Picture of the day: flower meadow in Californian plant biodiversity hotspot
Extreme heat wave Australia adds new colour to weather chart – forecast up to 54 degrees Celsius!
As red tones cannot get much darker when you approach black, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology had to resort to introducing new colours on their weather forecast maps for next week, when inland temperatures in South Australia can locally reach a staggering 54 degrees Celsius.
Both historical and 60-year trend show Dutch winters are warming – these graphs tell you how, why – and what to expect
Falling snow flakes are humbling. Not just because of their beauty, but also because of their gentle ability to completely paralyse a developed and overpopulated country with traffic jams, clogged railroad switches and closed runways.
But although that (together with a repeatedly forecasted but ever-postponed ‘horror winter’) may make for a great annual media hype, it does not imply winters are getting colder. To the contrary – winter warming in the Netherlands* is increasing – but it’s not as simple as a ‘local seasonal case’ of global climate warming.
[*) Here we use the Netherlands as case study, but the general climate analysis and the shown seasonal trends go for Northwest Europe (in which the Netherlands lie central) as a whole, including winter development for Great Britain, Ireland, Belgium, Germany, France, Denmark and (southern) Norway & Sweden.]
Graph of the day: European winters and summers warm equally fast
Latest ENSO forecasts: +0.3C average for Niño 3.4 during approaching boreal winter (2012-2013) – Australia and New Zealand will have driest summer in years
60-year trend shows tropical trade winds weakening in Pacific too – ENSO inclination towards El Niño state
It is a question that has puzzled climate scientists for a long time:
Under global climate warming, how will the El Niño/La Niña Southern Oscillation (ENSO) respond?
