WEEKLY WEATHER AND CLIMATE NEWS

11-15 January 2016

Items of Interest:

• Check -- http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/severeweather/severewxcal.shtml
• Welcome weather science educators to the annual AMS meeting -- The 96th annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) is being held this week (10 - 14 January) in New Orleans, LA. The theme for this year's AMS meeting is "Earth System Science in Service to Society."
  One of the numerous symposia and conferences that will be conducted at the meeting is the 25th Symposium on Education, where educators from kindergarten through university levels will be attending workshops or giving presentations on weather, ocean, climate and space science education issues.
• Worldwide GLOBE at Night 2016 Campaign continues -- The first in a series of GLOBE at Night citizen-science campaigns for 2016 will continue 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]
• Approaching coldest time of the year -- This upcoming week is the third week of January, which for many locations across the nation typically marks the coldest week of the year, as indicated by the daily normal high and low temperatures. Usually, those stations located away from the moderating influences of the oceans reach their lowest temperatures during the third week of January, or a roughly one month after the winter solstice, when the Northern Hemisphere receives the fewest hours of daylight and the smallest amounts of solar radiation. During that month, temperatures continue to fall to their lowest typical values as cooling continues. However, the increased length of daylight and increased sunshine during this month begins to warm the ground and overlying atmosphere as normal daily temperatures begin to rise toward their highest levels in mid to late July.
• Free admission into the National Parks and Forests-- Next Monday, 18 January 2016, has been designated by the National Park Service as a fee-free day in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. This fee waiver will cover entrance and commercial tour fees in many of the national parks and monuments administered by the Park Service. [National Park Service Fee Free Days]

Weather and Climate News Items:

• Eye on the tropics -- Only one organized tropical cyclone formed across the major ocean basins of either the Northern or Southern Hemispheres during the last week. Tropical Storm 5S formed over the South Indian Ocean on this past Sunday several hundred miles north of Saint-Denis de la Réunion. This tropical storm could intensify to become a category 1 cyclone on the Saffir-Simpson Scale during the early part of this week as it was projected to travel to the east-southeast.
• ...
• check -- Review of Canada's top ten weather stories in 2014 -- During the last week, meteorologists with Environment Canada released a list of what they considered the top ten weather events across Canada during this calendar year of 2014. The top story was the long cold 2013-14 winter across Canada. Additional stories focused upon the flooding in the eastern provinces, wildfires across western and northern sections of their nation and the summer that was hot along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, but cool in the populated areas of Ontario and Quebec. [Environment Canada]
  http://www.ec.gc.ca/default.asp?lang=en&n=FD9B0E51-1 or
  http://www.ec.gc.ca/meteo-weather/default.asp?lang=En&n=3318B51C-1
• ...
• Updated El Niño outlook released -- Late last week forecasters at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center released their monthly El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) Diagnostic Discussion in which they still maintained their El Niño watch as above-average sea surface temperatures persisted across the equatorial Pacific Ocean in December How they lowered the odds of an El Niño event during the remainder of this upcoming Northern Hemisphere winter (Jan through February) to between 50 and 60 percent. The forecasters envisioned that ENSO-neutral conditions would be favored during the following three months (March-May 2015), which constitutes Northern Hemisphere spring. An ENSO-neutral (El Niño/Southern Oscillation) event means that neither an El Niño or La Niña event would occur. A description of the forecasters' reasoning for the slightly reduced probability levels is provided. [NOAA Climate Prediction Center]A blog entitled "January ENSO update: The little engine that couldn't quite" written by scientists from NOAA's Climate Prediction Center provide background information as to why the potential El Niño event is having a difficult time developing. [NOAA Climate.gov News]
• Calendar year of 2014 was warm across the nation -- Near the end of last week NOAA's National Climatic Data Center released a preliminary narrative that noted that the calendar year of 2014 was the 34th warmest year across the 48 contiguous states since 1895. A full report will be forthcoming during this week. [NOAA/NCDC State of the Climate]
  NOTE: A description is provided of the climatological rankings employed by NCDC for their monthly, seasonal and annual maps. [NOAA/NCDC]
• Extreme weather/climate events in US during 2014 -- Last week NOAA's National Climatic Data Center reported that eight weather and climate disaster events occurred during 2014 that each produced at least $1 billion in losses. These events included five severe thunderstorm/tornado outbreaks across the Plains, the Midwest and Southeast; one major flood event in Michigan and the Northeast; a winter storm event across the Midwest and Atlantic Seaboard and the major drought across California. Furthermore, these eight events appear to have caused 53 deaths across the nation. Note that the eight "billion-dollar" events in 2014 were less than the 11 weather and climate extreme events that occurred during 2012 and claimed 349 lives. Further updates to this tentative list for 2014 will be made in the next several months. [NOAA NCDC News]
• New climate data record for vegetation has been released -- Scientists at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) recently released "the Leaf Area Index (LAI) and Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (FAPAR) Climate Data Record" that was developed by colleagues at University of Maryland. The daily vegetation data in this high-resolution record have been obtained from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer Global Area Coverage data collected by the instruments onboard the NOAA POES series of polar-orbiting environmental satellites extending back to 1981. The compiled data can be used by climate modelers, meteorologists and agriculturists. [NOAA National Climatic Data Center News]
• ...
• check -- Five new NASA field campaigns to tackle climate issues in 2015 -- NASA is planning on conducting five new airborne field campaigns during 2015 that are designed to investigate several issues that could affect the Earth's climate. These five selected campaigns are part of NASA's Earth Venture-class projects are:
• Melting Greenland glaciers – intended to investigate the role of warmer, saltier Atlantic subsurface waters in Greenland glacier melting, which should help improve estimates of future sea level rise by observing changes in glacier melting where ice contacts seawater.
• Atmospheric chemistry and air pollution – designed to study the impact of human-produced air pollution on certain greenhouse gases.
• Ecosystem changes in a warming ocean – aimed at improving predictions of how ocean ecosystems would change with ocean warming by studying the annual life cycle of phytoplankton and the impact small airborne particles derived from marine organisms have on climate in the North Atlantic.
• Greenhouse gas sources – designed to quantify the sources of regional carbon dioxide, methane and other gases, as well as to document how weather systems transport these gases in the atmosphere.
• African fires and Atlantic clouds – intended to probe how smoke particles from massive biomass burning in Africa influences cloud cover over the Atlantic.
[NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory]
• 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]