'unusual' weather (Page 2 of 5)

World faces hottest year ever, as El Ni ±o combines with global warming

By Cahal Milmo
Published: 01 January 2007

A combination of global warming and the El Ni ±o weather system is set to make 2007 the warmest year on record with far-reaching consequences for the planet, one of Britain's leading climate experts has warned.

As the new year was ushered in with stormy conditions across the UK, the forecast for the next 12 months is of extreme global weather patterns which could bring drought to Indonesia and leave California under a deluge.

The warning, from Professor Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, was one of four sobering predictions from senior scientists and forecasters that 2007 will be a crucial year for determining the response to global warming and its effect on humanity.

Professor Jones said the long-term trend of global warming - already blamed for bringing drought to the Horn of Africa and melting the Arctic ice shelf - is set to be exacerbated by the arrival of El Ni ±o, the phenomenon caused by above-average sea temperatures in the Pacific.

Combined, they are set to bring extreme conditions across the globe and make 2007 warmer than 1998, the hottest year on record. It is likely temperatures will also exceed 2006, which was declared in December the hottest in Britain since 1659 and the sixth warmest in global records..................http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article2116873.ece

Mukul Sharma, Assistant Professor of Earth Sciences at Dartmouth, examined existing sets of geophysical data and noticed something remarkable: the sun's magnetic activity is varying in 100,000-year cycles, a much longer time span than previously thought, and this solar activity, in turn, may likely cause the 100,000-year climate cycles on earth.

This research helps scientists understand past climate trends and prepare for future ones.

Published in the June 10 issue of Earth and Planetary Science Letters (Elsevier, volume 199, issues 3-4), Sharma's study combined data on the varying production rates of beryllium 10, an isotope found on earth produced when high-energy galactic cosmic rays bombard our atmosphere, and data on the past variations in the earth's magnetic field intensity.

With this information, Sharma calculated variations in solar magnetic activity going back 200,000 years, and he noticed a pattern.

Over the last 1 million years, the earth's climate record has revealed a 100,000-year cycle oscillating between relatively cold and warm conditions, and Sharma's data on the sun's magnetic activity corresponded to the earth's ice age history.

"Surprisingly, it looks like solar activity is varying in longer time spans than we realized," says Sharma. "We knew about the shorter cycles of solar activity, so maybe these are just little cycles within a larger cycle. Even more surprising is the fact that the glacial and interglacial periods on earth during the last 200,000 years appear to be strongly linked to solar activity."

Sharma's calculations suggest that when the sun is magnetically more active, the earth experiences a warmer climate, and vice versa, when the sun is magnetically less active, there is a glacial period. Right now, the earth is in an interglacial period (in between ice ages) that began about 11,000 years ago, and as expected, this is also a time when the estimated solar activity appears to be high.

Sami Solanki, Professor at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich Switzerland, says the Sun has been burning more brightly over the last 60 years than over the previous 1090 years.

    “We have to acknowledge that the Sun is in a changed state. It is brighter than it was a few hundred years ago, and this brightening started relatively recently – in the last 100 to 150 years. We expect it to have an impact on global warming,"  he told swissinfo.

The sun's brightness hasn't changed much over the last 20 years. But it has been brighter for the last 60 years than it has been at any time in the last 1,150 years.

    According to scientists, the Sun’s radiance has changed little during this period. But looking back over 1,150 years, Solanki found the Sun had never been as bright as in the past 60 years.

    The team studied sunspot data going back several hundred years. They found that a dearth of sunspots signalled a cold period - which could last up to 50 years - but that over the past century their numbers had increased as the Earth's climate grew steadily warmer. The scientists also compared data from ice samples collected during an expedition to Greenland in 1991. The most recent samples contained the lowest recorded levels of beryllium 10 for more than 1,000 years. Beryllium 10 is a particle created by cosmic rays that decreases in the Earth's atmosphere as the magnetic energy from the Sun increases. Scientists can currently trace beryllium 10 levels back 1,150 years.

Variations in sunspot activity are probably behind the increases and decreases in solar radiation and consequence changes in Earth's climate.
During the Medieval maximum of 1000-1300 there was an extremely large Sunspot which is believed to have warmed the Earth higher than normal. There were no accurate measurements of the weather to call upon during this time but the discovery and colonization of Greenland by Eric the Red supports this hypothesis. Eric was exiled from Iceland for manslaughter and sailed west discovering Greenland. He then led many ships, filled with people who wanted to make a fresh start, to this new land. For 300 years Greenland flourished, new communities settled, trade with other countries grew, and the population increased. Around 1325 the climate cooled down considerably, people started to abandon the northern settlements. By 1350 glaciers covered the northern settlements, and the southern most settlements were dying out as well.
The Sporer minimum of 1400-1510 and the Maunder minimum of 1645-1715 were each known as a "little ice age." They were both droughts in Sunspot activity, and a link to a time of abnormally cold weather on Earth. In addition to finishing off the Greenland colonies, the Sporer minimum showed increased rates of famine in the world, and the Baltic Sea froze solid in the winter of 1422-23. Some of the more notable effects of the Maunder minimum included the appearance of glaciers in the Alps advancing farther southward, the north sea froze, and in London there was the famous year without a summer where it remained cold for 21 consecutive months.

Wacky weather throws birds and bees off balance

Cheryl Cornacchia
CanWest News Service

Saturday, January 06, 2007

MONTREAL -- If you think you're confused by this winter's warmer than usual weather, take a moment to ponder our feathered friends and furry neighbours.

While this season's record-breaking temperatures have offered humans a welcomed reprieve, the unseasonal weather has played havoc with the lives of birds and animals.

The balmy winter weather has tricked many members of the wildlife community to alter their usual migration schedules, sleeping habits and feeding and breeding patterns.

Now, wildlife biologists, ornithologists and zoologists are concerned that the survival of some of these birds and animals could be threatened by the winter months ahead.

Among the anomalies reported in Eastern Canada:

-The Canada goose, which usually migrates south, staying put. An annual Montreal Christmas bird count found an all-time high number of the water fowl, 2,832, roosting on the open waters of the St. Lawrence.

- Raccoons and skunks foregoing their shorter but still important hibernation period and, burning up fat stores that they will need if and when a January or February deep freeze arrives.

-In Montreal, the eastern gray squirrel is feeding instead of nesting and getting fatter. At the same time, it has been joined by the Fox squirrel, a bigger and brown-reddish colored squirrel with a more southern range.

- Possums, a marsupial associated with the southern United States, have been spotted in southern Quebec.

"There's a pile of stuff going on," said Lynn Miller, a Montreal wildlife biologist based at Le Nichoir, a bird refuge in Hudson."There will be winners and losers," she added.

Miller recently had to euthanize a great blue heron because it couldn't stand up. Frostbite had destroyed its toes. The species usually migrates to Florida and other sunny climes for winter.

"The weather has been so warm, he thought he could stay," she said. "It was bloody awful."

With little snow, the white-tailed deer is having no trouble finding food this winter and, as a result, the species will be more successful come breeding season.

Coyotes, foxes and many birds of prey are also well positioned with a plentiful food supply. Turkey vultures, a bald-headed species usually seen much further south at this time of year, is now thriving in Canada.

In southern Ontario, spring-like temperatures have dandelions blooming and even frogs, flies and bees are out.

At the Ojibway Nature Centre in Windsor, Ont., people are reporting seeing frogs, snakes and turtles, said naturalist Paul Pratt.

Pratt says a sudden plummet in the mercury could be a killer.

"The biggest danger is a real sudden change in temperature. You don't want to go from plus 13 C one day to minus 20 the next," Pratt said Friday.

"You want to give them a chance to crawl back in their holes and get in the burrows and hollow logs or wherever they want to go when the weather's cold."

http://www.canada.com/components/print. … mp;k=97303

Montreal Gazette, with file from Windsor Star