Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Finland thinks that piles of snow accumulated from road clearing this year are so large, some of the snow will still be frozen when winter returns.
In Finnish capital region, snow piles built up this winter may not melt during summer
FINLAND 15 MARCH 2021
THE CAPITAL REGION of Finland has received so much snow this winter that the metres-high piles hauled to designated snow dump areas may not melt during the course of the summer, reports Helsingin Sanomat.
In Uusimaa, for example, the amount of snow was 1.7 times higher than last year in January, according to Foreca.
Helsingin Sanomat on Friday wrote that the piles of snow stand almost as high as 20 metres at the dump area in Herttoniemi, eastern Helsinki. In Maununneva, a north-western neighbourhood of the city, lorries have dumped roughly 16,000 loads of snow at the dump area, revealed Tero Koppinen, a production manager at Helsinki City Construction Services (Stara).
The snow ploughed from roads forms a large structure, nicknamed by the locals as the Alps, also at the only snow dump area in Espoo, in Vanttila.
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Read more: https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/domestic/18867-snow-piles-built-up-this-winter-may-not-melt-during-summer-in-finnish-capital-region.html
The Fins mostly seem to be treating this as a joke, maybe a chance to cool off on warm Summer days. And most likely this event will have no long term consequences.
But history teaches that when ice ages strike, they can strike abruptly, with very little warning.
12,800 years ago, the world abruptly froze. Temperatures plunged back to ice age conditions, and stayed cold for over 1000 years.
In 2009, a group of scientists researching high resolution sediment samples from Lough Monreach, an ancient lake in Ireland, claimed the return to ice age conditions might have occurred over a period of less than a year. In the lead researcher’s words, “It would be like taking Ireland today and moving it up to Svalbard, creating icy conditions in a very short period of time”.
There is nothing unusual about ice ages in our current geological epoch. It is the reprieve from cold temperatures which is unusual, not the glaciation. Most of the last 115,000 years the world was locked in a harsh ice age, with vast ice sheets covering Europe and Canada. The Holocene, our current brief respite from extreme glaciation, only stretches back for the last 12,000 years.
While climate alarmists parade their worthless computer models and shriek that the world is overheating, paleo-climatologists are aware that far from being unusually warm, the world is currently in the grip of the Quaternary Glaciation, a period of unusual cold which has so far lasted 2.6 million years. What we are experiencing right now is the Holocene, a brief respite from the vast ice sheets which define much of the Quaternary.
A return to extreme cold is unlikely to happen in our lifetimes. Noteworthy geological scale events rarely happen on a human timeframe. But a return to glaciation at some point in the future is inevitable. Let us hope our descendants maintain the technological and engineering prowess they will need to hold back the ice, when the ice finally returns to challenge our beautiful home.
Update (EW): Fixed a few typos.
Is this good or bad in the climate accounting system? It might get them kicked off the climate junket list.
How much carbon emissions did they have in piling the snow up for fossil fuel vehicle transport.
Two words; Snow melters.
Two more; Get some.
We’re in the Quaternary Iceage which is in an interglacial. This story conflates the two.
Quaternary glaciation is because the Earth has permanent ice sheets at the poles and on high mountains. Much of Earth’s history there was very little if any permanent ice.
Cooling ahead
Thanks!
It’s the multi-cycle effect that they just don’t seem to get with their single-cycle correlations and comparisons. Compounding effects of cooling in the NH matters.
At least, the Arctic melt season didn’t really start ’til today.
Nevertheless, the max growing may have ended on March 10/11.
Time to start spreading black tarps.
Old Indian say “snow in shade take longer to melt”
Confucius would’ve said it first if only he could speak English !!
If glaciation suddenly returned, over 1 year or even 10 years, I’m sure they would find a way to blame either global warming (“climate change”) or “deniers”, or, more likely, both. Kinda reminds me of Niven’s “Fallen Angels” (which I learned about from other posters here – funny how fiction so often can predict fact)
When the Finns finally get the roads cleared, they should give Greta a free ride from Sweden to see the huge snow piles and ease her mind about global warming. Give her a sled or a pair of skis and let her enjoy her youth in the snow, and leave the rest of us alone!
Hey, I had a pile of snow 12 feet high in my yard. Shoveled by my neighbor. Now it’s down to a small patch the size of a dinner plate and kind of ragged in appearance.
You’d think the Finns would be used to bad weather in the winter, wouldn’t you? Are they getting soft? Maybe they should spend a real, snow-filled winter in Chicago, like 2011, or this last bit which started in late January and ended its attempts to intimidate mid-westerners in mid-February. Pffffttt!
The Finns are squawking about snow and cold when they live further north than I do, and I’m 35 miles north of Chi-town. Oh, yeah – lest I forget, Lake Michi Gamu is REALLY loaded up this spring: higher levels again, just like 2011 and several winters afterwards. I have not looked up the volume going into the Mississippi River but I’d bet it’s high.
Just curious: Is there any information about what the plant hardiness zones would be under glacial conditions (assuming similar to historical glaciation)? Obviously they would move south. But what zone, for example, would central NC be? Atlanta? etc.
Its more complicated than just moving to find warmer weather, the cold sucks much of the CO2 out of the air, so there’s a chance modern agriculture would be very difficult to impossible in ice age conditions, anywhere on Earth. In terms of warmth, tropics are a good bet.
If our descendants lose the technological ability to tackle a really cold climate, then they may rediscover living in caves being scared of bears and learning how to decorate the ceiling.
Anthropogenic Re-Glaciation
Cool fronts from the south along with La Niña bring heavy downpours to eastern Australia.
https://www.accuweather.com/pl/au/sydney/22889/weather-radar/22889
It is very bad and it will get worse.
The animation below shows a cold cyclone front from the south blocking the low over eastern Australia.
http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mtpw2/product.php?color_type=tpw_nrl_colors&prod=ausf×pan=24hrs&anim=html5
The date has been set and commercialization has begun (background for producing saleable products) based on Andrea Rossi’s latest “Cold Fusion” replacement. Not to argue the point, but his further technologies should lead to thousand mile (without recharge) EVs, and plenty of almost free, fossil fuel-less heat during the coming Grand Solar minimum.
https://e-catworld.com/2021/03/20/e-cat-presentation-announced-for-november-30th-2021-in-sweden/
I have searched without success for an article that appeared about 10-15 years ago from an older scientist who claimed that rising CO2 led to the ice ages.
In a thumbnail, his theory was that more atmospheric moisture from the rising temps led to more snow which took longer to melt which led to lower surface temps which led to ice ages.
If anyone can point me in the right direction it would be much appreciated.
Looking out my window right now, I’m in Helsinki, south as south gets here more or less. Snow is not going anywhere right now anyway and we’re at the end of March
The only melting is caused by direct sunlight and it refreezes when the sun goes away making it like glass, treacherous as heck, wear those spikes 🙂
You have to be able to predict the weather that far ahead. Lets face it, meteorology just isn’t doing better than a guess when talking months ahead.
The snow will melt in summer UNLESS, there is constant and consistent cloud cover AND a lack of warm air coming here from the East.
I think the story is bollox to be honest, I’ve seen snow here well into April in the past.
Right now, we have low dense cloud cover and no sun, and in march, the sun is the only thing melting dense snow pack.
The snow this winter froze, as in hard, as in, you didn’t want to fall face first into it, lest you have skin removed. It needs to warm up more than 32f to melt that amount of frozen packed snow and ice
Ice clods up more northerly may persist into early June, though they’ll blame that on climate change when it’s not entirely unusual