Media outlets other than climate change blogs are beginning to take notice that we maybe in for some multi-year cold spells. This is from Tom Harris and Dr. Madhav Khandekar writing at PJ Media
In the past few years we have seen a dramatic demonstration of the deadly effects of prolonged cold weather. From Chicago to China, Egypt to Argentina, India to the Antarctic, new low temperature and snowfall records have been set.
This has led to severe hardship for millions — and increased death rates.
The first half of this year’s Northern Hemisphere (NH) winter season was especially brutal. December 2013 and January 2014 were the third-coldest Decembers and Januaries in the past 30 years averaged over the contiguous 48 United States, with temperatures plummeting to −10°C in Atlanta and −26°C in Chicago. Residents of North East India struggled with unusually severe snow and −10°C temperatures without home heating. Snow and extreme cold also impacted the Kashmir Valley in India, where many elderly and very young people died of hypothermia. At the time of this writing, most of India is two to five degrees C colder than usual, a serious problem when 95% of all Indian homes lack central heating.
In mid-December, Cairo experienced its first snowfall in over a century, and Jerusalem was hit by a snowstorm called the “fiercest in 20 years.” On December 17, 59% of the contiguous United States was snow-covered, a level the National Weather Service claims has not been seen on that date in at least a decade.
Contrary to the claims of groups such as Ecology Ottawa — which last week held an event titled “the Future of Snow and Skiing in a Warming World” — winter snow cover in the NH has gradually increased since 1967.
Not just during this winter season has weather been unusually cold. March 2013 was the coldest month for Berlin in 100 years. In the same month, low temperature records were set in the United Kingdom, and UK Office for National Statistics reported: “An estimated 31,100 excess winter deaths occurred in England and Wales in 2012/13 — a 29% increase compared with the previous winter.”
All-time low temperature records were also set in Antarctica in 2013. As demonstrated by the global warming research mission aboard the MV Akademik Schokalskiy — the Russian ship stuck in Antarctic ice for two weeks starting on Christmas Day, 2013 — southern sea ice is now more extensive than at any time in the modern-day record.
At the opposite pole, summer sea ice increased by almost 2.4 million square kilometers during 2013 over 2012, the largest year-to-year increase since satellite records began.
The 2011/12 winter was especially severe in Eastern Europe, where temperatures plunged below −40°C and hundreds of people died.
Overall, the NH has witnessed four severe winters since 2000: 2002/03, 2005/06, 2007/08, 2009/10. Most operational forecasters agree that much of this is unprecedented in recent history.
According to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), this shouldn’t be happening. The IPCC asserted in their Fourth Assessment Report (2007) that, as an impact of the carbon dioxide (CO2)-induced global warming that activists say is still going on:
There is likely to be a decline in the frequency of cold air outbreaks (i.e., periods of extreme cold lasting from several days to over a week) in NH winter in most areas.
Always looking for environmental phenomena to blame on human activities, the White House now says the opposite of the IPCC: man-made global warming caused this winter’s extreme cold. IPCC forecasts indicate that it should have warmed 0.3°C in the past fifteen years. Instead, global warming stopped 17 years ago. Indeed, 134 climate experts from 18 countries wrote in their as-yet-unanswered November 24, 2012 open letter to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon:
Global warming that has not occurred cannot have caused the extreme weather of the past few years.
Read the rest HERE, but this is the money paragraph:
Of particular concern are the warnings from solar scientists that over the next three decades, we are headed toward significant global cooling as the sun weakens into a grand minimum. The last time the sun was as weak as solar experts predict will occur starting after 2030, the Earth was in a particularly cold phase of the Little Ice Age that lasted from about 1350-1850, a period when there was great misery around the world.
The Next Grand Minimum 
You forgot the reason we no longer use the term Global Warming and instead use Climate change is so the IPCC can’t lose. If you have warm weather, cold weather or just normal weather the IPCC can blame it on CO2. I would love to go to Vegas if the house would let me bet by the same rules!
As I stated before, I think the lack of sun activity is going to result in a century of very cold weather and hopefully will not result in an overdue real ice age which we are not prepared for. A real ice age would result in the population needing to live on about half the land mass we currently use. The massive relocation as well as the change in agriculture and industry would be something we have never seen before.
There are so many things to say about this. One of the biggest things is the dogmatic view that co2 was the cause of the warming and nothing else. To my horror not one thing has been done to prepare for global cooling. I think it is ridiculous that these scientists, if they are scientists, couldn’t have at least considered the fact that past temperature swings were directly correlated with solar activity. Rather than say that this might be the case, they dismissed all of the evidence as local rather than world wide. Recent research has shown that not to be the case. It was world wide. I’ll say this again, if you can’t explain the recent past, LIA and MWP, you can’t explain the present. The co2 levels don’t fit and that’s per their graphs. I am not going to make the same mistake and claim that solar is the only thing that regulates temperature, but I will say it has to be significant. An increase in dust per cubic kilometer in space for example could lead to a cooling while the sun is active, volcanoes are another, and the list goes on. Many variables. One other thing I’d like to address is the temperatures that are warmer but not record highs, for instance the 7th warmest or 4th, but not achieving higher. Did the IPCC think that this is a switch, as soon as the sun became quite that the temps would drop? It took a long while to build the heat up on this planet, it will take a while for it to start dropping. Providing of course that the sun stays inactive. Personally, I’d rather not see it get cold. It would be a personal win argument wise, but the tragedy would be enormous. Meanwhile they keep telling us it is still warming while it has been getting colder for the last 5 years. The winters aren’t anything like 1998. I for one am not fond of freezing to death or starving. A disruption in the fuel or food supply to some areas of the country would be mind numbingly horrendous during an extreme cold spell. Is anybody listening?
Science has been sorely abused. We are victims of the third greatest fraud in history. Remember: warm was good.
Hey can anyone explain the following comment by David Hathaway? “a Maunder Minimum would still not be enough to counter the warming effects of anthropogenic climate change.” From: http://www.forbes.com/sites/brucedorminey/2014/01/20/sun-flatlining-into-grand-minimum-says-solar-physicist/. I mean seriously? How can a person make such an absurd statement? Can anyone help me here?
In other words if anthropogenic warming is doing what Hathaway claims? Why are the Great Lakes almost all frozen over? Of course they mostly disavow that AGW has anything to do with the “polar vortex” as idiotic as statements like Hathaway’s, even they know better than to try. Sorry AGW cultists, the Cold Sun is upon us puny humans. We are but an arrogant millisecond of Infinite time.
Tom Harris is an unqualified anthropogenic climate change denier. His background is engineering. He continues to spread his pseudoscience in an attempt to change people’s minds regarding this subject. Not surprising, since Mr. Harris has been affiliated with the fossil fuel industry. Your funding comes from where Mr. Harris? Don’t make me bring out all the evidence on this, unless you wish to be embarrassed. You know and many others know your background and affiliations which also include working with an organization that supported the tobacco industry.
Although Tom Harris is not qualified on the matter of global warming he still seems to believe that he knows more than Stephen Hawking! Dr. Hawking has frequently shared that anthropogenic climate change is a fact. See below.
“The danger is that global warming may become self-sustaining, if it has not done so already. The melting of the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps reduces the fraction of solar energy reflected back into space, and so increases the temperature further. Climate change may kill off the Amazon and other rain forests, and so eliminate once one of the main ways in which carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere. The rise in sea temperature may trigger the release of large quantities of carbon dioxide, trapped as hydrides on the ocean floor. Both these phenomena would increase the greenhouse effect, and so global warming further. We have to reverse global warming urgently, if we still can. ”
Stephen Hawking’s Quote from ABC News interview (16 August 2006)
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“We are learning how human activities and technologies are affecting climate systems in ways that may forever change life on Earth. As citizens of the world, we have a duty to share that knowledge. We have a duty, as well, to alert the public to the unnecessary risks that we live with every day, and to the perils we foresee if governments and societies do not take action now … to prevent further climate change.”
~Stephen Hawking~
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“As scientists, we understand the dangers of nuclear weapons and their devastating effects, and we are learning how human activities and technologies are affecting climate systems in ways that may forever change life on Earth. As citizens of the world, we have a duty to alert the public to the unnecessary risks that we live with every day, and to the perils we foresee if governments and societies do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and to prevent further climate change… There’s a realization that we are changing our climate for the worse. That would have catastrophic effects. Although the threat is not as dire as that of nuclear weapons right now, in the long term we are looking at a serious threat.”
Stephen Hawking’s Quote from Press conference for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, (1 January 2007)
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“The danger is that global warming may become self-sustaining, if it has not done so already. The melting of the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps reduces the fraction of solar energy reflected back into space, and so increases the temperature further. Climate change may kill off the Amazon and other rain forests, and so eliminate once one of the main ways in which carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere. The rise in sea temperature may trigger the release of large quantities of carbon dioxide, trapped as hydrides on the ocean floor. Both these phenomena would increase the greenhouse effect, and so global warming further. We have to reverse global warming urgently, if we still can. ”
Stephen Hawking’s Quote from ABC News interview (16 August 2006)
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In response to Sen. James Inhofe: Could it be that man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people?
“…One of the most serious consequences of our actions is global warming brought about by rising levels of CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels. The danger is that the temperature increase may become self-sustaining, if it hasn’t done so already. Drought and deforestation are reducing the amount of carbon dioxide recycled into the atmosphere and the warming of the seas may trigger the release of large quantities of carbon dioxide trapped on the ocean floor. In addition the melting of the Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets will reduce the amount of solar energy reflected back into space and so increase the temperature further. We don’t know where global warming will stop but the worst case scenario is that the earth will become like its sister planet Venus, with a temperature of 250 degrees C and rain sulphuric acid. The human race could not survive in those conditions.”
Stephen Hawking’s Quote from the film “The 11th Hour” (2007)
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Stephen Hawking: How can the human race survive the next hundred years?
a href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ur27W9F2kPw” target=”_blank”>Try watching this video on http://www.youtube.com, or enable JavaScript if it is dis
One can see from space how the human race has changed the Earth. Nearly all of the available land has been cleared of forest and is now used for agriculture or urban development. The polar icecaps are shrinking and the desert areas are increasing. At night, the Earth is no longer dark, but large areas are lit up. All of this is evidence that human exploitation of the planet is reaching a critical limit. But human demands and expectations are ever-increasing. We cannot continue to pollute the atmosphere, poison the ocean and exhaust the land. There isn’t any more available.
Stephen Hawking’s Quote from the film “The 11th Hour” (2007)
But Mr Tom Harris knows better than Dr. Stephen Hawking.
Erron, this just blather. You wrote: “The melting of the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps reduces the fraction of solar energy reflected back into space, and so increases the temperature further.” Please provide proof that the Arctic and Antarctic icecaps are melting. According to Al Gore the Arctic icecap would be gone by 2013. It is still there and this years summer melt was less than last year. Antarctic ice is growing, not melting. You need to get your facts straight, if you expected readers to give your blather any credibility.
Steven Hawking is a theoretical physicist, cosmologist, what are his climatology qualifications?
There is a highly speculative concept which, if ‘greenhouse effect’ is to have any real validity, suggests that by stopping outgoing radiation and constraining energy to the lower levels of the atmosphere, would effectively reduce energy levels at higher altitudes. This in turn, would alter the upper level profiles and with them the tracks of surface level cyclonic weather patterns. That would have the effect of pumping more energy towards the polar regions where it would be radiated away in the usual entropic manner. There may be some short term increase in observed surface temperatures but, as hotter things lose energy faster than cooler things, actually increase the overall rate of polar energy loss from the atmosphere. If we combine that with the current reduction in incoming radiation, the total rate of reduction in atmospheric energy could be exacerbated. But, as noted, this is highly speculative !
Recent studies published by NASA scientists have demonstrated that Antarctic icecap is gaining mass and the Arctic icecap is losing mass about the last 20 years. Nevertheless the gain in mass regarding the Antarctic continent concentrates in its eastern region but there is an increase in the melting process in the western region. This could possibly explain the raise in area of the sea ice around Antarctica and the incurring freshening process of the southern ocean waters. This process is also leading to lower levels of salinity in these waters according to researchers of the ETH Zurich from Switzerland. In the absence of an El Nino event and the freshening water process this may have led to the subtropical parts of South America had a climatic winter of 5 months starting on mid-April and leading to record minimum average temperatures since the beginning of the 20th Century no matter the criteria used to evaluate it. You can easily find information on meteorological and newspapers sites of Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay about what happenned this season so far (there are some predictions to late episodes of cooling temperatures till next November). In some regions of subtropical South America there were months with an average temperature anomaly of up to -4ºC (mainly the months of May and June).
Interesting, the Southern Hemisphere seems to be cooling, will the Northern soon follow?
In subtropical South America we had the months of May, June, July and September with negative deviations on the temperature anomaly (please refer to the monitoring site of the Brazilian INPE/CPTEC for that at http://clima1.cptec.inpe.br/monitoramentobrasil/pt). August and October presents little deviation. Subtropical Australia has had negative deviations on July, August and September. This seems to be in straight line to the Little Ice Age Theory concerning the subtropical zones and… the phenomenum is not specifically related to the Atlantic Ocean as it was hypothesized (Australia, Pacific). Information on subzero temperatures and even snowing weather (at higher places) still ongoing in Brazil, Australia and New Zealand for the month of October.
Could the discrepancy be explained by the difference in landmass, the difference in the ratio of land to sea, between the northern and southern hemispheres giving a greater ‘swing’ to the jet stream structure? Greater variation, greater ‘swing’, greater turbulence, in the northern hemisphere streams increasing the thermal ‘pumping’ effect in the north as compared to the south, more energy being pushed poleward ? The implications are a short term effect as observed, followed perhaps by greater cooling as the land will cool faster than the sea ?
Much of the swing in the summer season occurs when the two primary jet streams, the sub polar and sub tropical tend to become confused and combine as one single ‘loopy’ structure, locked to the sea/land profile and remaining fixed, giving ‘blocking highs’.
It might be expected that the greater retention of energy in water, rather than land, would warm the south rather than the north, however if less energy in being ‘pumped’ in that direction there would be less to retain. The concentration of land in the western (Atlantic) half as compare to the Indian Ocean/Pacific half may explain the East/West discrepancy perhaps. Thoughts ?
Some few more information regarding the 2016 winter season in subtropical South America : (i) there was some indication of an overall increase in low-height cloud cover and on the straight pole wind which could be related to the decay in the average temperatures; (ii) snow levels were kept about the same historic levels and ice rain has prevailed at higher levels; (iii) according to ETH Zurich researchers the phenomenum of refreshening of South Atlantic waters reaches the northern hemisphere including the south of Europe.
Meteorological sites of the subtropical zone of South America are now officially informing that the winter season ‘finished’ yesterday is considered one of the coolest (and hardest) in the recent recorded times. Nevertheless the cold weather is expected to be prolonged for a (still undefined) period (meteorological season is considered to have started on April 24th). Negative temperatures at places above 1000m/height are still recurrent. Meteorological sites from the northern hemisphere are now reporting the fall season to have started September 1st. There are indications that freezeing of ice at Arctic has started sooner and faster than expected.
Thanks for the report. We may be looking at an uncertain winter in the Northern Hemisphere. Farmer’s Almanac is predicting a hard winter for the US.
November 11th, 2016 – update: the same type of jet streams that are now freezing Europe, Asia and parts of North America are still active on the southern hemisphere, either leading to heavy storms and floods in the subtropical parts of South America, Africa and Oceania. Tornados, hail storms, heavy rains, and cyclones are happening in these regions with high frequency now. And yesterday it was officially announced the break of the La Niña condition.
Reblogged this on Climate- Science.