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
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‘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.