Breaking news! December can still be cold and snowy over parts of the Northern Hemisphere. Don’t look to the American media for much information about European weather; it’s about as foreign as driving on the wrong side of the road. But, in Britain, Italy, and the rest of Europe, the past several weeks have seen “the Arctic refrigerator door” swing wide-open. Here are some example headlines:
Arctic freeze to last another month as AA warns of ‘worst driving conditions imaginable’ for Christmas getaways: Mail Online: “With temperatures expected to fall to -15c (5f), the Met Office said this is ‘almost certain’ to become the coldest December since records began in 1910.”
Europe travel mayhem as arctic freeze strikes again: AFP: “In Italy, rare snowfall disrupted the tourist destinations of Pisa and Florence, forced both airports to close and severely disrupted traffic and the region’s rail network.”
Thankfully, Dr. James Hansen has this figured out: Europe is one-half Rossby wavelength downstream from a partially frozen Hudson Bay, which causes Europe to become colder, or something: from NASA’s government funded blog:
Back to the cold air in Europe: is it possible that reduced Arctic sea ice is affecting weather patterns? Because Hudson Bay (and Baffin Bay, west of Greenland) are at significantly lower latitudes than most of the Arctic Ocean, global warming may cause them to remain ice free into early winter after the Arctic Ocean has become frozen insulating the atmosphere from the ocean. The fixed location of the Hudson-Baffin heat source could plausibly affect weather patterns, in a deterministic way — Europe being half a Rossby wavelength downstream, thus producing a cold European anomaly in the trans-Atlantic seesaw. Several ideas about possible effects of the loss of Arctic sea ice on weather patterns are discussed in papers referenced by Overland, Wang and Walsh.
However, we note in our Reviews of Geophysics paper that the few years just prior to 2009-2010, with low Arctic sea ice, did not produce cold winters in Europe. The cold winter of 2009-2010 was associated with the most extreme Arctic Oscillation in the period of record. Figure 3, from our paper, shows that 7 of the last 10 European winters were warmer than the 1951-1980 average winter, and 10 of the past 10 summers were warmer than climatology. The average warming of European winters is at least as large as the average warming of summers, but it is less noticeable because of the much greater variability in winter.
This is the trap that statistical/data manipulators like Hansen have fallen into: in the past, they would freely say: “of course you cannot attribute one weather event to global warming, but the likelihood of that event has become higher because it’s the extremes that are going to increase the most”, or something like that. Now, there is no pretense to equivocate about what the atmosphere is doing: weather has become climate, and necessarily so for the continued narrative of global warming alarmism. The trap is that they do not understand the underlying meteorology or climatology from basic dynamics — instead giving hand-wavy explanations with some citations thrown in from their colleagues.
To adequately attribute an ongoing weather/short-term climate event to AGW, considerable data analysis and time must be invested into researching many different avenues. It is a disservice to those interested in climate variability for senior scientists to supply hand-wavy, reflexive out-of-their-behinds explanations to the media to further their obvious political agenda. This actually goes for both sides of the climate aisle.
In the meantime, Europe continues to enjoy the effects of global warming or the Arctic Oscillation or the North Atlantic Oscillation, or something. It’s hubris and arrogance to think you have the Winter of 2010-2011 all summed up before it even starts.
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As this thread has turned a little UKcentric…..
Could anyone tell me why central heating oil is only 37p per litre (when the sharks are not upping the price) when diesel is 124p per?
Is it fractionated close to derv?
See where I am going with this…..
One reason I ask is that I had a couple tyres fitted last week and took an interest in the heater in the workshop. It would appear that when a green directive from the EU insisted that garages, etc, pay to dispose of used engine oil an entrepreneur, as is their wont, decided he would save all the garages in the EU some cash and deliver a system for buring all that “waste” for heat. Nice.
Fat wallet for said company. Warm mechanics. Big plume of black smoke. What’s not to like?
Somerset. 5PM. -1C.
Pascvaks says:
December 18, 2010 at 5:34 am
Driving on the “Wrong Side” is freightening enough (especially in an American Car and no one in the right seat to tell you when somethings coming) but the thing that will leave an indellible mark on your immortal soul for the rest of your life and all eternity is the first multilane, rush hour, bumper-to-bumper, 100KPH “Round About”. If you live, it ranks up there with your first fish, your kiss, and your first.. you know.
100 KPH? That’s only 62 Mph! What’s so earth-moving about that? Can’t call that an “experience.” Don’t be such a wuss!
Here are a couple of videos that you may get a kick out of… No less accurate than the Global Warming Cheerleaders and a lot funnier.
Global Warming and Laughing Babies
Carbon Credits and Adultery Credits
Cheers,
Andrew
Open water in the Arctic does not seem to have saved Alaska from being very cold this month.
Extreme cold has formed in interior Alaska with this morning’s temperature reaching the chilly -60 F threshold at Fort Yukon, just N of the Arctic Circle. But at least the wind is calm!
Fairbanks has averaged -19 deg F (14 degrees below normal) over the first 17 days of December with each of the past 3 days reaching -40 F.
AGW Progress Report: The fear, the fear, from the left-socialists. They are sniffing something out.
What could that be? Here are clues:
“The conditions are likely to make this the coldest December on record, with a current average temperature of minus 0.7C, five degrees under the long-term average.”
“Louise Ellman, Labour chair of the Commons transport select committee, said it was no longer sufficient for ministers to brush away criticism by saying the severe conditions were exceptional.
“This is now the third bad winter in a row. We need to establish whether we think there may be a change of weather patterns and if so respond accordingly,” she said. “We should be able to respond to these events better.” Ellman said her committee would investigate what had gone wrong. “Clearly it is something we will have to look into.””
“UK snow: Britain in gridlock as big freeze brings Christmas travel misery
• Passengers angry as BA cancels all short-haul flights
• December set to be coldest on record, says Met Office”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/dec/18/uk-snow-travel-disruption-christmas
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/015611.html
Piers Corbyn of Weather action ( http://www.weatheraction.com/ ) was on Sky News tonight forecasting that after a brief respite around New Year the UK will have lots more snow in January. He may or may not be right, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen this anti CAGW astrophysicist given such prominence on mainstream TV in the UK. Another sign of the times?
Expanding arctic ice has joined up with the west coast of Iceland – usually there is a gap of 100km or so:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_bm_extent_hires.png
Lets see how close it comes to northern Norway – normally a large gap here.
The hottest year and the hottest decade? I note the best proxy for the state of the climate – sea level- has fallen back to 20cm, first broached in 2002:
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_noib_global.jpg
Anyone following how the world’s glaciers are doing these days. Also, with the cooling oceans volume shrinkage should eventually be reflected in sea level. Time to switch to a polynomial fit to the flattening sea level curve.
“…Europe being half a Rossby wavelength downstream…”
In one of my undergrad essays on the history and philosophy of science course , read and marked by only one person, my lecturer, I used a phrase, “only an epicycle away”, that got several question marks dotting around it. I was miffed. I was trying to explain how, in the world of geocentric universe, the growing discrepancy between the accumulated observational data on planetary movements and the predictions of the geocentric model of the universe was reconciled: by adding an epicycle to the model that was wrong fundamentally. The addition of epicycles made the old model so complicated that some astronomers, including Copernicus, began to have other ideas.
And now, many years later, James Hansen of CAGW fame uses a phrase that is almost identical and for real: “…Europe being half a Rossby wavelength downstream…” I guffawed reading that.
It seems the discrepancy between the observation and the model can this easily be dismissed. Aristotelian astronomers were “only an epicycle away,” too. And they got away with it for two thousand years.
@ur momisugly Henry Galt
Central heating fuel is “rebated” fuel. Much lower applied tax.
Rebated fuel can be used for all non-road-fuel applications.
The penalties for using rebated fuels in road vehicles start at massive fines and impound of the vehicle and go up to imprisonment and total seizure of vehicle and load and sale of same.
Rebated fuels are chemically treated for detection purposes and also dye marked for visual detection. roadside checks involve taking a sample and testing for the chemical markers (the roadside checks also involve several other government agencies such as police, other arms of HMRC (revenue and customs) benefit agency (checking for fraudulent benefit claimants) VOSA (vehicle and operator services agency) DVLA (driver and vehicle licencing agency) (etc))
In all, if caught “running on red” (red dye) you are looking at a minimum of about £1000.00 fine and then you have to pay more to get the vehicle back.
Al good fun.
Richard Holle says: December 17, 2010 at 10:28 pm
… from another upcoming RealNobel status researcher? While I freely admit I could not slow down enough to understand the detail, I sniff high quality – and when I’ve had that feeling before, I think I’ve been right.
Heck, Richard, please spell that all out with pictures, a nice nice book that even kids can enjoy. Get Nigel Calder to ghostwrite and Marc Hendrickx to illustrate it.
Loadsa shiny white Global Warming here, decking all the tree branches. Certainly beats anything I’ve ever seen in December (60 years). I wrapped chains round my shoes to stop skidding, and tied them with rubber ties cut from old tyres. It works a treat.
Henry Galt, I’m in Somerset too. Email me if you see this.
Well 2010 will be remembered as the year with 2 winters in the UK for a long time.
thought last winter was bad, and we only mid way through December!! if it carry’s on like this for Jan,Feb i pity the next warmist scientist who raise’s his head and spouts off about global warming…..please let it be a member of the TEAM.
Looks like Somerset is becoming a skeptics county
Currently at just after 10pm here in sunny rural south somerset we have 8 inches of global warming and its -13c, better get the bbq and bikini out!
There is an interesting hypothesis that a warming Arctic (relative to mid-latitudes) is leading to weakened meridional thermal gradient, and consequently weakened average westerly flow, allowing more incursions of easterlies into western Europe, leading to more heatwaves in summer and more cold outbreaks in winter.
David Jones says:
December 18, 2010 at 9:51 am
Pascvaks says:
December 18, 2010 at 5:34 am
Driving on the “Wrong Side” is freightening enough (especially in an American Car and no one in the right seat to tell you when somethings coming) but the thing that will leave an indellible mark on your immortal soul for the rest of your life and all eternity is the first multilane, rush hour, bumper-to-bumper, 100KPH “Round About”. If you live, it ranks up there with your first fish, your kiss, and your first.. you know.
100 KPH? That’s only 62 Mph! What’s so earth-moving about that? Can’t call that an “experience.” Don’t be such a wuss!
Hear hear…
It does remind me of various American cop shows, where the commentator talks breathlessly about pursuits “sometimes up to 70 miles an hour” – in the UK, speed starts at 70mph.
Just as a nit-pick though, about the photo at the top of this – Northern Ireland is not part of Britain.
Pamela Gray says:
December 18, 2010 at 7:09 am
Another comment regarding right versus left. My boyfriend got me a very cool 38 revolver with gun belt, I think for Christmas. He is 6′ tall and can’t even put his finger into the trigger guard to pull the trigger. And the grip looks like a peanut in the shell in his hand, so I think this gun sitting on his couch at his house is meant for me. I can only hope. He had me try it out Friday and it fit my hand beautifully. Plus it has a longer barrel. so there IS a chance in hell I can hit something with it.
If you can’t hit the target, stand closer. It’s only our friendly climate scientists who when they can’t hit anything worth a damn with a 20 year prediction, lengthen it out to 100 years.
I didn’t try on the belt though I REALLY wanted too. It is a right handed belt. I hope the belt fits. He said it was way too small for him. But he has this skinny cowboy behind and I have a smallish but woman behind. So just in case, I’m not eating till Christmas.
Which would be ironic if it ends up being too large.
Pamela Gray says:
December 18, 2010 at 7:11 am
I forgot to mention that it is snowing again and witch tit cold in NE Oregon, just so my above post is not off topic.
I hope you warmed your hands beforehand – or she’ll complain.
Henry Galt “Could anyone tell me why central heating oil is only 37p per litre (when the sharks are not upping the price) when diesel is 124p per?”
Tax. Diesel fuel for motoring is actually sold by the oil companies to the retailers at 42p per litre. Duty is around 58p per litre. The retailer makes 5p per litre. Then there is VAT on the lot (yes, tax on the tax!), a whopping 17.5%, to go up to 20% in January. That gets you to nearly 124p per litre.
Yes folks, in UK the government gets over 76p per litre, over 60% of the price paid at the pump, and set to increase in January. For US readers the tax works out at equivalent to $4.46 per gallon, and we are paying the equivalent of $7.29 per gallon for motor fuel at the pumps.
Not content with that, the UK government additionally charges us ‘Vehicle Excise Duty’ (‘Road tax’) to use a motor vehicle. This is linked to the vehicle’s carbon emissions (CO2 in grams per kilometre) and is typically over £200 ($300) per year.
Well of course we are having more snow in the UK. The Met Office predicted a ‘mild winter’ didn’t they? For heaven’s sake predict blizzards next year, and save on my heating bills. And Al Gore: stay away.
There is an interesting hypothesis that a warming Arctic (relative to mid-latitudes) is leading to weakened meridional thermal gradient, and consequently weakened average westerly flow
That is incorrect in several aspects. The polar jet is weakened (negative AO), not average westerly jets. More fundamentally, a smaller latitudinal thermal gradient would lead to less latitudinal flow, not more.
My boyfriend got me a very cool 38 revolver with gun belt, I think for Christmas.”
Oh, dude! America is an entirely different planet.
This is remarkable. Another couple of UK winters like this and the AGW theory will be dead (In the minds of the average punter. No cure for believers).
Meanwhile, Sydney, Australia, currently 22c. That’s well on the cool side for the mid December.
I lived in England in 1999, 2000-2001 and 2004-2007
I witnessed snow all these years. to be more specific I lived in Cambridge, London and Bristol but I haven’t seen temperatures plummeting to as low as -15 and below.
Yes I think the cold pattern has started and may last for another 20 years or so.
Eric (skeptic), I think you misunderstood. The westerly strength is proportional to how much colder the higher latitudes are than mid-latitudes. The Arctic is not as cold, so the westerlies weaken, so easterly (cold in winter, hot in summer) perturbations become more frequent. This is NAO, not AO, I am talking about.
Baa Humbug says:
December 17, 2010
I made no such claim. I claimed a regime change.
==========================
Ummm. I never said you did.
Such observations were my own…thank you very much.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA