Hot...

[alan refail]

...news for a cold weekend:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11841368

[Nature's Babe]

Yes and carbon emissions have not fallen as much as expected either, so we are not on track for keeping down to a level which will stop runaway global warming. - likely to get hotter sooner unless we all rein in our emissions.

[Elle's Garden]

I am sure it is coincidence, but these sort of weather stories always seem to be released just when the current weather is the polar opposite (pardon the pun)

[richard p]

well weve had a long cold winter and cold late spring.... bit of a hot early summer, wet cold august leading into a cold autumn... and early freezing winter..... and theyre sat in their overheated offices telling us its been one of the hottest years on record..... this winter is set to be our third in a row thats been signiicantly colder than nomal.. summers havnt been noticably hot either.... not even a threat of a hose ban this year.....what are these people on

[johnsgirl]

We had a hose ban in the north west but luckily it rained quite a lot after they brought the ban in so it didn't cause any hardship.

[Nature's Babe]

Globally its hotter though Richard, perhaps you should try the continent, India or Africa. It seems a change in the jet stream is having an effect on us. It did get pretty hot early summer here, some cane fruit cooked on the vine. My brother lives in France it was so hot in summer some days they just closed the shutters and stayed indoors

[Mike Vogel]

I cannot believe that this year is set to be the second hottest on record. I can't recall sitting in the house or being in the garden and sweltering - which is the case most years. As for rain, my water butts ran out of water in mid August 2 days before the rain came in earnest. I measures over 110 mm of rain in August.

[Colin Miles]

I have a weather station which logs the temperature every 10 mins. I can thus calculate a very exact mean temperature for the year. I give it in Fahrenheit.

2007 50.77
2008 48.97
2009 49.13
2010 48.84 (to date - will be significally lower unless December is very mild)

Obviously giving it to 2 dec places gives a spurious accuracy but I do it to show the differences, which are meaningful. Equally obviously you can't read anything into a 4 year period.

Another interesting fact is that we are still not really out of the longest Sunspot minimum for at least 100 years. Yes, there are sun spots and it is a couple of months since we last had a Sunspot free day, but the level of activity is low. Time for another Maunder minimum and a mini-ice age? Perhaps just as well that the CO2 levels are rising?

[richard p]

ive got a brother in law near malaga.... three or so years ago they were getting worried at the low levels of the reservoirs after a couple of hot dry years....now theyve had a couple of very wet winters and the reservoirs are up to normal levels agan... i was out there in february and the village river was in flood having the previous week been the highest any of the natives could remember.....

all i can say is if global warming is occuring its not the simple model , more co2 emmissions means higher temps and less rain, that weve all been presented with

[Nature's Babe]

Agree with you there Richard, more complex than we think and not that predictable.

[richard p]

and from todays daily mail website


"Last winter was the UK's coldest in 30 years and motorists struggled to cope with unexpected snowfalls, ice-coated highways, potholes and shortages of road salt and grit.

This year the cold weather has started earlier. Northern England and Scotland have the earliest snowfall in two decades. Forecasters predict this winter could be even colder than 2009."

[John Walker]

We all have to be wary of confusing weather with climate.

Weather is what happened in my garden last night when the temperature fell to -13C; climate is what happens over many decades on a global scale. So a couple of cold winters (or a cool summer) witnessed in our own gardens does not in any way disprove that man-made global warming/climate change exists and is accelerating.

I find http://www.skepticalscience.com a handy resource for checking facts when faced with 'it's freezing, so what's happened to global warming?' There's a good and readable explanation at 'Does cold weather disprove global warming?':

http://www.skepticalscience.com/global- ... eather.htm

Another section of the same web site explains in some more detail the reasons for the cold snap last winter in the UK and elsewhere, and why this is not evidence that global warming has somehow 'stopped'.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Decembe ... spells.htm

If you scroll down (under further viewing) you will find a link to a short and very watchable and informative YouTube video, which explains the reasons why many parts of the world, including the UK, have experienced recent severe cold snaps. (It is US-based, but the message is just as applicable to us here in the UK.)

Or you can skip straight to 'It's so cold, there can't be global warming' on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDTUuckN ... r_embedded

Keep warm.

[Nature's Babe]

Hi John, the jet stream is in a really unusual horseshoe shape at the moment
usually flows west to east.

[richard p]

sorry im confused
we see our short term (3 or 4 years) weather getting colder exactly what evidence is there to say that climate is now getting hotter?

[Colin Miles]

John, weather is indeed what is happening and I am tempted to say that weather is what has happened over the last 50 or 100 years whereas climate...

Yes - the skeptical science links you provide are very useful, but if you read the discussions on modelling and temperature reliability, you will realise that there are good reasons for doubt. Unfortunately, even when the consensus is an on-balance one, the headline gives a stronger impression than the evidence on which it is based.

I have kept weather records on and off since the mid-fifties and have recently been comparing manual with electronic readings, due to a problem with the latter. This has reminded me of just how accurate/inaccurate manual readings are. +/-1 C? To achieve that would be rather remarkable and as for the timings - when the readings are taken... And when you consider site conditions - which is why many of the temperature stations around the world, especially in China, are no longer acceptable.

I have also been writing computer programs for 50 years on a wide variety of machines, and had many happy hours trying to find an algorithm matching Delta T with observed/estimated values dating back 2000 years. And having got a match you then project forward. Is this reliable? Not really. Earthquakes, volcanoes even weather events, can influence the Earth's rotation and the value of Delta T and these are not predictable. With climate modelling the variables involved are manifold and I don't think that anyone could reasonable claim that they are well-understood. And they could be chaotic and ultimately not calculable.

Yes - the evidence as presented from around the world would seem to suggest warming. The best match that science has at the moment is that man is to blame due to CO2, but the evidence isn't as strong as the consensus, if you see what I mean. But at an individual level it makes sense to conserve energy and resources simply because it saves money and makes ecological sense.