Weather Eye

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

GREENLAND has been basking in remarkable warmth for the past fortnight thanks to mild southerly winds: on Saturday, Kangerlussuaq on the east coast recorded 7C (45F) — the seasonal norm is around -22C (-8F).

It is reminiscent of medieval times, when Greenland may have been even warmer than today. In 982, Viking pioneers landed on the southwest coast and found grass pastures where they could graze cows, sheep and goats. More settlers followed and colonies spread out along the west and east coasts — by the 12th century up to 5,000 Norse had established farms, churches and even a monastery. But it was a precarious existence. The climate barely supported the pastures, and when temperatures fell around 1250 the farming collapsed, sea ice spread and the colonies grew isolated from Europe.

When conditions improved enough for European ships to return during the 1500s, they reported no living sign of the Norse, only the deserted ruins of their settlements, which can still be seen today.

The Greenalnd Norse helped to bring about their own downfall. They failed to adapt to the worsening climate, staying tied to their farms instead of surviving on fishing and hunting as the native Inuit did.

Perhaps there are lessons to be learnt with today’s changing climate, as resources become stretched to the limit and people fail to adapt.

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

UNUSUAL weather struck southern Algeria on Monday. The town of Djanet, deep in the Sahara, was soaked by 16mm (0.6in) of rain — that may sound fairly trifling but it is almost three quarters of their annual rainfall.

Djanet is near Tassili n’Ajjer, a vast plateau famous for its prehistoric rock paintings. These pictures, some 6,000 years old, show ancient people and such animals as elephants, giraffes and hippos in an era when the Sahara was green and wellwatered, rather like the Serengeti in Tanzania today.

The Sahara had turned green thanks to a slow wobble in the Earth’s rotation around its axis, rather like the way a spinning top wobbles as it spins. Around 8,000 years ago, this made the North African summers hotter and the monsoons stronger, pulling moist air from the Atlantic deep into the Sahara. But 3,000 years later those monsoons weakened and the region dried out, leaving the prehistoric tribes marooned in a vast desert until eventually they vanished.

Today the region looks like a barren Martian landscape of deep chasms and dramatic cliffs. But this week’s downpour may be a sign of another change in climate — global warming, caused by the greenhouse effect, may pull the African monsoon further north, and once again the Sahara could turn green.

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

LAST Thursday Steve Fossett wrote himself into aviation history by making the first non-stop solo flight around the globe without refuelling.

The venture depended on riding the jet stream, the fast river of wind a few miles high which blows eastwards around the globe and which gave Fossett's flight a crucial 100mph boost.

The first flights that rode the jet stream were made 60 years ago, by the Japanese in the Second World War. Although the jet stream was almost unknown to the Allies, the Japanese realised that high-altitude winds circled the globe and used them to launch huge balloons loaded with incendiary bombs. These so-called “Fugo” balloons floated across the Pacific and were designed to crash after flying approximately 6,200 miles, detonating their explosives in the western forests of America and setting off huge fires which would cause panic and tie up military resources.

Of 9,000 Fugos launched in the winter of 1944-45, about 1,000 landed between Alaska and Texas, but the forests were too wet to set ablaze and little damage was done.

However, the US military authorities feared that the balloons might deliver a chemical or biological attack. Special squads were set up to clear away any evidence of the Fugos and keep eyewitnesses quiet to prevent panic and news filtering back to Japan.

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

IT MAY feel like winter, but this is supposed to be spring in the weather calendar. In fact, the first 10 days of March were the coldest in Britain for eighteen years — for the past four weeks, a block of high pressure has been anchored in the Atlantic around the West of Ireland, helping to drag down cold northerly winds.

After a slight respite last week, colder weather is returning this weekend with biting winds streaming down from the Arctic and the possibility of blizzards over the Scottish Highlands.

But a big change is expected next week — the high pressure disappears and will be replaced by depressions streaming in from the Atlantic. These low-pressure systems will sweep in relatively much warmer air, at least in southern regions of the UK. But the the depressions are loaded with rain, and there is a chance that their weather fronts could become jammed and produce some huge downpours, with the threat of local flooding over northern parts.

“March, many weathers,” goes the old saying, and this month’s weather has lived up to the capricious reputation of a month which is capable of some shocking bursts of cold weather.

In marked contrast, this winter — the three months from December to February — was milder and drier than average for the UK. The overall temperature was around 1.5C (2.4F) above normal, and those glorious conditions brought out early flowers and wildlife.

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

AS THE world grows warmer, a debate is raging about whether malaria will invade new regions, and even reach Britain. The fear is that the malaria parasite and its mosquito carriers will thrive as temperatures rise.

But, as we know from history, malaria can thrive even at low temperatures. In the 1300s England was plunged into a cold, wet period; Chaucer described in The Nun’s Priest’s Tale the “sudden humours hot” and “fever’s pain” of the “ague". The disease was also featured in many of Shakespeare’s plays, such as The Tempest and King John, written in the late 1500s and early 1600s, when the climate was turning so cold that the period later became known as the Little Ice Age.

The malaria of those days was certainly virulent. Oliver Cromwell, who died in 1658, was one of its most famous victims, and the death rate in marsh communities at that time is comparable to that in areas of sub-Saharan Africa today.

It was only in the 1950s that the disease was completely eradicated in England, but that was thanks to drainage and public health measures, and nothing to do with the climate.

So, even if temperatures in the UK continue to rise at their current, alarming rate, the chances of malaria re-establishing itself here are slight, so long as public health, hygiene and vigilance are maintained.

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

THIS week the Sun appears over the horizon at the North Pole for the first time after six months’ darkness, and it will remain light for the next six months. But the early Arctic sunshine also helps to launch an attack on ozone in the atmosphere.

The ozone lies in a layer of the stratosphere about 9-19 miles (15-30km) high and shields the Earth’s surface from much of the sun’s ultraviolet rays. This radiation can cause skin cancer and eye cataracts, and without the ozone layer most life on Earth would perish.

The ozone is attacked by man-made pollution — a key offender is chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) used in fridges. The ozone-depleting chemical reaction needs intense cold and sunlight — conditions which come together after the long, cold Arctic winter — and destroys so much ozone that it creates an “ozone hole”.

This winter temperatures in the Arctic stratosphere hit their lowest levels since records began 50 years ago, probably thanks to global warming. As the surface of the Arctic warms up at a phenomenal rate, the stratosphere is growing colder.

The ozone is now thinnest over Greenland and Iceland, where levels are as much as 40 per cent below normal. Over Britain ozone levels are as much as 20 per cent below their seasonal average — not dangerous to public health but a warning of possible ozone depletion in years to come.

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

A BIZARRE sight recently appeared off the south-east coast of China during cold weather. Mountains appeared over the open sea, with a castle seeming to nestle on the mountain peaks — but there are no mountains or castles in the area, and the sight vanished after three hours.

This was a mirage called a Fata Morgana, named after Morgan le Fay, the legendary half-sister of King Arthur who could fly and change shape. The mirage is created by layers of cold and warm air sandwiched together, and which bend light from images in the far distance, making them appear in the sky. Because the light bends through several layers of air, the images can become distorted into what looks like mountains and castles.

The Arctic is especially famous for Fata Morganas. In 1818 the British explorer John Ross was searching the north coast of Canada for the elusive Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific, and for which Parliament offered a £20,000 reward, a huge sum in those days.

But Ross found his way blocked by peaks looming ahead; he named them the Croker Mountains and returned home discouraged, reporting that no Northwest Passage existed. But a year later his second-in-command, William Parry, retraced the voyage and found no Croker Mountains — he sailed through the Northwest Passage and collected the reward. The mountains were a Fata Morgana.

Link to Weather Eye source

[Methuselah]

Thanks for that, Highcliffe...it's absolutely fascinating what mirages can do...

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

TURN off the heating and shake out your summer clothes — this week’s glorious spell of warm weather looks likely to hold for the weekend over most of Britain.

With temperatures reaching 20C (68F), more typical of late June than mid-March, it is no exaggeration to call this a heatwave. But just how long it will last is difficult to say — March is a transitional month for weather, as winter cold and spring warmth fight it out, the one often ousting the other at bewildering speed.

Chill winds can sweep down from snowfields in Russia and Scandinavia; the seas around Britain are still cold and the sunlight relatively weak despite longer daylight hours. On the other hand, warm air can be imported on winds from the Bahamas or the Sahara.

One of the most dramatic swings in weather happened in March 1965, which began with a big freeze and ended in a sensational heatwave.

On March 3, temperatures sank to -21C (-6F) as blizzards raged over England and drifts 60cm (2ft) deep blocked the centre of Birmingham. But on March 27 the skies cleared and temperatures soared, hitting 25C (77F) at Wakefield, Yorkshire, on the 29th, a record high for March in the UK and only equalled in 1968, in Norfolk.

However, a March heatwave is no guarantee of hot weather later in the year — 1965 had a truly abysmal summer.

Link to the Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

A GREAT flood is under way in Iraq as the Tigris and Euphrates rivers have burst their banks over a vast area.

This might seem remarkable in a region which receives only a few inches of rain a year, but springtime floods are normal, as melting snows in the mountains of eastern Turkey and Iran feed a tremendous surge of water down the two rivers, flooding the plains and fertilising them with silt.

The floods also create southern Iraq’s marshes, an area as large as Wales, and reputed to be the biblical Garden of Eden. These marshes formed part of the Fertile Crescent where early agriculture developed, thus allowing the emergence of the Mesopotamian civilisation 5,000 years ago, when engineers first built great dykes to control the spring floods.

During Saddam Hussein’s regime the marshes were drained to destroy the livelihood of the Marsh Arabs. Dykes and canals were built to stop the floods, and the region became so dry it endured vast duststorms — a phenomenon rarely seen in southern Iraq.

Only about 7 per cent of the original wetlands remains, but now a huge effort is being made to restore them. Dykes are being breached, some of the floodwaters are flowing again, and birds and fish returning.

But serious problems of salination and reduced flow — due to water extraction upstream in central Iraq, Iran and Turkey — still have to be addressed.

Link to Weather Eye source

[johnholmes]

tks for that Ryan, an interesting read.

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

A BEAUTIFUL sight appeared over London early on Saturday morning. The sun shone bright in a sky which was almost completely clear, except for a few “contrails” — the cloud trails left behind by aircraft. One of those contrails was streaked along a short segment by a brilliant spectrum of colours, as if a piece of rainbow were trapped inside it.

Contrails are basically ice crystals created from jet-engine exhaust fumes. If those ice crystals are shaped like six-sided pencils and lined up horizontally, they bend rays of sunlight into a pair of multicoloured “sundogs” either side of the Sun.

However, in Saturday’s spectacle there was only a single sundog because there were too few contrails in the sky to create a pair of them.

Sundogs are so named because they sometimes sport a tail of light pointing upwards, like a dog. They usually form from high, often wispy, streaks of cirrus clouds, usually over about 5,500m (18,000ft).

They are not as rare as you might suppose. Shakespeare certainly knew about them when he wrote in Henry VI — Part 3: “Dazzle mine eyes, or do I see three suns?” asks Edward of his brother Richard, who replies: “Three glorious suns, each one a perfect sun; Not separated with the racking clouds, But sever’d in a pale, clear-shining sky.”

Link to Weather Eye source

[johnholmes]

another nice link there, tks

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

LAST WEEK’s extraordinary flip in our weather was even more dramatic elsewhere in Europe. Arctic conditions had gripped much of the Continent for the first half of the month, with snow on the French Riviera and record-breaking cold in the Netherlands. But last Thursday a heatwave took hold, with Bilbao, Spain, reaching 28C (82F) and Biarritz, southwest France soaring to 25C (77F), way above their seasonal norms of 15C (59F).

For skiers, the sudden burst of heat has come at a heavy price. After magnificent snowfalls between late December and mid-March, many ski resorts were reporting their best conditions for many years; some were even planning to extend their normal season by a week or more, into mid-April. But the soaring temperatures have triggered a thaw, especially on lower slopes, and many of last week’s perfect ski runs are now looking decidedly slushy under scorching sunshine.

In central and eastern Europe, thick snows are thawing so rapidly that there is now a growing threat of flooding. Many rivers in Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic are swollen with surging meltwaters and some have burst their banks already.

However, Afghanistan is suffering far worse. This winter’s snowfall was unusually large and is now melting, but the thaw has coincided with fierce rains. This combination of snowmelt and torrential rainfall has triggered devastating floods, leaving some 200 people dead and thousands homeless.

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

PRING is bursting out in spectacular style across much of Britain. The past week’s warmth has triggered sycamore, horse chestnut and many other trees and shrubs to break open their leaves or blossoms.

The key threshold for spring is when temperatures roughly average over 6C (43F), which triggers many trees and plants into growth. As it takes longer for temperatures to rise in the north than the south of the country, the arrival of spring marches northwards at an average of about 17 miles per day, at sea-level.

Another springtime phenomenon happens across the entire northern hemisphere. The sudden awakening of plant growth each spring is so dramatic that the levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere drop sharply as the new vegetation absorbs huge amounts of carbon dioxide for photosynthesis (the process which turns carbon dioxide into food, using solar energy).

Long-term monitoring of these carbon dioxide levels reveals that in the past 20 years the springtime burst in photosynthesis has begun seven days earlier. This pattern is even stronger in latitudes north of a line running roughly through Boston, Bordeaux and Vladivostok, and is thought to be caused by global warming, stimulating plants to start growing earlier in the year.

The rising temperatures also seem to be responsible for a more vigorous growth of vegetation in spring and in summer across Europe, Asia and North America.

Link to Weather Eye source

[Shiny_Bottom_1]

An amazing piece there Highcliffe.

So many interesting points/POV's:

1) Spring starts when temps average over 6oC

2) The speed of spring moving north (never thought of it like that)

3) The huge drop in CO2 when spring starts

4) How spring has become earlier, according to vegetation/plant growth

I am starting to believe the answers and solutions to GW are out there in nature. But the question is....where?

Anybody fancying sponsering me to do this research? It would probably take me 35-40yrs [taking me into retirement ], starting at a salary of, say, £35K + Car + Laptop + Mobile, with the salary rising at the rate of 50% above inflation?

Any takers ?

[Rollo]

An amazing piece there Highcliffe.

So many interesting points/POV's:

1) Spring starts when temps average over 6oC

2) The speed of spring moving north (never thought of it like that)

3) The huge drop in CO2 when spring starts

4) How spring has become earlier, according to vegetation/plant growth

I am starting to believe the answers and solutions to GW are out there in nature. But the question is....where?

Anybody fancying sponsering me to do this research? It would probably take me 35-40yrs [taking me into retirement  ], starting at a salary of, say, £35K + Car + Laptop + Mobile, with the salary rising at the rate of 50% above inflation?

Any takers  ?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Sounds like a good deal SR..........um,no thanks.

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

WITH the threat of deteriorating conditions this Easter, it is worth remembering that in past years this holiday period has often brought savage weather. Even though Easter can fall as late as April 25, snow at Easter has been more common than a white Christmas over the past 50 years.

Easter 1908 brought a cruel taste of winter. The days leading up to the holiday were bitterly cold, and on Easter Day, April 19, eastern and southern regions were hit by snow and hail. Snow fell again on Easter Monday — although the dire conditions did not deter the great cricketer Dr W. G. Grace from playing his final game at Whitstable, Kent, despite snow on the pitch. The weather after Easter was even worse: a week later spectacular blizzards buried southern England under 2ft (60cm) of snow.

The whitest Easter in recent times struck in 1983, when Arctic winds gripped Britain in an icy embrace. Late on Good Friday — April 1 that year — snow carpeted the hills of northeast England and the north Midlands, spreading southwards the next day. By Easter morning, London and the South East lay under a blanket of snow, 8in (20cm) deep on the hills around Dover and leaving many roads in Kent blocked. The following day temperatures soared and most of the snow thawed, bringing different problems as the torrents of meltwater triggered flooding.

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

THERE are growing concerns that parts of England are heading for a drought this summer (The Times, March 22 and 25). Large areas of southern and eastern England have not had a prolonged spell of rain since October, and despite the snow and rain in early March, the rest of the month has turned dry again.

Southeast England is running 40 per cent below its normal rainfall for March, with little chance of the deficit being made up before April.

The need for rain is particularly urgent because the recent warm spell has prompted trees to break their buds and come into leaf. That new vegetation is about to lose huge volumes of water by transpiration, as the leaves evaporate water and suck up groundwater from the tree roots — a full-grown oak tree can transpire about 100 gallons (455 litres) of water a day.

Because many regions of southern and eastern England extract their water from underground aquifers, any shortages in groundwater are critical.

In contrast, most western and northern areas of Britain have been drenched in rains this winter. Their water supplies are largely held in big reservoirs which are now brimming.

In theory there could be enough spare capacity to help out the dry regions, but the costs of pumping the excess water are prohibitive. The only affordable alternative, it seems, is for people in the dry South to cut their water use.

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

IN SOME of Britain’s deepest lakes there lives a relic of the last Ice Age — the Arctic char, a cousin of trout and salmon, and our oldest native fish.

When the ice sheets retreated in Britain several thousand years ago, they left behind new, icy-cold lakes which the Arctic char quickly colonised. But as the British climate slowly warmed, the Arctic char was squeezed out because it needs waters colder than 7C (45F) in which to spawn. Today it lies marooned in only a few deep, cold lakes in Wales, the Lake District and Scotland.

These last British outposts of the fish are now threatened by rapid changes in climate. Windermere, the only place in Britain where anglers fish for Arctic char, has grown significantly warmer since the 1990s. Although the fish usually lives deep in colder water, parts of the lake are suffering from lack of oxygen at depth and the Arctic char is being forced up into warmer, better aerated waters. This makes it vulnerable: only a small rise in water temperatures could push it to extinction. The same may be true elsewhere, but information is lacking.

However, global warming is offering opportunities for the Arctic char elsewhere. In the far north of Alaska and Canada, glaciers are retreating fast, leaving behind new icy-cold lakes which the Arctic char is rapidly invading.

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

IN A bizarre move to celebrate the building of the Titanic, a project in Northern Ireland plans to tow an iceberg from Norway into the Belfast shipyard where the liner was built.

The Titanic was launched on April 2, 1912, and was hailed as “unsinkable” by her owners, White Star. But only 13 days later she sank with the loss of 1,503 lives after hitting an iceberg in calm waters in the North Atlantic, off the Grand Banks of Canada.

However, the Titanic’s fatal collision with an iceberg inspired an astonishing project in the Second World War, and one which was backed fully by Winston Churchill — to make aircraft carriers out of icebergs. Not only are icebergs far tougher than ships, they are practically bomb-proof, as was soon discovered when attempts were made to bomb bergs in shipping lanes to destruction.

The plan was to hollow out the centre of an iceberg for living quarters, hangars and maintenance workshops, and flatten the top as a landing strip for aircraft. The entire craft would have been 2,000ft long, with walls 50ft thick, and would have weighed around two million tons. A model of the iceberg carrier was built in 1943 on a lake in Canada but the costs were so astronomical that the project was dropped.

Perhaps the best use for icebergs is by a Canadian company which makes vodka from their meltwater.

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

CLIMATE change is melting many mountain glaciers across the world.

The Swiss are so alarmed at the loss of their glaciers that they plan to try to save part of the Gurschen glacier at the ski resort of Andermatt. In May a sheet of foil-backed plastic will be laid over 3,000sq m (slightly smaller than a football pitch) of the glacier, which is retreating by about 5m each year. The foam will insulate the glacier from the blazing summer sun. Other Alpine resorts are considering using similar shields to protect their pistes, and they will be monitoring the experiment closely.

An even more ambitious plan to slow global warming is being developed by scientists. The idea is to cool the Earth by turning clouds into powerful heat shields. The proposal is to inject sea salt into low-level stratocumulus clouds. The tiny particles of salt would encourage more water droplets to form in the clouds, making the cloud tops more reflective and so bounce more of the Sun’s heat back into space.

The big problem is injecting the salt into the clouds, but one ingenious idea is being developed at Edinburgh University. Unmanned yachts across the world’s seas would use high- frequency generators to convert seawater into a fine mist of tiny salt particles, which would rise and eventually get sucked into the low clouds.

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

THIS month looks as if it will close on a soggy and dismal note, living up to an old folklore reputation that March borrows its last three days from April.

In Ireland these borrowed days come from a legend about the brindled cow, which complained about the harshness of March weather. But the month of March claimed to be mild-mannered and borrowed a few wet and stormy days from April to teach the cow a lesson.

In England the borrowed days are supposed to bring a bitter taste of winter, with frost, sleet and snow, as well as rain. This is why the spell is also called the “blackthorn winter”, a cold snap around the time that blackthorn bushes come into blossom.

In fact across much of Europe the end of March has a bleak folklore reputation, and there may be something in this. The spell from March 28 to April 1 is often swept by wet depressions, the first of a series of chilly, wet outbreaks through April and early May.

At least this year’s borrowed days have brought welcome rain to the parched lands of southern and eastern England, although the month’s rainfalls for these regions will probably be just below average. And despite the dramatic snows in the first half of March, the month’s temperatures across the UK are likely to be a touch above the norm.

Link to Wather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

“IF MARCH comes in like a lion, it will go out like a lamb,” goes the folklore saying. This suggests windy, wet weather at the beginning of the month and fine and settled at the end. But the proverb also hints at the transitional nature of March, starting in winter and ending in spring — and it certainly lived up to its reputation this year, beginning in an icy cold grip and departing on a mild but soggy note.

It was the coldest first week of March since 1971, with heavy snow in many areas. But mid-way through the month spring burst out in a remarkable heatwave, reaching 21.6C (70.9F) at Wisley, Surrey, on March 19, a UK record for that date. That balmy weather boosted the UK average temperature for the month to about 1C above normal. But despite the late warmth, March was thoroughly dull, with sunshine figures well below average.

The other big talking point was the dryness. England and Wales had another significant shortfall in rain, but the dry southeast and east of England fared better, and this week’s downpours boosted their month’s rainfall to only slightly below average.

The rainfall from November to March was the lowest in England and Wales for 61 years. This was caused largely by long bouts of anticyclones in the Atlantic batting away many of our usual wet depressions.

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

THE virtuoso Italian sculptor and goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini (1500­-71) was not noted for his modesty

“An aureole of glory has rested on my head,” he claimed, confirming his belief that he was a genius. “This [halo] is visible to every sort of men to whom I have chosen to point it out.”

While Cellini’s immodesty did not exactly endear him to all his contemporaries — who no doubt detected a big head rather than a sign of holiness — all us can see our heads surrounded by a halo. We need only to do as Cellini did and walk on a dew-drenched lawn in the morning sunshine.

Look at your shadow and you should see a faint glow appearing around your head; sometimes this halo can be quite bright and even have a touch of colour in it.

The spectacle is known as Heiligenschein from the German word for halo, literally “saintly light”. The drops of dew behave like tiny lenses, focusing sunlight onto the blades of grass they sit on and then reflecting it back as bright pinpricks of light. With hundreds of such dew drop reflections, the whole effect adds up to a Heiligenschein.

Cellini’s claim that his halo was visible to others was also misleading — in fact it is difficult to see someone else’s halo, because your eyes have to be in an almost straight line between the sun and the reflected light from the dew drops.

Link to Weather Eye source