No it’s not a time warp photo of Dicken’s time, it’s from the NASA MODIS satellite imager this week. This is like one of those “spot the cow in this photo” images, looking for the UK in a sea of white.
It must be having quite an impact in the UK. According to UK resident and WUWT commenter “borderer”:
Every single newspaper in the UK has published the following satellite image of the UK today – it shows the entire country in glowing white – snow and ice now appears the entire British Isles from John O’ Groats at the Northern tip of Scotland – to Landsend in Cornwall.
Despite this – and we are now in our 25th day of sub zero temperatures – the MET Office put up a spokesman on Newsnight last evening claiming that their forecast for a ‘very mild winter’ had ‘only been a probability!!
In other news, the Met Head gets paid extra even for botched forecasting. Remember the “BBQ summer” forecast?
“Mr. Hirst, you predicted a barbeque summer for 2009 – we don’t remember that – and a mild winter for this winter, which hasn’t happened. Why did you get a massive performance related bonus?“
h/t to Kate at SDA
“D. Ch. (08:11:12) :
Where’s Ireland?”
Ice Cap is apparently 19 miles from Iceland’s north-western coastline:
http://daltonsminima.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/hafis_20100108_1216.png?w=510&h=351
“D. Ch. (08:11:12) :
Where’s Ireland?”
Sorry, thought I saw Iceland!
Pictures like this and this of the US:
http://www.foxnews.com/slideshow/scitech/2010/01/08/spaceshots-weeks-best-photos-universe?slide=39
really put in perspective our “control” over Earth’s temperature.
All you need to do is compare this to the idea of painting city rooftops white.
The “Chief Forecaster” at the UK Met Office has just been interviewed on BBC News. He said that the Met Office Seasonal Forecasts (which do still appear on their site) were only as good (!) as the daily forecasts were 40 years ago, and that the media had been mischief making (!) in making such an issue of last year’s “barbecue summer” or this winter’s “small probability of cold weather”.
He reckons that it will be some years before the seasonal forecasts approach the quality of today’s short term forecasts (which, for anyone in the UK, are relatively easy to have a good stab at themselves simply by looking at the precipitation radar.
Met Office slowly moving backwards?
Andrew Harding,
“So they can tax us more with the justification that they are protecting the planet”
If only that all there was to it – a bit more tax on fuel, a bit more tax on cars. Unfortunately it goes far beyond a means to raise tax.
Does the wholesale replacement of coal fired power stations by wind power generate more tax revenue? Does the projected increase in the average home (UK) fuel bill from £1000pa to £5000pa help the governments finances? Do the job losses from companies like Corus that migrate to India add to the tax revenue?
The government knows that for each percentage point of CO2 they eliminate from the economy, the deeper they are digging the country into a fiscal hole. Knowing what they know, why do they act in this way? I don’t know, but it ain’t for tax revenues, that’s for sure.
MikeE (14:47:49) :
So what do you reckon then – T-shirt and shorts?
Hehe.
Yes, and bring a swimsuit. Hope it will be a nice trip!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34780726/ns/weather/
“On Friday the agency reported that the Baltic Sea was covered by ice that was nearly 16 inches thick in places. ”
Curious satellite images show no such thing.
http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr/amsre.html
On a lighter note, rats smarter than humans?
“In Berlin, even the mice were desperate to escape the cold: Swarms of them have taken over the Bundestag, the country’s parliament, the daily newspaper Bild reported. But more than 100 people jumped into a hole in the ice at Oranke Lake as part of an annual Berlin ice-swimming celebration.”
Don’t know if anyone else has mentioned it, but Ireland hasn’t totally escaped the snow. The mountains are frosted with snow, even though the low-lying areas are still green. I wouldn’t say it’s terribly warm over there.
Alexej Buergin (03:47:22) :
“kadaka (15:19:00) :
On the neighborhood level, one leg of the incoming high-voltage three phase is used to provide the single phase to individual houses, which may be split (center-tapped winding) for two hot legs and a neutral. To work backwards, with 160V incoming, times 1.732 yields 277V. It is expected in the UK to be 240V from hot to neutral, 480V between hots.”
You wanted to say 416V between hots.
No. Here in the US the voltages for houses are supplied with single-phase transformers with center-tapped secondary windings to get 120V hot to neutral, 240V between hots. If you are seeing 240V hot to neutral and 416V between hots, then a three-phase transformer arrangement with a wye-configuration secondary is being used, your hots are two legs of the three phases. That would be a complicated arrangement for house-level distribution, with the loads on the phases being likely unbalanced, thus I would not expect it to be used.
Another difference is that in the USA 220V is from hot to hot and at 60 Hz (50Hz in Europe). Used to create problems with early VCR. And might be a problem with safety, when one uses european 230V-appliances on US 220V.
Nah. Check the standard voltages. The US is standardized at 120V with a +/- 5% tolerance, has been for awhile. Old equipment might have a nameplate voltage given of 115V or 110V, but a good chunk of that was due to expected voltage losses in transmission and looser tolerances. At the low end you would get 228V in the US between hots. In the UK standard voltage is 230V with a +/- 10% tolerance, so 253V on the high end, which matches well with the US high of 252V. Thus UK (European) 230V equipment shouldn’t have a problem besides the frequency, except…
It is standard US practice for grounds and neutrals to be hooked together in the main panel, and only there. Technically the first is the grounding conductor while the other is the grounded conductor. Return voltage is expected on the neutrals, the grounds are only for electrical faults. From there they are connected to the neutral coming from the transformer. Whatever grounding systems are at a house, are for emergency backup if the neutral to the transformer is lost. Otherwise, with the neutral connections in the main panel, the 120V appliances would suddenly see close to 240V or less (all loads on one leg with all loads on the other becoming a series circuit dividing up the 240V).
If the particular European equipment is somehow referencing the ground for a “zero voltage” state, as might be seen in electronics, on a straight hookup it would see 120V to ground where it expected nothing from neutral to ground, which could be an issue. Thus a step-up transformer operating from 120V, with a lead from both primary and secondary windings connected together for a true neutral, would be preferred.
“Glenn (11:39:11) :
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34780726/ns/weather/
“On Friday the agency reported that the Baltic Sea was covered by ice that was nearly 16 inches thick in places. ”
Curious satellite images show no such thing.”
Somebody is confusing the Baltic with the Bay of Bothnia which did freeze over completely on Friday, about a month earlier than has been usual in recent years:
Current ice-chart here:
http://www.smhi.se/oceanografi/istjanst/produkter/sstcolor.pdf
People assembling for latest British protest against global warming . . . .
http://tinypic.com/r/11w7xg4/6
Most Schools are closed because of the weather. Why are schools closed?
I can tell you . Because they will not put the heating on!
I give Karate lessons in a school hall ,at night,twice a week. Last month, with a class of young children waiting, i walked into the hall and it was freezing. As you can realise these children were in their barefeet with only a karate gi (suit) on and they were all chittering. i found the Janitor and asked him if he would turn the heating up. He replied that he could’nt do this as he did not have a key for the boiler house. i asked if there was a thermostat controller in the office . of which there wasn’t. I then asked if he could leave a note for the teachers to turn up the heating for the next evening that we would be there. He informed me that the teachers could’nt gain access to the boiler house either and only the officials that be had keys. the excuse for this was asbestos in the boiler house.
So, as you can see ,in this particular school the heating is controlled by officials or,as the janny said, “environmentalist loonies.”
Dominic Lawson makes this assertion in The Times.
“In fact, the Met still asserts we are in the midst of an unusually warm winter — as one of its staffers sniffily protested in an internet posting to a newspaper last week: “This will be the warmest winter in living memory, the data has already been recorded. For your information, we take the highest 15 readings between November and March and then produce an average. As November was a very seasonally warm month, then all the data will come from those readings.”
I find this to be extraordinary, but if it is true, then we can see where ‘warming’ is coming from. Somebody’s fingers seem to be stained with cherry juice. Or have I missed something?
The southern NZ summer has disappeared in a flurry of cold fronts, hail and strong winds, which, we are told, will go on to April or May – the cool side of El Nino.
Sorry – link here.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/dominic_lawson/article6982310.ece
More Delusion here http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jan/10/climate-change-uk-big-freeze
2010 could still be global temp record high
But at least it contains this admission that 1998 is still the record year not a later one as they were claiming recently
It is a point stressed by Doug Smith, a climate expert at the Met Office. “The hottest year on record was 1998 and some people have argued that if global warming is really taking place, we should have had an even warmer year since then. We haven’t, I admit. And yes, the weather is absolutely terrible at present. However, I am sure things will change – and we won’t have to wait long either.”
“Molon Labe (01:21:21) : Maybe the Thames will freeze. An ice fair on the frozen Thames would just be gobsmackingly awesome.”
The River Tay is the most powerful river in the UK in terms of water flow. There is a celebrated event when it froze over in 1895 and could be crossed on foot.
Although it is not possible to cross by foot (at least at the moment), the River Tay has frozen over at the same place as the 1895 event.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/at_pix/4260748252/in/photostream/
This will make me seem like a pedant (which I probably am) but “Landsend” is actually written “Land’s End”. See Wikipedia for info.
Everyone knows how we Brits are obsessed with the weather, so you’d think we’d be better at predicting it. Unfortunately it’s not so – even with multi-million pound computer facilities, meteorology in Britain is a national joke.
Is the Met Office trying to redeem itself by attacking claims that the seas will rise by 6ft by 2100?
The link from Purakanui is interesting and begs the question .How long has this been going on? The Met takes the highest readings and nothing else matters.As my mate compo says ……FFS.
Short-term slow thaw starting this week.
So I think that satellite shot won’t be mimicked next Friday. There will still be plenty of snow lying on the Northern hills and in Scotland, but I suspect the South East and low lying ground on coasts will become snow free.
Piers Corbyn’s forecast predicted short-term thaws in January but generally remaining cold till month’s end.
So far he’s been right, I guess we’ll find out soon how right he’s been and how far ahead he’s been right.
If I were the Minister, I would want to integrate his longer-term forecasts into Met Office shorter-term stuff. To optimise preparedness ahead of time with tactical deployments during the cold snap.
Whether egos would allow that to take place is someone else’s call, I guess…
All you idiots who are saying, “bring global warming on, we’re freezing our butts off” should be shot. Open your eyes, it’s a GLOBAL issue.
It sucks where you are, but it sucks here too. Melbourne (Australia, look it up) is expecting a top temperature of 43 degrees (yes, Celsius) today, with an overnight low of 27.
REPLY: “All you idiots who are saying, “bring global warming on, we’re freezing our butts off” should be shot.” Great, moral advice calling for deaths of people you disagree with. Care to rephrase that? – A
Perhaps someone should redo that famous composite picture that shows a polar bear on an iceberg in the Thames with a current background shot of the exact same scene.
My former acceptance of the theory of carbon-dioxide driven Global Warming has been shattered by the apparent revelation of the Mann hockey-stick as a fraudulent attempt to deny the existence medieval warm period and discovery that most of the effect of any new CO2 added to the atmosphere is masked the current absorption profile of the CO2 already there.
Shetland has been left out of the picture (as usual) … not even a box in the Moray Firth 🙂
kadaka (13:25:25) :
I am not concerned with the exact voltage; it has been creeping up because one can transmit (a bit) more power through the same wire.
But here
http://www.sensorcentral.com/worldsupport/standards12.php
it says that England has 3-phase 415V.
Concerning 220/230/240 V one can get a shock in the US from both prongs, only from one at 115V. Not so in Europe. That could be a problem when you have a defect wire in an european appliance in the US, and your housing touches the “other” hot.
US VCR turn faster than european ones, US hair-clippers only work on 50Hz and about 70V in Europe.