Skip to comments.Powerful winter storm prompts blizzard watch ( no global warming )
Posted on 10/25/2006 8:48:42 AM PDT by george76
Passes closed...about two weeks earlier than normal.
Early snow shuts down Independence, Cottonwood.
Winter weather will return to Colorado later today and Thursday as a powerful Pacific storm moves into the state prompting forecasters with the National Weather Service to issue a variety of watches and advisories.
All of Southeastern Colorado is under a blizzard watch beginning at 9 p.m. today continuing through 5 p.m. Thursday.
A winter storm watch covers the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and the Wet Mountains where up to a foot of snow may fall and wind gusts could reach 40 miles per hour.
A snow and blowing snow advisory covers the Sawatch Range and mountains west and north of the Upper Arkansas River Valley.
Trail Ridge Road along U.S. 34 through Rocky Mountain National Park also closed for the season Monday. The passes usually reopen in May.
(Excerpt) Read more at themountainmail.com ...
|New Research Adds Twist to Global Warming Debate
October 12, 2006
By Steven Milloy
In the experiment, cosmic radiation was passed through a large reaction chamber containing a mixture of lower atmospheric gases at realistic concentrations that was exposed to ultraviolet radiation from lamps that mimic the action of the suns rays. Instruments traced the chemical action of the penetrating cosmic rays in the reaction chamber.[Click here for more details about Svensmarks hypothesis and experiment, including high-quality animation].
The data collected indicate that the electrons released by the cosmic rays acted as catalysts to accelerate the formation of stable clusters of sulfuric acid and water molecules the building blocks for clouds.
Many climate scientists have considered the linkages from cosmic rays to clouds as unproven, said Friis-Christensen who is the director of the Danish National Space Centre. Some said there was no conceivable way in which cosmic rays could influence cloud cover. [This] experiment now shows they do so, and should help to put the cosmic ray connection firmly onto the agenda of international climate research, he added.
But given the potential significance of Svensmarks experimentally validated hypothesis, it merits more than just a place on the agenda of international climate research it should be at the very top of that agenda.
Low-level clouds cover more than a quarter of the Earths surface and exert a strong cooling effect. Observational data indicate that low-cloud cover can vary as much as 2 percent in 5 years which, in turn, varies the heating at the Earths surface by as much as 1.2 watts per square meter during that same period.
That figure can be compared with about 1.4 watts per square meter estimated by the [United Nations] Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the greenhouse effect of all the increase in carbon dioxide in the air since the Industrial Revolution, says Svensmark.
Middle Ages were warmer than today, say scientists
Claims that man-made pollution is causing "unprecedented" global warming have been seriously undermined by new research which shows that the Earth was warmer during the Middle Ages.
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