WEEKLY WEATHER AND CLIMATE NEWS

4-8 January 2016

Items of Interest:

• Worldwide GLOBE at Night 2016 Campaign continues -- The first in a series of GLOBE at Night citizen-science campaigns for 2016 will continue with a 10-night campaign running through 10 January. 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 (Orion in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres) 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 1-10 February 2016. [GLOBE at Night]
• Tracking orbiting environmental satellites -- NOAA's National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) posted a website that provides information that helps locate those orbiting satellites used to monitor the weather and other aspects of the Earth's environment. [NOAA NESDIS News]
• Top 15 images of Earth obtained from the Space Station in 2015 are selected -- A gallery of 15 digital photographs of Earth made by astronauts onboard the International Space Station during 2015 has been selected by NASA Johnson Space Center's Earth Observations team and posted. These images show a variety of interesting features of the planet's atmosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere. [NASA Features]
• Finding the "ABCs" images of Earth from orbit -- The "NASA Earth Observatory" writer and social media manager has produced a gallery of 26 images obtained from NASA spacecraft during the that contain features in the Earth's atmosphere, oceans and on the land surface resembling each of the letters in the Latin alphabet. [NASA Earth Observatory]

Weather and Climate News Items:

• Eye on the tropics --- Tropical cyclone activity was relatively limited to the Pacific basins in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres during the last week:
  
  • In the North Pacific basin, a tropical depression formed last Wednesday approximately 1100 miles to the south-southwest of Johnston Island or approximately 1850 miles to the southwest of Honolulu. This system was identified as Tropical Depression 9C, as it was the ninth tropical depression to have formed in the Central North Pacific basin (located between 140 degrees West longitude and the International Dateline) during the calendar year of 2015. Surprisingly, this tropical depression formed at 2.5 degrees North latitude, which is unusually close to the Equator for most tropical cyclones. Tropical Depression 9-C failed strengthen as it traveled to the west toward the International Dateline before dissipating on New Year's Eve. The NASA Hurricane Page has additional information and satellite images on Tropical Depression 9-C.
    
  • In the South Pacific basin, a tropical storm formed last Wednesday east of American Samoa and the International Dateline. This tropical storm, identified as Ula, intensified to become a category 2 tropical cyclone on the Saffir-Simpson Scale as it traveled toward the west-southwest and southwest late last week and into this past weekend. On Sunday (local time), Tropical Cyclone Ula was traveling to the southwest away from Fiji. Additional information and satellite images on Tropical Cyclone Ula can be found on the NASA Hurricane Page.
    
• Satellite views of late December deadly storm moving across nation's midsection -- NASA Goddard Space Flight Center assembled images from several satellites showing the winter storm that traveled across the southwestern and south central United States over the Christmas weekend (26-28 December 2015). This storm was accompanied by severe thunderstorms that spawned deadly tornadoes, heavy rain that produced deadly floods and heavy snow. An animation of satellite images obtained from NOAA's GOES-East satellite shows the eastward movement of the cloud shield surrounding the storm. Attention is directed to the line of thunderstorm-producing cumulonimbus clouds to the southeast of the storm across sections of Texas. [NASA Goddard Space Flight Center]
  NASA's Global Precipitation Measurement or GPM mission core satellite analyzed extreme weather that affected the US during the five-day span running from 23 to 27 December. Heavy rainfall, flooding and tornado outbreaks affected a large area across the Southwest through the Midwest. [NASA Goddard Space Flight Center]
• Satellites detect a still-growing El Niño event aimed on US -- Scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory recently reported that the latest image of sea surface heights across the Pacific Ocean basin obtained from the U.S./European Ocean Surface Topography Mission (OSTM)/Jason-2 mission spacecraft bears a striking resemblance to one from December 1997 obtained by the NASA/Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) Topex/Poseidon mission, Jason-2's predecessor, during the last large El Niño event. Both images reflect the classic pattern of a fully developed El Niño. The researchers foresee that the United States would continue to experience the impacts of this current El Niño event of the next several months. [NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory]
• Canadian national seasonal outlook issued -- Forecasters with Environment Canada issued their outlooks for temperature and precipitation across Canada for the first three months of 2016, which represent the remainder of meteorological winter (January and February) and the first month of meteorological spring (March). Their temperature outlook indicates that essentially all of Canada could experience above average or normal (1981-2010) temperatures for these three months. Only a few scattered areas along the eastern Great Lakes in Ontario and in coastal sections of eastern Canada could have close to average temperatures for the next three months.
  The Canadian precipitation outlook for January through March 2016 indicates that a large section of the nation, running from central British Columbia across the Prairie Provinces and Ontario to Quebec could experience below average precipitation for these three months. Sections of the Yukon and Northwest Territories could also have below average precipitation. Conversely, above normal precipitation was projected for a large section of the Canadian Arctic including the Nunavut Territory and along the Atlantic coast in Labrador and the Maritime Provinces.
  [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.]
• Monitoring freeze-thaw patterns across polar and subpolar latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere from space -- Scientists at the University of Montana and other research institutions have been analyzing more than 30 years of data obtained from orbiting satellites to determine the seasonal freeze-thaw patterns across land areas of the Northern Hemisphere. A map is shown of the frozen and thawed land areas poleward of the 45 degree North latitude parallel for early March 2015 generated from the data collected by the radar instrument on NASA's new Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite. Earlier, the researchers showed that soils in the Northern Hemisphere thawed for as many as 7.5 days more in 2008 than they did in 1979. The change was primarily driven by an earlier start to the spring thaw and coincided with measurable warming in the region. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• Exploring ice and sea level change through time with a new app -- The education coordinator at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and her colleagues have designed and made available a new free mobile application (or app) for the iPad called "Polar Explorer: Sea Level" that allows the user to learn about sea level and the various processes that control the location of the shoreline. (A version of the app for iphones will be available shortly.) A series of maps of the planet are available on this app, ranging from the deepest ocean trenches to the ice at the poles. Users, ranging from students to interested adults, can see how ice, the oceans, precipitation and temperatures have changed over time and listen as scientists explain the reasons for these variations. A browser version of the Polar Explorer App is available from a companion web page for use in class rooms and seminars:[Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory News]
• California drought threatens tens of millions of trees -- Using laser-guided imaging spectroscopy tools mounted on the Carnegie Airborne Observatory (CAO) aircraft, researchers from CAO and from California's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF) have determined that as many as 58 million large trees in California have experienced severe canopy water loss between 2011 and 2015 due to the state's historic drought, while up to 888 million large trees had measurable canopy water loss. Some of these trees are in forests that are home to the planet's oldest, tallest and most-massive trees. In addition to the persistently low precipitation totals, high temperatures and outbreaks of the destructive bark beetle have increased forest mortality risk. [Carnegie Science News]
• Climate-induced disasters and food security linked across time and location -- Archaeologists, historians and geographers from the United States, the United Kingdom and Denmark have found that prehistoric and historic peoples in the American Southwest and on North Atlantic islands who had created vulnerabilities to food shortfall were especially susceptible to challenges caused from climate. The researchers compared four pre-Columbian regions in arid to semi-arid deserts with three sub-polar North Atlantic islands during Norse occupation, applying eight variables -- ranging from social to environmental aspects -- to quantify vulnerability to food shortage before extreme climate challenges. The researchers discovered that social factors, such as limitations on networks and mobility, were the primary contributors to vulnerability to food shortage. [Arizona State University News]
• US postage stamps to honor NASA planetary discoveries -- The US Postal Service has recently announced a series of postage stamps that are to be released during this upcoming year of 2016 highlighting NASA's Planetary Science program. The stamps include an image of Pluto and the New Horizons spacecraft, eight new colorful Forever stamps of NASA images of solar system planets, a Global Forever stamp dedicated to Earth's moon as well as another postal treat for space fans: a tribute to 50 years of Star Trek. [NASA Feature]
• Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com]