Extreme Temperatures
S


Igloo

Better get your woollies!

Dr. Klaus L.E. Kaiser
Canada Free Press
Thu, 12 Sep 2013 17:38 UTC
No doubt about it. The Earth's climate is cooling!

One of the most prescient indicators clearly shows it, namely the Danish Meteorological Institute's daily mean temperatures for the Arctic area north of the 80th northern parallel. They have been measured for over 50 years which shows a long-term average of 90 days with the air temperature above freezing.

The Year 2013

The year 2013 has seen a dramatic departure from that routine. In 2013, the summer (above freezing temperatures) lasted for only 45 days, one half of the average number of days. Not only did the frost-free days start much later than on average this year, they also ended much earlier, see the figure below. In fact, the frost-free period seen this year was significantly shorter than in other year since 1958, when the recordings began.
Global Cooling
© Danish Meteorological InstituteFig. Observed temperatures in the Arctic (latitude above 80° N) by day of the year in 2013 (red line), the long-term average (green line) and the freezing temperature (blue line); temperatures in degree Kelvin (K).
The new data corroborate other findings of no global warming for the last 18 years. In fact, not a single of the 20-plus climate prediction models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) even shows the recent temperature developments as within their model uncertainties. It begs the question: Is another ice age imminent?
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Snowflake Cold

Ice age cometh: No warming left to deny... Global cooling takes over... CET annual mean temperature plunges 1°C since 2000

P Gosselin
No Tricks Zone
Thu, 12 Sep 2013 17:27 UTC
global temps
© www.woodfortrees.orgGlobal temperatures have fallen over the last 8 years.
Lately we've been seeing and hearing lots media reports of cooling and cold weather extremes. Global temperature data, such as HadCrut 4, show warming has disappeared altogether.

Looking at the data for the last decade or so, one thing stands clear: Global temperatures have been showing many more signs of cooling than warming. Already we are sensing that global temperature has lost the battle to stay up. The HadCrut data series above shows that cooling has gained the upper hand. Indeed warming is now in the history books, having died some 15 years ago.
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Igloo

Rare solar cycle has cold implications for UK climate

Paul Hudson
BBC
Thu, 12 Sep 2013 17:25 UTC
NASA last week confirmed their prediction that the current solar cycle 24 is likely to be the weakest since 1906.

Intriguingly, the current solar cycle shows a striking similarity with solar cycle 5 which was also very weak, with the same double peak as the current cycle, and ran from approximately the mid 1790s to around 1810.

Solar cycle 6 was weaker still and stretched from around 1810 to the early 1820s.

Solar cycles 5 and 6 were so unusual that they were named the Dalton solar minimum after meteorologist John Dalton and coincided with a period of increasingly cold winters and poor summers.

This type of climate is a result of a jet stream that's positioned further south than normal - caused, it's thought at least in part, by the behaviour of the sun.

The mechanism as to why weak solar cycles may affect the position of the jet stream is poorly understood.

But a more southerly positioned jet stream is the reason why the UK has recently seen a return of cold snowy winters and a run of poor summers.
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Cloud Grey

Physicists claim more evidence for link between cosmic rays and cloud formation

Edwin Cartlidge
Physics World
Mon, 09 Sep 2013 17:12 UTC
clouds
© Unknown
A Danish group that has reproduced the Earth's atmosphere in the laboratory has shown how clouds might be seeded by incoming cosmic rays. The team believes that the research provides evidence that fluctuations in the cosmic-ray flux caused by changes in solar activity could play a role in climate change. Other climate researchers, however, remain sceptical of the link between cosmic rays and climate.

The conventional view of climate scientists, as expressed in the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is that most of the warming of the Earth's surface over the last few decades is down to the atmospheric build-up of manmade greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. But Henrik Svensmark of the National Space Institute in Denmark believes that an effect related to the Sun's fluctuating magnetic fields may also play a major role in the warming.

For well over a decade Svensmark has studied how the energetic particles reaching Earth from deep space, known as cosmic rays, can influence the planet's climate as a result of changes to the Sun's output. The idea is that cosmic rays seed clouds by ionizing molecules in Earth's atmosphere that draw in other molecules to create the aerosols around which water vapour can condense to form cloud droplets. The low-lying clouds that result then have the effect of cooling the Earth by reflecting incoming sunshine back out to space. Since the Sun's magnetic field tends to deflect cosmic rays away from the Earth, the planet will be warmer when solar activity is high and, conversely, cooler when it is low.

Comment: For more on Henrik Svensmark's research see: The Cloud Mystery

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Snowflake

Arctic summers will be ice-free 'by 2013'

Jonathan Amos
BBC News
Wed, 12 Dec 2007 16:20 UTC
ice sheet
© BBC NewsThe US NSIDC monitors Arctic sea ice extent on a five-day mean. The 16 September 2007 record low falls below the previous minimum set on 20-21 September 2005, by an area roughly the size of Texas and California combined, or nearly five UKs.
Scientists in the US have presented one of the most dramatic forecasts yet for the disappearance of Arctic sea ice.

Their latest modelling studies indicate northern polar waters could be ice-free in summers within just 5-6 years.

Professor Wieslaw Maslowski told an American Geophysical Union meeting that previous projections had underestimated the processes now driving ice loss.
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Ice Cube

Best of the Web: Ice Age cometh: Record return of Arctic ice cap as it grows by 60% in a year; top scientists warn of global cooling

David Rose
Daily Mail UK
Sun, 08 Sep 2013 00:42 UTC
A chilly Arctic summer has left nearly a million more square miles of ocean covered with ice than at the same time last year - an increase of 60 per cent. The rebound from 2012's record low comes six years after the BBC reported that global warming would leave the Arctic ice-free in summer by 2013.

Instead, days before the annual autumn re-freeze is due to begin, an unbroken ice sheet more than half the size of Europe already stretches from the Canadian islands to Russia's northern shores. The Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific has remained blocked by pack-ice all year. More than 20 yachts that had planned to sail it have been left ice-bound and a cruise ship attempting the route was forced to turn back.

Some eminent scientists now believe the world is heading for a period of cooling that will not end until the middle of this century - a process that would expose computer forecasts of imminent catastrophic warming as dangerously misleading.

The disclosure comes 11 months after The Mail on Sunday triggered intense political and scientific debate by revealing that global warming has 'paused' since the beginning of 1997 - an event that the computer models used by climate experts failed to predict.
icesheet

Comment: This comes as no surprise to SOTT's regular readers since we've been disputing so-called global warming for years. Here's just a few recent articles to add to the mix:

Ice delays supply barge for Western Arctic communities
Tom Coburn: I'm a 'man of science' and the Earth is moving into a 'mini-ice age'
Record cold in parts of Alaska
South American countries gripped by snow

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Ice Cube

Global warming expedition foiled by ice

John Hinderaker
powerlineblog.com
Sat, 31 Aug 2013 11:46 UTC
Image
If you want to tempt fate, organize an expedition to one of the polar regions to call attention to the perils of global warming. The outcome is foreordained:

Severe weather conditions hindered our early progress and now ice chokes the passage ahead.

Our ice router Victor has been very clear in what lies ahead. He writes, "Just to give you the danger of ice situation at the eastern Arctic, Eef Willems of "Tooluka" (NED) pulled out of the game and returning to Greenland. At many Eastern places of NWP locals have not seen this type ice conditions. Residents of Resolute say 20 years have not seen anything like. It's, ice, ice and more ice. Larsen, Peel, Bellot, Regent and Barrow Strait are all choked. That is the only route to East. Already West Lancaster received -2C temperature expecting -7C on Tuesday with the snow."
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Ice Cube

Wrong again! Siberian Arctic is not warming after all - July temperatures hardly different from those thousands of years ago!

P Gosselin
No Tricks Zone
Sat, 07 Sep 2013 15:37 UTC
Tundra in Siberia
© Dr. Andreas Hugentobler / Creative Commons 2.0 GermanySiberian Arctic in summer.
Sebastian Lüning's and Fritz Vahrenholt's Die kalte Sonne site today writes about a new peer-reviewed study that shows that the Arctic is not warming quickly after all. For years alarmist scientists have told us that nowhere is warming happening faster than in the Arctic. Wrong again!

A study by an international team of scientists led by Germany's Potsdam-based Alfred Wegener Institute was published in September in the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. It's a temperature reconstruction from the Siberian Arctic. By examining pollen, the scientists were able to determine the July temperatures for the transition zone between tundra and taiga over the last 12,000, i.e. the Holocene.
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Snowflake Cold

Meteorologists point to signs of another upcoming "nasty winter for Europe" - Would make spectacular six in a row!

P Gosselin
No Tricks Zone
Mon, 09 Sep 2013 15:26 UTC
Joe Bastardi
© WeatherbellJoe Bastardi
It started with the Farmer's Almanac. We've been hearing lots of talk about another brutal winter being in store.

Although seasonal forecasts are speculative at best, meteorology indeed has advanced to a point where it is possible to get an idea of what direction the upcoming season is tending towards. Farmers have been doing this successfully for centuries.

Meteorologist Joe Bastardi in his Saturday Summary at the 7-minute mark looks at the latest NCEP NCAR global winter forecast for 2013/14. The charts point to another "brutal winter for Europe". The forecast sees blocking and a negative NAO. Joe also tweeted that "SST analog package combined with low solar, and climate cycle (similar to early 50s) argue for nasty Euro Winter".
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Igloo

Pashmina withers on roof of the world

Athar Parvaiz
Asia Time Online
Mon, 09 Sep 2013 15:11 UTC
Changra goats
© GreatKashmir.com
Changthang, India - The famed pashmina shawl that keeps the cold away - in style and at a price - could itself have become the victim of winter. Thousands of goats whose fine wool is woven into pashmina have perished in extreme cold being associated with climate change.

Pashmina is drawn from Changra goats found in Ladakh region of Kashmir state and a part of the Tibetan peninsula, more than 14,000 feet (4,267 meters) above sea level. The peninsula is often called the Roof of the World.

Little grows in these areas where the temperature can drop to minus 35 degrees Celsius. The local Changpa nomads live off their herds of sheep, yak and goats.

The Changthang region of the larger Tibetan Peninsula does not normally see heavy snowfall. That may be changing, given the heavy snowfall earlier this year that deprived the Changpas of fodder for their animals.

"In the past five years this is the second time I have seen such heavy snowfall," Bihkit Angmo, 53, who rears goats, told IPS outside her tent in Kharnak, a nomadic settlement 173 kilometers east of Leh, capital of Ladakh. "This new trend of snowfall several feet high has left us quite worried."

Summer last year brought its own problems, leaving areas parched and barren. "It was terrible. We had to go long distances to find suitable pasture for our livestock," said Angmo.
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