Extreme Temperatures
S


Ice Cube

Summer 2014 in the U.S. is already the coolest on record

Percentage of 90 Degree Days through July 23 at all US HCN Stations
© UnknownThe percentage of days above 90 degrees Fahrenheit through July 23rd has been decreasing on average for the past century.
So far the Summer of 2014 is shaping up to be the coldest summer on record in the U.S.A., with temperatures rarely breaking the 90-degree mark.

The latest data averaged from all temperature stations of the Historical Climatology Network shows that this summer has thus far broken the record as the coldest.

Ice Cube

Antarctic sea ice extent July 24 2014 - breaks daily record by 240,000 sq km

Image
Antarctic Sea Ice Extent is 1,102,000 sq km above the 1981-2010 mean

That smashes the previous daily record by 240,000 sq km. And is also the 126th daily record for the year.

Bizarro Earth

Disturbing NASA study shows water reserves in western US being drained underground

As droughts have ravaged the western US for over a decade, much of the water loss has come from underground resources in the Colorado River Basin, a new study has found. The water loss may pose a greater threat to the West than previously thought.
western US water shortage
© Reuters / David Becker
The study by NASA and the University of California, Irvine found that more than 75 percent of the water loss in the drought-stricken Colorado River Basin since late 2004 came from underground resources. It is the first time researchers have quantified the amount that groundwater contributes to the water needs of western states, NASA said.

The research team measured the change in water mass monthly from December 2004 to November 2013, using data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission to track changes in the mass of the Colorado River Basin. Changes in water mass are related to changes in water amount on and below the surface.

Binoculars

Wrong time, wrong place: Rare arctic bird spotted in Florida

Image
© Mark Hedden
Swedish biologist Viktor Nilsson-Ortman came to Florida to collect damselfly eggs for his post doctorate research and left last week with a discovery that turned the birding world all aflutter.

On the shoreline he spotted a red-necked stint, the first time this species has been seen and documented in the Sunshine State.

"What a great find Viktor!" was the salute on limeybirder.wordpress.com.

The red-necked stint is a tiny shorebird in the sandpiper family that breeds in Siberian Asia and parts of western Alaska. It migrates thousands of miles to winter in east India and Taiwan south through Australia and New Zealand. In the continental Untied States, the species has been spotted along the Pacific coast and in New England and New Jersey. And in July 2012, a red-necked stint caused a big stir when one was discovered by a national wildlife refuge biologist in Kansas.

Image
© Wikimedia CommonsThe Distribution of the Red-necked Stint
Red Broken Lines = Estimated Range
Green = Breeding Range
Blue = Wintering Range
But never before had one been seen and documented anywhere near Florida. This bird in the Keys may have remained anonymous - perhaps to be seen only by beachgoers who had no idea what type of bird it was or the magnitude of its existence here - if not for the eagle eyes and knowledge of Ortman.

Fish

Cold-water fish of northern latitudes turns up in Irish waters

Image
© Joe O’ShaughnessyFishmonger Stefan Griesbach with the Golden Red Fish in Galway. It was served to visitors to the Galway arts festival.
Golden Redfish commonly found off Iceland, Greenland and Norway

A long-living fish which prefers the chillier waters of northern latitudes has been caught by an Irish fishing vessel on the Porcupine Bank.

The golden redfish, or sebastes norvegicus, is prevalent in Iceland, and can be found along the North American coast, south of Greenland and along the Norwegian coast.

The 5.9kg specimen was caught by Aran islander Tomás Conneely of the Ocean Harvester II, a Rossaveal, Co Galway, vessel which fishes for prawns on the Porcupine.

Snowflake

New research on ocean heat content: Deep oceans are cooling amidst modeling uncertainty

Image
Guest essay by Jim Steele, Director emeritus Sierra Nevada Field Campus, San Francisco State University and author of Landscapes & Cycles: An Environmentalist's Journey to Climate Skepticism:

Two of the world's premiere ocean scientists from Harvard and MIT have addressed the data limitations that currently prevent the oceanographic community from resolving the differences among various estimates of changing ocean heat content (in print but available here).3 They point out where future data is most needed so these ambiguities do not persist into the next several decades of change. As a by-product of that analysis they 1) determined the deepest oceans are cooling, 2) estimated a much slower rate of ocean warming, 3) highlighted where the greatest uncertainties existed due to the ever changing locations of heating and cooling, and 4) specified concerns with previous methods used to construct changes in ocean heat content, such as Balmaseda and Trenberth's re-analysis (see below).13 They concluded, "Direct determination of changes in oceanic heat content over the last 20 years are not in conflict with estimates of the radiative forcing, but the uncertainties remain too large to rationalize e.g., the apparent "pause" in warming."
Image
© Wattsupwiththat.com

Arrow Down

Over 2070 cold records broken in last 7 days in the US

Image
This compares to only 281 record warm temps

Record cold numbers are double and triple the amount of record warm temps.

Look at the Month to Date for the Monthly temp records.

No wonder why the media is shooting blanks. Wow!

Source.

Thanks to Ralph Fato for this info

Snowflake

Images of snowfall in Chelyabinsk, Russia during the height of summer

Image
Witness to this natural anomaly were residents of the Urals, where over the last hundred years snow in the middle of the summer has happened only three times. Yesterday, I showed you a video of the Chelyabinsk region where it snowed, which was captured on video recorder car. Today I want to show you some of the most interesting pictures of how it was and how Chelyabinsk was covered with snow in the middle of summer.

Image

Ice Cube

Very little Arctic ice melt over the past week

Image
At the peak of the melt season, there is almost nothing happening in the Arctic. Red shows ice loss since July 11, and green shows ice gain. The melt season will start to wind down in the next three weeks, as the sun gets low in the Arctic sky.

Snowflake Cold

Cold temperatures break 128-year record in Mobile, AL

Image
© Fox10tv.com
Forecasters say Mobile has broken a 128-year-old record with a low temperature of 64 degrees.

The National Weather Service says the low Thursday morning was 1 degree cooler than the low of 65 degrees set in 1886.

The weather service says Huntsville tied a record low for the date of 59 degrees set in 1945, and temperatures were in the mid- to upper 50s across north Alabama.

The unseasonably cool temperatures are supposed to continue during the day with highs expected below 90 degrees across the state.