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At least 10 people died of cold in Poland. Night temperatures in Russia plunged to minus 30C.
Normally milder Greece has witnessed temperatures of minus 15C in the north where an Afghan migrant died of cold last week and roads were closed.
In Athens, the temperature failed to rise above 0C and several of the islands were covered in snow.
BBC Weather report about why the cold is so intense.
The extreme winter weather that has gripped Europe in the past days has caused more than a dozen deaths, left villages cut off, caused power and water outages, frozen rivers and lakes, grounded flights and led to road accidents. Serbia's authorities on Sunday banned river traffic on its stretch of the Danube — one of Europe's main rivers — because of ice and strong wind.
[...] In Italy, eight deaths were blamed on the cold, including a man who died in the basement of an unused building in Milan, and another one on a street flanking Florence's Arno River. [Pope] Francis asked God to "warm our hearts so we'll help" the homeless.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 11 2017, @11:09PM
Scientists predicted the climate will change. Even though some people try to deny it, here it is.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 11 2017, @11:17PM
This was the weather we've had here in the 80's every winter. If anything this is a temporary return to normality.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 11 2017, @11:23PM
> This was the weather we've had here in the 80's every winter.
Yeah, 'here' in North Dakota.
Europe, OTOH, no so much.
Meanwhile in the US deep south, average lows are 20°F above normal (normal low of 31°F, forecast lows of 50-55°F) for at least the next week.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ikanreed on Wednesday January 11 2017, @11:40PM
You understand that Europe is mostly in the same latitudes as Canada, right? That the southern US aligns better with Morroco and Tunisia?
Most of Europe has, for the better part of a couple millennia, had outlier temperatures for its latitude/altitude? Britain, in particular has been far far warmer than it should be. Most of this is attributed, by climatologists, to the thermohaline circulation(i.e. the Gulf Stream in this particular case).
Now to provoke the annoying replies: climate change has been expected to cause seasonal shifts in the flow-rate and location of the thermohaline since at least the late 90s, and observational evidence that that was happening began accumulating last decade. It is expected in the next decade for Europe to become a lot more Siberia/Canada-like.
As with a lot of climate change things, it's easy to miss the decadal shifts in the inter-annual noise, and so "blaming" climate change for this isolated event is a bit like blaming a deck missing a 2 of clubs for you drawing an ace of spades.
(Score: 3, Informative) by dlb on Thursday January 12 2017, @12:03AM
As with a lot of climate change things, it's easy to miss the decadal shifts in the inter-annual noise...
True. No reputable scientist has stated that climate changed can cause a specific change in weather. What the current conclusion of science is stating is that climate change will steadily increase the likelihood of such things happening.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 12 2017, @01:12AM
Why are you comparing the american south with europe?
GO back and read the post you are responding to. Read it harder.
Are un familiar with the concept that climate change causes increased variability, not uniform change?
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday January 12 2017, @01:27AM
None of the literature I've read suggests increased variability(specifically interannual or intraannual), but you know, there's a wealth of information out there, so odds are I missed the memo on that one. Would you be so kind as to provide a citation?
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Thursday January 12 2017, @03:45PM
The tie is between climate change and extreme weather events. These ties are faring about as well as the rest of the climate change stuff:
- "2007: We predict more and/or stronger hurricanes" [nationalgeographic.com] Darn, it didn't happen [noaa.gov].
- 2007: We predict more and stronger tornadoes [pnas.org] Darn, it didn't happen [noaa.gov].
- 2007: We predict more droughts and more flooding [www.ipcc.ch] Darn, it didn't happen [noaa.gov]; if you want to go back more than 20 years, then an analysis of the last 1200 years says it didn't happen [nature.com].
Apparently attempting to answer this great predictive record, one paper writes: "The lack of certainty in the state of the science does not equate with a lack of risk, since risk is based on possibility." In other words, "because we have no clue, it's fine for us to make doomsday predictions".
Warmer is better than colder - I'd rather live today than in the Little Ice Age.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday January 12 2017, @04:26PM
I just ran the linear regressions on that first link's dataset. There's absolutely a p Why the fuck did you just lie to me?
No, seriously, why did you just lie? What the hell do you get out of saying one thing when your own data says something different?
I don't really want to go any further with clicking your stupid-ass links, because fuck you for being so goddamn intellectually lazy as to not even check whether what you were saying matched what they said. Fuck your cult-of-ignorance. Fuck your laziness. Fuck your condescending bullshit. I shouldn't have to check whether what you're saying is true. You should do that to your own statements, you stupid, dishonest lying shithead.
In summary: fuck you.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday January 12 2017, @04:30PM
Well, I will apologize for letting a stray < turn into something that ate a paragraph about how I analyzed your data, and not using preview.
But I won't apologize for calling your dishonest bullshit bullshit. Or saying fuck you. Both of those are still entirely deserved.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Thursday January 12 2017, @09:40PM
Geez, calm down, you'll give yourself ulcers...
From your, um, explosion it's not entirely clear which data set you're talking about. I'll assume you mean the first one.
Is there a trend over the course of the whole data? Maybe, I didn't check, because that's not important. What's important is this: anyone can look in the past with 100% accuracy. Gee, wow, there appears to be a trend. Let's make predictions!
Predictions are what science is all about. The reason I chose all those 2007 articles is that they all lie 10 years in the past, and they all forecast gloom and doom for the future. Look at the data since 2007. The predictions of doom were wrong.
In the data set that so upsets you: look at the "hurricanes" column, the average over the 10 years leading up to 2007 was 8.1. The average of all years since 2007 was 6.5. You can parse the data in lots of different ways, but one thing remains almost unalterable: The years since the prediction were made have shown relatively few hurricanes, of unexceptional intensity.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by art guerrilla on Thursday January 12 2017, @12:09PM
yep, la florida here, and we have not had much of our 'normal' winter weather/temps, set a local record (85) a week or so ago (previous record for that day was 2015)... literally, have not turned the heat on so far this season, when it normally would have been on a month or so back... mid-upper 70's when it should be low 60's; 50's at night when it should be about 35-40...
i'm certain it is just some -you know- rogue weather, not any sort of indication of larger climate change at all...
say gang, let's all keep whistling past the graveyard ! ! !
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 12 2017, @12:31PM
Pretty normal winter in Helsinki: ie. minimum temperatures going below -20C but not -30C.
We've had a couple of crazy warm winters during past few years with temperature not hitting -20C at all so if you compare to those, it's cold, but those aren't (yet) the norm.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Unixnut on Thursday January 12 2017, @12:19AM
> Scientists predicted the climate will change. Even though some people try to deny it, here it is.
Isn't that a bit like predicting the the sun will rise tomorrow? The climate has been changing before humans existed, I suspect it will change after humans have ceased to exist on earth. Nothing in the universe is static, it is always changing.
The only thing crazier in my mind than people predicting the obvious, is that there are people out there that will deny the obvious.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 12 2017, @01:13AM
One issue with the climate change idea is that they take the average of an ensemble of models, all making different predictions from one another, and based on different contradictory assumptions.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 12 2017, @08:43PM
We're all going to die too, so why the big deal about killing a few fetuses or nuking the odd town? Shit just happens.