Winters are sure colder than they predicted

This latest northern winter is not the only unusually cold event to confound the predictions of global warming alarmists.

Dr Madhav L Khandekar, former research scientist from Environment Canada and an Expert Reviewer for the IPCC 2007, says the evidence suggests winters have become colder and possibly longer in the past 10 years.

Since the new millennium, there have been four winter seasons in the northern hemisphere which can be assessed as significantly colder and longer as well. As mentioned earlier, the 2002/03 winter was very severe over eastern Canada, the US eastern sea-board and in parts of Europe. The last three winters (2007-2010) have been significantly colder than normal in Europe, parts of North America and east Asia. The entire continent of South America witnessed one of the coldest winters during July 2007 and again this past winter in July 2010. A listing of cold weather extremes of the last six years is provided below for ready reference:

1. Winter 2009/10: Scotland suffered some of the coldest winter months in almost one hundred years; cold weather in Germany and eastern Europe caused several deaths and major disruption in transportation system; Bulgaria reported a low temperature of -29C, lowest in fifty years; Siberia suffered perhaps the coldest winter ever, according to Russian scientists.

2. Winter 2007/08: The snowiest winter over northern hemisphere since 1966; severe cold spells in the Middle East, eastern Europe, China and mid-western states in the US; mean temperature between December 2007-February 2008 was coldest over the earth since 2001; Watson Lake, Yukon, Canada had a low temperature of -52C on February 1; sea-ice between Greenland and northeast Canada was highest in 15 years;

3. Winter 2005/06: very cold in parts of Russia with long cold spell in Moscow; Europe had a very cold New Years' Day with temperatures well below normal in many areas; Poland reported 22 deaths from hypothermia in December 2005; parts of China was very cold and Tokyo and other cities in Japan received record-breaking snowfall

4. Winter 2004/05: Long, snowy and much colder in eastern Canada, several blizzards with heavy snow accumulation in central Canada; heavy snow in Himalayan foothills & in Kashmir valley in India. It should also be noted here that the 2004 summer was one of the coldest summers over US and Canada in almost one hundred years!

5. Winter 2003/04: Unusually cold and severe in eastern Canada, city of Halifax received close to 100 cm of snow in 24 hours in February 2004; New York city and vicinity received all time record snow, ~50 cm at earliest date, 5 December 2003.

6. Winter 2002/03: severe cold in parts of Europe, over 200 deaths in Poland in January 2003; long cold spells in northern India, Bangladesh & Vietnam with several hundred people dying of exposure to cold in January 2003; temperature in some areas of Mongolia fell to -50C in January 2003; by March 2003, over 90% of the Great Lakes region in US/Canada were frozen and Lake Superior (the largest and deepest of the lakes) was almost 98% covered with ice.

There are numerous other cold weather events of recent years which have been archived by a US-based project ICECAP (International Climate & Environmental Assessment Project: http://www.icecap). What is of interest here is that cold weather extremes seem to be occurring with greater frequency in the last ten years than what has been reported in media or in scientific literature. IPCC climate change documents do not mention anything about cold weather extremes and their trends and/or changes in future climate projections.

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