March 27-31, 2023 Weather & Climate News

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

(Source:  AMS, 3/27/23)

WEEKLY WEATHER AND CLIMATE NEWS, 27-31 March 2023

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Items of Interest:

• Becoming AWARE -- During this week (27-31 March), Iowa, and Nebraska will observe their Severe Weather Awareness Weeks. Other states throughout the nation have either conducted or will conduct their Severe Weather Awareness Weeks in the next six weeks as the spring season for severe thunderstorms unfolds.
• Tsunami Preparedness in Alaska and other West Coast states -- This week (26-31 March) is Tsunami Preparedness Week in Alaska, which is observed on the anniversary of the Great Alaskan earthquake and tsunami of 28 March 1964. {Office of the Governor of Alaska} Additional information on this memorable event is also available. [NOAA NCEI News]
  Tsunami Preparedness Weeks will also be undertaken in California and Oregon.
• Tidal Basin cherry blossoms have reached full bloom -- The National Park Service (NPS) announced last week that Thursday, 23 March 2023, was determined to have been the day when 70 percent of the Yoshino cherry blossoms surrounding the Tidal Basin in Washington, DC were fully blooming. The peak bloom came within the bloom dates of 22-25 March 2023 that had been predicted three weeks ago at the start of March by NPS. Following a warm first two months of the year, which could have meant a near record early bloom (15 March), the Washington, DC area experienced cool weather during the last two weeks that slowed bloom development. However, warm weather at the start of this week helped cause the blooms to advance from stage 4 Peduncle Elongation to Puffy White and then full bloom stage. [Cherry Blossom Watch 2023]
  The graph of the occurrence of the dates of peak cherry blossom occurrence in Washington, DC beginning in 1921 has been updated through this year. This graph is an example of the display of an assemblage of phenological observations taken over a 103-year span. Examination of this graph indicates that the occurrence of peak bloom has been trending to earlier dates over the last five decades.
  A four-minute narrated video entitled "Climate Change and Cherry Blossoms in Washington, DC" is available on the National Park Service website and describes how the earlier blossoming of cherry trees indicates a changing climate.
• Watching seasonal changes in day-night terminator from geosynchronous satellites -- NOAA's GOES fleet of Earth observing satellites that are in geosynchronous orbit around Earth provide an excellent platform to view the seasonal changes in the day-night terminator, which represents the boundary between the illuminated areas on Earth and the dark areas. This terminator extends from North Pole to South Pole paralleling meridians of longitude (crossing the Equator at right angles) on the two equinoxes (March and September), but is tilted with respect to the Equator on the winter and summer solstices (December and June for the Northern Hemisphere).
  A scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS) assembled an animated loop of satellite images of the Atlantic Ocean and sections of North and South America from the NOAA GOES-East (or GOES-16) satellite. This 11-second loop was a sequence ABI (Advanced Baseline Image) Full Disk true color images made every day at 11:00 Z, beginning on the autumnal equinox in September 2022 and continuing through the recent spring equinox, which was at the start of last week (Monday, 20 March). The time selected for the images was due to the location of the GOES-East satellite over the Equator at 75.2 degrees West longitude. At that time, the day-night terminator would be passing over that subsatellite point each day of the year.
  An interactive web page that was produced by a scientist at the Space Science and Engineering Center (University of Wisconsin-Madison) is available that allows the user to play the animation, as well as annotate the images. Webapps about the seasons are also available. An [CIMSS Satellite Blog]
• World's first weather satellite was launched 63 years ago this week -- Two and a half years after the former Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite to orbit Earth, NASA launched Television Infrared Observation Satellite (TIROS) I on 1 April 1960 to become the world's first successful weather satellite. TIROS-1, which was placed into a low-earth orbit approximately 450 miles above Earth, had two television cameras and two video recorders that provided ground-based observers with their first view of cloud formations developing around the globe. The first image from TIROS-1 was a fuzzy picture of clouds, organized into thick bands and clusters over the northeastern U.S., while the Canadian Maritimes were relatively cloud-free. Several days later, a TIROS image revealed a tropical cyclone approximately 1000 miles east of Australia. Since then, numerous polar-orbiting and geosynchronous satellites have been launched by the U.S. and other nations to observe the Earth. [NOAA NESDIS News]
  NASA has a produced a multimedia story map entitled "The World According to Weather Satellites" that shows the advances made in the technology involved with weather satellites and how they are important to essentially all the Earth sciences and society. What an amazing 63 years! [NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Feature]
• High-quality maps of April 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 April 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.
• April 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 April, 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.

Weather and Climate News Items:

• Eye on the tropics ---No organized tropical cyclones were found across any of the tropical ocean basins during the past week.
• Review of global weather and climate for February 2023 and last three months -- Scientists at the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) recently posted their analyses of preliminary weather data collected from the global network of surface weather stations through the month of February 2023. [NOAA NCEI] They reported:
  • February temperature -- the combined global land and ocean surface temperature for February 2023 was 1.75 Fahrenheit degrees above the 20th century (1901-2000) average, which represents the fourth highest global average February temperature since comprehensive global climate records began in 1850 (see notes below). This temperature departure was 0.64 Fahrenheit degrees smaller than the record combined global February temperature departure of 2.39 Fahrenheit degrees set in February 2016. Individually, the global ocean surface temperature anomaly for this past month ranked as the fifth highest global ocean temperature highest in the 174-year period of record, while the global land surface temperature anomaly was the fourth highest for the land surface record.
    
  • Seasonal (Dec 2022-Feb 2023) temperature -- The three-months running from December 2022 through February 2023 that constitute meteorological winter in the Northern Hemisphere (and meteorological summer in the Southern Hemisphere) had tied the December 2017-February 2018 and Dec 2021 for the fifth highest three-month average combined global land-ocean temperature for any such three-month interval since 1850/51. The December-February globally averaged ocean surface temperature was the fifth highest for December-February in the 174-year record, while the globally averaged land surface temperature for the same three months also the seventh highest for any December-February season in the record, tying the December 2018-February 2019 winter in the Northern Hemisphere. [State of the Climate/NCEI]
    [NOTE: NCEI began using its NOAA Merged Land Ocean Global Surface Temperature Analysis (NOAAGlobalTemp) data set at the end of January 2023; it has a higher resolution and more complete coverage of all land and ocean areas for a period of record that now has been extended back 30 years to 1850.]
  • Additional information -- NCEI also provides a map showing the "Selected Significant Climate Anomalies and Events: February 2023."
  • February snow cover -- The extent of the Northern Hemisphere snow cover during February 2023 according to the Rutgers Global Snow Lab was the twenty-sixth smallest for the 57-year period of record that started in 1967. However, the snow cover for the North American continent was the twenty-fourth largest smallest in areal extent in the last 57 years. [NOAA/NCEI Global Snow & Ice] https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/monthly-report/global/202302
  • February sea ice extent -- According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, the extent of the Arctic sea ice for this past February was the third smallest monthly extent for any February in the basin since satellite surveillance began in 1979. The extent of the sea ice surrounding Antarctica at the end of last month was the smallest February sea ice extent in the 45-year satellite period of record.
    
  • End of winter Arctic sea ice maximum extent is below average -- The National Snow and Ice Data Center has reported that the Arctic sea ice reached its seasonal maximum extent on Monday, 6 March 2023. Based upon satellite observations starting in 1979, this year's maximum ice extent was the fifth smallest in the 45-year satellite record. NASA Earth Observatory has produced "Arctic Sea Ice Hits 2023 Maximum," a 1:39-minute YouTube video that contains animations that include a daily sequence in the extent of sea ice starting in early April 2022 and ending in March 2023. The ice has gotten thinner and more susceptible to melting. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• Understanding seasonal variations in sea ice extent around Antarctica -- An updated feature article entitled "Understanding Climate: Antarctic Sea Ice Extent" contains a discussion of the recent 2023 summer minimum ice extent in the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica. This summer minimum was determined to be on 21 February 2023 by the National Snow and Ice Data Center, which also found that this event was the record smallest extent in the 45-year satellite surveillance era, breaking the previous record that had been set one year earlier (on 25 February 2022). Several graphs show the interannual (year-to-year) variations in the Antarctic sea ice yearly maximum extents and the corresponding annual minimum sea ice extents that commenced with satellite surveillance in October 1978. The range between the smallest summer sea ice extent and the largest late winter ice extent is larger in the waters surrounding Antarctica than in the Arctic, due to geography. Furthermore, the fluctuations in the Arctic sea ice are less complicated than those surrounding Antarctica, which is a much bigger ice sheet. Antarctic trends are less apparent, with seasonal ice extents swinging between record highs and record lows during the past decade. The reasons behind the complicated picture of sea ice in the Southern Hemisphere are explained. [NOAA Climate.gov Understanding Climate]
• Assessing the performance of the 2022-2023 Winter Outlook -- A meteorologist /climate scientist with NOAA's Climate Program Office recently posted a feature on the office's ENSO Blog in which he assesses the performance of the NOAA's Climate Prediction Center (CPC) Winter Outlook for the three winter months of December 2022 through February 2023 that was made in mid-November 2023. For visual comparison, he provides side-by-side maps of the forecasted temperature or precipitation conditions (provided on the left-side) and the observed conditions (on the right-side) for the three-month meteorological winter season across the contiguous U.S. Essentially, he was asking the question "How'd we do?" He made a quantitative verification of the outlooks using a verification metric called the Heidke Skill Score (HSS), which is a normalized statistic that measures the fractional improvement of the forecast over the standard forecast.
  Despite certain notable exceptions mentioned below, this blog author felt that overall, the CPC outlook "was a pretty good temperature outlook." The HSS for the temperature outlook was positive (a score of 30 for the entire contiguous U.S. and 39 for those regions that had not been relegated to the "equal-chance" category), indicating that the outlook was better than a random forecast. The CPC temperature outlook issued last November was leaning toward a La Niña winter, with a high probability of above average temperatures across a large area of the contiguous U.S., running from coast to coast over the southern tier of states and across sections of the nation to the east of the Mississippi. The outlooks indicated that only sections of the Northwest and northern Plains states would have below average temperatures. The pattern of observed winter average temperatures for winter 2022-23 exhibited certain similarities with the outlook, with essential all areas to the east of the Mississippi River and across the Mid-South and southern Plains experiencing above-average temperatures. But, areas around the western Great Lakes had a warm winter, not a cold one that was anticipated in the CPC seasonal outlook. Essentially all states from the northern and central high Plains westward across the Rockies, the Great Basin and the Sierras and Cascades to the Pacific Coast had below-average temperatures. Of note, the Southwest and southern Rockies did not have the warm winter as anticipated in the November outlook.
  The author of this ENSO Blog reported that the CPC winter precipitation outlook was somewhat skillful and better than chance as the observed precipitation patterns across the "Lower 48 states" bore a resemblance to the outlook that had called for a better than even chance for above average precipitation across the northern tier of states and below average precipitation across the southern tier of states; this winter CPC outlook was to be in keeping with what would be typical for a La Niña winter. While some areas across the Midwest had above-average precipitation as anticipated, the Southeast was also wetter than normal, when the forecast was for a dry winter. Across the West, the pattern for the outlook was reversed from what precipitation that had fallen -- namely, the Northwest was dry, while the Southwest was wet. Overall, the HSS for precipitation was positive (a score of 9 for the contiguous U.S.), indicating that the winter precipitation was somewhat skillful and was better than random.
  The author noted that La Niña is not the only determinant of winter temperature and precipitation across North America. Additional features such as the Pacific North American (PNA) Pattern index need to be considered. [NOAA Climate.gov News]
• Investigating long-term global sea level change and climate change -- A feature appearing in the online ClimateWatch Magazine provides recent information concerning the changes in global sea level since 1880 and how the general increase in sea level around the globe are related to corresponding changes in planetary climate. While statistics of the rises in sea level are important for understanding this issue, the reader is encouraged to explore the interactive graph showing the seasonal (3-month) changes in global average sea level that have been tabulated since 1880. Data that formed the first seven decades of the graph was provided by the sea level group from Australia's from CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation),with additional data during the last 50 years can from the University of Hawaii Sea Level Center (UHSLC). Links are provided to permit downloading of the digital data that were used to produce this graph. Furthermore, a global map of the changes in sea level between 1993 and 2020 shows that the sea level has not increased uniformly in all ocean basins over this 28-year interval; local sea level changes in some basin have increased by as much as eight inches, while in other areas, local sea levels have actually fallen. Attention is also directed as to the issue as why changes in sea level matter. The reasons for sea level rises are addressed. Finally, projections of future sea level rises are made. [NOAA Climate.gov News]
• Identifying the nation's Allergy Capitals™ for 2023 -- The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America recently released its annual rankings of the top 100 cities across the nation identified as the "most challenging places to live with allergies" for spring, fall and overall allergy seasons based upon measured pollen levels (airborne grass/tree/weed pollen and mold spores), allergy medications administered per capita and the number of board-certified allergists per capita for each major city. This year's 24-page report, which can be downloaded, named Wichita, KS as its top overall Allergy Capital™ for 2023 due to the city's higher-than-average spring and summer grass pollen levels, higher than-average tree and weed pollen and fewer certified allergists/immunologists. Last year's Allergy Capital, Scranton, PA, dropped to third place, behind Dallas, TX. Conversely, the least challenging place in these top 100 cities to live with seasonal allergies is Buffalo, NY, which comes in 100th place for spring, fall and overall rankings. Seattle, WA is now in 99th place (or is second place in the least challenging cities). Links are provided to articles concerning climate change and allergies. [Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America]
• 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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