Earlier I wrote about the Arctic Oscillation Index going strongly negative in December and what new cold to expect in January. From NASA’s Earth observatory, we have a high resolution temperature anomaly map that provides visualization of the effects. This image was taken while the Copenhagen Climate Conference was in progress.
A wave of frigid air spilled down over Europe and Russia from the Arctic in mid-December, creating a deadly cold snap. According to BBC.com, at least 90 people had died in Europe, including 79 people, mostly homeless, in Poland. In places, the bitter cold was accompanied by heavy snow, which halted rail and air traffic for several days during the week of Christmas.
This image shows the impact of the cold snap on land surface temperatures across the region from December 11–18, 2009, compared to the 2000–2008 average. The measurements were made by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. Places where temperatures were up to 20 degrees Celsius below average are blue, locations where temperatures were average are cream-colored, and places where temperatures were above average are red. Light gray patches show where clouds were so persistent during the week that MODIS could not make measurements of the land surface temperature. The biggest anomalies were in northern Russia, but a swath of below-average temperatures stretched across the countries around the Baltic Sea as well.
See also:
- Daily, 8-day, and monthly land surface temperature anomaly maps
- Animation of monthly global land surface temperature anomalies
h/t to WUWT reader “JT”
David L. Hagen
I am not so much concerned about just this one recent December /09 cold spell even if it was very cold , but more about the trend of the winter temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere. In Canada, the bellweather region for winter temperatures are the Northwestern Region and the Prairie Provinces. They are also one of our major food baskets. Their average winter temperatures have been declining since 2006 and are 6.6-7.1 C lower than 2006 winter. The 2010 winter is currently setting daily new records, with some regions setting as much 10 degrees lower than the previous daily record of only last year. So they are already at the 1970’s like lower winter temperatures .A significant part of the 2009 crops were at risk due to the late cold spring temperatures [snow in June] and lack of spring moisture. The winter temperatures for Canada as a whole have declined 3.6 C since 2006. The winter temperatures for the Contiguous US have declined 3.5 C since 2000 but more recently 2.4 C since 2006. The coldest weather during the last cool period was in the late 1970’s [1977-1979] well into the cool period of that era. It is the accumulating effect of many years of cooler weather that seems to be significant as well.
Europe ‘s winter temperatures only started to decline last year , so they are running some years behind North America in winter temperatures.
So I also see a serious problem for farming and crops in Europe and Asia by the middle of this new decade [2014-2015] due to the accumulating cold weather and moisture problems .This cool spell could last for several decades[2-3] and the difficulty in farming in these regions could be the real threat , not global warming. Many an invasion has been fought for a lesser cause.
So the second blogger David Hagen, on this track ,was quite right with his comments, in my opinion. Adequate Energy and food stocks will be vital for our future but the nations of the world are blindly preparing for global warming and demonizing fossil fuel. How foolish.
” Paul Vaughan (16:13:21) :
savethesharks (21:55:29) “It is plainly obvious that “Big Oil” has jumped on the AGW Train […]“
Unless I’m misinformed, the most shrieking alarmist force in Canada is funded by BO.”
Quite correct. I laugh myself silly every time I hear an activist scream “Deniers are funded by the oil companies” because Canada’s “Big Oil” is the “Father of Global Warming”!
Maurice Strong:
Strong started in the oil business in the 1950s. He took over and turned around some small ailing energy companies in the 1960s, and he was president of a major holding company — the Power Corporation of Canada — by the age of 35…..And in 1975, he was invited back to Canada to run the semi-national Petro-Canada, created by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in the wake of OPEC’s oil shocks.
Petro-Canada was a sop to Canada’s anti-American Left, then denouncing American ownership of the country’s oil companies. Strong talked a good economic-nationalist game — but he himself was a major reason why Canada’s oil companies were U.S.-owned. Ten years before, while at Power Corporation, he had enabled Shell to take over the only remaining all-Canadian oil company by throwing a controlling block of shares in its direction. As Maclean’s wrote, he now returned “amid fanfares” to rectify this….” http://www.afn.org/~govern/strong.html
“…It is instructive to read Strong’s 1972 Stockholm speech and compare it with the issues of Earth Summit 1992. Strong warned urgently about global warming, the devastation of forests, the loss of biodiversity, polluted oceans, the population time bomb. Then as now, he invited to the conference the brand-new environmental NGOs [non-governmental organizations]: he gave them money to come; they were invited to raise hell at home. After Stockholm, environment issues became part of the administrative framework in Canada, the U.S., Britain, and Europe….” http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=9401
To add insult to injury Strong’s company is Canada’s top CO2 polluter too.
“…Ontario Hydro, an industrial concern, headed by Earth Summit secretary general Maurice Strong, which [b]is the biggest source of CO2 emissions in Canada. This corporation is currently selling nuclear reactors to Argentina and Chile….” [Strong’s minions are the reason the USA killed it’s Nuclear power plant programs]
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/27/061.html
These little tidbits are well worth copying and saving to whip out the next time activists start the “big oil funds them” malarkey.
David L. Hagen
I am not so much concerned about just this one recent December /09 cold spell even if it was very cold , but more about the trend of the winter temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere. In Canada, the bellweather region for winter temperatures are the Northwestern Region and the Prairie Provinces. They are also one of our major food baskets. Their average winter temperatures have been declining since 2006 and are 6.6-7.1 C lower than 2006 winter. The 2010 winter is currently setting daily new records, with some regions setting as much 10 degrees lower than the previous daily record of only last year. So they are already at the 1970’s like lower winter temperatures .A significant part of the 2009 crops were at risk due to the late cold spring temperatures [snow in June] and lack of spring moisture. The winter temperatures for Canada as a whole have declined 3.6 C since 2006. The winter temperatures for the Contiguous US have declined 3.5 F since 2000 but more recently 2.4 F since 2006. The coldest weather during the last cool period was in the late 1970’s [1977-1979] well into the cool period of that era. It is the accumulating effect of many years of cooler weather that seems to be significant as well.
Europe ‘s winter temperatures only started to decline last year , so they are running some years behind North America in winter temperatures.
So I also see a serious problem for farming and crops in Europe and Asia by the middle of this new decade [2014-2015] due to the accumulating cold weather and moisture problems .This cool spell could last for several decades[2-3] and the difficulty in farming in these regions could be the real threat , not global warming. Many an invasion has been fought for a lesser cause.
So the second blogger David Hagen, on this track ,was quite right with his comments, in my opinion. Adequate Energy and food stocks will be vital for our future but the nations of the world are blindly preparing for global warming and demonizing fossil fuel. How foolish.
I have corrected the Contiguous US temperatures to Fahrenheit
Here is some more data about the Canadian 2009 winter impact on crops. The yield was about 20% less
In sharp contrast to their counterparts in Manitoba, agriculture producers in Alberta and Saskatchewan faced one of the most challenging growing seasons in years with drought, cold, floods and hail. Farmers rarely confront the dual threats of frost and drought at the same time, but parts of the Prairies experienced their driest spring in 50 years and their coldest in 35 years. Cool weather delayed crop development by three to four weeks, and with the risk of frost continuing into July, producers never caught up even when killing cold and the first snows came much later than usual in mid-October. Until the first hint of warmth in mid-June, all the talk was about the cold, especially its duration of six months and counting.
http://www.ec.gc.ca/meteo-weather/default.asp?lang=En&n=F2AE9E49-1
Gail Combs (11:50:56) “[…] Canada’s “Big Oil” is the “Father of Global Warming”!”
Dear Gail, I would very much like to hear your elaboration on this!
Re: Bob Tisdale (17:09:15)
It seems we are focused on different aspects of related phenomena – not a bad thing. Thanks for the notes.
Re: Gail Combs (11:50:56)
What I want to see is a cartoon that shows elites driving bubbles – (they’d be sitting (seemingly on air) inside bubbles of a variety of sizes, cutely clutching floating steering-wheels, & driving aimlessly… – it would be left to the reader to imagine what comes next [*bang!].)
Maybe owning a bubble alters one’s sense of humor…
agree with Paul Vaughan
Vincent (08:33:49) :
You said:
“Not the key point: Rises in air temperature are projected to occur during the 21st century. In other words, this is a model projection for the future – it is not happening now.”
Return to planet Earth. This phenomenon was predicted for the future, but DATA show that is is happening right now. I will not repeat the links I give earlier, just jump above and see the BLAST OF HEAT ABOVE THE ARCTIC.
What this show is that climate models get it wrong: THE ARTIC IS WARMING AND ARCTIC SEA-ICE IS MELTING MUCH EARLIER THAN MODELS PREDICTED.
So Global Warming impacts in the Arctic were severely UNDERESTIMATED.
This is quite obvious, unless you ignore the facts that you don’t like.
Then you said “So I look at my meteorology book and read (…).
Are you seriously suggesting that the warm anomolies in southern europe are caused by “warm arctic air” moving south and not by tropical air masses moving north?
This sounds more like magic than science to me”
What is magic is how you can invent words that I never said:
“Are you seriously suggesting that the warm anomolies in southern europe are caused by “warm arctic air” moving south and not by tropical air masses moving north?”
I never said such a thing.
I was talking about extremely warm anomalies ABOVE THE ARCTIC OCEAN.
We should talk after 6 months. I bet there will be highly warm ANOMALIES over the Artic. We will see. Only a BIG VOLCANO could make you “win”.
Of course that I inteded the case there was no big volcano, as it will obviously cool the Earth for a few years, as happened in 1992 with Pinatubo.
As for the comments about the 2009A/H1N1, I will not insist, as this is a Climate, not a Medicine blog.
But I am impressed how you ignore the dangers that arise in the world (and as a note: An influenza pandemic is a MAN-MADE disaster. If you put together people, pigs and birds then the virus will inevitably spread from one species to the other. And this occurs thank to bad farming practices that doesn’t prevent inter-species close contact.
But you could not even consider the possibility of a man-made disaster. Specially if it will cost a lot to Big Business do the things the right way.)
Only I give the reference: “Pneumonia and Respiratory Failure from 2009-A-H1N1 (Mexico)” that analize some cases of the earlier Mexico Outbreak in March-April 2009.
In Nature Magazine there are a lot more. Just search. My list of Nature articles about this virus is too long to list them.
Someone call me “Nonsense”. Nonsense is the ideology you follow and can be called:
“no problem, we will die some day anyway. Better die than pay taxes”
Your lack of respect for human life is astounding.
Of course there is a much better way to stop a Pandemic than elementary health care:
step 1)quarantine all the cities were there are outbreaks (as was not done in Mexico in West US in April).
step 2)Then ban all public meetings and stop traffic in those cities (as was done in Mexico City in April).
As the incubation period is roughly a week, in 15 days the Virus will disappear from circulation if the quarantines are applied everywhere there is an oubreak.
Of course that is unaceptable for you, because the economy (that will be temporarily stopped by the quarantines) is a more important thing than saving human lifes because “Death can’t be prevented, merely postponed”.
mistype. I said:
“step 1)quarantine all the cities were there are outbreaks (as was not done in Mexico in West US in April)”
I wanted to say: “step 1)quarantine all the cities were there are outbreaks (as was not done in Mexico *and* in West US in April)”
And a final comment:
If you are preparing to trash the GISSTEMP data about december, let’s do it right:
UPDATE THIS MAP TO SHOW THE SECOND HALF OF DECEMBER (that was anomausly warm in South Europe).
If you don’t have the updates, please don’t use this map to deny the December near-record warmth (worldwide).