Jan 30 - Feb 3, 2023 Weather & Climate News

[Mid-Atlantic Weather Station (MAWS) Mailing List]

(Source: AMS, 1/30/23)

WEEKLY WEATHER AND CLIMATE NEWS 30 January-3 February 2023 Items of Interest:

• An asteroid made a close pass of Earth last week -- A small near-Earth asteroid that has been named 2023 BU following its discovery a week ago Saturday, passed to within a distance of 2200 miles above the Earth's surface this past Thursday evening (26 January). This asteroid, which has the dimensions of a box truck (between 11 and 28 feet across), passed over the southern tip of South America in one of the closest known passes of Earth. At an altitude of 2200 miles, the asteroid would have been above polar-orbiting Earth satellites that are at altitudes of between, but below the 22,200-mile altitudes of the geosynchronous satellites. NASA’s Scout impact hazard assessment system, which is maintained by the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, analyzed the data from the MPC’s confirmation page and quickly predicted the near miss. Undoubtedly, most of the asteroid would have vaporized if it passed through thicker layers of the atmosphere closer to the Earth. [National Public Radio News]
   
• Faint green comet to make closest approach to Earth this week -- A comet, which is named C/2022 E3 (ZTF) because it was discovered in March 2022, will make its closest approach to Earth (26 million miles) on Wednesday, 1 February 2023; Earlier, it made perihelion when it came to within 100 million miles of the Sun on 12 January. According to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the comet has a period of approximately 50,000 years, meaning that the last time it came as close to the Sun and Earth was during the Upper Paleolithic period on Earth. This comet, which is moving toward the northwest across the nighttime skies, has a green color and might be possible to be spotted in dark skies during the predawn hours with the naked eye near the end of January for Northern Hemisphere observers and into the beginning of February for those in the Southern Hemisphere. Dark predawn skies are needed that are away from light pollution. However, the illumination from a waxing gibbous Moon early in the night will make seeing the comet more difficult. . [timeanddate News]
• Students invited to participate in NOAA's "Picture Climate Change"" contest -- The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is inviting all the nation's students in grades 5 through 12 to photo submission showcasing what climate change means to them. The photos need to show an example of climate change impacts or resilience of climate change in the United States or one of its territories. Photo contest categories include Nature, Water, Weather, Society, and Resilience. Additional information concerning this contest are available on the website that can be reached below. This competition will continue through Wednesday, 15 February 2023.  [NOAA News]
   
• High-quality maps of February temperature and precipitation normals across US available -- The PRISM Climate Group at Oregon State University's website has prepared high-resolution maps depicting the normal maximum, minimum and average air temperatures, the daily average dewpoint temperatures, precipitation totals and several solar radiation elements for February and the other 11 months across the 48 coterminous United States based upon the current 1991-2020 climate normals interval. These maps, with a 800-meter resolution, were produced using the PRISM (Parameter-elevation Regressions on Independent Slopes Model) climate mapping system.
• February weather calendar for a city near you -- The Midwestern Regional Climate Center (MRCC) maintains an interactive website that permits the public to produce a ready to print weather calendar for any given month of the year, such as February, at any of approximately 270 weather stations around the nation. (These stations are NOAA's ThreadEx stations.) The entries for each day of the month include: Normal maximum temperature, normal minimum temperature, normal daily heating and cooling degree days, normal daily precipitation, record maximum temperature, record minimum temperature, and record daily precipitation; the current normals for 1991-2020.
  MRCC also maintains a page titled "Weather on Your Birthday" where you can generate a printable certificate showing the weather data (maximum, minimum and average temperature; precipitation and snow) on the day you were born as observed at a close weather station.
• Groundhog Day and climatology -- This Thursday, 2 February 2023, is Groundhog Day, celebrated by many communities around the nation with much fanfare. According to legend, if the groundhog emerged from its burrow after hibernation on this day and saw its shadow, it would return to hibernation, thereby indicating six more weeks of wintry weather. Most people assume that a converse holds true - if no shadow were seen, an early spring should be expected. According to a "Groundhog Day Forecasts and Climate History" report prepared by the National Centers for Environmental Information, no convincing statistical evidence appears to support this belief of the prognostic capabilities of the groundhog. The only point that can be considered to have any meteorological significance is that cloud-free weather conditions would be responsible for allowing a woodchuck or human to cast a shadow. Such cloud-free weather conditions in early February typically are associated with a cold mass of air that would usually send all but the hardiest resident back into a nice warm shelter. This legend also coincides with an ancient late winter festival. To the ancients, this date was significant because it was one of the four Cross Quarter Days, marking an important astronomical milestone. The day is the customary halfway point of the astronomical winter season, located essentially at the point halfway between the winter solstice, marking the occurrence of the shortest length of daylight in the Northern Hemisphere (21 December 2022) and the spring equinox (23 April 2023) when equal lengths of daylight and darkness occur once again; The half-way point is actually on Saturday morning (4 February 2023). So regardless of what your local groundhog "predicts" the beginning of astronomical spring is still six weeks away.
• Satellites help rescue 397 people in 2022 -- According to NOAA, 397 people were rescued from life-threatening situations throughout the US and on its surrounding waters during last year (2022). These rescues were due in part to the role that NOAA's fleet of operational satellites played. Nearly 70-percent of those rescued (275) involved waterborne rescues, approximately 20-percent (80) were on land and the remaining ten-percent were from (40) aviation incidents. Florida was the state with the most SARSAT rescues in 2022 with 106, while 56 were rescued in Alaska. The 397 people rescued last year were 67 more than in 2021, but fewer than the previous record of 421 people rescued in 2019. By detecting distress signals from registered emergency beacons, these NOAA satellites helped pinpoint the location of these people and relay this information to first responders who perform the actual rescue. NOAA's geosynchronous and polar-orbiting satellites are part of the international COSPAS-SARSAT (COSPAS a Russian abbreviation for "Space System for the Search of Vessels in Distress" and SARSAT "Search and Rescue Satellite Aided Tracking") system. [NOAA News]
   

Weather and Climate News Items:

• Eye on the tropics ---During the last week, one tropical cyclone (an atmospheric low pressure system such as a tropical storm or hurricane that forms over tropical oceans) traveled over the waters of the South Indian Ocean basin. This South Indian Ocean basin includes the South-West Indian Ocean south of the Equator from Africa's east coast to the 90-degrees East meridian and the Australian region from 90 degrees East to Australia:
  • The Tropical Storm Cheneso had traveled to the west-southwest over the waters of the southwestern Indian Ocean late in the week before last. It made landfall over northern Madagascar and essentially dissipated as it interacted with the high terrain on the island. However, remnants of Cheneso traveled toward the southwest and south across the island before emerged out over the warm waters of the Mozambique Channel early last week as a weak tropical disturbance. After wandering close to the Madagascar coast, this tropical disturbance strengthened late last Tuesday to become a tropical storm that maintained the name Cheneso. Late Wednesday, this tropical storm had strengthened as it headed southward over the Mozambique Channel, where it became a category 1 tropical cyclone on the Saffir-Simpson Scale as maximum sustained near-surface winds exceeded 75 mph. By early Thursday, it had sustained winds peaking at 85 mph. Although Cheneso weakened to tropical storm status for less than 24 hours on Friday, it re-intensified Saturday afternoon as maximum sustained surface winds reached 85 mph. By Sunday, Cheneso began curving toward the southeast, passing to the south of Madagascar. As of early Monday (local time). Cheneso was beginning to lose its tropical characteristics and transition to become an extratropical system as it was approximately 1000 miles to the southeast of Europa Island.
• More than 100 tornadoes reported across nation so far in January -- As of last Monday, at least 102 tornadoes were confirmed to have ben spawned across the United States so far during the month of January according to NOAA's Storm Prediction Center (SPC). In the 74 years of tornado records maintained by SPC, only January 1999 (with 214 tornadoes) and January 2017 (137 tornadoes) have had more tornadoes in January. However, the 102 tornadoes did not include 32 additional tornadoes that were reported along the Gulf Coast from Texas to Florida last Tuesday and Wednesday. The tornadoes this January have not been limited to the Southeast, but have been reported in Illinois and Iowa in the Midwest, which is very unusual. Additionally, this January has been one of the warmest ever for many Southeastern states, where most of the tornadoes have occurred. [Weather Underground News]
• Satellites provide impressive views of atmospheric rivers hitting West Coast -- NOAA's National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) has assembled a 2-minute YouTube video entitled "Atmospheric Rivers Hit West Coast" that contains a montage of animated satellite images showing the long plumes of clouds and atmospheric water vapor called atmospheric rivers traveling across the North Pacific during the last several months to dump abundant amounts of precipitation on the Western Cordillera and help alleviate some of the drought conditions across the West. The satellite images were obtained from NOAA's fleet of geosynchronous and polar-orbiting satellites. [NOAA NESDIS News]
• Large iceberg breaks from an Antarctica ice shelf -- A new iceberg that has a size twice the size of New York City broke off Antarctica's Brunt Ice Shelf just before the start of last week according to the British Antarctic Survey. This iceberg, which has been assigned the name Iceberg A-81 broke from the Brunt Ice Shelf along an expanding rift that had been first noticed nearly four years ago. The Brunt Ice Shelf borders the Coats Land coast in the Weddell Sea sector of Antarctica, Iceberg A-81 can be seen on an image generated from data obtained last Tuesday by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) onboard NASA's Terra satellite. [NASA Earth Observatory]
   
• Montreal Protocol found to be a powerful climate treat -- Earlier this month, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) released its Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion: 2022 that confirms the recovery of Earth’s protective stratospheric ozone layer is on track, and that the Montreal Protocol, the international treaty originally signed in 1987 to guide the phase-out of ozone-destroying chemicals, has had the additional benefit of slowing global warming. This assessment shows the maximum extent of the 2022 ozone hole, or the region with maximum depletion of stratospheric ozone over Antarctica, was well below the average extent seen in 2006 when the hole size peaked. Furthermore, this assessment projects that the ozone hole should close by 2060. Although the Montreal Protocol was intended to phase out chemicals like chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that destroy ozone, the reduction in these CFCs are significant greenhouse gases that contribute to global heating. Thus, the Montreal Protocol eliminated a significant contributor to climate change, avoiding a potential additional global temperature increase of 0.5 to 1 Fahrenheit degrees by 2100. While one family of CFC replacements known as hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) were found to be safe for the ozone layer, HFCs act as potent greenhouse gases. Therefore, parties to the Montreal Protocol signed the Kigali Amendment to the Protocol (in Kigali, Rwanda) that is intended to reduce the consumption and production of HFCs. Scientists estimate that reductions in HFCs could eliminate another 0.5 to 1 Fahrenheit degree of additional warming by 2100. [NOAA News]
• A less costly carbon capture system is unveiled -- Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) recently announced that they have created a new system that created a new system that efficiently captures atmospheric carbon dioxide gas and converts it into methanol, one of the world's most widely used chemicals. Their new system, which costs approximately $39 per metric ton, is the least costly to date and offers a path for industrial entities to capture and repurpose their carbon. The new system, which uses a PNNL-patented solvent to strip carbon dioxide molecules before they are emitted, is designed to fit into coal-, gas-, or biomass-fired power plants, as well as cement kilns and steel plants. The stripped carbon dioxide molecules then are converted into useful, sellable substances and represents a key component in slowing global warming. [Pacific Northwest National Laboratory News]
   
• "City -HEAT" adaptation tool available for use by cities facing extreme heat events -- Researchers associated with a NOAA Climate Adaptation Partnerships (CAP) / Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments (RISA) team have developed the "City-Heat Equity Adaptation Tool (City-HEAT)" that offers users suggested optimal investments for mitigating urban heat and reducing health impacts through modifications of built and natural The optimization considers multiple public health and social objectives under a wide range of future scenarios. A demonstration of how City-HEAT can generate Pareto-efficient multi-year heat adaptation plans used Baltimore, MD as an example. [NOAA Climate.gov News]
• High resolution ocean reanalyzes are compared in California current system -- Ocean reanalyzes, which are ocean models created by observations through data assimilation, have been developed to provide historical ocean state estimates that are spatially and temporally uniform. High-resolution ocean reanalyzes are now available to investigate coastal ocean variability with enhanced detail because of recent advances in high-performance computing together with increases in the number and quality of observations. Researchers with NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory recently compared and evaluated the ability of three high-resolution ocean reanalyzes to accurately represent ocean temperature and salinity (from the surface to the bottom), sea surface height, and mesoscale activity in the California Current Large Marine Ecosystem. The three reanalyzes that were evaluated were the Global Ocean Reanalysis and Simulations (from Italy's Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change), the Ocean Reanalysis System version 5 (from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts or ECMWF), and the California Current System Reanalysis (from the U.S.). [NOAA Climate.gov News]
• Answering frequently asked questions concerning offshore wind energy units and whales    -- NOAA Fisheries has posted a feature that provides answers to as many as a dozen frequently asked questions concerning interactions between offshore wind energy systems and whales in the North Atlantic waters offshore of the nation's New England and Middle Atlantic Coasts. [NOAA Fisheries News]
• 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]

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