In 2014, Germany and parts of Europe will be seeing their warmest year ever since temperature recording began in earnest late in the 19th century. The media and alarmists are giddy about this, even though most of it is due to a global weather pattern that worked to deliver an almost steady stream of warm southerly air over the continent: especially early this year, over the autumn, and the end of the year. It’s all pattern related.
Moreover, as the warmists like to say when cold strikes, it’s just one year and does not in any way represent a trend.
Not long ago some climate scientists announced winters with snow would be a thing of the past in Europe. Global warming, they said, would be especially noticeable in the wintertime. But then in the late 2000s and early 2010s, a string of harsh winters gripped the old continent and the trend in Germany went downhill: colder and snowier winters.
Veteran journalist Ulli Kulke of Germany’s national daily Die Welt writes at his blog that the tendency over the last two and half decades – since before the first IPCC report was ever issued – has been slight cooling and no warming to speak of. He writes of Germany’s winters:
The winters between 2001 and 2010 were on average 0.1°C colder than the 1991 – 2000 decade. And the winters between 2011 and 2014 were also 0.1°C colder than the 2001-2010 decade. Even if we are talking only about tenths of a degree, the climate discussion is actually all about such magnitudes. So anyone who had the impression of hard winter times was not wrong. The tendency of winter temperatures has been downward over the past two and half decades, and not upwards. […] Snow has not disappeared.”
So with the general winter trend in Germany and Central Europe slightly downward, spooked climate scientists had to scramble to concoct an explanation. Kulke continues:
As the cold winters became undeniable, decisive institutes came up with the original idea of tracing the icy temperatures back to global warming. The reason for this was the disappearing Arctic sea ice around the North Pole. In a press release from the institute, Vladimir Petoukhov of Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research is quoted as having stated concerning a study of his: Disturbances in air currents, caused by the disappearance of ice ‘could increase the probability of the occurrence of extremely cold winters in Europe and North Asia by a factor of three’. In summary: ‘Hard winters such as last year’s or 2005/06 do not contradict global warming, rather they more so confirm it.’“
The Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Ocean Research also presented a similar paper. The warming Arctic, Kulke explains, was supposed to alter the pressure difference between the Azores and Iceland, and thus produce more favorable conditions for cold winters to take hold over Europe. Kulke calls the logic behind the theory weak, writing that there’s a lot of controversy swirling around it, especially in view that it was produced after the fact.
Kulke’s piece in general points out that the theories of the global warming scientists are not doing well when compared to real observations. For example he ends his piece with a look at the Arctic and global temperatures:
In addition it is turning out that the Arctic sea ice may increase in size. And as before the time-out taken by the global temperature increase continues on. No one knows how long it’s going to go on, even if this year a high will be reached because of an El Nino.”
Another blow to the models.