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Tim Palmer, a climate scientist and professor at the University of Oxford in the U.K., has published a somewhat controversial Perspective piece in the journal Science. In it, he theorizes that heavy thunderstorms in the western tropical Pacific (due to global warming) this past winter caused changes to the flow pattern of the jet stream, which resulted in the "polar vortex" that chilled the northern part of North America for the first four months of 2014. The winter of 2014 was cold in the U.S., of that there was no doubt. Subzero temperatures became the norm and heating bills skyrocketed. At the time, very few who experienced it were blaming it on global warming, but that may very well have been the cause anyway, Palmer suggests--despite the fact that global temperatures haven't been rising lately.
The abstract (and link to paywalled journal article) can be found at: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6186/803
(Score: 2, Informative) by Magic Oddball on Sunday May 25 2014, @03:19AM
I don't know how other West Coast states fared, but California had an unusually dry, warm winter once again, and AFAIK the Lake Tahoe region of the Sierra Mountains was also affected. It's not surprising either way, though: from what I recall reading, the immediate effect of global warming will be to make the weather more extreme rather than merely warmer.
(Score: 4, Funny) by LookIntoTheFuture on Sunday May 25 2014, @03:45AM
Well, I can say that this winter, near Chicago it was very cold indeed. While walking out to my car to go to work, I actually saw one of my testicles tumble from my pant leg. Froze right off.
(Score: 2) by evilviper on Sunday May 25 2014, @10:29AM
It's a BS statement. "More extreme" could mean any damn thing someone wants, and they can pick and choose after-the-fact which weather was "extreme" and which was not.
I know the highest recorded air temperature on earth was set back in 1913 in Death Valley, CA, and global warming hasn't put a dent in it yet. I know we hear about "record" temperatures all the time, but it's always a ridiculously specific high or low for a specific day, in a specific zip code, since they started recording that kind of minutia just 40 years ago at best. It's the kind of "records" that computers can easily spit out, but human beings don't give a crap about.
And in California, the winter of 2014 was incredibly, unusually mild... Is that "extreme" too? I'm pretty sure the definition of the word is diametrically opposed to that usage... And don't forget the projected quiet hurricane season.
Seems like a good change to me... A hundred meter rise in sea level would turn my mountain-top cabin into a pacific island getaway off the coast of California, and turn my cheap property into prime beachfront real-estate.
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday May 25 2014, @08:10PM
There's an official WX (weather recording station) a few miles from me that always shows amazingly warm temps in midwinter, no matter how cold is the rest of Montana. When I finally got round to checking that station's exact location, I found it was directly ON the bank (less than six feet from the water) of the Jefferson River, which at that point is big enough to be a serious local heatsink (and seldom freezes entirely). Well, no wonder that WX says it's 32 degrees even when just 10 miles away it's -20...
I've read of some that are on the edges of asphalt parking lots. Draw your own conclusions.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Informative) by broken on Sunday May 25 2014, @10:22PM
I conclude that you are a global warming denier since you latch on to even exceedingly weak counterarguments and publish them in an apparent attempt to spread doubt on the scientific theory. The "thermometers are poorly positioned" attempt to disprove global warming has been thoroughly debunked [skepticalscience.com].
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Reziac on Sunday May 25 2014, @10:36PM
When I know firsthand where one is that produces anomalous readings, it doesn't surprise me that there are worse.... call me a heretic if you like (it's more accurate than 'denier').
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Informative) by zsau on Monday May 26 2014, @05:04AM
It produces accurate readings for its site. The river hasn't suddenly changed course by ten miles has it? So it's not yielding any diachronic error that would need to be addressed. No-one cares about the absolute temperature of the earth, only what the trend is. Is there a trend? up? down?
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday May 28 2014, @12:23AM
It's perfectly accurate, but it's anomalous. If you put all the WX stations along the river, climate researchers could conclude Montana has no winter.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1) by zsau on Wednesday May 28 2014, @10:25AM
It wouldn't. The trend between "unknown temperature" and "zero degrees Celsius" is "unknown". Climate researchers know this. They also know that rivers, cities, oceans etc. have localised effects on nearby land temperatures. Your site doesn't disprove global warming.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday May 28 2014, @12:55PM
No, but the total mass of data does disprove it... if you stop cherrypicking only the most recent century (except for those pesky most-recent 15 years, of course) and realise that the total record has always gone up and down like a yoyo, and that we're presently in an unusually warm bit of an extended cold snap, expected to become another ice age within 1000 years or so. Ice ages are not good. Warming is better, if you want to keep eating.
Personally I think the AGW crowd -- the very definition of "useful idiots" -- have fallen into an "Earth First" type trap, which looks like sound environmental policy on the surface, but could have the "unintended consequence" of human extinction: Just two degrees of cooling could plunge the globe into a permanent ice age. Yet there are scientists who want to do cloud seeding to cool the planet.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by dry on Sunday May 25 2014, @07:07PM
Here in SW BC it was another warm dry winter, many days without rain and only a couple of inches of snow here where normal is more like a foot or 2 of snow. Cold wet spring with more snow in March then all winter. This has been the pattern for the last 4 years and if it follows the late summer will be hot and dry again. :)
Thing is there has always been cycles and its hard to judge if it is just another warm cycle or more extreme due to climate change and I don't have the skills or data to judge what is normal.
Now to stare at the rain