Gael_Force

Reading today that Italian authorities delayed confirmation to get their ducks in a row regard contact tracing ( a Chinese tour party). It's sensible to do, IMO, as some will scatter at thought of imposed quarantine. Containment will only work if ALL contacts are monitored ... an impossible task in a fast moving global environment.

Another consequence in the longer term ... The coronavirus in China could threaten pharma's ingredient source - STAT WWW.STATNEWS.COM As the Chinese government increasingly locks down portions of the country, there are likely to be questions about production and supply of drug ingredients.

Full-genome evolutionary analysis of the novel corona virus (2019-nCoV) rejects the hypothesis of emergence as a result of a recent recombination event WWW.BIORXIV.ORG bioRxiv - the preprint server for biology, operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a research and educational institution Curioser and curioser ...... something unknown has been added to allow it to attack humans?

I was just thinking along those lines earlier regarding discussion on case fatality rate. Some of the cities give case history of the deceased and it points to a week of mild flu type symptoms, hospitalisation on severe breathing difficulties, ICU a few days later and death within hours. I was relating number of fatalities to current case numbers but you need to go back to the numbers when their illness began. I think this is also confusing the incubation period length as people are maybe symptomatic in a few days but might be as much a 2 weeks before emergency care is needed.

I've just realised you are talking about mortality rather than infection rates ... last I saw was that mortality at 3% but that was based on early figures.

Reference thread by an epidemiologist: he has statistics and R0 figures for comparison.

A snip from Chinese authorities presser... The text in red will be a big problem for control measures.

Snip from WHO conference. The fourth generation cases are those who were infected by someone who was infected by someone with market exposure. The virologists were looking for this indicator as a prognosis for rapid spread.

I don't intend my reply to be callous but those who are dead go to the morgue and don't put pressure on critical care facilities. This virus, as recorded, has a 25% critical care requirement: can you imagine what that statistic will do to the NHS bed situation?

Additionally, our findings suggest that snake is the most probable wildlife animal reservoir for the 2019‐nCoV based on its RSCU bias resembling snake compared to other animals. Taken together, our results suggest that homologous recombination within the spike glycoprotein may contribute to cross‐species transmission from snake to humans. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jmv.25682

Probably best to look at wind direction on Dutch coast. Not much evidence of an easterly there either.

The stratosphere firmly in the driving seat on this episode; seems almost instantaneous response through all layers. This is why Canadian warmings were/are associated with cold weather west Europe ... Jet has departed USA to winter in the Caribbean !! Maybe ozone is the driver, perhaps echo from last winter or a low solar response. Whatever, no surprise to see surface charts when the big wheel up yonder looks like this.

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You would think so but the previous day had mild SW winds, probably the northerly still to clear those out in far south east. You can animate the charts on the link. Modèles France - ECMWF Europe - tameteo.com WWW.TAMETEO.COM Modèles France - ECMWF Europe - Modèle de prévision numérique du temps du Centre européen pour les prévisions météorologiques à moyen terme. Il...

This is the 2 metre temps for the 240 hour chart.

I think there is definitely a need for the cold hunt thread but the people who used the in depth thread seem to have disappeared. Perhaps some of the present posters will appreciate a less frantic paced platform for their thoughts to be expanded on an not get lost in the melee.

IMO, he would have done better to add the geopotential height ones you get on instant weather maps; having said that it shows the position of the vortex whereas the temperature ones didn't.

They were expecting it to move down through the strat layers: it didn't do that till it split properly in February and even then it was a slow process that left us with a cold spring and all the persistent summer -NAO. Just looking at the charts, I'm wondering if the zonal spell will be as bad as some are thinking. The vortex is well north of Canada and in a position to bring polar shots from the NNW rather than usual due westerlies.

ECM forecast jet stream chart shows a very typical low solar meridional pattern. The archives show a tendency for the ridging to be into Greenland but it is easy to see the influence on UK temperatures by little differences in the wave length. Pity we don't have long temp records for further east as I'm sure the solar effect would be more visible than in the CET series.

Why would something which is the NH climate norm be grim? As surely as (24 hour polar) night follows day, the vortex is going to strengthen approaching the winter solstice. it's now up to other sets of variables in the atmosphere to impact on the vortex and there's plenty of those in the mix for this season.

I don't know if he's referring to the Dec 2010 or Jan/Feb 2010: either way, the old CFSV1 picked up the cold at both ends of the year.

Mid November 2010, at 10mb level, there was a very strong positive anomaly over Greenland. The more detailed 30mb on JMA has a mid month split vortex with heights across Greenland to Kamchatka. I may be wrong on this but my understanding is it is the geopotential height placement rather than the warming that is important. The warming just gets the heights to shift position to a placement that is either good for us or not.

I don't think there's any evidence it scuppers the following winter. The vortex will eventually form and then be subject to a new series of events/ teleconnections to impact it in the new season.

I made this point a few weeks back; nothing unusual in the NH 500 polar set up for mid November You may be right in the ice loss having a delaying effect on vortex formation but I would also add that the intense scrutiny of charts gets earlier every year. There's also the school of thought that a strong SSW or final warming at the end of previous winter manifests in a delay to the new winter season vortex formation.