KOLD Climate Community Blog

How a hurricane will ramp up our monsoon

By Erin Jordan - bio | email | Facebook | Twitter

TUCSON, AZ (KOLD) - Hurricane Alex will make landfall tonight near the Texas-Mexico border. 

Track his progress with the First Alert Hurricane Tracker on KOLD.com/weather.

Alex will quickly weaken after landfall and head west, across northern Mexico, but the remnant circulation will still produce tropical downpours along the track. 

Some of the tropical moisture will even push into southern Arizona, bringing up our monsoon storm chances as we head into the weekend.

As what's left of Alex moves off land and into the East Pacific near the entrance to the Gulf of California, the counter-clockwise circulation around the low will likely initiate a tropical moisture surge traveling north over the Gulf. 

Once this moisture reaches Arizona, it will spread out and possibly keep our monsoon storm chances going through July 4th. 

After the holiday weekend, some drier air pushes back into southern Arizona.

However, the storms don't disappear from the forecast. 

They will just be a little less of them as we head into the short workweek. 

©2010 KOLD. All rights reserved.

Researchers Call for 'No-Regrets' Approach to Climate Warming

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The following is a news release from the University of Arizona.

TUCSON, AZ (UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA) - Two prominent climate experts, including one from the University of Arizona, are calling for a "no-regrets" strategy for planning for a hotter and drier western North America.

Their advice: use water conservatively and continue developing ways to harness energy from the sun, wind and Earth.

Jonathan Overpeck, principal investigator with the Climate Assessment for the Southwest at the UA, and Bradley Udall, director of the Western Water Assessment at the University of Colorado, write in the June 25 issue of the journal Science that such an approach is necessary for coping with a wide range of projected future climate changes in the West and Southwest.

In their overview of shifting climate in the region, Overpeck and Udall cite published findings of prevalent signs of change: rising temperatures, earlier snowmelt, northward-shifting winter storms, increasing precipitation intensity and flooding, record-setting drought, plummeting Colorado River reservoir storage, widespread vegetation mortality and more large wildfires.

"The West, and especially the Southwest, is leading the nation in climate change – warming, drying, less late-winter snowpack and drought – as well as the impacts of this change," said Overpeck, a UA professor of geosciences and atmospheric sciences and co-director of the Institute of the Environment.

In the past 10 years, temperatures in almost all areas in western North America have surpassed the 20^th century average, many by more than 1 or even 2 degrees Fahrenheit.

The warming has decreased late-season snowpack, which serves as a water reservoir, as well as the annual flow of the Colorado River, the researchers said.

Those reductions, combined with the worst drought observed since 1900, haven't helped matters; water storage in Lakes Powell and Mead, the largest southwestern water reservoirs, fell nearly 50 percent between 1999 and 2004 and has not risen significantly since.

In addition to water, vegetation is feeling the effects of climate change. Work by UA's David Breshears and colleagues have already showed that more than 1 million hectares of piñon pine have died in the Southwest in the last few decades from a lethal combination of record-high temperatures and uncommonly severe drought.

In addition, the frequency of large wildfires has increased as snowpack has decreased.

While researchers are confident that the higher temperatures and resulting changes in snowpack, Colorado River flow, vegetation mortality and wildfires are human-caused, they don't know whether the drought that has plagued the West for the last 10 years – the worst since record-keeping began – is because of humans, Overpeck said.

"It's critical to determine the causes of the observed change, including the drought, because then we will have a much improved ability to say what's coming next, in the future," Overpeck said.

To complicate issues, studies published to date suggest that Colorado River flow could continue to decrease by 20 percent by 2050, with severe implications for cities served by Colorado River water and for agricultural production.

"One thing is for sure," Overpeck said. "The best strategy now – the no-regrets strategy – is to prepare for a hotter and drier West, Southwest and Arizona, and to make sure we don't commit water to things now in ways that could make water shortages in the future more difficult to deal with."

Fortunately, Overpeck said, scientists have a better understanding about potential future climate change in western North America than for many other regions around the globe, making it easier for policy makers to plan coping strategies.

The researchers also point to the region's potential wealth of solar, wind and geothermal renewable energy production.

"That offers a way to make up economically for the costs that will be incurred in adapting to the warmer, drier conditions," Overpeck said. "And it will have the side benefit of decreasing the chances, through reducing greenhouse gas emissions, for potentially greater human-caused climate change."

(Copyright 2010 by the University of Arizona. All Rights Reserved.)

Comet Visible During Brief Visit To The Sun

Posted by Erin Jordan - bio | email | Facebook | Twitter

The following is a news release from the University of Arizona.

TUCSON, AZ (THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA) - It won't be around for very long, but with a pair of binoculars you can catch Comet McNaught as it nears the sun during the next few days.

The best place to see it is well away from city lights with binoculars or telescope for a better the view, according to University of Arizona senior research scientist Carl Hergenrother at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory.

The comet, he said, is now in northern Auriga, just a few degrees to the northeast of the 0th magnitude star Capella.

It is visible very low in the northeast sky about a half hour before the start of dawn.  

Hergenrother, whose work centers on comets, asteroids, has been keeping tabs on McNaught, officially C/2009 R1, and writes about this and other night sky phenomena in his blog.

Comet McNaught is one of several comets named for its discoverer, Robert McNaught.

Like other comets, McNaught is essentially a ball of ice and dust, remnants of the earliest days of the formation of our solar system.

As they approach the sun, comets develop signature "tails" as solar winds cause them to shed their dusty outer layers.

McNaught will appear lower and lower in the morning sky in the Northern Hemisphere as it heads to perihelion, its closest approach to the sun, on July 2.

Hergenrother said the comet may be visible low in the evening sky later on, but will be very close to the horizon and not very visible for most people.

And the window for morning viewing, he added, is closing rapidly. Still to come, though, is Hartley 2, which will be bright enough to see with the naked eye come this fall.

(Copyright 2010 by the University of Arizona. All Rights Reserved.)

Strong link between CO2 and climate

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The following is a news release from the National Science Foundation.

(NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION) - Increasingly, the Earth's climate appears to be more connected than anyone would have imagined.

El Niño, the weather pattern that originates in a patch of the equatorial Pacific, can spawn heat waves and droughts as far away as Africa.

Now, a research team led by Brown University has established that the climate in the tropics over at least the last 2.7 million years changed in lockstep with the cyclical spread and retreat of ice sheets thousands of miles away in the Northern Hemisphere.

The findings appear to cement the link between the recent Ice Ages and temperature changes in tropical oceans.

Based on that new link, the scientists conclude that carbon dioxide has played the lead role in dictating global climate patterns, beginning with the Ice Ages and continuing today.

"We think we have the simplest explanation for the link between the Ice Ages and the tropics over that time and the apparent role of carbon dioxide in the intensification of Ice Ages and corresponding changes in the tropics," said Timothy Herbert of Brown University and the lead author of the paper in Science. Herbert added, "but we don't know why. The answer lies in the ocean, we're pretty sure."

Candace Major of the National Science Foundation agrees: "This research certainly supports the idea of global sensitivity of climate to carbon dioxide as the first order of control on global temperature patterns," she says. "It also points to a strong sensitivity of global temperature to the levels of greenhouse gases on very long timescales, and shows that resulting climatic impacts are felt from the tropics to the poles."

The research team, including scientists from Luther College in Iowa, Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, and the University of Hong Kong, analyzed cores taken from the seabed at four locations in the tropical oceans: the Arabian Sea, the South China Sea, the eastern Pacific and the equatorial Atlantic Ocean.

The cores tell the story.

Sedimentary cores taken from the ocean floor in four locations show that climate patterns in the tropics have mirrored Ice Age cycles for the last 2.7 million years and that carbon dioxide has played the leading role in determining global climate patterns.

The researchers zeroed in on tropical ocean surface temperatures because these vast bodies, which make up roughly half of the world's oceans, in large measure orchestrate the amount of water in the atmosphere and thus rainfall patterns worldwide, as well as the concentration of water vapor, the most prevalent greenhouse gas.

Looking at the chemical remains of tiny marine organisms that lived in the sunlit zone of the ocean, the scientists were able to extract the surface temperature for the oceans for the last 3.5 million years, well before the beginning of the Ice Ages.

Beginning about 2.7 million years ago, the geologists found that tropical ocean surface temperatures dropped by 1 to 3 degrees C (1.8 to 5.4 F) during each Ice Age, when ice sheets spread in the Northern Hemisphere and significantly cooled oceans in the northern latitudes.

Even more compelling, the tropics also changed when Ice Age cycles switched from roughly 41,000-year to 100,000-year intervals.

"The tropics are reproducing this pattern both in the cooling that accompanies the glaciation in the Northern Hemisphere and the timing of those changes," Herbert said. "The biggest surprise to us was how similar the patterns looked all across the tropics since about 2.7 million years ago. We didn't expect such similarity."

Climate scientists have a record of carbon dioxide levels for the last 800,000 years--spanning the last seven Ice Ages--from ice cores taken in Antarctica.

They have deduced that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere fell by about 30 percent during each cycle, and that most of that carbon dioxide was absorbed by high-latitude oceans such as the North Atlantic and the Southern Ocean.

According to the new findings, this pattern began 2.7 million years ago, and the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide absorbed by the oceans has intensified with each successive Ice Age.

Geologists know the Ice Ages have gotten progressively colder--leading to larger ice sheets--because they have found debris on the seabed of the North Atlantic and North Pacific left by icebergs that broke from the land-bound sheets.

"It seems likely that changes in carbon dioxide were the most important reason why tropical temperatures changed, along with the water vapor feedback," Herbert said.

Herbert acknowledges that the team's findings leave important questions.

One is why carbon dioxide began to play a major role when the Ice Ages began 2.7 million years ago.

Also left unanswered is why carbon dioxide appears to have magnified the intensity of successive Ice Ages from the beginning of the cycles to the present.

The researchers do not understand why the timing of the Ice Age cycles shifted from roughly 41,000-year to 100,000-year intervals.

(Copyright 2010 by the National Science Foundation. All Rights Reserved.)

UA telescope now seeing crisp and clear far into the universe

Posted by Erin Jordan - bio | email | Facebook | Twitter

The following is a news release from the University of Arizona.

TUCSON, AZ (UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA) - The next generation of adaptive optics has arrived at the Large Binocular Telescope on Mt. Graham, northeast of Tucson. 

This new technology provides astronomers with a new level of image sharpness never before seen.

Developed in a collaboration between Italy's Arcetri Observatory of the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica, or INAF, and the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory, this technology represents a remarkable step forward for astronomy.

"This is an incredibly exciting time as this new adaptive optics system allows us to achieve our potential as the world's most powerful optical telescope," said Richard Green, director of the LBT. "The successful results show that the next generation of astronomy has arrived, while providing a glimpse of the awesome potential the LBT will be capable of for years to come."

Until relatively recently, ground-based telescopes had to live with wavefront distortion caused by the Earth's atmosphere that significantly blurred the images of distant objects (this is why stars appear to twinkle to the human eye).

While there have been advancements in adaptive optics technology to correct atmospheric blurring, the LBT's innovative system takes this concept to a new level.

This success was achieved through the combination of several innovative technologies.

The first is the secondary mirror, which was designed from the start to be a main component of the LBT rather than an additional element as on other telescopes.

The concave secondary mirror is .91 meters in diameter (3 feet) and only 1.6 millimeters thick.

The mirror is so thin and pliable that it can easily be manipulated by actuators pushing on 672 tiny magnets glued to the back of the mirror, which offers far greater flexibility and accuracy than previous systems on other telescopes.

An innovative "pyramid" sensor detects atmospheric distortions and manipulates the mirror in real time to cancel out the blurring, allowing the telescope to literally see as clear as if there were no atmosphere.

Incredibly, the mirror is capable of making adjustments every one thousandth of a second, with accuracy to better than 10 nanometers (a nanometer is one millionth the size of a millimeter).

In closed-dome tests beginning May 12 and sky tests every night since May 25, astronomer Simone Esposito and his INAF team tested the new device, achieving exceptional results.

The LBT's adaptive optics system, called the First Light Adaptive Optics system, or FLAO, immediately outperformed all other comparable systems, delivering an image quality greater than three times sharper than the Hubble Space Telescope using just one of the LBT's two 8.4 meter mirrors.

When the adaptive optics are in place for both mirrors and their light is combined appropriately, it is expected that the LBT will achieve image sharpness 10 times that of the Hubble.

Setting a New Standard for Optical Astronomy

The index of the perfection of image quality is known as the Strehl Ratio, with a ratio of 100 percent equivalent to an absolutely perfect image.

Without adaptive optics, the ratio for ground-based telescopes is less than 1 percent.

The adaptive optics systems on other major telescopes today improve image quality up to about 30 percent to 50 percent in the near-infrared wavelengths where the testing was conducted.

In the initial testing phase, the LBT's adaptive optics system has been able to achieve unprecedented Strehl Ratio of 60 to 80 percent, a nearly two-thirds improvement in image sharpness over other existing systems.

The results exceeded all expectations and were so precise the testing team had difficulty believing its findings.

However, testing has continued since the system was first put on the sky on May 25, and the LBT's adaptive optics have functioned flawlessly and achieved peak Strehl Ratios of 82 to 84 percent.

"The results on the first night were so extraordinary that we thought it might be a fluke, but every night since the adaptive optics have continued to exceed all expectations. These results were achieved using only one of LBT's mirrors. Imagine the potential when we have adaptive optics on both of LBT's giant eyes," Esposito said.

More images from the adaptive optics system are available at the LBT Observatory website. 

A Decade of Effort Delivers Technological Triumph

Development of the LBT's adaptive optics system took longer than a decade through an international collaboration.

INAF, in particular the Arcetri Observatory, conceived the instrument design and developed the electro-mechanical system, while the University of Arizona Mirror Lab created the optical elements, and the Italian companies Microgate and ADS International engineered several components.

A prototype system was previously installed on the Multiple Mirror Telescope, or MMT, at Mt. Hopkins, Ariz.

The MMT system uses roughly half the number of actuators as the LBT's final version, but it demonstrated the viability of the design.

The LBT's infrared test camera, which produced the accompanying images, was a joint development of INAF in Bologna and the MPIA in Heidelberg. 

"This has been a tremendous success for INAF and all of the partners in the LBT," said Piero Salinari, research director at the Arcetri Observatory, INAF. "After more than a decade and with so much care and effort having gone into this project, it is really rewarding to see it succeed so astoundingly."

More on LBT

The $120 million LBT on Mount Graham utilizes two giant 8.4 meter mirrors and with the new adaptive optics the telescope will have the resolution of a 22.8-meter, or approximately 75-foot telescope.

The new adaptive optics will enable versatile instruments such as the near-infrared camera spectrometer, which allows astronomers to penetrate interstellar dust clouds and reveal the secrets of the youngest and most distant galaxies, to achieve their full potential on the LBT.

The LBT is an international collaboration among institutions in the U.S., Italy and Germany. The LBT Corporation partners are:

• The University of Arizona on behalf of the Arizona university system

• Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica, Italy

• LBT Beteiligungsgesellschaft, Germany, representing the Max Planck Society, the Astrophysical Institute Potsdam, and Heidelberg University

• The Ohio State University

• The Research Corporation, on behalf of The University of Notre Dame, University of Minnesota and University of Virginia

(Copyright 2010 by the University of Arizona. All Rights Reserved.)

Bodies...The Exhibition Free Teacher Tuesdays!

Posted by Erin Jordan - bio | email | Facebook | Twitter

The following is a news release from BODIES...The Exhibition.

TUCSON, AZ (BODIES...THE EXHIBITION) — All teachers will receive one FREE admission to BODIES…The Exhibition every Tuesday throughout the run of the exhibition.

"It is a great exhibition for teachers to see, because educators have the amazing opportunity to enlighten, inform and inspire students to learn more about their bodies," said Cheryl Mure, Vice President of Education for Premier Exhibitions, Inc. "Teachers can take back what they have learned and share it with their students, including the risks associated with overeating and smoking."

Teachers will receive an up-close look inside the skeletal, muscular, reproductive, respiratory, circulatory and other systems of the human body.

The specimens are meticulously dissected and preserved through an innovative process, giving teachers and students the opportunity to view the complexity of their own organs and systems like never before.  

Many of the whole-body specimens are dissected in athletic poses, allowing guests to relate to everyday activities.

A healthy lung is featured next to a black lung ravaged by smoking in a vivid comparison more powerful than any textbook image.

For complimentary admission, teachers will be asked to show a school or district identification card at the Box Office.

Additional guests may purchase tickets at the box office, online or by phone at 888.263.4379.

Free downloadable teachers' guides correlated to Arizona academic standards are also available for reference.

The guides are divided into different educational levels from kindergarten up to post-secondary, and feature activity and resource ideas.

Teachers can register to receive the Guide for their grade level at http://education.prxi.com/tgrequest.

(Copyright 2010 by BODIES...The Exhibition. All Rights Reserved.)

Get your monsoon questions answered today at Desert Diamond on Nogales Highway

By Erin Jordan - bio | email | Facebook | Twitter

Monsoon Safety Awareness Week begins today.  

At Desert Diamond Casino on Nogales Highway join local agencies to discuss monsoon safety from 10 AM to 2 PM. 

The National Weather Service, Pima County Regional Flood Control District, local fire departments and emergency management agencies, along with the American Red Cross and even Vaisala, Inc., local experts in lightning, will be on hand to answer questions and address concerns. 

Just by stopping by, you could win a brand new rain gauge. 

If you win or already have a rain gauge in your backyard, report rain totals to RainLog.org.

Bring the kids because outside the casino rescue equipment and trucks will be on display.

©2010 KOLD. All rights reserved.

See Bodies: The Exhibition for $1

By Erin Jordan - bio | email | Facebook | Twitter

TUCSON, AZ (KOLD) - Bodies: The Exhibition will offer $1 admission for the first 100 people on the first 100 degree day in June.

The first 100 people to visit Bodies: The Exhibition within 24 hours of the first 100 degree day in June in Tucson (as designated by the National Weather Service), receives admission for only a dollar at the Bodies Box Office.  Simply mention the password HOT at the box office.

Regular Adult Admission is $22. 

Today could be the first 100 degree day in June, but just barely.  If we don't hit 100 today, we will definitely hit it on Saturday with a forecast high of 104 degrees. 

Track the temperature on our homepage at KOLD.com. The current temperature is on the upper right. 

Bodies: The Exhibition is at the Rialto Theatre in downtown Tucson.  It's open Sunday through Thursday 10 a.m. – 8 p.m. and Friday and Saturday 10 a.m. – 10 p.m.

©2010 KOLD. All rights reserved.

Coral atolls hold on despite sea-level rise.

Posted by Erin Jordan - bio | email | Facebook | Twitter

WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND (ASSOCIATED PRESS) – Some South Pacific coral atolls have held their own or even grown in size over the past 60 years despite rising sea levels, research showed Thursday.

Some scientists worry that many of the tiny, low-lying islands throughout the South Pacific will eventually disappear under rising sea levels.

But two researchers who measured 27 islands where local sea levels have risen 4.8 inches (120 millimeters) — an average of 0.08 inch (2 millimeters) a year — over the past 60 years, found just four had diminished in size.

The reason: Coral islands respond to changes in weather patterns and climate, with coral debris eroded from encircling reefs pushed up onto the islands' coasts by winds and waves.

Professor Paul Kench of Auckland University's environment school and coastal process expert Arthur Webb of the Fiji-based South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission, used historical aerial photographs and high-resolution satellite images to study changes in the land area of the islands.

While four had gotten smaller, the other 23 had either stayed the same or grown bigger, according to the research published in the scientific journal Global and Planetary Change.

The shape-shifting islands changed their size through what the pair describe as ocean shoreline displacement toward their lagoons, lagoon shoreline growth or extensions to the ends of elongated islands.

Kench said it had been assumed that islands would "sit there and drown" as sea levels rise. But as the sea rises, the islands respond.

"They're not all growing, they're changing. They've always changed ... but the consistency (with which) some of them have grown is a little surprising," he told The Associated Press on Thursday.

Tuvalu, a coral island group that climate change campaigners have repeatedly predicted will be drowned by rising seas, has its highest point just 14 feet (4.5 meters) above sea level. The researchers found seven of its nine islands had grown by more than 3 percent on average over the past 60 years.

In 1972, Cyclone Bebe dumped 346 acres (140 hectares) of sediment on the eastern reef of Tuvalu, increasing the area of Funafuti, the main island, by 10 percent. Another island, Funamanu, gained 1.1 acres (0.44 hectares) or nearly 30 percent of its previous area.

A similar trend was found in Kiribati, where three main islands also "grew." Betio expanded by 30 percent (89 acres or 36 hectares), Bairiki by 16.3 percent (14 acres or 5.8 hectares), and Nanikai by 12.5 percent (2 acres, or 0.8 hectares).

On World Environment Day in 2008, Kiribati President Anote Tong warned parts of his island nation were already being submerged, forcing some of Kiribati's 94,000 people living in shoreline village communities to be relocated from century-old sites.

Worst case scenarios showed Kiribati would disappear into the sea within a century, he said at the time.

But Kench said the study shows the islands are coping with sea-level change, with higher waves and water depth supplying sand and gravel from coral reefs.

"In other words, they (the islands) are slowly moving ... migrating across their reef platforms," he said. "As the sea-level conditions and wave conditions are changing, the islands are adjusting to that."

But he warned an accelerated rate of sea-level rise could be "the critical environmental threat to the small island nations," with "a very rapid rate of island destruction" possible from a water depth beyond a certain threshold. That threshold is unknown.

Australian sea level oceanographer John Hunter said the findings "are good news and not a surprise."

"Coral islands can keep up with some sea-level rise, but (there's also) ocean warming ... and ocean acidification ... that are certainly problematic for the corals. Sea-level rise can actually make the islands grow — as it apparently is doing," said Hunter, who did not participate in the study.

While coral might adjust to ocean warming, ocean acidification "will probably be the death knell of the coral reefs," leaving coastal management by humans as the only way of retaining and rebuilding atolls, said Hunter, a researcher at the University of Tasmania's Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Center.

Commenting on the findings, New Scientist magazine noted, "Erosion of island shorelines must be reconsidered in the context of physical adjustments of the entire island shoreline, as erosion may be balanced by progradation on other sectors of shorelines."

(Copyright 2010 by the Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

Tropical Alert: Atlantic Hurricane Season begins today. Plus an update on the East Pacific season

By Erin Jordan - bio | email | Facebook | Twitter

TUCSON, AZ (KOLD) - Today marks the first day of the Atlantic Ocean basin hurricane season. 

The ocean itself is quiet but there is one small area of clouds just south of the Yucatan Peninsula that the National Hurricane Center is keeping an eye on. 

Check out the latest information on tropical systems at the National Hurricane Center.

Below is the list of names for the Atlantic Basin.

Alex - Bonnie - Colin - Danielle - Earl - Fiona - Gaston - Hermine - Igor - Julia - Karl - Lisa - Matthew - Nicole - Otto - Paula - Richard - Shary - Tomas - Virginie - Walter 

The East Pacific hurricane season began two weeks ago on May 15th. 

Tropical Storm Agatha already hit Central America, with most of the damage and storm deaths reported in Guatemala. 

The list of names for the East Pacific Basin is below.

Agatha - Blas - Celia - Darby - Estelle - Frank - Georgette - Howard - Isis - Javier - Kay - Lester
Madeline - Newton - Orlene - Paine - Roslyn - Seymour - Tina - Virgil - Winifred - Xavier - Yolanda - Zeke

©2010 KOLD. All rights reserved.