Another record cold winter

[Merlyn]

Which followed a record hot summer.
The climbing temperature of the earth seems to have triggered a wide swing in resulting weather.
Knowing that weather is in many ways caused by geography, the ocean currents and what is a complex cycling of these and other factors, it seems the mood swings of the earth are far from what was predicted.

My question to Kernos and others, could the wide swings from hot to cold and back to hot etc, be the "coping" mechanism the earth has for too much CO2 ?
Or does the scientific community see this as a result of other factors.

Merlyn

[DJ Droood]

Which followed a record hot summer.
The climbing temperature of the earth seems to have triggered a wide swing in resulting weather.
Knowing that weather is in many ways caused by geography, the ocean currents and what is a complex cycling of these and other factors, it seems the mood swings of the earth are far from what was predicted.

My question to Kernos and others, could the wide swings from hot to cold and back to hot etc, be the "coping" mechanism the earth has for too much CO2 ?
Or does the scientific community see this as a result of other factors.

Merlyn

This winter in Eastern Ontario feels "normal" so far, in the sense that there is a good covering of snow and the temperatures are about what you would expect....-5c or so, with little spikes up or down. The past few winters have been weirdly warm with late snow and unseasonal warm patches.

[Corwen]

Increased likelihood of extreme weather events of all kinds is exactly what is forecast for climate change.

[Mountainheart]

In the UK we are heading for the coldest December since records began over 200 years ago. This follows colder than average winters in the past two years. There is some speculation that a weakening North Atlantic Drift (Gulf Stream current) could be behind this and that the weakening is caused by melting of Arctic ice in the summer. Whatever the cause, it's certainly been an extraordinary start to the winter in Britain.

Thx
David

[Merlyn]

Interesting,
The combination of contributing factors to this winter is different from last winter. We are getting a lot of "nor’easters" (extreme cold lake affect from the great lakes)
We are not getting the amounts of snow we had last year, which resulted from the opposite direction, caused by moisture coming up from the gulf.
The cold weather has been steady, fairly regular. In past 10 years the temperature swing was erratic, giving us wide variations. This as I understand it is different due to the change in ocean currents from last year.

The results of CO2 are one of a few factors, the depletion of O2 and diminishing rain forests, no doubt will change things as we go along. As we all have discussed, the diminishing oil supply will eventually mean a stop to its use, however the resulting environmental impact most likely will take tenfold the time.

The web of life on earth has even more to contend with, than CO2 or pollution. Depletion of natural resource impacts us all in many ways.
Building homes is difficult when the trees are gone, etc. Food supplies will be one problem to manage as invasions by predatory swarms of bugs, shifts in the migrations, etc.
The melting of ice caps as I understand has happened before, best I understand, as have other environmental changes recorded in Sumerian text and other very early records expressed as lore in scriptures.

Best I can tell, the CO2 has compounded the natural cycles, and "exaggerated" them. What might have been normal cycling of weather will now trend and possibly not return to any normal pattern historically.

Warming and cooling, in further extremes can redistribute and alter further the ocean patterns, changing temperate areas into anything from desert to ice-age.
From what I see, the predictions were indeed off. But then how can anyone really predict what the results are going to be, save "extreme".

Merlyn

[ElementalBeing]

Some scientists apparently believe that Earth is in an inter-glacial period, and that sooner or later we will enter another ice age. It is suggested that these cycles recur at a typical interval of 1 million years, and that the next ice age could start any time soon.

When I first heard this view expressed, I confess I was inclined to scoff, but since then I have heard it espoused by reputable scientific sources, and am wondering if there is any widespread debate or consensus on this.

i have not previously thought to raise it as a concern or issue, as I did not want to appear to distract or detract from other, more urgent environmental concerns.

[Merlyn]

It appears, by the weather forecast, that we will have a white Winter Solstice, (snow hitting us on Saturday.)

What I am considering is that the natural cycles of the climate may fall into a "domino affect" as a result of global warming and depletion of compensating factors like O2 and earth bound carbon, as the base line. Having a CO2 rise and lack of other resource, could couple with even more (solar and normal planetary factors) to cause a cascading affect. This earth has been averaging, adjusting and cycling for a very long time. The rise in CO2 and all is pushing the extremes, and the natural "buffers" may fail to stop a greater extreme, either hot or cold.

Possibly both ?

Merlyn

[Merlyn]

Hiya, ElementalBeing,
The reality of an ice age is perhaps more daunting than any of the water-world, burning earth problems illustrated by theory thus far.
With peak oil situations now global, the oil driven economy will come to a frozen stall if the beginning of an ice age comes to be. Heating a home would become very expen$ive.

To date, the weather change is causing major disruption due to winter snow & ice across the US and many other temperate zone countries. The ocean current changes and earth quakes seem to have combined to make a death blow to Australia in the form of floods. The trouble is confusing weather with global climate. The resulting data is a mixed bag at best, and has not been able to predict results, obviously. Over-all ocean temperature and land mass temperature are obscured by weather, and our historic accounts from hundreds of years ago are hard to use as scientific fact.

We have accounts of permanent climate and even land once under oceans, by archeological finds. This shows us that almost anything has and could happen. A bit alarming to see the obvious lack of time for land trodden animals to escape these abrupt changes....

Some scientists do agree on one very real thing. The over-population of the earth is "oil driven". And the resulting decline in population is quite possibly going to be linked to the decline in oil as peak oil is now a global reality.

Pondering the future..
Merlyn

[DJ Droood]

Last year was the warmest in Canada since it began keeping meteorological records 63 years ago, with average temperatures three degrees Celsius above normal, the Environment Ministry said Wednesday.

I'm not complaining...yet....

[Merlyn]

Hiya DJ,
If the 70's were any indication of things to come, when the US hit peak oil, there will be plenty of time to complain
Oil rationing would do a few things though, on the positive side. For us anyway.
The oil companies will need to become energy companies of a different sort. Right now, we have the final results of such change here in the hills of VA & WVA.
The power lines are in place for wind energy, to supplement the existing grid. This took a lot of fussing as they put the towering poles in place, lots of zig zags as the lines cross the existing land borders.

Possibly.. the stall in construction might lend to a new building trend. I am expecting that homes should be built in an energy efficient way in the future.
Most of the recent construction was done on 'old specs' and with colder winters hitting here, and possibly for an unknown number of years, the idea of getting geothermal and solar supplementation will be practical and even a necessity. The over-built McMansions hit $1,200.00 a month in electric bills. That is a staggering energy cost.
I also noted that these overbuilt homes have no fireplace in the home at all. No gas, and two or three heat pumps depending on the builder.

That kind of insanity will have to end. Or so one would expect..

[Huathe]

From 1998 to 2009 we had comparitively little snow in the Asheville area. But the last two winters have been a bit colder than usual and with much more snow. We have 8 inches on the ground now!

[Merlyn]

Hi Hawthorn_Ent,
The south is getting a lot more than normal snowfall, and the North East is getting pounded. Thankfully the Nor’easter ended that brought a very cold December to Virginia.
What I see here in this winter is comparable to what was going on in the 1970s. By 1988, the trend had begun and by 1998 winters had just been a few flurries and often 50 degrees in January.
The results of this has been sudden flip. People are ill equipped, failing to have firewood and equipment at the ready for winter. That is changing but slowly.
I think people are waiting to see if last winter was a 'freak' or if it is going to be a permanent change back to what winter was in the 60s & 70s here.

On the positive side: the ice storms that crippled this area have stopped. Though we had warm winters in the 90s we had a lot of ice instead of snow. The ice storms are far more devastating.

Merlyn

[DJ Droood]

Good morning Ottawa. It’s the coldest Jan. 24 since records have been kept.

The bone-chilling -28.6 C temperature at 5 a.m., broke the previous record for the date of -27.8 set in 1970.

Factor in the wind chill, and it’s going to feel like -37 C, according to Environment Canada.

For the love of gawd, people...please....idle your cars...fly....eat more cows...please...do whatever it takes to enhance global warming!! It is always alarming when they announce on the radio that you could quite possibly die if you leave your home.

[Merlyn]

Nice, 8 deg. this morning.
Not much 1 deg. in 100 years can do to be sure, LOL!

Eventually all the chicken little in the world cannot convince me that large oil companies should be allowed to charge me more to pollute and thus pollute all they want.
The global warming state sponsored grants to this end are simply a grand illusion designed to distract us from the real problems: over population and pollution!

Anyone can make a graph, imagine what temperatures were like 1000 years ago or claim that if the ice melts we are all going to need a boat. Let's all build an arc!
Forget the burning earth theories, the real truth is that a gasoline fueled world has vastly over populated the earth and has caused so much pollution and peak food problems!

Yes, it is a RECORD cold winter, again.
And it most likely will be for another 20 or 30 years.
The real problems, ones that do threaten our future, are far more immediate than another degree in another 100 years.
Floods happen, have for all of recorded time.

Get the pollution problem solved and (man made) global warming is not an issue.
Let's get back to the basics, forget the tax and spend scams, and realize we need to 'put the priority' where it belongs.
It IS a proven fact that governments will not use tax money to stop pollution.
Cap and spend? not!

While they pour money into the tax and spend scientific study grants, they starve any kind of progress to stop pollution,
as well as making wars to further this end. Where are the scientific study grants for solar? geothermal? wind? etc. (in the shredder is where)


Merlyn.

[DJ Droood]

Here's a warm thought for Canadians complaining about the cold: the winters here are not nearly as frigid as they once were.

Vast swaths of this country are experiencing a winter freeze that has become the subject of numerous media reports and even made international news Monday with the online headline from Britain's BBC: "Wind chill warnings across Canada."

But figures compiled by Environment Canada, and released to The Canadian Press, provide a little perspective.

Those statistics from the national weather office reveal a drastic drop in the number of cold days — defined as anything -15 C or colder — in recent decades.

The trend is noted in every city measured across the country — in Halifax, Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg and Calgary. Even Vancouver's mild winters have gotten milder.

[Merlyn]

Global weirding?,
Global warming?,
Or perhaps just normal cycles that go in overlapping 20 and 30 years cycles.
Global hish-hash is something of a fuss to predict, except to say the "weather will change" and right now it is changing to a colder climate, completely different ocean current and thus we may see rapid change.

For now, it is a switch back, to the 70s for the US. This will most likely be the case for at least 10 years or more.

MONDAY 10 PM
UKMET AND ME: WE HAVE TO AGREE TO DISAGREE ON 2011 TEMP.

I kept me mouth shut last year when the UKMET folks had the warmest year ever forecasted because of the el nino. And it was a good forecast in my opinion since even if it did not make it, it was close. BUT I HAD NO PROBLEM WITH THAT because it wasnt that big a deal. If we look at the sat data over the last 30 years, and stack on the nino, well I had no problem with the forecast being close to my idea. I did get into a disagreement the winter before with the cold I thought we would have, not a top 5 mild winter, but going into that, I actually pointed out that the summer of 2009 was warm as they said, though it did rain more.

However now, if what I hear is right, we have a disagreement. Assuming there is a forecast for a global temp in 2011 of .44C above normal, down from 2010, then there is a major disagreement as I have near normal forecast for 2011!

So we shall see who is closer.

BTW Jan looks like it will come in at about .1C BELOW normal!!! The forecast for Dec was .2C above ( it was .18C) The drop to below normal has occurred faster than I thought ( I had it making it there in March.

So in this case, again assuming what I hear from my sources is correct, we do have a debate.

thanks for reading, ciao for now ***



SUNDAY NOON.

AGAIN, NO SEVERE COLD IN SITE FOR UK/IRELAND

I want to make sure that I am clear on this.

That doesnt mean a day or two of cold or snow cant show up, its winter, but the core of the coming cold is in the south of europe, to the southeast of the UK and Ireland and I want to make sure that this is clear. It is as was said before the winter, though it took longer in the south to get in in there and did skew Jan warmer than I thought.

But I dont see a big cold event that would lead to the punishment we took in the northwest in December.

What a turn around!!! London, my "scoring city" so to speak was 7.5 BELOW normal in Dec, and is running 2.2 above normal in Jan. I think we can say, that Jan has not been cold, even if it does go below normal for a few days.

Moral is..the land of my ancestors ( Italia) will be colder against the normals than the land of my wife. I am married to a Lass of Scottish extraction... so I better get it right!!!!

ciao for now ****


SATURDAY 7 PM

IT TOOK A WHILE, BUT NOW I CAN SMILE ( ABOUT THE WINTER FORECAST IDEA FOR EUROPE)

I am pleased to say that no sustained cold is in sight the next 2 weeks for UKMET and IRELAND! Back and forth, sure. but overall there is nothing special I can see through Feb 5. And this was the main thrust of the mid and late winter idea. But I was not happy about the slow development of consistent below normal across the south, but its here now and likely to stay, with the cold pool from now through the 5th of Feb centered from Spain into the Balkans and moving back and forth. This blog is not to start picking out details in these areas, it is to let readers know that I am still not seeing the return of the kind of severe cold to the northwest that we had in December, and has been a source of speculation, consternation and challenge to my ideas since the cold broke. I am though seeing, and again, a couple of weeks later than I would have wanted from when I issued this forecast back in the fall, the turn to colder in the south in a way where it is going to hold for a while to come.

Over in the US, the southeast US is having one of their coldest winters on record, absolutely amazing giving the fact its a la nina winter and with the exception of 1918, something that has never happened in a La nina winter. In fact if we took all the first year la nina winters ( winters with at least a moderate la nina one winter and another one right after.. I think the nina continues into next winter) this winter in the US is unheard of!

Perhaps some of the folks that thought the hammer would continue to pound away in northwest Europe had the right idea in a way. For when you go into such cold patterns, 2 out of 3 of the major teleconnections points between the far east, eastern n america and western europe will try to hold on. In this case it was the eastern Us and eastern asia.

The global temps at noon london time was -.25C Its on this site

http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/extreme/ ... ml#picture

thanks for reading, ciao for now *****


THURSDAY NOON

QUICK COMMENT ON WARMINGISTA IDEAS ON FLOODING.

I play around half kidding with that term... warmingista, but I really wonder. When you see the contradiction in their statements, you have to understand that someone like me, who has to know the cause of past events to help with future ideas, comes to the conclusion they can't be serious about what they say is the cause, and it has to be something else.

Now take the flooding in Australia. If we look at similar or greater events, guess what the common thread is? A La Nina. What do La Ninas do to the global temperature? Come on now, look at what is happening to the global temperature... a crash of over 0.5 C since August... it's cooling, right? Why does it precipitate more than normal? what is needed for it? Well, one can argue a warmer, more moist air mass before, but one needs something to set that off. What would that be? Hmmm, we need a clash (A great band, by the way), and we need cooling... baby, I ain't fooling (some Led Zepplin there for you too).

IT'S THE COOLING THAT IS SETTING ALL THIS OFF. If you want to blame warmth... you must refer to it in the past tense, because widespread cooling in the face of warming leads to clashes.

But again, right off the bat, they can't be looking at the facts, or if they are, they are simply blind to the fact that floods like this have occurred in times of global temperature falls, not rises.

Look at the actual weather, will you? Can't account for missing heat that the models show, but is not in the data, so these guys say the data is wrong. Floods occur in Australia in La Nina, when global temperatures are falling, and they say it's because it's warming.

By the way, get ready for an upturn in the arctic ice. The AO is going positive now, and the late-season rally, and subsequent slower melt season, is going to occur as I have opined. We shall see who is right and who is wrong about the summer melt season this year. Just keep your eye on the data, and you will see who is right and who is wrong on the global temperature. If you want to fault me, it's because I was not cold enough, quick enough.

Ciao for now. ****