EV drivers urged to preheat batteries amid cold weather (aka winter)

Not the latest model

EV owners might want to consider the risks of putting a heat source near a lithium battery. If that goes wrong, it can really go wrong. But if they don’t or can’t preheat their battery in cold conditions, e.g. it’s parked in the street, they can look forward to a significant range reduction, made worse by using the car heater.
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In the wake of the coldest night of the winter in the UK, Edmund King, President of the AA, has issued guidance to electric vehicle (EV) owners, emphasising the importance of preheating their cars and charging overnight, reports Energy Live News.

As the nation grapples with snow and ice that led to the closure of numerous schools, Mr King warns that colder temperatures can adversely affect EV batteries, leading to longer charging times and reduced efficiency.

The AA noted that electric cars may experience a reduction in range ranging from 10% to 20% in colder temperatures.

This is attributed to the diminished efficiency of the lithium-ion battery, exacerbated by drivers activating features like heating.

This advice comes as electric vehicle users in the US, particularly in Chicago, have faced difficulties due to freezing temperatures, with reports of Tesla owners abandoning their vehicles.

Full report here.

2023’s record heat partly driven by ‘mystery’ process: NASA scientist

It’s warming, but not as they thought they knew it. ‘Everybody has lots of ideas, but it doesn’t quite add up.’ Aerosols, undersea volcano, El Niño, ‘new processes’ – the list of suspects goes on, but nothing convincing so far. Settled science has been unsettled, but persists with its usual assertions blaming humans anyway.
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It’s no secret human activity is warming the planet, driving more frequent and intense extreme weather events and transforming ecosystems at an extraordinary rate, claims Phys.org.

But the record-shattering temperatures of 2023 have nonetheless alarmed scientists, and hint at some “mysterious” new processes that may be under way, NASA’s top climatologist Gavin Schmidt tells AFP.

US: Winter storm brings ‘life-threatening’ cold

Instead of imagining dire global warming, many US citizens can step outside for a sharp dose of a different reality. “EVERY state in the US has an active NWS watch, warning, or advisory”. One to remember when summer heatwaves come around and UN-led warmist miserablism fires up again.
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The mercury was plummeting across the US Midwest on Saturday as a biting winter storm left hundreds of thousands without power and threatened to disrupt the first key event in the 2024 presidential election campaign, says DW.com.

Over a quarter of a million people in Michigan and Wisconsin were left without power as freezing temperatures spread across the region, according to the PowerOutage.US website.

Winds and heavy snow also grounded planes at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport with some 7,600 flights delayed across the country.

Swedish snow chaos leaves 1,000 vehicles trapped on main Euro route as temperatures fall as low as -43°C

A chance to counterbalance a few of the ‘rapid warming’/’boiling planet’ summer outbursts of climate obsessives. The BBC says a weather station in northern Sweden recorded its coldest night (-43.6C) for 25 years, i.e. since 1979 when satellite weather data became widely available.
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People who got trapped in 1,000 vehicles in heavy snow for more than 24 hours have been evacuated, Swedish authorities say.

Rescuers worked through the night to free people stuck on the main E22 road in the Skane area of southern Sweden, reports BBC News.

Many of those trapped were evacuated by rescue teams and told to return to their cars later.

The travel chaos occurred amid plummeting winter temperatures across the Nordic countries.

Met Office Storm Gerrit warnings for Scotland ‘were not strong enough’

Met Office in the doghouse. Too busy hyping up warmer than normal Christmas weather in parts of England and Wales perhaps, in support of their woeful greenhouse gas obsessions, while snow was blocking the main road into and out of northern Scotland and trees were toppling onto power lines?
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The Met Office has pledged to review its weather alerts after people in Scotland claimed they were blindsided by the ferocity of Storm Gerrit, says The Telegraph.

Yellow warnings issued by the UK’s weather service had suggested a low chance of severe impacts from the storm, which has battered much of the country with 80mph winds, blizzards and heavy rain.

In the wake of travel chaos caused by snow, flooding and fallen trees, the Met Office has been challenged over whether amber alerts should have been issued.

More records tumble as China cold snap persists

Climate alarmists resort to the *extreme weather* excuse whenever it suits them, for example when unusually cold weather arrives somewhere. In this case a vast area of China has ‘all-time December lows’. What empirical evidence is there that supports the idea of trace gases in the atmosphere being capable of having such effects?
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More low temperature records tumbled across China on Thursday, as the country endures a persistent cold snap that has crowned a year of extreme weather, says Phys.org.

The national weather office said in a social media post that more than 20 stations posted all-time December lows in the early hours of Thursday.

They included Hohhot, capital of the northern Inner Mongolia region, where a reading of -29.1 degrees Celsius (-20.4 Fahrenheit) broke a nearly 70-year record.

The big chill: flights suspended at Glasgow Airport – as warnings for snow and ice in place across UK

One day into meteorological winter and already global warming has gone missing. As ‘cold health alerts’ are activated, renewable energy has all but dried up leaving gas to take the strain of electricity generation. Even coal is outperforming wind power.
Update: Flights resume at Glasgow Airport [announced at 1020 am].
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Weather warnings for snow and ice are in place across swathes of the UK as temperatures plummeted below freezing overnight, reports Sky.com.

Forecasters have warned the wintry conditions could affect some road and rail journeys with icy surfaces posing the risk of injury from slips and falls.

Glasgow Airport has suspended flights due to heavy snow, with passengers urged to check with their airline for updates.

600 years of tree rings reveal climate variability in California, droughts and floods more severe and longer lasting than in the modern record

California’s San Joaquin Valley and Central Valley [image credit: Mark Miller @ Wikipedia]

The region studied has a naturally varying climate, as do most regions of the world. One minute the article says the last few centuries there had more weather extremes than now, the next it implies the future could or will be like that again or worse, due to being ‘compounded’ by the catch-all *climate change*. File under ‘unconvincing’?
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The San Joaquin Valley in California has experienced vast variability in climate extremes, with droughts and floods that were more severe and lasted longer than what has been seen in the modern record, according to a new study of 600 years of tree rings from the valley, says Eurekalert.

The researchers used the tree rings to reconstruct plausible daily records of weather and streamflow scenarios during the 600-year period.

This new approach, combining paleo information with synthetic weather generation, may help policymakers and scientists better understand – and anticipate – California’s flood and drought risks and how they will be compounded by climate change. [Talkshop comment – unsupported assertion].

The group’s paper is published in Earth’s Future, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

US Watchdog Has Grim Winter Warning: There May Be Blackouts

If it’s climate obsession versus reality in US power supplies, there can only be one winner. Strong opposition to new gas pipelines plus increasing reliance on intermittent renewables can only end badly for consumers of power.
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As much as two-thirds of the United States could experience blackouts in peak winter weather this and next year, the North American Reliability Corp has warned.

These warnings have become something of a routine for the regulatory agency lately, says OilPrice.com.

Earlier this year, NERC issued a blackout warning for some parts of the U.S. over the summer, citing extreme temperatures.

This year ‘virtually certain’ to be warmest in 125,000 years, EU scientists say — ignoring contradictory evidence?

Thermometer with Fahrenheit and Celsius units [image credit: Stilfehler at Wikipedia]

The ‘virtual’ in virtually certain is from a computer model result: ‘we combine our data with the IPCC’. Two things to bear in mind: satellite data only started in the 1970s, with other less accurate (due to shortage of data) records being kept from the 1880s onwards, and ‘the mid-Holocene … mean annual temperature reached 2.5°C above that of today’ (source: Encyclopaedia Britannica).
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This year is “virtually certain” to be the warmest in 125,000 years, European Union scientists said on Wednesday (8 November), after data showed last month was the world’s hottest October in that period, says Euractiv.

Last month smashed through the previous October temperature record, from 2019, by a massive margin, the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said.

“The record was broken by 0.4 degrees Celsius, which is a huge margin,” said C3S Deputy Director Samantha Burgess, who described the October temperature anomaly as “very extreme”.

Is the jet stream changing? Probably the wrong question

Forecaster highlights the jetstream over the UK [image credit: BBC]

The research here finds ‘no significant change to the phase speed of waves in the Northern Hemisphere, particularly over Europe, in the last 40 years’. But in the Southern Hemisphere it’s a somewhat different picture.
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Heavy precipitation, wind storms, heat waves—when severe weather events such as these occur they are frequently attributed to a wavy jet stream, says Phys.org.

The jet stream is a powerful air current in the upper troposphere that balances the pressure gradient and Coriolis forces. It is still not known whether the jet stream is really undergoing changes at decadal timescales and, if so, to what extent.

“There are various theories as to what we can expect from the jet stream in future. However, these are all based on highly idealized assumptions,” said Dr. Georgios Fragkoulidis of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU).

Open peer review: The truth about weather extremes: What the past tells us – The GWPF

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We are keen to receive review comments for our new report which is now available for open review here, says The Global Warming Policy Foundation.

Ralph Alexander: The truth about weather extremes. What the past tells us

This report refutes the popular but mistaken belief that today’s weather extremes are more common and more intense because of climate change, by examining the history of extreme weather events over the past century or so.

Drawing on newspaper archives, the report presents multiple examples of past extremes that matched or exceeded anything experienced in the present-day world.

Fact Check: Is This the Hottest Summer on Earth? – in short, far from it

Earth and climate – an ongoing controversy

Cherrypicking media alarmists select a short time window and go from there. But compared to most of Earth’s history, temperatures in 2023 are unusually cold. Modern warming is by no means unique – other similar periods in recent millennia, and sometimes much longer ones in the more distant past, are known to have occurred.
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Claim: “This summer is on track to be the hottest recorded on Earth.”

An article in Barron’s about rising food prices made the claim on Wednesday morning, says Breitbart.

CNN’s headline proclaimed: “The world has just experienced the hottest summer on record – by a significant margin.”

You can find similarly alarming headlines from CBS News, the Guardian, and the Associated Press.

Verdict: Misleading. Compared with most of the earth’s history, this summer is unusually cold.

Study shows a decrease in Indian Ocean cyclones, due to natural climate cycle (PDO)

Indian ocean

Natural climate variation is there to be observed (see title of paper), if anyone wants to. No dependency on CO2 levels required, despite the vague assertions made here.
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While the threat of tropical cyclones increases around the world – [Talkshop comment – which study said that?], a new study published in Nature Communications shows one area experienced a significant decline in cyclone activity, says Phys.org.

The paper, “Pacific Decadal Oscillation Causes Fewer Near-Equatorial Cyclones in the North Indian Ocean,” is co-authored by Pallav Ray, associate professor in meteorology at Florida Tech, along with researchers from [various universities] and the Ministry of Earth Sciences (India).

But, with recent changes in climatic patterns in the Pacific, the number of cyclones is expected to increase in the coming decades.
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The findings showed a 43% decline in the number of low latitude (originating between 5–11 degrees) cyclone formations from 1981–2010 in the north Indian Ocean compared to the number of formations between 1951–1980.

The decline is primarily due to the weakened low-level vorticity modulated by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and the increased vertical wind shear. The PDO is a long-term fluctuation in sea surface temperature of the north Pacific Ocean.

The PDO waxes and wanes approximately every 20 to 30 years, going through “cool” and “warm” phases.

Tropical cyclones do not form easily near the equator but can intensify rapidly. The wind pattern in the Indian Ocean helps initiate the cyclone spin near the equator. Without the storm-weakening wind shear, storms can move and strengthen more easily.

This research can help communities in the path of these rapidly intensifying storms better understand how to be prepared for them.

“I hope that this paper will bring a lot more interest in these types of storms,” Ray said. “One of the reasons why these types of storms have not received much attention is because most cyclone researchers work on the Atlantic and such storms are very rare there.”
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“There has been a decline close to the equator, but there has been an increase at the same time away from the equator, in the Indian Ocean,” Ray said. “Overall, there is a decline definitely, but the decline is not this high, because there was an increase away from the equator.”

Full article here.

‘Brace Yourself For An Onslaught Of Category 5 Climate Lies’ – hurricane season peak approaching

Image credit: sanibelrealestateguide.com

Climate doom is about to go into overdrive yet again, as nature does what it does, wherever that may be. Hence the term: hurricane season, well-known in places like Florida.
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We’re about halfway through the 2023 hurricane season, predicted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecasters to be a near-normal year, and it’s been rather quiet, says Issues & Insights (via CCD).
[NOAA updated its forecast to above-normal on Aug. 10. –CCD Ed.]

But with a few storms brewing this week in the Atlantic, we expect to hear the usual shrieking from politicians, activists, and the media, blaming the weather on human-caused climate change.

Our suggestion is to pay no attention to the eco-screamers’ lamentations.

On Sunday, the National Hurricane Center issued advisories for a hurricane and a tropical storm in the Atlantic Ocean and an advisory for a tropical storm in the Eastern Pacific.

Dramatic climate action needed to curtail ‘crazy’ extreme weather, say alarmed (or alarmist?) scientists

Photosynthesis [image credit: Nefronus @ Wikipedia]

Where’s the list of ‘the world’s leading climate scientists’ as they’re described below? We should be told. The hysteria bug seems to have got them all, after just one warmer than normal month in some parts of the world. Even climate models are wilting under the strain it seems, as we accelerate to oblivion or something. More drama needed? Or just more self-serving headlines? Reminder: the carbon dioxide they obsess about is a minor but essential trace gas currently occupying around 0.04% of the atmosphere.
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The “crazy” extreme weather rampaging around the globe in 2023 will become the norm within a decade without dramatic climate action, the world’s leading climate scientists have said. – From The Guardian (via Yahoo News).

The heatwaves, wildfires and floods experienced today were just the “tip of the iceberg” compared with even worse effects to come, they said, with limitations in climate models leaving the world “flying partially blind” into the future.

With fears that humanity’s relentless carbon emissions have finally pushed the climate crisis into a new and accelerating phase of destruction, the Guardian sought the expert assessments of more than 40 scientists from around the world.

Walker Circulation study is a damp squib for climate worriers, contradicts models

Walker Circulation – El Niño conditions [image credit: NOAA]

The paper this article is based on informs us that ‘The Pacific Walker circulation (PWC) has an outsized influence on weather and climate worldwide. Yet the PWC response to external forcings is unclear’. Under a headline saying: ‘Greenhouse gases are changing air flow over the Pacific Ocean, raising Australia’s risks of extreme weather’, the article here offers almost nothing to support an argument for any human-caused climate effects ‘in the industrial era’. The paper is somewhat embarrassing for climate models: ‘Most climate models predict that the PWC will ultimately weaken in response to global warming. However, the PWC strengthened from 1992 to 2011, suggesting a significant role for anthropogenic and/or volcanic aerosol forcing, or internal variability’. So that role could be anything or nothing, but the models trended the wrong way anyway. The search for ‘anthropogenic fingerprints’ continues.
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After a rare three-year La Niña event brought heavy rain and flooding to eastern Australia in 2020-22, we’re now bracing for the heat and drought of El Niño at the opposite end of the spectrum, says The Conversation (via Phys.org).

But while the World Meteorological Organization has declared an El Niño event is underway, Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology is yet to make a similar declaration. Instead, the Bureau remains on “El Niño alert.”

The reason for this discrepancy is what’s called the Pacific Walker Circulation. The pattern and strength of air flows over the Pacific Ocean, combined with sea surface temperatures, determines whether Australia experiences El Niño or La Niña events.

Shoppers desert High Street after record rain storms

Some UK areas had their wettest July on record, despite media headlines full of ‘global boiling’ and suchlike alarmist psychobabble attempting to blame any unusually warm weather on humans. Even the Met Office had to admit it was ‘more like autumn than summer’. What a difference a year makes; after last year’s July record the Met Office proclaimed that ‘The chances of seeing 40°C days in the UK could be as much as 10 times more likely in the current climate than under a natural climate unaffected by human influence’. This July 20°C days or less were closer to the reality for many, but at least June was generally sunnier and warmer than usual.
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The number of people heading out to the shops fell for the first July in 14 years as the UK grappled with one of the wettest months on record, says BBC News.

Overall footfall was down by 0.3% in the first drop in July since 2009, said retail analysis firm Springboard.

High Streets were hit hardest but shopping centres and retail parks got a boost in visitor numbers.

Heatwave hysteria – Net Zero Watch

Credit: nationalreview.com

Media headbangers seem to be in a constant race to the bottom to try and get the most attention-grabbing nonsensical climate alarm headlines out of the latest short-term weather phenomenon, whatever it may be. If truth is a casualty, they may fail to notice.
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Climate change extremism and the tendency to alarm first and analyse later is destroying clear and thoughtful environmental reporting, says David Whitehouse @ Net Zero Watch.

A good example of this is the European heatwave hysteria which was started by journalists confusing ground and air temperature.

It began with a report by the European Space Agency that referred to measured air temperatures above Europe.

The point of the press release was that it was very hot.

Research links climate change to ‘lazier’ jet stream, leading to extreme weather

Credit: The Weather Network

To what extent can ground conditions affect the weather, rather than the other way round? This study claims to have found something new, saying: ‘Since 2000, frequent “stuck” weather patterns have produced heat waves over Greenland, resulting in exceptional melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet’ – which begs the question: What started, or stopped, happening in or around 2000 to cause such patterns? The answer given is: ‘Observations have revealed a more prevalent negative phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO)’. In other words, a natural phenomenon. Getting to the bottom of what the paper says depends partly on interpreting what they mean by statements like this: ‘One question is whether this is a consequence of climate change.’
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Jet streams are relatively narrow bands of strong wind in the upper atmosphere, typically occurring around 30,000 feet, and blowing west to east, says Phys.org.

Their normal flows lead to week-to-week weather variations, modulated in the mid-latitudes by ridges and troughs in the jet stream. A high-pressure ridge, for example, produces clear, warmer weather conditions; a trough is typically followed by stormy conditions.

Together, these form waves in the jet stream that can stall as the waves grow and become more amplified, causing “stuck” weather patterns that produce longer storms and heat waves.

New research published in Nature Communications describes observations linking increased warming at high latitudes and the ever-decreasing snow cover in North America to these stalls in atmospheric circulation.