Seattle receives the most snow in 70 years

Two feet of snow in Seattle?

Yes it’s winter, but this is way beyond normal weather for this region as CBS News reports.

Some areas around Seattle received more than 10 inches of snow Saturday, the most in 70 years, the National Weather Service said, and more is on the way as two more storm systems close in on the area.

AAA: Cold weather can cut electric car range over 40 percent

One for the ‘worse than we thought’ file. Anyone running out of power in an EV in winter due to sudden cold weather range reduction has no in-car way to keep warm while waiting for rescue.

Cold temperatures can sap electric car batteries, temporarily reducing their range by more than 40 percent when interior heaters are used, a new study found.

The study of five electric vehicles by AAA also found that high temperatures can cut into battery range, but not nearly as much as the cold, reports TechXplore. The range returns to normal in more comfortable temperatures.

Underwater drones could transform hurricane forecasts

Image credit: sanibelrealestateguide.com

H/T The Atlantic.
Researchers found that all 11 hurricanes they investigated that went through the mid-Atlantic in summer experienced ahead-of-eye cooling. This indicator was not previously known.

The key to predicting storm intensity may lie below the surface, says Undark magazine.

In August 2011, with Hurricane Irene bearing down on the mid-Atlantic coast, Scott Glenn, an ocean engineering researcher at Rutgers University, made a bold decision.

While most other research teams moved their ships, personnel, and expensive hardware to safety ahead of the hurricane, Glenn left his data-collecting drone—a torpedo-shaped underwater “glider” about 6 feet long and worth about $150,000—directly in its path.

Extreme rainfall events are connected across the world

We’re told there are patterns which ‘appear to be created by Rossby waves – wiggles in fast-flowing currents of air high in the atmosphere, known as the jet streams.’

An analysis of satellite data has revealed global patterns of extreme rainfall, which could lead to better forecasts and more accurate climate models, reports Phys.org.

Extreme rainfall—defined as the top five percent of rainy days—often forms a pattern at the local level, for example tracking across Europe.

But new research, published today in Nature, reveals that there are also larger-scale global patterns to extreme rainfall events.

‘Gore Effect’ Trips Up Green Elites Talking Climate In Davos

Credit: foreca.com

Davos is a balmy -25C this morning – just right for sounding off about a theoretical future excess of warm weather. 😎

More than just a portmanteau, ‘Snowmageddon’ has forced the green elite to miss their own party in Davos Monday, putting their faux climate concern on hold, says Climate Change Dispatch.

Who would have thought it: Snow in Davos! It’s only Europe’s highest town.

Claim: Record snow ‘likely a consequence of global warming’

Alps weather: Heavy snow cuts off ski resorts
[image credit: BBC News]

‘Here we go again’ says Climate Depot. ‘Climate activists are once again claiming that *global warming* is causing record-breaking snow.’ Forgetting perhaps that it has to be cold to snow, otherwise moisture falls as rain. Also forgetting their earlier claims that Alpine snow would tend to disappear for exactly the reason that is now supposed to make it worse.  

UK Guardian By Kate Ravilious
Excerpt: Look at all that snow in the Alps; has global warming taken a break?

Alas, no, it turns out that the recent record-breaking dumps of snow across much of southern Germany, Switzerland and Austria are more likely a consequence of global warming.

More winter storms sweep across southern Germany and Austria

Bavarian snow scene [credit: BBC]

They’re now reporting ‘the heaviest snowfalls in 20 years’ as the weather chaos continues. The sheer weight of snow is a big problem. Greece and Turkey have also been badly hit.

Meters more snow are forecast to fall on southern Germany and Austria over the next week, says DW.com.

A child hit by a tree in Bavaria was the latest person to die in weather-related events.

Deadly snowfall wreaks havoc across Europe

Snow in Bavaria [image credit: BBC]

It seems that rumours of the end of snowy European winters have been greatly exaggerated. Countries as far south as Greece have been badly affected.

Winter storms have killed several people across Europe, including in Germany, reports DW.com.

While conditions have improved in some parts, meteorologists predict it’s just the calm before the next storm.

Tornadoes have not co-operated with climate alarmists in 2018

Kansas tornado [image credit: Wikipedia]

Of course 2019 may be different, but claims of a trend towards more severe weather due to human activity fall flat when the evidence fails to point in the predicted direction.
H/T The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)

2018 [has] become the first year since formal record keeping began in 1950, in which the United States has not endured even one “violent” tornado.  

Droughts boost emissions as hydropower dries up

Hoover Dam

Another headache for the ‘carbon-free’ crowd. When there’s less water in the dams, they have to crank up the power stations. Is a study needed to find this out?

When hydropower runs low in a drought, western states tend to ramp up power generation—and emissions—from fossil fuels, says Phys.org.

According to a new study from Stanford University, droughts caused about 10 percent of the average annual carbon dioxide emissions from power generation in California, Idaho, Oregon and Washington between 2001 and 2015.

Storm Diego blasts California, will roar across southern US with snow, ice, rain, floods

Smoke from a California wildfire [image credit: BBC]

From huge wildfires to cold stormy weather in a matter of a few weeks in California.

A powerful storm will crawl across the southern tier of the U.S. over the next several days, delivering snow, ice, rain, floods and even a few tornadoes, says USA Today.

A powerful storm that slammed southern California Thursday will crawl across the southern tier of the United States over the next several days, delivering a nasty mix of snow, ice, heavy rain, floods and even a few tornadoes.

Ahead of the storm, Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin declared a state of emergency for all 77 counties in her state.

Space weather may predict future climates

While this may all seem a bit vague, it looks like a step in the right direction.

Historic space weather could help researchers better predict future events and atmospheric cycles, a new study in Space Weather reports.

This finding comes from scientists at the University of Warwick, who tracked space weather in solar cycles for the last half century, reports The Space Reporter.

That then revealed a repeatable pattern in the way space weather activity alters over each solar cycle.

Global temperature drops by 0.4°C in three years

Misleading manipulation of climate-related stats is an ongoing issue, as explained here.

It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words, says David Whitehouse @ The GWPF.

In science communication however, a simple graph can be worth far more than pictures particularly when the main point is that the last four years have been the hottest on record.

Strong chance of a new El Niño forming, says WMO

The last one finished in mid-2016 and was one of the strongest on record.

The World Meteorological Organization says there’s a 75-80% chance of the weather phenomenon forming by next February, BBC News reports.

The naturally occurring event causes changes in the temperature of the Pacific Ocean and has a major influence on weather patterns around the world.

It is linked to floods in South America and droughts in Africa and Asia.

Climate silly season continues: UK’s future climate

Hot on the heels of the latest, much-derided US climate report, the UK Met. Office’s crystal ball gazers have waded in with their own prognostications. They offer a ‘range of future scenarios’ which are based on concentrations of trace gases in the atmosphere, because that’s what they believe matters the most. Their predictions, or projections, are…predictable. Look out for words like ‘could be’ and ‘up to’.

The UK’s most comprehensive picture yet of how the climate could change over the next century has been launched today by Environment Secretary Michael Gove.

The UK Climate Projections 2018 (UKCP18) include:

— UK’s most comprehensive projections of climate change
— Data gives most detailed picture yet of temperature, rainfall and sea level rise over next century
— Cutting-edge science to help businesses and homes plan for the future

Wildfire? Homes Burned, People Killed? Must be Global Warming.

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Spot the crackpot. Clue – it’s not President Trump.

American Elephants

California  Governor Jerry Brown has said that “hundreds of billions” of dollars could be needed to adapt to man-made global warming in “the span of a few years” The Democrat added that “And it’s not millions, it’s billions and tens and probably hundreds of billions even in the span of a few years. We’ve got lots of work to do.”

California does have a “Climate Adaption Strategy” that is supposed to reduce the vulnerability of populations to the effects of future global warming like higher sea levels, more intense storms and more crop failures.

President Donald Trump said he’d pull federal funding if California did not “remedy” its wildfire problems, which Trump blamed for poor forest management practices for large wildfires.

Brown did mention that better forest management was necessary to getting fires under control, but then went on to say “those who deny” man-made global warming were “definitely contributing”…

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Ian Wilson: A Severe Case of Cognitive Dissonance

[For details on the graph see below]

Update 12/11/2018: Ian Wilson’s 2019 El Nino forecast can be found here.

Cognitive Dissonance: When a person or a group of people have attitudes, beliefs or behaviors that are in conflict with each other. Generally, this produces a feeling of mental discomfort that leads to an alteration in their attitudes, beliefs or behaviors that moderates their mental discomfort and restores balance.

I believe that the level of cognitive dissonance that we have about the influence of lunar tides upon El Nino events has become so large that something has to give.

In a series of blog posts in November 2014:

http://astroclimateconnection.blogspot.com/2014/11/evidence-that-strong-el-nino-events-are_13.html

I showed that between 1870 and 2025, the precise alignments between the lunar synodic [phase] cycle and the 31/62 year Perigean New/Full moon cycle, naturally breaks up into six 31-year epochs each of which has a distinctly different tidal property. Note that the second of these 31-year intervals starts with the precise alignment on the 15th of April 1870, with the subsequent epoch boundaries occurring every 31 years after that:

Epoch 1 – Prior to 15th April  1870
Epoch 2 – 15th April 1870 to 18th April 1901
Epoch 3 – 8th April 1901 to 20th April 1932
Epoch 4 – 20th April 1932 to 23rd April 1963
Epoch 5 – 23rd April 1963 to 25th April 1994
Epoch 6 – 25th April 1994 to 27th April 2025

I claimed that if the 31/62-year seasonal tidal cycle plays a role in sequencing the triggering of El Niño events, it would be reasonable to expect that its effects for the following three epochs:

A New Space Weather Metric

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Hard to see a daily view there, but the multi-decadal view is worth a look.

The Next Grand Minimum

This is an interesting post at Spaceweather.com.

The daily Thermosphere Climate Index (TCI) is now on Spaceweather.com. TCI is a relatively new space weather metric that tells us how the top of Earth’s atmosphere (or “thermosphere”) is responding to solar activity. During Solar Maximum, the top of our atmosphere heats up and expands. Right now the opposite is happening. Solar Minimum conditions are in effect, and this is causing the upper atmosphere to cool off

TCI was invented by Martin Mlynczak of the Langley Research Center along with other NASA and university colleagues. For the past 17 years they have been using the SABER instrument onboard NASA’s TIMED satellite to monitor the wattage of infrared emissions from the top of the atmosphere. Recently, they realized that those measurements could be used to summarize the state of the thermosphere in a single daily index, the TCI, expressed in watts (W). Moreover…

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Met Office fakes the Foehn effect

Descending air in the atmosphere rises in temperature as it is adiabatically compressed in the pressure gradient created by gravity acting on atmospheric mass. This has been known for centuries. However, the MET Office has decided to do away with this fundamental fact of physics in a short video it has produced.

Here is some more information on what we mean by the Foehn Effect pic.twitter.com/h8Zr9XJ2Y2

— Met Office (@metoffice) October 23, 2018

Even their own website page on the Foehn effect (now safely screenshotted and web-cited) tells us:

“ foehn air… becomes warmer and drier on the leeside after it is compressed with descent due to the increase in pressure towards the surface.”

Winter deaths in Scotland at highest level in 18 years

Scottish winter forecast [credit: BBC]

Whatever the causes may be, an excess of mild weather and/or low heating bills can safely be ruled out.

The number of people who died in Scotland last winter hit a 18-year high, new statistics have revealed.

There were 23,137 deaths between December 2017 and March 2018, according to the National Records of Scotland – the highest figure since 1999/2000, reports BBC News.

It also revealed that the seasonal increase in mortality – the number of “additional” deaths in winter – was significantly higher than in 2016/17.

The main underlying causes of the deaths were influenza and pneumonia.