tagged w/ Climate
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The Western campaign for global dominance has reached the top of the world. To the world’s military leaders, the debate over climate change is long over. They are preparing for a new kind of Cold War in the Arctic, anticipating that rising temperatures there will open up a treasure trove of resources and long-dreamed-of sea-lanes. The largest military exercise in the High North, inside and immediately outside the Arctic Circle, since the end of the Cold War (and perhaps even before) was completed on March 21 in northern Norway. http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/recent-news/43061-cold-response-2012-nato-are-preparing-for-a-new-kind-of-cold-war-in-the-arcticThe Western campaign for global dominance has reached the top of the world. To the... more
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At least five people were killed when a series of suspected tornadoes tore through the Midwest all day Saturday and into Sunday.
The National Weather Service received more than 88 reports by late Saturday of tornado touchdowns in Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa, said Pat Slattery, a spokesman for the service's Central Region in Kansas City, Missouri.
Authorities in the four states reported more than a dozen new ones by Sunday morning.
Five people, including two children, died from injuries related to a suspected tornado in the northwest Oklahoma town of Woodward early Sunday morning, said Amy Elliott of the state Medical Examiner's Office.
Woodward Mayor Roscoe Hill said 37 people were injured, including several critically, in the storm that struck the town shortly after midnight.
Mayor: Tornado caught us asleep
Tornadoes strike the Plains
Powerful storm hits Iowa hospital
Severe weather tracker
"This thing comes in the middle of the night. It caught us asleep, mostly," Hill told CNN.
A tornado warning siren that had sounded a day earlier failed to go off when the suspected tornado struck, Hill said. He said it was unclear if the warning system was damaged by the storm.
"Everything is dark. Buildings have been tore up," he said.
Authorities were still working to assess the damage. But Hill said a suspected tornado touched down in front of his nephew's house, destroying several buildings, including a carpet store. There was also extensive damage to a new residential area in the town, he said.
"It's a typical tornado scene. It flattened the west part of our town," he said.
In Kansas, Gov. Sam Brownback declared of a state of disaster emergency to help speed relief to areas affected by storms.
Emergency officials, stymied by the dark and heavy rainfall in their welfare check of residents, will resume their search Sunday morning, the Kansas Emergency Management Agency said.
Despite extensive damage reported in many parts of the state, no deaths were reported, officials said.
About 11,000 customers were without power across the state, Westar Energy said.
In southwest Iowa, officials evacuated the entire population -- roughly 300 people -- of the town of Thurman after a suspected tornado struck Saturday, damaging or destroying three out of every four homes.
By early Sunday morning, many Thurman residents who took up temporary shelter at a high school in nearby Tabor were again in the path of a storm that spawned suspected tornadoes in neighboring Kansas.
"I can hear the rumbling in the distance. You can see the lightning. Whatever is in Kansas is coming this way," said Mike Crecelius, Fremont County's emergency management director.
A sign in a park that bears the town's name is one of the few things still standing, Crecelius said.
"That's about all there is. About 75% of the homes are damaged or destroyed," Crecelius said. "From the looks of things, there won't be a tree left in that town either."
Across the south and central Plains, storm chasers broadcast images of funnel clouds roaring through rural landscapes.
Residents in some high-risk areas received new warnings intended to grab their attention and prompt them to find safe shelter.
Officials will wait for daybreak to fan out across the four states to confirm tornado touchdowns.
In the basement of 30-year-old Lacy Jay Hansen's home in downtown Wichita, Kansas, she and her family donned bicycle helmets and crouched against a corner as a suspected tornado churned its way toward her home.
"It turned right in the nick of time for us, striking this other neighborhood," she said. "But now there are other people we know and love in the path of it."
Through text messages and tweets, the Hansens learned that the storm that spared their house destroyed a friend's house several miles away.
Eleven months ago, Hansen, her husband and son were in Joplin, Missouri, visiting their ailing grandfather in a hospital when a tornado ripped through, killing 158 people.
"None of us were supposed to be there," she said. "We've always taken it seriously. But ever since then, we take it more seriously."
The tornado that tore through Joplin was one of 1,691 tornadoes that killed a total of 550 people in 2011, according to the National Weather Service. Last year was the 4th deadliest tornado year in U.S. history.
The tragedy in Joplin triggered stronger warnings by the weather service to life-threatening storms. More than 24 hours before the storms began rolling across the Midwest on Saturday, the service was warning residents of the storm's potential damage.
At the Marriott in downtown Wichita, Johnny Williams watched over eight children in an interior ballroom where the group took shelter from the storm.
The group, from Oklahoma City, were in town for a basketball camp when the storm struck.
"We play together as a team, and we believe together as a team," Williams said. "We really believe everything will be all right."
The storm flooded parts of downtown Wichita, and McConnell Air Force Base also sustained damage, authorities said.
A roof collapsed at Spirit Aero Systems, which produces fuselages and other equipment for Boeing aircraft, and damage was also reported to Hawker Beechcraft, which manufacturers high-performance business jets and turboprop planes.
At the Wichita Mid-Continent Airport, a suspected tornado tossed baggage carts across the runways, overturned jetways and blew out windows, affiliate KSNW told CNN.
Earlier, a confirmed tornado struck a hospital in Creston, Iowa, blowing out windows and damaging the roof, John Benson of Iowa Homeland Security and Emergency Management said. There were no major injuries reported, and the patients were relocated to other area hospitals.
More at the linkAt least five people were killed when a series of suspected tornadoes tore through the... more
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April 2, 2012
Here is the good news. The La Niña is vanishing.
One of the major factors that shaped the autumn and winter of 2011/2012 was the La Niña in the Pacific. This pattern of wind and water in the Pacific helped to shape weather around the world.
Here in the US, it helped create the drought that eliminated so much of the snow in the Western mountains. It created a two-year drought in Texas and left large stretches of the South high and dry.
By the middle of March, 58% of the contiguous US was dry or in drought conditions.
The La Niña is a large pool of unusually cool water in the Central and Tropical Pacific. It cools the air above it, altering not only the air’s temperature but also its ability of hold moisture. The air pressure changes and that, in turn, alter wind patterns. When over a million square miles of tropical air changes pressure, it changes wind and weather patterns around the globe, particularly in the tropics and the Pacific Rim.
The impact of a La Niña can be magnified or reduced by other climate factors. In the Northern Hemisphere, the wintertime behavior of the Arctic Oscillation (AO) can overwhelm the impact of a wintertime tropical oscillation. Normally a La Niña creates cold weather in Canada and the northern states. This year a positive Arctic Oscillation trapped the cold polar air north, leaving temperatures in most of the US positively toasty.
This winter’s La Niña was weaker than the winter of 2010/2011, when the US froze and 49 of 50 states were covered with snow. It peaked in January and started to fade in February. At this point, most scientists expect La Niña to be gone by mid-to-late spring.
The good news is that to all intents and purposes, the La Niña is over. It is so weak that we are beginning to see a return to more normal winter. Rain has begun to return to the West and Texas. Storms lashed western states in late March, bringing near-normal snowpack to northern portions of the Pacific Northwest and welcome moisture, if not relief to central and southern portions of the West. Even parched Texas saw some relief, although 90% of the state remains in dry or drought conditions.
With La Niña fading, rains are returning to much of the drought-stricken USA. SOURCE: Wikipedia
Looking to the future, the majority of scientists expect the Pacific to be neutral this summer. Think of it – normal water and more normal weather.
Wouldn’t that be a nice change?
by Evelyn Browning Garriss, historical climatologist, blogger, writer for The Old Farmer's Almanac, and editor of The Browning Newsletter, adviser to farmers, businesses, and investors worldwide on upcoming climate events and their economic and social impact for the past 21 years.
http://www.almanac.com/blog/weather-blog/vanishing-la-ni%C3%B1April 2, 2012
Here is the good news. The La Niña is vanishing.
One of the... more
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This is not good:
On March 1, snowpack in most of the mountainous parts of the state was between 70 and 89 percent of average. By the third week of the month, a dramatic melt-off was underway. Now, snowpack in the state stands at just 58 percent of normal. That’s only a bit higher than in March of 2002, a year that brought drought of historic proportions to Colorado and the West. By mid-June, 19 U.S. wildfires were burning, most in California, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming and Alaska. (The worst March conditions on record in Colorado were in 1977, when snowpack stood at just 46 percent of average.)This is not good:
On March 1, snowpack in most of the mountainous parts of the... more
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I suspect very few of us Coloradans will ever forget the day, a few years back, when our nitwit former governor posed before the cameras and pronounced that “today, the entire state of Colorado is on fire.” As I explained to friends, no, he didn’t actually say ”please take your tourism dollars to Utah,” but he may as well have.
Some new data, though, has me wondering how bad the 2012 forest fire situation might get.I suspect very few of us Coloradans will ever forget the day, a few years back, when... more
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Eighty per cent of Bangladesh lies on a floodplain less than 5 metres above sea level. As sea levels rise and seasonal storms become more severe, millions of farmers living along the country's southern coast could lose their land and livelihoods, putting the entire country's food security at risk. Fighting against time, six branches of government and international donors work together to help farmers adapt.
http://youtu.be/auFoBr1PaqsEighty per cent of Bangladesh lies on a floodplain less than 5 metres above sea level.... more
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(NaturalNews) Here on NaturalNews, we often spend so much time talking about what's wrong with the world that we sometimes neglect to give sufficient attention to the real solutions that exist right in front of our eyes. One of the most powerful solutions for sustainability, abundance, health and liberty is, simply, hemp.
Hemp is poised to revolutionize our nation and our world. It's decriminalization would be a boon to American farmers and a godsend to our economy. Hemp produces super-strong fibers, oils, seeds, medicines and much more. With it, American industry can create textiles, building materials, dietary supplements, food, eco-friendly lubricants and even car parts!
To help celebrate this extraordinary plant and what it has to offer to our global economy, Nutiva, ELEVATE, The Luminaries, Aishah and Clayton Joseph Scott have teamed up to create Hemp Can Save the World. It's a groovy hip-hop ode to the extraordinary benefits of hemp, performed by a band of happy hempsters flying and bounding through a computer-generated 3D world of hemp highlights. Yeah, it delivers all that without even using drugs!
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/035244_hemp_save_the_world_music_video.html#ixzz1pc8cf0gg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rpY-8u8_Iw(NaturalNews) Here on NaturalNews, we often spend so much time talking about... more
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We encounter religious framing in America now as though it were a game show called, Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? Is he a guns, God and country kind of Jesus as our modern day Leviticans (oops, framing) would have us believe? Or is he more the soft and squishy Jesus of Matthew 25:34-40 fame, the one that shows an almost perverse concern for the hungry, the thirsty, the poor, the foreign, the ill, and the imprisoned?
In the economy, we see it whenever progressive taxation is called wealth redistribution, or conversely, whenever wealth redistribution is called progressive taxation. The price of gas at the pump is either a function of the free market, speculation, contango, corporate greed, Newt’s magic $2.50/gal. price policy, or President Obama’s secret gas price button (oops, more framing). The wealthy are either 1% greedy bastards or job creators. Mitt Romney is a real people person, provided corporations are people.
Women on birth control are either exhibiting their rights to make personal medical decisions in conjunction with their doctors, or they’re sluts. Medically unnecessary transvaginal ultrasound is either last minute conscience raising or state rape. On the one hand, I’d like to wait forever, but on the other, I “can’t wait” for a doctor performing such procedure under state laws to be tried on federal felony charges under the FBI’s recently revised definition of rape. “The ability of the victim to give consent must be determined in accordance with state statute.” The courts should have a helluva time sorting out consent, duress, and state-mandated unnecessary medical rape against the backdrop of consent in accordance with state statute.We encounter religious framing in America now as though it were a game show called,... more
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In July 2011, the Brisbane Times reported that Australia’s carbon price was dead in the water. Polling revealed that support for the legislation was low and that Prime Minister Julia Gillard had done a poor job explaining the bill. Down in the trenches, mud was flying: a politician compared a progressive activist organization supporting the carbon price, GetUp!, to the Hitler Youth League (GetUp!, by the way, is also the organization that produced this moving and wildly viral video in support of marriage equality last fall).
Despite ferocious opposition, the carbon price squeaked through the Australian parliament months later, sending a jolt of optimism through the global community. Like other climate bills, it ended up being pockmarked with holes gaping enough to drive an SUV through, but one of the largest per-capita carbon emitters in the world was clearly willing to throw its hat in the ring on climate action. The skeptics had been proven wrong.
Here in the U.S., activists perked up at news of Australia’s carbon price but overall seem hardened to federal policy after the American Clean Energy and Security Act failed to pass in 2010 (many environmentalists were opposed to the hulking and imperfect bill anyway, adding another layer of ambivalence). And don’t even mention the attitude in Congress. “We’re busy enough fighting off attacks on the EPA” is the mantra Democratic Congressmembers and environmentalists alike are fond of repeating these days.
But like crocus bulbs shifting under the frozen ground, a movement has been building for federal climate policy. And the time is right: belief in climate change among the general public has just taken an upward turn, according to Brookings.
Partly due to the pressure applied by groups like Citizens Climate Lobby, politicians and other leaders are beginning to warm up the public on carbon pricing.
NASA Climate Scientist James Hansen has been promoting fee-and-dividend legislation for years, recently appearing on MSNBC with Treehugger’s Brian Merchant. Soon after, the Washington Post editorial page released a small flurry of pieces on carbon taxation. First, that famous tag-team, Reps. Henry Waxman and Ed Markey, along with former Republican House members Sherwood Boehlert and Wayne Gilchrest , endorsed a carbon price in an op-ed:
We could slash our debt by making power plants and oil refineries pay for the carbon emissions that endanger our health and environment. This policy would strengthen our economy, lessen our dependence on foreign oil, keep our skies clean — and raise a lot of revenue.
Then the paper’s fickle editorial board endorsed Pete Stark’s existing carbon tax bill (H.R. 3242 – the Save Our Climate Act) currently languishing in committee. Leadership on the issue from politicians, even from well-known liberals like Stark, is sorely needed. Especially when the public, for better or worse, forms opinions based on their statements.
The LA Times editorial page, too, has been drumming up support for a carbon tax. Their neighbor to the north, British Columbia, passed a carbon tax three years ago and the evidence of its success is a hopeful sign.
Just do it. Put a price on carbon, one way or another. How much is levied, and where and exactly how it’s levied, aren’t as important as the principle that we all pay something for emissions.
In Canada — and in California — it will take time, and trial and error, to get climate change regulations off the ground and working. It’s difficult, yes. Complicated too. But it’s not economic or political suicide.
One can’t deny some heavy lifting is in order, but with luck we can learn from our past missteps. The environmental community will need to better communicate its goals, think outside the insular lobbying strategies of yore, and truly work with groups across the political and interest spectrum from unions and environmental justice groups to business and religious leaders, and especially Republicans.
That last point may seem like a joke in the current political climate but behind the scenes, many Republicans do support a carbon tax. David Roberts of Grist has even gone as far as calling carbon pricing a fundamentally conservative policy. Case in point: Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney’s economic advisor Gregory Mankiw is a strong proponent of a carbon tax, and his observations about the resistance to the policy reflect Roberts’ own:
In the debate over global climate change, there is a yawning gap that needs to be bridged. The gap is not between environmentalists and industrialists, or between Democrats and Republicans. It is between policy wonks and political consultants.
Among policy wonks like me, there is a broad consensus. The scientists tell us that world temperatures are rising because humans are emitting carbon into the atmosphere. Basic economics tells us that when you tax something, you normally get less of it. So if we want to reduce global emissions of carbon, we need a global carbon tax. Q.E.D.
We’re encouraged by statements from conservatives like Mankiw, Boehlert and Gilchrest, but what’s really moving us these days is the growing army of committed citizen lobbyists around the country we’ve seen jump into the lion’s den. They’re inspiring us to rethink our rote pessimism, and the idea that the general public can’t be rallied around this issue.
More at the linkIn July 2011, the Brisbane Times reported that Australia’s carbon price was dead... more
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Expect records for high temps to be broken all week across the Northeast and Midwest, a rare event given that we're still in winter.
"We may be seeing about a week where we are going to be possibly breaking or at least coming close to temperature records," said National Weather Service meteorologist Byron Paulson.
It is not unusual to see record high temperatures for a day or two in March, but a week is rare, he said.
"The jet stream, which would normally be cutting across the middle of the country, is way up north into Canada" and keeping the cold weather there, said NBC TODAY show weather anchor Al Roker, leading to warm weather in the U.S.
Forecasts called for records or near-record highs on Wednesday and Thursday in the mid to upper 70s in Chicago. The warmth also brought the threat of thunderstorms to the Chicago area.
In North Dakota and South Dakota, warm and windy conditions prompted widespread warnings that wildfire conditions were ripe for explosive growth if blazes are ignited.
National Climatic Data Service
Yesterday, temperatures soared to record highs in the Northeast.
In Boston, temperatures reached a record 71 degrees Monday afternoon -- eclipsing the former high of 69 degrees for a March 12 set 110 years ago.
The unseasonably warm weather was expected to continue in Boston throughout the week, but likely not with record-setting temperatures, said Bill Simpson, a weather service meteorologist based in Taunton, Mass.
Temperatures also soared Monday afternoon in New York City to 71 degrees in Central Park, tying the record that dates back to 1890, weather.com reported.
Among the 102 high-temp records broken on Monday were those in Albany, N.Y., Bridgeport, Conn., Buffalo, N.Y., Burlington, Vt., and Newark, N.J.
St Louis, Mo., tied its record at 84 degrees, while Saline and Russell, both in Kansas, posted record 83 degrees.
Moe at the linkExpect records for high temps to be broken all week across the Northeast and Midwest,... more
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Frank Balsinger clubs Inhofe to death with his own Bible. As entertaining as it is informative!Frank Balsinger clubs Inhofe to death with his own Bible. As entertaining as it is... more
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Our national policies will not be revoked or modified, even for scientists. If the dismissal of Jewish scientists means the annihilation of contemporary German science, then we shall do without science for a few years.
Reply to Max Planck (President of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Advancement of Science) when he tried to petition the Fuhrer to stop the dismissal of scientists on political grounds.
— Adolf Hitler
In E. Y. Hartshorne, The German Universities and National Socialism (1937), 11Our national policies will not be revoked or modified, even for scientists. If the... more
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ShayC5
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By Eric W. Dolan
Monday, March 5, 2012 18:45 EST
Televangelist Pat Robertson on Monday tried to deflect the blame for tornadoes away from God, saying people shouldn’t build houses in the Midwest and could prevent the deadly storms by praying.
“God doesn’t send tornadoes to hurt people,” he said. “We call them acts of God, but they’re not. All I can say is, why do you build houses in a place where tornadoes are apt to happen?”
Recently, early spring tornadoes in the Midwest and South have killed 39 people.
“If enough people were praying He would’ve intervened, you could pray,” Robertson continued. “Jesus stilled the storm, you can still storms.”
“But the hurricane for example is a release mechanism that God set in to take the heat out of this world and to transfer heat around various parts of the globe,” he added. “It’s very necessary. The fact that people want to build houses on the edge of an ocean is their fault, it’s not God’s… So don’t blame God for doing something foolish.”
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/03/05/pat-robertson-tornadoes-wouldnt-happen-if-enough-people-prayed/
Watch video, via Right Wing Watch...
"D'OH!!! And I have Gas cos I don't pray enough, I knew it was all My Fault!!!" =(By Eric W. Dolan
Monday, March 5, 2012 18:45 EST
Televangelist Pat Robertson on... more
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KB723
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You need not travel to the Himalayas or the Arctic to see the effects of climate change and warming.
You can see the effects right here in the US.
On place to see the effects of climate change is Collier Glacier, on Middle Sister, in Three Sisters Wilderness, Oregon.
For over 100 years, photographers have been documenting Collier Glacier from an overlook called Glacier View. The result, as seen in the video, is side by side photographic documentation of the glacier's retreat, which is dramatic.
Ironically, at present rates, within about 20 years, the glacier may not even be visible any longer from Glacier Viewpoint.
http://www.opb.org/programs/ofg/segments/view/1818
Go to the website to view the 6 minute video. (the embed code is not working on this site)You need not travel to the Himalayas or the Arctic to see the effects of climate... more
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Wetdog
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If this were simply a philosophy issue we could kick back, mix up a pitcher of Margaritas and indulge our joy in debating ideas. But it isn’t just philosophy. O’Keefe’s hateful shenanigans materially damaged countless numbers of people so poor they’re looking up at Mitt Romney’s “safety net.” Neocon sleight-of-hand killed well over 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians (and counting). Christian terrorists gunned down Dr. George Tiller in church (he’s hardly the only victim of social conservative thuggery – consider the attack on the Unitarian service in Knoxville, for instance) and the enforcers of the right receive ample validation for their actions in the movement’s propaganda wing: O’Reilly, Hannity, Savage and Limbaugh all seem popular with this crowd. And if you’re part of the “99%” you probably don’t need to be told about the impact American families feel as a result of the machinations of our new feudalist overlords.If this were simply a philosophy issue we could kick back, mix up a pitcher of... more
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GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – If you’ve been talking to friends about our Arctic weather, you should revise your description, for in recent days it’s been warmer in Svalbard, far north in the Arctic, than in Milan, Italy or Istanbul, Turkey, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in Geneva. Svalbard has seen 5C in recent days while Milan can expect -10 by the end of this week.
We’re currently in a “negative Arctic Oscillation” in Europe, says the WMO, based on reports coming in from its members, national weather services around the world.
The Arctic Oscillation “is the difference in pressure between Polar areas and mid-latitude areas (where most of the population in Europe lives). At the moment there is a negative Arctic Oscillation, which favors cold conditions in Europe and relatively warmer conditions in the Arctic.”
Our glacial temperatures are not even setting new records. “The long duration of the cold period, its relatively late onset and the extent of the cold area are noteworthy but not exceptional. The continental cold air extended even over the Balkan peninsula; slight ongoing frost was recorded even in northern Greece” in the past three weeks.
Meanwhile, Svalbard but also much of North America has benefited from mild air moving over the North Atlantic northwards over Iceland up to the Arctic region, according to the WMO.GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – If you’ve been talking to friends about our Arctic... more
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A loss of sea ice could be a cause of the bitter winds that have swept across the UK in the past week, weather experts say
The bitterly cold weather sweeping Britain and the rest of Europe has been linked by scientists with the ice-free seas of the Arctic, where global warming is exerting its greatest influence.
A dramatic loss of sea ice covering the Barents and Kara Seas above northern Russia could explain why a chill Arctic wind has engulfed much of Europe and killed 221 people over the past week.
The death toll from Arctic blast has been particularly severe in the Ukraine, where many of the dead have been people sleeping on the streets. Heating and food tents have been set up to ease their hardship. In Romania 24 people are known to have died and 17 in Poland.
A growing number of experts believe complex wind patterns are being changed because melting Arctic sea ice has exposed huge swaths of normally frozen ocean to the atmosphere above.
In particular, the loss of Arctic sea ice could be influencing the development of high-pressure weather systems over northern Russia, which bring very cold winds from the Arctic and Siberia to Western Europe and the British Isles, the scientists believe. An intense anticyclone over north-west Russia is behind the bitterly cold easterly winds that have swept across Europe and some climate scientists say the lack of Arctic sea ice brought about by global warming is responsible.
"The current weather pattern fits earlier predictions of computer models for how the atmosphere responds to the loss of sea ice due to global warming," said Professor Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. "The ice-free areas of the ocean act like a heater as the water is warmer than the Arctic air above it. This favours the formation of a high-pressure system near the Barents Sea, which steers cold air into Europe."
Sea ice covering the Barents and Kara Seas has been exceptionally low this winter, according to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Boulder, Colorado. But air temperatures above the Barents and Kara Seas have been higher than average. The relatively mild westerly winds that have kept Britain from freezing much of this winter have been blocked by fierce high pressure over north-west Russia, centred on an area just south of the Barents Sea.
Studies by scientists at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research have confirmed a link between the loss of Arctic sea ice and the development of high-pressure zones in the polar region, which influence wind patterns at lower latitudes further south. Scientists found that as the cap of sea ice is removed from the ocean, huge amounts of heat are released from the sea into the colder air above, causing the air to rise. Rising air destabilises the atmosphere and alters the difference in air pressure between the Arctic and more southerly regions, changing wind patterns.
Professor Rahmstorf said the Alfred Wegener study confirms earlier predictions from computer models by Vladimir Petoukhov of the Potsdam Institute, who forecast colder winters in western Europe as a result of melting sea ice.
Dr Petoukhov and his colleague Vladimir Semenov were among the first scientists to suggest a link between the loss of sea ice and colder winters in Europe. Their 2009 study simulated the effects of disappearing sea ice and found that for some years to come the loss will increase the chances of colder winters.
"Whoever thinks that the shrinking of some far-away sea ice won't bother him could be wrong. There are complex interconnections in the climate system, and in the Barents-Kara Sea we might have discovered a powerful feedback mechanism," Dr Petoukhov said.
More at the linkA loss of sea ice could be a cause of the bitter winds that have swept across the UK... more
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Antarctica is so vast that the pictures give you no sense of scale. The pencil-thin line across the satellite image of Pine Island Glacier (above) is actually more than 18 miles long, 800 feet across in places, and 180 feet deep.
And it's growing. In the next few months, scientists expect the glacier to create an iceberg about 350 square miles in area. It will probably float northward, melting as it goes.
"Pine Island Glacier is losing ice very quickly, about six meters per year," said Michael Studinger of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, which sent an expedition called Operation IceBridge to Antarctica in October in an old DC-8 jetliner, modified for scientific operations. It spotted the break in the ice. Earth-observing satellites have been watching it since.
"These things happen on a semi-regular basis in both the Arctic and Antarctic, but it's still a fairly large event," said John Sonntag, Instrument Team Lead for Operation IceBridge, in video recorded on the plane. "So we wanted to make sure we captured as much of that process as we could.
"A lot of times when you're in science, you don't get to capture the big stories as they happen, because you're not there at the right place at the right time," he said, "but this time we were."
To scientists, this is more than a vast spectacle. Both polar caps are losing ice, and researchers studying the world's climate say they want to understand the process.
More at the linkAntarctica is so vast that the pictures give you no sense of scale. The pencil-thin... more
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In the past, the bright surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet reflected well over half of the sunlight that fell on it. This reflectiveness helped keep the ice sheet stable, as less absorbed sunlight meant less heating and melting. In the past decade, however, satellites have observed a decrease in Greenland’s reflectiveness. This darker surface now absorbs more sunlight, which accelerates melting.
The map above shows the difference between the amount of sunlight Greenland reflected in the summer of 2011 versus the average percent it reflected between 2000 to 2006. Virtually the entire ice sheet shows some change, with some areas reflecting close to 20 percent less light than a decade ago. The map is based on observations from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments on NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites. It was produced as part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Arctic Report Card.
Climate scientists have long expected that Earth’s polar regions will become less reflective as global temperatures rise. Rising temperatures melt snow and ice, and the uncovered terrain—water, vegetation, bare ground—is darker and absorbs more sunlight. The loss of reflectiveness then amplifies the initial warming.
Most of the patterns on the map fit expectations. Warmer, lower-elevation areas of the ice sheet have darkened more than the colder, higher-altitude interior. Each summer, winter snow retreats from the edge of the ice sheet. Dark pools of melt water form on the surface of the ice, and windblown dust and other particles also collect near the surface, making it even less reflective.
But the darkening in the interior is just as remarkable as the changes at the margins, according to Jason Box of Ohio State University, who analyzed the reflectiveness data. The interior is the high point of the ice sheet, nearly two miles above sea level, and there is no visible melting in the summer. So why is the area becoming darker?
The darkening, says Box, is due to changes in the shape and size of the ice crystals in the snowpack. As temperatures rise, snow grains clump together and reflect less light than the many-faceted, smaller crystals (see lower image from a scanning electron microscope). Additional heat rounds the sharp edges of the crystals, and round particles absorb more sunlight than jagged ones.
More at the linkIn the past, the bright surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet reflected well over half of... more
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