Earth and Science | February 03, 2012 | 8 comments

Snow falls in Rome for first time in 26 years/European death toll rising

source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2095509/Eastern-European-death-toll-hits-150-big-fre...

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JanforGore
Snow fell in Rome today for the first time in 26 years as freezing temperatures took the death toll across Europe to more than 150.

The Italian capital is usually blessed by a moderate climate but the snowfall prompted authorities stop visitors from entering the Colosseum, the Roman Forum and the Palatine Hill, the former home of Rome's ancient emperors.

The last substantial snowfalls in Rome were in 1985 and 1986, though there have been other cases of lighter snow since then, including in 2010. The director of the Colosseum, Rossella Rea, said the sites were closed out of fears that visitors could slip on ice..

Snow began falling in the late morning Friday, leaving a light dusting on trees and cars and forming slush on the roads. It wasn't clear if there would be any significant accumulation on the ground.

The European Union is bracing for another potential energy crisis in the dead of winter as Russian gas supplies to some of its member states suddenly have dwindled by up to 30 percent.

The European Commission put its gas coordination committee on alert today, but insisted the situation had not yet reached an emergency level since coordination between nations to help each other had improved and storage facilities had been upgraded.
Commission spokeswoman Marlene Holzner said Russia was going through an extremely cold spell and needed more gas to keep its citizens warm.

She said that Russia's gas contracts 'allow for certain flexibility in case they also need the gas. And that is the situation that Russia is facing at the moment.' The severe winter in Russia has seen temperatures drop to minus 35 C (minus 30 F).
The north of the country has also been gripped by snow and ice that is disrupting train travel.Temperatures plunged as low as minus 22 Celsius (minus 7 Fahrenheit), in Trepalle, a village in the Italian Alps.

Snow in Rome came as the death toll across Europe reached 150. Temperatures have plummeted as low as -36c in parts of Ukraine and Siberia.
In Serbia, at least 11,000 villagers are stranded in their homes by heavy snow and blizzards which have hit remote areas that cannot be reached due to icy, snow-clogged roads.

The worst weather is near Serbia's southwestern town of Sijenica, where it has been freezing cold or snowing for 26 days, and diesel fuel supplies used by snowploughs are running low.Thirty-eight more people have died overnight as freezing weather grips Ukraine, authorities say. The death toll there from the past week is now 101.
The Emergency Situations Ministry in Ukraine said more than 1,200 other people have been treated in hospital for hypothermia and frostbite as temperatures in some parts of the country sank to -32C (-26F).

Authorities have closed schools and colleges and set up nearly 3,000 heating and food shelters across the country. Health officials instructed hospitals not to discharge homeless patients, even after treatment is finished, to save them from the cold.Experts said the high death toll reflects the country's inability to deal with the homeless. There have been dozens of death elsewhere in Eastern Europe with thousands of villagers trapped by heavy snow and blizzards in Serbia.

Snow fell across large parts of the UK, with two inches covering Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Suffolk in white, while in the Pennines, fences and phone masts resembled ice sculptures.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2095509/Eastern-European-death-toll-hits...
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8 comments // Snow falls in Rome for first time in 26 years/European death toll rising

  • IceKat
    • -1
      IceKat  
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    • Strange, Coolplanet. In this year without a winter, half the globe is experiencing severe cold, and now look what just happened:

      “A staggering 48 inches of snow has buried an area three miles north of Black Hawk, Colorado,” says Accuweather.com. “Evergreen, Colo., has already seen 36 inches and near West Jamestown, Colo., has received more than 34 inches of snow.”

      Source: http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/up-to-date-storm-reports-and-s/61158

      One of the highest snowfall events for the month of February on record for Denver

      But, as your scaremonger-in-chief reports, this weather is also caused by CO2. Heads you win, heads you lose. No wonder you manage to get everything right, you tell us it's getting warmer/colder/less rain/more rain/less snow/more snow/more drought/less drought... and no matter what happens, you predicted it and that means it is proven to be being caused by CO2.

    • 4 months ago
  • coolplanet
    • +1
      coolplanet  

    • It's the Snowball Effect.
      Climate extremes just keep getting bigger as CO2 continues rolling down the cliff.
      At this point I'm anticipating four feet of snow in May.

    • 4 months ago
  • JanforGore
    • +1
      JanforGore  
    • coolplanet:

      Well we certainly haven't had winter here and from what I've read even the "blizzard" that hit Denver was more like what happens in spring. It looks like at least for this part of the world winter has been skipped over for now and in Europe it is extreme, while in South America there has been a prolonged drought that is actually affecting their GM soy crop. Studies are showing corrolation between the amount of sea ice loss in the Arctic and wind patterns that are making it colder in Europe and bypassing us. Some however wouldn't understand that correlation no matter what because it doesn't fit in with their agenda here.

    • 4 months ago
  • IceKat
    • -2
      IceKat  
    • JanforGore:

      So maybe Arctic wind patterns are causing colder than average temperatures in the southern hemisphere too? And maybe Arctic wind patterns are what caused the severe northern hemisphere winters in the past, even when Arctic ice was at a level you'd be happy with?
      Where's CO2 in all this, don't tell me, you're now going to say CO2 is causing the Arctic winds to change? Or is it CO2 causing global warming that's causing the winds to change and causing weather to be colder? Then, why were winters colder when the climate was cooler? Are you seriously telling me the climate is so sensitive that even a third of one degree Celsius can make the difference between
      Why isn't CO2 warming the planet and making this winter warm? I thought CO2 was the big driver of global warming? Where is it, then?

      According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit of the University of East Anglia, within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event". He wrote that in 2000. Imagine that, a senior scientist getting things hilariously wrong! Who would have though it?
      And now imagine the fact that the Met Office have had to concede that any warming ended in 1997! And how about the satellite data you hate because it doesn't give you the results you want?
      January 2012 temperature anomalies:.
      Global: -0.093
      Northern Hemisphere: -0.059
      Southern Hemisphere: -0.127
      Tropics: -0.138

      Yes, Jan, they're minus signs!

      Surely you can think up something else to explain why your back yard isn't covered in snow this winter?

    • 4 months ago
  • JanforGore
    • +2
      JanforGore  
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    • http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Correlation_between_summer_Arctic_sea_ice_cove...
      "Even if the current weather situation may seem to speak against it, the probability of cold winters with much snow in Central Europe rises when the Arctic is covered by less sea ice in summer.

      Scientists of the Research Unit Potsdam of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association have decrypted a mechanism in which a shrinking summertime sea ice cover changes the air pressure zones in the Arctic atmosphere and impacts our European winter weather. These results of a global climate analysis were recently published in a study in the scientific journal Tellus A.

      If there is a particularly large-scale melt of Arctic sea ice in summer, as observed in recent years, two important effects are intensified. Firstly, the retreat of the light ice surface reveals the darker ocean, causing it to warm up more in summer from the solar radiation (ice-albedo feedback mechanism). Secondly, the diminished ice cover can no longer prevent the heat stored in the ocean being released into the atmosphere (lid effect).

      As a result of the decreased sea ice cover the air is warmed more greatly than it used to be particularly in autumn and winter because during this period the ocean is warmer than the atmosphere. "These higher temperatures can be proven by current measurements from the Arctic regions," reports Ralf Jaiser, lead author of the publication from the Research Unit Potsdam of the Alfred Wegener Institute.

      The warming of the air near to the ground leads to rising movements and the atmosphere becomes less stable.

      "We have analysed the complex non-linear processes behind this destabilisation and have shown how these altered conditions in the Arctic influence the typical circulation and air pressure patterns," explains Jaiser."

      One of these patterns is the air pressure difference between the Arctic and mid-latitudes: the so-called Arctic oscillation with the Azores highs and Iceland lows known from the weather reports. If this difference is high, a strong westerly wind will result which in winter carries warm and humid Atlantic air masses right down to Europe. If the wind does not come, cold Arctic air can penetrate down through to Europe, as was the case in the last two winters.

      Model calculations show that the air pressure difference with decreased sea ice cover in the Arctic summer is weakened in the following winter, enabling Arctic cold to push down to mid-latitudes."

    • 4 months ago
  • EmperorThan
  • JanforGore
    • +2
      JanforGore  
    • Image

    • http://www.sciencenewsline.com/nature/2011052616080000.html

      Melting glaciers effects on ocean current and climate.

      Human forcings warming the atmosphere at a faster rate perpetuating faster melting of glaciers and an influx of freshwater into the oceans may well lead us to these climactic/hydrologic shifts much faster than had we gone along just a natural timeframe. What once would take thousands of years to occur naturally is now occurring in hundreds of years. This is why understanding what our actions have done and are now doing to push these natural cycles beyond their boundaries is so important to our lives present and future.

    • 4 months ago
  • IceKat
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