Thousands of British holidaymakers face travel chaos in Austria today after the country experienced the heaviest snowfalls in a century and was bracing for another round of storms.
Three metres of snow fell in the space of 48 hours in some parts of the country and more than a metre is forecast to fall today and tomorrow. Yesterday the army was drafted in to help with the clear-up and to deliver supplies to towns and villages that were cut off.
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According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”. “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said. —The Independent, 20 March 2000
Yesterday we wrote about a study that told us the data do not support that weather blockings are occurring more often than they used to. Some alarmist media and scientists have claimed that the heavy snowfalls in the Alps are happening due to manmade global warming.
Swiss meteorologist: Such snowfalls “nothing unique” for Alps
Yesterday one of Europe’s most high profile meteorologists, Jörg Kachelmann, penned an opinion piece at t-online.de reminding the public that heavy snow events in the Alps, such as the one we are now experiencing, are in fact nothing unique and that it is not a catastrophe.
In the days ahead, many parts of the Alps are expecting up to another meter of new snow, yet, according to Kachelmann, this should not pose any problems to buildings and structures – if their construction indeed adhered to the applicable building codes.
“Nothing to do with climate change”
Kachelmann adds later in his t-online piece: “1. The snowfalls are nothing unique so far for the Alps. 2. They have nothing to do with climate change.”
The Arctic and North Atlantic have suddenly turned surprisingly cold. First, according to Weatherbell meteorologist Joe Bastardi, the northern Atlantic has turned cold; so cold in fact that Bastardi called it “impressive”: …
All the Atlantic cold could have a big (positive) impact on the upcoming hurricane season, says hurricane expert Philip Klotzbach. One week ago Klotzbach tweeted …
Presenting this week (Monday 9 April 2018) at the European Geosciences Union (EGU) meeting in Vienna, an international team, led by British Antarctic Survey, describes how analysis of 79 ice cores collected from across Antarctica reveals a 10% increase in snowfall over the last 200 years. This is equivalent to 272 giga tonnes of water – double the volume of the Dead Sea.
Lead author and ice core scientist Dr Liz Thomas from British Antarctic Survey explains: (…)
Although a number of scientists are hollering that 2017 was “among the warmest on record”, we are not seeing any manifestation of this, at least over the northern hemisphere, where ironically snow and ice have shown surprising extents. This year the northern hemisphere winter has been surprisingly cold and brutal over a number of regions.
On March 20, 2018, northern hemisphere snow and ice cover was over 1 standard deviation above normal. Source: Environment Canada.
Periods of extreme cold winter weather and perilous snowfall, similar to those that gripped the UK in a deep freeze with the arrival of the ‘Beast from the East’, could be linked to the solar cycle, pioneering new research has shown.
A new study, led by Dr Indrani Roy from the University of Exeter, has revealed when the solar cycle is in its ‘weaker’ phase, there are warm spells across the Arctic in winter, as well as heavy snowfall across the Eurasian sector.
Scientists have revised an estimate of snow volume for the entire continent, and they’ve discovered that snow accumulation in a typical year is 50 percent higher than previously thought. Researchersplace the yearly estimate at about 1,200 cubic miles of snow. If spread evenly across the surface of the continent from Canada to Mexico, the snow would measure a little over 7.5 inches deep.
In the journal Geophysical Research Letters, researchers at The Ohio State University place the yearly estimate at about 1,200 cubic miles of snow accumulation. If spread evenly across the surface of the continent from Canada to Mexico, the snow would measure a little over 7.5 inches deep. If confined to Ohio, it would bury the state under 150 feet of snow.
The record snowfalls of 2018 that are sweeping across the Northern Hemisphere and continuing the growth trend in winter snowfall levels provide yet more compelling evidence that the UN IPCC AR5 WG1 climate report and models are flawed because this report concludes that future snowfall level trends will only decline.(…)
After several decades of extremely dry weather, residents in southern regions of Morocco finally woke up this morning to an unusual snowfall that currently impacted Ouarzazate, Taroudant and even Zagora, which has not experienced snowfall for fifty years.
Several photos and videos have been posted on social media depicting the cities covered with a huge layer of snow. Despite the freezing cold temperatures, many residents went outside to enjoy the unexpected snowfall.
by Joshua Nevett, December 23, 2017 in DailyStar, UK
A GLOBAL cool down lasting 120 years will trigger “more intense” winters that threaten months of freezing temperatures and snow “within a few years”, climate scientists have warned.
by P. Gosselin from F. Bosse and F. Vahrenholt, June 18, 2017
In May the sun was very quiet as sunspot number was a mere 18.8, which is only 36% of what is typical for the month this far into the cycle. Seven days saw no sunspot activity at all.
The following chart shows the current cycle, Solar Cycle 24 (red), compared to the mean of the previous cycles (blue) and the similarly behaving SC 5 (black).
It’s clear that the current cycle is significantly weaker than the mean and far weaker than the cycles we saw throughout most of the warming 20th century.
Winter, apparently, does not want to step back and let spring in as May snow has once again covered the Russian capital ahead of the annual V-Day parade. Meteorologists say May 2017 is on track to break the precipitation record from 1922.
“Storms of such power in Moscow take place once in 30-35 years,” Evgency Tishkovets from the Fobos weather monitoring centre told local Govorit Moskva radio, adding that it is possible that this May can break an absolute record from 1922.
by DMI (Danish Meteorological Institute), May, 2017
Here you can follow the daily surface mass balance on the Greenland Ice Sheet. The snow and ice model from one of DMI’s climate models is driven every six hours with snowfall, sunlight and other parameters from a research weather model for Greenland, Hirlam-Newsnow.
Extraordinary images are now coming from the Newfoundland and Labrador town, where the snow is high enough to cover doors and windows completely. More than 135 cm of snow has fallen on the town of Gander, Nfld., over the past week after it was hit with two back-to-back Nor’easters.
To put that precipitation in perspective, Torontonians can expect around 115 cm of snow in an entire year.
