In case you haven’t noticed, it is as cold in Canada (and soon some parts of the USA) as it gets at the South Pole at times:
The video author writes:
Woke up to a balmy -41C (-41.8°F) this morning in South Porcupine, ON. Thought I’d share what happens when you mix boiling water and a water gun and take it outside for a few shots.
Watch:
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R. de Haan says: @ur momisugly January 5, 2014 at 1:33 pm
Wonder how that AGW scare mongering is working for the warmista’s when we have snow owls in California…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
We have one here in North Carolina on my farm.
Pamela Gray says:
January 5, 2014 at 8:07 am
We are in an Arctic low which allows polar jet stream wanderings to escape the confines of the circle and invade our lands in more southerly directions with polar-frozen air temperatures. …….. So what happens if the pattern stays around for a long period of time?
I am going out on a limb to suggest that invasions of Arctic air and snowy storms (IE negative Arctic Oscillation pressure) may have caused or significantly contributed to the development of Lake Missoula. And then when the pattern reversed to a more positive trend (IE positive Arctic Oscillation pressure), the ice dam area warmed up and we ended up with catastrophic floods.
Pamela,
That is an interesting and plausible speculation! The many cycles of formation and destruction of Lake Missoula created much of the convoluted geology of Washington state (as I’m sure you well know). For others that may not be aware, here’s a summary simulation video:
http://youtu.be/27BP4CL66Tk
A fine picture of the ancient beach fronts stair stepping the mountainsides around Missoula today can be seen here: http://formontana.net/shores.html
MtK
Meanwhile, in Brisbane we are having a heat wave with temperatures well over 30. This is PROOF! Global Warming is happening!
Niagara Falls frozen in 1911:
https://twitter.com/History_Pics/status/419929162875670528/photo/1/large
_Jim says:
January 5, 2014 at 11:15 am
http://earth.usc.edu/classes/geol150/stott/weather/circulation.html
That page is a wealth of info showing the interaction highs and lows, Hadley, mid-level and polar cells as modified by real-world Rossby wave behavior. The difficulty with atmospheric air flow systems/dynamics is – it’s a complex 3 dimensional system where density, temperature, Coriolis effect, un-even heating etc is not uniform, never in actual equilibrium and adjoining air masses are always in ‘conflict’!
_Jim,
That page IS a wealth of information – Thanks!
MtK
Myth, parlor trick or special circumstances required?
A paper by Monwhea Jeng, published in the American Journal of Physics, vol 74, pg. 515-522 sheds some insight. Here is a summary from another forum on the paper and the effect:
This paper described the notion of the Mpemba effect starting at the time of Aristotle, and when you read it you find that it is a highly difficult problem, to begin with, difficult in stating what one exactly means by “hot water freezes faster than cold water.” First of all, he shows that not all experimenters did the same experiment or looked for the same effect. It would go too far to write all down what Jeng claims, and anyone who would like to have a copy of the paper (with numerous references to other papers) can get it from me.
Clearly it will not always function, if you take a liquid at 99.9 degrees celcius and one at 0.1 degrees celcius you will find that the cooler one will freeze sooner. Therefore, it is a parametric problem, such that “there is a temperature range within which warmer liquids will freeze faster than cooler.”
Basically, there were a lot of explanations, convection in the fluid while freezing, the containers standing on frost which melts for the hot liquid giving a better conducting area at the bottom (but the lab experiments were performed with frost-less cool elements), degassing (but there are various experiments that did not show any difference), super-cooling … , the size and shape of the container, etc. etc.
Basically, this is a very interesting and real phenomenon, but very difficult to investigate as it depends on lots of paramenters. A very interesting study was done by Walker with different containers and different thermocouples and different temperatures, and found that for some of them nothing “weird” happens and colder fluids freeze faster than warmer (Hurrah for thermodynamics!) but there are also parameter regions, in this case temperature regions where warmer fluids freezes faster (Hurrah for Mpemba).
According to Jeng super cooling is no solution for the Mpemba effect, although a paper a year Earlier by Auerbach (Am. Journal of Physics, 1995, vol 63, pg. 882-885) seems (according to the abstract) to make a link between supercooling and the Mpemba effect.
.
John F. Hultquist and Gunga Din,
Thanks for responding to my comment @9:43 am. But I still don’t understand the mechanism.
What is the straw used for? Is it a diversion, where the ice forms after a few seconds with or without the straw? Or is the burning straw necessary?
Also, I know there’s a relationship between salt, water, and ice. But what is it in this case?
TIA.
[I would do the experiment myself, but I don’t have a plastic straw handy.]
My name has probably become a bad word in news organizations for my many e-mails on the subject, but I will risk enduring the same fate here by pointing out that wind chill is not temperature. So, statements like “[hitting temperatures now -50C today with wind chill] are wrong. The wind has no effect whatever on temperature. The same units should never have been adopted to express both temperature and wind chill, but the idea is now ingrained into us and there is little to do- I wonder if the media had a hand in this since they love to use anything that sounds the most extreme (“if it bleeds it leads”). Temperature is temperature and is only what is shown by a thermometer. Wind chill is a RATE OF COOLING, not a temperature.
Ian M
From layers of mud occurring after a Mt. St. Helen’s ash layer laid down around 13,000 BC (or BP whatever the new letters are), 11 of those catastrophic floods occurred after that period of time. So freezing temperatures and snow buildup could not have been caused by continental drift, or some huge meteorite causing a dust cloud every now and then. Of all the possibilities of periodic warming and cooling that would cause that ice dam to break, it seems to me that the AO could be among the top contenders.
How does the current winter weather compare with the wintery weather that the mid west had during 1886.
dbstealey says:
January 5, 2014 at 3:59 pm
The video is on a site called TrickLife. Think about it.
All things that look like water – are not.
All things that look like salt – are not.
All things that look like ice – are not.
See here, especially #3.
http://chemistry.about.com/od/chemistrymagic/tp/sciencemagictricks.htm
The newest model forecasts are even uglier.
Up to 20C below normal by early Tuesday afternoon for the eastern half of the US. Mega-exceptional.
http://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/models/gfs/2014010518/gfs_T2ma_namer_9.png
re: That page IS a wealth of information – Thanks!
MtK
You’re welcome Mac.
Pamela Gray says:
January 5, 2014 at 4:19 pm
The mechanics of the failure of the ice dams (I think the count is 80+ or so) is very well understood. Cracks, water, gravity and so on. After failure and drainage of the water more ice flowed south in the Purcell Trench and pushed across the opening of the Clark Fork River. Then the lake grew and deepened again with the increasing depth increasing the pressure on the blocking ice. Repeat. “Episodically” from the Ice Age Floods Institute:
http://www.iafi.org/
As far as I have heard and read, no one has suggested the need for an atmospheric periodic warming and cooling for these events because none is needed. Timing of the refilling (raising) of the lake can be related to something perhaps, but that timing changes and is not periodic (from what I read).
From the (1983) link at the end, quote:
“Calculations show that each time the lake rose to about 600 m deep, it made the glacier buoyant and engendered a catastrophic discharge along the glacier bed (a joekulhlaup). A reconstructed water budget suggests that after a complete draining, the lake refilled in 3 to 6 decades; thus the hydrostatic prerequisites for a joekulhlaup were reestablished dozens of times during the late-Wisconsin episode of lake damming. Various intercalated tephra layers, radiocarbon dates, varve successions, and the Bonneville flood deposits in the region suggest that late-Wisconsin glacial Lake Missoula existed for about 2 millennia within the period 15,000 to 12,700(?) yr ago.
http://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/ofr83671
PAMELA GRAY
“land temps can be ramping down, simply because the ocean source of the heat has lessened.”
You are repeating what I said originally about the oceans also being a part of the reason for the cooling. It is common knowledge that a positive AO causes strong westerlies which keeps the ARCTIC air to the north . In December we had strong positive AO but the temperatures got colder , indicating that some other mechanism was at work too. What you are arguing about escapes me ?.We seem to be saying the same thing. in just different ways , so lets call it a draw and go on to other topics
Suspect the reason for the “boiling water” in the squirt gun is so the gun does not freeze up after the first squirt. The hot water gives you a few more opportunities to shoot before a freeze up.
Something being missed about the equations of heat etc is the heat of fusion.
That takes many more calories then cooling the water off.
R. de Haan says:
January 5, 2014 at 1:33 pm
The article only says “An invasion of snowy owls has been reported this winter across the Midwest, Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states.”
Northeast reference: http://falmouth.patch.com/groups/around-town/p/snowy-owls-invade-cape-and-islands says in part:
======================================================================
Cool! …er… Hot! …er… You get the idea.
I bet the burnt straw tip had some of that dreaded Carbon on it!
@ur momisugly Ian L. McQueen
While I understand your irritation, I also understand the point of adding wind chill to temperature. It is to tell Canadians what it will feel like if they are foolish enough to go outside.
“The thermometer says it’s a comfortable -41, but don’t let that fool you! Wrap up warm anyway, because there’s a sharp wind that makes it feel like -50, and you’ll be really cold if you dress for -41.”
@John F. Hultquist
“All things that look like water – are not.
All things that look like salt – are not.
All things that look like ice – are not.”
How can that be? Water looks like water, and it is water, so it can’t be true that everything that looks like water isn’t water. Likewise for salt and ice.
Yes, hot water freezes faster than cold water
Jim says @9:14-My Bet. It’s Bogus….@3:49 Myth parlor trick or special circumstances required?
Jim you’re making progress and that’s good.
“When Mpemba asked his physics teacher to explain the observations, the teacher told Mpemba his data must be in error, because the phenomenon was impossible.
Mpemba asked a visiting physics professor, Dr. Osborne, the same question. This professor replied that he did not know, but he would test the experiment. Dr. Osborne had a lab tech perform Mpemba’s test. The lab tech reported that he had duplicated Mpemba’s result, “But we’ll keep on repeating the experiment until we get the right result.” Well, the data is the data, so when the experiment was repeated, it continued to yield the same result. In 1969 Osborne and Mpemba published the results of their research. Now the phenomenon in which hot water may freeze faster than cold water is sometimes called the Mpemba Effect.”
On the road to bogus; after 50 min in 24 deg F weather, the cold water tray is icing over first …
herkimer, I wouldn’t call December’s AO indices strongly positive. It certainly was in November. It is entirely possible that Arctic cold air was allowed in your area during December. Even under a strongly positive vortex, the edges are a bit wriggly, reaching a bit outside and inside a perfect circle.
I think what I am trying to speak to is a trend versus a single month. AO trends are like Pacific equatorial oscillations. Some decades we have more El Nino’s (weaker or stronger), some decades we have neutrals (weaker or stronger), and some decades we have more La Nina’s (weaker or stronger). Plus the oscillations are not of equal length. I am guessing the AO goes through similar somewhat chaotic patterns.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/hgt.shtml
I just got back from the Arctic… sea ice page on WUWT, and the Yearly Max / Mean / Min Ice Extent trend chart has been updated with an additional year of data, change from previous chart:
Max -2.63% is now -2.574%
Mean -4.01% is now -3.946%
Min -9.04% is now -8.951%
– – –
In 2012, the CBC said that climate scientists told them that the Arctic would be ice free in 2014. In 2013 the CBC didn’t say a word about the arctic, no update for its viewers / taxpayers.