Above-average Atlantic hurricane activity again expected in 2021

Typical influence of La Niña on Pacific and Atlantic seasonal hurricane activity. Map by NOAA Climate.gov, based on originals by Gerry Bell.

Prediction time as the 2021 season approaches. The expected impacts of El Niño and La Niña on hurricane seasons in both the Atlantic and Pacific ocean areas are discussed by NOAA here. Hurricane detection has improved over time, so what is considered ‘average’ now is unlikely to be the same as it used to be.
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The year 2020 saw the most active hurricane season on record and marked the fifth consecutive year for above-average activity, says Phys.org.

A University of Arizona-led hurricane forecasting team predicts another year of above-average hurricane activity over the Atlantic Ocean in 2021.

The team predicts 18 named storms, including eight hurricanes, throughout the 2021 North Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30.

In comparison, the 30-year average is 13 named storms and seven hurricanes annually.

Four storms are expected to produce major hurricanes, which are defined as category 3, 4 or 5.

If the predictions are realized, 2021 will be the sixth-consecutive year for above-average activity.

“The past decade has been very active for hurricanes,” said forecast creator Xubin Zeng, director of the university’s Climate Dynamics and Hydrometeorology Center and a professor of atmospheric sciences.

“We need to ask ourselves if this is part of the natural variability of the system, or if we are already seeing impacts of global warming,” said Zeng, who is also the Agnes N. Haury Endowed Chair in Environment in the Department of Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences. “If this is part of the natural variability, then after some overactive seasons, we’d expect activity to quiet down, but every year is kind of crazy in the past few years.”

While Zeng expects that a warming world is translating to warmer ocean waters that fuel hurricane development, that can’t yet be confirmed through modeling.

“In climate modeling, every model resolution (similar to a single pixel or grid box on the Earth’s surface) is about 50 miles by 50 miles. In contrast, for global weather forecasting models, the resolution is more like five miles by five miles,” Zeng said. “If we really want to simulate the impact of global warming on hurricanes, it’s preferable we have the smaller model grid box, and we just don’t have the computing power for that yet for decade-long simulations.”

Zeng predicts, however, that in another 10 years, he will have the data and confidence to say for sure that the increase in hurricane activity was outside of the natural variability of the climate.

While this season is expected to bring above-average activity, it isn’t expected to be as dramatic as last year, partly due to average climate patterns in the Pacific Ocean driven by sea surface temperatures.

When eastern tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures are below average—a weather phenomenon known as La Niña—it drives up easterly wind speeds over the Atlantic that exacerbate hurricanes.

When Pacific sea surface temperatures are above average—a weather pattern referred to as El Niño—it weakens easterly winds and weakens hurricane activity over the Atlantic.

Full article here.

Met Office and Microsoft to build climate supercomputer

Weather forecasting technology

Before they even build it, everyone knows what kind of answers the ‘climate supercomputer’ will be required to produce. These will then be presented as evidence of the pre-conceived climate theories, which will be tagged as ‘science’ and everyone will be expected to be impressed.
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The Met Office will work with Microsoft on a supercomputer which will help model climate change, says BBC News..

They say it will provide more accurate weather forecasting and a better understanding of climate change.

The UK government said in February 2020 it would invest £1.2bn in the project.

The Climate Blame Game

A diet of daily assertions that human-caused carbon dioxide emissions are a big deal, isn’t evidence of anything.
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A paper published today shows that attempts to blame extreme weather on human-caused global warming are “overconfident and probably wrong”, says The Global Warming Policy Forum.

The paper, by statistician and philosopher of science Dr William M Briggs, reveals that mainstream attribution science is beset by flaws of reasoning, modelling and data.

The Green Mirage

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Wind is generating a mere 1-2% of UK electricity today, the cause being a high pressure weather system with very low wind speeds, which no amount of subsidy can ever prevent. Discuss.

Science Matters

John Constable writes at Civitas The Green Mirage: Why a Low-Carbon Economy May be Further Off Than We Think. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and images. h/t Real Clear Public Affairs

Findings:

• The prospects for a sustainable, low-carbon economy as the result of current UK national and EU-wide policies are poor.
• Empirical experience in Spain and Germany shows that the costs of supporting renewable energy generation are too high.
• Rising employment in the renewable energy sector compared to the wider UK economy stems from unsustainably high subsidies.
• Renewables are naturally less productive, so as they are relentlessly pursued, a painful rebalancing of the economy will occur, with fewer jobs and less economic growth.

Bottom Line: The current prospects for a sustainable low-carbon economy are poor in both the UK and across the European Union (EU). Germany and Spain have already clearly shown what happens when state coercion forces…

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France to declare agricultural ‘disaster’ over spring frost

A winegrower lights anti-frost candles in a French vineyard [image credit: thelocal.fr]

Government policy is to try and make the climate cooler. Now read on.
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The French government is to declare an agricultural disaster over an unusual early spring frost that has damaged crops and vines across the country, the agriculture minister said. Phys.org reporting.

Julien Denormandie told Franceinfo radio late Thursday that the cold snap had been “particularly difficult” for the sector with “significant losses” registered.

“We are completely mobilised so that the accompanying measures can be put in place as quickly as possible,” he said.

New study ties solar variability to the onset of decadal La Niña events

Solar activity [image credit: NASA]

What drives the weather can drive the climate. In this case the chances of non-correlation are said to be extremely low.

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A new study shows a correlation between the end of solar cycles and a switch from El Nino to La Nina conditions in the Pacific Ocean, suggesting that solar variability can drive seasonal weather variability on Earth, Phys.org reports.

If the connection outlined in the journal Earth and Space Science holds up, it could significantly improve the predictability of the largest El Nino and La Nina events, which have a number of seasonal climate effects over land.

For example, the southern United States tends to be warmer and drier during a La Nina, while the northern U.S. tends to be colder and wetter.

“Energy from the Sun is the major driver of our entire Earth system and makes life on Earth possible,” said Scott McIntosh, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and co-author of the paper.

Super-cold thunderstorm sets temperature record

Anvil of a thundercloud over Columbia [image credit: Eulenjäger @ Wikipedia]

But that’s not the whole story. It seems from long-term data ‘that these super-cold thunderstorms may be increasing in frequency. There have been as many such events across the globe in the past three years as there were in the 13 years before that.’ Could this be in some way related to the big decline in sunspot activity over the last two solar cycles?
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We’ve all seen those majestic anvil storm clouds that form on a hot summer’s day, but what do you think is the temperature right at the very top? – asks BBC News.

It’s very cold, obviously; at high altitude it is well below freezing.

But would you be surprised to learn it is sometimes below even -100C?

Indeed, scientists have just published research showing the top of one tropical storm cloud system in 2018 reached -111C. This is very likely a record low temperature.

Major floods increased in temperate climates but decreased elsewhere, say researchers

Such floods, or lack of them, were ’caused by a range of factors’ so not conducive to any particular brand of alarmism, it would seem.
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Severe river floods are escalating in temperate climates and putting at risk populations, livelihoods and property, according to evidence published today in Geophysical Research Letters by an Oxford-led international team, says Phys.org.

The first global examination of recent changes in the size, frequency, and probability of extreme river floods using historical river records, the paper shows that dangers of extreme river flooding demand close monitoring of rivers for decades to come, to understand and account for the potential impact of such changes.

Fossil fuels versus renewables as global temperatures plummet

The ‘climate change is your fault’ crowd have gone into damage limitation mode as temperatures sink to unexpected (by them) lows. This ‘op-ed’ does a fair job of summarising the cold weather, but then drifts off into a woolly propaganda-based ‘discussion’.
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This week debates have heated up about the world’s shift away from fossil fuels, as frigid temperatures have wreaked havoc from Turkey to Texas, says PEI.

Let’s start in the USA. It’s the first time in 17 years that such a large portion of the US has been covered with snow and rolling blackouts have meant many have been without power, exposed to freezing temperatures.

Utilities are struggling to keep the power on as wind turbines have frozen and natural gas flow was impeded from frozen pipes.

According to USA Today: “In Texas, more than 1.6 million homes and businesses remained without power late Wednesday night, and some also lost water service”.

As is the case in many emergency situations, folks are looking for someone or something to blame. This time, the focus is on failing renewables – like the frozen turbines – with people questioning the shift from coal and natural gas, viewing it as unwise and risking baseload reliability.

U.S. energy crisis deepens with nearly 5 million in the dark

Some of the points regularly made by critics of the energy policies of climate obsessed leaders with fixed ideas, get an airing here. If reports like this don’t make it obvious to all that renewables-based policies aren’t working and won’t work, what will? All this is happening when the planned switch to electric-only transport has, fortunately for all, barely started.
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The energy crisis crippling Texas’s power system continued to spread, with nearly 5 million people across the U.S plunged into darkness as authorities fought to avoid a total collapse of the grid, says Bloomberg.

Homes and businesses from North Dakota to Texas are losing power in the middle of an unprecedented deep freeze that has broken daily temperature records in hundreds of places.

Blackouts in Texas as big freeze upends energy markets

Texan wind project [image credit: Newscom]

What a surprise! Energy demand soars in really cold weather. One researcher served up the bad news: “When wind-turbine blades get covered with ice, they need to be shut down”. This in turn can cause sudden frequency problems on electricity grids. Global warming falls short yet again.
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(Bloomberg) — Millions of households in Texas are suffering rolling power blackouts for the first time in a decade as an unprecedented Arctic freeze wrought chaos in U.S. energy markets, reports Yahoo News.

The largest cities from Houston to San Antonio were without power for spells of up to an hour at a time as supplies in the U.S.’s second largest state fluctuated wildly.

“Every grid operator and every electric company is fighting to restore power right now,” said Bill Magness President and Chief Executive Officer of Ercot, the operator of the state’s power grid.

The extreme cold caught the highly decentralized Texan electricity market by surprise despite a heads up a week ago about the impending frigid temperatures from the U.S. National Weather Service.

Met Office ‘to give forecasts from abroad’ with £1.2 billion energy-guzzling supercomputer

Weather forecasting technology

Of course they wouldn’t want to incur the wrath of climate alarmists who blame humans for the weather, since they’re closely allied with them and believe carbon dioxide, although fine for vegetation and fizzy drinks, is somehow ‘unclean’.
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H/T TheWorldNews.

Bosses at the Met Office are said to want to house half a £1.2 billion new supercomputer system outside the UK, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Well-placed sources say the forecasting set-up will be the most advanced in the world, but there are fears that the huge amount of energy it uses will torpedo the service’s public stance on fighting climate change.

‘The electricity this thing will use will be so massive that they want to house half of the technology somewhere like Norway where they have cleaner energy,’ one insider said.

Electric buses from Berliner BVG have a cold problem

Image credit: bus-bild.de

An attempt to put some of the blame on a tractor protest by farmers, holding up traffic, sounds a bit weak. A solution adopted by some e-bus builders is to use fuel-powered heating systems, described here as ‘an absolute oxymoron for the electric vehicle industry’.
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By 2030, Berlin wants all local public transport buses to be electric, says the Teller Report.

Passengers and drivers are already experiencing what this can mean in a cold winter.

Apparently one type of vehicle in particular causes problems.

According to information from The “Berliner Morgenpost” newspaper, a dozen of the electric buses operated by the Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (BVG) are currently out of action.

Temperature of -22.9C in Braemar ‘UK’s lowest in 26 years’

Winter in Braemar [image credit: BBC]

Must be a blast from the past, before the invention of a ‘climate emergency’.
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The Met Office says an overnight temperature of -22.9C recorded in Scotland is believed to be the lowest in more than 25 years, reports BBC News.

BBC weather presenter Simon King described the temperatures in Braemar, Aberdeenshire, as “incredible”.

The Met Office said it was provisionally the coldest night since 1995.

La Nina climate cycle has peaked: UN

Of course the WMO doesn’t miss the chance to promote its ‘human-caused warming’ dogma, painting La Nina is a minor break in their imagined process.
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The 2020-2021 La Nina phenomenon has passed its peak, the UN weather agency said Tuesday, but its impact on temperatures, rain and storm patterns is set to continue, reports Phys.org.

The 2020-2021 La Nina phenomenon has passed its peak, the UN weather agency said Tuesday, but its impact on temperatures, rain and storm patterns is set to continue.

La Nina refers to the large-scale cooling of surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, occurring every two to seven years.

The effect has widespread impacts on weather around the world—typically the opposite impacts to the El Nino warming phase in the Southern Oscillation cycle.

Besides the cooling effect, La Nina is usually associated with wetter conditions in some parts of the world, and drier conditions in others.

La Nina conditions have been in place since August-September 2020, according to atmospheric and oceanic indicators.

“La Nina appears to have peaked in October-November as a moderate strength event,” said the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

The WMO said there was a 65 percent likelihood that La Nina will persist during February-April. The odds shift rapidly thereafter, with a 70 percent chance that the tropical Pacific will return to neutral conditions in the cycle by April-June.

“El Nino and La Nina are major drivers of the Earth’s climate system,” said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.

“But all naturally-occurring climate events now take place in the context of human-induced climate change, which is increasing global temperatures, exacerbating extreme weather, impacting seasonal rainfall patterns and complicating disaster prevention and management.”

The temporary global cooling effects of La Nina were not enough to prevent 2020 from being one of the three warmest years on record.

reports Phys.org.

Northeastern US digging out from not-quite-record snowstorm

Credit: CBC News

Not your run-of-the-mill winter snowfall, only six weeks after a similar event described by the BBC as ‘record-breaking’ .
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People of the northeastern U.S. shoveled themselves out Tuesday after a two-day snowstorm that shut down public transport, canceled flights and closed coronavirus vaccination sites, reports Phys.org.

Some bands of snow were still moving through parts of Maine and Pennsylvania in the morning, but the worst was over, with more than 30 inches (76 centimeters) in parts of New Jersey and just a few inches in Boston.

UK weather: January 2021 was coldest in 10 years with more wintry conditions this week

Credit: Met Office

January 2010 was itself described as the UK’s coldest January since 1987. All three of these cold months occurred within a year or so of a solar minimum (end of a solar cycle). Cold weather and snow are continuing in some parts today, but not on a par with the current major US snowstorm.
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The average temperature last month was 2.2C – the coldest January since 2010, Sky News reports.

This makes it the coldest January since 2010, when the average was 0.9C.

The coldest January on record was 1963, when conditions averaged -1.9C.

Snow: Severe weather warnings in place across UK — BBC

Image credit: BBC

The BBC didn’t think it would be reporting a widespread outbreak of toboganning and British-built snowmen in 2021, judging by its longstanding practice of trying to consign such pastimes to history along with Arctic sea ice.
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Severe weather warnings are in place across much of the UK after large parts of the country saw heavy snowfall, reports BBC News.

The blanket of snow drew people outside for sledging and winter walks, but motorists have been warned to take extra care on icy roads.

Several coronavirus vaccination and testing centres were closed in England and Wales due to the conditions.

Police forces have reminded the public to stick to Covid lockdown rules while enjoying the snow.

Freezing weather in Asia sends energy prices soaring, catching markets off guard

Chinese icebreaker

H/T The GWPF

Had those markets fallen into a computer-modelled global warming stupor? If so, real world weather has brought a rude awakening, requiring urgent actions to get the means of heating to millions of shivering people.
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China’s coldest winter in decades meant state-owned energy giant Sinopec was desperate to unload heating fuel from a vessel headed to a northern port, yet freezing temperatures that have swept parts of Asia froze a thick sheet of ice and blocked access, says Bloomberg.

With the help of an icebreaker ship and a cannon loaded with hot water, workers spent 20 hours clearing a pathway for the tanker to dock and discharge its cargo of liquefied natural gas in Tianjin.

Storm Filomena: Spain sees ‘exceptional’ snowfall

Image credit: NewsNow

This is said to be the heaviest snow seen in Spain for at least 40 years. Who’s next?
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Storm Filomena has blanketed parts of Spain in heavy snow, with half of the country on red alert for more on Saturday, reports BBC News.

Madrid, one of the worst affected areas, is set to see up to 20cm (eight inches) of snow in the next 24 hours.

The city’s airport has closed along with a number of roads.