Cold event setups in atmospheric circulation patterns are aligning. Two days ago I brought to your attention that there was a strong downspike in the Arctic Oscillation Index and that the North Atlantic Oscillation Index was also negative. See The Arctic Oscillation Index goes strongly negative
Yesterday, 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.
The Climate Prediction Center discussion for their forecast also concurs with both of the above:
THE AO INDEX WHICH RECENTLY HAS BEEN VERY STRONGLY NEGATIVE IS FORECAST TO INCREASE SLIGHTLY IN VALUE BUT REMAIN STRONGLY NEGATIVE THROUGH DAY 14. TODAYS BLEND CHART INDICATES BELOW NORMAL HEIGHTS ACROSS ROUGHLY THE SOUTHEASTERN TWO-THIRDS OF THE CONUS, AND ABOVE NORMAL HEIGHTS OVER THE NORTHWESTERN THIRD OF THE CONUS, CONSISTENT WITH A STRONGLY NEGATIVE AO.
Here are two of the CPC forecast maps for the days covered by Bastardi’s forecast. It is fairly typical to see an above average temperature in the west when we get a cold deep jet stream in the east:
I was going to include some Met Office forecasts here but after trying to find something useful at their web site and failing to find anything, I gave up looking.
If you live in these areas: bundle up, stock up. Get ready.
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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.
Which will be trumpeted by the Usual Suspects as further proof of AGW…
Got about an inch of “warming” on the ground outside my front door right now. I live about two blocks from the Idaho/Oregon border in Weiser, ID.
“Above average” temps in the west? Not here! This area usually gets snow around two or three times each winter, though once in a while it gets a lot of snow. Already above average/normal for the year now.
We have seen snow here in Houston two years in a row. That has not happened before in recorded history. I think we will see snow one more time before winter ends. Houston has not seen a temperature of 19F or lower since Dec. 1990 (at the reporting stations at least). I bet we will see that this winter. I remember back in the 80’s and early 90’s it was cold all the time. I’ve had several friends, co-worker and family members comment to me that they can’t remember it being this cold, this long since the 80’s.
I think this has more to do with the volcanoes that went off last year than anything else. They were high latitude volcanoes, so maybe the study about them has some merit. The El Nino is playing some part, but Joe Bastradi has been saying, the El Nino is not driving the pattern, rather it is being driven by the pattern.
Anthony the reason you probably didn’t find anything from the UK Met Ofiice is because they are still trying to get the egg off their face from the big snow storm that came through the UK. The Telegraph has an article with a comment from the Met Office
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100020868/the-uk-meterological-office-slightly-less-reliable-than-tea-leaves-or-cock-entrails/
Ok ok, WUWT readers/authors. You’ve proved your point. Global warming has stopped, and it’s very cold outside. We get it. You win. Now quit whatever it is you are doing to make it so #%^$ cold. Turn off your ‘Gore effect’. I can’t stand any more freezing weather, and it’s only December!
Anthoney I come here often but don’t post as I’m not an expert but really enjoy this place – I’m in Tampa and freezing my ass off already but those maps sure look like I better get some more firewood – just say’in
I think I’m right can anybody help out
Piers Corbyn has also forecast extreme cold, something along these same lines.
Not to worry. Field engineers are busy fitting weather monitoring stations with thermometer calibration jackets connected back to the IPCC modelling centres. Temperatures will continue to be as predicted.
Well, it took me a little while to find it (now, they couldn’t be trying to hide it, SURELY?) but here is the MET Office’s forecast dated 27 November 2009. (That’s right, just over a month ago!)
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/seasonal/2009/winter/?zoneid=79042
It is also confirmed by:-
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1231668/Forecasters-predict-mild-winter-Britain-Prince-Charles-visits-flood-hit-Cockermouth.html
Not to mention:-
http://www.energyhelpline.com/news/article.aspx?aaid=18801304&y=2008&m=9&w=4&pid=1
(Gosh! Cheap energy bills! Brilliant!)
You will see that after their previous fiasco last year:-
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2008/pr20080925.html
The MET Office’s prediction THIS time round gives 50% chance of a mild winter, 30% chance of a near average winter and 20% chance of a colder winter. Is that what’s called spread betting? I’ve got a small coin! I can do that! “Give us a job!”
And what have Joe Bastardi and Piers Corbyn been predicting? Gosh, and they haven’t got a £30 Million Super computer which is so clever that it says just what the climate will be doing in 90 years time!
Hey, I pay my taxes!
Can I have my share of £30 Million back, towards my “cheaper” energy bills?
For europe its here
http://www.accuweather.com/ukie/bastardi-europe-blog.asp
See that nice warm spot in the upper left corner? I’m happily sitting in it. 🙂
Cheers!
Nevermind I figured out B means go buy firewood at any cost before its gone
Congrats on 30 mill – I also found Russ at NC Media Watch from here and have had fun there – Happy New Year Anthony
Warm is good, benign even, cold very bad, and often malign.
In Uk in the winter of 62/3, my father, who had a construction business, with a large workforce, kept his people on standard pay for thirteen solid weeks of the freeze. It did not bankrupt him, but his business never recovered it’s former liquidity, and over the years there were many layoffs, and disapointments.
Cold periods can have all sorts of unusual consequences, and may have effects for many years.
Urged by the Met Office warm prediction for this winter, Highway Authorities have not stocked up with salt perhaps as much as they should have done, and whilst major highways have been cleared, sidewalks have not, nor local roads, and many folk have had falls, some minor, but for the elderly, very serious. Consequences which are not measured by the AGW crowd.
Make no mistake about it, Joe B is right, it’s going to continue to be cold.
In mid September, I predicted this when I spotted the Sea Ice extent for this year had made its turn from minimum, two weeks earlier than in 2007. If someone like me can draw a reasonable conclusion from this, then why does the Met Office continue with its ridiculous predictions? Frankly I wouldn’t believe their prediction for sunrise…………
For those in the UK that cannot rely on accurate and unbiased Met Office forecasts, an excellent resource is the Stormsurf pages which give jetstream predictions out to seven days.
Western Europe
http://www.stormsurfing.com/cgi/display_alt.cgi?a=natla_250
Worldwide
http://www.stormsurfing.com/cgi/display_alt.cgi?a=glob_250
The current model is showing an arctic blast descending on western europe for the forecast period.
So much for the CRU predictions of ‘tropical’ winters in the UK. Hopefully the policy makers are looking out of their windows and realising that nature and reality trumps the eco-fascist alarmist frenzy. AGW is over.
It’s a national shame and a scandal that on average, 20,000 people die of the cold each winter, most of them old state pensioners who can’t afford to heat their homes properly.
This winter, pensioners plight will be worsened by the huge increases in the cost of electricity and gas over the last 18 months. If they decide to escape their freezing homes and go to sit in the local pub or library, they risk breaking a hip on the icy pavements which have remained ungritted since the big freeze on Dec 18th.
What is happening to my country? Why do we tolerate the fools we allow to lead us?
Time for change.
We (in the Scottish highlands) have already had a week of very cold weather, when it has been -15C most nights, and rarely above -8C during the day. The Met Office are saying it will rise to 0C today and 4C tomorrow, but they usually over estimate our temperature by at least 4 or 5C in the winter, so I will beleive it when I see it. I suspect that the 40cm of snow we have will be here for long while yet. As I said to a friend last week, this winter so far, and last winter are much more reminiscent of the winters we had in the early 80s. He quickly made the link with the change in the NAO – he is a walking encyclopedia of the environmental sciences so ahead of the game as usual.
Ok, we’ll note this on our calendars and see how it all pans out.
but … even the comments in Nature magazine are saying…
NOBODY BELIEVES YOU ANY MORE!
Holy Climate Turbulence, Batman! Better buy some offsetting carbon credits.
Sure, this is only a weather event. At least that’s what you’ll hear from the warmists, other than their utter silence.
But remember, as Anthony mentioned a day or two ago, these things were sopposed to be rare and be out of the picture by now – that according to the world renowned and authoritive MetOffice.
This morning here in northern Germany we woke up to another snow cover. And the 15-day computer forecast by MeteoGroup says more is on the way, and that we’ll be entering the deep-freezer by this weekend. Joe Bastardi was right.
Forget the Met! Go to Joe!
A lot has been made of Greenland ice melting.
South Greenland, if Met office numbers are to be believed, is still in the range (winter) or below (summer) temperatures reached in 1930/40’s.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Sth_Greenland.gif
You Britons have to rise up and speak out against this huge waste of money, national symbol of incompetence and arrogance called the MetOfiice. They’ve become the laughing stock of the western weather world. (GISS is right behind them).
I feel a lot better now.
The Met Office is a joke. It must be born in mind that it is a public body, staffed by rent-seekers who do the least work possible. It regularly issues “forecasts” after the onset of the period to which they pertain. Its accuracy is risible, regularly failing to predict events beyond twelve hours in advance, and being wrong for whole days at a time, although it has unsurprisingly biased its performance targets to its own lowest expectations. It has been appropriated by the alarmist agenda and continually seeks – and receives, unfortunately – funding for its “climate” work, at the expense of its core functions, which are produced to the bare minimum it can get away with.
http://www.accuweather.com/video-on-demand.asp?video=19668940001&title=Bitter%20Cold%20Blast%20All%20the%20Way%20to%20Florida%20for%20the%20New%20Year!
buy some orange juice futures ?
It is set to turn brutal in the UK as well. “Turn”?
Well we had two weeks of sub zero temperatures around Christmas, it has now gone “mild” – ie, above zero. However from New Year’s Day I do not expect to see a return to positive temperatures for a long time thanks to a plunge of Arctic air invading across northern Europe.
We now know the Met Office’s forecast for a mild winter is shown to be an incompetent sham, and their credibility is in complete tatters. Better that they man up and admit that factoring AGW into their seasonal forecasts has meant they have all been busted recently.
From BBQ Summers to dreamed up Mild Winters, they do not come close to the skill of the likes if Piers Corbyn or Joe Bastardi.
But Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco will be above average, heck, the entire state of California will be above average. That’s a lot of votes. Remember, “global warming” isn’t about the reality, it is about what the voters *believe* the reality to be.
I have been reading your site daily for awhile I have to say I am very impressed. I wanted to be a meteorologist when I was younger but had no desire to join the military or go 100000 in school debt. Your crusade over the temperature reading sites confirmed what I felt growing up near D/FW Texas. We had a farm 30 miles north that was always 3-5 degrees cooler than town. Keep up the good work.
Yep, I hate the Met Office site too. This is their current UK long term forecast. Looks fairly typical for this time of year.
UK Outlook for Sunday 3 Jan 2010 to Tuesday 12 Jan 2010:
There will be a good deal of fine, dry and bright but cold weather across the UK from Sunday and through next week. Sleet and snow showers will affect many northern and eastern parts at times, perhaps becoming more persistent and spreading into some other regions from the middle of next week. Nights will be frosty, with frost locally severe in some areas, and overnight freezing fog will be slow to clear from some inland parts. There is uncertainty from next weekend onwards through the rest of the period with the strongest signal for the weather to remain generally cold with occasional wintry showers, though some western and southwestern parts may become less cold for a time.
Updated: 1154 on Tue 29 Dec 2009
In the Netherlands we’re expecting a major cold snap. Already there is speculation about a possible Elfstedentocht, which is a rare skating event.
Yesterday was bad enough, in southern New Hampshire. Howling wind and temperatures falling from around 19F at dawn to around 10F at 1:30 in the afternoon. Snow squalls put down two inches of snow, the day before, as the cold air pushed in, and it blew around like dancing ghosts all day.
Strangest was how the gale dug down into hollows and clearings which usually are protected from such arctic blasts. Despite bright sunshine there was nowhere outside to hide.
I wouldn’t have gone outside at all if I could have avoided it, but some aspects of running a farm force you out. I had to rescue seven ducks which looked like they wouldn’t last long in their pen, and move them in with my goats.
My goats usually dislike being cooped up, but when I went to drive them outside they took one look at the snow swirling in the howling wind, and I had a full scale mutiny on my hands. Despite all my yelling, they wheeled and bolted straight back to their pens.
And this is just the beginning?
Same thing happening here in UK and Europe. More snow and temps not above 3 in the North though milder in the South West up to 7-8 degrees. They’ve had more rain than snow.
This week there is an Artic wind bringing wind chill factor into the equation with the BBC reporting -7 this morning, for New Year’s Eve tomorrow and that’s during the day. Lowest temps this month so far were -16 in Scotland before Xmas and -18 in Wales this week. Lowest here in Yorkshire has been -10.
We had a power cut just before Xmas and a friend in Glasgow had one on Xmas Day when the daytime temp was -4. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more to come as the UK is very near its peak generating capacity. With the demand increasing for more heating there could well be widespread power cuts as we go into January.
I would have hoped our govt would take this as a warning that when they start closing down our oldest power stations from 2011 if we get more winters like this there are going to be a lot of people unable to heat their homes. According to official figures we already have 7 million people in fuel poverty in the UK a lot of them elderly. Fuel poverty is classed as being more than 10% of annual income. Average fuel bills are £1200 a year, so anyone on less than £12,000 is affected. That would be mainly those on the state pension with no other form of income, like my Mum and my Dad.
Unfortunately we won’t have any choice in the matter as the EU has decreed that we have to shut the power station down. It’ll be interesting to see if a “new” govt next year can do anything about it. I’m not holding my breath for that one.
And just in case we start feeling sorry for ourselves, in Lithuania they are shutting down their nuclear power station now to comply with the main condition set for their entry to the EU. In the middle of winter !!!
It supplies 70% of the country’s power so will have a major impact on their cost of fuel. The prices are forecast to increase by at least 30% in 2010 in the face of an economy that has tanked by 20% and rising unemloyment. They are being forced to get their power from Russia who already uses their power supplies “against” countries such as the Ukraine that were part of the old USSR.
If anyone needs an example of what the EU does, that is a stark warning to the rest of us.
Hold it hold it hold it.. what happened to El Nino with Bermuda shorts and umbrella drinks on the deck in January here at 45ºN 88W? Someone having an AGW protest?
Seriously.. On 1/7 the GFS actually has the 850mb -10C line in southern Alabama, almost at the FL state line. Yowza!
The AGW crowd might lose a few supporters on this one.
In England there appear to be a vague sequence of a 60 year pattern:
60 year summer-winter temperatures moving in the same direction.
60 year summer-winter temperatures moving in the opposite direction.
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/CET.gif
The opposing sequence maybe just starting.
You are right about the Met Office. Piers Corbyn is where to go to get any sensible forecast beyond a few days. The Met office clearly needs some new tea-leaves or seaweed; plus another super computer.
Should that not be ‘Major Northern Hemisphere cold OH Snap! coming’ ?
I live in a rural community so my coal bunker is full, my wood pile is high. My freezer and cupboards are also well stocked. The Met Office can kiss my…
Meanwhile in Australia where we were warned by the Alarmists droughts were going to take over its been widespread rain and floods with more to come!
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/keneally-returns-to-rain-soaked-regions/story-e6frg6nf-1225814416050
The warmists will say its just weather, but to me it looks like climate change.
The 1 in 1000 Year event came round rather quickly since last February’s press release from the Met Office ;-| After all we shouldn’t expect these things except every 100-200 years(Before AGW that is) according to the Met Office……..
I didn’t believe either figure at the time TBH. Current models projecting recording breaking Low Minimum records to tumble over the next 14 day in the UK :-O
But hey, after all it is going to be an ‘above average’ Winter…. Apparently……. Oh, that was the Met Office also. Where are my taxes going again? Tut Tut Tut…..
http://www.meto.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2009/pr20090225.html
“Natural variability of climate means that the UK will continue to see spells of colder weather at times. Although, if it had not been for the general warming already observed in global temperatures, this winter may well have been even colder.
Peter Stott, Climate Scientist at the Met Office, said: “Despite the cold winter this year, the trend to milder and wetter winters is expected to continue, with snow and frost becoming less of a feature in the future.
“The famously cold winter of 1962/63 is now expected to occur about once every 1,000 years or more, compared with approximately every 100 to 200 years before 1850”
Does anyone believe this rubbish anymore?
He doesn’t mince his words.
http://www.accuweather.com/ukie/bastardi-europe-blog.asp
“I have NOTHING against the Hadley Center, but I will be very curious as to what their outlook is for the rest of the winter and how they will explain what is going on. I think in light of what is going on, with a arrogance of authority in the climate and weather wars obvious (There is no human, or human-made, “authority” that holds the future in their hand and dictates events), before we discuss how hot 2010 will be we need to know why this was not the winter portrayed. And the explanation that December is only one month doesn’t hold water since if they are doing their research on winters like this, they will see why January and February, could and should be as cold or colder.”
The winter 1984/85 I was in Geneva. That is 25 years ago.
The cold was impossible, -25C at night, 70 cmeters of snow compacted into a mess because Geneva did not have snow plows, the lake keeping the climate tolerably warm. It took over a week for a semblance of order out of chaos.
I remember crying from the pain in my hands when I was leaving the lab at night, the steering wheel was so cold. I went out and bought fur boots, a fur (rabbit) coat and fur mittens. I still have them.
The heating in the lab was not enough and people would light the electric driers for electronics ( like hair driers) to get some heat there.
The nearby French villages were better off, they had snowplows at least because of the mountains.
25 years they say?
Fascinating. I have to wonder if it’s natural cycles on the earth such as the PDO, NAO, and AO, or is it the lack of solar activity. Or both? Or even more things we don’t yet understand.
Regardless, it’s a great learning opportunity!
I was going to include some Met Office forecasts here but after trying to find something useful at their web site and failing to find anything, I gave up looking.
There is a 6-15 day forecast (i.e. 3 Jan to 12 Jan) which more or less covers most of the the period in Bastardi’s forecast. See
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/uk/uk_forecast_weather.html
which says
UK Outlook for Sunday 3 Jan 2010 to Tuesday 12 Jan 2010:
I could have told you about the cold snap: I managed to find the only bit of ice that hadn’t melted in the village and ended up with a cut face; earlier in the week, my daughter slipped and broke a bone in her thumb. I blame Al Gore…
Has anyone read Phillip Eden’s book ‘Weather Extremes and the British Climate’ ?
I generally have a high opinion of his very level-headed approach to the weather/climate and don’t recall him being particularly pro/anti AGW.
Here’s the link
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Change-Weather-Philip-Eden/dp/0826479731/ref=cm_cr_pr_orig_subj
I heard that he’s just been made Dep at the Royal Met Society
Where is that Boston guy? I told him it would get cold there as soon as that low pressure area passed through. He seems to have disappeared.
Here in NE Ohio we’ll know it was an exceptionally cold winter if we start seeing Snowy Owls in late February or March.
I know we had a citing or two 25 years ago, and there was a bunch of them in our area around 1909/11. (I have a small treatise on this phenomenon somewhere on my Ohio related-history shelves.)
Back then, it seems a drastic winter in Canada depleted the supply of mice and other smallish critters… and the owls headed south to us.
crosspatch (01:38:52) :
I’m not going to bet on this following the standard warm in the west, cold in the east pattern. We’ve already hit a major cold snap out west, and for every year with a single winter snap, there’s been an equal # of years with multiple cold snaps.
Martin Brumby (00:51:07) :
“Well, it took me a little while to find it (now, they couldn’t be trying to hide it, SURELY?) but here is the MET Office’s forecast dated 27 November 2009. (That’s right, just over a month ago!)
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/seasonal/2009/winter/?zoneid=79042”
The MET Office must have noticed your post (who says they don’t read WUWT) and they have now, today Dec 30, updated the prediction. It now says “For the rest of winter, over northern Europe including the UK, the chance of colder conditions is now 45%; there is a 30% chance of average and a 25% chance of milder conditions.”
Quite a change, especially right in the middle of the cold weather. Someone at the MET office loked out the window.
I have been looking at the historical daily index of the AO. Not only is it “strongly negative” – it is forecast to get near record negative in the next few days (see http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/ao.sprd2.gif) – note all ensemble members take it to around -6 in the first few days of January.
There have only been 2 Januarys in which the AO has got this negative or stronger – one was 1977 and the other was 1985. Now 1985 was actually a La Nina, but 1977 was an El Nino (like present). Anyone remember JAN-MAR 1977? I am too young, but I can look it up here http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/usclimdivs/ and it looks a tad chilly…
photon without a Higgs (00:45:16) : Please don’t mention Piers Corbyn, or we might get another diatribe from Peter Hearnden.
Oh, that’s a relief. If I’m expected to believe the CPC maps, New Hampshire will be just normally cold. No sweat. (We don’t sweat much in most winters except when it warms up enough for a Nor’easter with heavy snow.)
Yesterday was interesting. From 0000-0600 EDT it was about 27°F (-3°C), then the cold front hit and after a steep 4 hour fall, the temperature continued to fall from 10°F to 5°F (-15°C). At least one ski area closed the lift to the top of the mountain due to hurricane force winds. Oh – what did Mount Washington report? Not as bad as I expected, average wind speed 67.8 mph, peak gust 100 mph (108-160 kph), minimum temp -25°F (hmm, 15 above -40, so -32°C).
The next few days will be interesting up here and in the northern half of NH and ME. The midwest storm will spawn a coastal storm that will “bomb out” in the Gulf of Maine and spread snow back west. My wife and daughter just left to visit friends in Caribou, return date will be a function of the snow.
Re: Bill Jamison (02:42:11) :
“Fascinating. I have to wonder if it’s natural cycles on the earth such as the PDO, NAO, and AO, or is it the lack of solar activity.”
There is actually decent scientific data (remember that stuff – data) to support a modulation of the AO by solar activity (e.g. see http://yly-mac.gps.caltech.edu/ReprintsYLY/A_LWSpapers/Ruzmaikin_Solar_02.pdf and http://strat-www.met.fu-berlin.de/labitzke/moreqbo/MZ-Labitzke-et-al-2006.pdf)
A key result in AGW theory (and I use the term “theory” loosely here) is that the AO should contionue to get more positive during northern hemisphere winters. In the meantime, data suggests we are approaching a record negative event this Winter.
Enjoy.
While it’s cold up north, downunder here in Sydney’s inner west, it was 23c today, that is not a typical Sydney summer and we’re 1/3rd way through already.
But this is just weather m’kay!
twawki (02:15:33) :
Meanwhile in Australia where we were warned by the Alarmists droughts were going to take over its been widespread rain and floods with more to come!
You are prone to exaggeration my friend.
Heavy rain has fallen over parts of NSW, and is much welcome, but most of the country remains in drought. Bushfires recently ravaged Port Lincoln in SA, and are currently burning in Toodyay, just north of Perth WA, and parts of NSW are under Fire Weather Alert. Just over two weeks ago there were 90 fires burning across NSW.
It was also 38C today in Melbourne and 39C in Adelaide, with similar temperatures predicted for tomorrow. Even Hobart is likely to hit 35C tomorrow.
It has rained on 5 days in Melbourne this month for a total of 55mm, which is about average for December.
It ain’t that hard to tell it like it is.
In the “it’s climate, not weather” department…
In 2005 two Russian solar physicists bet climate modeler James Annan $10,000 that global temperatures ten years from then would be cooler, not warmer.
If the weather is cool enough, no amount of “value added” adjustments will hide that.
crosspatch (01:38:52) : But Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco will be above average, heck, the entire state of California will be above average. That’s a lot of votes.
Wise caution, crosspatch.
Hold the champagne til the fat lady sings… perhaps even wait for the second chorus… we are dealing with bitter people who do not know from reality and will stab from behind.
Is it true or an urban myth that the Met Office is as accurate as assuming the weather will be the same as it was the day before?
I prefer to use the black suede shoe technique myself – wear them and it will rain irrespective of the forecast 😀
Kevin (00:41:45) :
Turn off the “Gore Effect”?
Only Al Gore can be the master of his own words, prior to them leaving his lips.
There is only 1 thing the mass of us can do now: adapt.
Sorry about the lost time.
“ShaneOfMelbourne (03:23:37) :
twawki (02:15:33) :
Meanwhile in Australia where we were warned by the Alarmists droughts were going to take over its been widespread rain and floods with more to come!
You are prone to exaggeration my friend.
Heavy rain has fallen over parts of NSW, and is much welcome, but most of the country remains in drought. Bushfires recently ravaged Port Lincoln in SA, and are currently burning in Toodyay, just north of Perth WA, and parts of NSW are under Fire Weather Alert. Just over two weeks ago there were 90 fires burning across NSW.
It was also 38C today in Melbourne and 39C in Adelaide, with similar temperatures predicted for tomorrow. Even Hobart is likely to hit 35C tomorrow.
It has rained on 5 days in Melbourne this month for a total of 55mm, which is about average for December.
It ain’t that hard to tell it like it is.”
This weather is not unusual for Australia in summer, bush fires included. You will find the Western Australian (WA) fire is now attribted to a fallen power line, much like that which happended in Victoria last year which started the worst bush fires. And in every case where property owners ignored local authority “rules” on clearing “bush” around properties cleared their properties and survived the fires.
I repeat; Live in a “disaster prone” area (Substitute a terestrial disaster, earthquake, volcano, flood, drought, fire etc etc etc etc) expect some sort of disaster over time.
I’ve read in various places that this year is following more the 1977-78 analog for weather, and that was the year in which it snowed in Miami, FL for the first time ever. To see that again would be something.
Anyone know if Al has an speaking engagement in S. Florida anytime soon?
Sorry, I am getting ahead of myself and thinking it is already 2010. In my previous post I am refering to the Victorian bush fires here in Australia over the Jan/Feb 2009 period (Summer).
After all, for me it’s just over an hour ’til new years’ eve.
Isn’t it about time for some eco-warrior to start trying to swim to the North Pole via all the open water?
-24C in Nova Scotia this morning. Brrrrrr.
To OZ people with a lot of drought going around (Australia), adapt, build desalination plants. The entire country is an island, you have coasts right?
Well, start building and get the water flowing. Adapt, adapt, adapt
“Rossa (02:00:24) :
And just in case we start feeling sorry for ourselves, in Lithuania they are shutting down their nuclear power station now to comply with the main condition set for their entry to the EU. In the middle of winter !!!
It supplies 70% of the country’s power so will have a major impact on their cost of fuel. The prices are forecast to increase by at least 30% in 2010 in the face of an economy that has tanked by 20% and rising unemloyment. They are being forced to get their power from Russia who already uses their power supplies “against” countries such as the Ukraine that were part of the old USSR.
If anyone needs an example of what the EU does, that is a stark warning to the rest of us.”
It’s frightening, isn’t it. Not only are we facing a crisis in our power supplies in a few years time as our older power stations become obsolete, our rubbish government have done nothing about planning for new power stations, concentrating instead on ineffectual wind turbine (don’t get me started), and a new coal fired power station was rejected in Kent because it was going to emit too much CO2. Politicians have got too caught up in the AGW scare that they are incapable of planning for the safety of our power supplies and we are fast running out of time. What price then when we can’t operate businesses etc because of power shortages? To say nothing of the social costs – although I guess it might solve the problem of our aging population – sorry to be cynical but when this government has stripped me of most of my future pension I am faced with the prospect of working til I drop (who will employ me when I’m old and doddery) or a visit to Dignitas. Sorry, I digress.
It is clear to me that the effects of a quiet sun are now starting to hit us hard. Another few decades and the full effect of the new Maunder Minimum as the oceans cool will becaome apparent. The heat retaining proerties of the worlds oceans can only buffer natural climate change for so long. In the UK, three crap summers and two very cold and snowy winters can’t be dismissed. At what point does weather become climate?
Will Hudson (03:08:08) :
The extraordinary flip of the UK Met Office winter seasonal forecast smacks of mind-numbing incompetence. I suggest it is now time for the incumbent Chairman Robert Napier to step down from his position and give way to a complete reorganisation, starting with the CO2-driven climate models and modelers.
A letter published by Napier in the Guardian in 2001 highlights the prejudice that is curtailing the ability of the Met Office to function as a forecaster rather than a propaganda mouthpiece.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2001/mar/19/guardianletters3
The fat lady is singing, loudly.
“Turn off the “Gore Effect”?”
You do know that “algor” is Latin for “to cool,” don’t you? YOu can google “algor mortis,” which is pretty funny in itself.
Anthony,
My suggestion is that we revisit this post in two weeks.
ShaneOfMelbourne (03:23:37) to twawki (02:15:33) : You are prone to exaggeration my friend.
Argh… I dunno, Shane. Sure it is overhot in the study tonight as I type this from Melbourne; but there has been a whole lot of rain right across large areas of the continent. The Murray-Darling basin has filled its drought-cracks and is ready to send the next lot downstream. Couple of deserts have had good soakings. Tassie may be in for some heat, but it has been raining there on and off for many weeks. Even our Melbourne dams are going to go into the new year with about what they started with in the previous two years.
I’d guess the drought has broken; and even the bushfires (wildfires) are not really so bad, even though the bush has been enviro-engineered to support them.
Still, there’ll always be a Hanrahan or two mooching about:
“We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan
In accents most forlorn
Outside the church ere Mass began
One frosty Sunday morn.
“AdderW (03:59:06) :
To OZ people with a lot of drought going around (Australia), adapt, build desalination plants. The entire country is an island, you have coasts right?
Well, start building and get the water flowing. Adapt, adapt, adapt”
Twice as much water falls on Sydney than London (Ignoring ground water sources in London of course). But in Sydney, there are few storage facilities, just one major one (Warragamba Dam, upto 80% of total), sites setup to collect and store water. So if rain does not fall over Warragamba, what do you do? Desalinate? Well, here in New South Wales, Australia, we’re bombarded with desalination plant propaganda; It’s the future, powered by wind (Or some other renewable, aparently). Why not stop the wastage? Why not build other catchments? Why not recycle (Anyone drinking water in the Greater London area will be drinking recycled water (What water isn’t))? BS political/green agendas again at the fore.
Tell me about it. I’m in new Hampshire and it’s cold as hell! If anyone has any ideas how I might be able to effect some warming, I would appreciate it.
The Met Office:
“Forecast for the rest of Winter 2009/10”
“…the chance of colder conditions is now 45%; there is a 30% chance of average and a 25% chance of milder conditions.”
Correct me if I’m wrong but I thought they previously forecast a 50% chance of a mild winter? Is this another major flip? :o)
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/seasonal/2009/winter/?zoneid=79042
1The Ministry of Defence is responsible for supplyingUK troops with the correct equipment.
2 The Ministry of Defence have failed to provide proper air transport and properly armoured vehicles to the troops.
3 The Ministry of Defence are in charge of the MET Office.
4 The Met Office is incapable of providing proper weather or climate forecasts.
Are we surprised?
As can clearly be seen in the maps, Canada will experience NO weather. None.
Either that, or Canada will continue to have Canadian winter weather, which is so unspeakably horrible that nobody dares mention it. Especially in Winnipeg. Particularly at Portage and Main, where two years ago I was stuck picking up a package in -32C with what seemed like a 100km/h steady wind. Good thing the package was heavy, too bad the zipper on my jacket didn’t work.
I remember the 70s. Yeah, I was a kid, but I remember that we used to get to -40C here in Calgary, a temperature I don’t think I’ve seen since 1982 (possibly was that cold in 1992 but not certain.) I remember more than once in the 70s our street was drifted in by blizzard conditions, which made it easier to believe the hype-du-jour of a coming ice age.
However, this kind of weather pattern that decimates the East Coast and spawns havoc through Europe seems to smile on us here. All those nasty, moisture laden flows crossing the Rockies lose their moisture, leaving massive amounts of snow but warming the Eastern slope. The more Chinooks we get in a season, the worse I know the rest of the continent is suffering.
I’ve been watching the patterns all of 2009, and it seems an unusual year for cold northerly flows to be tracking down along the Rockies, even during summer. I’ve mentioned before that I bought an R/C plane in May and have only had a very few flying days with it (one of which was Christmas, much to the delight of everyone else that lives on my lake). I’d be happy if we started getting more of the Westerly flows and fewer of the Northerly ones.
vukcevic (02:04:05) :
In England there appear to be a vague sequence of a 60 year pattern:
60 year summer-winter temperatures moving in the same direction.
60 year summer-winter temperatures moving in the opposite direction.
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/CET.gif
The opposing sequence maybe just starting.
Interesting graph Vuk, Dr. Scafetta has also noticed a 60 year pattern in the PDO that lines up with solar movements from the SSB. His graph also shows us heading on the downslope.
http://www.landscheidt.info/images/scafetta.jpg
I once heard that weather prediction in Boston, MA was 80% accurate. However, if they predicted “sunny” for every day, they’d be 75% accurate.
“Bill Jamison (02:42:11) :
Fascinating. I have to wonder if it’s natural cycles on the earth such as the PDO, NAO, and AO, or is it the lack of solar activity. Or both? Or even more things we don’t yet understand.
Regardless, it’s a great learning opportunity!”
Too bad that most of our scientists and government agencies already have complete understanding of climate from the surface of the sun all the way to the central core of our dear earth. Anything that does not fit the paradigm will be datawhipped into submission. It makes you wonder which other branches of research, gov’t and private, are on the “no progress” gravy train.
AdderW, matey if it wasnt for the overpriced and ripoff artists that get to plan and build suchlike as desal, many would have been made.
Govt won’t, and industry is a ripoff.
re weather well yeah two warm days in Vic this week and maybe? another tomorrow, whoopy chooky, its summer, about time as its been damned cool apart from another 3? day Normal event some week back.
WA fires, par for course, powerlines started it, whoops. Vic earlier this year, powerlines on a massively hot and dry very windy day, also standard, the arsonist made it so much worse.
Kyoto and idiot city greenies who have no idea of how thick scrub gets if not browsed or managed carefully also have a LOT to answer for there.
and too many trees too close to homes, homes in gullies etc etc, oh and almost all homes in this state in rural areas are wood/fibro tin..not hard to burn.
I used to call myself “green” however it,s now a word associated with fools and rabid brainwashed GW mob, and so I now refuse to accept it as a compliment anymore. it has become an insult indeed.
KRudd and WRong need to wake up, shut up about warming and supporOrganic land care Keyline farming systems and Peter Andrews wonderful examples of reclaiming land, restoring water and making Aus a better place to be.
will they? ha!
but thats ok, WE have the power of the VOTE and a lot of very angry people will be using that power!
Here is a New York Times headline from the past:
January 7, 1896, Wednesday
“GREAT SOUTH BAY FROZEN OVER.; Coldest Weather in Years on Long Island — Narrow Escapes.”
Lets hope it does not get this bad again….
All we need in the south now is some precipitation to go along with this upcoming cold weather and a nice, big snow event here in Tennessee!
Just out of pure interest, what goes for “cold” in the US? Here in Sweden we start complaining when it goes below -20 C (-5F) 🙂
REPLY: It depends on latitude. Minnesotans are known to complain at -15C while Floridians will complain at 5C
They are starting to build a desalinisation planet tight at this moment in Victoria (South Eastern Australia) The trouble is that it’s going to cost 10 billion dollars+ to construct and operate for the next 10 years. A dam would cost 1 Billion.( plus lots if green votes)
Australia is the same size as the lower 48 with only 22 million people. There is more than ample fresh water that can be harvested except for the green policies.
Then there is the ludicrous situation of state boundaries. One major population centre straddles the boundary of two states (boundary is a river). One side of the river has more water than they can handle. The other side of the river has water restrictions. State laws will not let water be shared across the border – ridiculous.
There is one major river in NSW that has a flow so huge that with a bit of judicious piping ( a few billion or so dollars) every main city on the eastern seaboard could be supplied with ample water. The cost for this would be less than a third of a desal plant. Why isn’t this done? Go figure.
ShaneOfMelbourne (03:23:37) :
Heavy rain has fallen over parts of NSW, and is much welcome, but most of the country remains in drought.
It does? Not even BoM has been able to find much in the way of drought lately:
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/rain_maps.cgi?map=contours&variable=drought&area=aus&period=12month®ion=aus&time=latest
And as for heat and bushfires, can you name a year (out of the last 40,000 or so) when it wasn’t hot and a lot of bushfires in Australia in summer?
Geoff Sharp (04:39:27) :
“Interesting graph Vuk, Dr. Scafetta has also noticed a 60 year pattern in the PDO ……….”
Hi Geoff
Here is a more on CET.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-SW.gif
I’ve just completed the graph, have no write-up yet, but pattern is obvious.
I am sure you will recognise the formula (I’ve been defending for a while now), but here are its origins.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SSNAnomaly1.gif
Perhaps elements of climate are predictable after all, but on basis on the solar activity, not CO2 (good for vegetation, let’s have some more!).
Beans? Kiss your beans?
🙂
Its the time of year for a bit of frivolous fun. Those outside the UK may not know that anyone can put in a planning application for a site that they do not even own (although of course if they wanted to carry out any work following permission they would have to own the site)
The Met office is 15 miles away from me. They occupy a very large prime site on the edge of Exeter. For a £100 application fee we could apply for planning permission for anything on their ste. A supermarket. Pub. A comedy club. Furniture store. Research unit to examine global cooling. Religious centre.
Any suggestions?
The more satirical to the Met office ideals the better 🙂 (after all they cost us Brits Millions)
Tonyb
James Waring (01:22:09) :
The Met Office is a joke…It regularly issues “forecasts” after the onset of the period to which they pertain. Its accuracy is risible, regularly failing to predict events beyond twelve hours in advance, and being wrong for whole days at a time, although it has unsurprisingly biased its performance targets to its own lowest expectations.
If it were in the military, the bullet-point on its evaluation report would probably read “Consistently fails to achieve the exceptionally low standards it has set for itself.”
There is finally a forecast for below average temps in northern Alaska!! Short range forecasts I know, but still.
And more for the weather, not climate file….
Tulsa Oklahoma experiences first ever “BLIZZARD WARNING”
http://www.traders-talk.com/mb2/index.php?s=&showtopic=86878&view=findpost&p=499764
OT just a little bit here.
Is everybody at AccuWeather named Joe?
I mean you have Joe Bastardi, Joe Sobel, Joe Mergo, Joe Zona and several others that I can’t think of right now.
Plato Says (03:26:16) :
“Is it true or an urban myth that the Met Office is as accurate as assuming the weather will be the same as it was the day before?”
Dunno, but I knew someone who worked in Operational Research for Lyons around 1960. Lyons was in many ways a very adventurous and far-sighted company, developing the LEO computer.
One of their businesses was ice cream, and weather predictions are important for organising production and avoiding waste. He told me that they had a project for selecting the best forecasting method, involving chats with the Met Office, their own efforts at prediction, feeling seaweed, all sorts of stuff.
He said that at the end of a year or so of this project, they came to the conclusion that the best predictor of what the weather would be like tomorrow, was what the weather was like today.
These days, I find the Met Office forecasts pretty good for the next day, OK for the day after and longer term, useless.
Ha hahaha!!
From a telefone conversation today with polarbear resarchers at Svalbard.
“The last weeks the bears have moved south towards the ice FREE part of the Island.”
Well well well!!! They dont know thier own goood! WWF is an embarrasment.
Remeber this date and time: December 30 2009, 7:04 am. Steph Abrams on the weather channel commenting on the cold weather in the Northeast states, “Well, it is winter of course it’s cold.” Thanks Steph, you better say something similar when it is hot this summer.
I have to find a clip to send to her this summer if she spouts off that it’s hot because of global warming/climate change like she has done in the past.
OT But I thought this was cheering anecdotal feedback – it appears that an active political watcher has been struck by unprompted thumbs down feedback on AGW.
BTW – the poster is also the best-selling novelist Tom Knox and a travel journalist.
http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2009/12/30/now-the-election-for-the-pb-betting-tipster-of-2009/comment-page-1/#comment-1363974
Do you believe in AGW ? someone asked me yesterday at a small conference.
No, I replied, I am not religious.
The chap gave me a funny look and walked away.
Yet another forecast that looks likley to fail (at least for December):
From: Stewart Rampling (Long range forecaster) at Netweather.tv
“Temperatures for the UK are forecast to be close to average during the period December 2009 through February 2010. Rainfall (including snowfall) is forecast to be above average. These departures are likely to hide significant monthly variations.
December is forecast to have average or slightly above average temperatures. For continental Europe, temperatures are forecast above average but closer to average or even below average over Scandinavia. Rainfall is expected to be above average throughout.
January is expected to feature below average temperatures for central Europe, Scandinavia and the southern part of the UK in particular. Rainfall is expected to be below average for Northern Europe and above average for southern Europe. There is low confidence on the degree of departure for cold temperatures which are likely to range between 0.5 and 2C below average for much of central Europe and Scandinavia. This impacts the confidence level for the winter as a whole as a cold January would result in a colder start to February and increase the probability of colder than average winter as a whole.
The forecast confidence for February is very low. Our current forecast is for average or slightly above average temperatures for much of western and central Europe including the UK based on historical analogues. Rainfall is expected to be above average.
Our forecast is for the negative phases of the Arctic Oscillation and North Atlantic Oscillation which would normally favour below average temperatures across Europe. A cold forecast has not been issued overall due to warm sea surface temperatures in the eastern Atlantic and potential draw of south-winds during February resultant from a surge in angular momentum during this month and guidance from historical analogues.”
See full forcast at:
http://www.netweather.tv/index.cgi?action=other;type=winter-forecast;sess=
So far CET temperatures are approx -1.4 C below average for December.
See:
http://www.netweather.tv/index.cgi?action=cet;sess=
(OK this is not the ‘true’ CET and is not representative of the UK wide temperature …but it still provides an indication of how close or far temperatures are from those predicted)
Caleb (01:52:28) : Ric Werme (03:16:30)
Caleb and Rick – I’m over in western New Hampshire, and yesterday I tried to go for a morning jog, but I abandoned the run when the wind chills dropped below 0 F – really, quite dangerously cold! I’ll try again today – it’s supposed to warm up to 19 F!
What is the likelihood, given the apparently very cold starts to both Europe and North American winters that large swaths of land in sparsely inhabited parts of Canada/Russia/Africa and Austrailia will show record/near record heat so that it is still the 4th-6th warmest December on record?
It seems that whenever the forecast ends up too warm, they claim that it was “wind chill”. Usually the forecast is something like; “today’s high will be 10 C but the wind chill will feel like -30! Rather convenient way of fudging the record.
Regarding rainfall in Sydney – I just looked up the stats which say that Sydney gets 1217 mm ( 48 in.) yearly. Looks like 2009 was lower than average, with about 37 in (968 mm) falling. So they didn’t count on that.
Still, in any objective sense, that’s a huge amount of water and most of it must be getting wasted. With 40 in. of yearly rain almost anywhere in Texas every river and creek is full and every lake is overflowing, and there are a lot of lakes, almost all man made. Anything west of Dallas would have massive flooding with that much rain, only Houston and areas close to the coast get more rain than that. And Phoenix, Az, survives quite well on only 10 in. of rain a year, never gets more.
So for any modern city to get 40 in of rain and wail about a drought – somebody’s treating their resources like they were still hunter gatherers. Time to do a little bit of strategic planning and construction there, just a thought.
As far as the brush fires – yeah, if you let the brush build up it’s gonna burn. There are several ways to control that problem, but doing nothing and crying about the cruelty of the Fire Gods each summer isn’t one of them.
If I were a met office/Hadley centre employee I would be cringing with shame right now.
The met office is of course run by political appointees and they use a multimillion pound supercomputer that has enabled them to see decades into the future with a self proclaimed stunning never before achieved accuracy, this computer program is able to predict climate and weather in 2050 which gives them the unique ability to provide government departments with sufficient intelligence of future events so they may plan accordingly for the long term.
Sounds fantastic doesnt it? Governments around the world will be fighting to give the MO their business? Er…uhm…well…it would be great if the above self proclaimed brilliance were true but it isnt, in fact the met office has built itself a computer prediction system,fed it with faked,forged,manipulated,fudged data and now they use this system to predict the weather in all situations, they must have patted themselves on the back at their cleverness, all they had to do was sit at the computer and wait for it to churn out the predictions, it was a cunning plan eh? the only tiny snag is of course that the predictions are a load of worthless trash!
In the effort to peddle their masters AGW narrative and their lazy approach to the job they have turned what used to be the worlds finest meteorology institute into a pathetic laughing stock.
How the met office employees could stand to live with the utter shame is beyond me.
I wanted to find the winter forecasts and the latest winter update of the infamous UK Met Office, but it is extremely hard to locate on their web page.
The Met Office wheather news releases archive (last updated on December 28) has their last Summer forecasts as well as the Summer update. So one could assume that the Winter forecasts would be there too, but it is not. I am sure it is somewhere out there and it is not buried or anything like that.
Instead, anyone visiting the archives page is met with such inane news release headlines as “November heralds the return of autumn” (Oct 30), “Stormy weather on 13 and 14 November 2009” (Nov 17), “Wintry weather on the way” (Dec 10) and “Cold weather to continue” (Dec 18).
They don’t neglect patting themselves on the back when they get a few small things right: “Hat trick for seasonal tropical storm forecast” (Dec 16), though it is impossible to find humility for getting big things wrong.
If I were a British taxpayer, I’d demand my money back.
This is prob a bit O/T but i think its close to Anthonys heart.
I have a suspicion that the actual TV & Radio presenters from the Met don’t actually believe the official AGW line either.
For example…how many times do you hear them say “temperatures down to one or two degrees in the towns and cities, and probabley a couple of degrees less in rural areas…”
..er…what?
Surely they are not suggesting there is a big UHI effect are they..?
Yes…I think they are, and I think its their way of pointing us to a truth, ie they do not believe their computers ‘alterations’ either.
REPLY: Being on television is somewhat like being a blogger. Both “broadcast” words and pictures. If you say something obviously “untrue” your viewership will let you know about it, and fast. They have to walk the line between predictions and reality. Been there, done that. -A
How about an ice skating arena – providing some cool breezes as well as heat (in the “right” direction)
As far as the brush fires – yeah, if you let the brush build up it’s gonna burn.
Bush fires, mate, bush fires.
@TonyB
an ice hockey rink?
Ah, forgot the link to the Met Office news release archive. For your reading pleasure. 😉
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/weatherclimate.html
Reply said: “Minnesotans are known to complain at -15C”
You mean complain about the heat?? As for the upcoming cold snap, I predict it will end at some point. The local forecasters who I trust more than the national ones are saying things like this “STAYING WITH BELOW NORMAL TEMPS THROUGH THE PERIOD…AS THE NAO AND
AO ARE FORECAST TO BE IN A HIGHLY NEGATIVE PHASE WHICH INDICATES
COLDER TEMPERATURES OVER THE EAST. BEYOND THE EXTENDED
RANGE…FORECAST SIGNALS SUGGEST A POTENTIAL WARM UP TOWARD THE 2ND
WEEK TO MID JANUARY TIME FRAME” (Blacksburg, VA)
Y’all do realize that this is just nature covering up what Mankind has done to the climate, right? 😉
Geoff Sharp (04:39:27) :
Undoubtely!, here is the source document. This was made for the FAO organization (United Nations) and it is really surprising. See graphs on page 50:
ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/005/y2787e/y2787e08.pdf
RayB (02:01:48) :
Hold it hold it hold it.. what happened to El Nino with Bermuda shorts and umbrella drinks on the deck in January here at 45ºN 88W? Someone having an AGW protest?
The fact is (look along the equatorial line, those small warmed yellow patches: El Nino seems to be paralized due to the cold Humboldt’s countercurrent going from south to north, along SA coasts and then turning westwards, driven by the pacific’ s anticyclone winds which run counterclockwise. See:
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.gif
Last but not least:
Joe Bastardi in a global warming blog?…Not surprising. Every decent conspiricy can’t be thought in one dimensional terms, as common humans use to think in daily life, but in n+1 dimensions, where n=>2, and planners options are expected to be found in at least the 3rd. dimensional level. So both sides compete..while I wait and watch from above. ☺
TJA (04:09:52) :
Algor is a noun not a verb. It means: cold, chilliness, a fit of shivering and (in the plural—algores) cold weather.
The verb is algeo, 2nd declension (so the first person passive is algeor); it is related to the Ancient Greek algeo, I feel pain.
Cold world with no power as AGW president and congress plan for warm climate that is not reality. Skyrocket Skyrocket those energy prices Obama!
WHOA – great news. Top journalist and BBC front man tells it like it is
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/dailypolitics/andrewneil/2009/12/its_going_to_be_a_cold_2010.html
“As much of the country braces itself for further snow falls and freezing temperatures word reaches me from several US forecasters that the whole of the Northern Hemisphere is in for a very cold start to 2010. Apparently there’s been a strong downspike in something called the Arctic Oscillation Index and the North Atlantic Oscillation Index is also strongly negative…”
He’s been reading WUWT 😀
REPLY: Indeed, he quoted me exactly, but without attribution:
Meanwhile I pass on this advice from one US forecaster who thinks we’re in for a tough time: “bundle up, stock up and get ready.”
-A
It is interesting, (concerning J. B.’s forecast of colder than normal temperatures the next 2 weeks or so), that the air mass above 80 degrees latitude has been warmer than normal for the past 100 days or so. If this is the case will the cold air blast last very long or will the pool of cold air be depleted fairly quickly?
Despite being ‘warmer’ than normal the Artic ice has been growing at about the same rate over the last several years. A colder AO might give a boost to the ice mass/extent/multiyear cover this winter leading to a higher than normal summer extent next year. Wouldn’t that be another nice nail in the “the Arctic ice is melting faster than we thought” science?
Jim, too.
“amicus curiae (05:02:52) :
but thats ok, WE have the power of the VOTE and a lot of very angry people will be using that power!”
Only if they can be bothered to step out of the pub on dole, errrmm…I mean polling day!
OT, but very interesting – something from Wales (that is odd enough in itself, of course): Light emitting wallpaper!
Forget AGW, but I’d buy this idea in a flash. The idea is great, seriously non-directional lighting is something people try to achieve all the time:
http://gnews.com/science/Light-Emitting-Wallpaper-Could-Replace-Bulbs-by-2020-3123053811919.html
I enjoyed Joe Bastardi’s comment from the European Blog: “Make no mistake about it, while I take stands on my ideas, I am skeptical about them and constantly questioning them until they can come true. But I don’t want these folks [Hadley Center-UK MET] to get away with this. I want them to come clean and admit they simply worship their model and that is what they went with, plus their incredible drumbeat of warmth. You have to understand the drumbeat from me, and I use my forecast to show what I know before hand, is that there is no controlling authority on the weather, and that PRIVATE SECTOR TYPES, BECAUSE OF COMPETITION, can do the job. Part of the rhetoric that comes out of academia and government climate agencies is that they want no other challenges.” (My emphasis, thanks to JuspPassing 02:31:23).
Anthony’s 30 mill record comes from the same excellence in product and free competition (and amazing inventiveness at his tasks –“puzzling things…and news”).
We are experiencing frightening times in both Europe/UK and the USA.
-Lithuania closing down a nuclear power station in the middle of winter (so they will be dependent on Russia)?? (Rossa 02:00:24)
-Refusal by an (illegitimate) government in the USA to act on the reality that we are at war with Islamic terrorists, including their willingness to put hundreds (Northwest Airlines- 290 on board) — and of course, by logical reasoning, thousands — of lives at risk of certain death.
-Cap-and-trade, for which the current (illegitimate) government’s bureacracy is continuing to prepare, was begun by a “legitimate” USA government — Republican presidency Bush/Cheney — supporting (in secret) the enormous scams of Kenneth Lay-Enron; enhancing the power of the Executive; and refusing to investigate an illegitimate challenger for the presidency.
-After 9/11 President Bush increased the bureacracy of the FBI-CIA instead of opening the reporting process to those in individual offices who were [successful at their government jobs] trying to report for MONTHS that the responsible Islamists were preparing for something dangerous and highly suspicious.
-Stacey (04:26:30) points out that the Ministry of Defence in the UK, responsible for the MET Office, is the same Ministry that could not supply its troops with the correct equipment, proper air transport and properly armoured vehicles.
This list could go on and on of elites in power being more than willing to endanger (sacrifice the well being, affluence, and the very lives of) their citizens. IMHO it is time for action, including proactive thinking to keep the internet free and to make blogs like WUWT more available (and income sustainable). Let this be our new MSM.
Bastardi’s forecast from July 15th makes interesting viewing:
AdderW (03:59:06) :
When it’s flooding, there’s often a drought somewhere else. Back in ’92, and in election campaigns in ’96 and ’98, I tried to get some interest in building pipelines from drought areas to flood areas, to ease pain, to save money (in the long run), and to create infrastructure projects, without success. I also invented a small solar-powered desalinator (for slightly saline, freshwater creeks and the like) but could never get anyone else interested in developing it.
Most of the proposals for desalination plants in Australia I’ve seen involve expensive, high-energy solutions whereas I favour less expensive, low-tech solutions (using tidal power for pumping, for instance, and solar-powered evaporation).
In any event, our politicians, generally, prefer bureaucratic arse-covering afterwards to prudent planning beforehand.
One thing to point out is that the map is not a map of temperatures. It is an anomaly map.
Second – yesterday at dawn the temp was 2F in my neck of the woods (about 90 mi west of Chicago).
Well this is purely subjective but I spent the most part of Christmas in the peak district in Derbyshire, around Matlock, visited Arkwright’s mills (where global warming began in 1776) then onto Buxton and further on to the 2nd highest public house in the UK (The Cat and Fiddle, which has a jolly good restaurant) At that altitude it was subzero of course, so one could see nothing but snow for miles, tho even at lower altitudes in Derbyshire it was still in the -C. Yet in nottinghamshire on the same day – a much flatter county – it was an average 2-3C with barely any snow left during the 28th December – the freeze during the prior week was snow covered.
Even in Derbyshire on the 28th, not all was snow and ice – there were intermittent patches of global warming around Matlock and Cromford
Predicting the weather by reading entrails is more accurate and predictable than what the MET is doing
It’s a good time for the AGW people to save on the electric and NG bills, set your temp at 50 or so to save energy and CO2. Please do so that I may keep mine at 73 and keep warm.
Plato Says (03:26:16) :
Is it true or an urban myth that the Met Office is as accurate as assuming the weather will be the same as it was the day before?
Actually sometimes they are worse. They boast that their next-year forecast of the Worlds temperature is on average only 0.06 degrees off. I checked what the average error is if you assume that the temperature each year will be the same as the previous year. Answer: 0.053 degrees.
Gregg E. (00:24:25) send some of that snow east we have the cold no snow though. I live in Shelley and we have a little snow hopefully a few inches more today.
Deadman (06:54:01) : Unbelievable!!!!, so this in one more confirmation of greek cabala (from “caballus”, not from khabbala)☺
The youtube video above of Joe Bastardi was very spot on.
@ realitycheck (03:12:21) :
There have only been 2 Januarys in which the AO has got this negative or stronger – one was 1977 and the other was 1985. Now 1985 was actually a La Nina, but 1977 was an El Nino (like present). Anyone remember JAN-MAR 1977? I am too young, but I can look it up here http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/usclimdivs/ and it looks a tad chilly…
I remember the winter of ’77 and it got so cold we were off school for a week. Well, maybe not that long, but it was more than one day…I was in 4th or 5th grade. I remember my mother almost having a nervous breakdown because it was too cold for us to go out and play and we had to stay inside. A pipe burst in the kitchen and flooded the first floor. My dad was at work and my brother, who was about 12 at the time, had to try to fix it. All in all, not good! 🙂
Kevin (00:41:45) :
Nah. Let’s crank it up to 11. 10 isn’t high enough. (Spinal Tap reference)
Bill Sticker (07:14:47) :
Bastardi’s forecast from July 15th makes interesting viewing:
Farmer’s Almanac does too:
The idea that voters will ‘feel the cold, see the light, and turn the tide’, so to speak, and put the MET Office and the AGW crowd out of business; keep the legal system from turning against reason, the constitution, and the majority; and elect representatives, MP’s, and senators with 2 or more brain cells, is as nieve as the aspirations of the Copenhagen Summit. But that’s the way people think the system works. So why argue about that AND the weather?
===
Steve in SC (05:30:22) :
OT just a little bit here.
Is everybody at AccuWeather named Joe?
I mean you have Joe Bastardi, Joe Sobel, Joe Mergo, Joe Zona and several others that I can’t think of right now.
===
I used to work at a plant in Grover’s Mill, NJ where a lot of the people had the first name ‘John’. They were pretty weird, too. I’d be suspicious if I were you.
realitycheck-
Interesting correlation-the winter of 1977 was the “winter of record” for the Ohio River Valley area and especially so for SE Ohio. IIRC, from mid-January onward for 45 days, the daily max was below freezing with nighttime minimums below zero F for about 50% of that time period. That winter was followed by the infamous Blizzard of ’78 which was, in the eastern “mid-west”, much more extreme than the “Storm of the Century” that hit the east central area in the early ’90’s.
twawki (02:15:33) : Tell your authorities to visit WUWT before making any decisions regarding weather…The no droughts forecast for australia has appeared many times here along this year.
JER0ME (07:10:49) : Surely that wallpaper is carcinogenic…because it is intended to “stop global warming” and what we need it is precisely WARM!
Whilst pointing out to someone that AGW may be tosh – I came across.
It describes the MWP in relation to wine growing in the UK and contains an ‘interesting’ temperature prediction/graphic on future wine variety cultivation 😀
http://www.winelandsofbritain.co.uk/book.htm
Doncha love Meacham, Oregon. In spite of predicted warmer than normal temps in the upper western part of the US, this little frigid place continues to set record cold temps. I hear the pregnancy rate is increasing however. So it’s warmer somewhere in that little hamlet.
STATION PREVIOUS NEW RECORDS
RECORD/YEAR RECORD BEGAN
MEACHAM, OR 8 / 1948 -3 1948
And California’s drought is likely over thanks to all the global warming falling across the state. The Sierra snowpack is increasing by the minute, and the weather satellites show wave after wave of storms lined up in the Pacific and headed our way.
See West ConUS, water vapor video at this link:
http://www.goes.noaa.gov/
LOVE Bastardi’s name….
His July forecast/interview posted above is pretty amazing. And I don’t think he is peer reviewed.
“There have only been 2 Januarys in which the AO has got this negative or stronger – one was 1977 and the other was 1985. Now 1985 was actually a La Nina, but 1977 was an El Nino (like present). Anyone remember JAN-MAR 1977? I am too young, but I can look it up here http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/usclimdivs/ and it looks a tad chilly…”
I was in New Jersey at the time and I do remember large snowfalls in 77. But I also remember that year was a humungous heat wave in July with temps 103-4+ for 3 or 4 days in a row. It was brutal.
Deadman,
Have a look at this link for interesting ideas on irrigating Australia. Scroll down to “Transfer of Fresh Water. ”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Paul_Pedrick
Since you ask, JonesII (07:33:44), cabal (clique, conspiracy) comes from the Latin Cabale, from the Hebrew Kabballah (tradition).
Caballus is a horse of another colour entirely, being Latin for nag.
If you want to posit, say, a warm-making clique of horses’ arses, the would be calefacta cabale culorum caballorum.
AdderW (06:31:06) :
TonyB (05:23:30) :
Its the time of year for a bit of frivolous fun. Those outside the UK may not know that anyone can put in a planning application for a site that they do not even own (although of course if they wanted to carry out any work following permission they would have to own the site)
The Met office is 15 miles away from me. They occupy a very large prime site on the edge of Exeter. For a £100 application fee we could apply for planning permission for anything on their ste. A supermarket. Pub. A comedy club. Furniture store. Research unit to examine global cooling. Religious centre.
Any suggestions?
The more satirical to the Met office ideals the better 🙂 (after all they cost us Brits Millions)
Tonyb
AdderW replied
“How about an ice skating arena – providing some cool breezes as well as heat (in the “right” direction)”
Nice idea AdderW-rather ironic-but would be very useful to Exeter. I dare say a planning application for this use would create a great deal of interest.
“The Anthony Watts or Steve Mcintyre ice skating arena-formerly the Met Office.”
It has a nice ring to it.
tonyb
TonyB (05:23:30) :
Its the time of year for a bit of frivolous fun. Those outside the UK may not
know that anyone can put in a planning application for a site that they do not
even own (although of course if they wanted to carry out any work following
permission they would have to own the site)
Eh, a coal fired power plant 😉
Pamela Gray (08:07:47) : That’s the inconvenient side of cooling: pregnacy.
Yes and Piers Corbyn forecasted it a month ago or so…
In Northern Colorado we have already had more snow and cold than we normally get in an entire winter.
Roger Sowell (08:16:37) :
I thank you for the link to a droll article. Are you suggesting thereby that it would not be cost-effective to transport water from flooded areas to drought-effected ones even though floods at times cause damages costing many millions of dollars and much heartache? Bear in mind that, here in Tasmania at least, some of those pipelines I suggest, would be little longer than some of those we already have as part of hydro-electric schemes.
Deadman (08:39:39) : With such a big costs it would be cheaper to irrigate with bottled water☺
Or to move all aussies to the amazon jungle.
wmsc
“a coal fired power station.”
Classic!
Tonyb
JonesII
ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/005/y2787e/y2787e08.pdf
Interesting document you quoted there, I have to study it in the detail. Initial impression is frequent quote of 55 year period.
I’ve just completed a graph with a similar 53.6 year sequence for CET summer/winter deviation.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-SW.gif
An immediate repeatable pattern is recognised in each block:
– 1 pre 1740 deviation is converging
– 2 diverging deviation (opposite)
– 3 converging deviation
– 4 equal deviation
– 5 diverging deviation (opposite)
– 6 equal deviation
formula from:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SSNAnomaly1.gif
This is could be one of the ‘known unknowns’, at least for time being.
JonesII (08:52:08) :
Which big costs? Also, we’re already fairly irrigated with expensive bottle water here.
Over here even the real-time data is wrong. My kitchen window thermometer (bad location with significant warm bias, maybe 1-2C too warm) now shows -19.5C and at the same time http://yr.no for my location says it is -10C. So I think they are 10C too warm right now. Like always when it is this cold, there is no wind at all.
yr.no is a cooperation between Met.no (our equivalent of UK Met Office) and NRK (our equivalent of the BBC).
vukcevic (08:58:04) : It seems that though that oscillation (LOD) it is near reality it also would oscillate within another one, or be modulated by your sun’s magnetic polar field strength oscillation.
@Deadman (08:39:39) :
“I thank you for the link to a droll article. Are you suggesting thereby that it would not be cost-effective to transport water from flooded areas to drought-effected ones even though floods at times cause damages costing many millions of dollars and much heartache? Bear in mind that, here in Tasmania at least, some of those pipelines I suggest, would be little longer than some of those we already have as part of hydro-electric schemes.”
Quite the contrary. In fact, our ideas coincide. see link to my article:
http://energyguysmusings.blogspot.com/2009/02/wind-water-farms-and-power-generation.html
I heard that the Met Office over in England has a new chief: http://tinyurl.com/yax88pm
Is this true?
Where’s Canada?
REPLY:Being a US government service, NOAA does not cover Canada
Deadman (09:02:12) :
This is really funny, I’ve just found the following in the web:
ALGOR MORTIS = “The cold of death”☺
The Gore effect decoded!
M.A.DeLuca (07:52:18) :
===
“Steve in SC (05:30:22) :
OT just a little bit here.
Is everybody at AccuWeather named Joe?
I mean you have Joe Bastardi, Joe Sobel, Joe Mergo, Joe Zona and several others that I can’t think of right now.
===
I used to work at a plant in Grover’s Mill, NJ where a lot of the people had the first name ‘John’. They were pretty weird, too. I’d be suspicious if I were you.”
I went for a beer once in a pub at home. There were 6 other guys in there at the time and they were all called Jimmy.
@ TonyB (05:23:30) :
A casino with attached Lido/Ice rink?
Good thing we’ve got Global Warming going for us, or else it would be MOST EXTREMELY COLD!!!! (Ahem…) Dear Friends, the Great Plan is to return us to the status of SERFS. Your politicians will not save you. Your churchmen (churchpersons?) will not save you. Take a good look in the mirror, because that’s from where your help will come. Bless you all!
Carsten Arnholm, Norway (09:02:19) :
“My kitchen window thermometer (bad location with significant warm bias, maybe 1-2C too warm) now shows -19.5C and at the same time http://yr.no for my location says it is -10C. So I think they are 10C too warm right now. Like always when it is this cold, there is no wind at all.”
That’s inversion. Forecasts fail to model temperatures in any detail in rugged terrain when inversion sets in. Temperatures can easily be 20C off. Living a bit uphill I have fairly balmy conditions outside with a temperature of -7C right now, but a station a few km away near a lake currently reports -20C. Here there also is a slight breeze, but I bet it’s dead calm at that lake.
*******
wws (06:23:33) :
Regarding rainfall in Sydney – I just looked up the stats which say that Sydney gets 1217 mm ( 48 in.) yearly. Looks like 2009 was lower than average, with about 37 in (968 mm) falling. So they didn’t count on that.
Still, in any objective sense, that’s a huge amount of water and most of it must be getting wasted. With 40 in. of yearly rain almost anywhere in Texas every river and creek is full and every lake is overflowing, and there are a lot of lakes, almost all man made. Anything west of Dallas would have massive flooding with that much rain, only Houston and areas close to the coast get more rain than that. And Phoenix, Az, survives quite well on only 10 in. of rain a year, never gets more.
So for any modern city to get 40 in of rain and wail about a drought – somebody’s treating their resources like they were still hunter gatherers. Time to do a little bit of strategic planning and construction there, just a thought.
*********
It depends on temp & the resulting evaporation rate. While 40″ avg here in w MD keeps the soil plenty moist, the same amount in say, south Florida would lead to drought. Boreal forests grow amid soggy marshes in N Canada w/only 5-10″ precip, while 30″ in central Texas can support only grasslands (other than on floodplains).
“Deadman (08:39:39) :
[…]
Are you suggesting thereby that it would not be cost-effective to transport water from flooded areas to drought-effected ones even though floods at times cause damages costing many millions of dollars and much heartache? Bear in mind that, here in Tasmania at least, some of those pipelines I suggest, would be little longer than some of those we already have as part of hydro-electric schemes.”
Nah, can’t work. Didn’t work for the Romans either. Look at what they did. A few hundred years after starting to build aquaeducts they were so heavily indebted that they had to sell their entire empire to the Germans. IIRC 😉
Don’t worry, Al Gore will soon to announce that the United States under his direction and scientific acumen has quilted a giant blanket to cover the hemisphere just in case errors to his extensive calculations are temporarily “Challenged” by actual climate activity.
TonyB (05:23:30)
My entry:
The BBC (Bye Bye Credibility) Hotsprings and Spa.
Doug Arthur (09:20:36) :
It’s that big block of ice just north of the USA
Deadman,
Wish I had a permalink you your reply. That is pretty good. Al Gore has the best name since Mike Dukakis of kakistocracy 🙂
Carsten Arnholm: About yr.no: The observations from today are here: http://www.yr.no/observasjonar/
The extreme local variations during weather like this just reminds us what an absolutely impossible concept “world mean surface temperature” is (Sea and upper troposphere temperatures are different, though). The closest observation to where I live is Asker, but it was probably 8-10 C warmer today.
For the Aussies, there is this piece from The Register:
SGI inks deal for Tasmanian cluster
‘Cluster-what‘ is up to you
Supercomputer maker Silicon Graphics has inked a deal to build the Tasmanian Partnership for Advanced Computing – which has the rap name TPAC – at the University of Tasmania on the eponymous Australian island state. The gig: creating a new x64-Linux cluster for climate research.
The TPAC facility is a partnership between the University of Tasmania, CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, the Australian Antarctic Division, Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre, Bureau of Meteorology Research Centre, and the Australian Maritime College. […tech stuff…]
…
By the way, TPAC is run by Nathan Bindoff, a professor of physical oceanography at UTAS, who was one of the handful of scientists who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with former US vice president Al Gore for their collective efforts to get the world to deal with climate change.
Read the article. Turns out if they had just waited a bit they could have saved some money (and to us ordinary peons that’s a whole freaking lot of money). Is someone trying to get in whatever they can before the gig is up?
I’m not feeling smug about this, nor am I gloating – but I knew this cold was coming.
How did I know, not being a meteorologist, nor working at the MetOffice?
Simple: the rowan berries, the rosehips and the berries on the cotoneaster hedge had gone by October – very fast indeed.
‘Old wives’ tales’ have it that this is a sign of a very cold winter, the birds eating as much as they possibly can before it sets in.
As has been mentioned here before: good observation of events in the natural environment, and a memory going back for some decades, together with a willingness to listen to old people who have seen it all before will beat those who rely on computer models before anything else.
Still – could’ve done without this cold weather!
And how about the fact that our winter was 2 months late in coming where I live in Bulgaria and it didnt arrive untll late December? Last time I checked, Bulgaria is in the northern hemisphere. And surprise surprise but for the last 3 days we have had record HIGH temperatures here. This has been yet ANOTHER very mild and warm winter so far. The 3 or 4th in a row. A few extra cold days? I will believe them when I experience them.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/dailypolitics/andrewneil/2009/12/its_going_to_be_a_cold_2010.html#P90364206
😀
This deserves to be repeated; a result of the “Law of Unintended Consequences” vis-à-vis AGW-driven long range forecasts which others base material, substantive decisions on (like PLANNING for winter events!).
We have press reports here in the US about NE (northeastern) states who have already exhausted (busted) their ‘snow’ (street clearing) budgets on account of the storm that moved through around Christmas!
.
.
@ MikeinAppalachia (08:00:18) :
realitycheck-
Interesting correlation-the winter of 1977 was the “winter of record” for the Ohio River Valley area and especially so for SE Ohio. IIRC, from mid-January onward for 45 days, the daily max was below freezing with nighttime minimums below zero F for about 50% of that time period.
I didn’t know that. No wonder I remember it being so cold. Kids don’t feel the cold the way adults do, so to remember that it must have been freezing.
Even my kids have been complaining about how cold it’s been (even my daughter who tries to leave the house in flip flops)–they’ve never been through a good old, 70’s type winter. I feel like an old timer when I tell them, “I remember when…”
“TonyB (05:23:30) :
Its the time of year for a bit of frivolous fun. Those outside the UK may not
know that anyone can put in a planning application for a site that they do not
even own (although of course if they wanted to carry out any work following
permission they would have to own the site)”
A prison?
A new religious order retreat? Same thing, perhaps.
http://globalfreeze.wordpress.com/2009/12/28/india-it-could-turn-out-to-be-the-coldest-calcutta-winter-ever-%e2%80%9d/
Record cold India and of course we have been following records in Europe.
Joe Romm is blowing a gasket.
Maybe I am dense but for me this map is a warm up.
In Guilford NY it has been cold lately with highs in the lower teens and lows below zero, more like January weather than December.
The weather report says the same thing, warming up to highs of 30 and lows in the twenties.
Here’s a hint for you that animals are pretty good weather pattern sensors. In the past 5 years, Canadian Moose have been moving SOUTH! We now have a small herd in the Wallowa Mountains in NE Oregon.
JonesII (09:21:29) :
So there is no cure for the AlGor Effect. The reduction in temperature with his appearance means that heat is escaping due to the expiration of the warranty.
Met Office said winter would be milder than average, but there was a 1 in 7 chance of it being colder than average. This is called having your cake and eating it. Also in The Scotsman (Edinburgh, Scotland) their editorial said the cold weather did not invalidate global warming. Well, guys, it sort of does because you see we take an average and if it isn’t getting any higher then there is no global warming. These guys see AGW as a philosophical construct. Scotland is really being blasted this winter. You might think it is a cold place but winters are not usually that severe due to the maritime influence. But year it has snowed and snowed. Temps of -16 C in the Highlands and that is cold for us. Never seen a winter like it in my 62 years and this is only December. The clown Salmond (First Minister) is still banging on about renewable energy since the wicked fossil fuels will cause warming. Could do with some. It is really bad here. Three years ago the newspapers carried stories about skiing in Scotland being a distant memory. Guess what? We have had three splendid skiing seasons since then.
Moose
http://www.wallowacountychieftain.info/main.asp?SectionID=31&SubSectionID=101&ArticleID=16792&TM=47695.89
The winter of 1976-77 was a total drought in the West with severe cold storms in the East. That has not happened this year. Pattern doesn’t match.
This does not compute. Error.
Thanks! (strange, I was considering to drop you an email on the issue!) It is understandable that forecasts are problematic under these conditions. But if one can’t get the current temperature right within 10C (or even 20C as you suggest), there is no point in trying to estimate it, IMHO. It would then be better to just report whatever actual observations that exist, even though they may represent only a subset of locations.
Bad data is worse than no data.
Unprecedented!
“Bridget H-S (10:10:08) :
Its the time of year for a bit of frivolous fun. Those outside the UK may not
know that anyone can put in a planning application for a site that they do not
even own (although of course if they wanted to carry out any work following
permission they would have to own the site)”
Cultist Deprogramming Therapy Clinic.
ALGOR MORTIS = “The cold of death”☺
The Gore effect decoded
Cracks me up.
realitycheck (03:12:21) :
Hmm, for some reason I recall feeling sorry for the Ohio cold weather disaster the year before the bicentennial, but the climate page makes it clear it was 76/77. 77/78 was also cold, but more so to the west
I grew up in Ohio, and was in Pittsburgh PA from 1968-1974 in school and work, but lived in Massachusetts from 1974-1978.
76/77:
Between the coal barges being frozen in place on the Ohio River and a shortage of natural gas, schools and industry were forced to shutdown for a couple weeks.
An aside – The state had been leaning on the Amish community to send their children to proper state-run schools. The Amish schools stayed open with their wood stoves for heat and the state gave up in defeat and dealt with more serious issues that winter.
Time magazine has a good look at that winter, see http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,918620-1,00.html (Jan 31, 1977)
77/78:
New England wasn’t particularly cold, but there were three major snow storms that season:
Jan 20: a new 24 hour record for snow in Boston, 25.1″.
Jan 26: rain in New England, “The Blizzard of ’78” for much of the midwest. Cleveland recorded it lowest ever barometric pressure.
Feb 6/7: Boston records for 24 hours (23.6″), single storm (27.5″), and total snow depth (29.0″). Oops – I have a mistake there, either one of those 24 hour records is wrong, or my memory of a record set in January being broken in February is srong. At any rate, this is the “Blizzard of ’78” for southern new England, and is referred to in a current local coffee commercial.
See http://wermenh.com/blizz78.html and http://wermenh.com/blizz78a.html (I posted those recently on another thread too).
Carsten Arnholm, Norway (10:26:49) :
” IMHO. It would then be better to just report whatever actual observations that exist, even though they may represent only a subset of locations.”
The trouble is that there aren’t that many stations which have existed in the same location for a long time. Often they move a few km, which especially during winter may make a huge difference. If climate researchers only base their work on whatever actual observations that exist, they don’t have much to work on. So they extend the series by homogenisation, i.e. modelling/guessing what the temperature would have been in locations where no observations were made. An example of this by our met office is Svalbard lufthavn, a very important station for studying climate change in the arctic. From 1912 to 1975 the temperature at this place near the sea which not unfrequently remains open during the winter has been reconstructed using observations from a valley some km away, or from observations tens of km away, or simply interpolated for years with no data within a few 100 km. Voila, you’ve got 100 years worth of data for a single location and you can plot nice, continuous graphs.
“We are not sure” is science that is difficult to publish, nor does it attract mush interest, so if the data for getting useful results are missing, they model them.
TonyB
I vote we turn Hadley into either A) a sauna or B) an ice rink.
OMG [snip] Blue Peter was right and the Ice Age is coming!
Plamen Petkov,
“And how about the fact that our winter was 2 months late in coming where I live in Bulgaria and it didnt arrive untll late December? Last time I checked, Bulgaria is in the northern hemisphere. And surprise surprise but for the last 3 days we have had record HIGH temperatures here.”
You may be unaware, but North America is bigger than Bulgaria. Much, much bigger.
JonesII (09:14:25) :
“vukcevic (08:58:04) : It seems that though that oscillation (LOD) it is near reality it also would oscillate within another one, or be modulated by your sun’s magnetic polar field strength oscillation.”
LOD may be related to the E’s core responding somewhat differently due to viscous separation from the solid crust. GMF is probable generated somewhere nearby so the variance of both is a manifestations of the same excitation.
The formula here
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-SW.gif
is preceding solar by 16 years (but could be a few more or less), i.e. the s/w deviation may be driven by the E’s magnetic (via GCR regulating precipitations over Central Siberia), which precedes the solar by about 30-40. The E’s and S’s magnetic events could be linked, as is suggested here:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SSN-GMF.gif
Now, if that is confusing time line would be:
– External force applied
– GMF & LOD respond simultaneously at time T
– Solar at T + 35/40 years (inertia of much greater mass)
– Precipitations at T (controlled by GCR via GMF)
– Artic and Atlantic currents (controlled by the Siberian precipitations affecting Arctic Ocean salinity) regulate AMO at T+16 (+ – 3 to 4) years
– CET summer/winter temps respond to AMO also at T+16
Hence SSN, LOD, GMF, GCR, AMO & CET correlation.
Off course all events have built-in inertia (with a bit of random noise thrown in, local elements, etc.), which cannot be precisely defined, as the celestial mechanics ‘the mother of all natural oscillations’ can.
Just a hypothesis, but feel free to take note of (or maybe I need a rest).
!?
I was fortunate? to grow up in northern Alberta during the 1950’s where it was really cold; one of my earliest memories is my father lighting a fire under the outside propane tank to thaw it out so we could have heat in the poorly heated cabin we were living in while the town of Hinton was being built. It seemed natural to me that if you left water in a glass on the kitchen table and it was frozen solid by morning. As propane boils at -44 C, the temperature outside must have been lower much of that winter.
When I lived in Calgary it seemed normal to walk 3 miles to and from school in -40 C weather and no-one seemed to complain much about the cold as natural gas was really cheap in the early 1970’s. When I finally did get fed up with the weather was in January of 1979 when Ottawa had a few weeks of freezing rain which made it very difficult to walk and cross country skiing (my main way of getting around in the winter) was impossible. That’s when I moved to Vancouver and realized how subjective peoples opinions are on how cold it is outside During the winter of 1984/1985 I remember waiting for a bus in Vancouver when it was -15 C and I had dressed appropriately but everyone I ran into seemed to be traumatized by this degree of cold in what is supposed to be a non-Canadian climate during the winter. The first few places we lived in Vancouver seemed very cold during the winter and I suspect that insulation was a foreign concept to Vancouver builders.
I suspect that people who grew up during times with mild winters will be much more affected by the cold during the times that we get severe winters. What has stuck me about my notes of those early years is that I only kept track of when the first snow fell and stayed (a reason to celebrate as it meant I would be able to cross country ski/snowshoe) and very rarely did I make any mention of how cold it was as I had good parkas and gloves. Now my only concern about how cold it’s going to get in Kamloops is whether my fruit trees are going to survive the winter.
Ric Werme (10:58:13) :
The high pressure system sat over the Western US for months on end in 76-77 and the storms went ‘over the top’, passing far to the north into BC.
At this point in time in 76, the West was dryer than popcorn.
The winter in the Eastern US in 76-77 was the basis for Leanord Nimoy’s “In Search of the Coming Ice Age”. The previous winter (75-76) was dry, but not anwhere near as bad as 76-77.
By Sept. 77 the reservoirs across the West (Ca, Ore, Wa) were nearly empty.
Nobody hit the Panic Button and the winter of 77-78 hit and filled them back up.
I was in the central Mother Lode of Ca. at the time. We had an October 76 rain downpour lasting 1 or 2 days, and the system then went into total shutdown.
The current situation does not resemble that of 76-77 by any means.
Neither in winter climate nor solar activity preceeding.
Well as a west side resident i am happy to say i know where my sunglasses are.
By the way the title of this thread says “Northern hemisphere”; what does Europe and Asia look like? Are they in for a 25 year cold snap as well or is the “Northern Hemisphere” claim a stretch?
TonyB (05:23:30) :
Its the time of year for a bit of frivolous fun. Those outside the UK may not know that anyone can put in a planning application for a site that they do not even own (although of course if they wanted to carry out any work following permission they would have to own the site)
The Met office is 15 miles away from me. They occupy a very large prime site on the edge of Exeter. For a £100 application fee we could apply for planning permission for anything on their ste. A supermarket. Pub. A comedy club. Furniture store. Research unit to examine global cooling. Religious centre.
Any suggestions?
The more satirical to the Met office ideals the better 🙂 (after all they cost us Brits Millions)
Tony,
How about a center for the study of Alchemy, Astrology and Fortune Telling? They could share duties with what should replace the CRU and would be of much greater benefit to civilization than what they do now.
Thanks for the many suggestions for alternative uses for the Met office site
(See my 05 23 30)
Clear favourite so far is an ice rink which has a beautiful irony as far as I’m concerned and would also be wildly popular in Exeter.
However, I must admit a sneaking desire to go with the suggestion of a coal fired power station, if only because that would annoy so very many people who deserve to be annoyed. The Monbiot coal fired power station?
Tonyb
@ Boris Gimbarzevsky (11:25:02) :
Your father lit a fire under a propane tank?
…
I have read it is possible to draw off the propane fast enough that a tank will “freeze up” (specifically with a blacksmith’s gas forge). For that it is recommended to place the tank in a tub, use warm water.
But directly heating a metal pressurized propane tank, with fire?
The thought makes my brain freeze up.
Pamela, are you sure they’re Canadian moose? Maybe they’re American moose that are lost… do they have a Canadian flag stitched onto their backpacks?
Most moose I encounter have no passports, and with the latest border crossing rules that is a no-no.
Or they could be Mexican moose…
Anyway, if they’re Canadian, they’re probably after your beer.
TonyB (11:58:50) : Another good idea was that of a prison…but keeping the employees in it. It will be easier just to build an iron cage around.
Joe Bastardi has some interesting vids too
http://www.accuweather.com/video-on-demand.asp?channel=VBLOG_BASTARDI&title=Joe%20%20Bastardi
Yeah, no-passport-moose, on the loose.
How does a moose with no passport get on a plane anyway?
The antlers, for a start…
This vid from AccuWeather with Joe Bastardi illustrates cold throughout Europe and Asia.
Looks like the entire NH will be cold.
http://www.accuweather.com/video-on-demand.asp?video=44795589001&title=Bachman%20Turner%20Overdrive:%20%20Winter:%20You%20Ain%27t%20Seen%20Nothing%20Yet
Grover’s Mills, NJ? Cue the X-Files music.
(It was where the Martians landed in Orson Wells’s radio drama.)
What is cold in the US? As far as I’m concerned, anything below 60F is cold; too bad for me I live in Indiana and not San Diego. I hope we don’t get any snow to go along with the cold; I don’t think I could stand being stuck inside with the kids for a week out of school, the way my mom was stuck with us for the blizzard of ’78. And it is too hard to run outside when it drops below 10F or so. I for one don’t understand how all the AGW believers could possibly complain about warmer weather. I am more than ready to sacrifice the Maldives in exchange for Indianapolis never dropping below freezing.
Snow years in the UK from 1616.
http://www.netweather.tv/index.cgi?action=other;type=winthist;sess=
It looks like Harry Reid had better schedule the Senate Cap and Trade legislation during the dog days of summer in DC. It would seem foolish to debate a carbon tax at the same time the country’s citizens are paying their sky high winter heating bills.
JonesII (12:13:11) :
TonyB (11:58:50) : Another good idea was that of a prison…but keeping the employees in it. It will be easier just to build an iron cage around.
A cage of cold iron to trap the demonic weather wizards?
Glad I listened to them a couple of months ago. I heat with wood pellets with gas fired circulating hw as a backup. Basically I want off the grid. I had ordered 3 tons of pellets thinking that the El Nino would result in a warm winter. These guys came out and said, no way, its going to be cold. These are the guys who the commodity traders use. If they get it wrong they get fired. If Gore and Hansen get it wrong, they just give more speeches to the gullible. I put in a second order for another 3 tons. So far I have gone through about 1 ton and we had a warm november.
Roger Sowell (09:18:06):
I thank you, and bookmark you.
“Roger Knights (12:39:52) :
M.A.DeLuca (07:52:18) :
===
Steve in SC (05:30:22) :
OT just a little bit here.
Is everybody at AccuWeather named Joe?
I mean you have Joe Bastardi, Joe Sobel, Joe Mergo, Joe Zona and several others that I can’t think of right now.
===
I used to work at a plant in Grover’s Mill, NJ where a lot of the people had the first name ‘John’. They were pretty weird, too. I’d be suspicious if I were you.
Grover’s Mills, NJ? Cue the X-Files music.
(It was where the Martians landed in Orson Wells’s radio drama.)”
——-
——-
——-
Unless I am greatly mistaken, M.A.DeLuca was making a reference to the cult classic B-movie “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension”. A bunch of aliens were named John, and were in Grover’s Mill, NJ, hence M.A.DeLuca’s reference.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Buckaroo_Banzai_Across_the_8th_Dimension
Quote from the movie: “Wherever you go, there you are.” It has a few recognizable names, but surely did not win any awards. Which perhaps explains why I enjoyed it! Great fun if you care for that sort of thing.
ShrNfr (12:50:43) : So you paid a higher price for your second order…
TonyB:
The Church of Global Warming
Reflecting on his disappointment with Stalin’s communism he experienced in Russia in the 1940s, Julian Huxley wrote in his memoirs:
“Marxist-Leninism had become a dogmatic religion… and like all dogmatic religions, it turned from reform to persecution.”
Now replace Marxist-Leninism with environmentalism and you’ll get my diappointment with the green movement changing their focus from important causes to grandiose madness.
“disappointment” of course!
realitycheck asked if anybody remembers January to March 1977. I do. I lived in New York City and it was so bitterly cold that the Hudson River froze shore to shore — very unusual, at least nowadays. The subsequent winter of 1977/1978 was also exceptionally cold, at least in New York State.
Here’s a link to an igloo-building kit, the Eskimold, just reviewed on Cool Tools. It’s a mold for snow that produces curved, mating blocks, making it better than other kits. Fun for kids. $22.
http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/004129.php
I don’t know if this counts as an increase in sea ice extent, but the third picture in this series shows ice on Loch Dunvegan, Isle of Skye. Loch Dunvegan is a sea loch, although this picture was probably taken at the head of the loch. But interesting none the less.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/8435387.stm
I guess the rest of the pictures show how little snow we have had in recent years as this is exceptional!!
@Dan Murphy:
Here’s a quote from your Wikipedia link:
So DeLuca’s reference was ultimately based on the Well’s story.
I agree that the winter of 1976-77 was different. The Ridge in California set up and expanded north and hardly ever seemed to budge. Besides the bad drought out west, I think warmth flowed up the west side of the ridge and it was quite warm up in Alaska. However a steady flow of arctic air came down the east side of the ridge and I hardly remember it ever relenting in Maine from October onwards. The ocean harbors were icing over in December and people began daring to walk on the ice on the edges of Casco Bay by the first of January.
The old-timers were very sure that winter was going to be a bad one, as early as October. Clam-diggers and Lobstermen, they spent a lot of time outdoors and had keen powers of observation. I recall one fellow pointing out the way smoke sank from chimneys in the wind, and telling that when you saw that often in the fall the winter would be bad. However the most humorous omen involved the sign outside of L.L.Beane, which was still fairly small back then.
Yuppies had discovered L.L.Beane, but it still largely outfitted hunters and fishermen, and it still operated out of a single store in the center of Freeport. Around the start of November a large snowy owl flew up and landed on their sign, and stayed there all of a morning, resulting in many photographs and great advertizing for L.L.Beane. After that everyone was sure it was going to be a hard winter for Lobstermen and Clam-diggers, and a good one for L.L.Beane.
The pattern seems quite different this year. The southern stream (caused by the El Nino?) seems stronger. Not only does it pump energy into these big blizzards which head north and stall, but also it sends these sort of bowling-ball storms that head east out to sea and just keep going and going.
One interesting thing to watch is the storms that bowl across southern Europe. They seem to persist, at least as upper air impulses, all the way to India. In western India it is usually getting pretty dry by now. In fact a rain in October is called an “Elephant Monsoon” and deemed a blessing. Rain after that is very rare. However there may be rain in the Western Ghats this week as a couple of these upper air waves move over. It sounds pretty impressive when you say the rain will be over 600% of normal….until you realize that is around a half inch. Still, it will be a blessing to the farmers.
I can only conclude that winters are as different as snowflakes, and this one will have a character all its own.
PS: You can also use the Eskimold to make a large, topless, circular, wind-protected shelter with a firepit,
PPS: Or an ice-fishing shack that doesn’t need to be demolished or dragged away. (Drag the blocks to the site on a piece of plywood.)
I heard about the expected rain in India at Jim Andrews’ blog-site on “Accuweather Professional.”
Just want to give credit where credit is due.
Roger Knights,
Yes, I agree that the original spark to that comment came from the War of the Worlds broadcast. But I believe that M.A.DeLuca’s comment had to do with the movie.
Not totally off topic, new post up here on WUWT regarding an expected volcano eruption in the Philippines. At this point, I think we probably have enough cold to win the argument, battle and war. If the eruption is very large, and emits very large amounts of SO2, then we might just all wish global warming was real.
Tony B,
I live nearby and have visited Exeter and the Met O. many, many times. I have never heard anyone complain about it. You really should not give such a false impression because the reality is The Met Office is a popular addition to the Exeter area and economy. Get yourself up there sometime and check out the brilliant meteorology library.
As to you frivolous time wasting planning application idea, I hope anyone wasting local authority employees and our taxes on such things would face a hefty bill from the local authority for wasting their time. More likely they’ll just bin such nonsenses.
Re: Caleb (14:21:42) :
Can’t say as I recall a drought here in Colorado in those years. But I sure remember this:
http://www.super70s.com/Super70s/Tech/Nature/Disasters/Floods/76July31-Big_Thompson.asp
For first-hand accounts of the floods, read below the NOAA story. This was a popular canyon for tourists, and I hiked there weekends as a college student. We would ford the Big Thompson near the mouth to get to the north side, where we’d climb.
@Tonyb
You know, you could combine the three proposals, the ice rink, the prison and the coal power plant and produce carbonite (Star Wars). A lot of useful applications in one basket.
That is not correct. Or you have a selective memory. You had a cold winter last year, in 2008. Record-Low Temperatures Kill One More in Bulgaria
Sorry, wrong link to the cold spell in Bulgaria in 2008.
I just realized… I’ve become my own definition (from younger days) of an “old guy”… I’m not only talking about weather, but recalling specific years.
Ouch.
Patrick Davis.
I agree the weather is not unusual, it’s just that it has happened a month or so earlier than what you would normally expect. I’m told the 1851 fires were the worst in recorded history: there were no fallen power lines to start that one. Also, many are started naturally by lightning strike, and others by humans, accidental or deliberate. Many houses surrounded by vegetation, survived February’s bushfires, others in cleared areas were destroyed. Clearing vegetation around your house, while certainly a wise move, is no guarantee your property is protected. Again, some who ignored the rules and cleared bush around their houses still had property destroyed. And yes, I knew you meant 2009.
Roger Carr,
Yes, a lot of rain has fallen in the Murray Darling basin, hopefully there will be good follow up rains. Weather the water makes it all the way downstream depends on how many farmers want to use their full water allocation. Rain in the desert is fine but nobody grows crops there. Melbourne’s catchments did have good rains in October, but a few more heavy downpours would not go astray. If we get good rains over the next two years I’d say the drought would be broken. We’ll see!!!!
Patrick,
The simple answer to water supply problems is to recycle: no need for new dams and catchments. Unfortunately the population is against drinking recycled water. In Melbourne, a large part of suburbia is supplied with water drawn from contaminated sources, and treated to potable standard. What you don’t know doesn’t hurt you.
Amicus curiae
Again clearing of vegetation is no guarantee against bushfires. But better regulations in regard to building material, allotment sizes and location of houses would be a good start.
Les Francis,
The desal plant is budgeted to cost $5.7billion, to build and operate for 30 years, supplying 150Gl of water per year. I’m not sure what river has more water than it can handle, but the issue of water across state boundaries is a contentious one. Piping water from one area to another is only robbing Peter to pay Paul, and you still have the issue of storage prior to transfer.
Tty
I’m all for intelligent informed debate but I’ll answer your question anyway.
As for drought, it pays to read to whole statement, in particular the sixth paragraph.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/drought/drought.shtml
As for the last 40,000 years, I wouldn’t have a clue. Obviously you go back a little further than me. Suffice to say it will always burn, the question is will it be worse than last year.
Peter
For heavens sake read the original post and lighten up- it was a joke on the last couple of days of the old year.
Yes of course I have been to the met office many times on official business as I did on a professional basis when they were in Bracknell.
tonyb
Check these forecasts for AO for January 2010, almost -6 and we all thought that -4 was a record low during December 2009. Joe Bastardi is right on with his forecast.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/ao_index_mrf.shtml
Here in sub-tropical Brisbane it has been a cool (for Brisbane, not for Minnesota) Xmas. For the last couple of weeks we seem to have had heavy rain every day.
A few years ago we were desperate for water. Heavy water restrictions were in place. (No washing cars or peeing allowed.)
vukcevic (08:58:04) : Thanks Vuk!. After your kind response I´ve been thinking what a good proxy fish catches are, fishes are better thermometers..and they do not lie as humans do. Along SA west coasts, when anchovy reappears, surfaces, it is because the cold, South-North-West, Humbold´s current surfaces too and El Nino takes vacations.
Mike Bryant (04:59:15) : “Too bad that most of our scientists and government agencies already have complete understanding of climate from the surface of the sun all the way to the central core of our dear earth.”
Which are both at millions of degrees, according to Big Algor.
They know it all. If you don’t believe it, just ask ’em:
“NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Earth’s environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and conserves and manages our coastal and marine resources.” –NOAA
All hail, great and powerful NOAA, awesome in thy self-proclaimed might and wisdom! May thine excellence draw the gaze of all the gods, that they may marvel at thy claims of all-knowingness and honor thee with their full attention…
“Unfortunately the population is against drinking recycled water. In Melbourne, a large part of suburbia is supplied with water drawn from contaminated sources, and treated to potable standard. What you don’t know doesn’t hurt you.”
ShaneofMelbourne
All water is recycled. There isn’t any which hasn’t been everywhere during the course of the planet’s history. Which is why there’s a common saying that when you drink a glass of water in London, the water has already passed through several pairs of kidneys, so it must be pretty pure…
The UK Met Office have lost the plot.
Their forecasts of seasonal weather have been rubbish for the last 3 years and even the 3 day forecast is so inaccurate that if you take the opposite of what they say, your more likely to be right.
The MOD have withdrawn funding and It’s time the place was shut down to save the tax payer some money. Science and politics are a recipe for disaster.
The Jewish people as a whole will become its own Messiah. It will attain world dominion by the dissolution of other races, by the abolition of frontiers, the annihilation of monarchy and by the establishment of a world republic in which the Jews will everywhere exercise the privilege of citizenship.
In this New World Order the children of Israel will furnish all the leaders without encountering opposition. The Governments of the different peoples forming the world republic will fall without difficulty into the hands of the Jews. It will then be possible for the Jewish rulers to abolish private property and everywhere to make use of the resources of the state. Thus will the promise of the Talmud be fulfilled, in which is said that when the Messianic time is come, the Jews will have all the property of the whole world in their hands.”
— Baruch Levy, Letter to Karl Marx, ‘La Revue de Paris’, p.574, June 1, 1928
REPLY: OK this being historical, I’ll leave it, but let’s steer away from any further religious discussions please – Anthony
Peter Hearnden (15:15:47) : “I live nearby and have visited Exeter and the Met O. many, many times….The Met Office is a popular addition to the Exeter area and economy….”
Yes, I agree, Peter. Your proposal for converting the Exeter Met Office into the All-Britain Humorless Twit Museum and Waxworks is a splendid and timely one. I shall pass it along, as you suggest, to the local authorities.
Dodgy
All water is recycled………I can’t disagree with that. And I’m sure London’s water is as good as it gets, I did work for Thames Water here for a number of years!!!!
In Melbourne the Eastern Treatment Plant discharges 370ML of water daily into the sea. This water, with additional treatment, could easily be reintroduced into the reticulation system. The new Desal plant about 30km from the ETP discharge point, will take sea water and treat it for consumption at a far greater cost than upgrading the ETP.
A few years ago, the population of the Queensland town of Toowoomba voted against the recycling of treated water for consumption despite a dire shortage of water. It appears to be the Aussie mindset.
I would hazard a guess and say that using treated recycled water for human consumption is political suicide.
[learn to post links, it’s not really that hard ~ ctm]
Mihail (17:23:42) :
Anthony and mods, I may be wrong, but that post I am referring to sounds an awful lot like skinhead propaganda. Your site, so leave the post up if you wish, but I couldn’t find an actual reference that wasn’t along the lines of what I linked too, which I sure hope you delete if you leave this post up. Sorry, don’t mean to pound on the religion drum, I know you dislike it. 🙁
New postings from Joe Bastardi
“The colder it gets, the warmer these people try to claim it is”.
and a direct remark to his European Audience:
“Freedom, that sounds like a revolting idea.
Somebody let the telegraph know a cold winter was forecast for Europe from over three months out. I would appreciate that”.
http://www.accuweather.com/ukie/bastardi-europe-blog.asp?partner=rss
ShaneOfMelbourne (17:59:31) :
Dodgy
“All water is recycled………I can’t disagree with that. And I’m sure London’s water is as good as it gets, I did work for Thames Water here for a number of years!!!!”
Yes, you can see the Thames Waterworks in action from space her:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=18169
Zoikes! Scrub link from my comment please. I only posted it so you could see why it might help to delete the comment @ Mihail (17:23:42) :
Europe : GFS shows just very bad weather for next thursday (7th of january)
http://www.meteociel.fr/modeles/gfse_cartes.php?&ech=180&mode=1
How many “weathers” equal a “climate?”
Kadaka notes:
But directly heating a metal pressurized propane tank, with fire?
Not something you’d want to do in the summer but when the outside temperature is -55 C (which was recorded that winter in Hinton) a fire under the propane tank is the only way to go. I agree that a nice electrical heater around the tank to get it up to a balmy -30 C or so would be a safer alternative, but I don’t think we had any power then and there was no wood stove in the cabin. Water was supplied by a water truck that would show up a couple of times a week and the water was stored as ice as the interior temperature of the cabin was below freezing much of the time.
I’ve talked to other people who have spent winters in the north during the 1950’s and 1960’s and they also had to light fires under their propane tanks. I’ve never heard of one exploding and the fire is actually quite an inefficient way of heating the tank.
After writing the first note I suddenly figured out why the cold never seemed to bother me when I was younger — brown fat. One of the ways of preserving brown fat into adulthood is to have infants grow up in a very cold environment. I certainly experienced that at the age of 2. Brown fat burns fat to produce heat via short-circuited mitochondria and I remember one of my physiology profs critiquing my experiment where we estimated basal metabolic rates by looking at how fast we individually used up a fixed amount of O2. My metabolic rate was 3x that of the class average and that was a time in my life that I could eat anything and would have trouble maintaining my weight. I argued that I had done the experiment properly and my metabolic rate was that hight. I also felt quite warm in the winters back then.
Unfortunately we don’t have any easy way of increasing brown fat in adulthood; either you have kept it as a child or you haven’t. This area has been researched extensively by drug companies as it would be a very profitable weight loss drug; all one would have to do to lose weight would be to walk in below zero weather lightly dressed. With the current global cooling combined with punitive carbon taxes perhaps we’ll see more and more people retain their brown fat although they’ll probably be taxed on their markedly increased CO2 production when compared with their brown-fat deprived neighbors.
Peter Plail (03:13:40) :
photon without a Higgs (00:45:16) : Please don’t mention Piers Corbyn, or we might get another diatribe from Peter Hearnden.
It’s always a risk to mention him because there is also a certain commenter, whom I will gladly leave unnamed, who has the rudest of things to say about him. And you might be surprised who that commenter is…….
Patrick Davis (03:20:48) :
While it’s cold up north, downunder here in Sydney’s inner west, it was 23c today, that is not a typical Sydney summer and we’re 1/3rd way through already.
But this is just weather m’kay!
—————————————-
I’m still looking for that heat that could be called ‘just climate’.
hpx83 (05:08:30) :
Just out of pure interest, what goes for “cold” in the US? Here in Sweden we start complaining when it goes below -20 C (-5F) 🙂
REPLY: It depends on latitude. Minnesotans are known to complain at -15C while Floridians will complain at 5C
——————————————
Californians will complain about everything.
Pamela Gray (10:18:53) :
Pretty cool on that moose story… I can only wonder what’s happening with the pine beetles we keep hearing about gobbling up the Canadian and Colorado forests?
http://www.elephantjournal.com/2009/01/global-warming-now-pine-beetles-kill-2-million-acres-in-colorado-alone-25-million-acres-in-n-america%E2%80%94and-speeding/
Methinks they might need a blankie right about now….
Doug Arthur (09:20:36) :
Where’s Canada?
REPLY:Being a US government service, NOAA does not cover Canada
Government, as in, lots of money in poor results out.
paul c (20:46:42) :
How many “weathers” equal a “climate?”
No amount of cool weather equals cooling climate. Any amount of hot weather, even heat in computer climate model forecasts equals global warming.
It’s Mannomatica math.
Doug Arthur (09:20:36) :
Where’s Canada?
REPLY:Being a US government service, NOAA does not cover Canada
Does NORAD do their own weather monitoring? One would assume they might keep a keen eye on what the ICBM’s would be flying through, as well as assorted bombers, etc. Might be hard to launch fighter jets in a blizzard. Could we (legally) get ahold of their weather data?
kadaka (22:36:53) :
Does NORAD do their own weather monitoring? One would assume they might keep a keen eye on what the ICBM’s would be flying through, as well as assorted bombers, etc. Might be hard to launch fighter jets in a blizzard. Could we (legally) get ahold of their weather data?
They use the same weather data that is available to all aviation weather forecasters. They just don’t trick it.
gtrip’s right. NORAD relies on reports and forecasts from the weather-guessers at Scott AFB. Archived weather observations from the DEW Line — if any remain — would be at NORTHCOM (which essentially inherited SAC) in the daily logs, but they don’t fall under FOIA.
How bad was the winter of 1976-1977 you ask? I wasn’t in Toronto (Canada) back then, but it was purty cold according to the records. See http://www.climate.weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/climateData/dailydata_e.html?timeframe=2&StationID=5097&Year=1976&Month=12
* From December 26 to 31, 1976, the daytime *HIGHS* were below 0 Celsius (32 on the Fahrenheit scale).
* Click on “Next Month” near the bottom right. *THE ENTIRE MONTH OF JANUARY WAS BELOW FREEZING*. The *MAXIMUM* temperature for the month was -1.3 C.
* Click again on “Next Month” near the bottom right. Feb 1st through 9th of 1977 had *MAXIMUM* temperatures below freezing.
That’s 46 consecutive days below freezing. And you wonder why people were predicting an ice age back then.
That post (Mihail (17:23:42) 🙂 should definitely be dropped. I shouldn’t have to explain why.
[Referring to that post gives it unnecessary publicity. Anthony has made a decision, explained why, and warned the poster. Any similar comments like Mihail’s will be deleted. ~dbs]
Happy to see the forecast is near normal for central MN. Just sharing the wealth this winter with y’all.
TonyB (05:23:30) :
Any suggestions?
A brand new manufacturing plant for Airfix – models you can rely on.
Though “The George Moonbat Memorial Power Station” is getting my vote so long as it is fuelled by coal.
OT
Hi
photon without a Higgs (21:30:49) :
Why such a handle? Whats wrong with the Higgs? You do not ascribe to the mass breaking mechanism that separates the photon from the heavy bosons?
Just curious
-22 C in Regina today, forecast is -32 C for New Year’s day. About normal, unless we were only counting New Years 2001 which was +12 C.
The Environment Canada forecast also has above normal temperatures in the west, especially BC, and across the prairies and the north and slightly below normal for Ontario eastward. Baffin Island has had another warm winter so far, rain fell in Iqaluit (63 N) a couple of weeks ago and -20 C today.
http://www.weatheroffice.gc.ca/saisons/image_e.html?img=sfe1t_s
This discussion and disagreement should indicate how difficult averages and normals are to estimate and forecast for large areas or regions as opposed to a point. Global averages are essentially meaningless unless calculated by a global energy balance on incoming and outgoing radiation. If CO2 or anything else reduces energy loss, the global temperature should rise, with some lag. Climate research should choose a series of individual stations to study and use nearby stations to see if other factors are affecting each monitoring station.
The Frost Spirit
HE comes, – he comes, – the Frost Spirit comes!
You may trace his footsteps now
On the naked woods and the blasted fields
And the brown hill’s withered brow.
He has smitten the leaves of the gray old trees
Where their pleasant green came forth,
And the winds, which follow wherever he goes,
Have shaken them down to earth.
He comes, – he comes, – the Frost Spirit comes!
From the frozen Labrador,
From the icy bridge of the northern seas,
Which the white bear wanders o’er,
Where the fisherman’s sail is stiff with ice,
And the luckless forms below
In the sunless cold of the lingering night
Into marble statues grow!
He comes, – he comes, – the Frost Spirit comes!
On the rushing Northern blast,
And the dark Norwegian pines have bowed
As his fearful breath went past.
With an unscorched wing he has hurried on,
Where the fires of Hecla glow
On the darkly beautiful sky above
And the ancient ice below.
He comes, – he comes, – the Frost Spirit comes!
And the quiet lake shall feel
The torpid touch of his glazing breath,
And ring to the skater’s heel;
And the streams which danced on the broken rocks,
Or sang to the leaning grass,
Shall bow again to their winter chain,
And in mournful silence pass.
He comes, – he comes, – the Frost Spirit comes!
Let us meet him as we may,
And turn with the light of the parlor-fire
His evil power away;
And gather closer the circle ’round,
When the firelight dances high,
And laugh at the shriek of the baffled Fiend
As his sounding wing goes by!
John Greenleaf Whittier
Last December was the 4th coldest on record for Portland, Oregon, with an average temperature of 35 degrees.
Now you know.
Once in a generation cold snap forecast for NC
Forecasters say the coldest stretch of weather in years if not decades could be heading for North Carolina….could last up to two weeks.
http://www2.wnct.com/nct/news/local/article/once_in_a_generation_cold_snap_forecast_for_nc/91554/
At 6 a.m. today in Strandburg, South Dakota, USA, it was -25F. The car struggled to start and nearly ran the battery down before it finally started. I had to let it run for 50 minutes before it was warm enough to begin our 4 hour drive to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where it was only -15F. Much more comfortable now.
Pat
time for change
http://climate.gi.alaska.edu/ClimTrends/Change/TempChange.html
There is a lot of fuzz about this cold snap. I just wanted to say that we still are in the beginning of the winter and January and February are still to go.
It is going to be very interesting to follow the development, to see if milder conditions comes towards february, or if the cold weather persist.
At least this cold start means that there is an incresed possibility of a cold winter this year, but cold weather has had problems lasting long times the recent winters (by that I mean the ones that I remember, last 10-15 years), at least in Sweden, where I live.
The mean temperature of December – February decides, by definition, if the winter is cold or warm, so I don’t want to call it a very cold winter just yet.
Record Report
Statement as of 12:30 am CST on January 03, 2010
… Record low temperature set at Mason City IA…
a record low temperature of -23 degrees was set at Mason City IA
yesterday. This breaks the old record of -22 set in 1979.
http://www.wunderground.com/
Go to their US Severe Weather.
[go away till you change your tone ~ ctm]
For the first time since 1997 it might even be cold enough for that famous skating tour in Holland this winter. In my lifetime this tour was organized in 1963, 1985, 1986 and 1997.
It’s a skating tour over canals and rivers in the north of Holland (which has a mild sea climate), 200 kilometers and a national event of unseen proportions. The whole country comes to a standstill that day. The Dutch go mad when it happens. The winner of the race becomes a national hero.
Only the snow could spoil tings they are saying here, as the snow will keep the ice from growing.