British Winter Was the Coldest for 31 Years
March 4th, 2010Via: Guardian:
After suffering snow, sleet, rain and consistently freezing temperatures, the knowledge that the Met Office has officially recognised winter 2009-10 as the coldest in 31 years brings with it a certain grim satisfaction.
Provisional figures from the forecaster show the UK winter ? which in forecasting terms lasts from the start of December until the end of February ? has been the harshest, in temperature terms, since 1978-79.
The news may come as little surprise to those affected by snow in December and January, when falls of up to 2ft saw councils’ grit supplies run low, travel chaos and the return of the Guardian’s snow day live blog.
According to the Met Office the mean temperature in the UK was 1.51C this winter, compared to a long-term average winter temperature ? calculated from data collected between 1971 and 2000 ? of 3.7C. The mean temperature in 1978-79 was 1.17C.
The data shows that Scotland suffered the most this winter, with the provisional mean temperature 0.24C ? only slightly higher than 1978-79, when the figure was 0.16C.
England, Northern Ireland and Wales were warmer, although temperatures of 2.12C, 2.05C and 2.09C respectively could only be considered mild by comparison with the Scottish figure.
The 1978-79 winter temperatures were 1.43C, 1.51C and 1.64C for England, Northern Ireland and Wales.
Local news is saying that it hasn’t been a winter this cold in over 50 years.
I’ve got a “global warming believer” friend who denies any notion that “solar forcing” could be behind any measured temperature increases in recent decades. However, the recent lack of solar output and related sunspot cycle seems too strong a correlation to completely deny.
Further, the temperature data has been so diddled that I’m seeing current reports suggesting that 2009 was one of the warmest years on record while at the same time it is being reported as having record cold temperatures.
***sigh***
@Zenc – I slso don’t know what to think given the data that’s available.
All scientific data became suspect just because some emails were “found and exposed” as false data because the scientists were learned to be supporters of the global warming theory.
And then about two weeks (or months) after that, the world went into a freeze and snow storm the likes have not been seen for centuries.
I’m just wondering what all that water melting in the north pole is doing to the Gulf Stream?
Lots and lots of melting snowcap from the North Pole (if you can believe that is happening).
Many climate models I’ve read in the past said that when lots of melting water is poured into the Gulf Stream it will slow down and bring a colder climate to England, Whales, etc.
Whatever is happening, we’re not going to be given the facts, is what I think. Fuggetaboutit.
So I think we are on our own. To discern what we experience with our own lives, what we have learned from what used to be a “free sharing” of information, and go on with what we think we need to do with our own lives.
My family lives in Florida fer crying out loud.
The Gulf Stream is surely impacting Florida. While not the coldest on record, it is the longevity of the cold, weeks at a time that people are experiencing.
Fiction surely.:-) I still think the movie the “Day After Tomorrow” one of my favorite disaster movies, has the best plausible explanation of what is happening in the world climate today. It only gets two stars on Amazon.
But I think it is worth watching. I know I am a sentimental romantic that likes hero survival stories so just don’t barf when you see the trailer. 🙂
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_After_Tomorrow
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnvqsWVluCE
I seriously doubt that the term gobal warming was coined by scientists. During my time at the university, all professors subsumed menacing climate related stuff under the term CC / climate change. Also in German, where Klimaveränderung was the chosen term. I met even a few who accept Klimaveränderung and deny Klimaerwärmung the same time. I suspect a Wittgensteinian twist here 🙂
All you readers here have to consider several things: The blank tropics devoid of all trees, CO_2 and methane being a proven driver, massive change globally or complete lack in big regions of particle emissions from coal plants and traffic (sulfur dioxide e.g.), the possible slowing down of the gulf stream and many, many unreported LOCAL changes in the climate due to deforestation or megacities lead to a complete change of the experienced and on this note “real” and relevant climate.
I wonder if the sinking groundwater table around where most of our population lives is also purely invented science. And I wonder if the trees just murmur “meh, nothing changed, I will live on rocks instead, this is normal variation of the groundwater level physics” or if the forests vanish globally. And, at last, I wonder if _that_ also hasn’t any influence on our global climate!
There are regions in india with an annual precipitation of eight thousand mm, which experience drought-like condition if “only” six thousand mm or rain pour down from the sky. Just because those systems just can’t adapt this fast. And this is the reason I am deeply freightened about our collective future. Much more humans rely on much more fragile systems to get food. A little variation, for just two, three years, “just the normal way and as it changes constantly”, as we will hear from certain media, can disrupt the global supply with devastating consequences.
We are yeast in a plastic bottle, not in a beer copper.
look – movement of humans to the americas during end of the pleistocene may have caused a dip of cooling by reducing the number of mammoths & buffalo. The mammoths, like other grass eaters, had produced a lot of methane. Reduced methane is reflected in ice cores http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2009AM/finalprogram/abstract_164005.htm