Extreme Temperatures
The latest solar cycle update graphs have been released by the NOAA SWPC today, and the anemic cycle 24 continues:
The current count isn't keeping up with the prediction line in red. Not only is the sunspot count low, so is the 10.7cm radio flux and the Ap magnetic index:
© Ole Magnus Rapp
Svalbard Champagne Glass.
Svalbard Champagne Glass.
Normally the champagne glass collapses around the end of July, but so far nothing has happened.Now locals wonder if summer will come to Svalbard at all.Last year's collapse took place on the 29th of July. But as of today, the last day of August, the stem is still in one piece.
This has not happened in at least 40 years.
The local newspaper Svalbardposten records the date each year when the stem breaks and conducts a contest where readers can predict when it will happen.
Maybe the stem has not broken before, says editor Birger Amundsen, but certainly not since I first came to Svalbard in 1973.
Amundsen still believes the stem will break and he bets on a beautiful autumn in the north.
By the way, Svalbard is where the global seed vault is located. Won't do anyone much good if it's buried beneath the ice, will it?
Source: Aftenposten
- On same day Met Office reveal it's been the wettest summer ever, temperatures plunged to almost record summer lows overnight
© Jonathan Pow - Braemar is Scotland was the coldest spot as it dropped to -2.1C
- There has only been one August night colder, August 21 1973, when Lagganlia in the Highlands suffered -4.5C
- It tops off a miserable summer, which has been the wettest in a century, causing flash floods only yesterday
- Traffic congestion as parents return from family holidays ahead of children going back to school next week with M25 delayed in both directions
A team of boffins in Germany say they have found a statistical link between periods of low solar activity and very cold winters in Europe. Some physicists believe that a long period of low solar activity - like the "Maunder Minimum" of the 17th and 18th centuries - could be on the cards in coming decades, so the new research might indicate an upcoming "mini Ice Age".
The new study was published over the weekend in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. Lead author Professor-Doktor Frank Sirocko of the Johannes Gutenberg Universität (University) of Mainz in Germany - and his colleagues - compared old records showing which years the Rhine river iced over to the record of sunspot activity.
© ANSTO Research Selections 2011
View of the Prince Charles Mountain flanking the Lambert Glacier near Loewe Massif on the East Antarctic Ice Sheet.
View of the Prince Charles Mountain flanking the Lambert Glacier near Loewe Massif on the East Antarctic Ice Sheet.
"We found two really unexpected results," said Duanne White, a geoscientist at the University of Canberra, who is part of a group of researchers using the new dating technique.
"Previously it had been thought that during the last Ice Age the Ice Sheet expanded all the way out to the continental shelf and was a thousand metres thicker at the margin. But we found quite the opposite - along the whole length of the Lambert Glacier, there was only a relatively small change.
"But the kicker for us was this happened very soon after global temperatures and sea level began to rise at the end of the last Ice Age. So while the response wasn't large at that particular time, it happened very quickly."
© Tigerente
Arenaria ciliata (Fringed Sandwort)
Arenaria ciliata (Fringed Sandwort)
Up to now most scientists agreed that Ireland's flora and fauna emerged or came here after the end of the Ice Age, some 15,000 years ago.
However, this latest discovery by a research team from NUI Maynooth, pushes back this date to a much earlier time.
The team, led by ecologist Dr Conor Meade, developed a new DNA analysis method to unravel the complex history of the Fringed Sandwort, a rare cold-loving herb that only grows on the high slopes of Ben Bulben in Co Sligo.
Researchers collected the plant on mountain peaks all over Europe, from Spain and Italy up to Svalbard in the Arctic Circle, and then completed detailed genetic analyses.
The new analysis method, based on a process called DNA melting, greatly improves the accuracy of existing DNA analysis and helped to reveal previously unknown levels of genetic diversity in the Irish populations.
"Summer weather was miserable - now there's proof," says this article out of Sweden.
According to the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI), on only six days this summer did the temperature reach more than 25 degrees Celsius in Stockholm.
Last year, Stockholm had 28 days with summer weather, ie days with a minimum temperature of 25 degrees. This year, just six days met this definition - 4 days in July and two in August. Recent summers have not even come close to having as few summer days.
Gothenburg had only five summer days this year. Malmo had nine, about as few as last year.
According to the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI), on only six days this summer did the temperature reach more than 25 degrees Celsius in Stockholm.
Last year, Stockholm had 28 days with summer weather, ie days with a minimum temperature of 25 degrees. This year, just six days met this definition - 4 days in July and two in August. Recent summers have not even come close to having as few summer days.
Gothenburg had only five summer days this year. Malmo had nine, about as few as last year.
© AP/Institute of Biophysics of the Russian Academy of Sciences
This campion plant grew from a 32,000-year-old fruit.
This campion plant grew from a 32,000-year-old fruit.
The researchers were studying ancient soil composition in an exposed Siberian riverbank in 1995 when they discovered the first of 70 fossilized Ice Age squirrel burrows, some of which stored up to 800,000 seeds and fruits. Permafrost had preserved tissue from one species - a narrow-leafed campion plant - exceptionally well, so researchers at the Russian Academy of Sciences recently decided to culture the cells to see if they would grow. Team leader Svetlana Yashina re-created Siberian conditions in the lab and watched as the refrigerated tissue sprouted buds that developed into 36 flowering plants within weeks.
This summer Yashina's team plans to revisit the tundra to search for even older burrows and seeds.
Since we were treated to scads of news articles by the MSM on how many record highs happened in July, it seems only fair that we report on the multitude of record lows that occurred this weekend in the USA, and I doubt we'll see the sort of coverage the highs got. A number of these record lows go back into the past 100 years or more.
Here's a map for the weekend:Click here for interactive source data
A blast of polar air from a cold-front in southern Australia last week managed to push all the way up to the tropics. Darwin shivered through it's coldest August night on record Monday after the temperature dropped to just 13.1C Monday, more than seven degrees below the August average minimum of 20.4C.
Comment: A Different Kind of Catastrophe - Something Wicked This Way Comes