Right now as I write in Germany we are having nice comfortable summer weather with temps in the 20s C (70s F). But that is set to change today as a couple of hot days are in store. Here’s the forecast for my area:
North Germany is set for a very brief heat wave (1 day!). Source: www.wetter24.de
So this heat wave they are talking about is going to be a whole one and half days long, at least in the area I live. I think this is not even long enough to qualify it as a “heat wave”. Granted for Southern and Eastern German areas the forecasts indicates much warmer temperatures. Here’s the forecast for Munich:
Munich forecast: Source: www.wetter24.de
But this is not something you wouldn’t expect to happen here in the summertime. Yet, llistening to the media and some climate scientists, you’d think the world is coming to an end, that the heat waves are more and more frequent than ever, and that Europe will soon burn up.
For example Express.de here warns of “horror heat”.
With all the heat in the headlines, we ask ourselves just how has 2013 been so far in Germany? Surely it will probably go down in the books as “one of the hottest on record!“.
Looking at the end of month reports from Germany’s DWD Deutsche Wetterdienst (German Weather Service), we find the monthly anomalies as to the 1981 – 2010 reference period. They are as follows:
January: -0.3°C
February: -1.8°C
March: -4.1°C
April: -0.1°C
May: -1.3°C
June: 0.0°C
July: +1.5°C
The average anomaly is -0.87°C, i.e. almost a full degree below normal. Only July was warmer than normal this year.
So tell me what has been more frequent this year, heat waves or cold snaps? It may turn out that we’ll get a few warm months and wind up with an average year, or even one that is a bit warmer than normal. This is because we have a factor out there that we used to call “weather”.
One thing is sure: Europe is not burning up.
What counts as a heat wave in Germany?
I (now) know that lessons are cancelled in schools when the temperature gets to 26⁰C; about the same temperature when lots of Australians stop feeling cold. 😉
School where my kids went get cancelled for the day when the temperature reaches 25°C by 10 am. But I’ve seen days called when the temperature was 24°C at 10 am. I don’t know what the official definition is, but for the media it looks like a heat wave is anytime that’s over 20°C.
When my kid went to school, the director of the school was the one who measured the temperature to decide whether to release the kids.
He measured in his office; the only office with A/C.
The temperature picture has been much the same in the UK.
The weak solar cycle 24 has kicked in since 2008 and the solar experts expect the decline to continue on into the next cycle 25 and the next decade.
The Central England Temperature record gains since from 1970 – 2000 coincided well with three active solar cycles 21 – 22 – 23. This period of high level solar activity matched the great Global Warming scare.
Since the year 2000 a change has occurred: the CET record shows a marked reduction from its high levels loosing all the gains that it has made since 1850, even though at the same time CO2 levels have escalated further to ~400ppmv. And CET winter December – March temperatures have shown a significant loss -1.45°C in the last 12 years of since 2000.
However a further more extreme escalation of the temperature decline appears to have occurred in the first half of 2013. In these first six months CET temperatures were on average 1.89°C lower than the monthly averages of the previous 12 years. That has been a massive loss leading to significant crop failures and serious loss of agricultural productivity. The effect has been mirrored in both hemispheres.
Global Warming advocates only ever propose solutions for the control of Global Warming, (overheating), by reducing CO2 emissions. However the climate is presently changing, (as it continues to do naturally), to a colder phase, probably because of reducing solar activity and changes of ocean circulation patterns.
Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming advocates fail to explain how reduction of man-made atmospheric CO2 can ever can help to control Climate Change towards a cooling world.
Having made so many dire predictions of the impending adverse climate catastrophes from overheating, Global Warming / Climate Change advocates fail to accept that a climate change towards a cooler climate is more likely to lead to more intense adverse weather. However there is good reason to expect this, simply because the energy differential between the poles and the tropics is bound to be greater and that in itself leads to less stable atmospheric conditions.
A cooling world as the Northern Hemisphere seen in the years since 2000 leads to much more dire consequences for the biosphere and for mankind than any realistic amount of warming that could ever arise from man-made CO2 emissions. Cold is a much greater threat than any moderate amount of additional warmth that could result from greater release of Man-made CO2.
National policy makers and the United Nations are neither recognizing nor are they preparing for the eventuality.
But throughout this period CO2 levels have been increasing.
The cooling climate could well last for many decades or even centuries.
With a quietening sun, changing ocean circulation patterns and the present evidence of much colder winter weather in both Hemispheres, that cooling could already be upon us.
Perhaps its the sun and planetary mechanics that control the world’s climate.
“A very interesting paper published in Energy and Environment has found that the Earth’s actual surface (as opposed to the air temperature 1.5-2m above it) has been cooling since at least 1982, according to data from the European METEOSAT satellite observation platform, which is in a geostationary orbit above the equator on the Greenwich Meridian. The authors think this is due to increased cloudiness. They point out that the UAH satellite data processed by John Christy also showed a cooling of the troposphere in the 1980′s until ‘adjustments’ were applied to the original computations. It’s a very readable paper, reprinted from the E&E Journal,”
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/08/03/rosema-et-al-global-cooling-of-earths-surface-since-1982/