It is August 2084 and in the olive groves of Bedfordshire, the temperature has just topped 41C for the fourth day running.

Luton's silk industry may be thriving, but on the radio, there are reports of wildfires raging across the Yorkshire moors. Hospitals are overflowing with elderly victims of the heat wave, some stricken with tropical diseases.

It may sound far-fetched but it is one possible future as laid out yesterday by the Met Office, where Britain is still recognisable - but only just.

Across the Home Counties, the rolling lawns and herbaceous borders have been edged aside by palms and pistachio trees.

The most comprehensive climate change projections ever produced show the UK is facing temperature rises of between 3.6F (2C) and 10.8F (6C) by 2080.

Droughts will become commonplace in the South East by 2040 and there will be less rain in the summer and more in the winter, with more storms leading to widespread flooding, particularly in the North of the country.

Presenting the findings of the UK Climate Projections 09 study, Hilary Benn said the predicted changes would "transform the way we live".

He said that the heatwave that killed 2,000 people in 2003 would become "normal". Infectious diseases in humans and animals are likely to become more widespread because bugs will not be killed off during the winter.

Mr Benn warned that health authorities, councils, developers and farmers would all have to change the way they worked to deal with the problems of climate change. Buildings would have to be made more able to cope with hotter summers and flooding while water metres would have to be installed to help cut use.

Launching the UK Climate Projections 2009 report (UKCP09), Mr Benn told MPs that the UK climate will change even with a global deal on emissions.

By 2080, London will be between 2C and 6C hotter than it is now, he said.

Every part of the UK is likely to be wetter in winter and drier in summer, according to the projections.

Summer rainfall could decrease by about 20% in the south of England and in Yorkshire and Humberside by the middle of the century.

Scotland and the north-west of England could see winter rainfall increase by a similar amount.

The government hopes UKCP09 will allow citizens, local authorities and businesses to plan for future decades.

It uses computer models of the world's climate to make projections of parameters such as temperature, rainfall and wind.

(via Piero Vietti's Cambi di Stagione. My translation of course)

17 June 2009, From the ongoing OGS conference on Observational Oceanography in Trieste, Italy -

Rome, 17 June (Apcom) - No water warming processes are likely to be undergoing in the Mediterranean. It's one of the preliminary results obtained under MedArgo, the "sister project", coordinated by OGS [the Italian National Institute on Oceanography and Experimental Geophysics].

MedArgo deals specifically with the Mediterranean Sea and surrounding countries and is part of EuroArgo, the European component of the international Argo project.

Argo's objective is an intensive analysis of the seas to see what are the impacts of climate change and global warming on the waters of our planet and, consequently, also on its ecosystems. That is why 60 European scientists are comparing data and knowledge at the Second EuroArgo Conference on Observational Oceanography, being held in Trieste, and organized by OGS.

In order to study the chemical and physical parameters of the waters of the seas, OGS uses special tools called "float profilers" [?], battery-powered cylindrical tubes released into sea currents. Devices last between 3 and 4 years and collect 150-200 profiles before being abandoned.

Rain and cooler-than-usual weather so far in June may have dampened demand for summer items such as sandals, swimwear and beer for retailers already hard put to counter sales declines during the recession.

The effect may be most pronounced in the U.S. Northeast, where June so far has been the coldest in 27 years and is on track to become one of the wettest Junes on record, according to weather research firm Planalytics, which has tracked such data since the 1930s.

June in the Midwest so far is the coldest in six years and has been wetter than normal, but still not close to last year when it was the second wettest in 50 years.

It is the wettest in 4 years in the U.S. Southeast and U.S. Southwest and the coldest in 42 years in the Southwest, the weather tracking firm said.

What an odd month this has been for bird comings and goings.

Last week, Jerry Talkington found two whimbrels in a field in Fairport Harbor. The sightings were unprecedented for the date in Northeast Ohio, according to "The Birds of the Cleveland Region."

Were they late northbound migrants on the way to their Arctic nesting grounds? Or early fall migrants headed south?

At the same time, upland sandpipers -- a grassland species that had all but abandoned Ohio over the past 30 years -- suddenly appeared at three separate locations in Mansfield, Champaign and Harrison counties.

For the second consecutive year, yellow-crowned night herons are nesting in a neighborhood in Bexley, just east of Columbus.

The hottest birder buzz last week was over several sightings of one or more Mississippi kites in Worthington, just north of Columbus. The reports came a year after the state's first-ever nesting of kites at a golf course in Hocking County.

Then on Saturday morning, I was awakened to a familiar song coming from a hemlock outside my bedroom window. It was a white-crowned sparrow, a common visitor to my yard in April and May, but never before in the middle of June, when the "Birds of the Cleveland Region" tells us that white-crowneds are "occasional" and "not to be expected."

The Holocene denying, global warming hysteriacs have not listened carefully to the testimony of the Iceman, that poor soul whose body was found on top of an Italian Mountain Sept. 19, 1991. Otzi, as he has come to be known, clearly tells us that the Alps were clear of ice, or nearly clear when this man met his death high in the Alps. The body was found in a snow-covered depression, sticking out of snow and ice by two hikers. The amazing thing was the body was in near perfect condition, and this says loads about the conditions on that mountain 5000 years ago when Otzi walked the earth.

Why? Because normally when a human or animal body falls into a glacier or is covered with snow that turns into a glacier, the body is ground apart into tiny pieces and spread over a large area. This process can happen very rapidly, and was used as a reason, initially, to doubt that Otzi was as old as he is (dating proves he is about 5000 years old). About 400 years ago, a mercenary fell into the glacier in Theodul Pass. When 400 years later, his body parts began to appear on the surface of the glacier, he became known as the Theodul Pass Mercenary. The discoverers thought they were picking up a coconut only to find it was a human skull with hair still attached. The rest of the body was found over an area of 30 x 225 feet, ground into little pieces by the movement of the ice. In 1988, parts of what became known as the Porchabella glacier sheperdess, began appearing over an area of 20 acres. This is what happens to a body in a glacier.

The Joe Romm of Climate Progress article is nonsense on all counts.

Firstly, it is plain wrong when it asserts:

"The deniers have been rooting for a Maunder Minimum to stifle global warming."

I know of nobody who has been "rooting" for cooling, but I know of several so-called "deniers" who assert that slight warming (as could be expected if the AGW-hypothesis is right) would provide net benefits.

Secondly, article shows a degree of confidence that cannot be justified when it says;

"The sunspot cycle is about to come out of its depression, if a newly discovered mechanism for predicting solar cycles - a migrating jet stream deep inside the sun - proves accurate."

NASA's predictions of the next solar cycle have all been wrong: e.g. see their predictions of only three years ago at: (Link)

Suppose a company doctored data, misrepresented study findings, replaced observations with computer simulations and hired PR flacks to promote its new "wonder drug." News stories, congressional hearings and subpoenas would be in overdrive. Fines and jail sentences would follow. And rightly so.

But the standards change when "climate catastrophe" is involved.

The House of Representatives is preparing to vote on a 942-page bill to tax, regulate and penalize all US hydrocarbon energy use. The Senate promises an August vote. In December, 190 countries will meet in Denmark to discuss slashing carbon dioxide emissions, to "save the planet from global warming disaster."

But average global temperatures peaked in 1998 and since have fallen slightly, even as carbon dioxide levels continue to climb. Antarctic ice shelves show no signs of climate change, a six-year study has determined, while Arctic ice is seasonably normal. Hurricane activity is at a 30-year low.

Thousands of scientists say CO2 has little effect on planetary temperatures, and there is no climate crisis. Few developed countries are ready to commit economic suicide by agreeing to reduce their CO2 emissions by even one-tenth of what Waxman-Markey demands for the United States. Most Americans put global warming dead last in a Pew Research list of 20 concerns.

Climate Armageddonites are trying to counter these inconvenient truths, scare people into clamoring for climate legislation, and enact the job-killing Waxman-Markey bill before more citizens realize they'll be forced to pay $$$$ trillions for a hypothetical 0.1 degree Fahrenheit reduction in global temperatures. What to do?

Preface Part 1; Arctic Ice through the Ages- The Age of Scientific exploration



There are many great books about heroic polar explorers, and numerous technical papers by arctic researchers-often rather dry. Few papers with a narrative on the scientific exploration of the arctic during the 19th Century seem to exist as a half way house, accesible to laymen and experts alike, so it is hoped this article may fill a gap.

It was always intended to exist electronically, so links to the relevant information source have been made, rather than citing a printed reference. Whilst generally the narrative can be followed without needing to click on the link, many are interesting in their own right and are often well worth a diversion, (but don't forget to come back.)

Few external 'official 'instrumental records exist for this period-or are sporadic in area or time scale- so observations made at the time and place are important to our understanding as to what happened to arctic ice and temperatures in this era. This article has two converging themes; the search for the North West passage and the scientific explorations of the region by a former whaler.

This is somewhat longer than most blog articles, in fact-in truth- it is a a bit of an epic. So close the curtains, turn off the mobile, feed the dog, grab a drink, and order in the pizza for about an hour. Then sit back as the story begins in 1817 when the Royal Society used the enormous resources at their disposal to investigate the claim that ;