Global Warming or Global Cooling? Snow in Egypt, Middle East; Vietnam; UK Winter 2013 longest in history; Snow records set in USA
Snow In Egypt For The First Time In 100 Years
The snow that has blanketed much of the Middle East turned Cairo white on Friday - with local news reports claiming it was Egypt's capital's first snowfall in 112 years.
Snow covers the scene in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula
The city averages less than an inch of rain each year, and hundreds stopped their walk to work or school to snap pictures of the falling flakes, tweeting their delights. -Huffington Post Snow falls in Vietnam; Unusual weather strikes East Asia
The wintry weather caused a five-hour traffic jam as people flocked to the mountains to see the snow [AP]
Al Jazeera, 12/16/13
Snow has fallen in Northern Vietnam for the first time in many years.
The snow caused a five-hour traffic jam as people drove into the mountainous provinces of Lao Cai and Ha Giang to see the wintry flurries.
The weather system responsible for the snow has also brought some unusual weather to other parts of the region. This is normally the dry season, but torrential rain has been lashing Laos, Vietnam and southeast China.
Oudomxay in Laos reported 142mm of rain in a 24 hour period and Zhanjiang in China’s Guangdong province, reported 102mm. For Zhanjiang, this is three times the amount of rain that is expected in the entire month of December.Aljazeera
WINTER 2013 TO BE LONGEST IN HISTORY:
Heavy snow could fall until MAY warn forecasters
BRITAIN is facing an unprecedented SIX MONTH winter with long-range forecasters warning relentless heavy snow and sub-zero temperatures could last until MAY.
Britain is facing a relentless, long winter of heavy snow [PA]
The entire UK has been told to brace for a record-breaking period of bitter Arctic winds, crippling snowfall and plunging temperatures.
Long-range forecasts now point to winter 2013 now being the worst for more than 60 years with Polar conditions stretching right into the beginning of next spring.
The shock warning comes with the UK already shivering in an unseasonably early big freeze with temperatures plummeting to -5C and heavy snow sparking chaos in parts of the UK. It has also sparked fears that the extreme cold expected this winter could kill far more vulnerable people than usual, especially as millions turn down their heating in the wake of huge energy price rises.
Long range forecasts show that a high pressure ‘blocking system’ drawing cold air in from the Arctic will wreak havoc with our weather, generating prolonged spells colder than in Iceland, Norway and Sweden and even parts of the Arctic region.
Wintry scenes like this will dominate winter 2013 in Britain [NORTH NEWS]
Long-range forecaster James Madden, of Exacta Weather, said: “An exceptionally prolonged period of widespread cold is highly likely to develop throughout this winter and last into next spring.
“It will be accompanied by snow drifts of several feet and long-lasting snow accumulations on a widespread scale.
“This period of snow and cold is likely to result in an incomparable scenario to anything we have experienced in modern times. - Read full article on Express
Compare to 98 high temperature records, and 141 high minimum temperature records
Quite an imbalance in weather records this week. Even the AGU fall meeting in San Francisco where the best and brightest global warming scientists were meeting was surrounded by record (such as 25F in San Jose Dec 9th) and near record setting low temperatures, though the irony was lost on many of them.
See the map. Source: NOAA National Weather Service and HamWeather records centerLow Temp: 606 + Low Max temp 1234 + Snowfall 385 = 2225
VIDEO | Massive snow storm could impact over 110 million in U.S.
A massive storm spanning over 1,000 miles is expected to affect more than 110 million people across the Midwest and along the East Coast, AccuWeather said on Saturday.
The fast-moving snowstorm stretched from Missouri to Maine, dumping heavy snow, snarling air traffic and making roads treacherous for driving. The heaviest accumulation was expected in central Pennsylvania, New York state and interior New England, which could see between 4 and 8 inches of snow.
Mountainous areas and parts of eastern Maine could be walloped by a foot of snow. Utility companies across the region put extra crews on duty and made preparations for possible outages.
The snowstorm comes on one of the busiest shopping weekends of the year during one of the shortest holiday buying seasons with only four weeks separating Thanksgiving and Christmas.
In the 1960s and 1970s, a growing scientific consensus held that the Earth was entering a period of global cooling. The CIA announced that the “Western world’s leading climatologists have confirmed recent reports of detrimental global climatic change” akin to the Little Ice Age of the 17th and 18th centuries, “an era of drought, famine and political unrest in the western world.” President Jimmy Carter signed the National Climate Program Act to deal with the coming global cooling crisis. Newsweek magazine published a chilling article entitled “The Cooling World.”
In the decades that followed, as temperatures rose, climate skeptics mocked the global cooling hypothesis and a new theory emerged — that Earth was in fact entering a period of global warming.
Now an increasing number of scientists are swinging back to the thinking of the 1960s and 1970s. The global cooling hypothesis may have been right after all, they say. Earth may be entering a new Little Ice Age.
“Real risk of a Maunder Minimum ‘Little Ice Age,’” announced the BBC this week, in reporting startling findings by Professor Mike Lockwood of Reading University. “Professor Lockwood believes solar activity is now falling more rapidly than at any time in the last 10,000 years [raising the risk of a new Little Ice Age] from less than 10% just a few years ago to 25-30%,” explained Paul Hudson, the BBC’s climate correspondent. If Earth is spared a new Little Ice Age, a severe cooling as “occurred in the early 1800s, which also had its fair share of cold winters and poor summers, is, according to him, ‘more likely than not’ to happen.”
During the Little Ice Age, the Sun became eerily quiet, as measured by a near disappearance of the sunspots that are typically present. Solar scientists around the world today see similar conditions, giving impetus to the widespread view that cold times lie ahead. “When we have had periods where the Sun has been quieter than usual we tend to get these much harsher winters” echoed climatologist Dennis Wheeler from Sunderland University, in a Daily Express article entitled “Now get ready for an ‘Ice Age’ as experts warn of Siberian winter ahead.”
Scientists at the Climate and Environmental Physics and Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Berne in Switzerland back up theories that support the Sun’s importance in determining the climate on Earth. In a paper published this month by the American Meteorological Society, the authors demolish the claims by IPCC scientists that the Sun couldn’t be responsible for major shifts in climate. In a post on her website this month, Judith Curry, Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, all-but mocked the IPCC assertions that solar variations don’t matter. Among the many studies and authorities she cited: the National Research Council’s recent report, “The Effects of Solar Variability on Earth’s Climate,” and NASA, former home of global warming guru James Hansen.
