It’s early September, mornings are cooling down, days are getting shorter and the kids are back in school. What are fall and winter going to be like? The following National Weather Service chart shows the following:
Axel Bojanowski of Der Spiegel here also writes that two climate scientists, Hans Graf of the University of Cambridge and Davide Zanchettin of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, have developed a rule of thumb for predicting if it’s going to be cold or mild for the entire winter. How is this possible? Spiegel writes:
Graf and Zanchettin have discovered a weather kitchen that is mainly responsible for cooking up the winter for Central Europe. That kitchen is located on the other side of the planet in the Pacific the two climatologists report in a study in the “Journal of Geophysical Research”, which they submitted in the summer of 2011.”
They say it depends on the El Niño Southern Oscillation, which impacts weather globally.
According to Graf und Zanchettin: “After an El Niño over the Central Pacific, there’s a frosty winter in Europe – temperatures are on average 3 to 4°C lower than during other winters. Winters after El Niños are the coldest in Germany.”
Spiegel summarizes the rule of thumb the scientists use:
In Germany there’s a frosty, snowy winter when the following three conditions are fulfilled:
1.) For months there’s been an El Niño, meaning the ocean water surface is markedly warmer than usual.
2.) If the warm water spreads eastwards all the way to the coast of South America, then the chances for a cold winter in Central Europe drop off.
3.) There’s been no major volcano eruption – which would disrupt weather patterns.”
Leading climatologists Mojib Latif of the Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research in Kiel and Eduardo Zorita of the Helmholtz Center for Coastal Research, both in Germany, found the study to be of great interest. So once again Mr. Co2 warming Latif agrees that other factors drive the climate. An alarmist one day, and a scientist the next.
We’ll find out soon enough if Graf’s and Zanchettin’s rule will work for this coming winter.