From the “weather is not climate department. Oh the weather outside is frightful….
Prisoners used to shovel snow-bound US capitol
Here’s the roundup of cold and snow records for the past 7 days. While there is a handful of new high temp records, it is clear where the bulk of the statistics is. Note the new record lows in Florida.
Here’s a few other recent news stories:
Maryland Reports 4 Cold Weather Deaths
Cold weather kills scores in India
Dublin airport suspends flights after heavy snowfall, cold weather
Once in generation cold snap forecast for North Carolina
Record low blows into Siouxland
Recent global cool-down challenges validity of climate change models
National Weather Highlight for 12 / 29 / 09: Record snow falls in Dallas / Fort Worth area
A few warm and a few cold records are normal. They always happen.
But here again is a large number of cold records. And more record Snow. This is a third week of record snow and a second week of numerous cold records since before winter began.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/13/lots-of-new-cold-and-snow-records-in-the-usa-this-week/
&
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/27/877-new-snowfall-records-set-or-tied-in-the-usa-in-the-last-week/
I don’t know how I missed this one on deaths in the US from the cold weather from December 11.
Md. Reports 4 Cold Weather Deaths
http://wjz.com/local/hypothermia.residents.maryland.2.1364554.html
REPLY: Thanks – I’ve added it to the story -A
“Note the new record lows in Florida.”
Interesting, generally in 2009 Florida was shown as warmer than average.
One from the UK: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1239908/Britains-big-freeze-hit-return-work-forecasters-issue-new-ice-alert-drivers.html
“It will stay bitingly cold for the next ten days at the very least.
Met Office forecaster Dave Elliott said: ‘This cold spell is here for the foreseeable future. It will certainly stay with us right through this coming week and even then we can’t see an end to it.’”
So much for the Met Office forecast of another mild winter.
If many more people freeze to death from all this global warming we’re having, somebody is going to start to notice.
“Figures obtained by the Tories show that the North West’s “winter kill” rose from 3,210 in 2007-08 to 5,000 last year.”
Liverpool pensioners face cold weather death risk, claim Tories
http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-news/local-news/2010/01/02/liverpool-pensioners-face-cold-weather-death-risk-claim-tories-100252-25507589/
And don’t ffffuuurrget the fffrrezzzing weather in N Europe too. We have had another cold snap, that is likely to last for another week or so.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2009/pr20091231.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/weather/forecast/10209 (click on temperature)
For the UK, this is quite unprecedented. We normally get a cold snap or two in Jan or Feb, just for a few days with lots of warm weather in between. To have very cold followed by cold and then very cold for more than three weeks in Dec/Jan is quite unprecedented.
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FWIW, I speculate that the land can cool off faster than the oceans (since a shallow depth of soil cools, then acts as an insulator, whereas water moves) thus we get the new cold regimin showing up over land first. THEN I’d expect the “lava lamp” effect to have the warm air preferentially heading to the poles over the oceans and the cold air preferentially heading away from the poles over the (now colder) land.
Thus we get the ‘loopy jet stream’ and all the various air oscillators…
THAT then amplifies the land cooling and the whole thing slowly ‘spins up’ to these Arctic Express winds whacking straight down the center of N. America and into the heart of Eurasia.
Welcome to Lava Lamp Land, hope you brought a winter coat and mittens…
I fear we have 20+ years of this to live through. I take delight in the fact that we climate naturalists are being dramatically shown correct and that the global cooling deniers are being shown wrong; and I weep for the thousands who will die while the “powers that be” realize they need to do something about the cold.
When will the US become committed to preventing cold weather deaths from the global cooling going on now?
Michael, no need to rely on Tories’ info, you can get it yourself here http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=574 National winter mortality went up from 25,000 in 07/08 to 36,000 in 08/09. Go to the top of the site’s page (red text) and you’ll be playing around for hours finding out stuff!
Ahhh MET office UK Winter forecast in tatters
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/6921281/Britain-facing-one-of-the-coldest-winters-in-100-years-experts-predict.html
Regards the European cold weather.
This has been caused by a lowering of the jetstreams. They normally track at higher latitudes, dragging tight and therefore windy low pressure systems up over the UK, bringing lots of warm Mexican air with them.
This year, the jetstreams are way down in the Mediterranean.
http://www.eldoradocountyweather.com/forecast/europe/europeanjet.html
This is giving us slack pressure systems (both highs and lows), which are disconnected from lower latitudes and have ‘cooled off’. Our supply of warm tropical air has gone, so even the slack low-pressure systems are now fffreezzing.
http://www.eldoradocountyweather.com/forecast/europe/europeanjet.html
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Question.
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The main difference between high sunspot cycles and low sunspot cycles is the lower magnetic flux. A low magnetic flux can obviously interfere with the Earths magnetosphere, with a lack of auroras etc:
But could this magnetic disturbance (or calming) also influence the track of the upper jetstreams in any way? If so, we could discover the link between sunspot activity and climate.
In this case, the total energy flux impacting the Earth (the TSI) does not need to alter much, and neither does the cloud-induced albedo of the Earth. All we need is a disconnect between tropical air masses and northern latitude air masses (as is happening now), so that the northern latitudes get very cold and start accumulating snow and ice. And if sustained, we have the beginnings of a northern latitude Ice Age.
Any ideas?
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We had a dusting of snow last night. It wasn’t forecast so there is no grit on the roads. Chaos will ensue. Another great call by the Met Office.
OT, but there is a full page article about Wikipedia in today’s paper version of the FT. I can’t see it on their web site ft.com. Wikipedia plan to add a ‘rate this article’ button this year. I’m sure Anthony’s army will get to work rating William Connolley’s 5,800+ articles. Oh joy!
“Note the new record lows in Florida.”
It is supposed to be near 30 degrees for a low most of the rest of the week here in Orlando! What a way to start January. This is the sort of winter weather that destroyed the citrus industry here in central Florida back in the 70s.
I lost two foxtail palms last year and the big mature one had burned fronds on it up until just a couple weeks ago from last winter. I am afraid that it will not survive the coming winter.
If you garden in central Florida, you find it very difficult to believe the alarmists predictions.
The Carolinas are calling for a long period of cold. The temperatures won’t break records but the duration of the cold temperatures will be something not seen for over 20 years.
Those with highs, how do their station rate on http://www.surfacestations.org ?
Barry Foster (00:56:19) :
Thanks Barry.
I think we can now make a direct correlation between cold climate deaths and sunspot activity. Anybody have a chart or can make a graph on this?
And yet again:
predicted a month ahead by Dr. Piers Corbyn.
It’s becoming such a JOKE that the “officials” keep humming & turning a blind, ignorant eye. GOVERNMENT money needs to be channeled to this man in LARGE amounts starting NOW.
Greatest read yet:
Sounds to me like the councils haven’t budgeted enough for snow mitigation. If their budget is all used up then they must grope for excuses for not getting the sand trucks out on the road. It being too cold for sand trucks to move while people are trying to drive around doesn’t seem like a plausible excuse.
It Didn’t Start With Climategate
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/01/025294.php
I believe the AGW is a very cleverly disguised campaigne to help us cope with global cooling, I can tell from myself, I am not worried but glad about every cold record I hear about.
JohnH (00:58:53) :
Oh ya, but that’s just climate.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8437395.stm Just wondered if anyone has a recent temp record of San Francisco, and if the sea lions might be leaving because temps are cooler. They’ve been there since 1989. Rather worringly, there is a rumour that they know of an impending earthquake.
Who is the ClimateGate leaker in the media? It’s the Chinese now and not the Russians.
First segment of this video
p.s. OT, but no thread for OT now
ralph (00:46:37) :
For the UK, this is quite unprecedented. We normally get a cold snap or two in Jan or Feb, just for a few days with lots of warm weather in between. To have very cold followed by cold and then very cold for more than three weeks in Dec/Jan is quite unprecedented.
Only if you use the CRU data?
AlanG, you can’t be too far from where I am in south England. None of our roads were gritted either, and we drove home during that dusting last night. Accu forecast isn’t good http://www.accuweather.com/ukie/forecast.asp?partner=accuweather&traveler=0&postalcode=RG14 1AA&metric=1
This is just more of the natural cyclic variability in action. The Lunar declination was at it’s 18.6 year Mn cycle peak culmination back in 2005, when we had the record surge of Hurricanes, due to the turbulence in the atmosphere, of the turning of the tides.
Now the declination angle is decreasing back towards the Minimum, and the air mass that was moved toward the poles, is now out washing towards the Equator again. we will be in a trend of colder air surges during the winter, with lower jet stream positions, for the next couple of years.
Dryer summers, wetter falls, and colder snowier winters can be expected, in the USA and Europe for a couple more years yet, before milder times return (beginning in 2013) when the Lunar declination reaches it’s minimum, and starts to return again in 2014 / 2015.
Sorry, here is the Met Office surface pressure map I intended to post – showing the slack low pressure systems we have at present over N Europe.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/uk/surface_pressure.html
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How can global temperature anomalies continue to be reported as positive when it is so obvious that temperature anomalies overall globally are so negative as seen first hand with one record low temperature posted after the other?
And it’s not about to get warmer any time soon, at least for the eastern half of the US.
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp1.html
I think the main point being missed is this question.
What will transpire should this cold become longer term. What will happen to the US & European crops?? At what point in the Northern calendar is it not worthwhile planting?? Will the soil be too wet to seed anyway??
With food stocks at low historical levels this could get interesting.
regards
“…..Too many think global warming means monotonic relentless warming everywhere year after year. It does not happen that way…..” so says Kevin Trenberth (Recent global cool-down challenges validity of climate change models).
According to the IPCC, the overwhelming climate forcing factors for the past 60 years have been and remain human caused GHGs, most notably CO2.
The rate of rise in CO2, as measured at Mauna Loa Observatory since 1958, is monotonic — constant.
The only countervailing factors, according to the dogma, are aerosols.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Radiative-forcings.svg
So, for the past decade or so (if logical consistency is still of any value in the increasingly Alice-in-Wonderland world of climate science), aerosols must have overridden the effect of CO2 — no other explanation is possible.
John H
That’s why I way “Forget the Met, Go to Joe”.
– Joe Bastardi of Accuwaether.
Indeed nature is turning the Met into the Mother of Laughing Stocks.
In excess of one third of the population of Ireland are estimated to have died during two cold and rainy winters (1740/41) towards the end of the LIA. Summary noted in:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Famine_%281740%E2%80%931741%29
Following a 2009 ‘record breaking’ wet summer and autumn, and with snow on the ground for the last three week in parts of the UK, some of the descriptions from 1740 don’t sound too dissimilar to the current conditions being experienced. Tucked up in air-tight centrally heated homes makes the effects seem less severe. However, the Wiki story summarises;
“The story of the Irish Great Frost of 1740-1741 holds lessons for human social behavior in response to climate-induced limitations in energy, food, and housing.”
This may become more apparent and relevant as the next natural cycle of climate cooling wrong-foots our policy-makers suicidally bent on increasing our energy costs through misplaced and failed de-carbonisation policies. It is -6c this morning in Wales and none of the dozens of wind turbines in this region are operating due to static high pressure. The Met Office, Hadley, CRU, NASA, GISS and cohorts should hang their heads in shame for their conduct and misguidance in this unfolding farce.
Shiver me Timbers. It hasn’t been terribly cold here in NW Ca, but it’s rained a lot and dusted snow all over. Even when the storms are over, the clouds hug the ground in patches as they move east. I know it’s a lot worse soon as the storms leave the West Coast.
crosspatch, you can’t blame the councils if they get caught out, as they rely on the Met Office entirely. All of them are linked to the Met Office and get severe weather warnings sent to them direct. As much as I hate my local council, they rely on advice from the Met Office. Perhaps it should come from Piers Corbyn instead?
Jesse Ventura Conspiracy Theory on global warming.
Timothy Ball, Richard Lindzen, and Lord Monckton are in the show.
The show talks about Al Gore’s and Maurice Strong’s business connections to global warming.
There’s an interview with Ben Santer.
It’s a melodramatic presentation. But it makes good points
nevket240 (01:53:19) :
With food stocks at low historical levels this could get interesting.
Bio-fuels complicate that too.
I just cannot contain my Schadenfreude.
Coldest UK winter in 100 years.
The Met Office deserves the label of “Mother of Laughing Stocks”.
They departed from science and opted to zealously pursue a save-the-world ideology – ridiculing, alienating and insulting many of the best along the way.
Well, them chickens now coming home to roost!
The MetOffice and CRU have to get rid of these sophomoric brats, these charlatans, and fast.
Wind farms at virtual standstill.
There needs to be an urgent investigation into wind turbine output for the past two weeks as static high pressure persists as mentioned by the previous poster and others. At the coldest time of the year and when needed the most there have been observances of wind farms across the UK & Ireland at a complete standstill. As we begin to rely more and more on this form of power generation the shortcomings need to be documented to prevent black outs as our reliance increases.
It’s pretty obvious why the Met Office keeps forecasting warmer conditions and getting it wrong. Here is an axtract of what the Chief Scientist at the Met Office says in response to public questions:
“As Chief Scientist of the Met Office, I’m delighted to have the opportunity to respond to your questions that you, the public, have sent in around the science of climate change………
There’s been a lot of questions about carbon dioxide and whether it’s generally responsible for climate change, and so the first question would really be, how do we know that carbon dioxide is responsible for the climate change that we have seen and can we prove it?……….
What carbon dioxide is doing now is enhancing that greenhouse gas effect. So we understand the basic physics of that. It’s enhancing that greenhouse effect and leading to an increase in temperature, so we’re trapping more energy into the planet because of increasing levels of carbon dioxide………
And if we know that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, it’s hard to believe that if you increase it by 40% you’re not going to do something to the temperature of the planet.”
So there we have it. No evidence. It’s all based on belief.
You can read it all if you have a strong stomach) at http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/in-depth/ask/julia-slingo.pdf
-7C in the maritime SW of England this morning.
AlanG (01:05:12) :
This may be what you were looking for
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/125f6be6-f70a-11de-9fb5-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=1
In spite of all this record cold, the IPCC will still claim that 2009 was the __’th warmest year on record, and that the arctic sea is filled with rotten ice on December 31. (use you imagination and fill in the blank).
E.M.Smith (00:53:57) :
You are correct to describe the jet stream as “loopy.” If you notice the red spots in New England, it is because we were on the warm side of that huge Christmas blizzard that extended from Maine to Montana. It drove cold air clear down to Dallas, while sucking warm air up to New Hampshire. It reached 47F in Concord NH on the 27th, which was +14 of normal, but not near the record of 58F set in 1949.
Concord was also in milder air on the 15th, when it was 44, +14 of normal but not near the record of 60F set just last year.
The only record Concord set was on the 3rd, when it was a balmy 65, which was +22 of normal.
Despite those warm spells, when the jet stream looped north of us, it looped south enough to give us days of vicious northwest winds, and the month of December averaged out 0.7 BELOW normal in Concord, NH. The coldest was 0F on the 19th.
I’m glad we haven’t had record cold, because up here that can be as low as -24F. (December 20, 1875) In 1933 it got down to -21F on the 27th, 28th and 29th. That is too cold.
The snow cover has never melted away, and the wind has been ferocious at times, so the ice on lakes is thicker than usual. This may spoil a sourse of amusement and income for locals, which is to watch a “flatlander” drive a car out onto a lake and fall through. If the cold persists, it will soon take a Winnabago. (Don’t laugh; they do drive Winnabagos out onto the lakes, on colder winters.)
Similar observation of jetstream shift is also observed in the East Asia Monsoon Area in this winter. The jetstream is used to be above mainland Japan at this moment of the year over the last 5 years or so, it is now south of Japan.
And the result is obvious – much of East Asia Monsoon Area get a -‘ve abnormalty in Dec. Appearantly Hong Kong ( where I live ) got a Dec monthly average temp of 17.2/17.3 ( official number to be announced by HKO tomorrow ), which is -0.6/-0.5 to the 1971-2000 average.
Given the forecasts given by ECMWF, I would expect monsoon to be stronger than average at least in the first half of Jan. Would like to see if Hong Kong get a min temp lower than 7.5C, a temperature unseen for 5 years. ( What can you expect to happen at 22.5N? )
New to here, and wish all a Happy New Year!
Crosspatch:”Sounds to me like the councils haven’t budgeted enough for snow mitigation. ”
The councils are responsible for spending public money and should take care it is spent with care. To that extent they have to plan their spend against the best available information, the Met Office. Clearly the Met Office forecasting a mild winter leads to councils preparing themselves to mitigate the effects of a mild winter.
My Greenie friends thought it was OK to for the Met Office to read the “barbecue summer” wrong until I pointed out to them that many businesses would have based their summer plans on this forecast.
Slowly there is a rising public awareness of the politisation of the BBC and the Met Office, and it will lead to the next government severely curbing their activities. The Met Office seemingly puts out forecast simply to drive home the AGW agenda, while the BBC, and indeed much of the MSM ignore its continual failure to predict the weather much more than two days in advance.
Perhaps if the scientists at the Met Office became less interested in pushing an agenda and more interested in their job things would improve. I sent them a simple FOIA request asking who had approved the money to poll the 1700 scientists for agreement on AGW and they replied with this:
“It should be noted that the signatures referred to above were collected on behalf of the UKScience Community to show support for the statement below, not in support of the Met Office.
We, members of the UK science community, have the utmost confidence in the observational evidence for global warming and the scientific basis for concluding that it is due primarily to human activities. The evidence and the science are deep and extensive. They come from decades of painstaking and meticulous research, by many thousands of scientists across the world who adhere to the highest levels of professional integrity. That research has been subject to peer review and publication, providing traceability of the evidence and support for the scientific method.
The science of climate change draws on fundamental research from an increasing number of disciplines, many of which are represented here. As professional scientists, from students to senior professors, we uphold the findings of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, which concludes that ‘Warming of the climate system is unequivocal’ and that ‘Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.”
I have made clear that my question didn’t refer to motivation but to how they had the authority to spend public resources on activities other than forecasting and researching the weather. They appear to have totally lost the plot.
Friends:
Please remember the important sub-heading of this item; i.e.
“From the ‘weather is not climate department.’ ”
It is very important.
And it raises the important issue of how it can be decided what is an effect of weather and what is an effect of climate. Any atmospheric effect lasting less than a year is weather.
This cold snap is a weather event and tells nothing about how climate is changing. However, alarmists trumpeted the 1998 hot El Nino year as a ‘sign of things to come’ at the time, but that hot year was also a weather event and told nothing about how climate is changing.
Climate is the integral of weather so warm and hot extremes occur around the ‘climate normal’ temperature. When a climate is warming there will still be times with temperature well below the climate normal. And when a climate is cooling there will still be times with temperature well above the climate normal.
Also, the ranges of weather events are as important as their means because an increase to the ranges of weather events would be a climate change when their mean stayed constant.
There is no agreed minimum period for determination of a climate normal condition.
During the International Geophysical Year (1958) it was agreed that reference periods of 30 years duration would be adopted for comparisons to assess climate change. But this was an arbitrary decision based on what was then considered to be the earliest ‘reliable’ global climate data (data from before 30 years earlier was considered unreliable). The arbitrary (pragmatic?) nature of this decision can be demonstrated in several ways: for example, 30 years is not a multiple of the 11-year solar cycle. So, 30 years was adopted as the standard climate period for use when comparing climate data.
It is sometimes wrongly asserted that the 30 years of the standard climate period means that any atmospheric event of less than 30 years is weather. But this is not true. There is no agreed period for how long weather must be monitored as a climate indicator of climate change. Periods of single years, decades, centuries and millennia are all used in climate assessments published in refereed literature For example, the 1994 IPCC Report uses 5-year periods as an indicator of climate change when considering if the frequency of hurricanes is changing.
Indeed, a weather event (such as the present cold snap) can be assessed to the average temperature and the range of temperatures of previous winter months. This would be a climate assessment because the range of weather events is one parameter that could change to alter climate.
And climate has always changed everywhere on Earth. Climate change is normal.
Some climate changes seem to be cyclic. And two of these cycles seem to be very significant to present climate change.
There is an apparent ~900 year oscillation that caused the Roman Warm Period (RWP), then the Dark Age Cool Period (DACP), then the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), then the Little Ice Age (LIA), and the present warm period (PWP).
And overlaid on that ~900 year is an apparent ~60 cycle. This gave cooling from ~880 to ~1910, warming from ~1910 to ~1940, cooling from ~1940 to ~1970, warming from ~1970 to 1998, and cooling since.
So, if the pattern of thee two cycles were to continue then it could be anticipated that cooling will continue for another ~20 years. After that then either
(a) warming will resume for ~30 years as rise toward temperatures of the MWP continues
or
(b) cooling will continue back towards temperatures of the LIA.
In either case, it is an extreme risk to assume that AGW will overwhelm this pattern of past global climate change and, on the basis of that assumption, to only prepare for warming and not cooling.
The present cold weather is a reminder of the severity of that risk.
Richard
E.M.Smith (00:53:57) :
FWIW, I speculate that the land can cool off faster than the oceans (since a shallow depth of soil cools, then acts as an insulator, whereas water moves) thus we get the new cold regimin showing up over land first. THEN I’d expect the “lava lamp” effect to have the warm air preferentially heading to the poles over the oceans and the cold air preferentially heading away from the poles over the (now colder) land.
Thus we get the ‘loopy jet stream’ and all the various air oscillators…
THAT then amplifies the land cooling and the whole thing slowly ’spins up’ to these Arctic Express winds whacking straight down the center of N. America and into the heart of Eurasia.
Yes. This is what I’ve been going on about with my comments about the modoki el nino in progress. Rather than a big el nino like ’98 being concentrated in the east Pacific blowing hot air all over the land we have global SST anomaly which is nearly as high as ’98, but it’s due to energy leaving the ocean everywhere at once. This doesn’t set up any particularly strong air currents, and since the air isn’t massively humid over a localised big El nino like ’98, a lot of the energy escapes straight to space or drifts polewards over the oceans as you say.
JohnH (00:58:53) : “Ahhh MET office UK Winter forecast in tatters”
Maybe not, rumors have it that MET office has a new advisor, B. Clinton, and he has informed his client that as long as they don’t define what a ‘cold’ or ‘warm’ winter IS, their predictions will always be on the money, the cold that the ‘warm skeptics’ feel is an illusion and the UK is truly having a very warm winter this year.
(Some cheer for my dear and truly cold friends in London)
>>>There needs to be an urgent investigation into wind turbine
>>>output for the past two weeks as static high pressure persists
>>>as mentioned by the previous poster and others.
But it was so obvious that wind energy would collapse just when you needed it most – in the coldest of periods. Any farmer, aviator or sailor could have told us that. Take a look at this WUWT article.
Renewable Energy, Our Downfall.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/25/renewable-energy-–-our-downfall
And yet our most eminent scientists and media experts could not see the results of their drive for renewables. This calls into question the competence and viability of everyone in positions of authority, from government to so-called scientists to the media (especially the BBC).
And if they can get the basic fundamentals of renewables so wrong, then what other ‘global’ policies of the last two decades have our politicians got seriously wrong??
About time for a revolution?? Tanks on Parliament Square??
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My count of unfortunate deaths keeps going up, and is near 300: http://ecotretas.blogspot.com/2009/12/december-2009-cold-death-toll.html
It starts getting complicated in the USA, as I try not to count same death more than once; most probably, the numbers are much, much bigger…
Ecotretas
ralph (00:46:37) :
For the UK, this is quite unprecedented. We normally get a cold snap or two in Jan or Feb, just for a few days with lots of warm weather in between. To have very cold followed by cold and then very cold for more than three weeks in Dec/Jan is quite unprecedented.
Hardly unprecedented Ralph.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/anniversary/winter1946-47.html
I have been looking at the released Met-Office/CRU data and the related code. I am absolutely astonished. They use methods which a second year engineering student could demolish.
The methods they use can be be shown formally to be wrong. It can also be shown to produce substantial artifactual trends.
I am not entirely surprised in the light of this that the Met Office predictions may be slightly at variance with current weather.
Also, the data it self is extraordinary. I had expected continuous records from say 1900. In fact there are gaps in the records and some stop before the present.
Please, somebody reassure me that this is not the standard of grossly underperforming science on which we are supposed to de-industrialise our economies.
It snows in Lincolnshire as I type this!
Promises of -5C tonight, doubtless it will be lower, as the forecast is for the city of Lincoln, so drop a couple of degrees off that fir us poor peasants out in the frozen mud.
Today’s The Daily Telegraph has a page of predictions for the coming decade. Their “Warmist” columnist, Geoffrey Lean, says ” It will be the warmest decade ever as global warming continues…………..Continued shrinkage of the Arctic ice-cap could provide the first climate “tipping-point”
I think the only bit he gets right, is that nuclear power will not make a real contribution, as any new reactors won’t come on stream before the endof the decade.
Something else to thank Gordon Brown for !
Well I spent my teenage years growing up in Yorkshire in the north east of England in the sixties, and I can tell you that this is pretty mild temperature wise.
You haven’t seen nothing yet. And this is only the start.
I hope I’m wrong, but I doubt it.
Forget about Western crops. The west can look after itself . The real problem is in the majority rice eating populations of the world.
Only a year or two back there were severe shortfalls of rice production by the major producers and exporters due to cold and snow conditions in the rice production areas. This resulted in riots and deaths in those poorer rice eating population countries. (Do you remember the chaos in China during the traditional Chinese New Year celebrations and the hundreds of thousands stranded at rail stations due to Snow and cold?) The Chinese New Year coincided with the major rice harvest in those producing countries.
Wonder if someone could put me wise? Did they used to put molasses with the grit to stop it being washed away by winter rain? I heard one councillor stating that the roads were gritted (salted) but it was not their fault that subsequent showers washed away the grit. Then a listener rang up and stated it was because they no longer included molasses with the grit? (Talking about England here).
Back in June 2008 I dealt with the weather/climate and jet stream issues and this seems to be an appropriate time to draw attention to that article to be found here:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=1458
Barry Foster (01:33:50) : re San Francisco temperatures recently,
The entire Bay Area has been around 2 deg F cooler than normal for December, see http://www.calclim.dri.edu/
[snip waaaaaaaaayyyyyyy off topic, in subject, in content, in relevance. …people just putting the words “off topic” or OT at the beginning doesn’t give license to clutter the thread with irrelevant subjects. We have the tips and notes page for this – A]
Oh please – ” … is monotonic — constant” is such a ‘load’ when we *know* that the amount/the ppm varies locally and latitudinally and seasonally and even diurnally quite a bit*!!!
How do the ‘models’ handle this aspect? I’ll bet they don’t: one factor is probably used for all CO2 ‘interactive effects’ in the GCMs …
*See http://www.klima2009.net/de/papers/4/6 for starters.
.
.
Does anybody else see this as needing a great big:
“Duh!”
(MOST of us are adults here, ‘friend’.)
.
.
Somewhat OT, but have you seen this:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1240025/Not-bright-idea-Flawed-government-scheme-leaves-homes-swamped-180-million-unwanted-energy-saving-light-bulbs.html
A European energy company is distributing millions of energy efficient light bulbs to people who didn’t request them and will not use them. Since the power company knows that most of the bulbs won’t be used, they are consciously *adding* to net carbon emissions (after all, manufacturing, packaging, and distributing millions of light bulbs obviously produces some carbon output) because in doing so, they are complying with a government mandate to reduce emissions. You can’t make this stuff up!
ralph wrote: “For the UK, this is quite unprecedented. We normally get a cold snap or two in Jan or Feb, just for a few days with lots of warm weather in between. To have very cold followed by cold and then very cold for more than three weeks in Dec/Jan is quite unprecedented.”
It’s pretty brutal but not unprecedented as anybody who lived through the 1962/3 winter will tell you. Snowfall began on Boxing day and the same snow was still there at Easter. And that was on the south coast. After a few weeks there was a newspaper headline: “Temperature rises to zero”.
In the spring all of the main UK parties will be campaigning for the General Election about who will best be able to make the world colder! Anybody who calls at my door will get an earfull!
I have two comments related to the preceding. First, the Telegraph article had a headline about the coldest UK winter for 100 years, but that was naughty as the actual text said one of the twentiest cold winters in 100 years. I’ll wait until March to see how this one really shaped up against 1963 and 1947. In Gloucestershire it has been disappointing as we had 2 days of continuous rain at 2degC and snow only on the top of the hills (but plenty in Wales), and then a dusting at valley level last night. It’s great that it’s cold but I want snow!
Second, the jet stream position is IMHO equivalent to the tracking latitude of the depressions which exchange heat between the tropics and the poles. If the globe is cooling, then the war between pole and tropic moves southward (in the NH).
Here’s a question – how long can the run of cooling winters continue, as measured by the Central England Temperature maxima? 2008 was colder than 2007, 2009 was colder than 2008, and 2010 is looking like it will be colder than 2009 (certainly Dec09 beat Dec08 by 0.5 degrees – but a mild February could overturn that).
Rich.
On the Perth Council fiasco ref gritting lorries stuck in the Depots, the Diesel was turning to wax in the tanks so the engines could not start. Can’t blame the Met Office for that one, in Perth Scotland you expect low temps so any lorries used for gritting should have tank warmers fitted.
A new one for me, defending those MET idiots but the truth must be told.
Last Feb the Met office was to blame for the lack of gritting, Councils had relied on the Met office forcasts and ran out of salt, this year they ignored the forecast and have plenty of salt in stock. Shame some of them did not plan for a long spell of sub zero temps which saps heat from large fuel storage tanks.
ralph (01:01:51) :
“Regards the European cold weather.
This has been caused by a lowering of the jet-streams.
This year, the jet=streams are way down in the Mediterranean”.
Empirical (I love that word) data here is Cyprus showed a huge amount of contrails yesterday as the jets followed the the stream.
Call me a sadist… but I say “bring on the global cooling”
Shut these alarmists up for at least a little while…
O/T, but Arctic sea ice figures at stuck on 29th December. http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
Could IJIS be having similar sensor problems as DMI, because their graph line has dipped and flattened?
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
OT:
Just noticed that on an obscure UK satellite channel – Information TV: Sky 166- there’s a screening this afternoon – 1.30pm of “A Convenient Truth” which is billed as Dr Steven Hayward’s response to Gore’s film. Haven’t seen it yet so I don’t know how good/bad it is.
The nature of the channel means that the film will probably be repeated endlessly.
In comment @ 00:58 John H linked to another excellent piece in the Telegraph (a good news source for those of us on the US side of the big pond who occasionally like to get a balanced UK perspective).
Lead from that piece in the Telegraph is:
”Britain is bracing itself for one of the coldest winters for a century with temperatures hitting minus 16 degrees Celsius, forecasters have warned. ”
Couldn’t help but chuckle:
That’s about 3 degrees F. above zero. Here at the ranch in northern ND in January, if the sun is shining and there isn’t much wind that’s a very nice day. . . .
Meanwhile:
Yesterday morning just as the sun was coming up, outdoor temp reading here in ND was minus 30 degrees F. = minus 34.4 degrees C.
Weather is not climate, but eventually you start to see a trend. . . .
Ho w is the Dec 2009 anomaly shaping up?
With all the incredibly cold weather throughout the northern hemisphere, I wouldnt be surprised to find out it is the warmest December ever.
“It’s worse than we thought!”
Observer:
It could be because of the relative paucity of weather stations in the SH. Slightly above-average summer temperatures at some of these stations could conceivably bias the global average.
I wonder why the prisoners are shoveling snow instead of the “green” workers. I suppose there is a severe unemployment rate among the incarcerated class.
Another AGW protest falls victim to global cooling:
http://myloc.me/show.php?id=2xbZC
Lol.
REPLY: Looking through the full Twitter feed it appears to be just a joke among friends http://twitter.com/GoodnzHood
– A
What’s with that hot spot at Malcom AFB (Montana)?
Warm equals cool.
Hot equals cold.
Snow equals warming.
CRU is honest.
Gore is smart.
Fudging is fine.
Now I get it.
It’s odd that Montana and New England had record highs and record lows side by side. Could there be a problem with some of this data?
REPLY: I have an idea I’ll check on -A
Phillip Bratby (02:25:52) :
The Chief Scientist of the Met Office has done a wonderful job of summarizing the hypothesis of AGW.
CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
CO2 is increasing in the atmosphere due to mankind’s activities.
Therefore: Greenhouse effects will result in a warmer Earth.
Nice hypothesis.
Now we test the hypothesis. We program some computers with this assumption built in. Our computers tell us the warming will be catastrophic. The CO2 warming will be reinforced by other warming factors.
Unfortunately, the computer models are failing miserably.
There must be something besides CO2 involved in setting the world’s temperatures.
How about that other greenhouse gas they point to, on occasion, water vapor?
Only problem with water vapor as a candidate are those occasions when water vapor removes itself in the form of precipitation, with immense releases, ultimately into outer space, of heat.
Also, water vapor forms clouds in anticipation of releasing itself from the atmosphere in the form of liquid water, again, precipitation. These same clouds reflect sunlight, contributing more cooling, or if you wish, negative forcing of heat.
It is easy, not hard, to imagine built in feedback mechanisms overcoming a 40% increase in CO2 concentrations.
But all of this means nothing, until we have tested these various predictions against reality.
This is now happening and it is apparent AGW hypothesis has failed and must at least be readjusted.
However, the Chief Scientist of the Met, is a true believer, as were many of the communicators revealed in the CRU emails released by some insider.
Perfectly normal for humans to stick to their guns, even when others can see they are wrong. It will take a while, 10 to 20 years?, for climate science to recover from this hypothesis. But we’ll learn from it and move on. Future generations will snicker at our generation’s foolishness as they manufacture their own foolishness.
Regards the European cold weather.
This has been caused by a lowering of the jetstreams. They normally track at higher latitudes, dragging tight and therefore windy low pressure systems up over the UK, bringing lots of warm Mexican air with them.
This year, the jetstreams are way down in the Mediterranean.
http://www.eldoradocountyweather.com/forecast/europe/europeanjet.html
This is giving us slack pressure systems (both highs and lows), which are disconnected from lower latitudes and have ‘cooled off’. Our supply of warm tropical air has gone, so even the slack low-pressure systems are now fffreezzing.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/uk/surface_pressure.html
Question.
The main difference between high sunspot cycles and low sunspot cycles is the lower magnetic flux. A low magnetic flux can obviously interfere with the Earths magnetosphere, with a lack of auroras etc:
But could this magnetic disturbance (or calming) also influence the track of the upper jetstreams in any way? If so, we could discover the link between sunspot activity and climate.
In this case, the total energy flux impacting the Earth (the TSI) does not need to alter much, and neither does the cloud-induced albedo of the Earth. All we need is a disconnect between tropical air masses and northern latitude air masses (as is happening now), so that the northern latitudes get very cold and start accumulating snow and ice. And if sustained, we have the beginnings of a northern latitude Ice Age.
I cannot see any method or influence by which the Sun’s magnetic output can influence the north latitude jet-streams. But I am open to being proved wrong.
Richard Holle (01:45:29) :
This is just more of the natural cyclic variability in action. The Lunar declination was at it’s 18.6 year Mn cycle peak culmination back in 2005, when we had the record surge of Hurricanes, due to the turbulence in the atmosphere, of the turning of the tides.
I believe it was 2006, not 2005, but that is just a minor nitpick.
Now the declination angle is decreasing back towards the Minimum, and the air mass that was moved toward the poles, is now out washing towards the Equator again. we will be in a trend of colder air surges during the winter, with lower jet stream positions, for the next couple of years.
Do you have any sources for further reading on this, attributing the position of the jet stream to the lunar nodal cycle?
Dryer summers, wetter falls, and colder snowier winters can be expected, in the USA and Europe for a couple more years yet, before milder times return (beginning in 2013) when the Lunar declination reaches it’s minimum, and starts to return again in 2014 / 2015.
Again, references please! Not that I’m doubting you at all. I just want to follow up on this.
ralph (01:01:51) :
….
The main difference between high sunspot cycles and low sunspot cycles is the lower magnetic flux. A low magnetic flux can obviously interfere with the Earths magnetosphere, with a lack of auroras etc:
But could this magnetic disturbance (or calming) also influence the track of the upper jetstreams in any way? If so, we could discover the link between sunspot activity and climate.
….
Any ideas?
You might want to check out a couple of papers by Bucha and Bucha Jr.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VHB-3SX8915-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=bd2adf12f8007894a0813e06f94f7226
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VGS-44CXTTJ-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=1c6fbb135c6542ddf8b35e2f08a03834
Sorry, these are just abstracts; I haven’t found free versions of the full PDF anywhere. The first is particularly intriguing though. Writing in 1996, they said:
“The results seem to imply that the global warming could be slowed down in next decades, because the natural component influencing the increase of temperature in the 20th century will most probably decrease in the next century due to the weaker external geomagnetic forcing which was suggested to modify natural meteorological processes.”
You might also find this Ph.D. thesis interesting:
http://ro.uow.edu.au/theses/163/
Quoting from an even more lengthy abstract:
“Solar-modulated geomagnetic activity is therefore an important forcing mechanism for recent climate change. Specifically, many of the unexplained aspects of the recent changes in northern hemisphere climate, including the climate regime shift of the early 1960s, can be attributed to the effects of geomagnetic activity in the upper atmosphere. Interannual variations in the North Atlantic Oscillation should no longer be considered as climatic noise, while the strong positive trend and decadal variations evident since the 1960s can be attributed, in part, to solar forcing.”
It’s a balmy -22F (-36F Wind Chill) outside my house just now – just think what it would be without all of the unprecedented warming!
Interesting to compare the winter forecast for UK and Northern Europe
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=4492
Just last week, Anthony gave us this little quote from Joe Bastrdi (don’t know if the link will work or not…):
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/30/major-northern-hemisphere-cold-snap-coming/
“Senior AccuWeather meteorologist Joe Bastardi let loose with this stunning prediction on the AccuWeather premium web site via Brett Anderson’s Global warming blog:
What is facing the major population centers of the northern hemisphere is unlike anything that we have seen since the global warming debate got to the absurd level it is now, which essentially has been there is no doubt about all this. For cold of a variety not seen in over 25 years in a large scale is about to engulf the major energy consuming areas of the northern Hemisphere. The first 15 days of the opening of the New Year will be the coldest, population weighted, north of 30 north world wide in over 25 years in my opinion.”
Is more to come?
ralph (01:01:51) :
Regards the European cold
This has weather. been caused by a lowering of the jetstreams. They normally track at higher latitudes, dragging tight and therefore windy low pressure systems up over the UK, bringing lots of warm Mexican air with them.
This year, the jetstreams are way down in the Mediterranean.
http://www.eldoradocountyweather.com/forecast/europe/europeanjet.html
This is giving us slack pressure systems (both highs and lows), which are disconnected from lower latitudes and have ‘cooled off’. Our supply of warm tropical air has gone, so even the slack low-pressure systems are now fffreezzing.
http://www.eldoradocountyweather.com/forecast/europe/europeanjet.html
.
Question.
.
The main difference between high sunspot cycles and low sunspot cycles is the lower magnetic flux. A low magnetic flux can obviously interfere with the Earths magnetosphere, with a lack of auroras etc:
But could this magnetic disturbance (or calming) also influence the track of the upper jetstreams in any way? If so, we could discover the link between sunspot activity and climate.
In this case, the total energy flux impacting the Earth (the TSI) does not need to alter much, and neither does the cloud-induced albedo of the Earth. All we need is a disconnect between tropical air masses and northern latitude air masses (as is happening now), so that the northern latitudes get very cold and start accumulating snow and ice. And if sustained, we have the beginnings of a northern latitude Ice Age.
Any ideas?
This is a thought experiment and may be totally off base; But, I will put it out here for some more knowledgeable people to chew on.
As the Earth turns it’s atmosphere is heated and expands considerably during the day and then contracts during the night. As it expands during the day, it is forced to move forward being blocked from going backward by the atmosphere being warmed behind it, somewhat like a ramjet engine. Also during the cooling phase it will tend to rush forward, since the pressure would be lowered in the forward direction. Even though the atmosphere is thin, this will impart some energy and will drive the circulation of air . During Solar Minimum the Earth’s atmosphere is reduced in height and is colder. This change in the physical plant along with 6 percent lower ultraviolent energy wil cause the amount of push being given to the atmosphere to be considerably less and there will be less flow. The Earth is moving at a supersonic speed, 1000 miles per hour, and this could the air flow to organize into streams. I will be interested in your comments.
JohnH, Here in NE Canada we use what I call ‘cold weather diesel’ and I have no trouble using it in my tractor or in an outside tank used to heat my house, even when it gets to minus 40C, which it rarely does.
When school buses and trucks fill up with ‘organic’ ‘politically correct diesel’ from plants or from recycled chip fat, they get stuck in the cold. This happens in the various idiotocracies that pass for government these days. It happens each winter, and school kids need to be rescued from their frozen school buses.
Ref – Michael (00:54:11) :
“When will the US become committed to preventing cold weather deaths from the global cooling going on now?”
__________
The US has always been committed to preventing cold weather deaths from global cooling going on now. Official and unofficial policy for many years has been to open our borders on the North and South. Should global warming occure Americans of Canadian decent (and anyone who can speak Quebecish) can
freely move North and we’ll take the rest by trick or treat. Should global cooling occure Americans of Mexican decent (and anyone who can speak Mexican) can freely move South and we’ll take the rest of Central America by treat or trick. The US is and always has been prepared to do whatever it must do and to take whatever action it has to to take care of legal and illegal green carders and a few hundred of it’s own citizens duly elected to Congress. Never fear. Trust your Congressman or Senators to do whatever they have to. Honest! Really! Would I lie to you?
Poorly sited stations leave us wondering what the truth is. Here is a picture of the Salina, UT station:
http://members.dslextreme.com/users/juanslayton/Salina_looking_NNE.JPG
The map shows a record low. But the MMTS is on top of a 3 story office building, so should the record be even lower? On the other hand it is right next to what appears to be an air conditioning unit. If this is a two-way heat pump, then it is spitting out _cold_ air. So is the record cold an exaggeration?
The surface station project is showing clearly the need for on-site evaluation of these stations.
P Gosselin (01:57:00) :
John H
That’s why I way “Forget the Met, Go to Joe”.
– Joe Bastardi of Accuwaether.
Indeed nature is turning the Met into the Mother of Laughing Stocks
No, the Met Office is itself responsible for becoming a laughing stock. It used to be highly regarded as a Scientific organisation but has turned itself into a lobbying group.
This is not unexpected given it has a Chairman who is, unbelievably, not a scientist but is an environmental lobbyist. Quite why a department of the Ministry of Defence needs a Chairman is not clear and it is strange that the government should appoint a person who is not an internationally recognised Scientist.
Still, we’ve learned to expect that sort of stupidity from the wretched, corrupt, incompetent government we’ve had for the past 12+ years!
This is dramatic for snow, but the first week in December was even more dramatic for continental US temperature records:
record highs: 114
high minima: 56
record lows: 581
low maxima: 581 (not a typo, it’s the same total)
Can you imagine the MSM headlines if the high and low record totals had been reversed? For the whole month of December, the sum (record highs) + (high minima) exceeded the lows only 7 times. IOW, 77% of the time the number of record lows exceeded the number of record highs.
It’s worse than we thought. From the Met office site http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/policymakers/policy/avoid.html
“Our scientists are now leading a Government initiative — known as AVOID — to further improve the knowledge of our ministers and government officials.
Funded by Defra and DECC, AVOID will feed into UK government policy on tackling dangerous climate change and provide a better understanding of the potential impacts a changing climate can bring.
‘This programme will make the latest climate science accessible to decision makers, building a framework that will encourage integration between climate scientists, social scientists and economists to inform policy.’
Dr Jason Lowe, Head of Mitigation Advice, Met Office and AVOID Chief Scientist.
‘Government policies are based on robust, up-to-date evidence, and the AVOID programme will ensure that this continues to be the case by providing the very latest scientific understanding of climate change, its impacts and how we can cope with changes that are already unavoidable.’
Joan Ruddock, Minister of Energy and Climate Change.”
Idiots advised by donkeys. Or vice versa?
This is all very strange. Why, just this morning my local newspaper reported on a NOAA report by Susan Solomon that says:
“The warming effect inflicted on the atmosphere will last at least a thousand years, even if all the world’s smokestacks and tailpipes were to suddenly stop spewing greenhouse gases…” The report further states: “…even if atmospheric carbon dioxide were to decline, the oceans, which have slowed down climate change by absorbing heat, would release that heat back into the atmosphere until at least the year 3000.”
Conveniently, no one will be alive to remind the world of this prediction. I find it interesting that a governmental organization that cannot accurately predict seasonal temperatures is bold enough to make predictions for the next 1,000 years. I’m also appalled that my local newspaper would have the gall to print this.
Anyone who makes a habit of checking the DMI temperature graph for the Arctic north of 80 degrees latitude might be interested to know why the beginning of each year does not align with the end of the previous year. The reason is that the x-axis covers only 360 days.
It bothered me checking through the complete history that there was an alignment problem, so I wrote to DMI. They got back to me, explained the fact that the last five days of the year are not represented, and said that “a re-plotting of all graphs will be done as soon as possible.”
That was a little over two weeks ago, but it has been the holidays and the project could take a little while.
Chairman Brown and Skyrocket energy costs Chairman Obama follow AGW totally without looking out the window. These policies are a disaster for the new proletariat. The U.S. congress has only their own interests at heart. A real and positive energy policy needs to be addressed. The cold is real and if the energy markets are allowed to handle the natural climate change without the government wrong headedly intervening there should be minimal impacts. With Greenpeace fighting every power plant and Obama’s desire to kill coal real harm can come to the population.
Thanks for the link to the show of my former Govenor, Jesse Ventura. Having Jesse on your side will be a good thing, if he sticks to it. Jesse is a relentless self promoter and is absolutely fearless when it comes to taking on politics as usual. BTW its a chilly -29F with a level 24 inchs of snow on the ground here in SW Minnesota. We are used to extremes of weather here so its not a big deal, but its worth noting.
Thanks to Anthony and all who have made this a great site.
Many of the record high temperatures are odd as they are geographically close to record lows. Is this a surface station issue or simply a extremely low temp. variance issue.
Following up, I note that 2009’s x-axis appears to have been extended to 365 days. All previous years remain at 360 days for now.
Basil (06:54:13) :
ralph (01:01:51) :
>>> Writing in 1996, they said:
>>>“The results seem to imply that the global warming could be
>>>slowed down in next decades, because the natural component
>>>influencing the increase of temperature in the 20th century will
>>>most probably decrease in the next century due to the weaker
>>>external geomagnetic forcing which was suggested to modify
>>>natural meteorological processes.”
.
>>>You might also find this Ph.D. thesis interesting:
>>> http://ro.uow.edu.au/theses/163/
>>>Quoting from an even more lengthy abstract:
>>>“Solar-modulated geomagnetic activity is therefore an
>>>important forcing mechanism for recent climate change.”
.
Thanks for that Basil.
This is interesting. Lief Svalgaard has long been saying that the Sun cannot influence climate, because the TSI hardly changes during sunspot cycles. But the magnetic flux index does change – hugely.
These papers purport to show that magnetic changes can indeed affect climate, and so the sunspot cycle could well be influencing our current cooling episode (be that the last 10 years or this winter).
Smoking gun discovered?
.
Founder of the Weather Channel on Global Warming
http://www.kusi.com/home/78477082.html?video=pop&t=a
nevket240 (01:53:19) :
“I think the main point being missed is this question.
What will transpire should this cold become longer term. What will happen to the US & European crops?? At what point in the Northern calendar is it not worthwhile planting?? Will the soil be too wet to seed anyway??
With food stocks at low historical levels this could get interesting.
regards”
It is interesting that the 1995-6 peer reviewed IPCC ” Second Assessment Report was hijacked by an AGW activist who re-wrote key conclusions and injected a level of alarmism that had not been present in the consensus document”
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/01/025294.php
Also in 1995 Dan Amstrutz, VP of Cargill wrote the World Trade Organization Agreement on Agriculture that is designed to remove small independent framers from their land. He also wrote the 1996 USA “Freedom to Farm Act” that bankrupted many American farmers and did away with US grain stockpiling.
For these acomplishments The National Grain and Feed Association (NGFA) created the Amstutz award for his service to the grain traders. This is how they view food shortages (famine)
“Recently there have been increased calls for the development of a U.S. or international grain reserve to provide priority access to food supplies for Humanitarian needs. The National Grain and Feed Association (NGFA) and the North American Export Grain Association (NAEGA) strongly advise against this concept..Stock reserves have a documented depressing effect on prices… and resulted in less aggressive market bidding for the grains.” July 22, 2008 letter to President Bush http://www.naega.org/images/pdf/grain_reserves_for_food_aid.pdf
“In summary, we have record low grain inventories globally as we move into a new crop year. We have demand growing strongly. Which means that going forward even small crop failures are going to drive grain prices to record levels. As an investor, we continue to find these long term trends…very attractive.” Food shortfalls predicted: 2008 http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/dancy/2008/0104.html
The whole situation (food and energy costs) is being manipulated to make a few even wealthier. There is also a possibility that the wealthy/politicians have believed we are headed into an Ice Age since the 60’s/70’s and wanted to strip the more northern areas of industry and move “civilization to the tropics” while crippling the ability of normal people currently living in the north to also move.
Third Cold kills the elderly on fixed incomes. This gets rid of the “useless eaters” in the USA and Europe.
In the Seattle area the suburbs have just (in the past two years or so) discovered and adopted the molasses technique.
The statement you scorn would have been OK if it had read, “the annual rate is monotonic …”
I believe that the Met Office IS blamable, because diesel fuel can be formulated so as to resist clotting in the cold. Cold-weather diesel (“thinner” probably) works OK elsewhere in colder weather than the UK is experiencing.
OT ..
Had a creative spurt this morning …
Gore-Tex logo converted .. ☺ ☺ Does not really fit here… oh well.
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/2/d/8/63987/goretalk4-0.jpg
Canadian “*David Suzuki says he wants anti-Kyoto politicians thrown in jail.”
Suzuki and his MSM partners, including the CBC, must be brought to account in a criminal court of law for their roles in the AGW fraud.
…-
“Prisoners used to shovel snow-bound US capital
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US capital paid prison inmates to shovel sidewalks, crosswalks and bus stops after the biggest December blizzard in the city’s history, the Department of Corrections said Thursday.
Two work crews comprising some 20 prisoners convicted of minor offenses were deployed around the city December 18 and 19, along with two prison guards to watch over them, DOC spokesman Michon Parker told AFP.
Each inmate was paid 7.50 dollars per hour for their work, he added.
The December 18-19 snowstorm dumped 60 centimeters (24 inches) of snow on the city, the heaviest on record in the month of December.”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100101/od_afp/usweathersnowprisonoffbeat_20100101000544
…-
“*David Suzuki says he wants anti-Kyoto politicians thrown in jail. How did environmentalism become this totalitarian?
Terry O’neill, National Post Published: Thursday, February 07, 2008″
http://www.nowpublic.com/environment/david-suzuki-says-he-wants-anti-kyoto-politicians-thrown-jail
>>ralph (01:01:51) :
>>But could this magnetic disturbance (or calming) also influence
>>the track of the upper jetstreams in any way? If so, we could
>>discover the link between sunspot activity and climate.
.
>>Basil (06:54:13) :
>> You might also find this Ph.D. thesis interesting:
>> http://ro.uow.edu.au/theses/163/
>>“Solar-modulated geomagnetic activity is therefore an important
>>forcing mechanism for recent climate change. Specifically, many
>>of the unexplained aspects of the recent changes in northern
>>hemisphere climate, including the climate regime shift of the
>>early 1960s, can be attributed to the effects of geomagnetic
>>activity in the upper atmosphere. Interannual variations in the
>>North Atlantic Oscillation should no longer be considered as
>>climatic noise, while the strong positive trend and decadal
>>variations evident since the 1960s can be attributed, in part,
>>to solar forcing.”
Thanks Basil.
Leif Svalgaard has long said that the Sun cannot be forcing Climate Change because the TSI (total solar output) changes during sunspot cycles are far too small.
However, the factor that does change is magnetic flux. If these papers are correct, then it may be through decreasing magnetic flux that we are now encountering reductions in temperature during this extended solar minimum.
Climate Change smoking gun discovered?
.
Hu McCulloch (06:48:58) :
It’s odd that Montana and New England had record highs and record lows side by side. Could there be a problem with some of this data?
Well, one can never be overly vigilant about doubting data, but some of my family spent Christmas Holiday in Montana and there is a sharp gradient across the state. The Western valleys, west of Butte are (or were as of a couple of days ago) snow-free and mild. Mountains can play funny tricks with the flow of cold air this time of year.
Bernice (02:23:59) :
“Wind farms at virtual standstill.”
Anthony, there may be a good follow up thread here for the inadequacy of wind or solar in cold, static high pressure systems. Energy and heat are most critical in cold snaps, yet these renewable resources can’t cut it when most desperately needed. Comparative plots of energy demand vs. energy available from wind and solar would be enlightening.
REPLY: Looking through the full Twitter feed it appears to be just a joke among friends http://twitter.com/GoodnzHood
Ooops, sorry to waste time with a wild goose chase.
re: John K. Sutherland (07:17:41) :
Most of the biodiesel refineries are taking a huge hit and some are being mothballed as the tax credit went away here in the States at the beginning of the new year
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/hotstories/6794155.html
so perhaps the government can find a new way to fritter away tax dollars…
Back to the cold winter topic, yes, most of us reading this forum pretty much suspected it was going to happen. While this bit of prolonged cold still won’t prove any link between sunspots and clouds, it certainly doesn’t disprove it. Even though the magnetic mojo of the Sun is off the low levels, I’m not guessing this slightly higher level of solar wind is enough to push away the cosmic ray increases we’ve seen during this low. Even then, it’s what, a six month delay? The point here is, I don’t fear the cold winter killing off the old and poor as much as I fear the next growing season. It’s the potential for a cold spring and summer. A cold NH spring has the potential for doing quite a bit of damage to already low global food stocks. It’s not the early seasonal snow in Houston but the late snows in Iowa that will give us all pause. But this is mere speculation at the moment.
I contend that mankind has relied on global warming for far too long. It was only natural to do so. That money that the poor countries pleaded for in Copenhagen in compensation for the planet warming may eventually be needed to stave off the effects of an “unexpected” cooldown.
In the Weather is local department… we just had a storm blow through. Gusts of 95 MPH were recorded with 2-4 inches of rain. Whats interesting is in Oregon that is weather, in the Eastern US, its a Hurricane.
http://www.wunderground.com/US/OR/022.html#REP
Forecast was for 80 mph gusts around Cape Blanco…
geronimo (02:43:54)
BBC bias?
Yes, I can’t find any mention of the gritter lorry problem in Perth on the BBC Scotland News webpages:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/default.stm
or for Tayside & Central.
Strange uh?
The story does appear in the Scotsman:
http://news.scotsman.com/scotland/It39s-too-snowy-and-cold.5951285.jp
Now that I’m a bit thawed out and my innards have been warmed by a rich bowl of deliciously spicy chili …
Well – the only thing they got right with the forecast for Buffalo was that it would be cold out today; I guess 8°F qualifies. And that windchill!!!! At least around -5°F. But they missed the dang snow numbers. They were calling for approx an inch a day over the three day period (Sat – Mon). … Right. … Got about 5 to 6 inches overnight. At least it was very low density snow – lousy for snowballs & snowmen but perfect for a picture postcard. Got the whole drive done in an hour (it’s a circular drive that usually takes about three hours). And after the snow hit (it was only about a 3-5 mile or so band of snow), they issued a winter weather advisory for another 4-7 inches by tomorrow night.
Al, baby — where’s all that dang global warming you keep beating your drum about?
Bernice (02:23:59) :
Wind farms at virtual standstill.
Waste of investment.
Could have been spent on coal power.
Coal has this funny ability to burn 24 hours a day. 😉
And it’s the less expensive alternative. Which means if we build more coal powered electricity plants we will be showing mercy to the elderly on fixed incomes since their electric bills will go down. Sounds like a civilized thing to do.
http://www.marketskeptics.com/2009/12/2010-food-crisis-for-dummies.html
…These two realities can’t coexist!
Farmers can’t be going bankrupt across the US thanks to the worst harvest season ever seen while at the same time producing the USDA’s Biggest Crop Ever! Someone is lying, and evidence supports the farmer’s story…
http://www.marketskeptics.com/2009/12/2010-food-crisis-for-dummies.html
…These two realities can’t coexist!
Farmers can’t be going bankrupt across the US thanks to the worst harvest season ever seen while at the same time producing the USDA’s Biggest Crop Ever! Someone is lying, and evidence supports the farmer’s story…
Hide the decline?
Perhaps the UK should contract out the weather forecasting. Have a one year competition with the Met Office vs the private forecasters, winner take all. You might see a vast improvement in the Met forecasts.
My mind is having trouble grasping the concept of mixing sand/grit with molasses, especially in January.
John K. Sutherland (07:17:41) :
JohnH, Here in NE Canada we use what I call ‘cold weather diesel’ and I have no trouble using it in my tractor or in an outside tank used to heat my house, even when it gets to minus 40C, which it rarely does.
When school buses and trucks fill up with ‘organic’ ‘politically correct diesel’ from plants or from recycled chip fat, they get stuck in the cold. This happens in the various idiotocracies that pass for government these days. It happens each winter, and school kids need to be rescued from their frozen school buses.
In the north US of A we use “diesel prep” or just plain kerosene to make the diesel flow correctly and not jell. My 2 pkups have built in block heaters that I plug in too. I am now in North Carolina and having to plug in my pickups so they will start easily. Doesn’t the UK have block heaters in their diesels??? Doesn’t Canada use a fuel additive for the winter??? I know beauracratic idiots sitting in warm offices making the decisions… never mind..
TerryBixler (08:24:58) :
These policies are a disaster….Obama’s desire to kill coal real harm can come to the population.
The Americans keep voting for empty suits like this so America will get what it deserves.
Some red and yellow dots are lonesome. Grills of fire tucks must be keeping them warm. 😉
Today’s Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch had a weather summary for 2009. It was stated that the average temperature was 1.4 degrees F above normal.
However, they also published the monthly averages and the monthly departures from normal. The average of the monthly data was 0.1 degrees below normal.
I guess that means the normal yearly average temperature is not equal to the average of the 12 monthly average temperatures? Can anyone enlighten me about how the weather people calculate averages?
Re: Basil (06:54:13)
Thanks for the link to the PhD thesis. Ridiculous that the figures are not included in the online version – but some union-wage university thesis-admins dictate nonsensical rules as if all theses were Arts theses (i.e. no figures). But hey – (sarcasm) – not a big deal to cut out the material that comprises the top 99% of the content, particularly since it is inconvenient for people being paid 3-times their worth to militantly dictate nonsense.
I’ve been looking into AAO & SAM recently and I’ve found a way to isolate the ACC spatiotemporal mode. Preliminary results suggest beats with another oscillation (one related to EOP) will show coherence with QBO.
The thesis demonstrates some useful ways to gather clues about conditional dependencies. What is needed is a phase-oriented approach. Linear-amplitude-correlation-studies will remain messy until phase-relations are understood with much more precision. (We’re dealing with chords, not simple notes.)
–
Re: Retired Engineer John (07:15:33)
Interesting notes & questions John…
This 20 degree weather in the Dallas, TX area has gotten old fast (and we have MORE in the forecast for next week – oh joy!)
At this rate ALL the fire ants are going to get killed off; what will we do* for fun down-on-the-farm then?
.
.
(* Kicking over fire ant mounds and couting the queens can be great sport for the kids)
.
Ed Murphy (11:33:03) :
http://www.marketskeptics.com/2009/12/2010-food-crisis-for-dummies.html
…These two realities can’t coexist!
Farmers can’t be going bankrupt across the US thanks to the worst harvest season ever seen while at the same time producing the USDA’s Biggest Crop Ever! Someone is lying, and evidence supports the farmer’s story…
Hide the decline?
…These two realities can’t coexist!
REPLY:
Yes the two realities can exist because you are not seeing the WHOLE story. First the USDA used to have grain stores but policy changes were made. Thanks to the 1996 “Freedom to Farm Act” the grain stores were completely used up by the winter of 2008 and never replaced.
“Today, says USDA Undersecretary Mark Keenum, “Our cupboard is bare.” …Because of the current economics of food, and changes in federal farm subsidy programs designed to make farmers rely more on the markets, large U.S. reserves may be gone for a long time.
The upshot: USDA has almost no extra food to supplement the billions in cash payments it spends to combat hunger at home and in developing nations.
A coalition of religious and farm groups, in an open letter to Congress this week, warned that low supplies increase the risk of hunger and higher prices, calling for creation of a strategic grain reserve… http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2008-05-01-usda-food-supply_N.htm
However the guys with the political clout wrote:
“…Recently there have been increased calls for the development of a U.S. or international grain reserve to provide priority access to food supplies for Humanitarian needs. The National Grain and Feed Association (NGFA) and the North American Export Grain Association (NAEGA) strongly advise against this concept..Stock reserves have a documented depressing effect on prices… and resulted in less aggressive market bidding for the grains…” July 22, 2008 letter to President Bush http://www.naega.org/images/pdf/grain_reserves_for_food_aid.pdf
On top of this is the Bio-fuel idiocy mandated by law
“… Under this law, the United States will produce 15 billion gallons of corn-based ethanol a year by 2015. The U.S. is producing half that amount now and corn prices have soared…. It would require an estimated 20 million more acres of corn to produce this ethanol…
That is how we can have record crops planted and marginally higher amount of crops harvested BUT have a short fall in the amount of grain actually needed to cover demand for domestic food AND biofuel AND the export market.
Also the price a farmer is paid for his corn is not the same as the price a grain trader sells at.
“..According to a recent Tufts University study, the overproduction of agricultural crops such as corn and soybeans due to US agricultural policy since 1996 has, until recently, driven the market price of those commodities well below their cost of production (Starmer and Wise, 2007 )…” http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/Reports/Industrial_Agriculture/PCIFAP_FINAL.pdf
This combined with the WTO Agreement on Agriculture and NAFTA has allowed the grain traders to dump low cost US grain on third world countries and drive local farmers bankrupt. Smithfield, Tyson et al then move in and setup large commercial farms.
“…In Mexico, the price farmers receive for corn has plummeted 45 percent At least 1.5 million farmers have left their land. 900,000 people leave Mexico’s land every year, a U.N. program says. According to a study by Jose Romero and Alicia Puyana carried out for the federal government of Mexico, between 1992 and 2002, the number of agricultural households fell an astounding 75% – from 2.3 million to 575, 000…” .http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/ftaa/topten.html
There are about ten international Corporations that control the majority of the food supply, Cargill, Andre, Louis Dreyfus, Bunge and Born, are closely held corporations.
It is worth doing some digging into the World bank/IMF Sap’s, the WTO Agreement on Ag, the Global Diversity Treaty and the rest of the behind the scenes maneuvering in the world food supply. It has been giving me nightmares for a couple of years.
You can start here:
History, HACCP and the Food Safety Con Job
http://www.opednews.com/articles/History-HACCP-and-the-Foo-by-Nicole-Johnson-090906-229.html
The Festering Fraud Behind Food Safety Reform
http://www.foodsafetynews.com/contributors/nicole-johnson/
Jack in Oregon (10:17:11) :
A hurricane is a storm driven by vertical temperature differences. As the eye develops, descending air gives it a warm core.
Storms in the northwest and northeast are baroclinic – powered by the horizontal temperature differences and are embedded in frontal systems and don’t have as much of a “vertical drain”. They are broad storms, and effects tend to cover whole states or larger regions.
Hurricanes tend to be more compact than extratropical storms. That’s why you hear of hurricanes battering New Orleans, Homestead FL, or the Richlieu Apartments vs hurricane Camille, a very compact Cat 5. (BTW, apparently there was no party and most residents survived, see http://camille.passchristian.net/hurricane_party.htm – I never knew that.)
One thing that may happen to some severe nor’easters in New England is that they start taking on tropical characteristics. They’ve never been investigated by hurricane hunter planes, but some do develop eye-like structures according to radar images. Some people are using the term “Wintercane” to describe them.
Jim at (04:34:35)
I would have prefered you to cite and discuss one of my points and not my introductory statements before your writing:
“(MOST of us are adults here, ‘friend’.)”
Is your comment intended to suggest that you are among a minority of us here?
Richard
Richard Saumarez (03:32:44) :
You say:
“I have been looking at the released Met-Office/CRU data and the related code. I am absolutely astonished. They use methods which a second year engineering student could demolish.
The methods they use can be be shown formally to be wrong. It can also be shown to produce substantial artifactual trends.”
One of the Climategate emails pertains to my attempt to publish a paper that discussed the fact that the methods demonstrably generate “artifactual trends”.
I posted the pertinent email and discussion of it on WUWT you may be interested in all my comments on the item at:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/11/giss-raw-station-data-before-and-after/
My first comment is at (14:07:21) on 11.12.2009 and it begins:
“I have previously posted this on WUWT but it seems desirable to post it again here.
It demonstrates that 6 years ago The Team knew the estimates of average global temperature (mean global temperature, MGT) were worthless and they acted to prevent publication of proof of this.
The most important email among those hacked (?) from CRU may turn out to be one that I wrote 6 years ago. I had forgotten it but Willis Essenbach found it among the hacked (?) emails and circulated it. I copy it here then explain its meaning and significance.
The email is this.
….”
Richard
Hu McCulloch (06:48:58) :
New Hampshire had record high temps and record snowfalls.
The record highs were pretty unimpressive, like 43°F and were on the 27th and 28th.
The snowfall records make be really wonder just what sorts of weather stations are being used. They certainly don’t use just the standard sites at towns and airports, but one record snowfall came from Hudson NH, reporting 0.3″ on the 28th, the old record being “-9.9″ in 9999.” Presumably that means the Hudson site had never recorded snow on the 28th, something that means the Hudson site has not been around for a long time!
Another snowfall record from Wentworth was 3.2″, breaking the old one of 2″ in 1946.
Hmm, I don’t see that Wentworth or Hudson at http://www.weather.gov/climate/xmacis.php?wfo=gyx but I do see “Glencliff 2 (273415)” site. They’re close to Wentworth and set a new snowfall record of 5″, old was 2″ in 1981. That may be the Glencliff Home for the Elderly.
There is a NWS COOP observer for Glencliff listed in http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/inventory/coop27.html , but nothing for Hudson or Wentworth.
So, just where does that data come from and why should I believe it?
News results for North Kivu – Nyamulagira volcano
http://monuc.unmissions.org/Default.aspx?tabid=932&ctl=Details&mid=2070&ItemID=7098
Nothing on how bad it is, yet. This in addition to a comet grazing the sun at spaceweather.com
I think somebody has moved the Canadian border about a thousand miles south.
Remember, Merkel and and Brown has agrre to adjust the temperature within 2 degrees! Or was it within 1.5 ?
With promonent people like this in high offices, we have nothing to worry about.
Oh, my respect to the leaders of the West has no limits.
ralph (01:01:51) : “But could this magnetic disturbance (or calming) also influence the track of the upper jetstreams in any way? If so, we could discover the link between sunspot activity and climate.”
I suspect this is a possibility that needs additional research.
So, instead of specialists discounting the Sun’s variable output, they should be investigating the different possibilities how this variability effects the
Earth’s climate.
Beware of any expert that dismissively rejects solar variability.
Chances are that their ideas are frozen in prior assumptions.
That’s not good Science.
James F. Evans (15:46:42) : The next battle, in the field of science, will be in the astrophysical field, between the “dominican friars” of the holy church of the Big Bang (aka: The flintstones universe) vs. the plasma universe….
Jack in Oregon (10:17:11) :
In the Weather is local department… we just had a storm blow through. Gusts of 95 MPH were recorded with 2-4 inches of rain. Whats interesting is in Oregon that is weather, in the Eastern US, its a Hurricane.
Jack My wife’s cousin was married to a fellow from Cape Cod.They were dining in a little place in Wellfleet.There was a minimal Hurricane headed their way (I believe,in about ’95) She was from Port Orford.(I and my wife lived there too-at paradise
point about 3mi from Cape Blanco) The Waiter, concerned about the storm ar alarmed at 75 mph. Cousin said:”75 mph? only 75 mph?” Where are YOU from lady?” Replied the waiter..
That said, I fear the West Coast will have a late winter-Mid January -Feb.We will have a cold snap as bad as the east coast-simular weather in the 70’s..
JonesII (16:30:56)
You are on the mark.
With the highs and lows so close in some cases, wouldn’t that would seem to put the lie to their smoothing scam?
Government officials should request the presence of dioxide dissenters at those meetings, to get a balanced view.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2010-01/03/content_12746367.htm
If you have oil and the West wants to keep the Chinese out of your fields they invade you. If you have food and the West wants(needs)it they will …. no!! they wouldn’t. would they???
regards
Agri products could be the GO in 2010. :-0
The GFS has been pretty good lately in its less than 6-day prognostications.
And it is hinting at an “anafront” snowfall for the southeastern US which is exceedingly RARE.
The last time this occurred was about 25 years ago on Superbowl Sunday (1985).
This particular cold outbreak will not be as severe probably, but the idea of a “front behind a front” is rather significant.
Where’s the warm advection now???
It has been drowned in the cold.
Quite an amazing feat when you have one of the greatest HEAT generators on the planet to your south and southwest…..the Gulf of Mexico and its token “stream.”
Interesting times.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
One Record Cold Report:
http://www.wunderground.com/US/ND/027.html
Statement as of 12:21 am CST on January 3, 2010
… Record low maximum temperature set at Grand Forks Airport…
At mark Andrews international Airport in Grand Forks… a record low
maximum temperature of 17 degrees below zero was set for Jan 2. This breaks the previous record of 13 degrees below zero set in 1968.
jorgekafkazar (15:03:11) : I think somebody has moved the Canadian border about a thousand miles south.
We love to share. ☺
Clive
Coaldale, Alberta, Canada
nevket240 (01:53:19): What will transpire should this cold become longer term. What will happen to the US & European crops??
Here in southern Alberta, in 2009, we had a horrid “spring” with snow late in April, delayed plantings and a cold summer. (The sweet corn crop was in doubt for a while.) There are tens of thousands of sugar beets grown near me. Harvest started in late September, and then the crop got hammered in October with record cold, some were harvested in November when we had a nice warm spell, but in the end there was a huge 30 percent loss … not even harvested. Our spud crop was way down as well.
When you are on the northern fringes of cultivated production, it takes little to mess things up. When I was an aggie student in the sixties we were told that the expansion of cultivated farming into northern Alberta in the past century was because it had been warm and that the current (1960s) cooling trend did not bode well for a lot of farming and (as it cooled) there would probably be a shift in the North from wheat to crops like barley and pasture.
We got a reprieve for 30 decades. Now what, eh?
Clive
“We got a reprieve for 30 decades. ” Oops. I meant three decades.
A further note on the recent NWS records — that HAMweather site is quite the useful resource. 🙂
Look at the days in mid-October for a staggering view of the number and distribution of new record minimum high temps — an average of 450 record minimum highs *per day* for a 10-day period, Oct. 10-19. Then scan over the individual marks. The difference is often not just a little lower, but a *lot* lower — as much as 10 degrees.
Record temperatures highlight the behavior in the tails of the distribution. One might expect, as the climate warms (moving the median up), that it would become much harder to reach record lows than record highs (or record-low highs vs. record-high lows), because even a small shift in the center of the distribution changes the integrals of the tails (the probability of deviating by more than some fixed level, like the previous record) rather dramatically.
The month of November reflected this pattern. On only one day (Nov. 18) did the low-side records exceed the high-side records. But both October and November show remarkable imbalance toward cooling, strikingly toward record-low maxima.
The December UAH numbers aren’t out yet, but I will be very surprised if the anomaly doesn’t drop significantly for the month…
Ric Werme (13:41:02) :
Jack in Oregon (10:17:11) :
I lived in SW Washington for a decade and got caught on the interstate bridge in some scary gusts in those “hurricanes”, but the are, as Ric said, extratropical and not real hurricanes. On the other hand, there are some polar lows that look just like hurricanes–relatively warm core and all.
U.S. does its part for global warming: click
While on the subject of temperature records, I’ve been seeing this site hyped up recently.
http://www.climatewizard.org/
The default view on the home page shows a scary orange map of future temperature predictions/scenarios/projections/thumb-in-the-air-WAGs, but more interesting is if you pick the “last 50 years” radial button for the US. Unless my eyes deceive me, it looks like there are many parts of the Rockies that have experienced a temperature rise in the last 50 years (actually 1951-2006) of ~ 3 def F (~0.06 F/year).
I’d be interested if anyone has some mapping software that allows overlaying of a political map of the US with the “Climate Wizard” map so that we can match station data with the colors. As best as I can figure, some of the dark red splotches correspond to southeast Idaho/eastern Utah. Here are some representative stations in that region (USHCN data).
Malad City ID
Hazelton ID
Logan UT
Moab UT
From eye-balling the charts, of these four, the most warming was for Malad City and Moab for which I went to the trouble of calculating OLS trends (0.042 and 0.046 F/year respectively).
Anyone know where the 0.06-plus F/yr stations might be?
Heavy snow shuts down roads, hits flights in Beijing – January 3, 2010 –
Seems China is also having its fair share of snow. A lot of Japan is white and lake Baikal seems to be frozen along with other central Asian lakes
http://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/ims_gif/DATA/cursnow_asiaeurope.gif
I only hope I can survive until Spring truly arrives. It is ONLY Jan. 3rd, and already we have been badly punished, with only more bad things to come. Can’t even see a light at the end of the tunnel. My god, 90 days can go so incredibly slowly. I am used to only 3 seasons here in central Texas. It sure is devastating when we get 4. I don’t know where I realistically could move, to avoid this curse. This is bad…… and Wednesday 1/4 through at least Sunday 1/10, is only gonna be worse. Life sucks right now. There is no good, and never will be any good come from winter. I truly hate it
John M:
Beware of Malad City. NOAA acknowledges 3 locations for this station. The first was across the road (to the east of the local airport). This was moved in September of 96 to very rural site over a mile to the south. The temperature record shows a decided upward step at this date. MMS shows another move in Feb of 08, but very close to the previous location. I have taken pictures of these sites; you can see them on the surfacestations gallery. The station has since been moved again, although MMS does not report this; their “current” coordinates are incorrect. It is now located at the airport, right next to the tarmac itself. These pictures are also in the gallery. Notice that the MMS location tab shows no location from June 96 to Feb 08.
John S
Oops. That should be June 06 to Feb 08.
More deaths in India in the last 24 hours from cold weather
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1240319/As-Britain-told-expect-snow-10-days-rest-world-coping-Arctic-weather.html
I spent a couple of days in a beach town called Ulladulla, about 220kms south of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The w/e temperatures did not rise above 25c and Saturday afternoon it dropped to 18c, Sunday and today wasn’t any better (Ok, a coastal town, but this is summer). Back to inner west Sydney, it’s 23c. Ok, it is Summer and usual temperatures are nearer or above 29c.
And “Summer is proving to be interesting for Australia in 2010” (Lots of rain and cool temperatures) just announced on channel 10 weather tonight. You’re not kidding.
But cooler temperatures is just weather of course.
Re Richard:
Although snow is common in the Northern China, but this time it is spectacular. Maximum 8 inches of snow is recorded in Beijing in the last day or so, with Beijing hittng a temperature unseen since 1977.
Lately the Siberian Express has stationed in NE Asia, so I expect Northern China, Korea and Japan be the worst in the whole East Asia Monsoon Area.
To my knowledge, El Nino have almost always bring warmer-than-normal winters to most of East Asia Monsoon Area, take Hong Kong as an example, the two exceptions since 1960 are 1982-1983 ( thanks to valcanoes eruptions ) and 1976-1977 winters. It would be really interesting to see this winter becoming such an exception.
January is usually the coldest month in East Asia Monsoon Area and I do not yet see an end to the current cold spell. However ECMWF do indicate that the cold air mass will somewhat shift westward in the second half of the month, bring some relieve to NorthEast China, Korea and Japan, with the expense of Southern China and even Northern Vietnam, Central China will be cold anyway in both case…
Met Office director Rob Varley disagrees. On Channel 4 News in the UK this evening, he “stressed that headlines suggesting that the world had succumbed to an unusual period of heavy snow were incorrect.”
So there we have it. Move along, nothing to see…
Hear in South Dakota USA we have a little problem normal weather paterns are usualy dry and worm for the last 2 year been unable to harvest crops due to the rains and constant fog not alowing crops to dry down for harvest and the heavey snows that now fill the filds with crop still standing in them the trend is becoming alarming that we may not be able to cope with this climate change and it is not to the warming side i will tell you all that.
with all these cold weather deaths i wonder if the global warmist feel responsible for any of them for not telling the truth.
So the goverments could prepare for the cold weather to protect the ppl. Instead of telling them they would need refrigerators in the arctic they shoud have told them they would need furnaces in tennessee
I think Weatherman David hit the nail on the head right here:
***
We would most likely be very lucky if we were indeed experiencing warming instead of cooling. Read your history. Read about the Little Ice Age, the Medieval Warm Period, the Younger-Dryas event. Read for yourselves what happens during these warming or cooling events. Other than the fact that the AGW clowns want to scare us all into being good “sheeple”so the governments can control us more easily, we’d all be better off a little warmer than a lot colder!
I live in the NW corner of the U.S. where the weather is supposedly very similar to Gr. Britains and we’ve been noticably colder the last few winters. Snow down in the valleys the last three yrs.
Influence can be defined as the power exerted over the minds and behavior of others. A power that can affect, persuade and cause changes to someone or something. In order to influence people, you first need to discover what is already influencing them. What makes them tick? What do they care about? We need some leverage to work with when we’re trying to change how people think and behave.
http://www.onlineuniversalwork.com
Influence can be defined as the power exerted over the minds and behavior of others. A power that can affect, persuade and cause changes to someone or something. In order to influence people, you first need to discover what is already influencing them. What makes them tick? What do they care about? We need some leverage to work with when we’re trying to change how people think and behave.
http://www.onlineuniversalwork.com