Global Warming 2

[PeteC]

.....and I'm sorry to say that my countrymen get exactly what they deserve when they keep electing and re-electing people like this. He's far from the only example. I fear for my country, and I have for a long time now. When my daughter comes of age in a decade and a half, Thailand may indeed be a better place to make a life. Although, choices may be based upon the 'best of the worst' as the only alternative. Pete

[MrPlum]

'Sweden braces for record freeze'
http://www.thelocal.se/30516/20101130/

Local Swedish global 'warmista' Bro Kenrecord said "Look. I know I'm up to my armpits in snow but our instruments and models and peer-reviewed data is faultless. So stop being a 'denier'!'. Errr... can I borrow your shovel, please?"

[STEVE G]

I'm not sure that we can judge whether global warming is happening because it's cold in Sweden in December!
Actually the current cold spell in Northern Europe is a displacement of the jetstream from Siberia so it's the action of the weather system and not the climate.

[redzonerocker]

I'm not sure that we can judge whether global warming is happening because it's cold in Sweden in December!

what about record low temperatures & snowfalls in the uk during the last week of november (& forecast for another week to 10 days of subzero temps!!!)??

all this following on from yet another mild summer with hardly a sustained period of hot sunny weather

i think we can judge GW isn't taking place in the uk

[STEVE G]

Yes, I've got some bad news for you RZR; some studies suggest that a lack of sea ice in the Eastern Arctic causes a local warming of the air in that region that can disrupt airstreams and push cold weather normally destined for Siberia down into Northern Europe.

[redzonerocker]

Yes, I've got some bad news for you RZR; some studies suggest that a lack of sea ice in the Eastern Arctic causes a local warming of the air in that region that can disrupt airstreams and push cold weather normally destined for Siberia down into Northern Europe.

you couldn't possibly give me any bad news steve

the thing the GW brigade seem to forget when supplying these studies is that populations have lived through the decades that this GW process has supposedly taken place.
which begs the question , has the uk become a warmer place over the last 40 years? . . . .not a chance
& it's been especially noticeable over the past decade where summers have all but faded away & winters have become colder & harsher

seeing is believing steve & the evidence definately doesn't suggest a warmer climate in the uk, far from it.

[STEVE G]

Yes, the term is Global Warming after all and what the effect is in any one place can vary as the change in climate results in changes in weather patterns which we are seeing now, partricularly the changes in Monsoon seasons that have lead to a lack of water for irrigation in the early part followed by disastrous flooding later and the long hot summers that caused large forest fires in Russia.
The UK is only a very small part of the globe and people in other parts of the world have seen more noticeable changes.

[STEVE G]

(Barents Observer)
When the future history of the Arctic will be written, 2010 will be marked off as the breakthrough year for commercial shipping along the Northern Sea Route.
The ice is melting and the shipping is entering. The Northern Sea Route will be the new sea highway between Europe and Asia.
The first one to sail the entire Northern Sea Route, or the Northeast Passage as it was named those days, was the Finnish-Swedish explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskioeld in 1878-79. He spent 15 months on the route with his vessel “Vega”. This August, the Norwegian explorer Børge Ousland sailed the same route with his little trimaran. He spent some few weeks and reported that they hardly could see any ice.
But the strongest interest for the Northern Sea Route is no longer among Arctic explorers. The Russian and international shipping industry see the ongoing climate changes and the retreating of the summer ice-cap in the Arctic as a new opportunity. The distance from Europe to Asia is much shorter when sailing north instead of using the Suez channel or sail around Africa. Shorter sailing route save time and save fuel. In other words; save money. Also, the Arctic is free of pirates.
http://www.barentsobserver.com/index.php?id=4814307

[lindosfan1]

Steve g
I remember reading about 5 years ago about the gulf stream keeping the waters around Britain warmer and if it changes course it can affect the climate. Do you remember that. I cannot seem to find it

[STEVE G]

Yes, Glasgow is actually further north than Moscow and if you change the gulf stream you'll get much colder winters in the UK as it brings warm air up from nearer to the equator.

[sandman67]

not exactly on topic but related

was watching Timewatch (an excellent UK hisory program) yesterday and the episode was about when in the mid 1700s that massive volcano erupted in Iceland (the big sodding Mid Atlantic Ridge one thats left the big scar valley down the middle of Iceland)

In one day it pumped the same amount of sulpher dioxide into the sky as three years of modern industrial activity!

Its poison cloud killed 120,000 people in the UK alone, and the subsequent severe winter and shitty summer flooding that destroyed crops did for another 100.000 or so.

scary eh?

[MrPlum]

"'Ere. Why am I chuffing freezing, Albert?"

"Don't you worry, Sid. That's coz of that there Global Warming, that is."

"So, why have we had the the coldest winters on record then, Bert, me old sparrow?"

"Well, it's coz they've stuck all them sensors into icebergs, you see. It's not REALLY cold and that's not REALLY a snowdrift you're stuck in." It's... errrr.. it's an optical illooshun, that is."

"But me wellies are full of ice, Bert."

"Don't you worry, Sid, me old flower. That's yer carbon footprint, that is. Tuck up with a few of them Carbon Credits. That'll get yer blood boilin'."

[MrPlum]

[pharvey]

To the point.........

Bugger... couldn't add the photo.

[STEVE G]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/opini ... ?src=twrhp
Annual cycles like El Niño/Southern Oscillation, solar variability and global ocean currents cannot account for recent winter cooling. And though it is well documented that the earth’s frozen areas are in retreat, evidence of thinning Arctic sea ice does not explain why the world’s major cities are having colder winters.

But one phenomenon that may be significant is the way in which seasonal snow cover has continued to increase even as other frozen areas are shrinking. In the past two decades, snow cover has expanded across the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, especially in Siberia, just north of a series of exceptionally high mountain ranges, including the Himalayas, the Tien Shan and the Altai.

The high topography of Asia influences the atmosphere in profound ways. The jet stream, a river of fast-flowing air five to seven miles above sea level, bends around Asia’s mountains in a wavelike pattern, much as water in a stream flows around a rock or boulder. The energy from these atmospheric waves, like the energy from a sound wave, propagates both horizontally and vertically.

As global temperatures have warmed and as Arctic sea ice has melted over the past two and a half decades, more moisture has become available to fall as snow over the continents. So the snow cover across Siberia in the fall has steadily increased.

The sun’s energy reflects off the bright white snow and escapes back out to space. As a result, the temperature cools. When snow cover is more abundant in Siberia, it creates an unusually large dome of cold air next to the mountains, and this amplifies the standing waves in the atmosphere, just as a bigger rock in a stream increases the size of the waves of water flowing by.

The increased wave energy in the air spreads both horizontally, around the Northern Hemisphere, and vertically, up into the stratosphere and down toward the earth’s surface. In response, the jet stream, instead of flowing predominantly west to east as usual, meanders more north and south. In winter, this change in flow sends warm air north from the subtropical oceans into Alaska and Greenland, but it also pushes cold air south from the Arctic on the east side of the Rockies. Meanwhile, across Eurasia, cold air from Siberia spills south into East Asia and even southwestward into Europe.

That is why the Eastern United States, Northern Europe and East Asia have experienced extraordinarily snowy and cold winters since the turn of this century. Most forecasts have failed to predict these colder winters, however, because the primary drivers in their models are the oceans, which have been warming even as winters have grown chillier. They have ignored the snow in Siberia.