Accuweather’s Bastardi: Global Cooling Reason for Putin Shutting off Gas Pipeline

6 01 2009

Expert forecaster sees Putin’s moves with energy as a power play in anticipation of global cooling 20-30 years out.

By Jeff Poor
Business & Media Institute
1/6/2009 8:23:25 PM

It’s not often that meteorology intersects with geopolitics – but Europe could be in store for another Cold War, literally.

Accuweather.com’s chief long-range and hurricane forecaster Joe Bastardi observed that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s recent cut of gas flows to Europe via Ukraine may have been done so in anticipation of a global cooling cycle on the Jan. 6 “Glenn Beck Show” radio program. Bastardi has a solid reputation among Wall Street traders for understanding weather’s impact on energy commodities.

“The thing I want to bring up here – very interesting – most of the solar cycle studies that we know about and that guys like me read have come out of the Russian scientists,” Bastardi said. “But when Glasnost developed, the Russian scientists, a lot of their ideas on the coming cool period that a lot of us believe is going to occur – ice, rather than fire is the big problem down the road here 2030, 2040, and the reversing cyclical cycles of the ocean – it came out of the East.”

According to Bastardi – Putin is relying on the data from the Russian scientists and wants to bring some European nations to their knees by exploiting their reliance on natural gas when the weather is at its coldest. Read the rest of this entry »





RSS is out for December, down slightly

6 01 2009

rss-december-2008-520
Click for a larger image

RSS Data Source is here

The RSS (Remote Sensing Systems of Santa Rosa, CA) Microwave Sounder Unit (MSU) lower troposphere global temperature anomaly data for December 2008 was published today and has risen slightly. This is the new data version, 3.2  which changed in October.  The change from November with a value of 0.216°C (V3.2) to December 0.174°C is a (∆T) of  -0.042°C. Not much change really, but it is surprising in that many people expected a larger gain in December, not a slight drop.

RSS
2008 1 -0.070
2008 2 -0.002
2008 3   0.079
2008 4   0.080
2008 5 -0.083
2008 6  0.035
2008 7  0.147
2008 8 0.146
2008 9 0.241 (V3.1)
2008 10 0.181 (V3.2)
2008 11 0.216 (V3.2)
2008 12 0.174 (V3.2)





NCDC updates database for Dec08 – NCDC’s own graphic shows decadal cooling trend

6 01 2009

One of the best things about WUWT is the number of eyes and minds at work, multiplying the efforts. This is interesting. Now that the 1998 El Nino is disappearing off the 10 year scale, things are looking a bit different

From “crosspatch” in comments:

NCDC now has December 2008 in the database. Annual North American temperature since 1998 (11 years of data) is falling over the period at a rate of 0.78(F)/decade or 7.8(F)per century. At this rate we will be in an ice age within 5 decades. If you can get the graphic, the heavy black like is the average over the century 1901 to 2000.

Here is the graphic from their automated graphics generator linked to their database:

ncdc-december-2008

Source: National Climatic Data Center

While the link he provided is only a result, I’m sure he’ll share the method in comments to this post.

UPDATE: He has indeed, see below. Try your own hand at it. The trend will likely flatten a bit with the removal of 1998 from the 10 year set. Of course you could pick any number of scales/periods and get different results. The point being made here is that the last 10 years hasn’t met with some model expectations.

Also I have corrected in the text the reference to Centigrade when it was actually Fahrenheit, note the (F). NCDC being an arm of the US government operates on the English unit system whereas most other organizations use metric, and thus Centigrade. I’ve made the mistake myself, so has NASA, who famously lost a Mars probe when they botched orbit entry calculations by use of Metric and English units on different science teams.

UPDATE2: Some folks are erroneously thinking that this graph above represents a global trend, it does not. Read on. Read the rest of this entry »





Cold streak sets new record – Saskatoon experiences 24 consecutive days of -25 C or lower

6 01 2009
For those of you that don’t know where Saskatoon is, I have it on my city temperature map:
Cold streak sets new record
Rod Nickel, The StarPhoenix

Tuesday, January 06, 2009

Christina Weese takes a picture on the Traffic Bridge Sunday as the temperature dipped to -41 C
CREDIT: Gord Waldner, The StarPhoenix
Christina Weese takes a picture on the Traffic Bridge Sunday as the temperature dipped to -41 C

How’s this for cold comfort? Sask-atoon’s deep freeze is likely the longest streak of low temperatures below -25 C that has numbed this city since record-keeping began in 1892.

The 24-day streak started cruelly Dec. 13 after relatively mild temperatures and continued at least through Monday, said David Phillips, Environment Canada’s senior climatologist.

“That’s the thing that’s brutal,” Phillips said from Toronto, where he was enjoying a temperature of -4. “We can all handle a few (cold) days. It’s the long haul that wears you down.

“It’s really a shocker, the duration of the cold.”

Phillips said he couldn’t find a longer cold snap in Saskatoon’s recorded weather history during a look through the records Monday. Even during the infamous January of 1950, when temperatures hit -46 and -45 (not counting any wind chill), the cold streak of -25 or lower lasted “only” 21 days.

The first two mild weeks of December kept the month from being Saskatoon’s coldest ever. It still averaged -20.6, the sixth-coldest December on record and the most frigid since 1983.

Prince Albert was slightly colder in December, with an average temperature of -21.4, while Regina registered -18. Neither of those burgs have suffered a -25 streak approaching Saskatoon’s, Phillips said. Read the rest of this entry »