More harbinger of the Northern Hemisphere winter to come?
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A bulldozer cleans snow on the Sichuan-Tibet road in Nyingchi, southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region Oct. 30, 2008. (Xinhua Photo) |
LHASA, Oct. 30 (Xinhua) — The death toll has risen to seven, and one person remains missing, as a result of the worst snowstorm on record in Tibet, local authorities said Thursday.
The seven people killed either frozen to death or were crushed by collapsing buildings. About 144,400 heads of livestock died in the storm, which also knocked out telecommunications and traffic in parts of Shannan prefecture.
In Lhunze County, 1,348 people stranded by damaged buildings or blocked roads had been rescued, the county government said. Rescue operation for the remaining 289 trapped was still underway.
The worst-hit county had 36 consecutive hours of snowfall from Sunday, with an average snow coverage of 1.5 meters. Four people died and one remained missing in the snowstorm.
The rescued people have been moved to other villages, sleeping in schools or government buildings.
A road linking Lhunze to Cuona County reopened on Thursday after 63 hours of snow clearing efforts of armed policemen and transportation staff.
Cuona had been isolated from the outside for three days due to the road blockage.
The Tibet regional civil affairs department has allocated relief materials such as clothes and tents to the affected areas.
h/t to Dr. Roger Pielke
If Tibet can’t handle a little snow and cold, what’s the outlook for the rest of us? Warmer weather is kinder weather; bring on global warming any day. Consider the alternative.
In the top right corner of the photo you can see the CO2-laden exhaust coming out of bulldozer as it clears the snow. Classic.
It’s going to be a cold, cold winter for the northern hemisphere. Brrr.
That’s just great. I’m due to go to Tibet in a couple of weeks.
The BBC is ignoring this, for now. 07-58 am UK time.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/default.stm
Perry
[…] http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/10/31/tibets-worst-snowstorm-ever-7-killed […]
Live it up! It’s going to be a loooong winter
I don’t understand this nonsense post’s about snow in this blog. Weather is different than climate.
For example, this snow storm in Tibet was fueled with a lot of moisture from a tropical cyclone in north Indian ocean. Another example, in Alpes last days there was a big snow accumulation for the date. But just a few days before there was a strong positive temperature anomaly in Alpes. This kind of posts are just that, nonsense madness, to excite the crowd. Even Al Gore with all its exaggerations and misrepresentations looks like a saint compared to this stuff.
REPLY: Listen up Jonas, and everyone else because I’m getting weary of having to explain this every time I post a weather event.
1. I’m a former TV meteorologist. Weather is my life. This blog has a long history of posting about weather events.
2. If I was on TV right now, I’d run video of this. It is a normal day for any TV weather report to show video of interesting or unusual weather around the world.
3. I said not one word about climate in the short one sentence intro. You are the one who thinks the post is about climate.
4. The post is categorized “weather”. Not climate, not politics, not Al Gore, and I take exception to your “nonsense” comparison of my reprinting a news story from Xinhua news agency to Al Gore fabrications. If I made an animated video of polar bears wandering the Gobi Desert, then you might have a case.
5. If you don’t like reading about weather events, find another blog to read, but don’t heap this rhetoric on me again simply because I report about weather. Read the masthead: “Commentary on puzzling things in life, nature, science, technology, and recent news by Anthony Watts”
To make it clearer, I’ve now edited the masthead to add weather and climate change to the list of items discussed.
Anthony Watts
Josh, comment at 22:18:50,
That would probably be Carbon Monoxide coming out of the exhaust (not CO2) a far deadlier gas. (Has been known to be used in suicides)
I see a disturbing consistency here…this harken’s back to the early ’08 storms that hit China proper [I would give you all links, but my best resource site has wussed out and scaled back posting ‘negative’ stories involving China…]. Those storms caused considerable havoc…collapsing homes, power outages, and a later storm that stranded millions [4.5+] just before their Lunar New Year.
While the storm event is remarkable [1m+ snowfall], it says as much about China [construction standards and infrastructure] as it does about the current state of the climate. If we head into a global cooling phase, countries like China [and the region in general…], configured for milder climate, will face considerable problems.
This will not bode well for China, or it’s southern neighbors. As this is a climate science site, I’ll leave it at that. Climate-driven geopolitical dynamics, as fascinating and scary as that subject can be, should be discussed elsewhere.
Jonas (03:56:53) :
“I don’t understand this nonsense post’s about snow in this blog. Weather is different than climate.”
If you look at the second line from the top of this page you will read “Commentary on puzzling things in life, nature, science, technology, and recent news by Anthony Watts.” It seems to me this post fits that mission statement inasmuch as there is are claims of “worst snowstorm on record in Tibet” and “144,400 heads of livestock died”. You are the first person to use the word climate in a reply, please administer one dope slap to yourself at your earliest convenience
“For example, this snow storm in Tibet was fueled with a lot of moisture from a tropical cyclone in north Indian ocean.”
Thank you for that addition, feel free to cancel the dope slap. I had only seen the comment (see my post in http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/10/30/chill-in-the-air-part-2-us-breaks-or-ties-115-of-cold-and-sets-63-new-snowfall-records/ ) “The wet season for Tibet is generally March to September, so should be soon coming to an end.”
Jonas (03:56:53) : says,
I don’t understand this nonsense post’s about snow in this blog. Weather is different than climate. This kind of posts are just that, nonsense madness, to excite the crowd.
I think you miss the point, remember the flooding in china which was headlined all over the globe, the BBC made a meal of it, this level of monsoon rain which was NOT unprecedented is also just weather but it is used by the AGW fanatics to promote global warming, reporting this WORST EVER snowstorm just levels the playing a little and indicates that these events are just weather and nothing to do with AGW which does NOT exist.
Parts of Alaska may well have just had the coldest October on record. Look at the temperature record for Fairbanks. High temperatures are generally below the normal low.
http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/PAFA/2008/10/1/MonthlyHistory.html
Governor Palin cringed in the debates when she was asked about global warming. Most likely the result of being coerced by McCain people into incorporating his flawed belief system into her answers.
Jonas: Even Al Gore with all its exaggerations and misrepresentations looks like a saint compared to this stuff.
Seriously? You must have exceedingly powerful AGW blinders on for Al Gore to look like a saint. What “exaggerations and misrepresentations” with regard to this posting are you even talking about?
Like zombies, the AGWer trolls come here, repeating their pet phrases like “weather is not climate”, hoping against hope as their AGW religion crumbles around them, to turn a few more humans (climate realists) into non-thinking zombies. Fortunately, science and the truth are on our side.
Feeding the
trollsbears only encourages them to raid the garbage bins more frequently.My prediction for October – UAH will come in below September at about +0.10.
Al Gore was right again……Global Warming = snow, snow, snow and more ice.
165 records were broke the other night for cold in the US, it’s global warming at it’s best.
I take exception to the dictum “weather is not climate”.
Weather is an instantaneous sampling of climate, i.e. all its measures should be within ( lets be statistical) 2sigma of the values given by climate. When it is very far off the scale of climate, one could, in principle calculate how probable/improbable this manifestation is.
Otherwise “climate” has no meaning. Thus the answer to comments “weather is not climate” when an unusual manifestation is reported is that one is not reporting the weather event per se, but how low a probability it represents.
When I was in grade school, back in the late 1940’s we learned that the climate of Greece was temperate. Climate was characterized as humid, dry, “continental”, i.e. very cold in winter/ very hot in summer ( Russia for example), tropical,etc.
The past year I have seen that a lot of classification progress has been made since then.
We are currently having in Athens, Greece, a very mild beginning of November, warm and humid, no rain for a month, temperatures 16 night to 26 in the day. Unusual? No. It has a folk name: donkey summer.
Let’s all give Jonas some credit for this: “Even Al Gore, with all its exaggerations and misrepresentations”. You are catching on Jonas. Now, what were you saying? Was his Nobel noble? Did his documentary deserve an Oscar?
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Climate modelers have gone back and forth between forecasting that Northern Europe will burn or freeze as a result of global warming. The current “climate” thinking seems to depend on the current “weather.”
El Nino is climate. La Nina is weather. Heat waves are climate. Cold spells are weather. Hurricane intensity is now measured by the amount of coverage on cable news, which is considerably larger than 50 years ago.
The AGW true believers cannot stand for weather to be discussed unless they can manipulate it into supporting their apocalyptic faith.
That a true believer can now contain the two ideas- Gore is a liar and AGW is still happening is an improvement, however. We may get through this cascade without destroying the world economy and damaging the environment even more.
The definition of ‘climate’
1. The prevailing ‘weather’ conditions in a particular region
2. A region having certain ‘weather’ conditions ie; lives in a cold climate.
To say weather isn’t climate is like saying milk isn’t dairy.
As we speak here in NE Oregon,I am waiting for the first big snow of the Season.
(Fall) putting studs on today. I am expecting another hard winter…
Patrick: El Nino is climate. La Nina is weather. Heat waves are climate. Cold spells are weather. Hurricane intensity is now measured by the amount of coverage on cable news, which is considerably larger than 50 years ago.
And when all else fails, they can always blame it on “climate chaos”, the mother of all AGW ideology phrases. The more they lie, the more they have to lie to cover up the lies. Oh, what a tangled web they weave.
Why would it be a harbinger? According to the satellites through Sept (and it would take a nearly unprecedented fall to change in Oct), the Northern Hemisphere temperatures are above normal. Maybe we could get a post on the heat waves in the Northern Plains, western Russia, and Greenland? Really, the only thing climatologically interesting about the eastern US, London and this snowfall is that the long-wave pattern is very amplified at the moment.
REPLY: Point me to a news article, such as the one from Xinhua I posted here, and I’ll put it up for discussion. – Anthony