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The bitter winter afflicting much of the Northern Hemisphere is only the start of a global trend towards cooler weather that is likely to last for 20 or 30 years, say some of the world’s most eminent climate scientists.

Their predictions – based on an analysis of natural cycles in water temperatures in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans – challenge some of the global warming orthodoxy’s most deeply cherished beliefs, such as the claim that the North Pole will be free of ice in summer by 2013.

According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado, Arctic summer sea ice has increased by 409,000 square miles, or 26 per cent, since 2007 – and even the most committed global warming activists do not dispute this.

The scientists’ predictions also undermine the standard climate computer models, which assert that the warming of the Earth since 1900 has been driven solely by man-made greenhouse gas emissions and will continue as long as carbon dioxide levels rise.

They say that their research shows that much of the warming was caused by oceanic cycles when they were in a ‘warm mode’ as opposed to the present ‘cold mode’.

This challenge to the widespread view that the planet is on the brink of an irreversible catastrophe is all the greater because the scientists could never be described as global warming ‘deniers’ or sceptics.

Snow Is No Longer a Joking Matter in Washington

By Alex Altman / Washington Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2010


At this rate, the flinty toughness that President Obama has tweaked Washington for lacking when it comes to winter weather may soon be forged through sheer necessity. Another epic blizzard hammered Washington on Wednesday morning, paralyzing anew a city that was still struggling to dig out from a storm that dumped some two feet of snow on the nation's capital over the weekend. The frigid blast, which is expected to blanket Washington's beleaguered residents with another 10 inches or more, left travelers stranded, shuttered airports, snarled rail and road traffic and brought the federal government (yet again) to a standstill.


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Even before the latest pummeling, Washington had recorded 45 inches of snow this winter, including two of the heaviest storms ever to batter the city. Wednesday's storm — with some six inches recorded already, and snow falling at a rate of as much as two inches per hour at mid-morning — is poised to shatter a 111-year-old record for total seasonal precipitation. "No one ever has seen this much snow in Washington, D.C.," according to Mayor Adrian Fenty, who said on Wednesday that the city would ask the federal government to foot some of the cleanup costs. The city's Department of Transportation director of communications, Karyn Le Blanc, told TIME that plow crews were on their ninth 12-hour shift clearing snow, a stretch that dates back to the weekend's blizzard. "Mother nature has a very weird sense of humor," she quipped. More snow is expected next week.

World may not be warming, say scientists

“The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change,” said John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a former lead author on the IPCC.

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“We concluded, with overwhelming statistical significance, that the IPCC’s climate data are contaminated with surface effects from industrialisation and data quality problems. These add up to a large warming bias,” he said.

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Terry Mills, professor of applied statistics and econometrics at Loughborough University, looked at the same data as the IPCC. He found that the warming trend it reported over the past 30 years or so was just as likely to be due to random fluctuations as to the impacts of greenhouse gases. Mills’s findings are to be published in Climatic Change, an environmental journal.

“The earth has gone through warming spells like these at least twice before in the last 1,000 years,” he said.

-Data for vital 'hockey stick graph' has gone missing
-There has been no global warming since 1995
-Warming periods have happened before - but NOT due to man-made changes

Lake Erie now frozen over

241-mile stretch all ice for 1st time since 1995-96

By JOHN GUERRIERO


Take a picture of Lake Erie now, and you'll get a freeze frame.


For the first time in 14 years, the 241-mile-long lake is virtually frozen over from one end to the other.


Earlier this week, the Erie Times-News reported that the lake was 90 to 95 percent frozen. The relentless cold completed the job.


Gary Garnet, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Cleveland, said Friday that the lake is completely frozen over, for all intents and purposes.


He qualified that by saying satellite images show a small patch off Dunkirk, N.Y., with water and chunks of floating ice. He said that's one of the deepest parts of the lake and would be one of the last places to freeze.


The maximum depth of the lake is 210 feet, and the average depth is 62 feet, according to the Great Lakes Information Network, a project of the Great Lakes Commission.


There are also some cracks in the ice, which shift due to high winds, he said.


"But for general purposes, the lake is covered right now,'' Garnet said.


The ice cover will mean fewer lake-effect snowstorms, or at least less intense ones. Lake- effect snowstorms occur when cold air passes over warmer bodies of water, building up clouds and dumping snow downwind.


Edinboro and other snowbelt areas are typically hit the hardest.

Lake Erie completely iced over

Published: Tuesday, February 16, 2010


LORAIN — Lake Erie is completely frozen over for the first time this winter season, according to the National Weather Service in Cleveland.

Gary Garnet, warning coordination meteorologist, said based on the ice analysis from the National Ice Center, the vast majority looks ice covered, but wind can blow the ice around causing cracks and small openings.

He said the frozen tundra of lake does slow down lake effect snow and will cause a decrease in snow showers generated from the lake.