Global Cooling Is Coming

When we talk about climate change most people think about man made C02 spewing into the atmosphere but that has very little or anything to do with it. The real concern of climate should be focused on what the sun is doing! I actually read an article ( http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn14724-antarctic-sea-ice-increases-despite-warming.html) yesterday that said the Antartica sea ice extent has been so large (record) because of global warming caused by man, so offically global warming causes global cooling, and drought, and flooding, la nina, el nino, and some are blaming earthquakes on global warming believe it or not! (http://www.livescience.com/environment/070830_gw_quakes.html). Come on, next you will be hearing about manbearpig and crab people.

The main driver behind abrupt climate change is due to the sun! During the past 100 years solar wind, geomagnetic activity, and solar cycles have been very strong which would explain most of the .8 degrees of warming we have expierenced in the past 150 years. The only problem is now that we are very close to Dalton Minimum (http://sesfoundation.org/dalton_minimum.pdf) type activity from the sun which was one of the main causes of the Little Ice Age. In fact you can read up on the current solar cycle state and it's implication here (http://www.warwickhughes.com/agri/Solar_Arch_NY_Mar2_08.pdf)

Anyway the current solar cycle 24 has yet to make an appearance which has caused the solar to drop off big time allowing more cosmic rays from outside space to enter the inner solar system. They hit our atmosphere and create nucleation sites for cloud dropplets to form an with more clouds the suns already weakened energy is reflected back out into space which causes cooling. If the sun doesn't wake up soon some suggest the global temperature will drop by an average of 2 degrees celcius within just a few years!

See figure 1 on the solar wind: Note click the image so bigger version.

Recap of last winter

Just getting ready for the upcoming winter by going over what happened last winter:

Snow: (Note excluding the past two winters Netcong average snow was 81 inches)

Ave Actual
Nov-1.90" 6.00" (+4.10)
Dec- 7.30" 10.75" (+3.45)
Jan- 14.00" 5.25" (-8.75)
Feb- 8.00" 15.13" (+7.13)
Mar-5.90" 0.55" (-5.35)
Arp- 2.10" o.00" (-2.10)

Total:37.68"(-1.52")

As for snow we fell about 1.5" inches below the 200 year average but as for our decade average we fell short by around 43 inches.


Temperature:

Nov- 39.35 (-1.95)
Dec- 30.87 (-.78)
Jan- 29.59 (+2.8)
Feb- 28.90 (Ave)
Mar- 37.46 (+1.11)

Ave:32.17 (33.23) +1.06

As for the average winter temperatures we were about one degree warmer than the winter (Nov-Mar) average.

It's fall for sure

Well the long range GFS has been hinting at cooler weather coming our way and actually the 6UTC model had the polar vortex coming down out of the Arctic and bringing us our first snow but thats a long shot. After many years I have learned NOT to trust the GFS more than 6 hours out. (That was a joke) We won't be seeing our first snow anytime soon but we could be seeing our first freeze in Sussex and the higher elevations of Morris County during the first couple days of October. The model has been very consistent with it over the past few days and I give it 60% chance of happening. Check it out, click the image for bigger version!

Back in action...

Good day ladies and gentlemen! After only posting a few times over the summer I am finally getting back into action. Farmers almanac has come out to say that this winter for our area should be colder/snowy than average and it could be a trend that continues for the next decade do to fact that our sun is still showing no signs of sunspots. Everyday our sun remains inactive there is a net loss in energy reaching our atmosphere, and also the solar wind slows down allowing more cosmic rays to enter our atmosphere. For those of you who don't know cosmic rays are charged particles that originated from a star that has ripped itself to shreds, you may call it super nova but I call it suicide. Anyway these cosmic rays enter our atmosphere and create more nucleation sites which is where cloud droplets can form and with more clouds more of sun's life giving energy is bounced out back into the vaccum of space. My next blog will be posted within a few days all about the climate crisis we face if the sun does awake within atleast the next year.

And did you notice? Fall is here! Well not for a few more days but my high temperature today reached a balmy 60 degrees and tonights low should get down to around 40. The trees back in August in Sussex county had a lot of color going on but since then 5" inches of rain has fallen in the first week of September and tropical storm Ike took those colored leaves right off the trees putting us with very little change going on now. You can expect some nice fall foliage pictures in the coming weeks as well!

Well it is tradition on my blog to start off the season with the winter outlook! That will be coming up the first week in October, mainly because I don't feel like doing a lot of researching right now and I have loads of homework. I do have a little hint for you though go back to my March 27th blog about the big snowstorms that hit our area and read up. http://meteomaddness.blogspot.com/2008/03/noreaster-2009.html

I also like to wish my blog it's 1 year birthday tomorrow! Well, I have been writing blogs for two years plus but that was on myspace and I left due to the amount of spam I was getting whenever I posted.

Another thing I will be going over in this blog to get everyone ready for winter is the NAO, AMO, AO, PNA, and etc... You get the point, a bunch of random letters right? Well some of these expecially the NAO has huge say in what our winter will be like.

Anyway I would love to sit here and talk all day but within in the next few weeks expect:
-NAO discussion
-Winter Outlook
-Fall foliage pictures
-Solar output
-Recap of last winter
-Farmers Almanac forecast
-Perhaps first frost of the season?
-Perhaps first New England snow!? (We will start snow blogs October 1st)

The Great New York Hurricane of 2008

Just click for a bigger Image. Now remember this is the 18utc GFS 372 hours out and extremely unreliable. I normally wouldn't post a blog for this but the storm showed up a few days ago on the 6utc run so things could be getting interesting. Each model brought it up the coast with two landfalls, one in the Carolinas and one along the Jersey shore. If the trend continues expect more updates...

Icecap records are being crushed!

I realize that I haven't been posting very often and thats because, well, I must admit that I lose interest when summer time comes in the weather. Yeah, severe weather and hurricanes don't really get me into weather mode what really does is October-April when the NAO hits a negative phase and coastal developement of snowstorms becomes possible. But I am also big on the climate change topic and something of great interest has happened, something big...

We all hear stories how the arctic is losing ice to global warming and is slowing disappearing, well it is on a downward trend these past couple of decades but I do believe that downward trend is going to reverse as the years go on. In fact last September of 2007 the arctic sea ice hit the record low extent since records began back in the late 1970's. I can almost bet that everyone has heard of that but did you ever hear that it made the greatest come back in recorded history? That's right it went from the record low extent to almost near normal in just a few months time, below is the chart and you can click for a bigger image.



















Besides the arctic breaking these records the antarctic is far more impressive and is breaking records for the greatest ice extent on a regular basis. In September of 2007 when the arctic hit its record low ice extent the opposite went on at the south pole. It hit the all time record and completely crushed the old record. Ok and if that isn't enough for you, during the south poles summer (our winter) while the sea ice should hit it's lowest extent of the year it hit its highest low ice extent of all time at 1 million square km above average. If it hasn't sunk into your head look at the chart below. It is updated for June 22 and the ice extent is growing and already reached it's minimum level for the year. The minimum level for this year beats most of the maximum's of the past 30 years! Just think, the lowest level of this year almost broke the old maximum ice extent set before the 2007 level. The point is, the antarctic sea ice has been breaking records every single month, every day, every hour, every minute, and every second for the past year. Global warming should be global, don't you think?






















P.S. Sorry about any spelling mistakes or anything, I am sick right now and not feeling up to much revisions.

Is the world cooling?

It's been awhile since I wrote up a blog and there is good reason, we could say that it's been very boring weather wise and no shocking glo-bull warming stories or is there? There still has not been any sunspots and it's having an effect on the world already. Antarctica which just broke it's record ice extent last year looks like its going to top itself this year. Speaking of this year here are my May stats for Netcong:

Rain: 3.98"
Days of rain: 18
May 9th: Record rainfall 1.22"

Last Freeze: May 1st

Average temp: 57.50"
Average high=70 Average low=45

Actual Temp:54.905 (-3.21)
High=65.08 Low=44.73

May 9th: Record low high (48.3)
May 20th: Record low high (52.0)


May ended up 3.21 degrees below average and it wasn't just here, it was the country as whole almost. Let check out the other months:

Jan +2.896
Feb +0.077
Mar -0.04
Apr +3.28
May -3.21
_________
Year: +3.003

Ok so the year is still on the warm side but only for the southeast up the east coast, otherwise the rest of the country is below average and the world has now fallen 1 degree in average temperature since 1998. Undoing that 0.6 degrees of warming that Gore is always complaining about.