From the other side of the polar vortex

While everyone in the US is freezing, here in Italy we are still waiting for winter to arrive. I am seeing mosquitoes flying in my house - never seen mosquitoes in Florence in January in all my life. Today it was a 15 degrees C (almost 60 F). Italy is not Nebraska, but in January we were supposed to have snow, once! Instead, it was raining; almost tropical weather. I was expecting to see a T-Rex walking in the garden, in turn transformed into a Jurassic swamp.

It reminds to me the movie "The Secret of the Wings" - maybe you have seen it (OK, it is not for adults, but I loved it). It tells the story of a world sharply divided in two parts: in one it is always winter, in the other it is always spring. It seems that we are seeing something similar in the real word: the Polar Vortex has sharply divided Europe in two: a Winter World and a Spring World - you see below how we are standing in Europe (from MeteoGiuliacci):

They say that next week everything should change and that temperatures should drop of even 15 deg. C. It really looks like a fantasy movie.

Hansen's dice are rolling

Image from ThreeOak



By Alexander Ac

In a changed world all weather events are created under different conditions than before the Industrial Revolution. A weather that is on steroids, we could say. Or, as climatologist James Hansen calls it, we are "loading the climate dice" towards more extreme climate and weather. Not surprisingly, it is increasingly harder and harder for more and more people to simply "adapt" to weather extremes. Just consider the weather reports from around the planet during the the last few days. They may not by unusual separately, but together they give a picture of quite rapidly destabilizing Holocene climate. The calendar summer of 2013 on the Nothern Hemisphere has just started!

Consider this:

• Arizona Governor declares a state of emergency in Yavapai County due to fast growing forest fire:

• Numerous wildfires are currently spreading also in Colorado and this state already contained its most destructive wildfire in history earlier this year, while the previous one occured in 2012.

• Fires are also raging in Alaska, which recently experienced record temperatures, while California is preparing for the worst fire season in at least 100 years.

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• Record pollution is choking Singapore as a result of forest fires in Indonesia:

• Canadian Alberta is suffering the worst floods in at least 90 years:

• Strong rains caused flash floods in parts of Southwestern France:

• Strong wind and gulf ball sized hail surprized Switzerland:

• Much needed monzoon rains came to India, unfortunataly more intense than usually, already killed about 1000 people and caused a lot of damage:

We really need to listen more carefully to what our planet is telling us. And act accordingly. Now.

(h/t to recent events goes to Fire Earth blog and Desdemona Despair blog)

*Correction: As pointed out by a reader, forest fires in Indonesia are primarily caused by human activity and might NOT necessarily be related to climate change. Even worse, they may have been intentionally started by palm oil companies to grow "biofuels", which are supposed to "offset" fossil fuel emissions. See the "moth effect".

The world as a pressure cooker

A simple and effective statement from George Mobus' blog: "Question Everything" 
(image from xkcd)

"I'm seeing the world as a pressure cooker or boiler that has been overheated. Some of the bolts that hold the thing together are starting to buckle and the gaskets are starting to leak. Think of all the areas of the world where steam is bursting forth. Actually try to think of a part of the world where that isn't happening. It is a shorter list these days."

Temperatures are not rising, hence global warming is a hoax

Some years ago, Maria, the Moldovan woman who took care of my old aunt, told me the story of when she had rushed back home from Italy, to see her sick mother one last time.

Apparently, in Moldavia there is the use of lighting up a candle beside the bed of a dying person. Maybe it is to light the way for the departing soul, maybe to remark the solemnity of the occasion, or maybe something else; I can't say. But that was what was done with Maria's mother. The priest had come to administer the Extreme Unction to her and then a candle was lighted up and placed on her nightstand. Her sons and daughters, including Maria, sat in the room, waiting in silence.

Night came and, at some moment, Maria's mother woke up. She opened her eyes, she saw the lighted candle but she seemed not to care. She looked at her relatives, called them by their names, she smiled and she chatted with them of this and that. Maria told me that for a while it seemed that the sickness, the Extreme Unction, the candle, and everything else was forgotten. It was just as the old lady had totally recovered and she would live for many years more.

Then, the old lady said she was tired. She closed her eyes and she fell asleep. In the morning, the candle had burned to the end and the old lady was gone; peacefully in her sleep.