Coldest December since records began in UK

[Psephos]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1339149/Big-freeze-Temperatures-plummet-10C-bringing-travel-chaos-Britain.html

No wondering about a White Christmas in Merry Olde this year.

[tabatha]

1. This was actually predicted with climate change.

It can be googled.

[dipsydoodle]

11. The problem is that if you blame everything on climate change

the subject itself develops a credibility problem.

The situation here in the UK at present has been contributed to by the current shape of the jet stream above us , the sine wave more vertical than normal with higher peaks ,drawing cold air across us from Scandinavia. Winter cold air from Scandinavia is a fact of life - never changes but usually misses us and hits central Europe. To attribute this to climate change you would to show how climate change has a direct effect on the shape of jet stream.

Whilst doing so you'd also need to provide a rational explanation for our previous coldest winter which may have had the same cause - 1963 when it snowed almost continuously from New Years Day until early April.

[LawnKorn]

12. CO2 retains heat in the atmosphere = more energy in the system

This increase in energy manifests itself in in areas like increased winds of longer duration. The wind is sweeping cold air out of the Arctic and sending it south. The cold air vacated from the north is replaced by warmer air reducing the mass of the polar ice cap and exacerbating the problem.

In summer the situation is reversed with warmer air blowing from the south creating extreme weather conditions like the heat wave in Pakistan and Russia last summer. Global warming is causing more than just warming; it is causing record cold, drought, and floods too.

[dipsydoodle]

14. What you describe

in your first para has happened every year in living memory. As I'd said - normally that would hit central and eastern Europe but the current shape of the jet stream has brought it to the UK. The subject here is the UK weather - not melting of the polar ice cap.

You'd have more luck if you attibuted La Nina as a possible cause to the change in the shape of the jet stream and why and if La Nina is caused by global warming.

[tabatha]

17. False logic.

"It was predicted" is not the equivalent of "blaming everything".

Where did I blame everything? I had read predictions that Britain was expected to get colder because of climate change - here I did the googling:

Global warming may lead to colder winters in Britain

Greenland's melting glaciers have the power to change Britain's climate because of the way they can interfere with the Gulf Stream of the North Atlantic, which keeps winters relatively mild.

Scientists have found the first hard evidence to show that this actually happened 8,200 years ago, when the climate in parts of the northern hemisphere cooled dramatically after a period of global warming.

Paradoxically, a warmer world could lead to harsher winters in Britain because of the way that melting freshwater from the Greenland ice cap can interfere with the saltwater engine that drives the Gulf Stream.

The scientists found that 8,200 years ago the North Atlantic current slowed down at a time when a freshwater lake, which had formed from the melting glaciers of the last Ice Age, flooded into the sea.

They believe that the lake released so much freshwater it diluted the surface water of the sea and so slowed down the warm North Atlantic currents, which are generated by the sinking of cold, salty water.

"The 8,200-year-old event is the most recent abrupt climate-change event and by far the most extreme cooling episode in the past 10,000 years," Mark Chapman, a palaeoclimatologist at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, said.

The study, published in the journal Science, involved drilling for a core of seabed sediments from the south of Iceland and analysing it for indications of both the speed of the ocean currents and the saltiness of the sea.

"Our records show a sequenced pattern of freshening and cooling of the North Atlantic sea surface and a change in the deep ocean circulation, all key factors... in controlling... northern hemisphere climate," Dr Chapman said.

The core contained sediments representing the current "interglacial" warm period that began at the end of the last Ice Age about 10,000 years ago, Christopher Ellison of the University of East Anglia said.

"The sediment includes... small animals called foraminifera that record surface water conditions in their shells when living," Mr Ellison said. "We also analysed the sediment grain size to gauge the speed of ocean currents and the strength of ocean circulation."

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/global-warming-may-lead-to-colder-winters-in-britain-406084.html

Wetter Arctic may lead to colder winters

The Arctic is becoming a damper place as a result of burning fossil fuels, an effect that could send shockwaves through the global climate system, making British winters substantially colder.

* Arctic ice melting 'faster than predicted'
* Arctic ice cap 'will disappear within the century'
* Arctic water brings threat of icy winters to Britain

The Arctic has become wetter over the last half century, and humans are at least partly responsible through greenhouse gas emissions, concludes the study published in the journal Science by a team led by Francis Zwiers, Director, Climate Research Division, Environment Canada.

The new study presents the first evidence that human-induced climate change has contributed substantially to changes in precipitation patterns from 1950 to 1999 in the Arctic, and high latitudes north of 55° N, says Dr Zwiers. These human-induced changes have not previously been detected, in part due to the lack of sufficient data from both observations and model simulations.

Overall, pan-Arctic rain and snowfall has increased by approximately 7 per cent, while precipitation in the Canadian part of the Arctic has increased by about 11 per cent.

"The increase in Arctic precipitation is an indication that the global hydrological cycle is speeding up as a result of warming - in effect, the atmosphere transports more moisture towards the poles when the climate warms," he says.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3340689/Wetter-Arctic-may-lead-to-colder-winters.html

Colder winters possible due to climate change-study
14:52, Tuesday 16 November 2010

* Colder winters possible in northern regions

* Shrinking sea ice causes airstream anomalies

* Finding does not conflict with global warming

BERLIN, Nov 16 (Reuters) - Climate change could lead to colder winters in northern regions, according to a study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research on Tuesday.

Vladimir Petoukhov, lead author of the study, said a shrinking of sea ice in the eastern Arctic causes some regional warming of lower air levels and may lead to anomalies in atmospheric airstreams, triggering an overall cooling of the northern continents.

"These anomalies could triple the probability of cold winter extremes in Europe and northern Asia," he said. "Recent severe winters like last year's or the one of 2005/06 do not conflict with the global warming picture but rather supplement it."

Petoukhov, whose study is entitled "A link between reduced Barents-Kara sea ice and cold winter extremes over northern continents", said in a statement a warming of the air over the Barents-Kara Sea appeared to bring cold winter winds to Europe.

"This is not what one would expect," Petoukhov said. "Whoever thinks that the shrinking of some far away sea ice won't bother him could be wrong."

The U.N. panel of climate scientists say a creeping rise in global temperatures will bring ever more floods, droughts, heat waves and rising sea levels.

Almost 200 nations meet in Mexico from Nov. 29 to Dec. 10 to try to agree a "green fund" to help poor countries deal with climate change and other steps towards an elusive treaty to tackle global warming. (Reporting by Erik Kirschbaum; editing by Janet Lawrence)

[dipsydoodle]

18. That is a compelely separate issue

unassociated with current conditions so why bring that up now ? What you've said may well be correct : it is however irrelevent in context with the subject of the OP.

How many times do I need to say "the jet stream"

From 24th November :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/weather/hi/news/newsid_9223000/9223918.stm

[tabatha]

19. So how does the jet stream change?

This huge mass of warmer air over the Arctic in the late fall not only generates more wind and snow locally, several studies have now documented the impacts on global weather patterns.

The winter of 2005-6 was the coldest in 50 years in Japan and eastern Eurasia, reported Meiji Honda, a senior scientist with the Climate Diagnosis Group at Japan’s Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology. Honda’s studies show that the air over the Arctic was quite warm in the fall of 2005, which altered normal wind patterns, pushing the jet stream further south and bringing arctic cold to much of Eurasia and Japan. He also documented the same mechanism for the colder winters of 2007-8 and 2009-10, he told participants.

http://stephenleahy.net/2010/09/13/arctic-melt-down-is-bringing-harder-winters-and-permanently-altering-weather-patterns/

Say it as many times as you like, it is not a separate issue.

[muriel_volestrangler]

25. More explanation:

Now, to complicate matters further, a new atmospheric circulation pattern has been identified: the Arctic Dipole, which has become an increasingly-important feature of the Arctic climate during the first decade of the 21st Century. Arctic weather has until recently been driven by the NAO and its close relative, the Arctic Oscillation (AO), both of which broadly produce a circumpolar airflow from west to east. Now, with the Dipole, they have competition and it is having some strange affects on the climate of the Arctic and further afield.

The Arctic Dipole pattern features anomalously high and low pressure systems – they are occurring and persisting where previously they did not. When the Dipole is dominating things, high pressure builds over the American side of the Arctic and low pressure forms on its Eurasian side: this results in an extremely meridional pattern in which winds blow south-to-north through the Bering Strait and into the Arctic from the Pacific, importing extra heat in the process and driving Arctic temperatures further upwards, encouraging further melting of sea-ice well beyond that expected due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions alone. But – ironically – several studies published over the past few years have concluded that the mechanism for its formation was triggered by low sea-ice extent in the first place: it is an example of a positive climate feedback pattern. It works thus: sea-ice has a high albedo – that is, it reflects a lot of solar energy back out to space. Over areas where that ice has melted, the energy is instead absorbed by the open sea-water, warming it. The open water reaches its maximum extent in mid-September: during the Autumn, the research has found, it returns some of that heat back to the lower atmosphere, driving up air temperatures and thereby affecting pressure and atmospheric circulation patterns, which in return go on to cause further excessive summer ice-loss in subsequent years. But these changes are not just affecting the Arctic.

In their updated Arctic Report Card for 2010 (reference 1 at end of page), Overland et al note: “Winter 2009-2010 showed a major new connectivity between Arctic climate and mid-latitude severe weather, compared to the past.” They show what would be considered to be a “normal” pressure-pattern, with anticlockwise circumpolar winds, and then explain how December 2009 saw a complete reversal of this pattern, that essentially eliminated the normal west-to-east jet stream winds. This allowed cold Arctic air to penetrate deeply into some southern regions such as Europe, resulting in very low temperatures and snowy conditions: Northern Eurasia (north of 50° latitude to the Arctic coast) and North America (south of 55° latitude) had negative monthly temperature anomalies of -2°C to -10°C – whilst at the same time, Arctic regions had positive anomalies of +4°C to +12°C. This change in atmospheric circulation has been given the working name of the Warm Arctic-Cold Continents climate pattern. This year a similar pattern appears to have emerged: on November 28th, temperatures in parts of Wales fell to -18C (a November record minimum), but at Kangerlussuaq, inside the Arctic Circle in western Greenland, the minimum was +9C, an amazing 27C warmer.
...
In the case of the Warm Arctic-Cold Continents pattern, one explanation with respect to effects further afield in Europe may be this observed anomalously low late Autumn ice coverage – and accompanying high heat-flow from sea to atmosphere - in the Barents and Kara seas, marginal parts of the Arctic Ocean situated to the north of Scandinavia and Russia (location map below). This potential influence – the “B-K Effect” - has been analysed using a global atmospheric circulation model by Vladimir Petoukhov of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Vladimir Semenov of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University in a study submitted in November 2009 and recently published in the Journal of Geophysical Research (reference 2). Petoukhov and Seminov found that the model responded in a non-linear fashion: rather than resulting in a warming over adjacent continents as might have been expected, a strong regional cooling was generated within a certain range of sea-ice cover. In the abstract, they go so far as to state: “Here we show that anomalous decrease of wintertime sea-ice concentration in the Barents-Kara (B-K) seas could bring about extreme cold events like winter 2005-2006.” The paper, and indeed the whole subject of cold European winters and how they relate to the overall global climate, has been the subject of much lively discussion, in the context of that particular winter and others past and present. Writing on the Realclimate blog on December 14th 2010 (reference 3), Rasmus Benestad of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute noted that, while Petoukhov and Seminov's findings sound plausible, things may not be so straightforward. With respect to using global circulation models to determine regional effects, he commented: “There is a limit to what they are able to describe in terms of local regional details, and it it reasonable to ask whether the response to changes in regional sea-ice cover is beyond the limitation of the global model.”

http://www.geologywales.co.uk/storms/winter1011a.htm

[Odin2005]

21. It is thought that the shrinking arctic ice is causing a strongly negative Arctic Oscillation

During the negative phase of the AO the prevailing winds drive the cold arctic air southward, during the positive phase the cold air stays bottled up in the North.

[pintobean]

22. The continuing evolution of settled science

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. What is minus 10 C in Farenheit?

[happyslug]

4. 14 Fahrenheit

NOAA conversion scale:
http://www.wbuf.noaa.gov/tempfc.htm

The Two Scales only equal each other at -40 i.e. -40 Celsius = -40 Fahrenheit

[joshcryer]

5. Google also does magic conversion:

-10 c to f

http://www.google.com/search?q=-10c+to+f

[alex cross]

6. Colder than a well diggers bum.

[joshcryer]

3. Made hardly a dent in the global temperature record, alas.

[GreenPartyVoter]

7. Have you read the comments? If it isn't climate-change bashing, it's socialism bashing.

:eyes:

[Nihil]

24. That's almost guaranteed from the Daily Mail ...

If you object to using Fox as a source, you really shouldn't use the Daily Mail.

:shrug:

[jay-3d]

8. I hope this isn't going to happen every winter

check this weather underground link.

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1710

looks like the Arctic vortex is changing.

[dixiegrrrrl]

15. Jay, we are reading this blog with great interest.

I highly recommend it.

thanks....

[elleng]

9. 'Chief executive

of the Centre for Economics and Business Research, said the prolonged freeze could also lead to up to 1,000 businesses going bankrupt.

Many shoppers would be forced to stay at home because of treacherous roads, he added.

There are also concerns that heating oil - used by around two million homes, schools and hospitals - are nearing ‘crisis levels’. The Government is said to be considering rationing.'

[tinrobot]

10. It's predicted to happen when the gulf stream shuts down.

[stuntcat]

13. a couple of cold winters in the northern hemisphere will set the entire world back decades

The bald apes will even more joyfully stomp the rest of the lifeforms to death! Waving their crosses! :rofl:
You think I'm talking shit, tell that to my face in 2050 :hi:

[pscot]

23. The bald apes are also

the apes who wear pants. The better to withstand a northern hemisphere winter. Both facts are irrelevant to climate change.

[NickB79]

16. NASA explains how Europe can be so cold amidst the hottest November and hottest year on record

http://climateprogress.org/2010/12/12/nasa-explains-how-europe-can-be-so-cold-amidst-the-hottest-november-and-hottest-year-on-record/

[Odin2005]

20. Climate Change + Melting Arctic Ice = Strongly negative Arctic Oscillation = Cold Winter in...

Eastern North America and Europe. essentially the arctic is warm because the Arctic Oscillation is sending the cold air south instead of bottling it up in the Arctic.

Very interesting phenomenon.