Tibet’s ‘worst snowstorm ever’, 7 killed

31 10 2008

More harbinger of the Northern Hemisphere winter to come?

A bulldozer cleans snow on the Sichuan-Tibet road in Nyingchi, southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region Oct. 30, 2008.

A bulldozer cleans snow on the Sichuan-Tibet road in Nyingchi, southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region Oct. 30, 2008. (Xinhua Photo)

LHASA, Oct. 30 (Xinhua) — The death toll has risen to seven, and one person remains missing, as a result of the worst snowstorm on record in Tibet, local authorities said Thursday.

The seven people killed either frozen to death or were crushed by collapsing buildings. About 144,400 heads of livestock died in the storm, which also knocked out telecommunications and traffic in parts of Shannan prefecture.

In Lhunze County, 1,348 people stranded by damaged buildings or blocked roads had been rescued, the county government said. Rescue operation for the remaining 289 trapped was still underway.

The worst-hit county had 36 consecutive hours of snowfall from Sunday, with an average snow coverage of 1.5 meters. Four people died and one remained missing in the snowstorm.

The rescued people have been moved to other villages, sleeping in schools or government buildings.

A road linking Lhunze to Cuona County reopened on Thursday after 63 hours of snow clearing efforts of armed policemen and transportation staff.

Cuona had been isolated from the outside for three days due to the road blockage.

The Tibet regional civil affairs department has allocated relief materials such as clothes and tents to the affected areas.

h/t to Dr. Roger Pielke


Comments : 84 Comments »

Categories : weather

WUWT visitor traffic holding steady

31 10 2008

You may remember last month I posted adjusted numbers for WUWT due to a SPAM attack, dropping my September count by about 50K:


SEPTEMBER NUMBERS Click for full sized image

For September 2008 the total was 846,193 page views, up from 667,215 page views in August 2008.

But there is a caveat, I think the real numbers are just shy of 800,000, because on the weekend of 09/20 and 09/21 I got quite a bit of unexpected traffic to one old post that I’m not sure is real or not. During that time, we got a lot of Spam on that particular older entry comparing UAH, RSS, HadCRUT, and GISS, but not anywhere near the numbers specific to that post, shown below:

Blog Stats Increase due to DOS “something”

Saturday 09/20 23,486
Sunday   09/21 25,319
Monday  09/22   1,006

Total: 49,811

Raw WUWT September numbers:           846,193 page views

WUWT Spam Uncertainty numbers:           -49,811 page views (from 09/20 to 09/22)

Final Adjusted WUWT September numbers: 796,382 page views

Today at 5PM (00UTC) I tallied my October numbers, and while they are slightly lower than last month’s total, I didn’t have any perceptible spam attacks like last month, so I don’t need to adjust October’s numbers: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 15 Comments »

Categories : Announcements

Arctic sea ice continues rebound

31 10 2008

When we last checked in to the Nansen Sea Ice Graphs, it looked like they were heading towards the “normal” line in a hurry. Ice area seems to still be on that trend, while extent seems to be leveling off it’s growth rate. Area appears to be within about 200,000 square kilometers of the 1979-2007 monthly average and still climbing.

Sea Ice Area - red line is current value, shaded area represents 1 standard deviation

Sea Ice Area - red line is current value, shaded area represents 1 standard deviation

Of course the fact that the 2007 data is included in the average line, means the average is a lower than usual target than one might expect. If we compare to ice area over at Cryopshere today, they use a 1979-2000 mean, which is higher.  Still the rebound we are seeing is impressive.

Sea ice extent looks like this: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 68 Comments »

Categories : Uncategorized

New essay claims- “Not to Worry: Solar Magnetic Activity for Cycle 24 Is Increasing”

31 10 2008

So far, SC24 solar magnetic activity has been in a relative funk. See my post on this very issue from last month.

Leif Svalgaard points out this new paper in AGU from Keating, and kindly placed a copy on his own website for us to examine: Link to Keating-Bz.pdf

The crux of the paper is a forecast, which extends significantly into SC24, even though there is just a small number of observed data points:

Fig. 1. Actual boxcar averages for measured Bz(m) magnitude and the forecast results of applying the McNish- Lincoln technique. Actual data are represented by solid squares, while the calculated results are shown as a curve. The correlation between the two is due to the fact that the McNish-Lincoln method uses actual data when available. The calculated forecast is performed only for the time period after the end of the actual data. This plot shows that Bz(m) reached its minimum average magnitude in mid-2007 and has begun to increase in magnitude. The forecast is that it will continue to increase slowly through the first part of 2008, but will then begin to rapidly increase in magnitude beginning in the latter part of this year, reaching its first peak in late 2009.

There seem to be two schools of thought on the activity level of SC24, those who think it will be very low, and those that think it will be higher than normal.

Dr. Svalgaard goes on record here on this blog in saying: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 73 Comments »

Categories : Science, solar

Creepy Climate Change for Halloween

31 10 2008

I’m sure we’ll see other dead people talking about climate change soon. Jerry Garcia perhaps? Albert Einstein, John Lennon, why maybe even John Wayne could be utilized. I can see him now, “Listen up Pilgrim…climate change is gonna kill you unless you get off your sorry butt and do something about it!”.

We all know these long dead people had opinions about climate change, but they just never had a chance to express them before they died. Right?

Anything to “save the planet”, including putting words in dead people’s mouths. – Anthony

h/t to Jeff Alberts

Greenpeace Resurrects JFK for Global Warming Ad Campaign
Web video depicts dead president warning climate change ‘threatens our very existence,’ claims ‘technology and renewable energy offers the last remaining hope.’

By Jeff Poor
Business & Media Institute
10/30/2008 1:31:03 PM
There’s something a little creepy about historical figures being brought back to life to promote climate change alarmism, but the over-the-top environmentalists at Greenpeace have no qualms with using it as a tactic.

A video posted on Greenpeace’s YouTube site portrays former President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas, making a plea for environmental activism to save the planet from the perils of global warming.

“When man first walked upon the moon, it defined a generation,” Kennedy is depicted saying. “As this new millennium dawns, we face a greater challenge – climate change threatens our very existence. What further disasters will convince world leaders that the existing technology and renewable energy offers the last remaining hope for sustainable future?”

The ad is part of a Greenpeace campaign labeled “Energy [R]evolution” that sets greenhouse gas goals far in excess of the Kyoto treaty. The ad promotes the eradication of coal-fired plants, using more expensive unproven sources of energy, blames industrialized nations for the plight of poor nations, and calls for a radical overhaul of the European auto industry.

Watch the video: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 51 Comments »

Categories : climate_change, ridiculae