From the “weather is not climate department. Oh the weather outside is frightful….
Prisoners used to shovel snow-bound US capitol
Here’s the roundup of cold and snow records for the past 7 days. While there is a handful of new high temp records, it is clear where the bulk of the statistics is. Note the new record lows in Florida.
Here’s a few other recent news stories:
Maryland Reports 4 Cold Weather Deaths
Cold weather kills scores in India
Dublin airport suspends flights after heavy snowfall, cold weather
Once in generation cold snap forecast for North Carolina
Record low blows into Siouxland
Recent global cool-down challenges validity of climate change models
National Weather Highlight for 12 / 29 / 09: Record snow falls in Dallas / Fort Worth area
Recent global cool-down challenges validity of climate change models
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What’s with that hot spot at Malcom AFB (Montana)?
Warm equals cool.
Hot equals cold.
Snow equals warming.
CRU is honest.
Gore is smart.
Fudging is fine.
Now I get it.
It’s odd that Montana and New England had record highs and record lows side by side. Could there be a problem with some of this data?
REPLY: I have an idea I’ll check on -A
Phillip Bratby (02:25:52) :
The Chief Scientist of the Met Office has done a wonderful job of summarizing the hypothesis of AGW.
CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
CO2 is increasing in the atmosphere due to mankind’s activities.
Therefore: Greenhouse effects will result in a warmer Earth.
Nice hypothesis.
Now we test the hypothesis. We program some computers with this assumption built in. Our computers tell us the warming will be catastrophic. The CO2 warming will be reinforced by other warming factors.
Unfortunately, the computer models are failing miserably.
There must be something besides CO2 involved in setting the world’s temperatures.
How about that other greenhouse gas they point to, on occasion, water vapor?
Only problem with water vapor as a candidate are those occasions when water vapor removes itself in the form of precipitation, with immense releases, ultimately into outer space, of heat.
Also, water vapor forms clouds in anticipation of releasing itself from the atmosphere in the form of liquid water, again, precipitation. These same clouds reflect sunlight, contributing more cooling, or if you wish, negative forcing of heat.
It is easy, not hard, to imagine built in feedback mechanisms overcoming a 40% increase in CO2 concentrations.
But all of this means nothing, until we have tested these various predictions against reality.
This is now happening and it is apparent AGW hypothesis has failed and must at least be readjusted.
However, the Chief Scientist of the Met, is a true believer, as were many of the communicators revealed in the CRU emails released by some insider.
Perfectly normal for humans to stick to their guns, even when others can see they are wrong. It will take a while, 10 to 20 years?, for climate science to recover from this hypothesis. But we’ll learn from it and move on. Future generations will snicker at our generation’s foolishness as they manufacture their own foolishness.
Regards the European cold weather.
This has been caused by a lowering of the jetstreams. They normally track at higher latitudes, dragging tight and therefore windy low pressure systems up over the UK, bringing lots of warm Mexican air with them.
This year, the jetstreams are way down in the Mediterranean.
http://www.eldoradocountyweather.com/forecast/europe/europeanjet.html
This is giving us slack pressure systems (both highs and lows), which are disconnected from lower latitudes and have ‘cooled off’. Our supply of warm tropical air has gone, so even the slack low-pressure systems are now fffreezzing.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/uk/surface_pressure.html
Question.
The main difference between high sunspot cycles and low sunspot cycles is the lower magnetic flux. A low magnetic flux can obviously interfere with the Earths magnetosphere, with a lack of auroras etc:
But could this magnetic disturbance (or calming) also influence the track of the upper jetstreams in any way? If so, we could discover the link between sunspot activity and climate.
In this case, the total energy flux impacting the Earth (the TSI) does not need to alter much, and neither does the cloud-induced albedo of the Earth. All we need is a disconnect between tropical air masses and northern latitude air masses (as is happening now), so that the northern latitudes get very cold and start accumulating snow and ice. And if sustained, we have the beginnings of a northern latitude Ice Age.
I cannot see any method or influence by which the Sun’s magnetic output can influence the north latitude jet-streams. But I am open to being proved wrong.
Richard Holle (01:45:29) :
This is just more of the natural cyclic variability in action. The Lunar declination was at it’s 18.6 year Mn cycle peak culmination back in 2005, when we had the record surge of Hurricanes, due to the turbulence in the atmosphere, of the turning of the tides.
I believe it was 2006, not 2005, but that is just a minor nitpick.
Now the declination angle is decreasing back towards the Minimum, and the air mass that was moved toward the poles, is now out washing towards the Equator again. we will be in a trend of colder air surges during the winter, with lower jet stream positions, for the next couple of years.
Do you have any sources for further reading on this, attributing the position of the jet stream to the lunar nodal cycle?
Dryer summers, wetter falls, and colder snowier winters can be expected, in the USA and Europe for a couple more years yet, before milder times return (beginning in 2013) when the Lunar declination reaches it’s minimum, and starts to return again in 2014 / 2015.
Again, references please! Not that I’m doubting you at all. I just want to follow up on this.
ralph (01:01:51) :
….
The main difference between high sunspot cycles and low sunspot cycles is the lower magnetic flux. A low magnetic flux can obviously interfere with the Earths magnetosphere, with a lack of auroras etc:
But could this magnetic disturbance (or calming) also influence the track of the upper jetstreams in any way? If so, we could discover the link between sunspot activity and climate.
….
Any ideas?
You might want to check out a couple of papers by Bucha and Bucha Jr.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VHB-3SX8915-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=bd2adf12f8007894a0813e06f94f7226
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VGS-44CXTTJ-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=1c6fbb135c6542ddf8b35e2f08a03834
Sorry, these are just abstracts; I haven’t found free versions of the full PDF anywhere. The first is particularly intriguing though. Writing in 1996, they said:
“The results seem to imply that the global warming could be slowed down in next decades, because the natural component influencing the increase of temperature in the 20th century will most probably decrease in the next century due to the weaker external geomagnetic forcing which was suggested to modify natural meteorological processes.”
You might also find this Ph.D. thesis interesting:
http://ro.uow.edu.au/theses/163/
Quoting from an even more lengthy abstract:
“Solar-modulated geomagnetic activity is therefore an important forcing mechanism for recent climate change. Specifically, many of the unexplained aspects of the recent changes in northern hemisphere climate, including the climate regime shift of the early 1960s, can be attributed to the effects of geomagnetic activity in the upper atmosphere. Interannual variations in the North Atlantic Oscillation should no longer be considered as climatic noise, while the strong positive trend and decadal variations evident since the 1960s can be attributed, in part, to solar forcing.”
It’s a balmy -22F (-36F Wind Chill) outside my house just now – just think what it would be without all of the unprecedented warming!
Interesting to compare the winter forecast for UK and Northern Europe
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=4492
Just last week, Anthony gave us this little quote from Joe Bastrdi (don’t know if the link will work or not…):
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/30/major-northern-hemisphere-cold-snap-coming/
“Senior AccuWeather meteorologist Joe Bastardi let loose with this stunning prediction on the AccuWeather premium web site via Brett Anderson’s Global warming blog:
What is facing the major population centers of the northern hemisphere is unlike anything that we have seen since the global warming debate got to the absurd level it is now, which essentially has been there is no doubt about all this. For cold of a variety not seen in over 25 years in a large scale is about to engulf the major energy consuming areas of the northern Hemisphere. The first 15 days of the opening of the New Year will be the coldest, population weighted, north of 30 north world wide in over 25 years in my opinion.”
Is more to come?
ralph (01:01:51) :
Regards the European cold
This has weather. been caused by a lowering of the jetstreams. They normally track at higher latitudes, dragging tight and therefore windy low pressure systems up over the UK, bringing lots of warm Mexican air with them.
This year, the jetstreams are way down in the Mediterranean.
http://www.eldoradocountyweather.com/forecast/europe/europeanjet.html
This is giving us slack pressure systems (both highs and lows), which are disconnected from lower latitudes and have ‘cooled off’. Our supply of warm tropical air has gone, so even the slack low-pressure systems are now fffreezzing.
http://www.eldoradocountyweather.com/forecast/europe/europeanjet.html
.
Question.
.
The main difference between high sunspot cycles and low sunspot cycles is the lower magnetic flux. A low magnetic flux can obviously interfere with the Earths magnetosphere, with a lack of auroras etc:
But could this magnetic disturbance (or calming) also influence the track of the upper jetstreams in any way? If so, we could discover the link between sunspot activity and climate.
In this case, the total energy flux impacting the Earth (the TSI) does not need to alter much, and neither does the cloud-induced albedo of the Earth. All we need is a disconnect between tropical air masses and northern latitude air masses (as is happening now), so that the northern latitudes get very cold and start accumulating snow and ice. And if sustained, we have the beginnings of a northern latitude Ice Age.
Any ideas?
This is a thought experiment and may be totally off base; But, I will put it out here for some more knowledgeable people to chew on.
As the Earth turns it’s atmosphere is heated and expands considerably during the day and then contracts during the night. As it expands during the day, it is forced to move forward being blocked from going backward by the atmosphere being warmed behind it, somewhat like a ramjet engine. Also during the cooling phase it will tend to rush forward, since the pressure would be lowered in the forward direction. Even though the atmosphere is thin, this will impart some energy and will drive the circulation of air . During Solar Minimum the Earth’s atmosphere is reduced in height and is colder. This change in the physical plant along with 6 percent lower ultraviolent energy wil cause the amount of push being given to the atmosphere to be considerably less and there will be less flow. The Earth is moving at a supersonic speed, 1000 miles per hour, and this could the air flow to organize into streams. I will be interested in your comments.
JohnH, Here in NE Canada we use what I call ‘cold weather diesel’ and I have no trouble using it in my tractor or in an outside tank used to heat my house, even when it gets to minus 40C, which it rarely does.
When school buses and trucks fill up with ‘organic’ ‘politically correct diesel’ from plants or from recycled chip fat, they get stuck in the cold. This happens in the various idiotocracies that pass for government these days. It happens each winter, and school kids need to be rescued from their frozen school buses.
Ref – Michael (00:54:11) :
“When will the US become committed to preventing cold weather deaths from the global cooling going on now?”
__________
The US has always been committed to preventing cold weather deaths from global cooling going on now. Official and unofficial policy for many years has been to open our borders on the North and South. Should global warming occure Americans of Canadian decent (and anyone who can speak Quebecish) can
freely move North and we’ll take the rest by trick or treat. Should global cooling occure Americans of Mexican decent (and anyone who can speak Mexican) can freely move South and we’ll take the rest of Central America by treat or trick. The US is and always has been prepared to do whatever it must do and to take whatever action it has to to take care of legal and illegal green carders and a few hundred of it’s own citizens duly elected to Congress. Never fear. Trust your Congressman or Senators to do whatever they have to. Honest! Really! Would I lie to you?
Poorly sited stations leave us wondering what the truth is. Here is a picture of the Salina, UT station:
http://members.dslextreme.com/users/juanslayton/Salina_looking_NNE.JPG
The map shows a record low. But the MMTS is on top of a 3 story office building, so should the record be even lower? On the other hand it is right next to what appears to be an air conditioning unit. If this is a two-way heat pump, then it is spitting out _cold_ air. So is the record cold an exaggeration?
The surface station project is showing clearly the need for on-site evaluation of these stations.
P Gosselin (01:57:00) :
John H
That’s why I way “Forget the Met, Go to Joe”.
– Joe Bastardi of Accuwaether.
Indeed nature is turning the Met into the Mother of Laughing Stocks
No, the Met Office is itself responsible for becoming a laughing stock. It used to be highly regarded as a Scientific organisation but has turned itself into a lobbying group.
This is not unexpected given it has a Chairman who is, unbelievably, not a scientist but is an environmental lobbyist. Quite why a department of the Ministry of Defence needs a Chairman is not clear and it is strange that the government should appoint a person who is not an internationally recognised Scientist.
Still, we’ve learned to expect that sort of stupidity from the wretched, corrupt, incompetent government we’ve had for the past 12+ years!
This is dramatic for snow, but the first week in December was even more dramatic for continental US temperature records:
record highs: 114
high minima: 56
record lows: 581
low maxima: 581 (not a typo, it’s the same total)
Can you imagine the MSM headlines if the high and low record totals had been reversed? For the whole month of December, the sum (record highs) + (high minima) exceeded the lows only 7 times. IOW, 77% of the time the number of record lows exceeded the number of record highs.
It’s worse than we thought. From the Met office site http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/policymakers/policy/avoid.html
“Our scientists are now leading a Government initiative — known as AVOID — to further improve the knowledge of our ministers and government officials.
Funded by Defra and DECC, AVOID will feed into UK government policy on tackling dangerous climate change and provide a better understanding of the potential impacts a changing climate can bring.
‘This programme will make the latest climate science accessible to decision makers, building a framework that will encourage integration between climate scientists, social scientists and economists to inform policy.’
Dr Jason Lowe, Head of Mitigation Advice, Met Office and AVOID Chief Scientist.
‘Government policies are based on robust, up-to-date evidence, and the AVOID programme will ensure that this continues to be the case by providing the very latest scientific understanding of climate change, its impacts and how we can cope with changes that are already unavoidable.’
Joan Ruddock, Minister of Energy and Climate Change.”
Idiots advised by donkeys. Or vice versa?
This is all very strange. Why, just this morning my local newspaper reported on a NOAA report by Susan Solomon that says:
“The warming effect inflicted on the atmosphere will last at least a thousand years, even if all the world’s smokestacks and tailpipes were to suddenly stop spewing greenhouse gases…” The report further states: “…even if atmospheric carbon dioxide were to decline, the oceans, which have slowed down climate change by absorbing heat, would release that heat back into the atmosphere until at least the year 3000.”
Conveniently, no one will be alive to remind the world of this prediction. I find it interesting that a governmental organization that cannot accurately predict seasonal temperatures is bold enough to make predictions for the next 1,000 years. I’m also appalled that my local newspaper would have the gall to print this.
Anyone who makes a habit of checking the DMI temperature graph for the Arctic north of 80 degrees latitude might be interested to know why the beginning of each year does not align with the end of the previous year. The reason is that the x-axis covers only 360 days.
It bothered me checking through the complete history that there was an alignment problem, so I wrote to DMI. They got back to me, explained the fact that the last five days of the year are not represented, and said that “a re-plotting of all graphs will be done as soon as possible.”
That was a little over two weeks ago, but it has been the holidays and the project could take a little while.
Chairman Brown and Skyrocket energy costs Chairman Obama follow AGW totally without looking out the window. These policies are a disaster for the new proletariat. The U.S. congress has only their own interests at heart. A real and positive energy policy needs to be addressed. The cold is real and if the energy markets are allowed to handle the natural climate change without the government wrong headedly intervening there should be minimal impacts. With Greenpeace fighting every power plant and Obama’s desire to kill coal real harm can come to the population.
Thanks for the link to the show of my former Govenor, Jesse Ventura. Having Jesse on your side will be a good thing, if he sticks to it. Jesse is a relentless self promoter and is absolutely fearless when it comes to taking on politics as usual. BTW its a chilly -29F with a level 24 inchs of snow on the ground here in SW Minnesota. We are used to extremes of weather here so its not a big deal, but its worth noting.
Thanks to Anthony and all who have made this a great site.
Many of the record high temperatures are odd as they are geographically close to record lows. Is this a surface station issue or simply a extremely low temp. variance issue.
Following up, I note that 2009’s x-axis appears to have been extended to 365 days. All previous years remain at 360 days for now.
Basil (06:54:13) :
ralph (01:01:51) :
>>> Writing in 1996, they said:
>>>“The results seem to imply that the global warming could be
>>>slowed down in next decades, because the natural component
>>>influencing the increase of temperature in the 20th century will
>>>most probably decrease in the next century due to the weaker
>>>external geomagnetic forcing which was suggested to modify
>>>natural meteorological processes.”
.
>>>You might also find this Ph.D. thesis interesting:
>>> http://ro.uow.edu.au/theses/163/
>>>Quoting from an even more lengthy abstract:
>>>“Solar-modulated geomagnetic activity is therefore an
>>>important forcing mechanism for recent climate change.”
.
Thanks for that Basil.
This is interesting. Lief Svalgaard has long been saying that the Sun cannot influence climate, because the TSI hardly changes during sunspot cycles. But the magnetic flux index does change – hugely.
These papers purport to show that magnetic changes can indeed affect climate, and so the sunspot cycle could well be influencing our current cooling episode (be that the last 10 years or this winter).
Smoking gun discovered?
.
Founder of the Weather Channel on Global Warming
http://www.kusi.com/home/78477082.html?video=pop&t=a
nevket240 (01:53:19) :
“I think the main point being missed is this question.
What will transpire should this cold become longer term. What will happen to the US & European crops?? At what point in the Northern calendar is it not worthwhile planting?? Will the soil be too wet to seed anyway??
With food stocks at low historical levels this could get interesting.
regards”
It is interesting that the 1995-6 peer reviewed IPCC ” Second Assessment Report was hijacked by an AGW activist who re-wrote key conclusions and injected a level of alarmism that had not been present in the consensus document”
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/01/025294.php
Also in 1995 Dan Amstrutz, VP of Cargill wrote the World Trade Organization Agreement on Agriculture that is designed to remove small independent framers from their land. He also wrote the 1996 USA “Freedom to Farm Act” that bankrupted many American farmers and did away with US grain stockpiling.
For these acomplishments The National Grain and Feed Association (NGFA) created the Amstutz award for his service to the grain traders. This is how they view food shortages (famine)
“Recently there have been increased calls for the development of a U.S. or international grain reserve to provide priority access to food supplies for Humanitarian needs. The National Grain and Feed Association (NGFA) and the North American Export Grain Association (NAEGA) strongly advise against this concept..Stock reserves have a documented depressing effect on prices… and resulted in less aggressive market bidding for the grains.” July 22, 2008 letter to President Bush http://www.naega.org/images/pdf/grain_reserves_for_food_aid.pdf
“In summary, we have record low grain inventories globally as we move into a new crop year. We have demand growing strongly. Which means that going forward even small crop failures are going to drive grain prices to record levels. As an investor, we continue to find these long term trends…very attractive.” Food shortfalls predicted: 2008 http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/dancy/2008/0104.html
The whole situation (food and energy costs) is being manipulated to make a few even wealthier. There is also a possibility that the wealthy/politicians have believed we are headed into an Ice Age since the 60’s/70’s and wanted to strip the more northern areas of industry and move “civilization to the tropics” while crippling the ability of normal people currently living in the north to also move.
Third Cold kills the elderly on fixed incomes. This gets rid of the “useless eaters” in the USA and Europe.