16 May 2011

Are we in for an extremely cold winter?

| jacarandas
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fog over civic

Is it just me or is Autumn this year extremely cold?

I don’t recall seeing negative temperatures during Autumn last year. We hit -6.7 degrees Saturday night.

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Jethro said :

Diggety said :

Jethro said :

pierce said :

Read a book.

…apart from the fact that current temperature increases are occurring at a rate about 10X faster than was seen at the end of the last ice age..

Time to update that book collection. Predictions are changing at a faster rate than the climate, funnily (and understandably) enough.

Scientists- particularly those who aren’t trying their hand at politics- have learned it is wise to refrain from announcing dire predictions or effects, until they have a good degree of certainty.

Where is the lack of certainty that temperatures have risen by close to 1 degree in the last century?

There are very clear records of this occurring. That is not a prediction of future rate of change, but of change that has already occurred. If it took 5000 years for temperatures to change 5 degrees and it has taken 100 years for temperatures to change 1 degree that is evidence that the current (not future) rate of change is 10X faster than the end of the last ice age.

First, “certainty” in science is a big call. It is a status that requires a lot of scrutiny, agreement, empirical evidence (repeatable) and solid theory. The one thing that is certain is that 1’C increase in 20th century is not certain (yet). And the rate of increase you mentioned will take even longer for a proof.

Three things:
1. Method of data collection, this is particularly an issue for historical evidence (in this case you have used at least two methods, i.e. cavemen didn’t have thermometers.
2. Data interpretation. So much contention over a curve! Deriving a conclusion or even further hypothesis has (and will continue to be) difficult for wider acceptance, simply due to statistical acceptance.
3. Temperature variables- this is a hot debate at the moment with some methods of data collection/interpretation.

Diggety said :

Jethro said :

pierce said :

Read a book.

…apart from the fact that current temperature increases are occurring at a rate about 10X faster than was seen at the end of the last ice age..

Time to update that book collection. Predictions are changing at a faster rate than the climate, funnily (and understandably) enough.

Scientists- particularly those who aren’t trying their hand at politics- have learned it is wise to refrain from announcing dire predictions or effects, until they have a good degree of certainty.

Where is the lack of certainty that temperatures have risen by close to 1 degree in the last century?

There are very clear records of this occurring. That is not a prediction of future rate of change, but of change that has already occurred. If it took 5000 years for temperatures to change 5 degrees and it has taken 100 years for temperatures to change 1 degree that is evidence that the current (not future) rate of change is 10X faster than the end of the last ice age.

Jethro said :

pierce said :

Read a book.

…apart from the fact that current temperature increases are occurring at a rate about 10X faster than was seen at the end of the last ice age..

Time to update that book collection. Predictions are changing at a faster rate than the climate, funnily (and understandably) enough.

Scientists- particularly those who aren’t trying their hand at politics- have learned it is wise to refrain from announcing dire predictions or effects, until they have a good degree of certainty.

zig said :

pierce said :

The term Climate Change more accurately reflects the impact that rising global temperatures have on the Earth’s climate – most notably greater extremes in all forms of weather. Yes, including cold.

Read a book.

U mad bro?

History shows climate change is cyclical so I don’t buy into the sky is falling in theory.

All good and well, apart from the fact that current temperature increases are occurring at a rate about 10X faster than was seen at the end of the last ice age. (It took about 5000 years for the Earth’s temperature to increase by about 5.5 degrees… the Earths’ temperautre has increased by close to 2 degree in less than one hundred years.)

But don’t worry. It’s a natural fluctuation. (Note: I always trust the armchair scientists over the real ones)

I said
“increase by 2 degree”

typo… should have said “1 degree” don’t want to be accused of anything here…

zig said :

pierce said :

The term Climate Change more accurately reflects the impact that rising global temperatures have on the Earth’s climate – most notably greater extremes in all forms of weather. Yes, including cold.

Read a book.

U mad bro?

History shows climate change is cyclical so I don’t buy into the sky is falling in theory.

All good and well, apart from the fact that current temperature increases are occurring at a rate about 10X faster than was seen at the end of the last ice age. (It took about 5000 years for the Earth’s temperature to increase by about 5.5 degrees… the Earths’ temperautre has increased by close to 1 degree in less than one hundred years.)

But don’t worry. It’s a natural fluctuation. (Note: I always trust the armchair scientists over the real ones)

pierce said :

The term Climate Change more accurately reflects the impact that rising global temperatures have on the Earth’s climate – most notably greater extremes in all forms of weather. Yes, including cold.

Read a book.

U mad bro?

History shows climate change is cyclical so I don’t buy into the sky is falling in theory.

I’m all for lessening our environmental impact as much as possible but I think there needs to be balance. 🙂

troll-sniffer said :

John Moulis said :

This means that it is perfectly possible to get colder winters as part of the cycle.

Yep and it was the coldest May since 1974 so it’s happened before. Woopy Doo.

Pommy bastard said :

I certaily hope we’re in for a cold one, makes me quite homesick.

Mind you I could do without all the idiots driving in pea-soup fog with no lights on, as evidenced this morning…

And the same idiots probably have their fogs lights on when there is no fog

creative_canberran said :

The BoM also seems to be getting it very badly wrong this year. And obviously wrong too.
Day after day of predicting 0 for the overnight and instead it drops to -3 or more… isn’t someone going to wake up and realise something is wrong with their predictions? And predicting 15 as today’s max when it is -7 overnight, foggy and partly cloudy… well that was never going to happen. It’s 2pm and only just reached +7 degrees.

Don’t forget the BOM and the CSIRO have an interest in pushing the warming barrow, it’s good for the grant and funding business.

troll-sniffer8:44 pm 16 May 11

John Moulis said :

Gee, good thing we have “global warming” or whatever it’s being called this week. Just think how cold it would be otherwise. The reason why “global warming” was rebranded “climate change” was because we had several very cold winters during the drought and the public were seeing right through the stupid and fallacious greenie BS.

If you took your finger out of where the sun don’t shine and used it to flick through some research instead of pontificating from a pinnacle of ignorance, you would start to understand that global warming, climate change, AGW, whatever you want to call it, has little to do with a uniform increase that would lead to warmer winters etc. What it does do is increase the planet’s requirement to shift heat from the equatorial regions to the poles. The more heat at the equator, the faster the transfer must take place over the course of a year or several. This leads to more erratic weather, sometimes it’s manifested in more violent winds, mostly it is just showing up by more extreme weather. This means that it is perfectly possible to get colder winters as part of the cycle. But I guess if you haven’t bothered to find that out by now, and possibly don’t have the necessary to understand it, you will be unlikely to ever accept it. It’s soooo much easier to sit back in front of your plasma TV and poo poo it isn’t it?

The term Climate Change more accurately reflects the impact that rising global temperatures have on the Earth’s climate – most notably greater extremes in all forms of weather. Yes, including cold.

Read a book.

John Moulis said :

Gee, good thing we have “global warming” or whatever it’s being called this week. Just think how cold it would be otherwise. The reason why “global warming” was rebranded “climate change” was because we had several very cold winters during the drought and the public were seeing right through the stupid and fallacious greenie BS.

hehe +1

Gungahlin Al said :

Stand by for the usual ill-informed “I thought climate change was supposed toi make it hotter” comments from the usual suspects.

I’ve seen some already from certain ACT Liberal MLAs on FB.

+1

I love the cold weather. Thank the gods for good insulation and r/c air though.

Les Lozenger5:29 pm 16 May 11

I agree with Mystery Man. I’d like to see some snow in compensation for pain endured.

I’ve seen long cast weather reports stating that this is just an initial cold blast preceding what is apparently going to be a “warmer than normal winter”. Given the current lack of successful low and high temperature predictions, I’ll believe it when I see it.

Holden Caulfield4:43 pm 16 May 11

Haha, Gungahlin Al, you didn’t have to wait too long.

Gee, good thing we have “global warming” or whatever it’s being called this week. Just think how cold it would be otherwise. The reason why “global warming” was rebranded “climate change” was because we had several very cold winters during the drought and the public were seeing right through the stupid and fallacious greenie BS.

I did about 5 kg of green tomato pickle (using the recipe posted here last week)! But then I ran out of jars. I’ve got enough for about 3 years if I eat a LOT of pickle. Still working through the similar chutney from 3 years ago (luckily it improves with age).

I’ve found ripening very green tomatoes in the past a bit hit-or-miss. They often rot before they ripen. The old saw is to pull up the entire tattered wreck of the plant, and hang it up with tomatoes attached, but haven’t had huge luck with that.

Watson said :

Gungahlin Al said :

I remember as a kid and living in typical no-star brick govvies having the blanket on 3 all night

You had an ELECTRIC BLANKET as a kid?! Spoiled, I say! I didn’t even get a hot water bottle, just one blanket. And I grew up in Belgium were -20 wasn’t unusual and lived in a dilapidated terrace house with rotting window frames.

And walked 10kms to school, through the snow, barefoot, etc.

And you were so poor as a family that all you kids would gather around your fathers mouth as he chewed a mint just to get the warmth? (I did – just wondering whether you had to as well!). I spent most of the morning trying to pry the dogs tongue off the back sliding door window due to the cold. I think he’ll recover, but he’ll be eating soup for a few days!

As for that damn cat……………………………….

Cool! Hopefully we get some snow this year.

Green tomato chutney!

Gungahlin Al said :

I remember as a kid and living in typical no-star brick govvies having the blanket on 3 all night

You had an ELECTRIC BLANKET as a kid?! Spoiled, I say! I didn’t even get a hot water bottle, just one blanket. And I grew up in Belgium were -20 wasn’t unusual and lived in a dilapidated terrace house with rotting window frames.

And walked 10kms to school, through the snow, barefoot, etc.

creative_canberran1:52 pm 16 May 11

The BoM also seems to be getting it very badly wrong this year. And obviously wrong too.
Day after day of predicting 0 for the overnight and instead it drops to -3 or more… isn’t someone going to wake up and realise something is wrong with their predictions? And predicting 15 as today’s max when it is -7 overnight, foggy and partly cloudy… well that was never going to happen. It’s 2pm and only just reached +7 degrees.

“I threw away probably more than 10kg of perfect green tomatoes on the weekend. heartbreaking.”

You can ripen tomatoes on a sunny windowsill.

Or you could have given them away to ANU food co-op or choko bei jol, or the civic soup lady. Or taken them to work?

I live in Macgregor1:39 pm 16 May 11

EvanJames said :

As others have confirmed, it’s unusually cold.

I threw away probably more than 10kg of perfect green tomatoes on the weekend. heartbreaking.

Can’t you keep the green ones and let them ripen on the window sill? We had a few green ones drop off the vines over the past few weeks and I collected the last of them off the vines yesterday. They won’t taste as good as the vine-ripeed ones, but still better than store-bought IMHO.

if they freeze and re-freze though they will be ruined… so the rest of the tomato trees/vines are going on the compost heap this weekend.

that’d be ‘territory’ [blames cold fingers…]

invigorating, innit! what’s with the temperature range across the teritoty, though? the airport, BoM’s nominal site for ‘canberra’ weather, is sometimes three, four or five degrees different from belco or tuggers.

that said, goulburn was -8 earlier a couple days ago. so it could be worse… (in fact, it can always be worse if you could otherwise be in goulburn!)

Holy sheet the sun is officially out. I forgot what it looked like this morning.

EvanJames said :

I threw away probably more than 10kg of perfect green tomatoes on the weekend. heartbreaking.

I was starting to do that a couple of weekends ago, my mum took them and left them in her car – the warmth ripened them. They were mostly cherry tomatoes but there were Black Russians and large reds in there as well. The car gets left outside so all day long it is acting like a greenhouse.

I don’t mind the cold as long as we get some snow in Canberra! Otherwise, I feel ripped off at having to endure negative temperatures with no pay-off.

Gungahlin Al12:49 pm 16 May 11

Yes there haven’t been any ‘real’ Canberra winters for a while.

I remember as a kid and living in typical no-star brick govvies having the blanket on 3 all night, and under so many old-fashioned prickly woollen blankets it was stifling from the sheer weight of them.

Yet in summer we slept out on the bare concrete of the verandah some nights.

But cold really is just a state of clothing and a state of housing (unless you’re renocating – holy moley HC – planned that well!).

That said, surely it’s about time this bloody fog lifted?

troll-sniffer12:05 pm 16 May 11

Canberra is allocated 56 days of frost by the BOM. Most years we don’t use up our allocation, and the remainder are stored in a vault ready for release when too many Canberrans complain that the BOM can’t forecast the weather to save themselves. I’m not sure how many they have stored up but the good news is, once we get our annual allocation out of the way, that’s normally it for the year. So think of it this way… all these early frosts are helping to ensure a warmer spring, as long as no-one complains. Get it?

Mr Gillespie11:50 am 16 May 11

Makes a change to all the duds we have been through ever since the days of “global warming” and “the greenhouse effect” were renamed “climate change”.

As others have confirmed, it’s unusually cold. This is exacerbated by our long run of Indian Summers. We’ve had later and warmer summers during recent years, and have grown accustomed to a very gradual descent into cooler temperaturs. No so this year!

we had a cool summer, thanks to La Nina which brought lots of rain and cooler temperatures. The change to cool started much earlier than usual, and we didn’t get so much of a stop/start/stop jolting change-over to the new season.

now we’re having a classic Canberra June/July, with fogs and frosts and sparkling cold days. We’re just getting them in early May instead.

The change out of La Nina is interesting. If it had persisted, we’d be having rain, and so milder temperatures especially at night. If this hard dry continues, you’d be expecting the announcment of a drought.

I threw away probably more than 10kg of perfect green tomatoes on the weekend. heartbreaking.

georgesgenitals said :

This year there were lots of berries.

Yeah, but we had lots of rain this last summer…?

georgesgenitals11:38 am 16 May 11

As a kid I remember a few REALLY cold winters, and each year in Autumn the cattoneasta (sp?) trees would have heaps and heaps of the little red berries on them. On the milder years, there’d be much fewer berries.

This year there were lots of berries. Although what we’re getting now is unusual (antarctic air pushing north), I still think we are in for a cold one.

neanderthalsis10:19 am 16 May 11

“I don’t recall seeing negative temperatures during Autumn last year.”

According to the BoM, we bottomed out at -3.7 on 13 May last year and had a solid week of negative minimums. I must add, however, we have already surpassed last years coldest (-5) with our -7 yesterday morning.

Holden Caulfield10:14 am 16 May 11

The Frots said :

Good luck with it – need any donations of heaters…..? The temp this week is going to be a real monster!

Thanks, we should be okay for now. I think we have another week or two before the first wall for the extension comes down. So, as we get closer to winter, hopefully things warm up a little, haha.

Must be global warming. Where do I hand my money over to fix the temp again?

Pommy bastard10:06 am 16 May 11

I certaily hope we’re in for a cold one, makes me quite homesick.

Mind you I could do without all the idiots driving in pea-soup fog with no lights on, as evidenced this morning…

Holden Caulfield said :

Yep, looks like we picked a great time to rip our house apart for renos/extensions. Brrrrrrrr…

Ha! You have to be kidding? I recall renovating another house in another land a long time ago where I had the whole back of the house ripped out…………….much to the pleasure of the local cats and other wildlife!

Good luck with it – need any donations of heaters…..? The temp this week is going to be a real monster!

Thoroughly Smashed9:47 am 16 May 11

Gungahlin Al said :

Stand by for the usual ill-informed “I thought climate change was supposed toi make it hotter” comments from the usual suspects.

I’ve seen some already from certain ACT Liberal MLAs on FB.

Gungahlin Al said :

Stand by for the usual ill-informed “I thought climate change was supposed toi make it hotter” comments from the usual suspects.

I’ve seen some already from certain ACT Liberal MLAs on FB.

You only see these posts from the Liberals because Labor fails to understand that anything is even happening and the Greens have already run for cover fearing the end of the world.

Gungahlin Al9:37 am 16 May 11

Stand by for the usual ill-informed “I thought climate change was supposed toi make it hotter” comments from the usual suspects.

I’ve seen some already from certain ACT Liberal MLAs on FB.

Holden Caulfield9:33 am 16 May 11

Yep, looks like we picked a great time to rip our house apart for renos/extensions. Brrrrrrrr…

Mrs. Frot and I were saying that it is indeed the coldest we have experienced here. I cannot believe just how chilling it gets. So………………….this winter is going to be a real bitch I think!

Yep it’s a cold one. Coldest May since 1974.

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