Earth ChangesS


Igloo

Are winters in Europe becoming colder?


PhysOrg.com
Tue, 20 Apr 2010 19:42 UTC
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© NASAA sight which we will need to get accustomed to: Large parts of Great Britain and Central Europe were covered in snow during the previous winter, as this satellite image from 7 January 2010 shows.
Despite the trend towards global warming, people in Great Britain and Central Europe will possibly experience cold winters more often in the next few years. This is the findings of a study by scientists from the University of Reading, the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire and the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Katlenburg-Lindau.

Comment: There is no "trend towards global warming." The cold winter to come is the result of a trend towards global cooling, specifically an ice age.

The researchers have discovered a link between low solar activity and unusually low winter temperatures in this region. It is possible that, at times of low solar activity, the mild winds from the Atlantic do not reach Europe in winter. These results do not contradict an anthropogenic climate change, which is causing the temperatures on Earth to increase on average. (Environmental Research Letters, April 15, 2010)

Comment: These results do not contradict an anthropogenic climate change because there is no such thing as anthropogenic climate change. The changing climate is the result of natural cycles. Apart from pockets of warming, the temperatures on Earth are not increasing on average. They are falling.

The sun does not always radiate with the same intensity: Phases of high activity, in which our Sun sends particularly large amounts of radiation and large numbers of particles towards Earth, alternate with comparably quiet phases in a roughly eleven-year cycle. Visible evidence of this cycle is provided by the dark sun spots which can sometimes even be seen with the naked eye. If there are a large number of these spots, the Sun is experiencing a particularly high level of magnetic activity and therefore radiates very brightly.

Comment: Sott.net prediction: next winter will also be bitterly cold across the northern hemisphere. It may not even end.

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Propaganda

Propaganda Alert! Iceland volcano causes fall in carbon emissions as eruption grounds aircraft

David Adam
The Guardian
Tue, 20 Apr 2010 14:37 UTC
Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano
© JON GUSTAFSSON/APIceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano
Cooling effect from volcano ash cloud will be 'very insignificant', but flight ban stops emission of estimated 2.8m tonnes of CO2

The eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano is unlikely to have any significant impact on climate but has caused a small fall in carbon emissions, experts say.

Although large eruptions such as Mount Pinatubo in 1991 can spew out enough material to shade and cool the planet, recent activity in Iceland is very small in comparison. The ash cloud has not reached the high atmosphere, where it would have the most effect, and it contains little sulphur, which forms reflective droplets of sulphuric acid. The World Meteorological Organisation in Geneva says any cooling effect from Eyjafjallajokull will be "very insignificant".

A larger effect on the atmosphere, though still small in global terms, comes from the mass-grounding of European flights over the past few days. According to the Environmental Transport Association, by the end of today the flight ban will have prevented the emission of some 2.8m tonnes of carbon dioxide since the first flights were grounded.

Comment: Once again 'experts' on the man-made global warming bandwagon spreading absurdities. The real issue is the massive volume of toxic fluoride and ash that is contaminating drinking water and threatening livestock.

Next we'll be told that humans caused the volcanic eruption...Oh hang on..CNN and NPR already have:
NPR and CNN worry that Global Warming may have caused Iceland's Volcano!!!

This is just too bizarre:
Diana Rehm (NPR): We do wonder whether there's human involvement in all of these eruptions, earthquakes, storms -

Elise Labott (senior State Department producer for CNN): - and how much global warming has a role in it. You know we've seen a lot of wacky weather but that's just a microcosm for what's happening around the world and how much climate change is contributing to earthquakes and volcanic ash - it's a really good question.
How exactly could global warming cause a volcano to go off?


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Bizarro Earth

Australia: Earthquake Magnitude 5.2 Hits Kalgoorlie


ABC News
Tue, 20 Apr 2010 04:20 UTC
Kalgoorlie Earthquake 1
© USGS
Hundreds of school children were evacuated from classrooms after a 5.0-magnitude earthquake hit the West Australian Goldfields city of Kalgoorlie-Boulder this morning.

Geoscience Australia says the earthquake hit one to two kilometres south of the Kalgoorlie city centre in Boulder about 8:20am.

Ambulance officers have taken a man and a woman to hospital with minor injuries. They are both in a stable condition.

Residents are being warned to prepare for aftershocks, but Geoscience Australia's David Jepsen said the worst should be over.

Comment: USGS has rated this earthquake at magnitude 5.2 as opposed to the local media. The detail might sound insignificant, however because the Richter scale is logarithmic, the difference is quite substantial in terms of energy released.

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Igloo

Best of the Web: A Climate for Change: Our past can tell us about our future

Alistair Dawson
SEPA View
Mon, 19 Apr 2010 17:01 UTC
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In the first of a new series of book focuses for SEPA View, Alistair Dawson describes how his new book So Foul and Fair a Day: a History of Scotland's Weather and Climate traces the history of climate conditions in Scotland, showing that dramatic changes have played an important part in shaping Scotland's history.

Read through any history syllabus in any school and you will find few references to the impact of climate and weather on history. Text books on Scottish history are no different. There are descriptions of death and famine but there is nowhere to be seen any consideration of whether specific periods of hardship might also have something to do with extremes of weather and climate. For those trying to understand Scotland's present weather and climate and how it might change in the future, we can learn a great deal by looking back in time, beyond living memory, and attempt to decipher past patterns of change. Over the last thousand years some remarkable changes have taken place

Radical change

A big change in Scotland's weather took place between AD 1400 - 1410, before which it was rarely stormy in winter. Thereafter, there seems to have been a radical change in atmospheric circulation across the northern hemisphere. Scotland started to endure winter storms brought in from the North Atlantic and began to experience a much greater frequency of easterly winds during winter that brought low temperatures and plentiful amounts of snow. The country started to experience what was later to be known as 'the Little Ice Age'.

Comment: A "sulphurous fog", like this?

Video of a drive through the ash cloud in Iceland yesterday, April 18, 2010:



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Cloud Lightning

Come Rain or Come Shine

Willis Eschenbach
Watts Up With That?
Sun, 18 Apr 2010 13:10 UTC
One of the claimed dangers of a few degrees warming of the Earth is increasing drought. Drought is a very difficult thing to fight, because it is hard to manufacture water. So this is a frightening possibility.

I have long claimed that "a warmer world is a wetter world". I have said this without any actual data, based solely on the following logic.:
Increased temperature - > increased evaporation - > increased precipitation.
Today I graphed the numbers for the US precipitation. I used the USHCN state-by-state precipitation database, which also includes area-averaged values for regions of the US, and for the US itself.

First, here is the change in precipitation in the US since 1895:
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Figure 1. Annual precipitation in the US.
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Document

Queens University of Belfast told to hand over tree ring data


BBC
Mon, 19 Apr 2010 12:33 UTC
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Queen's University in Belfast has been told by the Information Commissioner to hand over 40 years of research data on tree rings, used for climate research.

Douglas Keenan, from London, had asked for the information in 2007 under the Freedom of Information Act.

Mr Keenan is well-known for his questioning of scientists who propose a human cause for climate change.

Queen's University refused his request saying it was too expensive, but it is now considering its position.

The university claimed that as the information was unfinished, had intellectual property rights and was commercially confidential information, it did not have to pass it on.
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Sun

Flowrate of World's 4th Largest River Linked to Solar Cycle

Dr. David Whitehouse
The Observatory
Mon, 19 Apr 2010 12:26 UTC
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Sunset over the Paraná River
A new study has postulated a link between solar activity and the flowrate of one of the largest rivers in the world, and suggests that it will lose water as the current low solar activity continues.

The quantity of water flowing down a river is a good climatic indicator since it integrates rainfall over large areas. In a paper submitted to the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, Pablo Mauas and Andrea Buccino of the Institute of Astrophysics, and Eduardo Flamenco of the National Institute of Agricultural Technology, Argentina, follow-up a previous study of the influence of solar activity on the flow of the Paraná River - the fourth largest river in the world by outflow - and second only to the Amazon in South America.

They find that the unusual minimum of solar activity observed in recent years has a correlation with very low water levels seen in the Paraná's flowrate. Additionally they report historical evidence of low water levels during the Little Ice Age.

They also consider flowrates for three other rivers (Colorado, San Juan and Atuel), as well as snow levels in the Andes. They conclude, after eliminating secular trends and smoothing out the solar cycle, there is a strong positive correlation between the residuals of both the Sunspot Number and the flowrates of these rivers as well.
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Roses

How the Iceland volcano ash cloud is crippling Kenya's flower industry

Mike Pflanz
The Christian Science Monitor
Mon, 19 Apr 2010 00:00 UTC
Ash cloud
© Brynjar Gauti/APA plume of ash from the Iceland volcano covers the farm of Pall Eggert Olafsson, in Thorvaldseyri, Iceland, Monday.
Kenya's flower and vegetable industry, which employs tens of thousands of workers and contributes over a fifth of the country's GDP, is losing $3 million per day because ash from the Iceland volcano has grounded freight flights.

Clouds of ash from the Iceland volcano are forcing thousands of workers at farms near the Equator to down tools and robbing Kenya's flower and vegetable industry of $3 million per day.

The East African country freights 1,000 metric tons of roses, carnations, French beans, snap peas, and other produce daily on overnight flights to Europe. About 1/3 of the cut flowers sold in the European Union are grown in Kenya.

But the Kenyan, British, and Dutch airlines that fly from Nairobi have been grounded since Thursday, following flight bans due to risks to aircraft from volcanic ash spewing from Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull eruption.

Already $12 million worth of flowers and vegetables destined for European supermarkets have had to be destroyed or given away.
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Binoculars

Incredible Images of Iceland Volcano from Just a Few Kilometers Away

Nancy Atkinson
Universe Today
Sun, 18 Apr 2010 12:17 UTC
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© Snaevarr GudmundssonLightning visible in the plume of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland on April 17, 2010.
Astronomer Snaevarr Gudmundsson from Iceland was able to travel to within just a few kilometers from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano, and shared his incredible close-up images with Universe Today. "I stayed near the volcano from about 16:00 hours to 22:00 hours on Saturday and watched its impressive eruption," Gudmundsson said in an email to me. "Amazing event, awesome explosions of 1200 °C hot magma reaching ice and water. I shot more than 550 images during these hours of continuous enjoyment. Sounds ridiculous but its ever changing appearance was never boring."

The massive plume put on an impressive display - from lightning forming within the plume to an incredible amount of spewing ash. On one of following pictures you can see helicopter for size comparison of the plume.

Gudmundsson said he and other photographers were a safe distance from the eruption, but were a few kilometers away. "Nearby was a small river and its prominent sound prevented us from hearing much in the eruption itself except a loud roar from thunders from time to time," he said. "During daylight we even glimpsed some lightning but at dusk (the photo is taken at about 22:00 in the evening) they were easily spotted especially during active periods of explosions."
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Bizarro Earth

How volcanoes can change the world

Rosanne D'Arrigo
CNN
Mon, 19 Apr 2010 12:11 UTC
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Palisades, New York - The recent volcanic eruption in Iceland is stranding hundreds of thousands of air travelers at Heathrow Airport in the UK and other airports across northern Europe, due to its voluminous clouds of volcanic ash that can clog airplane engines and limit visibility.

However, this is by no means the first such volcanic eruption in Iceland to affect human activities. Long before the advent of air travel, the eruption of Iceland's Laki volcano in 1783-84 had profound effects on climate, not just in Iceland but around the globe.

Volcanologists Thorvaldur Thordarson and Stephen Self estimated that a comparable event in the modern era would release enough ash and other eruptive materials into the atmosphere that the resulting ash cloud and sulfuric haze would probably disrupt air travel over much of the Northern Hemisphere for about five months. But there were impacts well afield of Iceland and Europe at the time of Laki.
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