Major volcanic eruptions around the world have coincided with periods of unusually cold weather in Ireland for a span of more than 1,200 years, new research shows. The findings suggest eruptions could have complex effects on regional climates, possibly leading to cooling in areas of the Northern Hemisphere even in wintertime, which hadn't been clearly shown before.

The study, published today in the journal Environmental Research Letters, reconstructed the history of cold events in Ireland from the fifth through 17th centuries A.D., based on more than 40,000 writings of scribes and monks from that time. The history of volcanic eruptions was also recreated based on levels of sulfate found in Greenland ice cores - an accepted method to date past eruptions, said study author and Harvard researcher Francis Ludlow. By comparing the two sources, Ludlow and his colleagues found cold events were more likely to occur in the years after these eruptions: More than half of the 69 coldest periods happened in the years following huge volcanic eruptions, Ludlow said.

"This suggests that a very major volcanic eruption can have a long-lasting impact on climate, with extreme cold occurring for possibly several years after an event," Ludlow told LiveScience.

A layer of snow on the second day of summer has put the citizens of the Russian city of Kemerovo completely out of humor.

Meteorologists say the anomaly occurred because a cyclone brought cold Arctic air from Kara Sea region into Siberia dropping, temperature to lows typical for summer north of the Arctic Circle.

Bloggers were at a loss when commenting the issue.

"Snow in Kemerovo TODAY? That's hardcore. The weather must've forgot it's June."

"With a sense of terror has just learnt it's been snowing in Kemerovo. What's next?"

"Tornado in the US. Floods in Czech Republic. SNOW in Kemerovo!"

The city in South Siberia is situated on 55°22'17.58" north latitude but even for that region -2 Celsius on June 2 morning is over the top. The region has seasonal inland climate, which means really cold winters and very hot summers.

Italy shivers through 'cursed spring' of relentless rain

June normally heralds the arrival of summer heat, but 2013's capricious weather is fuelling new meteorological obsession

As the breeze swept in under the cafe's parasols and the sky darkened over Rome, waiter Apu Haq exchanged commiserations with a customer nursing an espresso and a scowl. "They said summer was going to arrive this week," remarked Haq, "and instead came winter." Within minutes, torrential rain was lashing the cobblestones as thunder rumbled in the distance. "It's all the wrong way round," said a bewildered Haq, from Bangladesh. "It's incredible. I've been here for 10 years now and I've never seen anything like it. It's too strange."

Italian springs are often strange, but this one will perhaps be remembered as particularly capricious. As with much of northern Europe, the country has shivered its way through a good deal of the year. In the north-west, according to the Italian meteorological society, residents have had the coldest May since 1991. In much of the north-east, the spring has been the wettest for at least 150 years. A mountain stage of the Giro d'Italia bike race was called off due to snow and ice. Beach resorts in Tuscany have been flooded. Many farmers have suffered huge damage to their crops.

Now, as June arrives, it should technically be summer. But it certainly doesn't feel like it. "Last year, by this point, we were going to the sea. At the beginning of June we went down to the Fori Imperiali and sunbathed," said Mario Ramelli, a street-corner florist in central Rome. This spring's brutto tempo has been a topic of conversation with many of his customers - that is, those who stop to buy a pot of pansies or, optimistically, some sunflowers. "When it's horrid and wet, people hurry by," said Ramelli. "It's not good for work."

Trofim Lysenko became the Director of the Soviet Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences in the 1930s under Josef Stalin. He was an advocate of the theory that characteristics acquired by plants during their lives could be inherited by later generations stemming from the changed plants, which sharply contradicted Mendelian genetics. As a result, Lysenko became a fierce critic of theories of the then rising modern genetics.

Under Lysenko's view, for example, grafting branches of one plant species onto another could create new plant hybrids that would be perpetuated by the descendants of the grafted plant. Or modifications made to seeds would be inherited by later generations stemming from that seed. Or that plucking all the leaves off of a plant would cause descendants of the plant to be leafless.

Lysenkoism was "politically correct" (a term invented by Lenin) because it was consistent with certain broader Marxist doctrines. Marxists wanted to believe that heredity had a limited role even among humans, and that human characteristics changed by living under socialism would be inherited by subsequent generations of humans. Thus would be created the selfless new Soviet man.

Also Lysenko himself arose from a peasant background and developed his theories from practical applications rather than controlled scientific experiments. This fit the Marxist propaganda of the time holding that brilliant industrial innovations would arise from the working classes through practical applications. Lysenko's theories also seemed to address in a quick and timely manner the widespread Soviet famines of the time arising from the forced collectivization of agriculture, rather than the much slower changes from scientific experimentation and genetic heredity.

Tomorrow calls time on the coldest spring in more than 50 years, as the past fortnight of below average temperatures dragged the average thermometer reading during March, April and May putting it on course for its lowest level since 1962.

Apart from being a bit of a pain generally, the prolonged bout of unseasonably-cold weather has caused severe problems for farmers, prompting a surge in the number of livestock deaths and damaging vast areas of crops.

The average temperature over the period came in at 6.0C, which is 1.8C, or nearly 25 per cent, lower than is typical for the time of year, according to the Met Office.

This makes it the fifth coldest spring since records began in 1910 and the chilliest for 51 years.

A Met Office spokesman said: "The colder than average conditions have been caused by difference patterns at certain times, but generally this season has seen frequent easterly and northerly winds which have brought cold air to the UK from polar and northern European regions."

Rainfall was lower than normal in March and April but May has been wetter than usual, the Met Office added. As a result, spring has been slightly drier than average, but not as dry as the springs of 2010 and 2011.

The Met Office data runs up to the end of March 28, meaning that it does not take into account the final three days of spring.

Top U.S. corn and soybean producing state Iowa has received the most spring rainfall since records began 141 years ago, slowing crop plantings and threatening to reduce yields, an Iowa climatologist said on Friday.

Top U.S. corn and soybean producing state Iowa has received the most spring rainfall since records began 141 years ago, slowing crop plantings and threatening to reduce yields, an Iowa climatologist said on Friday.

"From March through May, which is our spring record keeping period, Iowa had received 17.48 inches of rain as of Thursday," Iowa State Climatologist, Harry Hillaker said. "There may be another 0.15 inch added to that today."

Hillaker said the old record of 15.36 inches was set in 1892 but rainfall seen from March through to May is the most since records began.

Hillaker said typical March-May rainfall in the state was 10.22 inches. "That would be normal and is based on rainfall received for the past 30 years," he said.

Excessive wet weather in the U.S. Midwest has slowed seedings of corn and soybeans, pushing corn plantings up to the end-of-May deadline that farmers can plant without suffering cutbacks in crop insurance coverage.

Around 1250 A.D., historical records show, ice packs began showing up farther south in the North Atlantic. Glaciers also began expanding on Greenland, soon to threaten Norse settlements on the island. From 1275 to 1300 A.D., glaciers began expanding more broadly, according to radiocarbon dating of plants killed by the glacier growth. The period known today as the Little Ice Age was just starting to poke through.

Summers began cooling in Northern Europe after 1300 A.D., negatively impacting growing seasons, as reflected in the Great Famine of 1315 to 1317. Expanding glaciers and ice cover spreading across Greenland began driving the Norse settlers out. The last, surviving, written records of the Norse Greenland settlements, which had persisted for centuries, concern a marriage in 1408 A.D. in the church of Hvalsey, today the best preserved Norse ruin.

Colder winters began regularly freezing rivers and canals in Great Britain, the Netherlands and Northern France, with both the Thames in London and the Seine in Paris frozen solid annually. The first River Thames Frost Fair was held in 1607. In 1607-1608, early European settlers in North America reported ice persisting on Lake Superior until June. In January, 1658, a Swedish army marched across the ice to invade Copenhagen. By the end of the 17th century, famines had spread from northern France, across Norway and Sweden, to Finland and Estonia.

Reflecting its global scope, evidence of the Little Ice Age appears in the Southern Hemisphere as well. Sediment cores from Lake Malawi in southern Africa show colder weather from 1570 to 1820. A 3,000 year temperature reconstruction based on varying rates of stalagmite growth in a cave in South Africa also indicates a colder period from 1500 to 1800. A 1997 study comparing West Antarctic ice cores with the results of the Greenland Ice Sheet Project Two (GISP2) indicate a global Little Ice Age affecting the two ice sheets in tandem.

According to predictions of the French Canal Meteo, there is a 70% chance of a complete absence of summer in Western Europe this year, making it one of the coldest and wettest summers since 1816 - almost 200 years.

This would occur because this year's long, late winter has cooled the ocean, which, coupled with weak solar activity in recent months, could have a direct effect on the climate.

The last time this happened was in 1816, known as the "year without a summer" or "the year of poverty." At that time the sun was in the midst of the Dalton Minimum, when magnetic activity was extremely low, and Tambora volcano erupted in Indonesia with a column of smoke so thick that it caused a decline in world temperatures.

It's been a cold 2013 so far in Central and Western Europe. Last weekend snow fell in Austria, Germany, and the Czech Republic.
Europeans are wondering whatever happened to global warming. Climate institutes, who just years ago predicted warm, snow-less winters, have turned 180° and are now insisting that the Little Ice Age-like conditions that have gripped Europe over the last 5 years are actually signs of global warming after all! Fortunately, very few people believe them.