Green Bay vs. Siberia: comparing Poles of Cold
Sure, it's cold in football's Pole of Cold--Green Bay, Wisconsin--where game time temperatures for today's NFC Championship Game will be lucky to crack zero degrees Fahrenheit, making it the third coldest NFL playoff game ever. Yeah, those crazy bare-chested Green Bay fans sure look pretty tough in that extreme cold, but they are total wimps compared to the people living in Siberia's Pole of Cold--Ojmjakon, Russia. The temperatures in Ojmjakon this weekend fell to -76°F, making the game being played in Green Bay seem like a summer tea party.
This weekend's -76°F reading was not very unusual for Ojmjakon (also spelled Oymyakon), which is considered to be the coldest inhabited town on earth. Ojmjakon also reached -76°F in both 2007 and 2005. The city lies in a river valley in eastern Siberia, and the cold air pools at night in the bottom of the valley, creating ridiculously low temperatures. On February 6, 1933, an absolute minimum of -67.7°C (-89.9°F) was registered in Oymyakon, putting the city in a virtual tie with the -67.8°C (-90.0°F) measured at Verkhoyank, Siberia on January 15, 1885. These are the two coldest temperatures ever measured on earth, outside of Antarctica. On January 26, 1926, a astonishing -71.2°C (-96.2°F) was measured at Ojmjakon. However, this temperature is unofficial, since the temperature was not directly measured, but obtained by extrapolation.
Figure 1.The world's coldest inhabited city, Ojmjakon, Russia, lies in a river valley in eastern Siberia. Image credit: Google.
According to Chris Burt's Extreme Weather: A Guide and Record Book, supply trucks servicing the area must never turn off their engines in winter. If the engine block freezes, truckers light a fire underneath it to warm it up. When the temperature falls below -58°F (-50°C), ice crystals in the atmosphere make a swishing sound called the "whispering of the stars". What's it like at -80°? Again, Chris Burt's book provides some insight. Two weather observers at the Snag airport in the Yukon of Canada experienced -81.4°F on February 3, 1947, and reported:
"We threw a dish of water high into the air, just to see what would happen. Before it hit the ground, it made a hissing noise, froze, and feel as tiny round pellets the size of wheat kernels. Spit also froze before hitting the ground. Ice became so hard the axe rebounded from it. At such temperatures, metal snapped like ice; wood became petrified; and rubber was just like cement. The dogs' leather harness couldn't bend or it would break...It was unique to see a vapor trail several yards long pursuing one as he moved about outside. Becoming lost was of no concern. As an observer walked along the runway each breath remained as a tiny motionless mist behind him at head level. These patches of human breath fog remained in the still air for three or four minutes before fading away. One observer even found such a trail still marking his path when he returned along the same path 15 minutes later".
Jeff Masters
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Measurements show that over the last century the Earth’s climate has warmed overall,
Furthermore, a single year of cold weather in one region of the globe is not an indication of a trend in the global climate, which refers to a long-term average over the entire planet.
MYTH: Scientists are able to establish a trend in global climate, using a 100year data base.
FACT: 100year trends are common. 100years of increasing temp, then 100years of decreasing temp.
FACT: No one on the face of this planet knows if we are all going to burn and die, or plunge into another ice age.
Link
I was reading an article in National Geographic this morning and one of the comments about global warming and the drought in the south said that there will always be drought, there will always be storms and severe weather, but they will stike in different places than they have in the past.
Doesn't that sound like a typical weather forecast? LOL
Southwest Indian Ocean North of Madagascar
Issued 0000 UTC WED 23 Jan 2007 by W456
Tropical Invest centered near 10.0S-51.0E, drifting. Estimated surface winds are 20-30 knots and minimum central pressure is near 1008 mb. SSTs are 29-31C and wind shear is 10-20 knots.
A combination of methods was used to position the center, among them were extrapolation of QuikSCAT passes, satellite-derived low level winds and convergence, and numerical models. However, the biggest help of all was microwave imagery which supported these findings. The low level closed circulation is somewhat elongated and to the east of the convective mass due southeasterly vertical wind shear. The system is producing gale force gusts as seen on QuikSCAT. Pressure was estimated using numerical models. Global models do develop this system and conditions appear and should remain favorable for development. Also, something else that should be noted is that the models also develop a system in close vicinity to 97S and at that distance one storm will hinder the other's development process.
By W456
JTWC Stats:
97SINVEST.15kts-1010mb-103S-500E
However, I note on the NWS snow cover satellite coverage maps that the polar ice cap has not filled in as in years past, and that over the past several days, thawing is already creeping up along the Greenland coasts.
I might add that the current cold snap hereabouts is typical about this time of year, although its duration seems a bit extended, perhaps a paradoxical effect of global warming, perhaps affecting the upper wind flow pattern in a slightly atypical way.
TMan
though this track isn't INVEST.97S there is another possible development in the southwestern Indian Ocean.
No more snow for the south!
Arab world shivers in unusual cold snap
Jordan's airport shut down by ice, other nations shiver as well
AMMAN, Jordan - The lone de-icing machine at Jordan's busy international airport worked frantically on Tuesday to clear planes for take off when a freak snowstorm blanketed this small desert country in a cold snap that has the whole region shivering.
Worst cold front since 1964
Meteorologists in the region are calling it the worst cold front since 1964 and attributing it to a high pressure zone in northern Europe that is forcing cold air into the Middle East.
The 10-day old cold front has also destroyed fruits and vegetables in the Jordan Valley, compounding worries that food prices will jump higher amid concerns about skyrocketing fuel prices as the government removes subsidies on basic commodities.
....SYNOPSIS....
GULF OF MEXICO/NORTHWEST ATLANTIC OCEAN WEST OF 50W....
A stationary front roughly extends along the Texas border from New Mexico to the Gulf Coast...a cold front continues across the Northwest portion of the Gulf and into the Southeast United States. Most of the moisture along the front is in the form of scattered to isolated showers across Northern Mexico, the Gulf region north of 25N and Florida north of 26N. Elsewhere, a weak surface pressure pattern has developed leading to light-moderate variable winds and fair weather.
A stationary front cuts across the Atlantic along 27N/75W 26N/60W 30N/40W. While most of this feature is relatively inactive, upper divergence within the left entrance region of weak upper ridge is providing enough rising motion to produce vigorous shower and thunderstorm activity...as suggested by lighting data...from 70W to 65W north of 25N. Additional activity is invading the Western Atlantic west of 75W ahead of cold front pushing off the SE CONUS.
CENTRAL AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN REGION....
QuikSCAT and surface observations through 0900 UTC revealed trades have increase across the Caribbean east of 70W due to the distortion of a ridge in the Central Atlantic by the frontal boundary to the north. These trades are producing 7-8 ft seas with 12 ft seas across the Colombian Coast. ROABS from Kingston, Jamaica and Saint Maarten, Netherlands revealed a typical vertical profile of the Caribbean winter atmosphere...Mid-upper level dry westerlieres above moist surface easterlies...that correlates to mainly fair weather with periods of tradewind moisture across most parts. Unusually chilly weather can be expected across the far northeast Caribbean where cold air advection is taking place.
By W456
Selfishly, I'm not all that concerned with the drama of obvious catastrophe that may occur long after I'm dead. What concerns me is the series of relatively small disruptions that now seem likely to occur with increasing frequency over the next 10-20 years - events that, each taken alone, won't seem like much but may, collectively, have significant socio-economic consequences.
For instance, even a gradual sea level rise of just a few inches would result in a loss of shoreline sufficient to have a potentially significant disruptive effect on the ecology and economic activity of low-lying coastal areas such as ports, fisheries, recreation areas, etc., that will lead to population displacements and other effects that will need to be dealt with. Also, localized weather extremes, wet as well as dry, that could incrementally reduce the quality as well as quantity of grain harvests enough to further increase food prices (e.g., the wet spring a couple years back that unexpectedly reduced the Canadian wheat harvest by 15%).
Whether GW is anthropogenic or not, it seems unwise to focus on "disaster movie" effects that may occur 50 years hence while less cinematic near term consequences go ignored and unprepared for.
Oh and heres hoping it warms up soon,thought I'd throw some weather into our conversation.
I spent a day or so at -80 and would like to dispel some of the myths about those sort of temperatures alluded to in the original post.
First of all, you can indeed throw a cup of water in the air and it will dissipate in a cloud of steam, but it has to be really hot water. If you throw up a cup of cold water, it comes down as cold water. By the way, you can do this even at -40.
Spit does not freeze before it hits the ground.
I didn't hear anything that sounded like the "whispering of the stars" and I was in weather that was colder than -50c for many days.
However, the air is full of ice crystals which you cannot see during the day, but show up on a flash picture at night. These seem to appear at -40 or so.
Ice is not rock hard and immune to an axe chipping away at it. Ice behaves just like ice. We watched some guy chip away at the ice on the frozen Indgirka river in order to measure its depth, and I chipped at it for a while. It seemed to behave just like ordinary ice.
You can actually touch cold metal and your skin does not stick to it. However, after a few seconds it becomes too painfully cold to hold on to.
My camera worked just fine at those temperatures. I had it on a string around my neck under my coat and I would take it out periodically to take pictures with it. I detected no shortening of the battery life. The only thing I noticed was that after a while in the extreme cold, the LCD display began working very slowly.
I was out in the -80 temperatures for about an hour and put the camera in an outer coat pocket. When I tried to turn it back on, it wouldn't come on. After warming it up inside for while, it worked fine. The batteries were just fine.
Your breath does come out in a huge cloud but it goes away fairly quickly. It makes a slight hissing noise if you breathe out a lot as the water wapor in the breath freezes. I seriously doubt that it would still be around 15 minutes later. Cars and trucks make huge vapor trails behind them which last for several minutes. In cities, this never goes away because of the number of cars driving around. This is known as ice fog and on the trip, was evident only in the city of Yakutsk.
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