Jan 2-6, 2023 Weather & Climate News

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

(Source:  AMS, 1/2/23)

WEEKLY WEATHER AND CLIMATE NEWS 2-6 January 2023 Items of Interest:

   
• High-quality maps of January 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 January 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.
• January 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 January, 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.
• Watching for high ocean tides along the coasts of the Pacific Islands this week -- According to the NOAA National Ocean Service's High Tide Bulletin for Winter 2022, higher than average astronomical tides are to develop along the coasts of Hawaii and the Pacific Islands (Guam, American Samoa, Midway, Kwajalein and Wake Island) beginning on Tuesday, 3 January 2023, and running for one week, through 10 January. In addition to tides that are higher than normal high astronomical tides during this week, lower than normal low tides can be encountered each day.
  These above- and below-average tides are known as a perigean spring tides, caused by the occurrence of lunar perigee (when the Moon is closest to Earth) and a new or full moon. Lunar perigee will occur early Sunday morning (6 January at 09:20 Z), which is nearly a day and a half (1 day 10 hours) after passage of full moon (06:23 Z on 6 January). None of the other coasts bordering the nation on the Pacific, Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico or the Caribbean should experience higher than normal tides during this week. [NOAA National Ocean Service News]
   
• In Close -- Earth reaches perihelion, the point in its orbit that is closest to the Sun (147.1 million kilometers or 91.5 million miles), on Wednesday morning, 4 January 2023, at 16:17Z (11:17 AM EST, 10:17 AM CST, etc.). Six months from now, Earth will reach aphelion, the farthest from the Sun (152.1 million km or 94.5 million miles), on 6 July 2023 (at 20:06Z). [timeanddate.com]
   
• Top NOAA satellite images for 2022 have been selected -- NOAA's National Environmental Satellite Data and Information Service (NESDIS) posted the Top satellite images obtained from the NOAA fleet of satellites in both geosynchronous and polar orbits that staff felt (in no particular order) captured a variety of events and images on planet Earth during the calendar year of 2022 At least 30 images were selected. Some of the images from the geosynchronous satellites are animated and can be downloaded. Images that were selected included those of landfalling hurricanes, dust storms from the Sahara Desert and the southwestern U.S., midlatitude storms with lightning flashes seen from above the tops of cold-frontal thunderstorm clouds, Aurora Borealis (northern lights), ice on the Great Lakes, western wildfires, and volcanic eruptions. An animation shows coronal mass ejection and solar flares emanating from the Sun's surface. Take time to reflect on the events captured by satellite imagery during 2022! EJH [NOAA NESDIS News]
• Enjoy the award-winning pictures in NOAA's 2022 "Get into Your Sanctuary Photo Contest" -- NOAA's National Marine Sanctuaries recently released the names of the photographers and their photographs they made in the marine sanctuaries to the 2022 "Get into Your Sanctuary Photo Contest." The best three photographs were selected for the categories of Sanctuary Views, Sanctuary Life, Sanctuary Recreation and Sanctuary at Home. Editor's Note: Take a moment to relax and enjoy these truly spectacular pictures that include sunsets, coastlines and underwater marine life! EJH [NOAA National Marine Sanctuaries News]
• It's Sure Dark in the morning! -- Have you noticed that if you are an early riser, that mornings remain dark and somewhat dreary although local sunsets are becoming noticeably later during the last week? During the last week of December and the first week of January, many locations throughout the country will experience their latest sunrise times of the year, even though the winter solstice occurred during the afternoon of Wednesday, 21 December 2022. The exact day for the latest sunrise depends upon the latitude, so you may want to check the date in your locale from the sunrise tables appearing in an on-line, interactive service available for many cities in the United States at https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/usa. The reason for the late sunrise now rather than on the winter solstice is due to the Sun not being as precise a timekeeper as our watches. Because of a combination of factors involved with Earth's elliptical orbit about the sun and the tilt of Earth's spin axis with respect to the plane of the ecliptic, the sun appeared to "run fast" by as much as 15 minutes as compared with clock time in November. In early December, most locations experienced their earliest sunsets. However, with the approach of the winter solstice and perihelion (the smallest earth-sun distance on Wednesday morning, 4 January 2023), the apparent sun slows during December and finally lags the clock by 12 minutes in February. Consequently, a noticeable and welcome trend toward later sunsets can be detected by the end of December, especially by those residents in the northern part of the country. However, the latest sunrises occur at most locales in early January, meaning a continuation of the dark and dreary mornings for another week or two.

Weather and Climate News Items:

• Eye on the tropics -- Only one tropical cyclone was reported during the last week. This long-lived tropical cyclone traveled across the south Indian Ocean basin (that 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). Tropical Cyclone Darian was traveling generally toward the south across the open waters of the South Indian Ocean last Monday morning as a high-end category 3 tropical cyclone on the Saffir-Simpson Scale. At the time, maximum sustained near-surface winds surrounding Darian were estimated to have been 125 mph as the center of this system was approximately 1075 miles to the southeast of Diego Garcia. One week earlier, Darian had become a category 1 tropical cyclone over the waters of the eastern South Indian Ocean that is within the Australian region to the west of Australia's Cocos (Keeling) Islands. Near the end of that week, Darian had reached peak intensity as a high-end category 4 tropical cyclone with estimated 155-mph sustained surface winds. as it traveled toward the south, then to the west and finally to the west-northwest. After weakening to a category 2 tropical cyclone before the start of last week, Darian re-strengthened to a category 3 system by early last Monday as it headed to the south-southeast and south. However, after this resurgence, Darian weakened to a tropical-storm system by last Wednesday as it took a track toward the southwest before it began curving toward the south. As of this past Saturday, Tropical Storm Darian was traveling toward the southeast. approximately 980 miles to the southeast of Port Louis, Mauritius. At this time, Darian was undergoing a transition to a subtropical and then extratropical cyclone, before becoming a remnant low.
• Mauna Loa's carbon dioxide monitoring site is shifted to nearby site due to volcanic eruption -- In early December, NOAA's Mauna Loa Baseline Observatory (MLO) that is located on the north flank of the Mauna Loa Volcano, on the Big Island of Hawaii, could no longer take observations of the concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide because an eruption from the volcano produced a lava flow across the road, blocking staff access and knocking out power lines to the facility. Located at an elevation of approximately 11,135 feet above sea level, MLO is operated by NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratories and is considered to be a premier atmospheric research facility that has been continuously monitoring and collecting data related to atmospheric change since the 1950's, in particular carbon dioxide concentrations. With the interruption of operations at MLO, NOAA and the University of Hawaii established a temporary measurement site at the university's Maunakea Observatories (elevation approximately 13,796 ft MSL) located on the nearby Mauna Kea volcano for the continuation of the critical carbon dioxide record and other atmospheric measurements taken at MLO for more than six decades. [NOAA News]
  The MLO is not the only place around the world that monitors atmospheric carbon dioxide variations. NOAA also maintains observatories that have monitoring instruments at Barrow-Alaska; American-Samoa; and South Pole-Antarctica. In addition, more than one-hundred stations currently measure carbon dioxide at sites representative of very different environmental conditions and climates, contributing to the Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) Program of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). [WMO News]
   
• Nation's newest water satellite unfolds in space -- During the last week, NASA released a 1-minute YouTube video that contains animated images of the deployment of the large mast and the Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn) antennae on the recently launched Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) spacecraft over a four-day span during the previous week. The antennae were unfolded after the solar panel arrays that power the spacecraft were successfully deployed. The two KaRIn antennae represent a part of the SWOT spacecraft's main science instrument that has been designed to measure the height of water on over 90 percent of planet Earth’s surface with unprecedented high resolution. KaRIn will bounce radar pulses off the surface of water on Earth and receive the reflected signals with both antennae. The SWOT spacecraft, which was placed into low Earth orbit (with an altitude of 533 miles), was jointly developed and operated by NASA and the French space agency Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES), in partnership with the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and UK Space Agency (UKSA). [NASA NCEI News]
• Focus is placed upon the "12 Days of Instruments!" used by researches at a NOAA laboratory -- In keeping with the holiday season, NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) launched a new social media series entitled "12 Days of Instruments!" that highlights twelve of the many instruments used by AOML researchers. The instruments described in this cleaver rendition of the English carol called the "12 Days of Christmas" include sophisticated instruments and instrument platforms used to measure a variety of oceanographic and meteorological variables and then transmit these observed data to centralized facility where the data are analyzed. [NOAA NCEI News]
• Fourth-quarter (December) 2022 Regional Climate Impacts and Outlooks reports are released -- During the last week, NOAA and its partners released ten in a series of eleven regional climate overviews for meteorological autumn of 2022 (September through November) that are designed to inform the public of recent climate impacts within their respective regions; the eleventh regional impacts and outlook summary for the Mid-Atlantic Region will be posted shortly. In addition, these reports provide regional future climate outlooks that span the three months of January through March 2023. This series of quarterly summaries and outlooks from NOAA's Regional Climate Services began in 2012. [NOAA NCEI News]
• Canadian national seasonal outlook issued for January through March 2023 -- Forecasters with Environment Canada issued their outlooks for temperature and precipitation across Canada for the first three months of 2023, which represent the remainder of meteorological winter (January and February) and the first month of meteorological spring (March). Their temperature outlook indicates that most of Canada should expect to see temperatures ranging from near- to above-normal (1991-2020) temperatures for these next three months. The region with above-average anticipated temperatures extends in a broad arc running from the eastern Beaufort Sea that includes northern sections of the Yukon and Northwest Territories along with portions of the Nunavut's Canadian Archipelago southeastward across the Prairie Provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba before turning eastward to cover most of Ontario, Quebec and the Maritime Provinces. Near-normal temperatures were to be expected across the southern Yukon and Northwest Territories, British Columbia and Alberta in the west, together with most of the Nunavut Territory, northern Quebec and Labrador farther east and north. A small area of northeastern Canada centered upon Nunavut's Baffin Island could have below-normal temperatures through March 2023.
  The Canadian precipitation outlook for January through March 2023 indicates a wide scattering of areas across Canada could have precipitation amounts ranging from below to above the 1991-2920 normals. Areas scattered across northeastern Canada that would include the Canadian Archipelago and Baffin Island in the Nunavut Territory, along with northern Quebec, the region around Hudson Bay and in central Saskatchewan should expect a drier than average start to 2023. On the other hand, areas that could receive above-normal precipitation were found in southern British Columbia, areas of Ontario surrounding the eastern Great Lakes, Nova Scotia, and sections of northwestern Canada that include the Northwest Territory and the Nunavut's Canadian Archipelago. Elsewhere, precipitation amounts could be close to normal.
  [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.]
• Major advancement in seasonal high tide flooding predictions is launched -- NOAA's National Ocean Service recently announced plans that it will incorporate a new and novel statistical approach to improve the prediction of seasonal high tide flooding by the end of calendar year 2023. This new approach is designed to be incorporated into a new seasonal to annual coastal flood outlook, building upon the agency's Seasonal High Tide Bulletin and High Tide Flooding Annual Outlook that are currently available. The new probabilistic modeling approach that relies on relative sea-level rise, tide predictions, and climatological non-tidal residuals as measured by NOAA tide gauges to determine the daily likelihood of high tide flooding at coastal locations throughout the U.S. Each day in the calendar year will be assigned a likelihood of actual flooding to occur to better enable communities, which represents a marked improvement in the current provision of a range of dates during each season when the tides would be highest. Consequently, the new update should aid flooding and restoration efforts by showing users when and where high tide flooding is most likely to occur in the coming months. Furthermore, the model should help lessen possible impacts from climate change. [NOAA NCEI 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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