, such as tree rings, cave formations and other natural records. The researchers note that that future changes to the Gulf's salinity and temperature could be expected to influence the climate of the surrounding continents in other ways. [University of Texas at Austin News]
Past decade has been warmer across North America and Europe than for much of last 11,000 years -- Researchers from the University of Wyoming, the University of Oregon, the University of Utah and the U.S. Geological Survey have found that temperatures during the last decade across North America and Europe have exceeded, for the most part, temperatures over the past 11,000 years, or the Holocene Epoch that began at the end of the last Ice Age. They found that the temperature during this recent decade was at least one-half Fahrenheit degree higher than the warmest periods of the Holocene. They based their conclusions on their reconstruction of temperatures from fossil pollen collected from 642 ponds or lakes across these two continents. Their reconstructions matched the numerical climate simulations conducted independently at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). Their study also revealed important natural fluctuations in climate have occurred over past millennia, which would have naturally led to climatic cooling today in the absence of human activity. [University of Wyoming News]

CLIMATE AND SOCIETY

Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com]

Concept of the Week: Start of the Growing Season

As we approach meteorological spring, the increases in daylength and air temperature across many areas of the nation make backyard gardeners as well as farmers contemplate the start of the growing season. For many crops, the soil has to be tilled and prepared for planting before the growing season really commences. Soil temperatures and moisture levels often influence when fieldwork can start.

The term growing season depends upon the plant species, as well as the climate of the locale, meaning that several ways can be used to define the growing season. In most mid latitude climates, the growing season is often used synonymously with the frost-free season, loosely defined as the length of time between the last killing frost in spring and the first killing frost in the autumn. The National Centers for Environmental Information (formerly, National Climatic Data Center) has produced climatological tables that identify those median dates (a 50 percent occurrence) during spring and fall when the temperature at a station falls to 36, 32, 28, 24 or 20 degrees Fahrenheit for the last time in spring or the first time in autumn. While the exact time span that a plant survives would vary by plant type, the growing season for climatological purposes is often related to the interval when the daily minimum temperature remains above 32 degrees.

The Midwestern Regional Climate Center (MRCC) is maintaining the MRCC Frost/Freeze Guidance Project as part of the Vegetation Impact Program (VIP) with website displaying a variety of freeze maps across the 48 contiguous United States. These maps show the 28-degree and 32-degree Freeze Climatologies as well as the current freeze statistics. Check the map showing the median date of occurrence of the last 32-degree Fahrenheit temperature in spring across the 48 coterminous United States. (The median date means that half of the occurrences of a 32-degree reading over the 30-year normal occur prior to this date, while the other half occur after this date.) Corresponding Freeze Climatologies for the first occurrence of 32-degree or 28-degree temperatures in fall are available across the contiguous US from MRCC/VIP. A map of the median date of the first 32-degree occurrence is available on this site.

Across the continental U.S. the typical lengths of the frost free regions range from about 120 days along the Canadian border to about 220 days in Oklahoma and north Texas and over 320 days in southern sections of Florida and California. Mountainous areas provide a complex pattern, with some higher elevations having lengths that are less than 100 days. By accessing the NOWData (NOAA Online Weather Data) feature on the Climate page of your local National Weather Service, you can find the "first/last dates" for various climate reporting stations around your area.

Many crops, especially vegetables and fruits, are sensitive to relatively low air temperatures. In spring, when many crops are emerging and in various stages of development they are more vulnerable to air temperatures near 32 degrees Fahrenheit. But by fall, many of these plants have become hardy. Generally speaking, a spring killing frost would occur when the plant has become well emerged and the temperature around the plant would fall to a point that would kill most tender vegetation. Sometimes, other terminology is used.

Historical Events:

5 February 1887...San Francisco, CA experienced its greatest snowstorm of record. Nearly four (3.7) inches were reported in downtown San Francisco, and the tall western hills of the city received seven inches. Excited crowds went on a snowball-throwing rampage. (David Ludlum)
5 February 1892...The temperature at Verkhoyansk, Russia fell to -90F, the lowest temperature ever in the Northern Hemisphere. The record would be tied at the same location two days later and again at Oimaykon, Russia on 6 February 1933. (National Weather Service files)
5 February 1996...The "great arctic outbreak of '96" began to wind down, but not before one more frigid morning. Greene, RI reported a state record low temperature of 25 degrees below zero. (Intellicast)
6 February 1933...The temperature at Oimekon, Russia fell to 90 degrees (Fahrenheit), tying the previous lowest recorded temperature in Asia and the Northern Hemisphere set in 1892. (The Weather Doctor)
6 February 1933...The highest reliably observed ocean wave was seen by crew of the US Navy oiler, USS Ramapo, in the North Pacific during the night on its way from Manila to San Diego. The wave was estimated (by triangulation) to have a height of 112 feet. Average winds at the time were 78 mph. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
6 February 1978...A massive nor'easter buried the cities of the northeastern U.S. The Boston, MA area received 25 to 30 inches in "The Great New England Blizzard of '78" By the time the storm ended late on the 7th, Boston had 27.1 inches of new snow to set an all-time single storm snowfall record. (David Ludlum) (Intellicast)
7 February 1989...The low of 43 degrees below zero at Boca, CA was a state record for the month of February. In Utah, lows of -32 degrees at Bryce Canyon, -27 degrees at Delta, -29 degrees at Dugway, and -38 degrees at Vernal were all-time records for those locations. (The National Weather Summary)
8 February 1933...The record low temperature for the state of Texas was set at Seminole when the mercury dropped to 23 degrees below zero. (Intellicast)
8 February 1936...The temperature at Denver, CO plunged to its all-time record low temperature of 30 degrees below zero. (David Ludlum) (The Weather Channel)
9 February 1899...Norway House, Manitoba reported a temperature of 63 degrees below zero to set the province's record for lowest temperature. (The Weather Doctor)
9 February 1933...The temperature at Moran, WY, located next to Teton National Park, plunged to 63 degrees below zero to establish a state record. The temperature at the Riverside Ranger Station in Montana near West Yellowstone, MT dipped to 66 below zero to establish a record for the state, and a record for the nation, which stood until 1954. (David Ludlum)
9 February 1934...The mercury dipped to 51 degrees below zero at Vanderbilt to establish a record for the state of Michigan. The temperature at Stillwater Reservoir plunged to 52 degrees below zero to establish a record for the state of New York; this record was subsequently tied in February 1979. (David Ludlum) (NCDC)
10 February 1899...The record low temperature for the state of Ohio was set at Milligan when the mercury dipped to 39 degrees below zero. The record low temperature for Virginia was also set at Monterey with 29 degrees below zero; this record has been broken in January 1985. (Intellicast) (Sandra and TI Richard Sanders - 1987)
10 February 1933...The temperature at Seneca, OR fell to 54 degrees below zero, tying Oregon's statewide low temperature record set the previous day at Ukiah. (NCDC)
10 February 2011...The Oklahoma Mesonet weather station at Nowata recorded a temperature of 31 degrees below zero, which is the lowest reading in the Sooner State, breaking the previous statewide record low of 27 degrees below zero set at several stations in earlier years. By midafternoon, the temperature at Nowata increased by 53 Fahrenheit degrees to 22 degrees above zero. (Accord Weather Guide Calendar) (NCDC)
11 February 1895...Braemar (Grampian), Scotland reported a temperature of 17 degrees below zero, the lowest temperature ever measured in the United Kingdom. (The Weather Doctor)
11 February 1899...Perhaps the greatest of all arctic outbreaks commenced on this date. The record low temperature for Washington, DC was set when the temperature fell to 15 degrees below zero. (David Ludlum) (Intellicast)
11 February 1935...The temperature of 11 degrees below zero at Ifrane, Morocco was the lowest temperature ever in Africa. Ifrane is a ski resort town at an elevation of about 5400 feet in the Atlas Mountains. (The Weather Doctor)
11 February 1970...Mount Washington, NH, the highest point in New England, recorded 10.38 inches during a 24-hour span (10^th-11^th) to set a statewide 24-hour maximum precipitation record. (NCDC)
11 February 1999...Tahtsa Lake, located in the Whitesail Range of the Coast Mountains of British Columbia reported 57 inches of snow, which set a new 24-hour snowfall record for Canada, eclipsing the old record of 46.5 inches of snow that fell at Lakelse, BC on 17 January 1974. This former record replaced a 44.0 inch summertime snowfall on 29 June 1963 at Livingston Ranger Station, AB. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar) (The Weather Doctor)

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