eddie

Hi VP, I'm not sure if you have seen this already but NOAA have a section on absolute temperatures.. About 2/3 of the way down this page they give the monthly absolute mean temperatures for the globe.

It always makes me smile when people say things like 'The problem is the way the global economic system works' and 'people are too greedy' as if those two issues in themselves are going to be easier to solve than that fact most of our power comes from coal and gas fired power stations.

It's far too early to say this year won't be a record breaker. Just remember that by the end of April, 2006 was only the 144th warmest year.

Unfortunately I can only see one viable alternative to coal fired power stations if we have to phase them all out by 2035 and a lot of people aren't going to like it.

Hadley is now on 7.4C. Yesterday was a cool 4.0C. Over 10C is now looking very unlikely indeed, not so much from a historic statistical point of view but because the models are not showing any real warmth in the reliable time frame. Suprisingly, The April 2007 CET was only 8.4C by this point. The period 9th-30th April 2007 averaged 12.2C (rounded).

-4.9C would get you in the January top 100. We haven't had one of those since 13th Jan. 1987 (-6.6C!).

The Hadley CET is now 8.5C. Yesterday was a very cold 2.3C To add some context, there have only been 83 April days since 1772 that have been colder out of over 7000. It's in the top 1.2% of cold April days.

Thanks for that Filski. An interesting read. The paper compares older generations of climate models against newer ones and, not suprisingly, the newer, more advanced models do a better job of simulating present climate from past observations.

I think the GFS is probably overdoing those minima but if we do indeed reach 5.6C by the 21st it would be the coldest consecutive 17 days in April since the period ending 17th April 1986.

The Hadley CET is now 10.5C which is very much above average. Only 15 Aprils since 1772 have been warmer by this point in the month (admittedly only 4 days in!). Good job the models are showing cold because otherwise I would be thinking that another record breaker was on the way.

Cosmic rays are not actually rays but sub-atomic particles, such as protons, accelerated to speeds *approaching* the speed of light. They are actual 'matter' so are not the same as X-rays, light, UV or microwaves which are all forms of electromagnetic radiation (all electromagnetic radiation travels at the speed of light).

First part of the article says: "Global temperatures this year will be lower than in 2007 due to the cooling effect of the La Nina current in the Pacific, UN meteorologists have said." Looking further into the article, the Hadley Centre are forecasting the global yearly temperature anomaly to be +0.4C. "Adam Scaife, lead scientist for Modelling Climate Variability at the Hadley Centre in Exeter, UK, said their best estimate for 2008 was about 0.4C above the 1961-1990 average, and higher than this if you compared it with further back in the 20th Century." That would actually put it about equal with 2007 (+0.3970). The 8th warmest year recorded. I honestly think the headline 'Global Temperatures to Decrease' is stretching things a bit.

Mentioning Al Gore should be confined to the Climate Change subforum. Lets keep the Annual CET thread 'Al Gore free' and avoid this thread becoming a big mess like most of climate change ones have.

This is something that I wonder about quite a lot. Look at the summer of 1976 for example. Was that the warmest possible summer that the climate of the late 70s could deliver? What would happen if we got exactly the same synoptics today? What is the warmest possible summer that the climate of 2008 could deliver? Similarly for winter 1962/3. Was that the coldest possible winter that the climate of the 60s could deliver? Are the winters we have seen lately the coldest that can be delivered in the current climate? Unfortunately it's impossible to tell if we are just at the top of some natural warm cycle in UK weather superimposed on top of background AGW or this really is as cold as it gets here now. Time will tell. I personally think we could still see a very cold year but the odds are much reduced.

The second half of 2006 was the warmest July-Dec period ever. The first half of 2007 was the warmest Jan-June ever. They both broke the previous records for year halves by quite a margin. I think 11 months cooler than the corresponding months the year before says more about how warm July 2006-June 2007 was than anything else. Top 5 Jul-Dec periods 2006 13.4C 1959 12.5C 1949 12.4C 1983 12.4C 1995 12.4C Top 5 Jan-June periods 2007 9.7C 1822 9.5C 1846 9.5C 1990 9.4C 2002 9.3C

The Hadley CET is now 6.0C to the 27th. It looks fairly certain now that this month will end up somewhere between the 1961-1990 and the 1971-2000 averages. If March ends at 6.1C it will be the 26th warmest January - March period in the CET record.

I'm going for a below average month. 7.7C for me please.

Of course not, they will lower the limit as time goes on. When cars start to emit the same amount of CO2 as bikes then I can see an argument for taxing them equally.

Most of the cyclists I know emit less than 120g CO2/km so would be exempt from road tax even if they were taxed under the current system for cars.

If there is no proposal to apply this wholesale to a town then I have less of a problem although I do think 20mph is a more realistic limit. As a cyclist I'm not really keen at all on shared road design and would actually prefer to be separate from both motorised vehicles (especially buses) and pedestrians. Having to negociate both pedestrians and vehicles in a busy street sounds like a nightmare to me. If you look at parts of Amsterdam, cycle paths are physically seperated by a section of curb or pavement from both the road and the pavement. Traffic lights stop either the road or cycle traffic where the two cross and walking in the cycle lane is also not permitted. This is much safer for both pedestrians and cyclists. This is not always possible to retro-fit in our old towns (I can see how shared surface design could be) but there should be no excuse in a new town. With no bikes or people in the road the speed limit doesn't need to be 15mph.

I was wondering if there are any undergound lakes that might drain into the Antarctic as the result of any warming? When we were coming out of the last ice age it is speculated that the cause of the Younger Dryas period may have been caused by a large influx of fresh melt water that played havoc with ocean currents.

I don't know, perhaps a bus or whatever other form of 'alternative' transport that people who aren't able to ride a bike or walk will use. Even ignoring the fact that cars exist completely who on earth would want to live in a town where, without allowing for stops, the bus would take one hour to go only 15 miles?

Read my post. Where did I mention cars?

I don't have any particular objection to lower speed limits in towns but 15mph is a stupid limit. Even cyclists would be breaking that on a regular basis. 20mph is more realistic and allows people to pass slower cyclists without having to break the law.

There might not be any point launching ICESat II in 2015 if some of the more pessimistic predictions come true. There won't be anything but single year ice to look at and open sea during the summer.