Guest post by Steven Goddard
(UK Pic Photo: NASA/GSFC, MODIS Rapid Response)
England, Scotland and Wales completely covered in snow, January, 2010
In my last article, I discussed the current theory that global warming is going to turn England into a tropical paradise. And ten years ago we were told by The Met Office that “Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past.” But five years ago the theory was that global warming will turn England into a frozen wasteland.
THE Gulf Stream currents that give Britain its mild climate have weakened dramatically, offering the first firm scientific evidence of a slowdown that threatens the country with temperatures as cold as Canada’s.
The Atlantic Ocean “conveyor belt” that carries warm water north from the tropics has weakened by 30 per cent in 12 years, scientists have discovered. The findings, from the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, give the strongest indication yet that Europe’s central heating system is breaking down under the impact of global warming.
Scientists have long predicted that melting ice caps could disrupt the currents that keep Britain at least 5C (40F) warmer than it should be, but the new research suggests that this is already under way. It points to a cooling of 1C over the next decade or two, and an even deeper freeze could follow if the Gulf Stream system were to shut down altogether.
The British Isles lie on the same latitude as Labrador on the East Coast of Canada, and are protected from a similarly icy climate by the Atlantic conveyor belt, which carries a million billion watts of heat. Although oceanographers still think it unlikely that the currents will stop completely, this could reduce average temperatures by between 4C and 6C in as little as 20 years, far outweighing any increase predicted as a result of global warming.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article598464.ece
What the scientists were saying is that the melting Arctic is going to flood the North Atlantic with cold fresh water, and will slow down the Gulf Stream. The BBC explained it like this :
Global Warming will cause the Greenland ice cap to melt which, when combined with increased rainfall at high latitudes, will potentially disrupt the THC by adding freshwater and decreasing sea water salinity in the North Atlantic…. Winters would be much colder than now “along the lines of the winter of 1962-1963” suggests Jenkins, with summers being cooler and shorter. This would have many social implications including (not surprisingly!) transport and agriculture. 3-4°C may not sound much, but the average air temperature difference between the ‘Medieval Warm Period’ when vineyards thrived in southern England and the ‘Little Ice Age’ when the River Thames regularly froze over was only 1-2°C.
Sun photo : English cars buried in global warming
The Guardian explained it like this:
“Based on climate simulations we think that UK winters would be around 5-10C colder on average if the Gulf Stream shut down,” says Michael Vellinga, of the Met Office’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research. For those who can remember back that far, this would make the average UK winter feel more like 1963, when February temperatures hovered around -5 C.
So here is the climate cycle timeline:
- 2000 – Snowfalls are a thing of the past in Britain
- 2005 – Britain to turn into a frozen wasteland
- 2010 – Britain to become a tropical paradise like Portugal
Climate science in England shows a statistically significant cycle, alternating between tropical forecasts and ice age forecasts every five years.
What do readers think?
England’s Five Year Climate Forecast Cycle
England, Scotland and Wales completely covered in snow, January, 2010
In my last article, I discussed the current theory that global warming is going to turn England into a tropical paradise. And ten years ago we were told by The Met Office that “Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past.” But five years ago the theory was that global warming will turn England into a frozen wasteland.
THE Gulf Stream currents that give Britain its mild climate have weakened dramatically, offering the first firm scientific evidence of a slowdown that threatens the country with temperatures as cold as Canada’s.
The Atlantic Ocean “conveyor belt” that carries warm water north from the tropics has weakened by 30 per cent in 12 years, scientists have discovered. The findings, from the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, give the strongest indication yet that Europe’s central heating system is breaking down under the impact of global warming.
Scientists have long predicted that melting ice caps could disrupt the currents that keep Britain at least 5C (40F) warmer than it should be, but the new research suggests that this is already under way. It points to a cooling of 1C over the next decade or two, and an even deeper freeze could follow if the Gulf Stream system were to shut down altogether.
The British Isles lie on the same latitude as Labrador on the East Coast of Canada, and are protected from a similarly icy climate by the Atlantic conveyor belt, which carries a million billion watts of heat. Although oceanographers still think it unlikely that the currents will stop completely, this could reduce average temperatures by between 4C and 6C in as little as 20 years, far outweighing any increase predicted as a result of global warming.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article598464.ece
What the scientists were saying is that the melting Arctic is going to flood the North Atlantic with cold fresh water, and will slow down the Gulf Stream. The BBC explained it like this :
Global Warming will cause the Greenland ice cap to melt which, when combined with increased rainfall at high latitudes, will potentially disrupt the THC by adding freshwater and decreasing sea water salinity in the North Atlantic…. Winters would be much colder than now “along the lines of the winter of 1962-1963” suggests Jenkins, with summers being cooler and shorter. This would have many social implications including (not surprisingly!) transport and agriculture. 3-4°C may not sound much, but the average air temperature difference between the ‘Medieval Warm Period’ when vineyards thrived in southern England and the ‘Little Ice Age’ when the River Thames regularly froze over was only 1-2°C.
Sun photo : English cars buried in global warming
The Guardian explained it like this:
“Based on climate simulations we think that UK winters would be around 5-10C colder on average if the Gulf Stream shut down,” says Michael Vellinga, of the Met Office’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research. For those who can remember back that far, this would make the average UK winter feel more like 1963, when February temperatures hovered around -5 C.
So here is the climate cycle timeline:
2000 – Snowfalls are a thing of the past in Britain
2005 – Britain to turn into a frozen wasteland
2010 – Britain to become a tropical paradise like Portugal
Climate science in England shows a statistically significant cycle, alternating between tropical forecasts and ice age forecasts every five years.
What do readers think?
1. Ice age for the UK
2. Tropical paradise for the UK
3. Just the usual cold, rainy mess
Regardless of whether or not we are going to freeze or fry, the idiots in charge and the wannbe be idiots in charge are still hell bent on destroying the UK’s energy generating capacity. We are seriously in danger of seeing the lights go out in the near future.
Government don’t listen to the “experts” any more than we do unless there’s a reason for them to pay attention – like the carbon credits scam and the “sustainable energy” scam. At least some common sense seems to be prevailing in France and Germany. Let’s hope it’s contagious…
Possibly linked to the greater government funding cyclical current? Known to keep certain areas of Britain in up to 45% more useless bureaucrats than normal.
Bring on the tropical weather…but this is Britain – land of crap weather and the most elitist and deceptive politicians in the world. The first will never change and the second needs a modernist Cromwell.
More Global Warming for the UK
http://www.accuweather.com/blogs/news/story/26713/disruptive-snow-to-hit-the-uni.asp
Probably worth noting that the Meridional Overturning current is not shutting down …
Voodoo.
The Atlantic Conveyor Belt is a really scary subject, especially for those living in north western Europe. We know what it is and we can measure it, but no one – with the obvious exceptions of Gore and Patchi – understands what makes it tick and why it strengthens and weakens for no apparent reason.
This post brings up the subject of Arctic Ocean salinity and consequential extent of the Arctic ice cap.
School boy science correctly tells us that the more salty the oceans, the lower will be the temperature at which it freezes and, of course, vice versa.
In Canada and Russia, several of the great Arctic rivers have been dammed and much of their fresh water is now pumped southwards for industrial and agricultural purposes. So – I have no idea about the amount – much less fresh water is now entering the Arctic than say 50 years ago. This means salinity levels have been rising, which should have a negative affect on the size of the Arctic ice cap, which apparently is exactly what has happened over the past 50 years.
Does this fit the AGW argument? Or is AGW just about carbon dioxide?
We know the Antarctic ice cap has been increasing slowly, but the Arctic ice cap has decreased in size. Why the difference? Logic indicates this is all to do with relative ocean salinity levels – decreasing in the Arctic, static in Antarctica – this makes much more scientific sense than rising carbon dioxide levels.
Then again, there is this problem to consider: a melting Arctic ice cap – if it occurs/continues – will mean greater evaporation and therefore greater snowfall in the region, meaning the Greenland ice cap will consequently thicken.
If the Greenland ice cap thickens, then this (hydrostatic pressure??) will presumably cause the glacier flow from the interior to the oceans to increase.
The bottom line is that – as illustrated in the forecasts above – nobody has a clue about what’s going to happen or how to model it.
The fact remains however, the future machinations of the Atlantic Conveyor Belt is the only really scary subject in climate science which should concern anyone living in NW Europe.
Yes, very droll. Prefer the science. Satire has it’s place but it is out there amongst the humourless drones who spout AGW as an accepted fact.
Nice aricle Steve. I fear I am getting a sense of deja vu all over again, as Yogi bear is reputed to have said.
This 1907 newspaper cutting reports that the gulf stream is cooling and slowing
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9903E2DF173EE233A25751C2A9669D946697D6CF
This was prior to the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 from icebergs that were much farther south than usual, and was the precursor to the start of the 1917-1940 warm period in the arctic. Something similar seems to have happened around 1820 as well.
The workings of the Gulf stream were described in this British Pathe News reel (linked below) which would have been shown in 1936-during this extreme warm period which bore many similarities to today. If we can forget recorded incidents that happened only within peoples lifetime, what hope is there of pointing out other warming incidents in the more distant past?
http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=10775
This news reel also includes details of an American plan that would have diverted the Gulf Stream away from the UK!
Look out for the graphics at the end which manages to mix Penguins and the North Pole
Tonyb
The Gulf stream being the main mild climate driver for Western Europe is a myth, that has been debunked 10 years ago.
6000 years back, Greenland had much less ice than today, Sahara was covered by savanna, Siberian summers were warmer by 3-7C and Siberian forests extended all the way up to North Arctic Ocean. Is there any proof that British isles experienced extremely cold climate at the same time? If not, where is the sense in the claims above, except “but our models show”?
Actually, I do rather miss the cold winters of England, not the rain you can keep that (Mind you, Southern Ireland was worse, 3 months of drizzle every day, every winter, thanks to that thing from the Gulf that proves AGW is real because there are “Palm” trees growing in Torquay, Cornwall, y’know, the English Riviera.
Cold and snow are OK as I used to sit in a country pub, with a pint of winter brew in front of a roaring open fire. Toasty!
The sun is bright the sky is blue on my graph.
But someone told me it’s raining outside.
Apologies to Buddy Holly
Apologies
Last post: re ocean salinity levels, should read increasing, not decreasing, in the Arctic
Steve, I usually like your pieces, but you’re not doing a good job for tourism OR THE TRUTH with your poll which says, “Just the usual cold, rainy mess”. At times we do have some miserable days, or even weeks, but the weather here in England is fantastically changeable because of our geographical location. We can have hot summers (and we may well have one this year) which have put temps higher than Greece and Spain for a week or so. Our winters are usually fairly mild affairs. Lots of Americans still think we have fog here! The truth is that it pretty much died out in the late 1970s. I haven’t seen ‘London Town’ in fog for almost three decades now. As I sitting typing this, it’s 10 deg c outside, lovely and sunny, and yet it’s the end of March (when the average England March temp is 6.7 deg c).
So come on Steve (am I right in thinking you’re a Brit?), ditch the tired old cliche, the UK has really good weather – and a good tourist industry which is important to us!
I live in the temperate climate of the North Island of New Zealand. Quote ” … average air temperature difference between the ‘Medieval Warm Period’ when vineyards thrived in southern England and the ‘Little Ice Age’ when the River Thames regularly froze over was only 1-2°C.” Unquote. I can move North about 150 Km and get a local microclimate 2 degrees C warmer, or I can move to the South Island and get colder by the same amount. Odd, I have not noted vast changes in the climate. Could it be that the Met Office is raving, barking mad?.
NZ is moving into winter and my three grapevines are a spreading green monster along my property fence and the grapes look luscious. Go for it I say.
Looking at this and the previous two threads, have I missed something?
Is it the 1st. of April already?
We have a promise of 13 deg c today (in North London) – double the usual average March temp.
Question: What do anti-air travel activists do when they want to talk about “climate change”?
Answer: They fly from London to Bolivia.
The latest bunch of global warming hypocrites have their hour of fame in the Mail on Sunday:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1261251/Activists-jet-12-000-miles–climate-meeting.html
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Activists jet 12,000 miles – to climate change meeting
Jason Lewis
27th March 2010
Climate change activists opposed to air travel are travelling to a conference in South America…by plane.
Campaigners from Climate Camp — who helped blockade Heathrow at the height of the summer holidays in 2007 — face claims of hypocrisy having decided to send two members to an international meeting in Bolivia to discuss ‘transnational protests’ against climate change.
The 12,000-mile round trip to the Climate Change and Mother Earth’s Rights conference next month involves changing planes at least twice. The flights will generate about eight tons of carbon dioxide greenhouse gases.
The money for their tickets — at least £1,200 for an economy fare — is being paid for by donations to Climate Camp from people opposed to flying and airport expansion.
One of the campaigners making the trip is Agnes Szafranowska. Ms Szafranowska, a Canadian who now lives in London, organises Climate Camp workshops and was involved in the “Great Climate Swoop” on Ratcliffe power station in Nottingham last October.
Police arrested ten people before the protest began on suspicion of conspiracy to cause criminal damage. Some 1,000 people took part, and security fencing around the plant was pulled down. Police made 56 arrests and a number of people were injured, including one policeman who had to be airlifted to hospital.
Ms Szafranowska failed to answer questions sent to her by email, other than to say that Climate Camp were preparing a statement.
The group’s Press officer did not return calls.
I was born and lived in England for 49 years. (I now live in France in what without past global warming would be a glacier.) The only things predictable about England’s “weather is not climate” were, we got a lot of it, and its unpredictability. Long before Climatebotherers invented Globalwarmism, I observed long, parched, hot Summers; freezing, long, snow-covered Winters; delightful warm Springtimes; blustery wet Autumns and all points in between.
We watched the evening weather forecast for amusement not information as it was never right.
Plus ça change.
I do distinctly remember the change in reporting that occurred in the UK over this. The reason that it changed is that when we in the UK were told we’d have summers 5C warmer than they are now, we all said ‘Brilliant! Longer growing seasons, barbecues, and great weather!” The British are sun monkeys. The scaremongers realised they’d scored an own goal and decided to frighten us with colder weather instead.
IIRC this theory has been around since the early 90’s and it didn’t make much sense then either.
If the flow slows due to Northern ice melt wouldn’t that cause the North to get colder and hence counteract the melt?
Willis Eschenbach (01:14:57) :
Probably worth noting that the Meridional Overturning current is not shutting down …
Quite. I don’t believe the “slowing gulf stream theory” has ever been accepted by mainstream scienctists. Even realclimate dismissed the suggestions in the Times report
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/05/gulf-stream-slowdown/…
The post concludes “Thus while continued monitoring of this key climatic area is clearly warranted, the imminent chilling of the Europe is a ways off yet.”
There really should be a ban on scary predictions of what “could” happen.
But the biggest laugh is the fact that hard-pressed UK taxpayers are paying real money for the comfortable salaries and index-linked pensions of these “academics” and civil “servants”.
If they want to do something to help the environment they should be provided with plastic sacks and told to go and pick up litter.
Back in the days I believed their nonsense I listened to an academic giving a lecture about the way the gulf stream disappearing would make the UK as cold as the same latitude on the West of the Atlantic.
But remembering my school boy geography (before global warmers rewrote the text books), I remembered being told that the ocean currents were driven along by the trade winds, and sure enough if you look at the East and West of the Pacific, you find roughly the same temperature difference as teh E-W Atlantic.
So, expected to be told that “yes trade winds played a part … not all the temperature difference will disappear”, I engaged the academic after the lecture.
Their response: “never heard of that!” Never heard of that The guy had not even bothered to check whether the Pacific also had temperature differences, they hadn’t bothered to check that the Gulf Stream and North Atlantic Drift have nothing at all to do with the conditions in the Artic ocean, and not only was his terminology all to pot, he simply hadn’t a clue what he was talking about when he said the Gulf (of mexico) current would be turned off by melting ice in the Artic.
Using school-boy geography, I’ve worked out that this whole effect is a small current that goes up between Shetland and iceland which is insignificant in comparison with the bulk North Atlantic Drift current that brings warm water to the North Atlantic. I think it is 1% of something, and whilst it may significantly affect the temperature in Shetland/Iceland and Norway, I suspect the effect would be almost unnoticeable except to a few climate nerds in England!
Steve
Here is a Google Translate link to Anton Uriate’s blog post of 12 March 2010, for the 2009-10 European winter season just ended, titled
Invierno récord
“In southern Europe, the most notable feature has been the rain. In Spain most of the rainfall total is more than twice the average.”
‘the currents that keep Britain at least 5C (40F) warmer than it should be,’
Not quite, that’s the rough conversion for temperatures recorded, not the conversion for degrees C into degrees F.
Global Warming will cause the Greenland ice cap to melt which, when combined with increased rainfall at high latitudes, will potentially disrupt the THC by adding freshwater and decreasing sea water salinity in the North Atlantic….
The Eemian interglacial is recorded in the Greenland ice cap. Since the Eemian was around 2°C warmer than present day for a couple thousand years and the ice cap didn’t melt, I think we still got a chance. Of course, the Eemian may have been a local phenomenon.
I don’t wish to look picky – a wee bit pedantic perhaps, but we British folks call it either Britain, Great Britain, or the United Kingdom.
I get tired of seeing the UK get called “England” by those in the USA 🙂
My country – Scotland – is there too y’know 🙂
Regards.
In my 70th year, I have known the 12 foot snowdrifts of 1947, with the following floods, the 3 months of very hard winter of 1963. I enjoyed the 1976 long hot summer, and other assorted anomalies.
Most of these extreme events occured when our current forecasters were still in short pants, and the dire predictions which keep coming are largely because of an apallingly lazy media, who simply print press releases without even a cursory check. Consider the AR4 scandal with all those ‘peer reviewed’ papers written by advocacy groups.
Gaia refuses to be bullied into warming up, though most of us here in UK could do with a bit of it right now, but the MET office says it is going to snow again this week.
I think you should be more clear on your use England; do you mean England the country or Britain the island?
Unlike England the country, Scotland always has had a revolving climate; in places the weather can change dramatically within minutes and you can have ‘four seasons in one day’. And there are plenty of stories about tourists wandering around Ben Nevis in t-shirts and suddenly deciding to take a walk up the mountain as it was a ‘nice day’ only to find blizzards and snow storms as they progress up the mountain. A lot of the time in Scotland the weather is always changing as opposed to always raining in England.
Basically they have their geophysics wrong.
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, part of the global ocean conveyor belt that helps regulate climate around the North Atlantic, show no significant slowing over the past 15 years. The data suggest the circulation may have even sped up slightly in the recent past.
http://www.heliogenic.net/2010/03/26/agw-climate-models-blow-another-prediction/
Steve,
One interesting observation is the close association of cloud cover with the UK landmass.
What caused that?
Before the Scots, Welsh etc, start complaining, England is only part of the UK/Britain/British Isles.
Why not try and contact some of the researchers involved and try them, and their predictions, to account? Just for the record.
The press (and Met Office) noise about shut-down of the (thermohaline) North Atlantic Deep Water formation 5 years ago follows in phase-lag a period of widespread publication ca. 1999/2000 of Quaternary evidence (Globally, if not hemispherically) indicative of just such a shut-down at the start of the Younger Dryas (YD), 12.7 KYBP (calibrated and absolute, ca. 10,800 in radiocarbon). The actual mechanism 12,700 years ago might have involved a catastrophic release of melt-water from a mega-lake in Central Canada into Huddon Bay, following a warmish (inter-stadial) period, perturbing the deep water formation off the N. Labrador coast (thermohaline circulation itself is based on density characteristics of salty vs. less salty and warm vs. cold water, and is a major driver today of the Gulf Stream towards the UK, it’s intensity probablt varies also in tandem with North Atlantic [NAO] as well as Arctic Oscillation [AO] indices).
This 5-year lag is typical of inter-disciplinary communication lag, obviously misapplied, due to shoddy scientific standards, to potential outcomes of then (2005) imagined warming of recent times. This shoddiness is of course typical of many historical cases of political and economic abuse of science. Events surrounding the weak AGW hypothesis are not unique this way. What AGW has done that is quite unique is to forcibly divorce an entire subdiscipline (Quaternary Studies) from its proper role in the test of the hypothesis (in the ‘unprecedented warming test’, for example). I too noticed this mis-application of Quaternary Studies notions following the y 2000 YD spate 5 years ago, but did not really appreciate the why until about 5 months ago (peak time at this web-site).
BMWA, PhD., PDRA, Durham U., UK
HUDSON (not Huddon!) Bay
I thought that the Atlantic Conveyor was sunk by an Exocet off the Falklands in 1982.
That island you are showing is Great Britain ( part of the United Kingdom).
England is just a little bit of it – it is like saying Mexico when one means the whole of North America.
Big subject – the thermohaline circulation (THC) – and in its Atlantic manifestion – the MOC – this phenomenon is implicated in the switches in earlier climate cycles, like the ends of inter-glacials.
Check out Predictability? With a Pinch of Salt please.. Part One
Cold water sinks….
I’m sorry there’s no place to vote for a long, year round, succession of warm summer days, with a slight breeze and fluffy white clouds and blue sky, and babbling brooks, and a steam train chugging through the landscape billowing out white vapour, and an orchestra in the background playing Coronation Scot by Vivian Ellis.
It maybe wouldn’t fit in the box. But if it did, we could make a real difference, if Flash Gordon and his pet Milipede noticed.
5C warmer is about 9F warmer; not 40F warmer. Somebody apparently got confused by the fact that a temperature of 5C is about equal to a temperature of about 40F.
Everyone should vote. We all know that climate is determined by consensus!
/sarc
Duly noted, Willis. The Meridonal Overturning current is not shutting down because
1.) Greenland isn’t melting.
2.) AGW is a bad-breath theory.
3. Supercomputers are no better than the highbrows stuffing monkeyfingered data in one end and collecting the monthly monkeyclimate reports spit out the other end.
Madness!
Total hedge of any climate or weather change is what IPCC loons is creating.
Nothing adds up and everything is contradictive.
Please someone!! Release us from this IPCC madness!!
i predict that in 5 years time britain will be saturated by water falling from the sky. this once proud capital of empire will be completely annexed by the colour grey. and the economy of this huge island will stagnate and centre largely around package holidays.
can i have a grant?
Post-structuralism has managed to deliver a bunch of pseudoscientific bastards right at the doorstep of an unsuspecting public. What’s really remarkable is that the educational system in Europe and the US has gotten so infested by relativistic ideals that all independence of ideology – be it religion, be it leftist extremism – has been thrown overboard. Students have been microwaved into believing all and any superstitious views that MSM tell them about drowning polar bears, disappearing glaciers, the Earth’s climate simulating a suicidal barbecue party, West Side Highway a.k.a. Henry Hudson Parkway under water by 2008 etc etc.
But I believe that this game’s over now. The IPCC will be dismantled and buried, Pachauri will be sacked, and all the ideological “climate researchers” of that brand will have to start thinking about getting themselves a life after the climate…
One of the guests at the “UK- based” Fawlty Towers comedy TV series once made the following summing-it-all-up remark to Basil the “manager”:
“GREAT FUN!”
Well, that’s all I can say, too, about the Hansen-Gore-Pachauri climate circus. Let’s hope the alarmists don’t get it into their heads to turn to the LHC at CERN cause someone may get hurt…
We have had two extended periods of winter blocking highs in two years, little ice-age here we come.
We must be entering a Mournful Minimum.
I know correlation is not causation but… the frozen wasteland prediction came just a year after The Day After Tomorrow.
Willis Eschenbach (01:14:57) :
Probably worth noting that the Meridional Overturning current is not shutting down …
As Journalists like to say, ” Never let the facts ruin a good story.”
National Trust campaign highlights how gardens will look if global warming brings Mediterranean weather to Britain:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1260213/National-Trust-campaign-highlights-gardens-look-global-warming-brings-Mediterranean-weather-Britain.html#
Who says the Arctic is melting?…data does not back it up. The Arctic has been recovering from all reports I have seen.
Is the “political” climate going to change in the UK?
If you don’t like the climate forecast, wait 5 years and it will change.
No way> They say it is CO2 and nothing else. Currents? Can’t be. The vancouver Olympics were warm because of a warm ocean current nearby. Accross the mountans but still not far away, it hit 46 below in Edmonton.
“at least 5C (40F) warmer than it should be”
Who wrote this crap? They don’t know how to convert celsius to farenheit.
A 5C increase is a 9F increase. They confused absolute temperature with temperature changes.
Well, if their models predict that “UK winters would be around 5-10C colder on average if the Gulf Stream shut down” then that would explain why their seasonal forecasts are always utter garbage.
The idea that the British Isles are protected from a Northern Canada style winter by the Gulf Stream is one of those urban legends that goes round and round and is accepted as fact simply because – it goes round and round.
I first wondered about this proposition after I first heard the Gulf stream panic 5 years ago. I remember being on holiday in SW Wales and wading into the supposedly warmed Gulf Stream waters only to be rudely disabused of my notions. It was pretty damn cold. How much colder would it be if the Gulf stream shut down? I don’t know, but I do know it wouldn’t be any colder than 4C, the average winter sea temperatures on the East coast.
And that is the bottom line. The British Isles are protected from Canadian style winters because they enjoy maritime climate – the wind predominately blows from the Atlantic. The only time Britain gets cold winters is when polar air masses or Russian continental air masses move in. The winter will always be (in fact must be) above freezing when the Atlantic air masses move in, regardless of what the Gulf stream does or does not do.
As long as the Earth spins on it’s axis, the oceans will circulate.
N’est-ce pas?
Sorry: ‘…its axis’.
Just an observation … if the gulf stream stops – why the hell would Greenland melt ….
Obama is set on forcing Cap & Trade onto a disbelieving public.
This is from a leading American commentater today in the Sunday Times:
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/columnists/article7078817.ece
“…On to energy and education, both on Obama’s “transformation” list. Congressional reluctance to give the president the cap-and-trade legislation he wants is no longer an obstacle to his plans to confront climate change. The Environmental Protection Agency already has wide powers to reduce carbon emissions, and the president has shown in the healthcare fight that voter opposition cannot deflect him from his drive to change America. He will do by rule what he cannot get from the votes of the people’s representatives.”
So there you have it. One way or another C&T is coming, whether you like it or not.
==============================================
An interesting article is hiding away deep in the labyrinths of the Observer today, and it’s all about how this world-wide carbon taxation plan is going to be put back on track after the Copenhagen train wreck.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/28/un-climate-change-meeting-london
What is of major concern to believers in freedom and democracy is that the prime movers of this process are not environmentalists, but bankers and financiers who seem to have most politicians by the balls. Notice the word “paymasters” below:
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“…Some of the planet’s most powerful paymasters will gather in London on Wednesday to discuss a nagging financial problem: how to raise a trillion dollars for the developing world. Those charged with achieving this daunting goal will include Gordon Brown, directors of several central banks, the billionaire philanthropist George Soros, the economist Lord (Nicholas) Stern and Larry Summers, President Obama’s chief economics adviser…
…As an array of expertise, it is formidable: but then so is the task they have been set by the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon. In effect, the world’s top financiers have been told to work out how to raise at least $100bn a year for the rest of this decade, cash that will be used to help the world’s poorest countries adapt to climate change…
…Consider the US. Obama – fresh from his successes in passing his health bill and his nuclear arms talks with Russia – has indicated he is turning his attention to climate change. At an hour-long meeting last week, his climate and energy adviser Carol Browner and White House legislative affairs director Phil Schiliro discussed the prospects of a climate change bill with Senate leader Harry Reid and other senior Capitol Hill Democrats. Three senators – Democrat John Kerry, independent Joe Lieberman and Republican Lindsey Graham – have also been holding talks to draw up legislation. Their planned bill looks set to be released next month.
…Significantly, this latter group is backed by the distinguished UN climate chief Yvo de Boer. “I think we’ll continue on the two-track approach. For the developing countries, the presence of the Kyoto protocol is very important,” he said. He is also supported by more than 200 of the world’s largest environment and development groups, including Friends of the Earth International, Christian Aid, Third World Network, Jubilee South and the World Development Movement, which have called for a total rejection of the Copenhagen accord and urged countries to resume twin-track talks.”…
etc…
***************************************************************************
If this is democracy, God help us all!
It can now confirmed that the Met Office has determined the attention span of the average Brit to be precisely five years.
The science is settled.
In the interest of full disclosure, I know a scientist.
Mann comes out of hiding.
Somebody call the troops.
Gotta be a story there somewhere.
http://www.mcall.com/news/local/all-global-warming-interview-whole,0,5661907.story
…but the average air temperature difference between the ‘Medieval Warm Period’ when vineyards thrived in southern England and the ‘Little Ice Age’ when the River Thames regularly froze over was only 1-2°C.
1-2C ? is this Mann made math?
Doesn’t 5C warmer covert to 9F warmer? If not, I think England would already be that tropical paradise.
But, but, but…..
There wasn’t a ‘Medieval Warm Period’!
/sarc
DaveE.
With that track record, why would they be believed this time?
Just wondering…
Needed this humor on a cold, wet (yeah, yeah – global warming) Ohio spring morning.
Thanks!
Having lived in England all my life it wasn’t that difficult to choose the 3rd option in the poll. Seems I was right!
I voted for Ice Age but only for dramatic purposes.
The beauty of the internet is what these jokers say lasts forever. You can delete an article from off your server, but you cannot stories that talks about your article from other websites.
Remarkable that they can include a reference to the MWP in the BBC article. Doesn’t it occur to them that the Medieval Warm Period had a warmer
Greenland than exists now, and that the Greenland icecap didn’t melt and shut down the Gulf conveyor? I think it’s called cognitive dissonance.
Cooling is the new warming.
On a related note
“Virginia Modeling, Analysis and Simulation Center (VMASC) invites applications for the position of Chief Scientist of a university-wide research center that emphasizes modeling, simulation, and visualization (MS&V) research, development and education.”
http://chronicle.com/jobs/0000630028-01/?sid=ja&utm_source=ja&utm_medium=en
Maybe I’ll apply and say in the cover letter that I will consider my primary responsibility to be to point out when the computer models are “full of it” having “no scientific value”. How far do you think I’ll get?
It strikes me there could be a time-line of catastrophic headlines that match the corresponding weather going back as far as the printing press.
off the top of my head There was that guy fist said something about Co2 causing +4 degrees C temp change because of coal fumes in the 1900’s, the ice age scare of the 60/70’s, because of that real bad winter in 63/64 in UK, then all change back to warming scare after the heatwave in 76. Those old headlines about the N.E. passage etc.
I bet there are corresponding headlines to match the warm/cooler periods Jones admitted to.
Great job as always, Steve. You connected so dots that have been there all along.
Thanks to your research, we have a new five-year teleconnection.
Call it the Anglo-Saxon Quinquennial Oscillation
Or the ASQO for short.
I hope you send your findings to every news organization as a joke, including the BBC!
Pretty damn funny!
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
We have such a twisted sense of size with our world maps. This leads us to believe that little things can affect large areas we “see” on a map in major ways. The scale throws our thinking this way. To wit: the amount of fresh water being dumped into the Arctic is a variable thing and depends on weather pattern variation on a yearly, decadal and century time scale, let alone interglacial time scale. Add a dam here and there and you get a VERY fractionally small change in the normal variation of fresh water sources into the salinity of the Arctic. Damming up the fresh water rivers around the Arctic will not make even a scant difference. So too adding a bit of longwave radiation back towards land will not make a scant difference. The areas we think we know because we have seen them on a map, look quite different if we could actually see them to scale. These tiny changes than humankind has wrought (dammed rivers around the Arctic and CO2 from fossil fuel sources) just do not have the muscle to change such gargantuan areas in any way that can be detected outside the normal variation.
So let’s pause before we say this or that can affect globally large structures. As for the Arctic rivers, there are precious few rivers we could actually see if they were depicted to scale on the maps we usually view. These things are tiny, tiny land features that are exaggerated in scale so that we can locate them on a map. They just are not that big in reality.
Or, to be more specific…the UKMQCFO
U K Met Quinquennial Climate Forecast Oscillation
I voted for an Ice Age for the UK, ’cause I keep looking at that 100,000 year ice age cycle and thinking to myself, “hmm, 11,000 years since the end of the last ice age…”
Wind energy, no use:
http://alfin2100.blogspot.com/2010/03/big-wind-bad-news-all-around.html
Mike Haseler (02:26:09) and Vincent (05:49:35) both touched on what I had read within the past year, that the mild climate of the UK and western Europe is not due to the Gulf Stream, but to the movement of mild air over the Atlantic. It was pointed out that the same phenomenon keeps the west coast of Canada much milder than it “should be” at that latitude.
The article that I archived was at:
http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/51963?fulltext=true&print=yes
but when I tried just now to open it, it was no longer available.
More attention should be paid to this point of mildness being due to a mediterranean climate than to the Gulf Stream.
IanM
R. de Haan (03:04:48) :
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, part of the global ocean conveyor belt that helps regulate climate around the North Atlantic, show no significant slowing over the past 15 years
However, the GULF CURRENT….it originates in the gulf, which btw it´s now cold:
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.html
A good future business: A Ice skates´shop near the Thames river.
Anthony,
I think you mean a 5 degrees celsius increase is equivalent to 9 degrees F.
REPLY: actually this is a guest post, but I’ll pass it on. -A
The ghost of Big Jim Cooley (01:39:44) :
I don’t live in the UK any more, but I have seen some years with very nice weather there, particularly 1969-1970 and 1999-2005. My last UK holiday was August, 2008 and it hardly stopped raining for five minutes the entire week!
While Piers Corbyn said:
“….WeatherAction’s offer (link 12 Feb) to advise you on whether and if/when parts of the UK will suffer floods this summer still stands and please note our success rate of long range forecasting of the last seriously abnormal seasons is 5/5 whereas the Met Office-Global warmers success is zero/5.”
http://www.weatheraction.com/docs/WANews10No10.pdf (12 Feb letter to Hilary Benn)
These jokers don’t have a clue about what the climate is going to do. But whatever it does they’re damned sure it’s our fault.
Imran (05:59:30) :
Exactly! Even if the gulf stream theory was correct, the mechanism causing the problem would shut itself down. Negative feedbacks dominate in the real world.
Kate (01:46:35) :
Actually, I’m all for letting them shut down power stations for a while.
Let them shut down the Drax 4Gw station & Ferrybridge 2Gw simultaneously!
Brilliant idea! See how long they survive all those angry Yorkshire people!
DaveE.
3×2 (02:07:51) :
Bingo.
Not only that, the extra energy released from the above 0°C ocean would also contribute to planetary cooling.
DaveE.
This would be a good place to review the world wide historical cycles of fear mongers oscillating between a fiery death and icy death.
It is entertaining.
CAB (08:00:05) :
The 5C 40F is a quote from a Times article. Note the indention and italics.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article598464.ece
A good place to put an end of the global warming nonsense would be to take a look at Sheffield UK Weston Park weather station.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/stationdata/sheffielddata.txt
Its a High Quality location, in a park, not surrounded by buildings and has been in operation since 1883 and is one of the UK’s oldest continuous use, weather stations.
Jan 1883 Temp Max. 6.3C Min 1.7C.
Jan 2010 Temp Max 3.4C Min 0.1C.
(Monthly averages)
Enjoy your global warming.
A Feel a paper coming on relating to those stats. I might also take photos of the weather station to prove how high quality it is !
Its been in the same spot as long as i’ve been alive as well (30 years at least !).
The article talks about “decreasing sea water salinity.” I remember Geophysical Research Letters carrying an article a couple of years ago by Stott of the Met Office. That article was about how AGW was causing increased salinity of sea water.
Having lived in northern Canada, I am laughing at what’s considered a bad winter in England. I used to live Grande Prairie, in the Peace River Region of Alberta, which is about as far north as Stockholm. Yes, it would get down to -40 every winter. So you dress warmly those few weeks. But the summers would be warm and pleasant, with the same long days enjoyed in northern Europe, and the region is one of the most agriculturally productive bits of land in the world. I really don’t see the big deal about the temperature dropping a few degrees in the winter. Can someone enlighten me?
For climate scientists, cycle is a four-letter word.
Al Murray explains our weather better than I could.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wu6_oXpRHY
RE: AndyS
As Journalists like to say, ” Never let the facts ruin a good story.”
As climate modellers like to say “Never let data get in the way of a good model”.
James Ibbotson (08:45:35) :
I plotted the Sheffield data you linked to. It shows about 1C warming since 1930.
https://spreadsheets.google.com/oimg?key=0AnKz9p_7fMvBdFg2X3dMRzZuX2dhT3VqZUVGUU5WX2c&oid=1&v=1269793381656
NASA Study Finds Atlantic ‘Conveyor Belt’ Not Slowing
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-101
I remember reading about the original idea about 10 years ago in New Scientist. It certainly seemed plausible.
From what I remember of the article : the Russians were saying that Greenland melting would not be sufficient to cut off the Gulf Stream, as most fresh water in the Arctic came from Siberian rivers. They were proposing a project to divert some of this fresh water from Siberia to refill the Aral Sea, but needed a few billion dollars of international aid to complete the project. They said that this would be sufficient to remove the danger. I would certainly have liked to have seen this project completed but I am assuming it got nowhere.
“anticlimactic (09:59:35) :
[…]
From what I remember of the article : the Russians were saying that Greenland melting would not be sufficient to cut off the Gulf Stream, as most fresh water in the Arctic came from Siberian rivers. They were proposing a project to divert some of this fresh water from Siberia to refill the Aral Sea, but needed a few billion dollars of international aid to complete the project. They said that this would be sufficient to remove the danger. I would certainly have liked to have seen this project completed but I am assuming it got nowhere.”
A simple attempt to grab some billion dollars by pretending you solve a problem that doesn’t exist in the first place; instead of stopping using the water from the Aral tributary rivers for irrigating cotton fields, in other words, misallocating other people’s capital on a grand scale.
Granted, it’s small fries compared to the AGW subsidies and Cap&Trade schemes that are already in place in Europe.
Peter Miller: FYI—I’ve canoed many of Canada’s arctic rivers and never saw a dam. The most northerly dams of consequence that I know of are in Alberta/BC on the Peace River and the Taltson.
Talking about siberian rivers, you have to see these color photographies from Russia from about 1910:
Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Mikhailovich_Prokudin-Gorskii
Bridge over Siberian river:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Prokudin-Gorskii-25.jpg
Exhibition:
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/
Architecture:
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/architecture.html
A city with its river in Siberia:
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/images/p87_4507__00755_.jpg
All these photos have been made with 3 monochromatic plates and color filters.
and check out todays temp in the arctic –
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
Seems that all that release of pent up energy over the winter is having an effect now.
Who woulda thunk?
So all the ice will melt in the arctic, including the greenland cap, cool off the gulf stream and cause Europe to congeal into an icy forbidding terrain. The solution is simple, move to the balmy arctic.
Sean Peake: While the Canadian rivers that drain to the Arctic aren’t dammed, many of them have substantial diversions for agricultural and oilfield use. Those rivers would include the North and South Saskatchewan Rivers and their thousands of tributaries, and the Red River (which also drains parts of the northern US). While the rivers aren’t necessarily dammed, much of the water that would normally flow into them never makes it there.
On the other hand, the modern agricultural practices across the prairies have left the soil unable to absorb water, which leads to massive spring run off, causing, among things, the frequent severe flooding along the Red River. The clearcut logging on the eastern slopes of the Canadian Rockies and the Alberta foothills has much the same effect.
It’s hard to say, on balance, whether the flow of fresh water to the Arctic has been increased or decreases by human activity in Canada.
An explanation of the Atlantic circulation / Gulf Stream:
-It doesn’t significantly heat Europe
-It’s not slowing down
http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/GW_4CE_NATCGulfStream.htm
From your insert of the Timesonline: THE Gulf Stream currents that give Britain its mild climate …
Years ago in an article I cannot now find a comment was made regarding warm water flowing westward through the Strait of Gibraltar, turning northward, and contributing to the process mentioned above about the Gulf Stream. Also, some images suggest the warmth of the Gulf Stream is distant from NE Europe at least some of the time. See here, p.3:
http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/SEH/Ocean_Planet/activities/ts2siac2.pdf
In searching for mention of Mediterranean warm water, some promising titles are behind pay-walls. I haven’t found the sort of thing I am looking for.
The concept is interesting because as this water moves northward, and being both warm and salty, once having its warmth transferred to the atmosphere it would contribute to the deep water. The transfer of warmth from water to atmosphere will occur closer to Europe than does the warmth of the Gulf Stream.
It may be that the volume of water and the heat involved is too little to have much influence (compared to the Gulf Stream), or it may happen too far south. If this is a significant contributor or compensates when the Gulf Stream slows then the climate of NW Europe may be (here it comes) more robust than previously thought. (Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.)
Can anyone help with a reference?
Interesting stuff, and typical UK forecast, but for Pete’s sake it’s the UK, or Great Britain, it is not England, any more than it is Wales Scotland or Ireland. Get it right otherwise such simple errors undermine your academic rigour.
Sorry to get on the pedantic bandwagon. And can I preface my next comment by saying what a wonderful resource this site is…
…but …
as other have already pointed out, England is NOT an interchangeable alias for the the UK … or Great Britain … or the British Isles. For those of us in Scotland, Wales or Norther Island … its tedious to have to keep making the distinction. We are not “English” and that snow-amp is not a map of England.
Otherwise … thanks, and carry on the good work !-)))
BBC News
Monday, 7 December 2009
“if the largest of them (the East Antarctic Ice Sheet) melts, the global sea level will rise by an estimated 64m”
source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8399036.stm
The article appears to indicate oceanic thermal expansion as the single largest contributing factor to sea level rise with melting glaciers and then ice sheets from Greenland.
Other article tabs relate to Acid Oceans, Heat maps, and Water stress.
thanks for the great link Alan Cheetham
Kate (06:00:43) :
Actually, Kate, when the President said he won’t quit trying, that I believe.
Two can play that game.
America does not accept the things he is doing, and C&T is right on top of that list, being based on the nonsense of AGW.
If the President and Carol Browner Energy won’t quit, why should we?
It looks like the Met Office is wisely playing it more conseravative now when it comes to decadal forecasts. They now say ,
“Looking further ahead, our experimental decadal forecast confirms previous indications that about half the years 2010–2019 will be warmer than the warmest year observed so far — 1998.”
If future El Ninos happen every 2-2.5 years, like the last decade , they may come closer to their forecast.[ warming every second year ].As we saw this year there are also more negative AO cold winters during El Nino years spanning the winter. During EL Nino years 60% of the months have a cold AO .
However if El Ninos happen about every 3-3.5 years [closer to long term average[18 El Ninos in 60 years since 1950] , they may be close only about 30% of the time . With the other natural planetary cycles[AMO,PDO] possibly heading also for cool or negative[ latter part of 2010?], their forecast may be found wanting 70% of the time. A La Nina later this year is a possibilty .La Ninas have followed an El NINO , about 50% of the time within 1-7 months after the El Nino ends. During the last cool spell for Europe and Uk ,namely 1962- 1987, 70% of winters were below norm[ AMO was neagive most of the time ] The winter of 2010/2011 may as colds as the last one if not colder.
Sediment studies of the Gulf Stream between the tip of Florida and Cuba have shown that the Gulf Stream slows mainly during cold periods and not warm. The slowing down of the Gulf Stream in the last 12 years is in agreement with Phil Jones’s statement that we have not warmed in 15 years and been cooling for the last 8.
There is not enough fresh water that can be delivered fast enough to stop the Gulf Stream and if it tends to speed up with warming, it would, in effect, protect itself from the effects of fresh water.
Peter Miller (01:18:12) wrote: “In Canada and Russia, several of the great Arctic rivers have been dammed and much of their fresh water is now pumped southwards for industrial and agricultural purposes…”
Unless it just happened last night when all the lights were off for Earth Hour, this statement only applies to Russia.
Current forecast for mid-week is for up to 20cm of “global warming” over much of the UK from Central Scotland to the English Midlands.
We hardy souls in Caledonia will carry on with barely a murmur; the English press will collectively burst into tears at the injustice of it all.
A sort of green “fuzz” on a particular local hedgerow has become a sort of marker for the first sign of Spring here in recent years. Usually visible from about St Patrick’s Day onwards (appropriate!). This year, as at this morning, still no sign! This has been a long hard winter by the standards of the last 30 years, I kid you not.
Sorry for my redundant comment re Canadian rivers. Missed the later ones.
But, just to keep things factual…
Mark Rose (11:11:08) wrote that “While the Canadian rivers that drain to the Arctic aren’t dammed, many of them have substantial diversions for agricultural and oilfield use. Those rivers would include the North and South Saskatchewan Rivers and their thousands of tributaries, and the Red River (which also drains parts of the northern US).”
NONE of those rivers flow to the Arctic Ocean. They flow into Hudson Bay.
And NONE of those mentioned have the ‘oilfield’ uses you mention. I’m guessing you are referring to the oil sands projects which use some water from the Athabasca R which does flow to the Arctic Ocean eventually. However, note that because the oil sands are a big fat cash cow that the Greens are trying to extort money from, what most people have heard is exaggerated BS times ten over.
And only the South Saskatchewan has any significant use for agriculture.
To your comments on flooding. Where do you get your info? The Red River has always flooded. Read some history. Or look at glacial Lake Aggasiz.
No doubt more pavement and land use changes have had an impact but…
And this is truly gross exaggeration: “The clearcut logging on the eastern slopes of the Canadian Rockies and the Alberta foothills has much the same effect.”
Bottom line is that no activity in Canada is having any significant or even measurable impact on the amount of water flowing into the Arctic Ocean.
I have worked in both Bristol and Cambridge. Bristol is much warmer in the winter because it faces the warm waters of the Gulf Stream. Note in the first picture in the article that while England, Scotland and Wales are covered with snow, Ireland is not. Once again because Ireland is closer to the Gulf Stream.
The Gulf Stream keeps the North Atlantic warm, which keeps the UK warm.
Ha-ha, even better: “Spring postponed as snow forecast in parts of UK” http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8591688.stm (28 Mar 2010)
UK to have a climate like Potugal? A pleasant prospect!
However, I won’t be ordering the sun awnings just yet.
I just feel latitude, geography, and the Atlantic Jet stream might just intervene and the UK weather will be just as disappointing as it has always been.
Al Gored: Thanks for that. I was about to respond with the same points when my teenage daughter came home and I experienced the full effects of a “Seagull Offspring” (they storm in, leave s**t all over the place then leave). You’re exactly right about the Red River, and its problems have been made worse by overdevelopment on the floodplain and drainage channel changes. The Red River valley area is pretty much flat and flood waters have extended over wide areas in March and April for ages well before there were farms etc—(shameless book plug alert) I’ve researched and written about David Thompson (The Travels of David Thompson available on Amazon later this year) who was a surveyor and trader for the Hudson’s Bay and NorthWest companies and he was the first to survey the river back in 1798 and was delayed by floodwaters for two weeks.
Sean Peake – I too have extensively researched David Thompson, and found a great deal of popular mythology incorporated into what has been written about him in some recent books. Hope yours is better.
One point that most historians seem to have missed is that while the latter part of his Narrative is extremely accurate for a narrative because it was based on his still surviving journals – for both his and our reference – the early part of it was just based on his memories decades later. So… not so reliable, to put it mildly. Yet historians quote those early memories as though they were recorded facts.
And then there’s the conveniently lost journal of 1810, which allowed him to tell tales about why he turned away from the Howse Pass route and went north to Athabasca Pass.
The Met Office needs to be turned out and deprived of its taxpayer cheques. They are still pushing Global Warming on their website. Come into my garden, Met Office drones, and admire my February Gold daffodils flowering AT LAST, nearly April, because of the late Spring. Do I see a late Spring commented upon anywhere? No. Not politically correct.
Temperature in North London may be 13 degrees today, but we have snow storm forecast next week. Where is this dangerous Global Warming? I don’t believe it. WHY are we still paying these people with our hard earned taxes? Turn them out into the real world. And the BBC.
The Labour Party have already turned it into a Socialist Hell! Who cares what the fecking weather will be like?
More snow this week forecast in the UK. However, it seems that the Met office records are not even correct in the recent past. The BBC website today states:
“Statistically, snow is more likely at Easter than Christmas, according to the Met Office website. Over the past half a century, snow has fallen across low-lying areas of the UK during 12 Easter breaks – the last time was the Easter of 1998.”
The Met office says
“Easter 1-3 April 1983 – this was the snowiest Easter with Scotland, the Midlands and Kent getting up to 10 cm of snow. Over the past 45+ years, snow has fallen quite regularly, even in lowland areas. For example, 1958, 1965, 1970, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1978, 1982, 1983, 1986, 1994 and 1998 were all years when snow fell.”
I can tell you, East Anglia, where CRU is situated, is in a ‘low-lying area’ and definitely had snow on Easter Sunday last year, 2009: at least an inch and a half fell overnight, and it was a complete whiteout that morning.
The previous year, 2008, was the coldest Easter in some parts since the 1930s, with widespread snow, especially in East Anglia. See for example,
http://www.buryfreepress.co.uk/news/Snow-hits-region.3926361.jp
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article3607669.ece
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-544088/It-coldest-Easter-40-years–spring-weather-April.html
Why is this not being registered by the Met office. If we have snow (as is forecast) this week, that will be three white Easters in a row. It seems that both the BBC and Met Office are promoting the idea that the last ‘White Easter’ was 1998, which is total rubbish.
……’The Hardley Ever Center!
or even…………’The Hardley Even Remotely Close to Center!’
ScientistForTruth (15:58:53) : Why is this not being registered by the Met office. If we have snow (as is forecast) this week, that will be three white Easters in a row. It seems that both the BBC and Met Office are promoting the idea that the last ‘White Easter’ was 1998, which is total rubbish.
Damn good sleuthwork. I hope that you badger the Met and the BBC for an explanation!
I am sure they don’t have one, because the weather in the UK as of late is not going as planned!
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
ScientistForTruth (15:58:53)
Perhaps just an old article about Easter on the Met Office web site?
Dr David Viner, the UEA CRU genius who in 2000 predicted no more snow, is now head of the British Council’s climate change programme.
As “the UK’s international cultural relations body”, why does the British Council even have a climate change programme?
If this summer does turn out to be a scorcher, you can bet that they will be screaming AGW. If not then there will be a lot of nonsense about needing to look at the longer term trend. What ever happens, they want this CO2 tax, and by hook or by crook they are going to impose it.
“So – I have no idea about the amount – much less fresh water is now entering the Arctic than say 50 years ago.” Peter Miller (01:18:12) :
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/313/5790/1061 “Increasing river discharge anomalies and excess net precipitation on the ocean contributed ~20,000 cubic kilometers of fresh water to the Arctic and high-latitude North Atlantic oceans from lows in the 1960s. Sea ice attrition provided another ~15,000 cubic kilometers, and glacial melt added ~2000 cubic kilometers. ”
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/298/5601/2171
“…river-monitoring data reveals that the average annual discharge of fresh water from the six largest Eurasian rivers to the Arctic Ocean increased by 7% from 1936 to 1999. The average annual rate of increase was 2.0 ± 0.7 cubic kilometers per year. Consequently, average annual discharge from the six rivers is now about 128 cubic kilometers per year greater than it was when routine measurements of discharge began.
We had hail in the blue mountains (They are not very tall mountains in actual fact) yesterday here in Australia, and we’ve only just gone into Autumn.
In an interview, the late Nobel laureate, Linus Pauling was asked:
How does one make important scientific discoveries?
Pauling’s response (not an exact quote):
First you have lots of ideas. Then you throw out the bad ones.
My elaboration. There’s an intermediate Step 2: Cast those brilliant ideas into testable hypotheses.
Climate Alarmist ‘scientists’ have made some headway on Steps 1 and 2. But they just can’t wrap their brains around Step 3.
Climate change computer models make predictions, some of which are falsifiable. On the whole, the falsifiable predictions have proven to be pure codswallop.
After his pet hypothesis suffers a stunning defeat in the real world, any real scientist would admit that he was mistaken. Then he’d try to understand what was wrong with the hypothesis. After some soul-searching, he’d either modify the bad hypothesis and do a new experiment to test it, or chuck it entirely.
Instead of being intellectually honest, Climate Alarmist ‘scientists’ have taken a page from the celebrity psychics’ playbook:
First you make lots of predictions. Then you trumpet the few that turn out to be correct, by the luck of the draw.
This is what the British Climate Alarmists appear to be doing. Steve, thanks for calling them on it.
To all you Aussies out there:
I thought Ayers Rock was the highest point in Australia!!!! : )
Anyway, the coming projected heat wave in the UK is I suppose generated by El Nino but the Sun is doing pretty much nothing so we’ll see. I imagine it’ll be pretty much like last year as not much has changed since 2009. Am I right? We had El Nino last year and a dead sun.
Ass-U-M ing that the Sun doesn’t explode into sunspot activity any time soon which it has missed it’s usual sun spot ramp-up roll going back to 2001(?)
Sean Peake (14:45:46) :
You sound like a good candidate to give a paper at next year’s biennial meeting of the Canadian Science and Technology Historical Association, which will probably be held at Wilfrid Laurier University in Kitchener-Waterloo. Think about it. We have trouble getting papers dealing with topics prior to about 1850 and a paper on David Thompson would be quite welcome. Think about it.
I don’t know who wrote this first here: On the other hand, the modern agricultural practices across the prairies have left the soil unable to absorb water, which leads to massive spring run off,
That is a gross misrepresentation of facts. I’ve been an agricultural professional working in the field for over 40 years in southern Alberta and have some experience in soils and water. I’ve witnessed about 30 percent of the time period of land use in southern Alberta and will attest that soils are just fine thank you. Can we do better yet? Probably, but these sensational claims are without foundation.
Yes we have spring runoff. No surprise there. But there is virtually no bare summer fallow left in Alberta. Min-till and no-till is the norm on vast tracts of cropland. But even the 50 percent fallow land is left covered from crop to crop.
But what is this nonsense about “left the soil unable to absorb water” ? That is
sheer rubbish. Soils in Southern Alberta are in good healthy condition producing high-yielding crops with little erosion or runoff. Water percolates through soils today as it always has. Organic matter, tilth and soil structure is fine. Organic matter is maintained through crop rotations and application of manure when possible. Indeed, soil management in the early part of the last century was poor and lead to soil degradation. Today, soil erosion is minimal to non existent and water seeps in just fine. Crop yields are ever increasing, but fluctuate with varying weather from year to year.
It is also an exaggeration to say, “much of the water that would normally flow into them never makes it there.” Yes, considerable water in the S SK system is diverted, but considering the entire Saskatchewan River drainage heading to HB, through the course of a year very little is diverted.
Clive
Sorry if I posted a duplicate: I’m having router problems and got an offline message when I attempted to submit the first time.
Where some might see a sine wave, I see only bipolar disorder
😛
“10 deg c outside, lovely and sunny”
“13 deg today”
Sorry guys. Nowhere in my universe is 10-13 degrees anything but a cold and miserable climate.
If the gulf stream shuts down because ice in the northern latitudes is melting, and the northern latitudes freeze over as a result, won’t that solve the problem?
I remember the UK freeze of 1963 very well (that was a time when we had real weather forecasters not these climate nitwits!). I will take a little global warming rather than the months of freezing days and night we suffered!
“johnnythelowery (20:17:57) :
To all you Aussies out there:
I thought Ayers Rock was the highest point in Australia!!!! : ) ”
Not sure about that, but what I am sure is that Ayres Rock is the biggest single lump of rock on Australian land and also the Earth.
“Failing ocean current raises fears of mini ice age”
30 November 2005 by Fred Pearce
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8398
So, if the energy transport from the equator to the pole stops, can someone explain to me where the missing heat is being dumped instead?
Steve Goddard, were you sharing an office with the late Bruce Herrod in 1984? If so, I was next door. Otherwise…there are at least two Steve Goddards.
“We’re gonna freeze!”
“We’re gonna fry!”
“We’re gonna freeze!”
“We’re gonna fry!”
“We’re gonna freeze!”
“We’re gonna fry!”
Then they wonder why their credibility is in tatters?!
I’m English and the summer weather is (sadly) as bad is it ever was. When I was in my twenties and all this global warming nonsense was new, it seemed plausible, because when you are 20 you haven’t really got a memory for “climate”, only for “weather”. Now I’m well into my 40’s I can dig out my old holiday snaps from when I was ten and I can see that the weather now is much the same as it was way back then – we only seem to go through cycles of “weather” – the weather now reminds me of the late 70s/early 80’s, big deal. I’m expecting a at least 5 more years of the same.
We owe it to our children to protect their innocent minds from the brainwashing pollution of Team AGW. We know better – but our kids don’t.
“I have worked in both Bristol and Cambridge. Bristol is much warmer in the winter because it faces the warm waters of the Gulf Stream. Note in the first picture in the article that while England, Scotland and Wales are covered with snow, Ireland is not. Once again because Ireland is closer to the Gulf Stream.”
Not true, Cambridge and the rest of the SouthEast corner of the UK gets continental European weather, whereas the rest of the UK is influenced primarily by the weather systems from the Atlantic.
The ocean around the South West of England is very slightly warmer than that around Ireland but in the photo it is still covered with snow. The water around Ireland is hardly any different in temperature from the water around the UK.
England usually only gets snow when the prevailing winds are from the north and are carrying extremely cold air from the Arctic. In these conditions the air temperature (-5 to -10Celsius) is much lower then the sea temperature (+10 + 12 Celsius), so it is difficult to see why the Gulf Stream would have much impact on snowfall.
Pete H (22:30:35) :
Me too!
Steve Goddard (17:48:15) :
ScientistForTruth (15:58:53)
“Perhaps just an old article about Easter on the Met Office web site?”
No, the page was created November 19, 2008 (metatag shows 2008-11-19) so the very snowy Easter in 2008 (as per my links) was recent history (just a few months earlier!), so there’s no excuse, even if the page wasn’t updated for Easter 2009.
More likely, it was supposed to be the warmest decade for 1000 years, so a white Easter in that decade, and the coldest Easter for 40-70 years (depending on location) was quietly ignored. The BBC are now propagandizing that the last white Easter was in 1998, citing the Met Office as their source. The 2009 Easter snowfall in East Anglia might have been local, but the 2008 cold and snowfall was widespread and record breaking. They must think we have very short memories, or are incapable of doing even the most basic research. It is this type of junk and lazy journalism, attached to a policy of bias that has created perceptions about AGW out of nowhere.
From today:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8589512.stm
The Gulf Stream does not appear to be slowing down, say US scientists who have used satellites to monitor tell-tale changes in the height of the sea.
Five year climate cycle or have we identified a five year news cycle or perhaps a five year research funding cycle.
“THE Gulf Stream currents that give Britain its mild climate have weakened dramatically, offering the first firm scientific evidence of a slowdown that threatens the country with temperatures as cold as Canada’s.”
——-
OBSERVATIONS
BBC – 29 March 2010
Sorry, forgot the link
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8589512.stm
Buffy Minton (02:01:39) :
No. Not me.
Ryan (03:15:46) :
Sea surface temperatures on the west side of England are 2-4C higher than the east side due to the Gulf Stream. This makes it warmer in Bristol than in Cambridge.
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadisst/charts/actual.png
Buffy Minton (02:01:39) :
I don’t know a Bruce Herrod
Apart from the Gulf Stream not slowing down and picking up a little other research suggests that its warming influence is a myth.
In a letterto the Economist.com M.I.T. professor of physical oceanography Dr. Carl Wunsch says:
More on the Gulf Stream myth.
MONTHLY WEATHER REVIEW September, 1900
Yet the myth survives even after being ridiculed over 100 years ago.
johnnythelowery (20:17:57) :
We had El Nino last year
Was it not that you had, instead, a Nino that never grew up ?
Jimbo (08:22:01) :
Over 100 years ago, many ridiculed the idea of the airplane.
Steve was referring to the England who’s capital is Copenhagen.
“Gulf Stream ‘is not slowing down'”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8589512.stm
“Between 2002 and 2009, the team says, there was no trend discernible – just a lot of variability on short timescales.”
How far back to Polar Ice cover data reach? I recall seeing a Kriegsmarine atlas of ice cover, which reached back in the 30s i think. Would that be of any interest?
It’s amazing that the Gulf Stream folk-lore myth is still being dragged out of the cupboard when a climate scare story is needed!
This idea was many years ago, when it was shown that it is the air circulation which is responsible for our Western European temperate climate. Couple of links below:-
2006 – The Source of Europe’s Mild Climate
http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/2006/4/the-source-of-europes-mild-climate/5
The play that the doomsday scenario has gotten in the media—even from seemingly reputable outlets such as the British Broadcasting Corporation—could be dismissed as attention-
grabbing sensationalism. But at root, it is the ignorance of how regional climates are determined that allows this misinformation to gain such traction. Maury should not be faulted; he could hardly have known better. The blame lies with modern-day climate scientists who either continue to promulgate the Gulf Stream-climate myth or who decline to clarify the relative roles of atmosphere and ocean in determining European climate.
2007-Climate mythology – The Gulf Stream, European climate and Abrupt Change
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/gs/
It is long time that the Gulf Stream-European climate myth was resigned to the graveyard of defunct misconceptions along with the Earth being flat and the sun going around the Earth. In its place we need serious assessments of how changes in ocean circulation will impact climate change and a new look at the problem of abrupt climate change that gives the tropical climate system and the atmosphere their due as the primary drivers of regional climates around the world.
This is further confirmation, if needed, that Michael Vellinga and the rest of the cretins at the Met Office’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, don’t even get to first base regarding an understanding of climate. Cargo cult science at it’s best!
Hawaii is warm because it is surrounded by warm water. Iceland is cold because it is surrounded by cold water.
The Gulf Stream brings warm water to the North Atlantic, which is why you can find Palm Trees in northern Scotland close to the Arctic Circle.