Newsbytes from Dr. Benny Peiser of the Global Warming Policy Foundation
Britain should brace itself for another freezing winter with the return of La Niña, a climate phenomenon known to disrupt global weather, ministers have warned. The warning coincides with research from the Met Office suggesting Europe could be facing a return of the “little ice age” that gripped Britain 300 years ago, causing decades of bitter winters. The prediction, to be published in Nature, is based on observations showing a slight fall in the sun’s emissions of ultraviolet radiation, which over a long period may trigger mini ice ages in Europe. –Jonathan Leake, The Sunday Times, 9 October 2011
BRITAIN is set to suffer a mini ice age that could last for decades and bring with it a series of bitterly cold winters. And it could all begin within weeks as experts said last night that the mercury may soon plunge below the record -20C endured last year. Latest evidence shows La Nina, linked to extreme winter weather in America and with a knock-on effect on Britain, is in force and will gradually strengthen as the year ends. It coincides with research from the Met Office indicating the nation could be facing a repeat of the “little ice age” that gripped the country 300 years ago, causing decades of harsh winters. –Laura Caroe, Daily Express, 10 October 2011
Some scientists predict that the Sun is heading for a long slump in solar activity known as a Grand Solar Minimum. If this happens, it is possible that Britain could return to conditions similar to those 350 years ago when sunspots vanished during “the Little Ice Age”, when ice fairs were often held on the frozen Thames in London. –Paul Simons, The Times, 10 October 2011
Investment in more winter equipment may not be economical given rarity of British snow, says RAC Foundation chairman. The row over the need for a multimillion-pound investment in snowploughs, de-icing equipment and salt stocks deepened this morning with the publication of a government-backed report using Met Office predictions that successive hard winters are rare. Quarmby said the Met Office remained convinced that the severe cold snap is a one-off phenomenon. “We cannot say this is an annual event,” he said. –Dan Milmo, The Guardian, 23 December 2010
The Met Office is working with academics to try and predict the likelihood of severe winters over the next 20-30 years. The work aims to help transport authorities understand the risks of further severe winters after the coldest December since records began in 1910. But the work was criticised this week by Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. “I would strongly advise not to rely on any 20-30 year winter forecasts,” he said. “The point is that nobody really understands the basic feedbacks and climate dynamics that drive annual winter variability, let alone that long in advance.” –Local Transport Today, 25 February 2011
In October 2009 the Met Office predicted a mild winter because of El Nino. Temperatures in December would be above average, they said. In reality December temperatures were a whopping 1.1 degrees below the recent average. In 2010, contributing to the Quarmby Report, the Met Office advised to assume that the chance of a severe winter in 2010–11 is no greater (or less) than the current general probability of 1 in 20. Boy, were they wrong! Mean temperatures over the UK were 5.0 °C below average during December and 0.3 °C below average in January. –-David Whitehouse, The Observatory, 10 October 2011
The fact is that nobody knows if the forthcoming winter will be severe or mild. The only wise advice that can be given is to plan as if 2011 is going to be like the previous three winters, and one doesn’t need multi-million pound computers to make it. –-David Whitehouse, The Observatory, 10 October 2011
Snow is starting to disappear from our lives. Sledges, snowmen, snowballs and the excitement of waking to find that the stuff has settled outside are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain’s culture, as warmer winters – which scientists are attributing to global climate change – produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”. “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said. –The Independent, 20 March 2000
Green thinking represents a challenge to the status quo? That’s a laughable idea. From schools and universities to every corner of the Western political sphere, the climate-change outlook is the status quo. In fact, it’s the new conservatism. –Brendan O’Neil, The Australian, 8 October 2011
Smokey says:
October 10, 2011 at 1:01 pm
Yes, the literature preceeds the Renaisance observations, and that same literature does indeed paint a global extent of the MWP and the LIA when assembled. Parchment, ink and time were precious commodities, and it had better be worth writing about, or else they wouldn’t have bothered. There were no global theories about climate or weather, and not much in the way of instrumentation. Accurate accounts were crucial in assessing what the trade prospects and transportation routes/needs were.
Let’s all just pay our taxes to the co2 god and hope he spares us..
/sarc off
Robbie says:
October 10, 2011 at 12:05 pm
Well Anthony: Are you also kind enough to provide us the title of that Nature paper in which the article is published? So I can verify and read the source and not some media statements in which I am not interested in. The media has done more than enough damage on both sides of the climate debate.
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Here http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo1282.html
Solar forcing of winter climate variability in the Northern Hemisphere
and http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/pdf/ngeo1298.pdf
Atmospheric science: Solar cycle and climate predictions
You’ll need either a subscription or academic access to nature geoscience.
Uh-oh. Does the Goreacle intend to make London his new permanent residence? And just when the little tykes thought snow was going to be a very rare and exciting event.
My mistake – Benny Peiser is a rational human being it seems. Just me being unfamiliar with him. where have I been hiding? Tasmania. Please forgive me, its 07:30 and I’m just catching up. Need another coffee I think.
Steven Mosher: “The LIA was limited in geographical distribution. As was the MWP. Interesting problems that have nothing to do with global warming.”
Regarding MWP Steven Mosher may wish peruse http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php before he makes this statement again at least with regards to MWP.
If one is going to discuss climate change or claim understanding of climate, it becomes necessary to explain the LIA and the MWP. CO2 really doesn’t explain any of the major climate changes, and cannot even explain the minor changes.
Cooling has always been the danger and will always be the imminent peril. It has been since Mankind stopped swinging through trees. Warming increases bio-available moisture, as it increases frost free land and melts ice, increasing surface area of all water bodies. Cooling reduces bio-available moisture by locking greater amounts of ice in glaciers and poles. Desertification follows.
Warming is a pleasant walk in the park. Cooling is the horror story of Hansen and Gretal, when it was considered better to abandon starving children to the wolves, then watch them die, slowly. Women living alone in the forest were burned as witches. How, a few scientists and NGOs were able to reverse Man’s perception of danger, is beyond my reasoning. GK
They are just the biggest bunch of clowns ever are they not. All of a sudden their thoroughly useless computer model, which has failed, failed and failed again, which would not allow them to predict winters, summers on any other medium to long term weather has shown that the sun, which was not programed in before, will give us very cold winters? PLONKERS all of them.
Shut down that damn UK met office. A complete waste of several million pouns per year.
But, have you heard the one about the alarmist report issued by the Australian Government’s Department of Climate Change? No snow in our high country in 50 years time. Bushfires! Aramgeddon! And just in time to inform the people ahead of this week’s vote on the new Carbon Tax legislation.
Never mind that last year was a bumper snow year, we are a month into spring and Tasmania has snow down to 800 metres and it is a bit nippy in the morning, there is so much water in the Snowy Mountains hydro reservoirs that see fit to dump several gazillion gigalitres down the Snowy River just for environmental flow.
That must just be Gaia’s sucker punch.
I was wondering why there appeared to be a political volte face with regard to the threat of warble gloaming:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100108989/lets-commit-suicide-more-slowly-suggests-osborne/
What’s wrong with a brand new hypothesis? Man causes global cooling, because (fill in ludicrous hypothesis here)……..perhaps global____________is caused by our hubris, not our pollution. (fill in blank as you see fit) /sarc
Damn! Got the the wrong way round!
All of the Northern Hemisphere is having brutal winters. A USA ski area has just opened not long after the last to close in July. Why is all this happening every year lately? The Sun is in a grand solar minimum and the Ocean is colder than normal while Arctic Air intrusions are occuring because of negative oscilation. The highlights of the last 4 USA winters included blizzards, the coldest winter in 30 years last year, heavy snow all years, 2nd place 71% snow cover last year, 50F temperatures, frequent freezing past the Mexican border and into Florida, strong wind near low pressure systems, ice dams on roofs http://www.HeatersPlus.com/roofs.html and more will all continue in brutal winter 2011-2012.
This idea of a cold winter already has traction in of all places the Dept of Energy and Climate Change who produced a junior Conservative minister on the BBC to explain how a whole tranche of new benefit monies would be made available this winter for cold weather payments to needy pensioners and others for whom the ROC had become a tax to far.
His embarrassment was obvious as I wondered at the incongruity of a climate change person being wheeled out to explain a cold weather benefit but he need not have worried over the duplicity of his position. It was only the BBC that was interviewing him and the elephant that he saw in the room went unremarked by his interviewer to whom elephants had obviously become a commonplace occurence.
Julia Gillard must be thrilled that Mother Gaia is cooling her heels at the mere thought of a carbon tax.
Zac says:
October 10, 2011 at 11:33 am
“It never ceases to amaze me when I look in an atlas to see how far north Britain is. Yet the climate is so temperate thanks to the Gulf stream.”
Yes, Britain is far north. The climate is temperate for islands that far north. However, it is not temperate in a way that a teenager from south of St. Louis might understand as temperate. For example, in the Highlands of Scotland, the sun can rise at nine and set at three. Temperate enough for you?
I’ve always said a little global warming doesn’t worry me. A little global cooling… That’s a problem.
Oceans a few inches higher aren’t going to hurt New York City. But what do you do if there’s an ice sheet a mile thick over the whole state? Aren’t we nearing the end of the 10-15kyear warm periods that break up the much longer ice ages?
It would appear that the lads from the Met have finally realized that they suffer from their own version of the “Gore Effect” i.e. there is a nice inverse correlation between what they forecast for future weather and what actually transpires. Thus the only hope for the kind of dramatic uptick in temperatures that could possibly reignite the dwindling fires of AGWphobia is for them to predict a looming ice age. In taking one for the team in this fashion they do face the prospect of future embarrassment if their ploy is successful but, given their performance in recent years, they seem to have moved beyond the archaic concept of being embarrassed by poor performance
3×2 says:
October 10, 2011 at 11:46 am
“Ah, more guess work from all.
What is worrying is that given HMG’s obsession with “global warming” and all things “green” it is doubtful that, even if we are in a “little ice age”, anything could be done. The shell game is so advanced that it could take decades to unwind.”
The semantic gymnastics will be fabulous. They can start with the claim that this new Little Ice Age would have been far worse except for global warming. But then they will have to explain why all this Natural Variability suddenly appeared. That will be their next great trick. I can’t wait.
I cannot wait for this guys 11/12 smackdown………got any books to burn?
The sun is very sultry and we must avoid its ultry-violet rays.
H/t Noel Coward, mistily in Plum’s pomegranate orchard.
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“it has very little to do with the Gulf Stream. London is almost at the same latitude as Vancouver and has similar climate. even though Vancouver has a cold ocean current flowing past it”
London is not Britain. London is about 200 miles North of Vancouver. London is at the Southern end of Britain. The Scottish Western Isles enjoy a far more temperate climate than Vancouver and they are another at least another 400 miles further North than London.
The only thing that can cause this phenomenon is the Gulf Stream, which in recent times has been relabeled the North Atlantic drift.
Most of Britain is further North than Hudson Bay.
In the unlikely event the Met Office forecast proves correct… folks may finally wake up to the fact that a trend to lower temperatures is far worse than a trend to warmer temperatures. There will be real problems with people affording sufficient heat, even assuming the energy producers can satisfy demand. The resulting loss of life will not be insignificant!
The Grand Solar Maximum officially ended in 2009, when the Grand Solar Minimum began. (This according to duhau and de Jaeger, http://journalofcosmology.com/ClimateChange111.html)
Prepare for cold, lots of cold – for decades. And no increase in CO2 is going to stop it.
I don’t think ENSO makes much of a difference to English or European winters – we have had three cold winters in a row, one of which was during El Nino, another during la Nina, and one in between – what matters is the loopiness of the jetstream and how far north or south it travels. The science alerting us to the jetstream being pushed south and flatenning during low UV episodes is at least as old as 2003 when extrapolations were made back to the Little Ice Age and Maunder Minimum (Drew Shindell at NASA – but then I think he got taken off the job). This science was ignored by the IPCC and I might add, the UK MetOffice – I wrote to them about it and who knows, may have sparked their current interest, when writing ‘Chill’…..where I anticipated the last three cold winters on the basis of the work of ‘he who must not be named on this blogsite’ who in a 2004 paper predicted the low solar cycle 24 and that 25 would probably be lower still, with a strong chance of precipitating a Maunder-type minimum. The extra low UV data for the recent solar minimum points to the Maunder Minimum having had the same ‘weather’ patterns as we see now – where contrary to expectations from warmer world theories where the jetstream runs more northerly, it shifts south.
Oeanographic climate experts will know that what happens in the North Atlantic can shape what happens globally – and what happens is that cloud patterns and oceanic heat budgets are affected and the effect is cumulative over time. Something determines the long-term cycles we see in the ice-cores – and their often very rapid rises in temperature in Greenland for example suggest rapid changes in wind patterns.
The late 20th century warming has no doubt been partly or mainly (in my view) driven by the long term cycle peaking – yet many climate scientists who now can say the dropping cycle is counteracting the warming cannot embrace the obvious corrolary that the cycle amplified it in the first place (and cannot possibly embrace the possibility the CO2-effect was not much to amplify anyway and that most of the warming is natural).
As far as I am aware, only ‘he who must not be named’ actually predicted a potential grand solar minimum after cycle 24. I hope he gets the credit he deserves.
Meanwhile the jetstream is more south than usual – over central Britain rather than just north of Scotland, but is kinking up after the flat summer – and the high pressure systems will form and give us another very cold winter. As also in northern USA wheatbelt, Scandinavia and Russia, Mongolia and China, as well as Argentina for the equivalent in the southern hemisphere…..all major areas of food production that are vulnerable. And the world is still not ready to deal with a food deficit.