UK Register: 'Climate shocker: Carry on as we are until 2050, planet will be FINE' -- 'Doubled CO2 means just 1.9°C warming, says Norwegian gov'

'New research produced by a Norwegian government project, described as "truly sensational" by independent experts, indicates that humanity's carbon emissions produce far less global warming than had been thought: so much so that there is no danger of producing warming beyond the IPCC upper safe limit of 2°C for many decades' -- 'The Earth's mean temperature rose sharply during the 1990s. This may have caused us to overestimate climate sensitivity'

Snow and ice create 44-mile-long traffic jam in Germany

Snow blanketed much of Germany early this week following heavy snowfall on Sunday and Monday, the German Weather Service reported. The service said that 3.5 billion tons of snow fell in the country on Sunday alone. With the winter blitz continuing, that figure could rise to 6 billion tons by Wednesday.

THE HOCKEY SCHTICK: New paper finds Antarctic sea ice has markedly increased over past 7000 years

A forthcoming paper in Climate of the Past finds the annual sea ice duration around the west Antarctic Peninsula has markedly increased over the past 7,000 years. The authors attribute the changes to "decreasing mean annual and spring [solar] insolation despite an increasing summer insolation" and to ENSO variability changes. In addition, the authors find the temperature of the Antarctic Peninsula has dropped ~2C over the past 9000 years.

THE HOCKEY SCHTICK: New paper finds China was warmer than the present 1100 & 1700 years ago

A forthcoming paper in Climate of the Past reconstructs temperatures from 5 locations in China and finds no statistically significant change in temperature between the beginning of the record 2000 years ago to the end of the record in the year 2000. The paper shows the Medieval Warming Period about 1100 years ago and the Roman Warming Period ~1800 years ago were both warmer than the present.