A heatwave in Pakistan's largest city Karachi and other districts of southern Sindh province has killed at least 130 people, health officials have said.

Sindh province's Health Secretary Saeed Mangnejo told AFP news agency that the provincial government had imposed a state of emergency at all hospitals, cancelling leave for doctors and other medical staff and increasing stocks of medical supplies.

The southern port city of Karachi saw temperatures reach as high as 45 degrees Celsius on Saturday, just short of an all-time high of 47C in June 1979.

Dr Seemin Jamali, the head of the emergency department at state-run Jinnah Hospital said more than 100 people had died at the hospital.

The mountains of Sjufjellet are still covered in 243 cm (8 ft) of snow - and their spring has been unseasonably cool and overcast with 149% of normal precipitation.

The summer solstice occurs June 20-21st when day length begins turning shorter and there seems to be a lot of whinging going on:

Thanks to H.B. Schmidt for this link

"High latitudes are the first to experience real climate changes, and you can't get much higher of a latitude than Tromsø," says H.B. "With NH land temperatures showing a declining trend since 1950, and upwards of 90% of land-based temperature variance affected by oceanic thermal currents, any cooling of the North Atlantic is going to show up on land."

"We already see the decline off Greenland and in the North Atlantic from direct SST measurements, so Norway and others should expect a continued cooling if the linear logic used by AGW proponents is to be believed.

"Keep the snow boots handy, kids."

June is on track to be the coldest summer month for more than 40 years as the persistent rainfall and low temperatures blight hopes of a turn to warmer weather.

Scotland's average temperature up until June 15 was 9.3C, two degrees below normal and the coldest June, July or August since June 1972, Met Office records show.

Forecasters are predicting another 10 days of downpours from next week. But first, another cold front will bring cloud and scattered heavy showers tomorrow, followed by a wet Sunday with hail. Highs of 18C tomorrow will drop to 15C on Sunday.

Met Office forecaster Helen Roberts said: "An Atlantic cold front will bring a lot of cloud and showers, some heavy, on Saturday, and a cooler Sunday with showers."

Forecasters are predicting "generally unsettled" conditions from the middle of the next week for up to 10 days.

Large areas of Norway still covered in snow - in June !

There is an extreme amount of snow in the mountains, both in the north and south.

Satellite measurements show that 23 percent of land area in southern Norway is still covered in snow, nearly five times more than normal in June, says senior forecaster Eirik Malnes..

In Northern Norway, the corresponding figure is 35 percent, more than double a normal year.

Daily satellite measurements from the research institute NORUT in Tromsø show that nearly a quarter of the land area in the south and one third in the north are still snowy.

A couple of unexplained large scale changes in the waters off the northeast coast of the U.S. have oceanographers perplexed: an accelerated rate of sea level rise compared to most other parts of the world; and the disturbing signs of collapsing fisheries in the region.

A new study by physical oceanographers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, shows that water temperatures in this continental shelf region have been trending upward, with unprecedented warming occurring over the last 13 years. The study also suggests a connection between sea level anomalies and water temperature along the continental shelf.

"The warming rate since 2002 is 15 times faster than from the previous 100 years," says co-author Glen Gawarkiewicz, a WHOI senior scientist. "There's just been this incredible acceleration to the warming, and we don't know if its decadal variability, or if this trend will continue."

The scientists compared their findings with a study of surface waters using data collected by Nantucket Light ship, and other light ships up and down the East Coast between 1880 and 2004, previously analyzed by Steve Lentz of WHOI and Kipp Shearman of Oregon State University. The new study shows that recent accelerated warming is not confined to the surface waters, but extends throughout the water column.

"Others have reported on the temperature increase in this region," says Gawarkiewicz's colleague, WHOI assistant scientist Magdalena Andres, "but they've been confined to looking at the surface temperatures from satellites or buoys." And Gawarkiewicz and Andres wanted to understand how deep the warming went.

The research is based upon a rare collection of temperature data from the waters off the northeast coast of the U.S. that were collected in collaborative effort between scientists and the operators of the container ship Oleander, which routinely travels between Bermuda and New Jersey. The effort, which began in the late 1970s with funding from NOAA/NMFS, involved launching bathythermographs along the ship's track to collect temperature data approximately 14 times each year. Later the program was funded through the National Science Foundation and the University of Rhode Island and Stony Brook University. The bulk of the prior analysis has been on velocity data also collected by the Oleander.

Anyone visiting Alaska this week would be wise to pack plenty of shorts and T-shirts.

The far-north state is sweltering under unusually hot, dry weather that has broken records and intensified conditions fueling two large wildfires in the state.

The tinderbox setting got an early start during a warm winter with comparably little snow. Here's a brief primer on this summer's baked Alaska:

HOW HOT IS IT?

Summers can get warm even in Alaska, but this week's temperatures set records.

Anchorage, for example, had a record high of 83 degrees Tuesday, topping the old record of 82 set in 1969. The normal high for Alaska's largest city this time of year is in the low 60s, National Weather Service meteorologist Dave Snider said.

Last night weather station Twente measured minus 4,1 Celsius. It has never been that cold in the Netherlands at this time of year, summer.

For the coming night night frost is expected, too.

Normally there is no night frost after the Ice Saints (May 11 -15).

Thanks to Argiris Diamantis, Hans Schreuder and JJM Gommers for these links

The Icelandic Marine Research Institute's annual spring expedition from May 18 to 30 concluded that the ocean temperature off Iceland has not been lower in 18 years, or since 1997. The number of krill is below average and not a single mackerel was caught.

"In the past years we have always caught some mackerel, and especially last year. But now we didn't see any," Guðmundur J. Óskarsson, one of the institution's specialists, who took part in the expedition, told Fréttablaðið.

Guðmundur stated that the ocean temperature from Southeast Iceland to the West Fjords has dropped by one to one-and-a-half degree Celsius. However, it can quickly increase if the air temperature increases substantially, he added.

Last month was the coldest May in Iceland in decades.

The expedition is part of the institute's long-term study of the condition of the ocean around Iceland, the vegetation, krill and fish which exist there. Samples were taken in 110 locations.

In a bizarre but beautiful sight the Red Centre turned white on Saturday following a thunderstorm which blanketed the area in a sheet of hail.

Photographs show a stunning contrast between the bright earth and hailstones covering the ground in parts of Alice Springs.

While the area does see storms it's not often conditions are just right to deliver the spectacle it did at the weekend.

'This event was set apart due to the fact it was a slow moving storm,' Jackson Browne, a meteorologist at the Darwin Bureau of Meteorology explained to Daily Mail Australia.

'Usually these storm cells move with quite a lot of pace,' he said, adding that although hail is present in most storms it has often melted by the time it meets the ground.

As the hailstones were only marble-sized they weren't large enough to cause any damage, but they did provide quite a sight for locals, many of whom have never seen hail despite living in the area for years.

Visitors to Denali National Park may get more than they bargained for today, as the National Weather Service has issued a winter weather advisory for the area.

The weather advisory went into effect at 6 p.m. Wednesday and was scheduled to last through noon today.

Snow topped the list of concerns precipitating the need for a weather advisory, according to meteorologists at the National Weather Service station in Fairbanks. Meteorologists estimate the park will receive 4 to 8 inches of snow.

The Weather Service estimates the snow will fall about 2,500 feet above sea level, which would leave the visitors center and much of the beginning of the park road clear of snow. A significant portion of the park road lies above 2,500 feet, however, as the road's elevation begins climbing early and rises significantly near Sable Pass.