Translation via the GWPF
Speculation Alert: “New Little Ice Age Cannot Be Ruled Out”
Wednesday, 15 December 2010 09:16 Rickmer Flor, wetter.info
It is already clear: the average temperatures in Germany this year (8.1 degrees Celsius) were 0.2 degrees below the long term measured average of 8.3 degrees. “I fear we will end up still significantly lower by the end of the year”, said Globig. The long-term average is actually the average of all German stations from 1961 to 1990.
Coldest December in 100 years
In Berlin, there was an absolute cold record in early December, “For 100 years it had not been as cold as in the first decade of December,” said Globig. This also applied to other regions. But why is it so cold just now? Might it have anything to do with climate change? “I’m very sceptical”, replied Globig. A few years ago when we had a period of mild winters many climate scientists warned that winter sport in Germany’s low mountain ranges would soon no longer be possible anymore because of global warming. “Now they are saying: the cold winters are a consequence of global warming – a questionable implication,” according to Globig.
“Unbelievable amounts of snow” in Berlin (AW note: 800 flights grounded in EU)
Globig appeals to our long-term memory – and recalls a prolonged period of extremely cold and snowy winter in the 1960s and 1970s. Half a meter of snow fell in Berlin in early March 1970, in Potsdam even 70 centimetres. “From today’s perspective, these amounts were unbelievable.”
Then followed a period of milder years, and, probably the impression spread that there will be no more real winters in Germany”, said Globig. “That was a misjudgment.” People became careless, and as a result the authorities run out of grit in a very short time last winter and this year the airport operators lacked de-icing fluid for airplanes. In the Berlin the S-Bahn traffic came to a halt because of the cold and the high-speed trains did not run either. “Our modern, high-tech world was completely overwhelmed with the winter situation” said Globig.
Even the last winter was extremely hard
Many had succumbed to the delusion that the usually mild winters of the past ten years would continue. But already the winter 2009/2010 – with its long periods of frost and snow well into spring – was an eye-opening event for many. “This eye-opening experience could be even bigger this year,” predicts Globig.
Globig sees two main causes for the significant cooling: First, the cyclical changes in the big air currents over the Atlantic, and second, the variations in solar activity.
“Everyone has heard about the high over the Azores and the low over Iceland,” said Globig. The most important question for weather forecasts for many years was: “What are the air pressure differences between the two regions, how stormy will it be – and how much mild air is being shovelled sequentially from the Atlantic to Europe?”
“Both pressure areas do not exist right now,” explains Globig. On the contrary, over the Azores there is lower air pressure and a high over Iceland. “The weather over the Atlantic is upside down,” said Globig. Now cold air from the polar region has lots of space to flow to Europe – and that is what is happening.
“Normal” fluctuations with large currents
“These changes in the so-called ‘Atlantic Oscillation’ are totally normal – just hard to predict in detail,” explains Globig. The storm “Kyrill” in 2007 was the peak of the flow activity from the Atlantic to Europe. “Since then it has grown quiet over the sea,” the meteorologist said. The lows over the Atlantic have become weaker and weaker.
This effect has taken place in previous years, but at irregular intervals. Science does not yet know much about it, says Globig, „but here lies the key to a better understanding of the seasons”.
The low temperatures could very well go on a few years, maybe decades. Even more icy cold could be possible. „It has happened before, and can be explained with natural climate variability,” said Globig. We could even be at the beginning of a Little Ice Age, “the probability is at least given.”
This is also supported by the current development of solar activity. Solar activity has passed the zenith of a nearly 200 years continuing phase of high activity and will decline in coming decades. Around the years 2040/2050, scientists expect a new so-called solar minimum, with very little supply of solar energy into the Earth’s atmosphere.
Spread of the Arctic ice?
“I think it is even conceivable that the Arctic ice spreads significantly in the years to come,” said Globig. The impact of solar activity on climate has been criminally underestimated for a long time.
The last two weeks have been the coldest in England since the second-to-last solar minimum, many hundreds of years ago. “What actually will happen depends on the next five to ten years,” believes Globig. But one thing now appears to be very likely for the weather expert, “We will have to abandon some climate forecasts. “
Wetter T-Online, 14 December 2010 (translation by Philipp Mueller)
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It’s not statistically significant, is it?
Just to give an idea of how much fake warming there is, .2 C is enough drop in temperature to give the results of the coldest winters over the last century, and this is a local temperature drop where many locales have “warmed” several degrees in order to increase the average.
If AGW/CC/CCC caused the freezing conditions in Europe and North America last year then it is a given that increasing temperatures will cause a Little Ice Age.
1% less in TSI has some effect on the earth temperature.
Here is my point: ( I’m a layman. My logic could be wrong)
The radiation E to the space is proportional to T ^4, let set normal case as T^4 = 1
T^4 = 0.99 solve for T = 0.9975. This means 0.9975 of the normal earth temp, should emit 0.99 percent of the energy earth normally radiates to the space.
Assume earth normal temp is 300 K, 300K * 0.9975 = 299.247K
Lower by 0.75 K
I don’t know 0.75C lower temp has what effect on the climate. Should we ignore this 0.75?
Why we don’t see the effect? Because earth is a big pot, it stores lot of energy.
I turned off my teapot power, the water in the pot still hot for a quiet long time.
old44 says on December 18, 2010 at 6:07 pm
You are so correct, bordering on genius. Clearly those climate alarmists in the early ’70s did not yet have the mechanism correct. It is only warming caused by CO2 that will lead to an ice age. What a wonderful theory.
[SNIP. Insulting all readers of this “Best Science” site deserves a snip, which I’m providing as a public service. ~dbs, mod.]
Malcolm Miller says:
December 18, 2010 at 1:02 pm
Here in Australia there is December snow, and the longest and coldest winter for a long time where I live. We are supposed to be having summer now.
——————
For those of you who are easily confused. December snow in Australia means snow on the top of a mountain somewhere. It’s not unusual.
Australia is seeing a very wet year relative to the last 15- 20 years of warm and dry conditions that included record drought.
1DandyTroll says:
December 18, 2010 at 11:20 am
But OMG, will the beer in Munich in October freeze then?
OMG! A real emergency! Everyone get your steins and catch the earliest flight! 😉
At the last glacial maximum, mean sea level was about 120 m lower than it is now. There were fresh water ice sheets >1 km thick over parts of N. America. All that is required to melt this ice is an increase of 0.4 W.m-2 in the solar constant coupled into the ice sheets – over 10,000 years. The Earth’s solar climate budget is ~1365 +/-1 W.m-2. A decrease in the solar constant of 1 W.m-2 caused by the change in ellipticity of the Earth’s orbit from the Milakovitch cycle is sufficient to cause an ice age – over thousands of years. The fluctuations in the sunspot cycle are also of the order 0f 1 W.m-2. Over the last 6 solar cycles, the average increase in solar flux was about 0.3 W.m-2. This is sufficient to account for the observed long term increase in the ocean heat content. The Maunder minimum – 50 years with almost no sunspots – was sufficient to cause the ‘Little Ice Age’.
No need to worry about CO2. The last 100 ppm increase in atmospheric concentration has had no effect on climate. Instead, look more closely at the solar energy coupled into the oceans and the way it gets transported and recirculated. There is a region in the equatorial ocean where the sunlight can get trapped in subsurface layers below ~ 50 m for long periods of time. That is where we need to be looking for climate change.
mitchel44 says:
————
I also find it odd that folks are convinced that a “less than 1% variance in TSI between solar max and minimum” of the most powerful thing in the solar system has no effect on the earths climate, yet a change of .0001 in the composition of the atmosphere over 150 years has a major impact.
————
that’s because you don’t understand, along with a lot of other people, that the concentration of CO2 relative the other gases in the atmosphere is NOT relevant.
In principle if you took away all the others gases and had just CO2 you would still have the same amount of green house warming.
BUT there are complicating factors such as other green house gases, most importantly water vapour, AND pressure broadening of green house gas absorption spectra.
I just always get a laugh at R Gates and his lack of frontal lobe judgement call…that he is actually taken seriously on here.
I mean, really, R, comparing you to this expert meteorologist (Globig), is like comparing apples to….bricks.
Yeah yeah….as always some of your points are valid. And yeah yeah I guess I am moving into the argument from authority category a bit, I must admit.
But therein lies the rub from YOUR quasi-argument from authority: Just enough knowledge to be dangerous.
But you have this delusion of yourself as a higher critic of somebody who is actually AN EXPERT IN THE FIELD and would probably eat you for lunch in an actual debate.
I thought this was a fascinating post, even if some of it was LOST IN TRANSLATION, such “lostness” in translation evidenced by your naive quip about what Globig actually said.
Finally, the NAO, as he said, is very poorly understood….but very powerful indeed.
It was a fascinating post….and certainly not mitigated or lessened by your spray paint graffiti of half-truth additions!
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
I know I am stating the obvious but I find it interesting that the NAO and the AO always seem to work in tandem.
Two teleconnections and you have to wonder which one drives the other, or just who/whom is/are driving them both.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Manfred asked:
“What is the efficiency of all these solar cells buried under snow and ice ?”
Answer: The same as all of these windmills under continental ice sheets.
Love the German connection. Actually love all the interconnections. Over here in the UK, we’ve got a full hand of thumb-suckers. Crown prince, Chuckles, for starters and, just one amongst many, George MoonbatMan. Both of them born with a spoon in their mouths, differently assayed but spoons nonetheless.
Each a Guardinanista, both a fantasist, one a direct descendant of the saxony line the other a relic of the central European Marxist ideology.
However negative the Central European anomalies become these guys will happily disregard the sign and push the views that make their days.
When your life revolves around an axis that tells you that everything after you is downwards then you must understand just why Charlie Chuckles, georgia porgie, Gavin S*it, fill me jones et al are so desperate to tell us that “it’s worse than we thought@ur momisugly
LazyTeenager says:
December 18, 2010 at 6:42 pm
“For those of you who are easily confused. December snow in Australia means snow on the top of a mountain somewhere. It’s not unusual.
Australia is seeing a very wet year relative to the last 15- 20 years of warm and dry conditions that included record drought.”
As a dose of reality, temperatures in some of our main cities are well below normal for this time of year.
As I type this :
Melbourne 14C
Adelaide 17C
Brisbane 19C
I have noticed that R. Gates has been spewing out this “40% increase in CO2” lately as if that was something significant. The 40% increase is just 1.12 molecules of CO2 per 10,000 molecules of all the rest of the stuff. But I guess “40% increase” sounds a whole lot nastier.
“R. Gates says:
December 18, 2010 at 1:49 pm
The issue is whether a 1% variance in TSI (at the most) from solar max to minimum along with secondary effects that may be produced by the variances in galactic cosmic rays is all of a greater influence than a 40% rise in CO2 over a few centuries.”
Interesting comments have been made by others already. PhilinCalifornia mentioned the logarithmic effect. To visually see exactly how much additional effect this extra 40% CO2 has, see page 8 of “The Skeptics Handbook”: http://joannenova.com.au/globalwarming/the_skeptics_handbook_2-3_lq.pdf
Let us assume the temperature has gone up by 0.8 C over the last 130 years. A large part of this debate is exactly how much man-made CO2 is to blame for this. I have read estimates that say the effect of man-made CO2 is between 3 and 7 times lower than the IPCC estimates. However let us for argument sake assume that 0.3 C is due to our CO2.
cal suggested a 1% decrease would cause a 1 K drop in temperature. I checked the average temperature of Earth’s moon and Mars. They were 250 K and 213 K respectively. Assuming Mars is 1.52 AU from the moon, and using the inverse square law, Mars would get 43% less sun than Earth’s moon, and being 37 K cooler, that number certainly seems to be in the ball park. (I chose to compare our moon with Mars since both have little atmosphere.)
So by doing very rough calculations, which can certainly be improved upon, I would estimate that “a 1% variance in TSI” is at least THREE TIMES STRONGER than “a 40% rise in CO2.” Naturally, different assumptions will give a different number.
LazyTeenager says:
December 18, 2010 at 6:59 pm
mitchel44 says:
————
I also find it odd that folks are convinced that a “less than 1% variance in TSI between solar max and minimum” of the most powerful thing in the solar system has no effect on the earths climate, yet a change of .0001 in the composition of the atmosphere over 150 years has a major impact.
————
that’s because you don’t understand, along with a lot of other people, that the concentration of CO2 relative the other gases in the atmosphere is NOT relevant.
In principle if you took away all the others gases and had just CO2 you would still have the same amount of green house warming.
BUT there are complicating factors such as other green house gases, most importantly water vapour, AND pressure broadening of green house gas absorption spectra.
——————————————
Well, I must admit LT that I don’t catch every single post on every thread here, but this is the first time that I’ve actually seen you try to make a foray into the science.
Don’t give up your day job.
If you have one
LazyTeenager says on December 18, 2010 at 6:42 pm
Do you actually know what you are talking about? The mountains in Australia are not tall enough to get snow out of Winter.
In my opinion as an Australian, it is very unusual to get snow in summer in Australia outside Tasmania, and the snows of the last two years are more than very unusual.
According to this article: http://www.australianclimatemadness.com/?p=2874
They had Snow in Cooma in January of this year, and Cooma is not on a mountain.
In fact, this was said:
And at this site: http://therobalution.com/2009/12/14/global-warming-dumps-snow-on-australias-summer/
They say this about December 2009:
And this site: http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/1001063/summer-snow-falls-on-nsw-towns
says this about the same event:
So, I think you are simply an ignorant blowhard.
I was amused that my namesake from the UK BoM was snowbound in London and could not get to cancun to report that 2010 was the hootest year on record. Why is it that I have a vision of the weather data collecting stations all having a radiator under them to cook the data to the required result?
As I live in the tropics, I’ve never seen snow. However, temperatures across most of eastern Australia have been markedly below average for the past 3 months. Nearest town to me, Mackay max temperatures:
Oct: 26.2 (avg 27.5)
Nov: 26.5 (29.1)
December so far: 29.3 (avg 30.1) and that’s after 3 days of above average temperatures. Today it’s back under 28 and likely to stay low for some time as nearly the whole of Australia is under cloud cover.
And an Aussie site where there is snow- Mawson in Antarctica:
Oct: -10.54 (avg -9.9)
Nov: -4.1 (-2.7)
Dec: so far +0.4 (avg 2.1)
so it’s not just a European phenomenon!
Bishop Hill published an article about Spanish solar cell owners, generating additonial electricity with Diesel generators and selling that at subsidized prices into the grid. If they hadn’t done this at night, they may be still doing it. Perhaps others are smarter and add only a portion day by day.
This however, appears to be perfectly legal:
Patent application:
A solar cell with an auto window type heating wire inserted and connected to the power grid.
When snow or ice covered, the heating device melts the cover at the small cost of coal or nuclear generated electricity. The additional power produced by the solar cell – though it may be less than the electricity used for melting – may still be expensively sold with an overall proft.
David W. says:
“I’ve seen some good posts from you R Gates but I don’t think this is one of your better ones. You surely must realise that it is far too simplistic to suggest a 40% variance in CO2 must outweigh a 1% variance in TSI purely because the 40% is a far bigger number. This is what your post implies via the juxtaposition of the 2 percentage values (re-read it carefully and think about it).”
_________________
I agree that the juxtaposition of the two percentages might seem that I am implying that purely by the difference in numbers (1% versus 40%) that the larger percentage must have a greater influence. This is absolutely not my intent, as surely a 40% rise or fall in TSI would be far greater an effect on earth’s climate than the 40% rise in CO2. The fact that they both are considered as driver’s of climate (with much discussion as to which might be greater) is my point. The fact that the 1% for TSI vs 40% for CO2 are even close to being equal (in some circles) shows how powerful the small variance in TSI can be, especially when looking at the secondary effects from GCR’s, and other related solar effects such as magnetic field strength of sunspots, etc.
Google Bilderberg Global cooling. They knew all along about the cycles and were trying to adjust supply/demand of energy so the coming LIA could be managed – but they couldn’t let on.
OT, but the sunspot number has just dropped to ZERO:
http://solarcycle24.com/trends.htm