Canberra's coldest mornings since 1965

9 July, 2012 by

A light dusting of global warming there…

From the Weather Isn’t Climate department. Cue Tim Flannery, Will Steffen or David Karoly saying that this is “consistent with global warming” in 3, 2, 1…

Canberra has shivered through its eighth straight freezing, frosty morning, the coldest stretch of winter mornings in 47 years.

The mercury dropped to a chilly minus 4.8 degrees at 6.51am this morning, topping off eight consecutive mornings below minus 2.3 degrees.

The eight-day cold spell, with an average minimum temperature of minus 4.9, is the coldest string of July mornings since 1965. The all-time record was in July 1962, when the average temperature over an eight-day period was minus 7.

Canberrans felt the worst of the cold on Wednesday, when temperatures fell to minus 6.1 degrees, 6 degrees colder than the long-term July average of minus 0.1.

Wednesday’s low is still far from the record July minimum of minus 10 degrees, recorded in 1971, but is just shy of the lowest temperature recorded this year, which was minus 6.3 degrees on June 20. (source)

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Australian temperature records 'shoddy, inaccurate, unreliable'

16 March, 2012 by

Sydney Observatory (no UHI there, no siree)

From Jo Nova:

The BOM say their temperature records are high quality. An independent audit team has just produced a report showing that as many as 85 – 95% of all Australian sites in the pre-Celsius era (before 1972) did not comply with the BOM’s own stipulations. The audit shows 20-30% of all the measurements back then were rounded or possibly truncated. Even modern electronic equipment was at times, so faulty and unmonitored that one station rounded all the readings for nearly 10 years! These sloppy errors may have created an artificial warming trend.

The BOM are issuing pronouncements of trends to two decimal places like this one  in the BOM’s Annual Climate Summary 2011 of “0.52 °C above average”  yet relying on patchy data that did not meet its own compliance standards around half the time.  It’s doubtful they can justify one decimal place, let alone two?

We need a professional audit.

Forget surface stations, just use satellites.

Read it all here.

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Scientists predict… more of whatever we've just had

12 March, 2012 by

Climate astrology

The role of natural variability in climate must be squashed at all costs. Just think of the consequences if natural variability were allowed to persist: we wouldn’t be able to “control” the climate by tinkering with a harmless trace gas, and we wouldn’t be able to shame Western civilisation into abandoning centuries of progress in order to “save the planet”. We might have to just accept what nature throws at us – and adapt.

And, more worryingly for The Cause, we wouldn’t be able to fill government and research coffers with taxpayers money, extracted by means of “carbon pricing”. And that would be a disaster. So whatever weather phenomenon happens, we can be sure that we will get more of the same, and it will be blamed on “man made global warming” to keep the bandwagon rolling.

For the last decade, Australia has suffered a period of drought. Prior to its recent end, scientists were falling over themselves to say that this was the “new climate” that we must get used to. Paid government hacks like Tim Flannery wailed about dams never filling again, and billions were spent on desalination plants to cater for the future without water.

How things change. After some of the worst floods in recent history in New South Wales, the alarmist Sydney Morning Herald finds a scientist to say that in future we will have… more floods. In other words, more of whatever we’ve just had:

EXPERTS PREDICT SURGE IN FLOODS

SPORTS fields, car parks and parklands will be important assets; houses will have walls that open, and some people might need to lose their water views to prepare for bigger, more frequent floods due to global warming, according to experts contacted by the Herald.

As global temperatures rise, short storm bursts will increase in frequency and severity, resulting in more flash flooding, especially in urban areas. But the outlook for longer periods of extreme rain, such as those that caused the flooding of the Darling, Lachlan and Murrumbidgee rivers, and which made the Warragamba Dam overflow this year, is less certain.

There is consensus in the scientific literature that ”the flooding that happens on small urban type of catchments, which is a result of short rainfall bursts, is going up, because convection is intensifying”, Professor Ashish Sharma, an Australian Research Council future fellow in the school of civil and environmental engineering at the University of NSW, said.

He said it was ”99 per cent sure” that the cause was global warming. A warmer atmosphere holds more water and releases it in shorter bursts, as seen in the tropics, Professor Sharma said. 

And notice that they have a bob each way – claiming that long term trends are less certain – so we can have more floods AND more drought and they’ll be right in both cases! There’s more:

What scientists agree on is that the assumption the future climate will mirror the past, known among scientists as ”stationarity”, no longer holds. This has implications for flood planning.

”This represents a major break with past practice”, Seth Westra, a senior lecturer in the school of civil, environmental and mining engineering at the University of Adelaide, said.

”The notion that the climatic drivers of flooding are changing through time not only poses profound challenges on how we estimate future floods, but also challenges the way we design [for] and manage future floods,” he said in a paper written for the federal government-funded National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility. (source)

How anyone could possibly “assume” that future climate will mirror the past, when climate has been changing for 4.5 billion years, is almost incredible. Even without the AGW scare, climate has always changed, over every time period, and always will.

What’s so amazing about this kind of article is the almost unbelievable lack of any historical perspective. So desperate are the Herald to link any weather phenomenon to global warming (especially with the Herald-sponsored Earth Hour just around the corner), that they will purposefully find a scientist who will say the right thing.

The unfalsifiable hypothesis gets stronger, and ever closer to climate astrology.

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Bureau of Meteorology's summer forecasts: 'hopeless again'

3 March, 2012 by

Max anomaly predictions

Anecdotally, from my weather station here on the Upper North Shore in Sydney, this has been the Year without a Summer. Mean temperatures for December, January and February were 18.6C, 21.5C and 21.6C, significantly lower than 2010/11 (21.7, 23.9, 24.1) and 2009/10 (22.9, 23.9, 23.4).

Overall summer means for the three months December, January and February were 20.5C for 2011/12, down 2.8C compared to 2010/11 and 2.9C compared to 2009/10. All totally meaningless in terms of climate, of course, but interesting none the less.

Warwick Hughes on the warmist BoM predictions for the Year:

This summer has been cooler than average across vast areas of Australia. Which has been a surprise to the BoM.

The BoM 3 month summer temperature outlooks were issued in November – actual daytime temperature anomalies were cooler over vastly more area of Australia than the BoM predicted. The actual warmth along the Perth to Pilbara coast and Sth Aust & Vic turned out to be miniscule compared to the BoM predictions. Ditto for the Far North which turned out near average. The BoM scores some marks for their Eastern and Central Australian cool predict but all of their hot predictions turned out cooler and smaller.

Source.

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If it's cold, it's "just weather"

15 February, 2012 by

Eighteen inches of solid global warming

But if it’s hot, it’s “global warming” or “climate change”. NASA and Scientific American manage, correctly, to avoid any mention of climate change in its explanation of why Europe is suffering one of its worst winter freezes in living memory:

Just how extraordinary has this winter been in Europe? The Danube river has frozen, for one.

Europeans have been shivering under a blanket of cold air that has sent temperatures plummeting and snows drifting. Across the continent, hundreds have died from exposure to the cold.

The Danube’s freezing is just one of many severe winter events in the continent this year. Heavy snowfall has blocked roads and stranded towns in central Italy. A train in Montenegro was stranded on the tracks for three days due to heavy snow. Even Venice’s famous canals froze, a rare feat.

At least four Balkan nations suspended shipping on the Danube today (Feb. 14) because of heavy ice on the river, according to news reports.

Keeping Europe frozen is a climate pattern called a “Russian Winter.” In this pattern, a strong Siberian anticyclone hovers over northern Russia and triggers intense cold and snow, according to a NASA statement. That cold has lingered long enough to freeze stretches of the Danube, the second longest river in Europe. (source)

Let’s contrast this with the hysteria over the Pakistani floods and Russian heatwave in 2010, which, because it occurred in Summer and was therefore related to heat, was immediately linked to climate change:

Climate scientists must urgently look into changes in atmospheric currents linked to devastating floods in Pakistan and wildfires in Russia, UN climate and weather bodies said on Wednesday.

Ghassem Asrar, director of the World Climate Research Program, told AFP that changes, known as blocking episodes, can prevent humidity or hot weather dispersing.

That intensified heavy rain or heatwaves and locked them over an area, he explained, potentially with a growing impact on extreme weather events that scientists expect to happen more frequently with global warming.

Asrar said that European researchers had modelled the blocking pattern in atmospheric currents and resulting weather behind the Pakistani rains and Russian heatwave a few weeks in advance.

They “clearly flagged this formation and kept track of it”, said Asrar, whose program is partly linked to the UN’s World Meteorological Organisation (WMO).

“We know for sure that the two events in Pakistan and Russia are linked,” he added.

So there you have it…

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Frozen Europe

13 February, 2012 by

Heidelberg frozen solid

The Big Freeze in Europe continues. This clearly has nothing to do with climate change, it’s just weather. However, it does demonstrate the damaging power of extreme cold. Now imagine what it would be like surviving in these extreme weather conditions with astronomical energy prices as a results of pointless “climate change mitigation policies”:

You would be forgiven for thinking these stunning vistas lay deep in the heart of Antarctica.

But they are, in fact, what has become of the European landscape as temperatures plummet to nearly -40C – the coldest snap in decades.

Rivers, lakes, beaches and even seas have been iced over by a Siberian freeze, creating some incredible sights, but also more tales of tragedy.

Thousands enjoyed a day out on the frozen Lake Pfaeffikersee, near Zurich, Switzerland, today, while ice anglers looked more like Eskimos as they braved the conditions on a Polish reservoir.

But in southern Kosovo, nine people were killed when an avalanche hit the village of Restelica, officials said on Sunday, adding to more than 500 killed in snow and bitter cold across the Continent in the past two weeks.          

In Poland, the interior ministry said 20 people had died in the past 24 hours because of the freezing weather, bringing the toll there so far this year to at least 100.

A spokeswoman said the latest victims froze to death or were suffocated or killed by fires due to defective or improvised heaters. 

The Kosovo avalanche enveloped about 15 houses on Saturday, but only two were occupied at the time.   

One person was missing and a girl aged about six was found alive late on Saturday after residents and emergency services helped dig out the houses. She was taken to hospital.   

‘The number of dead people now is nine and we believe there is still one missing person,’ said Ibrahim Shala, a spokesperson from the Kosovo Security Force (KSF).           

Temperatures have plummeted in parts of Europe close to minus 40 degrees Celsius (minus 40 Fahrenheit) in the coldest February snap the region has seen in decades. Meteorologists say it could last till the end of the month.           

In Kosovo, three people died and two children were injured on Thursday when a gas can that a family was using for heating exploded.

Kosovo’s government ordered schools to remain closed for another week with more snow expected. Police said many inhabited areas were completely cut off.

In neighbouring Montenegro the government imposed a state of emergency late on Saturday after snow blocked roads and railways across most of the country. Three people have died so far.

More than 50 people have been stranded on a train in Montenegro’s north for more than two days as emergency crews struggle to rescue them.
In the mountain town of Zabljak in Montenegro’s north, snow was 2.3 metres deep, while authorities have banned all private traffic in the capital Podgorica, where snow is almost a metre (three feet) deep and more is forecast on Sunday.

In Serbia, which declared a state of emergency last week, 19 people have died in the cold snap so far.

Economists said damage from the cold weather may cost the country more than 500 million euros ($660 million).

More than 2,000 industrial businesses have been idled to limit the strain on coal-fired power plants and hydropower plants, which were struggling because of the buildup of ice.

The government also ordered the closure of all schools and non-essential businesses until February 20.

Port authorities for Serbian sections of the Danube, Sava and Tisa rivers halted navigation due to a heavy buildup of ice.

For the first time in decades, parts of the Black Sea has frozen near its shores, while the Kerch Strait that links the Azov Sea and the Black Sea has been closed to navigation.

Some great photos at the link.

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Adelaide cold snap "not seen before since at least 1977"

12 February, 2012 by

City of churches (and brass monkeys)

From the Weather Isn’t Climate department:

Adelaide has remained at least seven degrees cooler than average for the past six days, which is a February feat not seen before since at least 1977.

From Sunday 5th February to Friday 10th, Adelaide failed to climb above 22.5 degrees, well below the long term February average of 29.4.

The unusually cool conditions are the result of a persistent flow of southerly air over the city during the past week and lingering cloud cover, which has restricted solar heating from the sun.

The city only managed to reach 20 degrees on Friday, nine degrees cooler than usual and the coldest February day in seven years.

Adelaide’s run of cool days is expected to end next week, when temperatures return to more familiar territory. The city can expect to reach the high 20’s by the end of the weekend and from Tuesday the mercury is set to climb into the 30s for the first time in 11 days.

Looking ahead, a weak change will affect Adelaide in the middle of next week, although temperatures are unlikely to stay as low as they have over the past six days.

(Weatherzone)

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Euro cold snap: The day the sea froze

5 February, 2012 by

Freezing Britain

From the Weather Isn’t Climate department. Just as warmer winters are blamed on “global warming” so are colder winters too! Which is it? Both? Yes, of course.

It’s our old friend the unfalsifiable hypothesis. Ask “The Cause” what weather phenomenon would be evidence that man-made global warming was NOT happening and all you would receive in return is a blank stare and a thud as jaw hits ground.

Whatever the real cause, it’s very cold in the UK at the moment (and in much of Europe as well):

  • Temperatures as low as Himalayas overnight, plunging to nearly -11C in Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire
  • Third of flights out of Heathrow tomorrow cancelled
  • Much of England under ‘Level 3’ cold weather alert, which warns of ‘100% probability’ of severe cold weather, icy conditions and heavy snow
  • Drivers warned to check ‘gritter Twitter’ updates as breakdowns attended by AA double
  • British Gas puts fleet of 4X4s on standby as call-outs soar
  • Salt stocks across Britain stand at 2.4m tons – a million more than last year
  • Sporting events called off including Portsmouth v Hull City Championship football match

Snow showers are sweeping across Britain tonight – with forecasters warning that most of the country will be covered by snow by the morning.

Widespread snow of up to 15cm deep is forecast to fall overnight across much of the country, with flurries already hitting Scotland, northern England and the Midlands this afternoon.

Up to 15cm of snow is expected to cover parts of Cumbria, Lincolnshire, East Anglia, North Yorkshire, the Peak District and the Midlands, while South East and eastern England is predicted to see up to 10cm of snow fall overnight.

Passengers travelling through Heathrow Airport have been warned that a third of tomorrow’s flights will be grounded, and the RAC has warned of a ‘dangerous cocktail of driving conditions’.

The freezing conditions have caused daytime temperatures to plummet four or five degrees lower than average for February – traditionally the coldest month of the year.

Motorists faced a ‘dangerous cocktail of driving conditions’ while forecasters warned the freezing weather was here to stay.

Kevin Andrews, RAC patrol ambassador, said the wintry weather and sub-zero temperatures had left roads ‘extremely treacherous’.

He added: ‘It looks like we’re going to get a dangerous cocktail of driving conditions this weekend.’

The motoring organisation said it had attended 70 per cent more breakdowns than normal while a spokesman for the AA said it dealt with around 1,500 call-outs per hour this morning.

The total figure was predicted to reach up to 15,000 by the end of the day – almost double the 8,500 of a usual Saturday.

Most parts of the country are expected to wake up to a blanket of snow tomorrow morning, including Cumbria, Lincolnshire, East Anglia, North Yorkshire and the Peak District and temperatures will remain low, with -9C expected in the snowy Midlands.

Meteo Group forecaster Paul Mott said the deep freeze was likely to continue into next week – meaning the snow is likely to settle and much of Britain will remain carpeted in white. (source)

There are also some great photos at the link. And elsewhere in Europe, temperatures have plunged:

TEMPERATURES have plunged to new lows in Europe, where a week-long cold snap has now killed more than 200 people as forecasters warned that the big freeze would tighten its grip at the weekend.

In the Czech Republic, the mercury dropped to as low as minus 38.1 degrees Celsius overnight yesterday while even Rome was sprinkled in snow.

In the past seven days, a total of 218 people have died from the cold weather, according to an AFP tally.

Ukraine’s emergencies ministry said the cold snap had now killed 101 people, substantially raising the previous toll of 63. Sixty-four of the victims died on the streets, it added.

Almost 1600 people have requested medical attention for frostbite and hypothermia.

As they try to prevent the toll from rising even further, authorities announced that 2940 shelters had been set up across the Ukraine where people could find warmth and food and another 100 would be opened in the next hours.
There was no sign of an immediate let-up in the weather, with forecasters saying temperatures would hover between minus 25 to 30 degrees Celsius at night and minus 16 to 21 in the day.

The ferocious temperatures killed eight more people over the past 24 hours in Poland, bringing the death toll to 37 since the deep freeze began a week ago, police said.

Temperatures plunged to as low as minus 35 degrees Celsius in parts of Poland – but even that was three degrees warmer than the temperatures in the southwestern Sumava region of the Czech Republic.

Temperatures have been so cold in Bulgaria that parts of the River Danube have been frozen over.

Sixty per cent of the surface near the port of Ruse was iced over, severely hindering navigation, the Danube exploration agency said.

Elsewhere in Bulgaria, another six people were found dead from the cold, bringing the overall tally to 16 in the past week, according to a tally of local media. No official figures have been released.

Most of the dead in the European Union’s poorest country were people in villages, found frozen to death on the side of the road or in their unheated homes, the reports said.

More than 1000 Bulgarian schools remained closed for a third day on Friday amid fresh snowfalls and piercing winds in the northeast of the country.

Residents in Rome experienced only their second day of snow in the past 15 years. Up to five centimetres of snow fell in suburbs of the Italian capital, although there was little precipitation in the city centre.

Temperatures in the Alpine region of Piedmont in northern Italy went as low as minus 30 degrees Celsius.

And the Met Office, always keen to make sure the public doesn’t get the wrong idea, provides the best quote of all:

The Met Office said there was a danger that the cold weather would catch people off-guard after the warmer-than-normal winter so far. (source)

Not any more it isn’t.

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UK freeze may kill 2000 a week

2 February, 2012 by

Brass monkeys

A bit of gentle warming is catastrophic, so we are repeatedly warned, but in reality, it’s cold that’s the real killer:

BRITAIN’S big freeze could kill up to 2,000 people a week, as temperatures plunge lower than at the South Pole, health chiefs warned last night.

The Department of Health warned the elderly and vulnerable to take extra care as temperatures fall to -11C (12F) in parts of the country and icy winds make it feel closer to -12C.

In comparison, yesterday the   research centre in Antarctica was a relatively mild -3C.

Chief Medical Officer Sally Davies said the number of cold-related deaths could rise “substantially”.

In one week in last year’s big freeze the number in England and Wales rose from 9,220 to 11,193.

Forecasters, who have warned that the cold snap could last all month, said today would be one of the winter’s chilliest days.

And by Friday, temperatures will fall as low as -11C at night in the North and -8C in the South. In some places they are not expected to rise above freezing during the day. (source)

And the effects of this dangerous cold will be greatly exacerbated by the spiralling cost of energy, a direct result of the UK government’s mad emissions reduction targets and renewable energy policies to “tackle climate change”, inevitably leading to many more of the population being unable to heat their homes. UK climate madness.

(h/t EU Referendum)

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NASA captures Cyclone Iggy

28 January, 2012 by

Cyclone Iggy (click for full size)

ScienceDaily (Jan. 27, 2012) —

NASA satellites are providing valuable data to forecasters as Tropical Cyclone Iggy nears Western Australia. NASA’s Aqua satellite provided visible and infrared data on Iggy, observing colder cloud tops and strengthening storm. Iggy has already triggered warnings and watches along coastal areas.

Meteorology (ABM) has issued a Cyclone Warning for coastal areas from Mardie to Ningaloo including Exmouth and Onslow. ABM has also issued a Cyclone Watch east to Port Hedland and south to Coral Bay. In addition, a Blue Alert has been posted for “People in or near coastal and island communities between Mardie and Coral Bay including the communities of Mardie, Onslow, Exmouth and Coral Bay need to prepare for cyclonic weather.”

…

Because of low wind shear and warm waters, Iggy is expected to continue strengthening on its approach to the Australian coastline. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center forecast as of January 27 takes the center of Iggy’s center very close to Learmouth on January 30 and 31 before turning to the southwest and heading back to sea.

Read it here.

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