Extreme Temperatures
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Snowflake Cold

Early cold temperatures hit Denver, Colorado; Summer snow falls on Pikes Peak

Chris Spears
CBS News - Denver
Fri, 12 Aug 2016 09:48 UTC
Summer snow at Pikes Peak
A cold front brought a taste of early fall to Colorado on Friday including a dusting of snow on top of Pikes Peak.

It's not uncommon for Colorado's highest mountains to record occasional summer snow.
Pikes Peak snow
Friday's temperatures started off in the 40s across the mountains with a few valleys dipping into the 30s.

Metro Denver saw overnight lows fall into the lower and middle 50s with a few upper 40s on the fringes of the city as reported by CBS4 Weather Watchers.

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Sun

Over 6,500 taken to hospital for heatstroke in Japan


Japan Today
Tue, 09 Aug 2016 13:19 UTC
Heatwave Japan
The Fire and Disaster Management Agency said Tuesday that 6,588 people were taken to hospitals nationwide to be treated for heatstroke in the week from Aug 1 to Aug 7.

The figure was an increase of 2,525 over the previous week as a heatwave covered most of Japan, agency officials said.

Twelve deaths were attributed to heatstroke, while 822 people had to be hospitalized due to their condition. Of the total number hospitalized, 3,330 were aged 65 and older.

By prefecture, Osaka had the highest number with 416, followed by Tokyo (398), Aichi Prefecture (383) and Saitama (382).
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Sun

Solar storm almost started WWIII in 1967

Neel V. Patel
Inverse
Wed, 10 Aug 2016 19:12 UTC
View of the Sun on May 23, 1967
© NSOA view of the Sun on May 23, 1967, in a narrow visible wavelength of light called Hydrogen-alpha. The bright region in the top center region of brightness shows the area where the large flare occurred.
The Cold War was filled with nuclear annihilation close-calls: There was the '62 Cuban Missile Crisis, the NORAD Computer Glitch in '70, the Nuclear False Alarm of 1983, and likely many we'll never know about. But there's one incident that has gone under the radar for decades. A new paper to be published in the journal Space Weather finally paints a detailed portrait of a 1967 solar storm that almost spurred the U.S. Air Force to attack the Soviet Union and potential ignite World War III.

Here's the deal: On May 23, 1967, the United States noticed its surveillance radars the near poles were jamming up. Naturally, defense officials assumed it was the Soviet Union preparing to attack American soil — so the Air Force began to make its own preparations to strike the Russians.

Problem was, the Russians were not to blame. The culpable party was the sun, which was in the midst of a particularly nasty solar storm. When the sun is producing major flares, the resulting energy can charge up nearby particles and cause electromagnetic disturbances that affect the ionosphere — the part of the Earth's atmosphere that helps propagate radio wave emissions over large distances.

Although solar activity was still not widely understood, by the 1950s the U.S. military knew how eruptions on the surface the sun could hamper communications on Earth. By the following decade, the Air Force established the Air Weather Service to regularly monitor the sun for solar flares.

Comment: Think it couldn't happen today? Think again! Out of any of the 'nuclear war' scenarios currently being thrown around, this reminder from 1967 may very well be repeated sans 'cooler heads prevailing'. This story provides a glimpse into the paranoid hubris of our leaders and touches on their blind reaction to a 'cosmic threat'. In today's atmosphere of US-driven rabid fear and paranoia towards Russia, how do you think our fearful leaders would respond when something wicked this way comes.

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Ice Cube

Two climbers freeze to death in August on the Matterhorn

Andrea Vogt
The Telegraph (UK)
Mon, 08 Aug 2016 20:27 UTC
Matterhorn
Matterhorn
The two British climbers who frozen to death on the Matterhorn may have been trying a second attempt to summit the peak when a massive storm trapped them on a perilous, narrow snowfield in the dead of night.

Based on information from other climbers who encountered the pair on the southwest ridge of the 4,478-metre mountain, rescuers believe the two men had tried and failed to summit the day before and were trying a second time, but turned back too late.

When a helicopter rescue was finally possible 36 hours later, Finance Police Rescue Marshall Massimiliano Giovannini found Peter Rumble and Dennis Robinson buried under a snowdrift, unresponsive and lying on top of one another. Italian authorities said the two men, both age 67, were close friends and resided in France.
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Snowflake Cold

New Zealand temperatures set to plunge to a record low with snowfall warnings across the country


NZ Herald
Fri, 05 Aug 2016 17:17 UTC
Dunedin snowfall
Snowfall covers Dunedin.
- Snowfall warnings across the country
- Motorists urged to take care with snow warnings for Desert Rd, Napier-Taupo Rd and Rimutaka Hill Rd
- South Island roads impacted include the Lindis, Lewis, Porters, Arthur's Passes and the highway between Dunedin to Waitati
- Sub-zero temperatures expected for South Island
- Schools closed in Dunedin

The bitter cold snap is set to smash a weather record that has stood for more than a century as an icy chill takes hold of the South Island.

Temperatures are set to plunge to a frigid minus 15C across the South Island tonight - but it's expected to be even colder overnight Saturday.

Philip Wallace captured this footage showing snow falling in Wellington at the Rimutaka summit.
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Sun

Iran's disappearing giant saltwater Lake Urmia turns blood-red


RT
Fri, 29 Jul 2016 18:03 UTC
Lake Urmia
© earthobservatory.nasa.gov
A drought of epic proportions at Lake Urmia has brought the Iranian UNESCO site to the brink of disappearing off the face of the Earth, and is turning its once blue waters blood-red.

While once Urmia spanned an area five times larger than Hong Kong, its volume has decreased dramatically since 1972.

A study by hydrology experts at the University of California in 2014 painted the picture of a dying natural resource, highlighting how desiccation, or drying, had reduced the 5,000 sq km (1,930 sq mile) lake by almost 90 percent.
Changes to Lake Urmia
Its catastrophic demise has been compared to the loss of the Aral Sea, where poor irrigation and farming practices contributed to it drying up almost completely.

Scientists working with NASA's Earth Observatoryhave explained that as water levels drop during the hot summer months, microscopic algae and bacteria become more apparent, causing the unusual hue.

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Smiley

John Kerry - Air conditioners as big a threat as ISIS

Joanne Nova
JoNova
Tue, 26 Jul 2016 07:33 UTC
You know it makes sense — air conditioners are as dangerous as suicide bombers. They must be stopped. Next up, refrigerators...
John Kerry, Airconditioners, ISIS
© JoNova
Here's a petition you can support: Do it for the children, for the future.
WHEREAS, Secretary of State John F. Kerry has suggested that air conditioners are as big a threat as ISIS, and

WHEREAS, it is the duty of our elected and appointed government officials to lead by example,

THEREFORE, we call upon the U.S. Department of State to remove air conditioning from all property that the Department owns, rents, or otherwise employs, including but not limited to embassies, consulates, office buildings, etc., all vehicles owned and/or operated by the Department, and any other property, real or movable, owned, rented, or otherwise employed by the Department.
Hopalong Ginsberg started this petition, and 2,500 people have spoken up already. To sign the petition go to Change.org...

This could help in so many ways.
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Igloo

The coming ice age - Antarctic peninsula has been cooling not warming

Joanne Nova
JoNova
Sat, 23 Jul 2016 05:15 UTC
Antarctic coast
© Wikimedia CommonsA tidewater glacier on the Antarctic coast, with a sharply peaked mountain behind.
The "fastest warming place" on Planet Earth wasn't warming.

A new Antarctic study wipes out 20 years of panic about the West Antarctic Peninsula. All these years while people were crying about penguins, it turns out that the place was cooling rather than warming. Mankind has emitting a third of all its "CO2-pollution" ever from 1998, and there was "no discernible" effect on Antarctica. Indeed, the study quietly finds that even the bigger longer warming that has happened in the last century was not "unprecedented" in the last 2000 years.

In the last decade as this cooling trend was happening in the real world - in the media, the same spot was being described as "one of the fastest warming places on Earth":
The Antarctic Peninsula is one of the fastest-warming places on Earth, NBC, 2013

West Antarctic Ice Sheet warming twice earlier estimate, BBC, 2012
And this sort of news has been going on for years. This was "big deal" once-in-2000 year type stuff:
UK scientists say parts of Antarctica have recently been warming much faster than most of the rest of the Earth. They believe the warming is probably without parallel for nearly two thousand years. - BBC, 2001
But the news in 2016 was a bit of a bomb, prone to being misinterpreted, so the PR Team was pre-armed with excuses, from the first line of the scientific abstract which pretty much says that the peninsula still was one of the fastest warming places on Earth (if you look at warming from 1950 and ignore the last 20 years the study is studying). Great opening line. The abstract also mentions that the Antarctic peninsula is only 1% of the Antarctic (though no one seems to mention that when it was melting).
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Snowflake

July snowfall strikes Northern N.W.T. communities in Canada


cbc.ca
Wed, 20 Jul 2016 13:32 UTC
Lee-Michael Shawn Ruben and John Sam Green enjoy the snow in Paulatuk.
© Maya MarchLee-Michael Shawn Ruben and John Sam Green enjoy the snow in Paulatuk.
It might not quite feel like a Northern Christmas in July, but some people in parts of the N.W.T. certainly aren't welcoming the winter-like weather that's hit their communities.

This week, snow has been falling in at least three N.W.T. communities — Sachs Harbour, Inuvik and Paulatuk.

CBC Meteorologist Ashley Brauweiler says about five centimetres fell in Sachs Harbour between Tuesday and Wednesday, breaking a new record for July 20. The last record was hit in 1966 with just 3.3 centimetres of snow.


A poor little snowman with a bottle cap for a hat in Inuvik, N.W.T., on July 20.
© Aaron BaraboffA poor little snowman with a bottle cap for a hat in Inuvik, N.W.T., on July 20.
Brauweiler says conditions could continue into Thursday, with another two to three centimetres falling in Sachs Harbour.

She says it's all thanks to a low-pressure system that formed over the Beaufort Sea and is slowly moving east, including over Sachs Harbour.
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Snowflake Cold

Brazilian Arabica coffee crop suffers 36% loss from cold; 70% banana crop loss

Adapt 2030
You Tube
Fri, 22 Jul 2016 13:04 UTC
coffee
Brazil suffering record cold temperatures again in July 2016 after a cold wave that damaged agriculture in June 2016.

Arabica coffee beans stand at 36% loss, bananas 70% loss in Ribeira, Argentina 30% loss of raisin production and Chile clementine 30% increase.

The grand solar minimum is here, South America is repeating the normal pattern expected climate wise during the GSM.

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