Waterspout

Yes getting worse at the moment! As I speculated just before a pulse of energy looks like it is running SE to NW over us, really heavy now. And the Recycling Bin collection hasn't come yet either!!! Wonder why....

Getting Heavier again now, near Sandbach. Don't know if any of you are looking at the Radar (!) LOL ;-| but those Heavier echoes just to our South, appear to me to be moving North now. It's easy to trick yourself looking at the Radar frames, but I'm sure that heavier pulse is going to pivot Northward over the next few hours over us. (Well me at least LOL)

Oh, the other thread wasn't locked. Snowing here in Sandbach. This is an unexpected feature, I assume, before the main band which is still West of Ireland. Looks like some big echoes heading up Irish Sea across to the North of the Region for later? From the Meto Radar. Interesting the heavy band to our East (Nottinghamshire). I wonder if a circulation is going to form between these two features.

Just started snowing lightly here in East Cheshire, Crewe/Sandbach. Covering on the cold pavements. Very thin layer so far!

Just a technical note about these! It's based on the GFS WEASD (Water Equivalent Accumulation Snow Depth) field. As we all know (!) The Melted water accumulated equates to a snow density which can vary from 3 times that (compacted snow) to may be 10 times ( freshly fallen) . So, as you say, it's only a best estimate of real Snow Depth assuming the density is a constant(!) Which it won't strictly be. John Ward of the GFS team explains it thus: << In the model a simple algorithm is used to determine if falling precipitation is rain or snow. If it's determined to be snow, both total precip & WEASD will be incremented by the precip amount. So, for any period the accumulation of water equivalent must be less than or equal to the total precip. At each forecast interval (6 hrs for example) the total precip is set to zero and precip is accumulated for the next period. Since WEASD is the water equivalent of snow depth, it is not reset to zero so it can represent the water equivalent accumulating at the surface. It continues to be incremented if the temperature is low enough to support snow may become larger than the total precip for any given forecast interval. >>

-3 to -4 Max across heart of England at Noon on Wednesday (on this run!)

Nearing 20 in some parts!

-1 to -4 Max UK wide next Wed Noon

-6 Over Snowfields off S. Wales at 15:00. -1 & -2 more widely

Indeed, but Alicante the day before Will change anyway I suspect!

Well, I'm off to Morocco on Xmas Eve, going by this run. Snow moving out of Spain and into North Africa.... LOL!

Indeed. Potential nice Snow Event next Saturday! Which will no doubt change......

That is the largest area of change so far.

I think I knew what you meant, Peter, but some might have assumed you meant the chemistry of the entire atmosphere! Yes, the Carbon molecules have increased. They have a specific absorption spectrum, and saturation points. I think alot is known how Carbon acts in the laboratory, but not neccessarily in the entire 'atmosphere' where it competes with Water Vapour in alot of that absorption Spectrum. I think this is why we are not seeing the proposed temperature response the models predicted back in the 90's - the sensitivity is almost certainly much less than what scientists might have us believe. But, I might be wrong about that! After all renewed Invigorated Anthropogenic Global Warming is apparently expected from 2012 onwards, and I'll certainly acknowledge any new temperature response when I see it happen.

Could you show this 'entire' change using this pie chart please, Peter!

They've now changed it: "This is very well spotted and is an error on our part. The press release has now been amended to ‘very unusual’ rather than ‘unprecedented’. Many thanks for bringing my attention to this. Kind regards,"

Oh yes! I must email the BAS, as their press release is rather misleading and not the same as to what the Paper abstract clearly says.

There's some new research just published in Nature "Antarctic Peninsula warming relative to Holocene climate and ice shelf history" - which reconstructs temperatures for the past 15,000 years. I havn't been able to see the paper, or indeed a graph, but I'm a little confused. The BAS report on it as follows: http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/press/press_releases/press_release.php?id=1892 Their summary being: "The first comprehensive reconstruction of a 15,000 year climate history from an ice core collected from James Ross Island in the Antarctic Peninsula region is reported this week in the journal Nature. The scientists reveal that the rapid warming of this region over the last 100 years has been unprecedented and came on top of a slower natural climate warming that began around 600 years ago." Note the use of "rapid warming of this region over the last 100 years has been unprecedented" So, I tried to search for more information, again couldn't actually find the paper itself or a graph! But The Australian reports as follows: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/ice-core-warming-within-bounds/story-e6frg8y6-1226456144974 "RECENT warming of the Antarctic peninsula is unusual but not unprecedented relative to natural variation, according to research published today in Nature. The Antarctic is currently one of the most rapidly warming regions on Earth but an analysis of ice-core records has found the rise in temperatures is "within the bounds of natural climate variability over the past 600 years"." LOL! This paper is only just trickling through the media, so may be a clearer picture will emerge!

It's a good job I didn't say that then, which I didn't ! I said there had been no "New" Global warming, but within that the Arctic has clearly Warmed more for the past 50 years. (and even the past 10 years) Anyway, back to the Sea Ice...... (or lack of it....)

Well, even the experts do not currently attribute the last 3 years of Southerly Tracking Jet all down to AA. I only saw a programme a few weeks ago and they were saying Who Knows, could just be a a bad run of coincidence! Remember Mike Lockwood in his research firmly pinned this down to reduced UV levels propogating down through Rossby Waves. And that's just one "for instance" alternative. I suspect a combination of things, including AA, UV, and whatever else. Not just loss of Ice, which is contributing. And who knows when UV picks up over the next few years it might weight the coin back to less Blocking. So, I think when making big statements about sudden 'climate shifts' we have to look at all the mechanisms, not just Sea Ice, in coming to a conclusion about the future.

I hadn't read it properly, but have now, and as I stated earlier there isn't currently an obvious "Global" AA signal, but there are indication of "Local" ones, such as High Latitude blocking - which the paper shows quite clearly. It also mentions the Severe Winter of 2009/10 in its conclusions and quite rightly ponders is there a link, but falls short of directly attributing it to this. Whereas it is more firm in attributing AA to the Texas Heatwave of 2011. As to records before 1979, so before the satellite monitoring era, yes there are many scattered records, many of which also show alot of melting occured in previous decades - my point being we can't properly put the last decade of melting into proper "Climate" context as we simply don't have the kind of data we've had since 1979. Because if we could put the past decade of Summer Ice Melt into this context we might see a pattern emerge over 100's of years. But we simply don't know that exactly, which is a great shame really. And remember there is still little known about the cause of the Arctic Warming which occured 1920-1940. Scientists simply don't know (or can't agree), but are certain that was not co2 driven. As to Hadley not representing the Arctic correctly or not, well remember it is only a small area of the surface of the globe when weighting it into a 'Global' temperature anyway. And even if NOAA and GISS have been weighting it 'more correcty' into their numbers, there is still very little "New" Warming to show over the past decade even in their series 'Globally" that is. Whereas all Data Series show obvious Warming in the Arctic over the past 50 years.

I'm often confused about the reasons people have for awaiting an "Ice Free Arctic", and remember that phase is often cited as being "even for only 1 day in the height of Summer" by some scientists. Remember, we only have accurate records since 1979, so we are only just about scraping in the minimum time period (circa 30 years) for making links to 'Climate Change' - Climate often being defined as pattern changes over a Minimum of 30 years. So, I'm intigued, especially about feedbacks, and how they will impact Globally. If these feedbacks are very sensitive then I'd expect to see an increasing upwards temperature trend. Now, we can't say over the past 15 years, with dramatic Summer Melting (well August melting I guess) we have not seen an effect Globally, as tenperatures have been stable (globally) Locally, then, is probably where the main focus will probably sit, which I believe mainly surrounds the increased likelyhood of High pressure forming in Aug/Sep. Although our severe Winters occured Nov-Feb, so I don't see the link (at the moment) with this and Summer Ice Melt.

Indeed, Peter, we should cite the report on the WWF site, which uses a study done in 2011: http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/where_we_work/arctic/wildlife/polar_bear/population/ The overasll status then is that 7 of the 19 Populations of Polar Bears are in decline, the other 12 populations are either increasing or stable. The latest scientific thinking, at the bottom of their report, is that they are still vunerable to extinction within the next century.

Call me picky, but! An "Ice Free Summer" is no ice from about June to August (or whatever 3 month rolling period you define as Summer). To say this might be only 1,2, or even a couple of days of complete loss in the height of Summer, is certainly not the same as "Ice Free Summer" I do agree, however, that within 10 years we might have "A Day (or 2) of No Ice in Summer" Notice the rewording from "An Ice Free Summer", which I don't agree with.

A new study reveals 10 years to total Arctic Ice Melt http://www.dailymail...o=feeds-newsxml The scientist from UCL was on BBC Radio 4 this morning talking about this. At the end of the interview he managed to reveal the total disappearance might only be for 1 Day in the Height of Summer. I wasn't sure Evan Davies (who did the intereview) was completely convinced. Kept mentioning about the previous studies which proved incorrect, and how certain they were these would be correct. Then came the revelation might only be for 1 day. Which I guess doesn't sound as good in the wording of the headlines which will be rolled out over the coming days to cover this story. Call me cynical.....!