Extreme Temperatures
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Igloo

Britain braced for mini-ice age as temperatures are set to drop to a 300-year low

Icy Weather
© BT.com
Low temperatures not seen for 300 years could be on the way to Britain thanks to a drop in solar activity, experts have warned.

If you were enjoying the current warm spell, enjoy it while it lasts as forecasters have warned that the UK could enter a mini-ice age.

A Met Office-led study in conjunction with scientists at the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Reading, found that a return to low solar activity not seen for centuries could increase the chances of cold winters in Europe and eastern parts of the United States.

But the study, which was published in the Nature Communications journal, added that the freeze will not be enough to halt global warming.

Sarah Ineson, a Met Office scientist and lead author of the study said: "This research shows that the regional impacts of a grand solar minimum are likely to be larger than the global effect, but it's still nowhere near big enough to override the expected global warming trend due to man-made change.

"This means that even if we were to see a return to levels of solar activity not seen since the Maunder Minimum, our winters would likely still be getting milder overall."

It is understood that the sun's output increases and decreases, measured by the number of sunspots on the star's surface, over a timescale of 100 to 200 years.

Sun

Pakistan heat wave kills hundreds: Victims 'dying on the streets'

Pakistan heatwave
© B.K. Bangash / AP
Pakistanis cool themselves Tuesday under a broken water pipe in Islamabad as temperatures increase during Ramadan.
A heat wave raging through southern Pakistan has claimed more than 700 lives, officials said, with witnesses describing victims "dropping dead" on the streets.

Temperatures have exceeded 110 degrees in recent days, and thousands of people have been left to face the heat without electricity amid widespread power outages.

At Karachi's largest hospital, more than 150 people have been admitted for heatstroke since Monday, according to Ali Nawazish, the emergency room registrar at Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center.

"Some patients have come to us with their families, some have been found by ambulances, and some families have come here looking for their loved ones who they fear are dead or affected," Nawazish said. "It's chaos."

Ramzan Chippa, who runs a volunteer ambulance service with a fleet of 300, told NBC News that all his vehicles are committed and that most of their relief activity is taking bodies to morgues.

"Most of the bodies we are recovering are people dying on the streets. They're just dropping dead," said Chippa. "Graveyards have filled up."

The army has joined the relief effort, setting up heatstroke relief camps in Karachi and five other cities in Sindh province. But relief systems are stretched across the city, and small, angry skirmishes have erupted in protest.

A deputy commissioner in the Korangi suburb of Karachi admitted that public relief services are stretched to their limits.

"People are screaming at us on our helpline to get help them, and when we do, they fight to get on the ambulance," he said.

More opposition parties, including the Karachi-based Muttahida Qaumi movement, are blaming the federal government for the crisis, which they say has been compounded by massive power cuts all across Sindh province.

Dildar Shah lives in the Karachi suburb on Malir and has lost two neighbors to the extreme conditions. "This is like the Day of Judgment," he said. "It seems all of us will die in this heat together."

Snowflake Cold

'One of our coldest days in history' - New Zealand shivers as temperatures plummet

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© Unwin LodgeThe area around Mount Cook on June 23
Temperatures approached record lows today as the country shivers in freezing conditions.

The temperature at Pukaki - west of Timaru and south of Aoraki/Mount Cook - hit -20 degree Celsius this morning, 5.6 degrees off the record low set in Ranfurly in 1903.

The MetService said Omarama went as low as -16.7 degrees and Tekapo -13 degrees.

"It's down there New Zealand, one of our coldest days in history," Breakfast weather presenter Sam Wallace says.

By 9.20am many South Island centres had yet to reach zero.

Invercargill was at -3.6 degrees, Alexandra -5.1 degrees and Queenstown -5.3 degrees.

It was still -12.4 degrees at the Pukaki Aerodrome.

Snowflake

Popular hiking trail in Norway closed because of 1½ meters more snow than normal

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© Ivar Arne Nordrum / NRKParts of Gjende lake are still frozen over.
Should be green by now, and have thousands of sheep grazing

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"I am currently on a MC trip up though the coastline in Norway, and it has been a very cold journey so far, only 3C on some passes in the mountains," says reader 996bip.

"I was planning to also do some hiking to some of the known mountains, though tourist season is in full swing, still a lot of places is closed due to snow, and frozen lakes. The popular hiking trail over "Besseggen" was closed due to the boat that takes tourist over the lake, could not go because of ice.

"The same on "Nigardsbreen" a glacier arm on Jostedalsbreen, the boat on that lake could not go because the lake was nearly empty. The summer melt, and the movement of the glacier has not even started yet. I had to walk along the lake about 45min to reach the glacier, and it was amazing be able to go so near and to almost touch the ice. Here's a short clip from that day:


Arrow Up

Heat wave kills over 130 in Pakistan

Pakistan heatwave
© AFPEdhi Welfare Organisation, Pakistan's largest charity, said their mortuary had been packed to capacity due to heatwave-related deaths.
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.

Attention

Coldest June in 33 years for Tromsø, Norway

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© Rune Nordgård Andreassen243 centimeters of snow in Sjufjellet in Balsfjord 14th June 2015.
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."

Info

June in Scotland on track to be coldest summer for 40 years

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Wet weather in Scotland
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.

Attention

Record snow cover for June in Norway, 5 times more than normal

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© globesar.comThroughout Norway is the record amount of new snow in the mountains
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.

Arrow Up

Researchers perplexed by 'unprecedented warming' of waters off northeast U.S. coast

US northeast coast water temp
© Forsyth, et al.A new study shows that water temperatures in this continental shelf region have been trending upward, with unprecedented warming occurring over the last 13 years. The research is based upon temperature data from the waters off the northeast coast of the US that were collected in collaborative effort between scientists and the operators of the container ship Oleander, which routinely travels between Bermuda and New Jersey (green line). The mean surface circulation in the northwestern North Atlantic is shown.
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.

Comment: Perhaps increased methane outgassing and undersea volcanic activity (it is estimated there are up to one million of these 'submarine volcanoes') are contributory factors to the "unprecedented warming occurring over the last 13 years"?

The significant increase of fish die off's and strange migratory behaviour of marine life could be considered other potential signs of such activity also.

As the number of volcanoes erupting right now is greater than the 20th century's YEARLY average, a comparable escalation in activity of their underwater counterparts seems logical.


Arrow Up

Alaska swelters in unusually hot temperatures

Alaska fire
© Alaska Division of Forestry via APIn this Monday, June 15, 2015 photo released by Alaska Division of Forestry, thick white smoke rises from the Card Street Fire near the community of Sterling on the Kenai Peninsula, about 60 miles southwest of Anchorage.
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.

Comment: Alaska bakes while other parts of the world experience unseasonal cold. Is the world's weather reaching a tipping point of some kind with these extremes on both ends of temperature? If you are interested in reading more about why this happening and what is to come, then read Earth Changes and the Human Cosmic Connection: The Secret History of the World.