Chilly Spring Around Here Is A Global Exception

Most of the world, with the exception of much of Canada and half
the United States was warm in April. It will be regarded as the
second warmest April on record for the world as a whole. 

It was another frosty morning in Vermont, the last of a string of them.

The warming trend has arrived in the Green Mountain State. But of course, this being 2020, it turns out the warming might be tamped down a bit by a stalled area of low pressure along the East Coast next week.

We'll see about that, but at least it won't be cold anymore. No more frosts, no more snow

While we here in the Northeast shivered through large chunks of April and the first half of May, the rest of the world broiled.

Global numbers for April are in and it was more or less tied for the hottest April on record, at least on a global basis.

NOAA's Centers for Environmental Information place April, 2020 as the second hottest on record, just an itty bitty skosh cooler than the record holder, April, 2016. Other measurements call last month THE hottest. All measurements basically come up with the same numbers for the month.

Central and eastern Canada, and the northeastern third of the United States were practically the only cool spots in the world during April.

As Bob Henson in Weather Underground's Category 6 blog points out, there were areas of incredible heat this past April.

Kyrgyzstan, China and Mongolia all set all time records for April heat.  Unseasonable wildfires ripped through eastern Siberia. Cuba reported all time record high temperatures, not just for April, but for the entire year. Southern Florida wilted in June-like heat.

The global temperature trends make it all but certain this year will globally be one of the top five warmest on record.

By the way, there is no discernable impact on carbon dioxide in the atmosphere now that much of the world's economy is shut down by Covid-19.  We are still spewing enough carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to increase concentrations of this main greenhouse gas.  It's just that the rate at which it's increasing in the atmosphere has probably slowed, for now at least.

Discover Magazine notes that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, as measured on top of Hawaii's Mauna Loa reached an all time high of 416.82 parts per million in April, which exceeds the previous high in April, 2019.  For a variety of reasons, carbon dioxide concentrations in the air cycle yearly, with an annual peak in April.

The International Energy Agency expects global carbon dioxide emissions to decrease by 8 percent this year, not enough, really, to significantly alter the forward path of climate change. Scientists are conducting flights around major cities along the East Coast to further study how these Covid shutdowns are affecting carbon emissions.

One intriguing thing to watch: Particulate polllution has decreased with these Covid-19 economic shutdowns. These little particles block a little bit of sunshine from getting through which has had the effect of tempering climate change a bit.

Will this year be hotter globally because of reduced particulate pollution, with more sun getting through?   Scientists are interested in finding out more, that's for sure.

Global Heat Goes On: April Was World's Second Hottest On Record

Canada, the ocean off the west coast of Australia and parts of the
Mideast were a bit cool in April, but most of the rest
of the world was warm. Again. It was globally
the second warmest April on record 

Once again in April, parts of the United States and Canada didn't get the memo:

While a few sections of North America were a little on the cool side, the world as a whole had its second hottest April on record, says NOAA's Centers for Environmental Information.

Only April 2016 had a toastier global temperature in records that date back to 1880.

The warm April follows March, which was also the second warmest on record for Earth.

For those of you keeping track, this was the 43rd warmer than average April in a row. It was also the 412th consecutive month with above normal global temperatures. If you're younger than 34 years old, you've never seen a cooler-than-average global month.

In April, the hottest spots, relative to average, were Greenland, Scandinavia and northern and central Asia. Relative cool spots were mostly limited to Canada, areas near the Great Lakes, and the southern Ocean near Australia.

(Here in Vermont, April's temperatures were pretty close to normal.)

Arctic sea ice extent was also the lowest on record in April, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

That doesn't necessarily mean this summer will be the most ice-free on record way up at the top of the Earth. It all depends on weather and ocean currents. There have been some springs in recent years with very low Arctic ice extent, followed by summers in which the ice was puny, but not at record lows.

These monthly updates on global climate come out about two weeks or so after the month closes. We'll see how May went when the next report appears in mid-June.

Rest Of The World Baked Along WIth Us Vermonters In August

Just like every other month in recent years, August, 2018
was hot across the Globe. 

Us Vermonters have barely gotten over our hottest August on record. Meanwhile, NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information said we had company.

On the Earth overall, August, 2018 was the fifth hottest on record. Those records date back to 1880.

This August global heat means that each of the last five Augusts are in the top five toastiest on record.

There were very few cool spots to be found on Earth in August, 2018. The only areas I could find that were a bit on the cool side were far northwestern Canada and northeastern Alaska, a patch of the North Atlantic south of Greenland, a little bit of central South America, and a few scattered spots in western Australia.

Heat in August, 2018 was particularly strong in, well, Vermont and much of the rest of New England, western Europe, especially up in Scandanavia, New Zealand and South Korea.

For the summer as a whole (June 1 through August 31), the world as a whole also had its fifth warmest summer.  So far this year, the Earth is having its fourth hottest year on record. The world will likely finish out 2018 as having a year in the Top 6 warmest.

All this comes without an El Nino, which tends to warm things up on the Earth as a whole. Some indications are that an El Nino is developing, which increases the odds the hot times will continue in 2019.

This should go without saying, but the fact that almost all of the warmest years on record for the Earth have happened in the past five years, global warming is having a huge influence on the climate, overcoming even the normal cyclical highs and lows and bumps and dips we get in the Earth's temperature trends.

Weather Disasters Were Big In 2016

One of the multi-billion dollar weather disasters in 2016
was severe European flooding in late May and early June.
Photo by Sebastian Widmann/Getty Images via Weather Underground

Now that the nation seems to have entered a break from a one or two month long stretch of seemingly constant big storms, let's look at weather disasters from 2016.

According to the Category 6 Blog by Jeff Masters and Bob Henson at Weather Underground, the world in 2016 experienced 31 disasters that caused a least $1 billion in damages.

That's the fourth highest number of such disasters since people started keeping detailed track of these calamaties back in 1990.

The monetary figures for these disasters are inflation-adjusted, so the reason for the uptick is not that everything is more expensive.  The expensive year of 2016 also appears to be part of an upward trend in enormous disasters.

Some people might be quick to blame global warming for the uptick in terrible, expensive disasters, and climate change could well be part of the mix.

But there are other big factors as well. The disaster statistics come from the Aon Benfield 2016 Annual Global Climate and Catastrophe Report. 

The report says:

"It can be concluded that there have been an increase in both annual and individual weather disaster costs in the last nearly four decades. It can reasonably be assumed that the combination of effects from climate change, more intense weather events, greater coastal exposures and population migration patters are all equal contributors to the loss trend."

The bright side to the report is that deaths from big disasters was smaller than most years. Natural disasters, including earthquakes, killed about 8,250 people worldwide in 2016, compared with a yearly average of around 71,000.

Scouring through the details of the 2016 disaster report and Masters' and Hensons' post:

"Munich Re, the world's largest reinsurance firm, put global losses from natural disaster at $175 billion in 2016, compared to $7.1 billion in 2015. the high losses in 2016 were driven by increasingly powerful storms and an exceptionally high number of severe floods, with flooding causing more than a third of all losses, well above the 10 -year average of 21%."

The most expensive weather disaster in 2016 was flooding in China's Yangtze Basin, around the first of August, which caused about $28 billion in damage and left 475 people dead.

Fifteen of the world's 31 billion dollar weather disasters occured in the United States. Most of the disasters were floods, tornadoes and severe thunderstorms, but drought in different parts of the nation contibuted to the total.

The death toll from all the billion dollar American disasters in 2016 was 106. Very bad, but not as bad as it could have been, considering the losses involved.

Of course, we don't know whether 2017 will follow the upward trend in expensive disasters. I don't even know yet if this month's slew of California storms, or the tornadoes in the South caused damages of a billion dollars or more.

Italy Floods; Tokyo Snows

Kiosks and lamposts are inundated during massive
flooding in Turin, Italy over the past few days  

Two extreme weather events slammed a couple locations around the world over the weekend.

The worst was an epic flood in Italy. The other was one of the earliest snows on record in Tokyo.

In Italy, torrential rains from a large, wet, slow moving storm caused incredible flooding, especially in the northwestern part of the nation.  

At least two people are reported dead, and thousands have been evacuated. The hardest hit area is in the Po River basin, including the city of Turin.

Most bridges in Turin were closed for safety reasons, and tourist boats were ripped from moorings and slammed into bridge abutments, the Weather Channel said. 

Video of the Italy flooding is at the bottom of this post.

Snow fell in November in Tokyo for the first time in
54 years. Photo by Shizou Kambayishi/AP

In Tokyo, snow fell in November for the first time in 54 years, numerous media outlets, including the Guardian reported. 

The snow didn't pile up much, but it did cause a stir in the megalopolis. It was the first time on record that snow actually accumulated on the ground in Tokyo in November.

Tokyo is a relatively warm city that averages only four inches of snow a year. Usually, that snow falls in January or Februrary. But a strong cold front from northeast Asia dropped temperatures to as much as 20 degrees below normal.

Temperatures are still a bit below normal in Tokyo, but are now much closer to normal.

Here's a video of the terrible flooding in Italy:

Beyond New England, Lots Of Other Worldwide Weather Weirdness This Month

Bad weather around the world this month, not
just in New England. Here, destruction from Cyclone
Marcia in Yeppoon, Australia. Photo
from Australia News Bureau  

New England's winter weather has been a nightmare for many people, to say the least, but  things haven't been all that peachy in other areas of the world over the past month, either.

Here's a roundup of how things are going bad with conditions elsewhere in the world over the past few weeks  that you might have missed for all this snow news in the United States.

AUSTRALIA CYCLONES

Earlier this month, two cyclones, named Lam and Marcia, hit Australia on the same day. (Hurricanes are called cyclones in Australia.)  

Damaging cyclones hit Australia from time to time, but this is the first time two have hit the nation on the same day, National Geographic quoted the Australian Bureau of Meteorology as saying.

Lam hit near Darwin, but the area it went through was somewhat lightly populated so it wasn't excessively destructive.

Marcia hit near the cities of Yeppoon and Rockhampton and damaged at least 1,500 homes. No deaths were immediatley reported. But Marcia, Marcia, Marcia! It hit an area more to the south than most strong cyclones strike.

CANADA STORMS

I've been mentioning southeastern Canada fairly frequently in the past few weeks because those storms that have been battering eastern New England move on to the Maritime Provinces in our neighbor to the north.

A road in Kesington, Prince Edward Island,
Canada after the blizzards earlier this month
Photo from Susan Gorham.  

The storms have buried parts of southeastern Canada in spectacular amounts of snow.

Since a lot of these storms have been heading due north from New England and Canada juts out to the east, sometimes, the extreme eastern parts of Canada have gotten into the warm sides of some of these big tempests.

Such was the case this weekend in Halifax, Nova Scotia over the weekend. It had snowed a lot in that city in the past few weeks, but yesterday's storm brought a bunch of rain.

Since the city's storm drains were blocked by snowbanks and ice, the city's streets flooded big time, says the CBC. 

Oddly, the more north you go, the warmer it gets in eastern Canada. Way up in St. John's, Newfoundland, the mean temperature so far this month is 23.7 degrees Fahrenheit (4.6 Celcius) according to Environment Canada data.

Compare that to Burlington, Vermont, much further south, where the mean temperature for February through Wednesday was 7.7 degrees Fahrenheit.

AFGHAN AVALANCHES

After a fairly mild winter, huge snowstorms swept through northern Afghanistan in the past week, triggering avalanches that have probably killed more than 200 people, says Al Jazeera. 

Avalanches are common in Afghanistan, but this was one of the worst in terms of death tolls. Rescuers have had trouble reaching remote villages affected by the disaster because of deep snow and continued bad weather.

MIDDLE EAST DUST, FLOODING AND SNOW

In the Middle East, huge sandstorms struck early in the month reducing visibilities to pretty dangerously low levels.

Sandstorms happen from time to time in the Middle East, of course, but this was the worst one in decades, by some accounts.

Here's a really dramatic video of a sand storm approaching Aswan, Egypt during this storminess:




The dust was so thick that Israel's Environmetal Protection Ministry said air pollution levels there were the worst in five years. People were told to stay indoors until the dust settled.

The high winds that brought all that dust also stirred up the Mediterranean Sea, says Huffington Post.  So while people were choking on the dust in places like Lebanon, high surf was causing flooding and structural damage.

More recently, in the past couple of days, the problem became flooding. Serious flooding has hit parts of Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and the West Bank, closing major highways and causing damage throughout the region.

Earlier in the week, heavy snows hit the region, especially in higher elevations.

BRAZIL DROUGHT

In Sao Paulo, Brazil, the drought and water crisis I mentioned a while back is getting worse.

According to the Guardian, Brazil's second biggest city is in its third year of drought, and things are getting dire. There's already water rationing, and water might be cut off to people five days a week, and there's no sign things will get better soon.

Reservoirs are only 5 to 15 percent of capacity.

"Simple calculations indicate that given the current level of consumption versus the predicted raining patterns, there is only enough water on the system to last four to six months. That means the water dould run out before the next rainy season starts in November.

As I noted previously, too much deforestation in the Amazon, and possibly global climate change are ingredients that have gone into the Sao Paulo water emergency.

ALBANIA FLOOD

Also from The Guardian, deforestation contributed to quite an opposite problem in Albania earlier this month. The Balkan coutry was hit by terrible floods.

Says the Guardian:

"Over the last two decades, many Albanian trees close to powerful rivers such as the Vjosa, Osum and Shkumbin have been chopped down by poor villages desperate for wood, and by entrepreneurs clearing the way for buildings and dams in a construction boom that has largely benefitted foreign firms.

The trees had held soil in place for centuries - acting as a sponge during rainfalls - but without them, soil erosion has accelerated flood damage."

The Albania flooding was regarded as among the worst in that country's history.

Want Snow? Head To Europe

Want snow? Head to the highways near the French Alps
Then get stranded, as these people did.  

Much of the snow has melted away in northern New England, putting a crimp in winter sports.
True, the downhill ski areas still have snow for skiing and riding, but it's pretty thin otherwise in most areas.

Winter cold is returning to the Northeast later today and will stay put for quite awhile, and there will be little snowfalls. Some mixed precipitation is due next Saturday, as it looks now.

But I don't see any whopper snowstorms for awhile, anyway.

Where do you go for snow, then. There's the northern Rockies in the U.S., where winter storm warnings are flying for up to a foot of new snow, on top of recent snowfalls there.

If you really want snow, though, head to the French Alps. The only problem is, if you do it today. (Yeah, right) you might have trouble getting there.

A very heavy snowfall has stranded up to 15,000 travelers as roads became treacherous in the storm, and many people didn't put chains on their tires in time.

In addition to all that snow in the French Alps, gales have cut power in areas of Britain and France. Paris is expecting its first freeze in at least a year, and snow has spread to wide areas of Europe, including the Netherlands, Germany and the Balkans.

For those New Englanders who can't travel, the snow will return eventually, for those who want it. Much of the first half of January looks like it will be on the cold side, which gives us chances for some snow anyway.

Maybe we'll get flurried to death like we often do in the northern New England mountains. An inch here, two inches there. Over time, that adds up, as long as we don't get any mega thaws again.

Storm Roundup: Australia Lightning

Lightning in Melbourne, Australia over the weekend.
Photo by Ian Ranson via Melbourne Herald Sun.  

The weather is relatively quiet in the United States at the moment (with some storminess in the Pacific Northwest, and a weekend of record heat in the Southern Plains.)

But, as always, its been active in other parts of the world.

There was an incredibly lightning display in and around Melbourne, Australia over the weekend.

The storm disrupted train service, flooded streets and cut power. Lightning strikes also disrupted train service and set at least one house on fire around Melbourne.

Here's a compilation of some photos taken during the storm:



Remember Hurricane Gonzalo? That was the hurricane that trashed Bermuda a couple weeks ago.

Gonzalo's remnants has since been on a world tour, causing stormy weather, coastal flooding and high winds in parts of Britain, then moving on to central Europe, where it dumped some heavy mountain snow.

The remnants of Gonzalo settled into Greece over the weekend, producing this flash flood in Athens:

Extreme Weather Worldwide: Fatal Japan Landslide,Mexico Hail, Genoa Waterspouts, More....

Landslide destruction in Hiroshima. Photo
from Mainichi.  

It's not just the United States that have had wicked bad storms this summer. Many spots around the world are getting hammered.

The worst of the recent storms hit Hiroshima, Japan, last week, where at least 39 people died when record rainfall, to the tune of eight inches in just a few hours, triggered a huge landslide that slammed into a crowded neighborhood. 

The area around Hiroshima is prone to landslides, since there's lots of steep, unstable mountain slopes there. Continued heavy rain in the area is making search and rescue really difficult.

Last weekend in Mexico City, the problem was hail. an incredible amount of it.

Hat tip to Capital Weather Gang for the alert on the Mexican hail which piled up to two or three feet deep in some sections of the city especially where rainwater washed the hail into  huge piles.  We were left with the odd scene of what looked like people shoveling heavy snow in Mexico City in August

Here's a video showing the deep hail, and flooding caused by the Mexico City storm. (Then scroll down for more more wild world weather below the video)



In Italy, the problem was tornadoes and waterspouts.

There was a spectacular waterspout off of Genoa, and here's a surveillance camera video of a tornado hitting an Italian beachfront cafe.

Probably not a good day for a nice cocktail on the beach:




Earlier this month, it was Germany's turn to have tornadoes and severe weather, as we can see in this video:

Worldwide, The Weather Extremes Continue

Two guys build a snowman over the weekend near
Ballarat, Australia. Photo by Ian Currie/Herald-Sun

Now's a good time, on a nice slow weekend, to catch up on the weather extremes gripping other parts of the world lately.

As usual, it's pretty extreme in spots.

In Italy, at least four people died when a flash flood swept through a festival site near Venice, the BBC reports.  Several people were swept away while in their tents or cars. Some people clung to trees during the flood and survived.

Down in Australia, they just had a relatively rare bout with snow and cold.

In the high elevations outside of Sydney, Australia, it snowed in the past few days.  The Blue Mountains do get snow from time to time in the Australian winter, which is now. Temperatures reached near record lows in some areas of Australia with this latest cold front.

The cold front that caused the snow also packed high, damaging winds, thunderstorms, sleet and a deep chill, according to the Herald Sun of Australia.  The high temperature in Melbourne Friday was 50 degrees, only the fourth time since 2000 the temperature stayed that low there.

This cold isn't unprecedented in Australia, but since they've had record warm temperatures consistently for the past year and a half, this chill must have come as a shock.

In the Pacific Ocean, Super Typhoon Halong is now packing 160 mph winds, and could cause a lot of trouble in southern Japan or maybe Korea later this week. Conditions along the storm's expected path are good for the typhoon to remain strong.

A program note: When there's a big typhoon in that part of the world, a sharp cool snap often follows in the central and eastern United States a week or two later. That happened twice in July after huge typhoons hit the western Pacific ocean area.

Japan has had enough problems lately. Last week, a torrid heat wave in Japan killed at least 15 people and sent about 8,600 to hospitals. Temperatures there exceeded 95 degrees, and the humidity was killer. Korea is experiencing a torrid heat wave, too.

England just endured its 8th hottest July since 1910, and the heat has been interspersed with severe storms and flooding. The heat is fading now, but local flooding is expected to continue.

Meanwhile, in Instanbul, Turkey, the problem was a tornado and other severe weather that passed through the other day.

Here's a video of the tornado and downpours in Instanbul:

June, 2014 Was World's Hottest, Says Climate Data Center

Lots of red on this global map depicting
the world's hottest June on record.  

To the surprise of few climate scientists, the combined ocean and land temperature on Earth during June, 2014 was the hottest on record,  the National Climatic Data Center announced this morning.    

The combined land and sea temperature was 0.72 degrees above the 20th century average. That doesn't sound like much to those of us who can easily tell the difference between 50 and 60 degrees.

But worldwide climate records involve small numbers, and this warm departure from normal makes June the hottest month globally since they started really keeping track of this stuff in the late 1800s.

If you count just land areas, June was the 7th warmest on record. The oceans were the hottest on record, of course.

The first six months of 2014 were tied for the third hottest on record for the world as a whole.

The last cooler than normal June for the world was in 1976. The last time any month of the year was cooler than average on a global basis was February, 1985.

Basically if you're 29 years old or younger, you've never experienced a month where the Earth has a whole was cooler than average. (Though of course there were a few individual months where you live that were locally colder than normal. If you lived in the Upper Midwest or Northeastern U.S. in January or March, you know what I mean.)

If trends continue, 2014 might actually turn out to be the hottest year on record on a global basis.

The latest global report comes on the heels of a NOAA assessment of 2013 that revealed little if any good news on the global warming front.

Last year was somewhere between the second and sixth warmest year for the world, depending upon who you asked. (Different sets of data yielded slightly different results)

The 2013 assessment also said carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere continued to rise, sea levels were still slowly but steadily rising, and Arctic ice extent stayed at low levels.

With the last several months being at or near the top warmest on record, I'd love to see how the global warming denialists spin THIS latest report.

Maybe they'll say the fine folks at the National Climatic Data Center are part of a huge conspiracy to somehow tell us it's hot so they can take our guns and liberty away.  Or something.

I'm not sure how saying the world is warming will take our guns and liberty away, but I'm sure some of the denialists will come up with something.

Here's something the denialists don't understand: If there is some huge conspiracy that hundreds or thousands of people are in on, you're going to get a few loudmouths, or ethical people, or people who don't want to break laws, to whistleblow.  And if that happened, the media, including me, would Eat. It. Up.

Gleefully.

But all I hear is crickets, and the rustle of aluminum foil hats on the heads of the most extreme denialists.