Waterspout

I think a better respresentation of the point being made. I recall before the dawn of the Interent, having that very book which showed the graph below. We are well below any of the scenerios A,B,C made in 1988. It is indeed not about comparing the month xx from 2012 with month xx from 1988. But it is about people being answerable for their failed predictions. Because if they don't answer for them, why on Earth should be believe their current ones? I should also say that the Hadley Centre also updates it's precitions every 5 years, and every one had fallen way short of the projected temperatures they expected. At the moment we should be around +0.35C (on average) above the actual average temperature now. When I see these organisations making believable predictions, then I'll start taking more interest in believing them.

I'm curious about the 'snapshot' correlation made based on conditions exactly 52m years ago. co2 was indeed twice that of today, but this was just at the end of a very cool period which lasted about 75m years when co2 was 2 to 2.5 times today. co2 was even higher before that, ranging from 2 to 4 times that of today, and we still alternated between 10's of millions of yeas of Cold and Warm cycles, which have no correlation whatsoever with the concentrations of co2 gases. If you look at the graph below, which shows at the top Cold and Warm period using Grey and White bars, then this cycle of Warm and Cold happened irrespective of co2 levels, which varied of their own accord, and there is no direct correlation. So, using 52m ago as a snapshot in time of a coincidence of Higher co2 with Higher temperature at only that specific point in time, and ignoring all the data spread across 500m years, is hardly very subjective evidence of what might happen if we double our current co2 concentrations. http://www.pnas.org/content/99/7/4167/F4.expansion.html

Well, it's his pet project, just wrapped up nicely in a paper with WHO approved data in it! Overstating temperasture rise by nearly 100% due to UHI in the US. It depends whether we can translate this to a global level, and then it would be very significant. I am bemused, however, why he cancelled his holiday and suspended his site for almost 3 days! It's an interesting paper, but hardly Climategate 3 !!!

Well, technically speaking the temperature has not been rising or falling for almost 15 years now! I don't know enough about Ice loss to know if the Southerly Tracking jet is due to this. Although I always thought the Weather is controlled from the Top Downwards, so I'd like to know the mechanism by which a Loss of Summer Ice (for a few weeks) can cause the Jet Stream to track Southerly in Winter (aka the two Severe Winters) and also the last 4 or 5 Summers. I think it's more widely understood now that UV Output from the Sun strongly influences the Jet Stream due to well known physical mechanisms. (UV fell 30% from 2001 to 2006) As the Jet Stream was only discovered in the 40's any exact data on its past behaviour is limited, although I'd be interested to see a reconstruction of the Jet Stream based on proxies of historic weather patterns. I wonder if someone will do this work soon, I'd have thought it was essential in making any links to it's changing pattern, with any natural variabilty or any man made influences on it.

I didn't realise people still argued about 'whether' we had 20 years of Warming from 1980 to 2000, but rather what caused it! Hadley is widely reported as saying Global Warming with restart again from 2012 with vigour, so we need to see whether that science proves correct or not, based on their model projections. Although my past analysis of their decadal forecasts still show we are quite a way behind the projection they made in 2005. We really need to be breaking new global records every 1-3 years, and this is not happening really since 1998. I will be interested to see the new HadCrut 4 readjustment, apparently it brings ther Hadley dataset more in line with GISS and NOAA. So any rise in temperature in the future might actually be from them altering the calculation. I think this will cause a storm no doubt! And may be their prediction of a sudden renewed warming from 2012 is because they already knew how HadCrut 4 was going to be altered to show this 'new' warming ;-/

It's a good job then that the Antarctic has not warmed at all in the past 50 years, if anything cooled slightly. The natural calving you talk about is quite a normal process, and any year on year changes that do occur are down to changes in Ocean currents which happen on a local level over decadal periods, and is also quite normal. There is no science I know of which is warning of a " total collapse" of any Ice Shelves in the Antarctic. In fact mainstream science, and infact BBC TV programmes,tend to steer clear of the opposites trends at our Southern Polar Icecap as they don't exactly fit in with the concenus opinion concerning the Warming that did occur from 1950-2000, globally.

Brings back memories that article by Richard Black in 2008. At that time I was highly active in this Climate debate, although since then I take more of a back seat now! Mostly because the main Forum site I used to post on (which I will not mention here) decided to stop the debate by basically annexing a whole side of it - but less said about that really as it's in the past, but I would never return to that site. But as I recall that article by Richard Black was based on a fast respone by Mike Lockwood (and others) hence why the results where published in the "Letters" - it was basically a fast way to rebut a paper without going through the enitre Peer Review process. Within that paper their main set of data came from the PMOD satellite data when montioring the Suns activity for the past 20 years - PMOD was the less reliable data-set showing TSI and such, as it used intruments that had signal degradation issues, the whole rebuttal basically surrounded whether the minimum of Solar Cylcle 22 was Higher or Lower that Solar Cycle 23 - as the other dataset based on ACRIM - showed the opposite - basically this difference in data came about due to a 2 year blank in data due to the Shuttle Challenger disaster which delayed a replacment satellite being used to monitor the Sun. Anyway, PMOD was always regarded as an inferior splicing of two datasets - but was used in this case to show Solar actvitiy had declined between the cycles and not actually increased as the ACRIM dataset showed. It's all very complicated actually, but anyway more recently Mike Lockwood now seems to be publishing papers about The Sun being more important that thought, so I guess we are all learning slowly! Sorry if this bored anyone! The way ACRIM and PMOD differ is shown here anyway,the "ACRIM GAP" is shown on their main graph which is a gap in data. PMOD interpolated this gap in a different way, and used other satellites to piece together a dataset. Unfortuately within Science, producing Datasets in a certain way can be useful to prove/disprove a trend, which is quite crucial in Cimate Science, so this is an important issue and central to the Mike Lockwood rebutal paper. http://www.acrim.com/

Solar Max is now expected around 2014. Some X-Ray Flares have indeed gone off lately, but the background UV Output has not increased that much so far, although I don't have current figures for the UV Spectrum. It will ramp up slowly, irrespective of any X-Ray flares going on. So, in % change terms I don't think the current UV Output is much different to that in 2009/2010. I must search out the figures now! One thing is interesing. The Solar Min in 2009 had a UV level 6% lower than the Solar Min of 1996. So, is there a threshold level which kicks in this Northern Blocking scenerio, or is it controlled by many years of lower UV over time? I don't think anyone has the answers to this as of yet. We can just keep monitoring what happens I suppose.

Well Well and as if by magic: http://www.bbc.co.uk...onment-15199065 I often email Richard Black, especially when he writes articles telling us Scientists say The Sun has no role in our Climate. I actually emailed him 2 years ago regarding the UV connection to European Winters, and I've just had the pleasure to email him again to congratulate him on the BBC playing catch-up with reality. ;-D I have to say he always replies as a courtesy.

In general I agree with your posting, however it is the drop in the Sun's UV Output by around 30% since the last Solar Max, which has a well known physically modelled effect of altering the Jet Stream and Blocked patterns into NW Europe. UV affects Ozone production in the atmosphere which affects the Jet Stream. There's some good reading/papers on this here: http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi?id=sh05100g http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=7122 Ironically 2 of the authors are Michael Mann and Gavin Schmidt. This research was further reflected on by Mike Lockwood more recently in the explaining Winters of 2009-2010: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8615789.stm "The way in which solar activity affects the behaviour of blocking episodes is linked to the amount of ultraviolet (UV) emissions being produced by the Sun. "

Hmmm, Probably feel awkward saying this now, as no one else has noticed it, therefore I must be the only one who used to do this! I used to click, for instance, on the "Model Discussion" from the front page in the "Latest Discussions" pane, and before the upgrade it would take me to the Last Page of the Model Discussion, but now it defaults to the 1st Page, which I don't find useful, and then have to navigate back and then hit Last Page again! Also, on the front page Michael Fish has been 'returning from his February break" for about 18 months now LOL!!!! Just to say......

I think the study assumes temperatures responded to co2 releases, whereas the co2 release may have been prompted by the temperature rising first due to some other natural cause. Also, the PETM was started by a massive Methane release. It's like comparing Apples with Oranges if this is the nearest comparison to today! Also, we don't currently have any "Severe Global Warming" - the temperature peaked Circa 1998. The new CERN data, regarding Cosmic Rays, will be interesting, as the Authors say they cannot state the exact results, as this is not allowed before publication. So, be interesting to see the full results later this year. It will be Ironic if this study showed a dramatic connection between CRs and Climate, as some people ciritised the Ch4 programme TGGWS for pushing this theory a few years ago, as being fantasy.

It's a very interesting topic this! As some of you may have heard the Government has asked the Chief Scientific Officer - Prof John Beddington - to report back to them on whether we should expect these severe snowy spells to carry on in the future, and hence as the topic suggests do we need to divert resources into tackling this. Actually, this is more a question regarding the UK's future climate and what we need to invest in for the next 30 odd years. This story, about the CSO being asked, was briefly mentioned on BBC News this morning, although they seemed to have dropped it since then - infact if you think about the question being asked the BBC's science team should be getting their teeth into it - as the Government, in my mind, is now asking contrary to being told to expect Milder, Wetter, Snowless Winters, is this now still the view after 2-3 years of what would appear to be at the very least a regional shift in weather patterns. So, it's a very good question, and it will be VERY interesting in seeing what Prof John Beddington actually reports back, as he is most certainly in the Meto/Hadley Camp of believing snow in the UK will become a thing of Myth for future generations. The government will obviously have to act on his recommendations, and it will be interesting how the Prof. goes about determining what is actually happening to the UK's climate at the moment. I also think it will be a hard turn-around for him to do if he decides the idea of "Snowless, Mild Winters" was just plain wrong.