leicesternosnowzone

Just saw on the weather forecast that parts of Newfoundland have had 18hours of freezing rain...did you get any glosteroldboy? Was it as bad as it sounds? Temperatures here in Hamilton have been hovering around freezing this week and the 3 or 4 inches of snow that fell last weekend are still hanging around, looks like it will be a bit milder this week, maybe a little premature to call it signs of Spring though.

It got up to 10 C here today, melted the 3-4inches of snow that fell over the weekend. Looks like being very boring weather here for at least the next week. I think this january has been one of the mildest for a long time in this region, also one of the least snowy. I'm still hoping for a couple of late winter snowstorms but it doesn't look that likely at the minute. -80 F is pretty phenomenal was it colder further inland i.e Yukon/NWT?

The medium term gfs charts (t100-t180) look reasonable with the -5 850hpa line reaching down into southern england. In fact right out to t192-204 at the end of the high res part of the run the prospects of snow/wintry weather look reasonable particularly for scotland and norhtern england. The gfs then shows a very deep (below 950mb) low pressure system in the north atlantic at around t228 and this brings in a more zonal and warmer SW winds for the uk. However the low is probably being overcooked by gfs so i would suggest the later parts of FI are unlikely to come off (even though they look quite good for coldies). Overall in the near term next week COULD bring some colder conditions and possibly snow for some if the synoptics pan out as shown on 00z gfs.

Just had a quick look at the data for Canmore on the environment canada website and it was giving a windchill temperature of -39C, good luck with the snow clearing tomorrow!! Down here in the deep south of Canada (Hamilton) we have rain and a max temp of 8C tomorrow, its been very mild and very little snow so far this winter in southern ontario. Ski areas of southern ontario have been snow making over the weekend (max temps were below -10C) but still have very little snow base and the Canadians are wondering whether winter will ever arrive! Looks like another cool down later in the week and possibly a couple of inches of snow but nothing on the scale of out west!

The GFS 00z has I think further reduced the central pressure of friday's storm, approximately 970-975mb with the track of the low further south, and windspeeds now predicted to be lighter and probably unlikely to cause as much damage. Perhaps potential disruption from tuesday's winds is now more likely, the south coast and south east corner could be potentially quite gusty 50-60mph(?) (please feel free to correct me I'm still getting used to the models). The northerly toppler still being predicted for next sunday/monday (a bit slower getting started than earlier runs due to friday's low pressure becoming almost stationary, although still deepening in the eastern North Sea. I would suggest anything after friday's system is still definitely FI but high pressure over Europe (1040mb seems to build in quite quickly(?)) is what the GFS is thinking tonight- and mild SW winds for much of the +200-360hrs timescale.

Some interesting points in this thread a good read. Loafer a quick question, is it that you don't think temperatures at the surface/lower troposphere have been rising in the last century or is it that you don't believe that man-made emissions are responsible for warming? I think some of the best evidence for warming temperatures come from mountain glacier retreat particularly photographic evidence of them moving up mountains in the alps in particular but also many other parts of the world since the early 1900's. This then causes less debate over satellites and the possible problems with using them to measure temperature, sea ice, etc. I notice there was some debate over The Sun's influence on climate as well, I think sun spot cycles are now widely recognised as having some influence on the climate of recent decades, they are currently estimated to have accounted for approximately 10% of warming since 1900 (0.07C), this is still an area actively researched in climate science and I wouldn't surprised if this estimate was say 50% out either way. There all still high levels of uncertainty in aspects of climate science but this doesn't make the science invalid. Ice cores are considered one of the best proxies of atmospheric composition, the records can be brought right up to modern instrumental measurements of CO2 and they show a very good match with them. The oxygen isotopes contained within them can be used to record glacial periods, the timing of negative intrusions of the heavier 18 oxygen isotopes match closely with data gathered from the rock record. As a final point I don't think too many people doubt that the greenhouse effect exists and causes averge global temperatures to be 30C warmer than they would be otherwise. So why is it then that people don't think that our emissions of CO2, CH4 (rice paddies and cattle), CFCs, NOx and many more greenhouse gases are (and will continue to) causing climate to warm on a global scale? Of course levels of greenhouse gases have varied over geological time, collisions of continents, solar variation, volcanic emissions(?) and the development of large organisms have driven these changes in the past but today it is my opinion that anthropogenic emissions are causing climate to change, it is not that our emissions are greater than natural emissions (they're not) it is that they have gone beyond the level that the carbon cycle can absorb.

Also unusually mild here in the great lakes, we had a few flurries during the week and a max temp below freezing today but its warming up again this week and still no significant snow around here- it's a bit like a British winter so far, lots of cloud and rain, just the cold wind reminds you, you're in Canada. I'm still hoping for some snow this side of new year, a winter storm would be nice but isn't looking likely at the winter.

The water that makes up the continental ice sheets was intially in the oceans, as the ice sheet melts (as is happening in Greenland and in some parts of Antarctica today) the water returns to the oceans causing sea levels to rise. During the last deglaciation sea levels are thought to have been 6-7m higher than today- to give some idea thats aprroximately equivalent to the whole Greenland ice sheet melting and would cause major problems for the majority of coastal cities- London, New York, Amsterdam and a lot more. I think most research suggests that a catastrophic melting of the East Antarctic ice sheet is currently unlikely but as Gray-wolf says that would be at least an additional 60m of sea level rise. The last time Earth had no ice caps was 35Myrs ago (and IMO we are currently still quite a long way away from that situation happening again) and most estimates suggest sea level was 100-200m higher during that period- the changing volume of ocean basins also played a role in this so this scale of sea level rise couldn't be reached simply by melting the water stored in ice sheets. Sea level and ice sheets both respond more slowly to atmospheric changes than surface temperatures do i.e ice sheet melting lags behind temperature changes, hence paul tall's comment about the sea being in the same place as 30 years ago. I think tide gauges show sea level rises of approx 20cm since 1900, this doesn't sound like much but countries such as Bangladesh and the Maldives have already been affected.

First signs of winter in the great lakes region yesterday/today as well. The worst (or best) of the snow in areas to the east of lake huron and lake superior, some places had around 30cm in 3 hours yesterday! We also had our first flurries here in Hamilton today, so I imagine Toronto got a little bit too. Of course where I am temperatures are a lot warmer than edmonton/calgary (or even vancouver by the sound of it!) its a few degrees above freezing here and going to warm up again over the weekend so nothing sticking yet but there are a few more months of winter to come! Here's a link to one of the warnings out for tonight http://www.simcoe.com/news/article/1246013--snow-s-comin