Shock: Climate realism appears on an alarmist website

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Welcome to the Ice Age? Global Warming vs. Global Cooling | celsias°

Global temperature patterns and predictions about warming or cooling are experiencing a sort of schizophrenia lately, with warming enthusiasts suggesting the oceans may rise even more than IPCC predictions, and cooling enthusiasts - supported by the weather - arguing that human-caused emissions are only a small part of the equation, in which the sun's activity (or lack of it, as now) plays the major role.
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A lot of people are going to be caught unprepared if the next few years grow progressively colder. It may be vindication for Chapman, but for the rest of us, such unexpected cooling will lead to unaffordable heating bills in a world where energy prices are already getting out of hand.

Since we can't all move south, expect a colder world to again divide populations into have and have-nots. This time, the division will occur in developed nations, where the fortunate live south of the 35th parallel and the rest burn their furniture to keep from freezing to death.

Linked from the post above: Ocean cycle may explain cool Alaskan summer

July in Fairbanks averaged 60.6 degrees, almost two degrees below normal. And August is averaging 51.4 degrees, a whopping 7.7 degrees below the long-term norms.

So I put in a call to the National Weather Service up there, and eventually found myself chatting with Gary L. Hufford, the regional scientist for the NWS in Alaska. He's in Anchorage, which enjoyed a rare sunny day yesterday (above, from an FAA web cam). He said temperatures in Alaska this summer really have been unusually cold.

Alaskans are "certainly noticing it," he said, "especially because the period of 2002 to last summer. 2007, we've had some incredibly pleasant summers." It was so warm, in fact, that the summers of 2004 to 2006 were very bad forest fire years for the state, as the warm weather speeded drying in the bush and left it prone to fires. But in Alaska, they're adapting, according to one Fairbanks writer, who said this summer is "becoming the most miserable in recorded history."

What seems to have occurred, Hufford said, is a shift to what climatologists call the cold phase of a cycle in the North Pacific Ocean called the "Pacific Decadal Oscillation," or PDO.

I've written about this phenomenon. NASA climatologists said in May the cool phase seems to have begun last fall, and could influence temperature and rainfall patterns in the United States for decades to come, including enhanced hurricane seasons in the Atlantic, milder winters in Maryland, more dry weather in the Southwest and Southeast, and cooler, rainier weather in the northwest.

Hufford said the Arctic Low, a persistent feature of the far northern atmosphere that usually hangs out near Greenland, has shifted west to the northeast corner of Siberia.

"That has ... put us into a lot of flow from the northwest, out of the arctic. And anytime you get air off the arctic, it's not gonna be warm," Hufford said. It also brings persistent cloudiness to the skies over Alaska.

"Everybody's aware of it," he said, "and that's what's getting to them."

The lack of sunshine has impaired the development of wild berries, which Alaskans love to pick in summer. "What berries you get are not very sweet," he said. Hufford also reported a big flock of cranes flying through Fairbanks last week, perhaps a sign of colder weather in the far north and an early fall.

The cool-phase PDO also tends to produce disappointing salmon runs in Alaska, while enhancing them in the northwestern corner of the lower 48 states.

"What really makes it interesting is that we've seen two or three events of snow down to 3,500 feet or so (in the mountains), right in the middle of summer. That's definitely not as usual thing here," he added.

If this really is the start of a cool-phase PDO they're seeing, it's of no small concern to Alaskans. And it's not just because of one summer of bland blueberries and scarce salmon.

When these PDO phases shift, they tend to do so for decades, not the 4- to 7-year cycles typical of the El Nino/La Nina cyclings in the tropical Pacific. The Icebox State could be in for a long haul.

"That's what's concerning us, if this is in fact the PDO," Huffford said.

The last time the PDO shifted into a cool phase was in 1947. And it stayed there until 1976, bringing cooler, cloudier summers.