Global Warming News - Mar 2008

Real News Stories To Share With Global-Warming Skeptics

EUROPE:
Hopes of an end to winter and the arrival of spring as March got under way, were dashed in Northern Ireland as a sharp cold snap hit during the first week of the month. Severe weather and heavy snow accompanied plummeting temperatures.


Tulloch, Scotland - Mar 3
In Scotland, the wintry weather hit the country in the early hours of March 3rd, with blizzard conditions reported, particularly in the west. Snow affected Argyll, Ayrshire, Dumfries and Galloway, along with parts of the north west Highlands and the Western Isles. Police issued safety warnings to motorists about the poor conditions.

During the same period, the rest of Europe faced storms that were characterized by high winds -- in some cases at hurricane-strength. The death toll rose to 10 as people were killed by falling objects. Two were killed in Poland, where winds reached 60 MPH. Two were killed in Germany, and another two in the Czech Republic. Four were killed in Austria, where wind gusts were clocked as high as 100 MPH.


Cairngorm, Scotland, mid-March
In general, March weather in Europe was milder than normal. This was due to an area of high pressure which persisted over the continent throughout most of the month. The unusual weather pattern is believed to have contributed in part to the unusually bad weather in China. NOAA is investigating the phenomenon. Despite the mild weather however, wind storms pummeled the UK, Ireland and Scotland at least two more times during the month, with snow being reported in the northerly areas and higher elevations.

The surprise came at the end of the month, when an "arctic blast" dropped temperatures on March 22nd. With gusts reaching as high as 60mph and snow settling in parts of the country, forecasters described the conditions as "unseasonably" cold and windy. Heavy snowfalls and icy temperatures over the Easter weekend forced the Queen to abandon her usual Sunday service walkabout.


Easter morning - Leeds, UK
The bad weather also triggered an overnight rescue on Scafell Pike, England's highest mountain. A Belgian skipper was lost overboard from his trawler in the Channel as gales and sleet swept in from the Atlantic, and drivers were warned to travel as little as possible in north-east England, North Yorkshire and the Peak District. Major routes including the trans-Pennine A66 were closed for two nights running and faced further disruption from snow (when the article was written). The Easter snow arrived "really suddenly", according to North Yorkshire police. A spokesman for the force said that conditions rapidly became "horrendous - the worst I can remember for a long time".

Three walkers attempting the Three Peaks charity challenge - climbing Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon within 24 hours - were helped down from Scafell Pike in the Lake District after sending a distress call at 4am. Volunteers from Wasdale mountain rescue team found the group trying to shelter from heavy snowfall high on the 978-metre (3,209ft) mountain. The trio were brought down safe and well. Rescuers had to be rescued themselves in Cumbria, where two ambulances were freed by mountain rescue teams from roads blocked by snowdrifts near Sedbergh. High winds added to the weekend's wintery feel, with gusts of between 40mph and 50mph across much of Britain, reaching a peak of 60mph recorded at Berry Head in south Devon. Temperatures dropped to a low of 4C, compared with an average of 7-11C at this time of the year.


Snowy fields following UK Easter snowfall
Afghanistan:
At the beginning of March, the Afghan winter toll was finally becoming known. Almost 2,000 people had been killed from the unprecedented severe cold weather since December. Most of the roads to remote areas were still cut off by avalanches from the mountains, especially in the central, north-eastern and western provinces of Afghanistan. Cattle were not spared either as almost 235,000 succumbed to the severe winter. [Editor's Note: Other sources report as many as 316,000 livestock deaths.]

"Many villages have been destroyed under the mountain of snow," said Abdullah Shariat Kakar, an Afghan diplomat in Kuala Lumpur. About 300 people, including 90 in western Afghanistan, had their limbs amputated due to frostbite. "The victims of frostbite are increasing every day and most have had their fingers and toes amputated," Abdullah said.


Afghan child suffering from frostbite
"In my living memory, I’ve never seen such a destructive freezing, snowing winter," said the 52-year-old Abdullah. The situation was made worse by high prices for food and basic items in local markets. Abdullah hoped the Muslims would join hands to assist the affected Afghans who were in dire need of basic humanitarian aid such as tents, foodstuff, winter clothing, medicine and blankets.

The country began bracing for the coming of spring and the danger of severe flooding with the melting of snow. Preparations were underway to head off the worst with more than 540,000 sandbags and thousands of other barriers brought to the affected areas to provide protection to vulnerable communities, although this was difficult as some areas could not be reached until after the snow began to melt.

According to a BBC article dated March 9th, the UK pledged £3million for Afghan food aid to help meet growing food shortages in Afghanistan. The money was to be given to a joint United Nations and Afghan government appeal for £40m in food aid. The International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander said, "Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world, and least able to cope with spiralling food prices combined with severe winter weather." Fortunately, temperatures moderated later in the month.

China:
Bad news continued to come out of China, where the winter weather has been called "a calamity" by the Chinese government. In southeastern China's worst winter in 5 decades, nearly a tenth of China's forests were seriously damaged by the weather. The following excerpts from the journal SCIENCE, dated March 7th, were found HERE.

From delicate orchids and magnolias to rare Chinese yews and Kwangtung pines, the flora of Guangdong Nanling National Nature Reserve is considered so precious that ecologists call the reserve "a treasure trove of species." But winter storms have reduced the biological hot spot to a splintered ruin. Snow, sleet, and ice laid waste to 90% of the 58,000-hectare reserve's forests, says He Kejun, director of the Guangdong Forestry Administration in Guangzhou.

Nanling Reserve is one of scores of fragile ecosystems, from Anhui Province in the east to Guangdong Province in the south, that took a beating from storms in late January and early February that set records for snowfall and low temperatures in some areas. Last week, China's State Forestry Administration (SFA) announced that the storms damaged 20.86 million hectares - one-tenth of China's forests and plantations - roughly equivalent to the number of hectares that were reforested between 2003 and 2006. SFA pegs the losses at $8 billion. "The severe storms did a massive amount of harm," says Li Jianqiang, a plant taxonomist at Wuhan Botanical Garden. "This scale of damage has never happened before." He Kejun and others say it will take decades for the hardest-hit ecosystems to recover. The ecological and economic toll rivals that of the devastating floods along the Yangtze River in 1998 that inundated 25 million hectares of farmland...


In southeastern China's worst winter in 5 decades, snow and ice knocked out power and paralyzed roads and rail lines at the height of the year’s busiest travel season - the Spring Festival, when many Chinese return to their hometowns. The storms pummeled 21 of 33 provinces and regions, claiming 129 lives. Some 485,000 homes were destroyed and another 1.6 million damaged, displacing nearly 1.7 million people, according to central government statistics. Agriculture officials estimate that 69 million livestock - mostly chickens and ducks - froze to death. Storm-related losses exceed $21 billion.

Meanwhile, outside the spotlight, an ecological calamity was unfolding. In Jiangxi Province, for example, entire bamboo forests were reduced to matchsticks. Exotic species were harmed more than native species... In northern Guangdong Province, plantations of slash pine (Pinus elliottii), an import from the southern United States, splintered under wet snow... Nanling's entire forest between 500 meters and 1300 meters in elevation was wiped out... Nanling Reserve is one of scores that took a beating from storms... In Guangdong, officials estimate that more than 700,000 hectares of forest and plantations are damaged severely... Other provinces enduring extensive forest damage are Anhui, Guangxi, Guizhou, Hubei, Hunan, and Sichuan.

United States:
In Minnesota, March began with temperatures above the freezing mark, but the cold air that was in place since late January settled back in, dropping temperatures to below average. Lows were in the single digits and highs were in the upper teens and low 20s during the first week of March. The average high for that time of year is 34 degrees and the average low is 18 degrees.

In Michigan, snow was reported at the end of the month. See pictures taken on March 23rd and March 28th...


Easter Bunny - Vicksburg, MI - Mar 23


Battle Creek, MI - Mar 28
According to the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Assoication (NOAA), 2007-2008 was the coolest winter in 7 years for the U.S. The average temperature across the contiguous U.S. during climatological winter (December 2007-February 2008) was the coolest since 2001, according to scientists at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. In the contiguous United States, the average winter temperature was 33.2°F (0.6°C), which was 0.2°F (0.1°C) above the 20th century average - yet still ranks as the coolest since 2001. It was the 54th coolest winter since national records began in 1895.

In terms of winter precipitation, Pacific storms, bringing heavy precipitation to large parts of the West, produced high snowpack that will provide welcome runoff this spring. Winter precipitation was much above average from the Midwest to parts of the West, notably Kansas, Colorado and Utah. During January alone, 170 inches of snow fell at the Alta ski area near Salt Lake City, Utah, more than twice the normal amount for the month, eclipsing the previous record of 168 inches that fell in 1967. At the end of February, seasonal precipitation for the 2008 Water Year, which began on October 1, 2007, was well above average over much of the West. Mountain snowpack exceeded 150 percent of average in large parts of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Oregon at the end of February.

Record February precipitation in the Northeast helped make the winter the fifth wettest on record for the region. New York had its wettest winter, while Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Vermont, and Colorado to the West, had their second wettest. Snowfall was above normal in northern New England, where some locations posted all-time record winter snow totals. Concord, NH, received 100.1 inches, which was 22.1 inches above the previous record set during the winter of 1886-87. Burlington, VT, received 103.2 inches, which was 6.3 inches above the previous record set during the winter of 1970-71.


Global:
According to the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Assoication (NOAA), 2007-2008 was the coolest winter in 7 years for the
entire planet. The presence of a moderate-to-strong La Niña contributed to an average global temperature that was the coolest since the La Niña episode of 2000-2001. While analyses of the causes of the severe winter storms in southern China continues, NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory scientists are focusing on the presence of unusually strong, persistent high pressure over Eastern Europe, combined with low pressure over Southwest Asia. This pattern directed a series of storms across the region, while northerly low level flow introduced cold air from Mongolia. Record Northern Hemisphere snow cover extent in January was followed by above average snow cover for the month of February.

Scientific Opinion:
Prominent hurricane forecaster Dr. William M. Gray, a professor at Colorado State University, told the audience at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change on March 4th in New York that a natural cycle of ocean water temperatures related to the salinity (the amount of salt) in ocean water was responsible for some global warming that has taken place. However, he said that same cycle means a period of global cooling would begin within 10 years.


Dr. William M. Gray
"We should begin to see cooling coming on," Gray said. "I'm willing to make a big financial bet on it. In 10 years, I expect the globe to be somewhat cooler than it is now, because this ocean effect will dominate over the human-induced CO2 effect and I believe the solar effect and the land-use effect. I think this is likely bigger."

Gray criticized NASA scientist and global warming alarmist James Hansen, calling him "the most egregious abuser" of data. According to Gray, Hansen's alarmism is exaggerated because the models he uses to predict the increase in global warming count on too much water vapor in the atmosphere.

On March 14th, John Coleman, founder of the Weather Channel said he wanted to sue Al Gore for fraud, hoping that a legal case will settle the global-warming debate once and for all. Coleman, who founded the cable network in 1982, suggests suing proponents of global warming for fraud, including Al Gore, and companies that sell carbon credits. "Is he committing financial fraud? That is the question," Coleman said. Coleman has long been a skeptic of global warming, and carbon dioxide is the linchpin to his argument. "Does carbon dioxide cause a warming of the atmosphere? The proponents of global warming pin their whole piece on that," he said.

Since we can't get a debate, I thought perhaps if we had a legal challenge and went into a court of law, where it was our scientists and their scientists, and all the legal proceedings with the discovery and all their documents from both sides and scientific testimony from both sides, we could finally get a good solid debate on the issue... I'm confident that the advocates of 'no significant effect from carbon dioxide' would win the case.

Duffy & Marohasy

And according to Jennifer Marohasy, a biologist and senior fellow of Australia's Melbourne-based think tank - the Institute of Public Affairs - global warming has either plateaued or declined, depending on your point of reference. She was interviewed on March 17th by Michael Duffy, co-host of 'Counterpoint', on Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Radio National. Here is an excerpt...

Duffy: "Is the Earth still warming?"

Marohasy: "No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you'd expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years."

Duffy: "Is this a matter of any controversy?"

Marohasy: "Actually, no. The head of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has actually acknowledged it. He talks about the apparent plateau in temperatures so far this century. So he recognises that in this century, over the past eight years, temperatures have plateaued... This is not what you'd expect, as I said, because if carbon dioxide is driving temperature then you'd expect that, given carbon dioxide levels have been continuing to increase, temperatures should be going up... So (it's) very unexpected, not something that's being discussed..."

Read more HERE.