659 replies to this topic

[biknut]

After last years prediction of record warming came back to bite them in the ass, now they're trying to down play the cooling. In this article they're trying desperately to explain why global warming is still happening in spite of the fact that 2008 probably won't be warmer than 2007 or 2006. No explanation is offered about 2006 or 2007 being cooler. Excuses are all they have now. They're saying only look at the last 8 year average, because that's better for their cause. When they say the period 2001-2007 with an average of 0.44 degree Celsius above the 1961-90 average was 0.21 degree Celsius warmer than corresponding values for the period 1991-2000, what they're failing to mention is that there was more warming between 1910 and 1961 than the period they're talking about. They're also not mentioning the fact that if 2008 turns out cooler it will mark 3 straight years of cooling. They also fail to mention that 1998 was the warmest year on record and offer no explanation why even after 10 years of massive CO2 emissions being released into the atmosphere the temperature is decreasing anyway, and so is the average.

What I think they're really saying is it's still warming, really it is. Don't cut off our funding. Noooo don't cut our funding.

World to cool slightly in 2008: British experts

1 day ago

LONDON (AFP) — World temperatures will cool slightly in 2008, but it will remain among the top 10 hottest years on record, British weather experts predicted Thursday.

The impact of a strong La Nina climate pattern over the Pacific will help keep temperatures down, according to the annual forecast by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia.

Overall the global temperature is expected to be 0.37 degree Celsius above the long-term average of 14.0 degree, making it the coolest year since 2000 when the value was 0.24 degree C above the average.

"Phenomena such as El Nino and La Nina have a significant influence on global surface temperature and the current strong La Nina will act to limit temperatures in 2008," said Professor Chris Folland of the Met Office.

"However mean temperature is still expected to be significantly warmer than in 2000 ... Sharply renewed warming is likely once La Nina declines," he added.

The forecasts take into account El Nino and La Nina, ballooning greenhouse gas levels as well as solar effect and natural variations in the world's oceans.

The cooling comes against the background of an underlying warming trend, said Professor Phil Jones, Director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

"The fact that 2008 is forecast to be cooler than any of the last seven years -- and that 2007 did not break the record warmth set on 1998 -- does not mean that global warming has gone away," he said.

"What matters is the underlying rate of warming -- the period 2001-2007 with an average of 0.44 degree Celsius above the 1961-90 average was 0.21 degree Celsius warmer than corresponding values for the period 1991-2000."

La Nina, effectively a drop in sea surface temperatures off the western coast of South America, can cause havoc with weather patterns in many parts of the globe.

El Nino, a warming of Pacific sea surface temperatures, was blamed for a lengthy drought in Australia, flooding in the Horn of Africa and Bolivia, and more severe winter monsoons in South Asia in 2006-2007.

http://afp.google.co...5-wJ4OmHAYGbvPg

Edited by biknut, 05 January 2008 - 06:00 PM.

[biknut]

More doubts

Home / Globe / Opinion / Op-ed Jeff Jacoby

Br-r-r! Where did global warming go?

By Jeff Jacoby
Globe Columnist / January 6, 2008

THE STARK headline appeared just over a year ago. "2007 to be 'warmest on record,' " BBC News reported on Jan. 4, 2007. Citing experts in the British government's Meteorological Office, the story announced that "the world is likely to experience the warmest year on record in 2007," surpassing the all-time high reached in 1998.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the planetary hot flash: Much of the planet grew bitterly cold.

In South America, for example, the start of winter last year was one of the coldest ever observed. According to Eugenio Hackbart, chief meteorologist of the MetSul Weather Center in Brazil, "a brutal cold wave brought record low temperatures, widespread frost, snow, and major energy disruption." In Buenos Aires, it snowed for the first time in 89 years, while in Peru the cold was so intense that hundreds of people died and the government declared a state of emergency in 14 of the country's 24 provinces. In August, Chile's agriculture minister lamented "the toughest winter we have seen in the past 50 years," which caused losses of at least $200 million in destroyed crops and livestock.

Latin Americans weren't the only ones shivering.

University of Oklahoma geophysicist David Deming, a specialist in temperature and heat flow, notes in the Washington Times that "unexpected bitter cold swept the entire Southern Hemisphere in 2007." Johannesburg experienced its first significant snowfall in a quarter-century. Australia had its coldest ever June. New Zealand's vineyards lost much of their 2007 harvest when spring temperatures dropped to record lows.

Closer to home, 44.5 inches of snow fell in New Hampshire last month, breaking the previous record of 43 inches, set in 1876. And the Canadian government is forecasting the coldest winter in 15 years.

Now all of these may be short-lived weather anomalies, mere blips in the path of the global climatic warming that Al Gore and a host of alarmists proclaim the deadliest threat we face. But what if the frigid conditions that have caused so much distress in recent months signal an impending era of global cooling?

"Stock up on fur coats and felt boots!" advises Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences and senior scientist at Moscow's Shirshov Institute of Oceanography. "The latest data . . . say that earth has passed the peak of its warmer period, and a fairly cold spell will set in quite soon, by 2012."

Sorokhtin dismisses the conventional global warming theory that greenhouse gases, especially human-emitted carbon dioxide, is causing the earth to grow hotter. Like a number of other scientists, he points to solar activity - sunspots and solar flares, which wax and wane over time - as having the greatest effect on climate.

"Carbon dioxide is not to blame for global climate change," Sorokhtin writes in an essay for Novosti. "Solar activity is many times more powerful than the energy produced by the whole of humankind." In a recent paper for the Danish National Space Center, physicists Henrik Svensmark and Eigil Friis-Christensen concur: "The sun . . . appears to be the main forcing agent in global climate change," they write.

Given the number of worldwide cold events, it is no surprise that 2007 didn't turn out to be the warmest ever. In fact, 2007's global temperature was essentially the same as that in 2006 - and 2005, and 2004, and every year back to 2001. The record set in 1998 has not been surpassed.[/b] For nearly a decade now, there has been no global warming. Even though atmospheric carbon dioxide continues to accumulate - it's up about 4 percent since 1998 - the global mean temperature has remained flat. That raises some obvious questions about the theory that CO2 is the cause of climate change.

Yet so relentlessly has the alarmist scenario been hyped, and so disdainfully have dissenting views been dismissed, that millions of people assume Gore must be right when he insists: "The debate in the scientific community is over."

But it isn't. Just last month, more than 100 scientists signed a strongly worded open letter pointing out that climate change is a well-known natural phenomenon, and that adapting to it is far more sensible than attempting to prevent it. Because slashing carbon dioxide emissions means retarding economic development, they warned, [b]"the current UN approach of CO2 reduction is likely to increase human suffering from future climate change rather than to decrease it."

Climate science isn't a religion, and those who dispute its leading theory are not heretics. Much remains to be learned about how and why climate changes, and there is neither virtue nor wisdom in an emotional rush to counter global warming - especially if what's coming is a global Big Chill.

http://www.boston.co...bal_warming_go/

[Mind]

THE STARK headline appeared just over a year ago. "2007 to be 'warmest on record,' " BBC News reported on Jan. 4, 2007. Citing experts in the British government's Meteorological Office, the story announced that "the world is likely to experience the warmest year on record in 2007," surpassing the all-time high reached in 1998.

And to be accurate, there have been some sources claiming this ("next year will be the hottest on record") every year since 1998. Many of these predictions are based on the GCM's, none of which have predicted this decade-long levelling off of the earth's temperature. Is it just temporary? Have we reached a limit? Judging by the long-term geological record and climate reconstructions, the earth is overdue for another ice age. Could this levelling off (and recent record warmth) be the top of the curve of the interglacial warm period?

[thughes]

I'd never heard of a decade long levelling off of the global mean temperature, so I went and took a look:

From NASA: http://data.giss.nas...5vs1999.lrg.gif

The variation doesn't look unusual (see for instance 1982-88) . The long term trend is still definitely upwards.

This data does not include 2006 and 2007. The one on Wikipedia goes to 2006, 2007 data may not yet be in considering the year just ended:

http://en.wikipedia....ture_Record.png

I think its way too early to call things a levelling off, considering the temperature variation is well within the variation of the trend, and 4 of the 6 recent years showed a steady upwards climb. There are a whole bunch of places on the graph you could have called a levelling off in the short term, and been wrong considering the long term trend.

- Tracy.

[Mind]

Here are 3 graphs that include 2006 here, and preliminary data indicates 2007 was cooler than 2006, although I won't know for sure until I get my "State of the Climate" issue from the AMS later in the spring. If you are going to claim that the earth has been warming up since 1998, you will find very few climatologists in the world who agree with you, and even less data to support that conclusion. In the southern hemisphere the trend-line is definitely downward (over the last decade).

I did say that this was a temporary levelling off. I didn't say anything about whether the temperature has gone up over the last 100 years, which it has, or whether it will go up or down in the future, no one knows for sure. When I am referring to the interglacial warm period, I am referring to this geological trend (this graph) which shows long periods of ice age conditions followed by brief warm-ups.

[thughes]

Hmm, spent the morning googling climate change since 1998 and you are right, no statistical significant change since 1998. Well thats neat.

I've heard the interglacial theory before, on the whole I'd prefer the warming /sigh

- Tracy

[Mind]

I've heard the interglacial theory before, on the whole I'd prefer the warming /sigh

Lol. That is the subjective opinion of most people. If we could keep the global temperature where it is right now (not so bitter cold in the winter), most people would say that is just fine. And of course, on the whole I would say having the globe a 'little' warmer would be better than an ice age. During the last ice age, the place where I am sitting right now, was covered with a sheet of ice a mile thick.

[platypus]

This is a La Nina year, with the next El Nino global temperatures will probably make new records..

[biknut]

First snow in Bagdad in 100 years. Of course someone claims it's caused by global warming. If it was too warm that would be global warming too, but in this case it's snowing. I wonder what caused it to snow a 100 years ago. Must have been some global warming we haven't heard about.

First snow for 100 years falls on Baghdad

Jan 11 07:04 AM US/Eastern

Light snow fell in Baghdad early on Friday in what weather officials said was the first time in about a 100 years.
Rare snowfalls were also recorded in the west and centre of Iraq, plunging temperatures to zero degrees Centigrade (32 degrees Fahrenheit) and even colder, an official said.

The snow in Baghdad, which melted as it hit the ground, began falling before dawn and continued until after 9 am, residents said.

"Snow has fallen in Baghdad for the first time in about a century as a result of two air flows meeting," said a statement by the meteorology department.

"The first one was cold and dry and the second one was warm and humid. They met above Iraq."

The director of the meteorology department, Dawood Shakir, told AFP that climate change was possibly to blame for the unusual event.

"It's very rare," he said. "Baghdad has never seen snow falling in living memory.

"These snowfalls are linked to the climate change that is happening everywhere. We are finding some places in the world which are warm and are supposed to be cold."

Snow was also reported in the mountainous Kurdish north of the country, where falls are common.

http://www.breitbart...;show_article=1

[Lazarus Long]

Again biknut you ( and many others) must really stop fixating on the extremes of wild weather as disproving the hypothesis. Counter intuitive to your intent snowfall in Baghdad doesn't diminish the core idea of the global warming hypothesis, it enhances it because the claim of the hypothesis is primarily about how global warming generates climactic instability. This is a further example of instability, along with the fact that the US northeast has been enjoying up to 70 degree days in many parts of late.

For the last week we have had usually warm weather but again examples of odd weather are not validation of the CLIMATE model for global warming. It is when taken together, along with literally THOUSANDS of other examples of aberrant weather patterns, both above and below normal, from around the world that we begin to have a true analysis of climate.

On balance those examples support the present argument for a global warming trend because more importantly, when they are viewed as an increasing number of extreme examples from around the world, which the global warming hypothesis PREDICTS, we see validation rather than disproof of the basic hypothesis.

[biknut]

World warming despite cool Pacific and Baghdad snow

Fri Jan 11, 2008 6:51am EST

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

OSLO (Reuters) - Climate change is still nudging up temperatures in the long term even though the warmest year was back in 1998 and 2008 has begun with unusual weather such as a cool Pacific and Baghdad's first snow in memory, experts said.

"Global warming has not stopped," said Amir Delju, senior scientific coordinator of the World Meteorological Organization's (WMO) climate program.

Last year was among the six warmest years since records began in the 1850s and the British Met Office said last week that 2008 will be the coolest year since 2000, partly because of a La Nina event that cuts water temperatures in the Pacific.

Actually the 7th so far not including December.

"We are in a minor La Nina period which shows a little cooling in the Pacific Ocean," Delju told Reuters. "The decade from 1998 to 2007 is the warmest on record and the whole trend is still continuing."

This year has started with odd weather including the first snows in Baghdad in memory on Friday and a New Year cold snap in India that killed more than 20 people. Frost hit some areas of Florida last week but orange groves escaped mostly unscathed.

Iraqis welcomed snow as an omen of peace. "It's the first time we've seen snow in Baghdad," said 60-year-old Hassan Zahar. "I looked at the faces of all the people, they were astonished."

Last year, parts of the northern hemisphere were having a record mild winter with even Alpine ski resorts starved of snow.

Delju said climate change, blamed mainly on human emissions of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, would bring bigger swings in the weather alongside a warming trend that will mean more heatwaves, droughts, floods and rising seas.

"The more frequent occurrence of extreme events all over the world -- floods in Australia, heavy snowfall in the Middle East -- can also be signs of warming," he said.

"UNEQUIVOCAL" WARMING

The U.N. Climate Panel said last year that global warming was "unequivocal." It said temperatures rose by 0.74 degrees Celsius (1.3 Fahrenheit) in the 20th century and could rise by a "best guess" of another 1.8 to 4.0C (3.2 to 7.2F) by 2100.

The record year for world temperatures was 1998, ahead of 2005, according to WMO data. Among recent signs of the effects of warming, Arctic sea ice shrank last year to a record low.

Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the U.N. Panel that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, said he would look into the apparent temperature plateau so far this century.

"One would really have to see on the basis of some analysis what this really represents," he told Reuters, adding "are there natural factors compensating?" for increases in greenhouse gases from human activities.

He added that skeptics about a human role in climate change delighted in hints that temperatures might not be rising. "There are some people who would want to find every single excuse to say that this is all hogwash," he said.

Ha, the exact same thing can be said about the alarmists. Every change in the weather is pointed out to be caused by global warming.

Delju said temperatures would have to be flat for several more years before a lack of new record years became significant.

I'll take that bet. Sounds like he's starting to have some doubts to me.

He noted 2005 was the second hottest year and that 1998 was boosted by a strong El Nino event which can raise temperatures worldwide in the opposite of the La Nina cooling.

Underscoring an underlying rise in temperatures, British forecaster Phil Jones said 2001-07, with an average of 0.44 Celsius above the 1961-90 world average of 14 degrees, was 0.21 degree warmer than the corresponding values for 1991-2000.

http://www.reuters.c...t...=22&sp=true

[biknut]

Again biknut you ( and many others) must really stop fixating on the extremes of wild weather as disproving the hypothesis. Counter intuitive to your intent snowfall in Baghdad doesn't diminish the core idea of the global warming hypothesis, it enhances it because the claim of the hypothesis is primarily about how global warming generates climactic instability. This is a further example of instability, along with the fact that the US northeast has been enjoying up to 70 degree days in many parts of late.

For the last week we have had usually warm weather but again examples of odd weather are not validation of the CLIMATE model for global warming. It is when taken together, along with literally THOUSANDS of other examples of aberrant weather patterns, both above and below normal, from around the world that we begin to have a true analysis of climate.

On balance those examples support the present argument for a global warming trend because more importantly, when they are viewed as an increasing number of extreme examples from around the world, which the global warming hypothesis PREDICTS, we see validation rather than disproof of the basic hypothesis.

So it's been in the 70s lately. Did that break any records? What about snowfall. Any records broken?

[Lazarus Long]

Did that break any records? What about snowfall. Any records broken?

Not so much on snowfall, though there are some recent records in the mountains to the north. Some of the daily January temps are tied for all time highs in '99.

[Lazarus Long]

Since you brought this subject up of odd cold events I think that this report highlighting how recent NE US temps have been unusually mild should also be displayed. Especially since this report came out coincidentally after I made the assertion in print.

Study: Northeast winters warming fast

By MICHAEL HILL, Associated Press Writer Sun Jan 13, 3:37 AM ET

ALBANY, N.Y. - Earlier blooms. Less snow to shovel. Unseasonable warm spells. Signs that winters in the Northeast are losing their bite have been abundant in recent years and now researchers have nailed down numbers to show just how big the changes have been.

A study of weather station data from across the Northeast from 1965 through 2005 found December-March temperatures increased by 2.5 degrees. Snowfall totals dropped by an average of 8.8 inches across the region over the same period, and the number of days with at least 1 inch of snow on the ground decreased by nine days on average.

"Winter is warming greater than any other season," said Elizabeth Burakowski, who analyzed data from dozens of stations for her master's thesis in collaboration with Cameron Wake, a professor at the University of New Hampshire's Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space.

Burakowski, who graduated from UNH in December, found that the biggest snowfall decreases were in December and February. Stations in New England showed the strongest decreases in winter snowfall, about 3 inches a decade. There were wide disparities in snowfall over the eight-state region, with average totals ranging from 13.5 inches at Cape May, N.J., to 137.6 inches at Oswego, N.Y. Some stations on the Great Lakes, where lake-effect storms are common, showed an increase.

The reduction in days with at least an inch of snow on the ground was the most pronounced at stations between 42 and 44 degrees latitude — a band that includes most of Massachusetts, a thick slice of upstate New York and southern sections of Vermont and New Hampshire. Burakowski cites two likely causes for the reduction in so-called snow-covered days: higher maximum temperatures and "snow-albedo feedback," in which less snow cover to begin with allows more sunshine warmth to be absorbed by the darker ground, making it less conducive to snow cover.

The research has yet to appear in a peer-reviewed journal, though meteorologists who have studied long-term climate trends said the observations appear to be in line with other research. Richard Heim of the National Climatic Data Center looked at trends in snowfall totals nationwide from 1948 to 2006 and found that patterns varied regionally and seasonally. For the Northeast in winter, he found totals mostly decreasing along coastal areas, with an increasing trend along the Great Lakes. Art DeGaetano, of the Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University, said regions around New York state have recorded negative trends in snowfall since 1970.

DeGaetano cautioned that snowfall totals can vary a lot from year to year. Last month, for example, snow totals were well above average for December across much of the Northeast.

Ski center operators also have noticed an incremental increase in temperatures over the decades, said Parker Riehle, president of the trade association Ski Vermont, but he echoed DeGaetano's point that snow totals have gone up and down. "We've seen some erratic winters in recent years," Riehle said. "The mood swings of Mother Nature, perhaps, are deeper than they used to be."

But while ski slopes can fire up snow-making guns to compensate for lack of flurries, snowmobilers and cross-country skiers have complained about later starts and fewer trails covered with snow. Cross-country skiers never even get in the right frame of mind during some winters, said Mark Booska of the Hudson Valley Ski Club.

"They look out their window and they're not thinking skiing," he said.

Well the facts just seem to keep coming in supporting the global warming camp. Whether that means that someday we switch over into a period of advanced global glaciation is still a subject of conjecture but the more we look at global records right now, the more the studies observe warming trends world wide.

[thughes]

FYI I was discussing the short term recent trend with someone else, and they pointed out that an article had just been posted on http://realclimate.org discussing just this, for those interested. It appears the short term trend doesn't (yet) exceed expected (and previously experienced) short term variability in the climate.

- Tracy

Edited by meyusa, 14 January 2008 - 04:22 PM.

[Luna]

Dosen't it just goes both ways?
Warmer here and at those timer, colder there and at those time but all over new heat and cold records?

[biknut]

Just because you're freezing you ass off it doesn't mean that's the end of global warming, really. Please keep believing in global warming otherwise what are we going to do with all these dim ass light bulbs that hurt your eyes?

Ice returns as Greenland temps plummet

16.01.2008

Residents insist Greenland's freezing temperatures don't mean global warming has been called off

Keep telling yourself that.

While the rest of Europe is debating the prospects of global warming during an unseasonably mild winter, a brutal cold snap is raging across the semi-autonomous nation of Greenland.

On Disko Bay in western Greenland, where a number of prominent world leaders have visited in recent years to get a first-hand impression of climate change, temperatures have dropped so drastically that the water has frozen over for the first time in a decade.

'The ice is up to 50cm thick,' said Henrik Matthiesen, an employee at Denmark's Meteorological Institute who has also sailed the Greenlandic coastline for the Royal Arctic Line. 'We've had loads of northerly winds since Christmas which has made the area miserably cold.'

Matthiesen suggested the cold weather marked a return to the frigid temperatures common a decade ago.

Temperatures plunged to -25°C earlier this month, clogging the bay with ice and making shipping impossible for small crafts, according to Anthon Frederiksen, the mayor of the town of Ilulissat, where Disko Bay is located.

'On the other hand, it's an advantage for fishermen who rely on dogsleds for transportation,' Frederiksen said.

The mayor cautioned against thinking that the freezing temperature indicated that global warming claims were overblown. He noted that a nearby glacier had retracted more in the past two decades than in recorded history.

'We Greenlanders have acclimated to changing conditions over the past 1100 years,' said Frederiksen. 'Temperatures change at regular intervals.'

Un ah, there's just steady temperature and then man made global warming. Just ask algore.

Although Greenland's capital, Nuuk, and much of the island saw temperatures drop below -25° C yesterday, milder temperatures appeared to be on the way in the near future.


http://www.cphpost.dk/get/105114.html

Edited by biknut, 17 January 2008 - 04:13 PM.

[biknut]

This doesn't really sound like global warming.


Russians Brace For The Big Chill

January 16, 2008 8:18 p.m. EST

Jupiter Kalambakal - AHN News Writer

Moscow, Russia (AHN) - Russians are bracing for temperatures of as low as minus 55 degrees Celsius (minus 67 degrees Fahrenheit) in Siberia as Russia's emergencies ministry warns on Wednesday of its impending dangers in the coming weeks.

Government agencies were placed on high alert, reports AFP. The ministry ordered local administration officials to prepare for the extreme chill expected to last until Jan. 21.

The ministry warned that the unusually cold weather could kill, cause frost-bite, conk heaters and cut electricity to homes, disrupt transport, increase the rate of car accidents and even destroy buildings across Siberia.

The freezing temperatures have already caused overloading of electricity grids and power interruptions in the regions of Irkutsk and Tomsk because of overused heaters in homes. Two people have already died and more than 30 others hospitalized with forst-bite in Irkutsk, reports AFP citing state media.

Bloomberg reports that worst hit will be the Siberian region of Evenkiya, while neighbor Georgia, whose climate is subtropical, already plunged to as low as minus 35 degrees Celsius. Lake Paliastomi in the western Georgia froze for the first time in 50 years, reports Rustavi-2 television.

Average temperatures in large Siberian cities in January usually range between minus 15 degrees Celsius and minus 39 degrees Celsius, according to data from weatherbase.com. Schools have been closed down in at least four regions because of the cold.

http://www.allheadli...cles/7009739004

[platypus]

Please try to figure out the difference between "local" and "global" as well as "weather" and "climate".

[biknut]

Please try to figure out the difference between "local" and "global" as well as "weather" and "climate".

Let's see. Greenland, Siberia, and North America. All record cold.

[biknut]

Please try to figure out the difference between "local" and "global" as well as "weather" and "climate".

I forgot to mention most of the southern hemisphere had record cold in their last winter too.

Any place in the last year that was warmer than usual, that was local.

[biknut]

What do Greenland, Siberia, and North America have in common? They're all freezing their ass off.

algore could not be reached for comment.

B-r-r utal: Upper Midwest Locked In Deep Freeze

Air Temperature May Hit 25 Below Overnight In Northwest Wisconsin; 14 Below in Minnesota, Minus 3 In Chicago

CHICAGO (CBS) ― Bitter, dangerous cold has settled across the Chicago area and its neighbors in the Upper Midwest, making just walking a block a miserable experience.

A wind chill advisory is in effect for all of northern Illinois and most of Indiana, as well as the entire states of Wisconsin and Minnesota and most of Michigan.

The forecast high for the day in Chicago is a mere 7 degrees, with an overnight low of 3 below zero. But with northwest winds at 20 to 25 mph, the wind chills will make it feel as if it were 20 to 25 below.

Thus far this January, people across the Chicago area have been treated to a warm spell with one day where the mercury reached a shocking 65 degrees. But with the temperatures plummeting beginning last night, Chicagoans have been preparing.

"I probably won't go outside at all, so I won't have to think about what I have to wear," said Chicagoan Meredith Shaiv.

But the fact that the cold will only last a couple of days does not diminish its danger.

When air temperatures drop below zero, hospital rooms expect to be busy with cases of frostbite. Doctors say it's important to protect your skin, even if you're only outside for a short time.

"Supposedly tonight it's going to be negative 15 degree windchill," Mitton said. "Negative 15 degree wind chill you can get frost bite in 20 minutes."

Dr. Janet Lin, a physician at the University of Illinois-Chicago Medical Center, said, "you're freezing the cells and so the pain is probably the first thing that you actually see. The worrisome thing is when you don't; when you actually freeze the cells, then the cells could actually die off."

Anyone going out is encouraged to dress in layers with socks, hats and gloves. Click here for facts on frostbite and hypothermia.

In the Rockford area west of Chicago, the air temperature is expected to drop to 9 below zero overnight.

In northwestern Wisconsin, the forecast high is 5 below zero in some areas for both Saturday and Sunday. For Saturday night, the overnight air temperatures – not wind chills, but air temperatures – are expected to drop to 25 below in that area.

The cold will make for a difficult game for both players and spectators when the Green Bay Packers play the New York Giants at Lambeau Field.

Minnesota has it equally hard.

At Minneapolis' Crystal Airport, the temperature at 6:15 a.m. was 14 below zero. The forecast high for Minneapolis on Saturday is 2 below zero, on Sunday 0 degrees, CBS station WCCO-TV reported.

In Detroit, the temperatures are well below normal, but almost balmy relative to the rest of the Upper Midwest. Highs there are expected to topping out at 16 degrees with scattered snow showers, CBS station WWJ-TV reported.

http://cbs2chicago.c...t.2.633678.html

[Mind]

Yep, its cold. Here in my town the high temperature today was -7 Fahrenheit. It broke the record for the coldest high temperature ever recorded on January 19th. The old record was -6. Daily records go back to 1896. Otherwise, most of January here has been above normal so far. Looks colder for the rest of the month.

[platypus]

The sea-level in the Mediterranean Sea is rising rapidly, which indicates that the local climate is warming up:

http://news.bbc.co.u...ure/7197379.stm

[biknut]

The sea-level in the Mediterranean Sea is rising rapidly, which indicates that the local climate is warming up:

http://news.bbc.co.u...ure/7197379.stm

Since the last ice age 10,000 years ago the sea level has been rising on average .1 to.2

inches a year. What else is new.

[biknut]

BTW here's a look at the last 5 years global sea surface temperatures. As you can see the oceans are cooling. 2007 data lacks December which when included will probably drop the average even further.

2003 0.406
2004 0.383
2005 0.383
2006 0.340
2007 0.293

http://www.cru.uea.a...e/hadsst2gl.txt

[Lazarus Long]

Of course they are cooling short term Biknut that is also consistent with the warming model, because of the unprecedented rate of glacial and polar ice melting into them. The rate that fresh water is entering is actually adversely effecting salinity in many parts of the ocean. But the warming trend is overall still up when that is taken into account.

Tropical oceans are not cooling however and I think the list of averaging that you are referencing needs to be more clearly laid out. If you are talking about the North Sea Atlantic then yes it is cooling slightly as well as the South polar sea but the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, Indian Ocean, Sea of Arabia, and mid Pacific are warmer I believe but I need to look up the data.

[biknut]

Of course they are cooling short term Biknut that is also consistent with the warming model, because of the unprecedented rate of glacial and polar ice melting into them. The rate that fresh water is entering is actually adversely effecting salinity in many parts of the ocean. But the warming trend is overall still up when that is taken into account.

Tropical oceans are not cooling however and I think the list of averaging that you are referencing needs to be more clearly laid out. If you are talking about the North Sea Atlantic then yes it is cooling slightly as well as the South polar sea but the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, Indian Ocean, Sea of Arabia, and mid Pacific are warmer I believe but I need to look up the data.

I'm sorry, but your first paragraph is a total load of baloney. There has always been glacial melt water going the oceans. Any additional melt water going in now compared to say 50 years ago is minuscule and very unlikely to affect global sea surface temperatures more than in the past.

Your second paragraph is also inaccurate. Tropical oceans are cooling. This is the excuse scare mongers are using why 2008 is going to continue the global cooling trend that's been happening the past few years. I guess they're at a loss to explain 2007 or 2006.

I love the way rational thinking people accept the concept that if it warms up that's evidence of global warming, and if it cools down that's evidence of global warming.

It's about time to accept that the global warming theory is wrong. It's not getting warmer. The global temperature at this time is not above normal expectations.

"La Nina, effectively a drop in sea surface temperatures off the western coast of South America, can cause havoc with weather patterns in many parts of the globe."

http://www.imminst.o...showtopic=16493

Edited by biknut, 20 January 2008 - 11:13 PM.

[Lazarus Long]

I'll forgive the hyperbole Biknut but try to keep it impersonal. You may not like what I said but perhaps it is because you are in denial not because it "is a total load of baloney".

This article outlines what I am referring to and yes the rate of melt is considerably higher than fifty years ago including only half the sea ice coverage.

At the Poles, Melting Occurring at Alarming Rate

By Doug Struck
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 22, 2007; A10

For scientists, global warming is a disaster movie, its opening scenes set at the poles of Earth. The epic already has started. And it's not fiction.

The scenes are playing, at the start, in slow motion: The relentless grip of the Arctic Ocean that defied man for centuries is melting away. The sea ice reaches only half as far as it did 50 years ago. In the summer of 2006, it shrank to a record low; this summer the ice pulled back even more, by an area nearly the size of Alaska. Where explorer Robert Peary just 102 years ago saw "a great white disk stretching away apparently infinitely" from Ellesmere Island, there is often nothing now but open water. Glaciers race into the sea from the island of Greenland, beginning an inevitable rise in the oceans.

Animals are on the move. Polar bears, kings of the Arctic, now search for ice on which to hunt and bear young. Seals, walrus and fish adapted to the cold are retreating north. New species -- salmon, crabs, even crows -- are coming from the south. The Inuit, who have lived on the frozen land for millennia, are seeing their houses sink into once-frozen mud, and their hunting trails on the ice are pocked with sinkholes.

"It affects everyone," said Carin Ashjian, a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute scientist who spent early September with native Inupiats in Barrow, the northernmost town of Alaska. "The only ice I saw this year was in my cup at the cafeteria."

At the South Pole, ancient ice shelves have abruptly crumbled. The air over the western Antarctic peninsula has warmed by nearly 6 degrees since 1950. The sea there is heating as well, further melting edges of the ice cap. Green grass and beech trees are taking root on the ice fringes.

Antarctica's signature Adelie penguins are moving inland, seeking the cold of their ancestors, replaced by chinstrap and Gentoo penguins, which prefer open water. Krill, the massive smorgasbord for a food chain reaching to the whales, are disappearing from traditional spawning grounds.

"We've seen quite big changes in the living environment," John King, a lead researcher for the British Antarctic Survey, said from Cambridge, England.

The scenario is not new. What is most alarming to the scientists is the speed at which it is unfolding. A decade ago, melting at the poles was predicted to play out over 100 years. Instead, it is happening on a scale scientists describe as overnight.

When the Larsen B, an Antarctic ice shelf the size of Rhode Island, collapsed in 2002, "it was a big glaring clue that something not natural was happening," said Hugh Ducklow, director of ecosystems for MBL Laboratories in Woods Hole, Mass. "The geological evidence suggested that was stable for at least 10,000 years, back to the last ice age. And it literally disintegrated in three weeks."

The scientists say the coming scenes in the movie, as described by the historic melding of research assembled by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, will be even more disturbing:
(excerpt)

True the writer of this article is indulging a bit of hyperbole himself but his facts are referenced if you go to the source.

Yes the caps are melting more and faster than 50 years ago, considerably, and that means a considerable amount more fresh ice water getting into the mix. However this is not an event that goes on ad infinitum so it will start warming up or the trend might allow a reversal but generally the trend is still warmer not colder. Five years does not make a trend and the same years you are talking about 2003 to 2007 are addressed specifically in the article and reference nearly unprecedented polar and pglacial retreats worldwide.