Russian heat wave 2010: extreme weather or within new normal climate?

Russian heat wave extreme weatherOne could focus on the rise in average temperatures and wonder to what extent this will increase the chance of weather extremes. One can of course also walk the opposite route: take a witnessed extreme – and examine if that weather event stems from the climate trend.

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Some weather extremes simply lie beyond Gaussian distribution

When assessing the climate system it doesn’t hurt to include some geography to your statistical assumptions. After all, without mountains, oceans and coastlines there would be no weather, just one boring climatic average – and therefore no ground to create that normal distribution in the first place…

extreme weather Gaussian distribution climate
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Nanotech helps make plastics without oil

Iron particles on carbon nanotube

Iron particles on carbon nanotube

Nearly all chemical products ranging from antifreeze and medicine to plastics and paint are currently made from petroleum.

But since it became apparent that the petroleum supply was not as reliable and unending as many had hoped, several techniques have been developed to make chemicals out of biomass.

A promising development for the environment one would say, but unfortunately those techniques have proven to be complicated, lengthy, inefficient and thus expensive. Because of this biobased chemicals have not really been able to compete with the current petroleum-based chemicals. But a new find by researchers of Utrecht University, the Netherlands may change this.

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Hellmann development Dutch winters shows cold declining

In climatology development of the average may differ substantially from the extremes – both as a characteristic of the normal distribution – and the possibility of skewness increases.

On average the Dutch climate shows a clear warming trend – but compared to spring, summer and autumn, the winter shows somewhat better resilience – with a smaller increase of average temperatures. In scientific literature it has been suggested a few negative feedbacks could be at play, whereby Arctic warming may actually increase the chance of experiencing cold European winters.

However, based on Hellmann data by the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute KNMI, such theories are not supported by multi-decadal evidence. Not only are average winter temperatures rising, also the cumulative frost is declining – albeit that here the trend indeed seems a little less steep:

Dutch winters Hellmann number graph trend
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Today´s paradox: European cold winters associated with Arctic warming – and positive(!) AO

Warming in the Arctic would increase the chance of cold winters in Europe and parts of North America and Asia. There have now been three consecutive studies that reach this conclusion in as many years.

That means it is about time we paid attention to the hypothesis. But to us still natural climate variability seems an equally convincing candidate to explain a recent set of near-average-temperature winters.

Arctic warming colder winters
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