Extreme Weather in Europe, Africa, and The Middle East

Europe

(March 28) A lack of rain combined with tinder box conditions throughout Britain have bred the ”perfect recipe” for wildfires, authorities say after several areas were hit by raging blazes. The fires erupted as many parts of Britain sweltered in temperatures closing in on 73.4 (23C). Early summer sunshine will also mean more hosepipe bans later in the year, the Environment Agency has warned, with parts of Yorkshire declared officially in drought. (Source)

Persistent Droughts Plaguing Much of the World; Water Shortages Could Cause Wars

(March 19) Five people have died after being caught in a major avalanche in northern Norway, a sixth man was pulled out and taken to hospital with “moderate injuries”. (Source)

(March 14) The worst drought in at least 40 years in the Balkans has left countries that rely on hydro power struggling to maintain a steady electricity supply. The drought that began in August has shrunk output of electricity from the dams to just a quarter of that amount. (Source)

(March 13) Thousands of hectares of forest in northeastern Spain have been destroyed due to out of season forest fire due to a very mild and dry winter. (Source)

(March 12) Water companies across southern and eastern England are introducing water restrictions as a result of two unusually dry winters which have left reservoirs, aquifers and rivers well below normal levels. (Source)

(March 7) An unprecedented one hour of severe hail storm completely wiped out fruit crops in Sicily, Italy. (Source)

(March 1) The driest winter in the last 40 years has raised red flags in Spain, where farmers face the threat of drought. The droughts that Spain experiences year on year are one of the main concerns of agricultural workers who use up to 80% of a reservoir’s water for their crops. (Source)

Africa

(March 18) Hundreds of acreages of indigenous and bamboo forest and moorland in Mt Kenya National Park have been destroyed by raging fire for the ninth consecutive day. (Source)

(March 9) At least 111 people are dead and 332,204 people homeless after Tropical Storm Irina struck Madagascar, most of them residents in the southeast of the Indian Ocean island of the south African nation. (Source)

(March 8) Violent storm destroyed homes and uprooted trees in the Onayena Constituency in Namibia. (Source)

(March 5) Mozambican emergency officials say heavy rains and high winds killed eight people in the southern African nation over the weekend. (Source)

(March 1) Ten students were swept away by raging flood waters while attempting to cross Losukutane River in Tanzania. The river had suddenly swollen following torrential rains that fell in many parts of the country. (Source)

(March 1) A combination of melting snow, overflowing rivers, and heavy rains flooded parts of northwestern Tunisia in late February 2012. Flood waters reached rooftops in some areas. As of February 23, at least two people were confirmed dead, and one person had been reported missing. (Source)

The Middle East

(March 19) Severe sandstorms and below-zero temperatures in the northern and eastern regions and Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. (Source)

(March 18) Some 277 individuals on the Failaka Island in Kuwait were evacuated due to the sandstorm and bad weather conditions. Visibility dropped below 300 meters in most of the country’s areas. (Source)

(March 10) At least 145 people are missing and “presumed dead” after an avalanche hit a remote village in Afghanistan’s northeastern Badakhshan province last week, the United Nations said Saturday. Afghanistan’s harshest winter in 15 years has claimed scores of lives, with the avalanches taking the toll to more than 90 in the mountainous province of Badakhshan alone, according to officials. (Source) (March 7) At least 37 people died and hundreds were still trapped in northern Afghanistan when a snow avalanche covered an entire village near the northern border with Tajikistan. (Source)

(March 2) Heavy snow fell in the Jerusalem area on Friday, and for the first time in four years, parts of Israel were white with snow. (Source)

(March 1) Jordan’s capital, Amman, experiences heavy snow as rare weather conditions hit the gulf region. (Source)

http://endtimesrevelations.wordpress.com/2012/03/20/extreme-weather-in-europe-africa-and-the-middle-east-march-2012/

Spring Snow in Parts of Arizona

Parts of Arizona remained under a winter storm warning on Monday after a snowstorm snarled traffic and forced the closure of many schools.

According to the National Weather Service, heavy snow, particularly around Flagstaff and Prescott, hit much of central and eastern Arizona over the weekend and was expected to continue through Monday. The inclement weather is expected to leave the state by Tuesday -- the day of the vernal equinox, which heralds the official beginning of spring.

Flagstaff, which closed its schools Monday, reported 10 to 14 inches of snow; Prescott received up to a foot.

Road closures were reported throughout the region, most notably the shutdown of about 180 miles of Interstate 40 in northern Arizona. The highway was fully reopened Monday morning, a spokeswoman for the Arizona Highway Patrol said by telephone.

According to the weather service, snow showers are expected to continue in the Flagstaff area through Monday with temperatures just under the freezing point of 32 degrees. Winds were expected to gust to as much as 28 mph.

Monday's snow accumulation was expected to be between one and three inches.

By Tuesday, temperatures are expected to hit a balmier 41 degrees with mostly sunny conditions.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-arizona-snow-20120319,0,1661519.story

Greenland Ice Sheets Could Cause Sea Level Rise

LOS ANGELES - The Greenland ice sheet has a lower melting point than previously thought, with scientists saying not only that it could melt completely at a lower temperature than once believed, but also that the melting process could soon become irreversible.
"Once the process of melting the ice begins, it is very hard for it to change course even if we can lower temperatures in the future," Alex Robertson, lead author of a new study, said by e-mail.

Next century tells the tale

"So even though melting the whole ice sheet could take a really long time, we will essentially decide the fate of Greenland within the next century."
The study was published Sunday in Nature Climate Change.
The Greenland ice sheet is about 1,490 miles at its longest and more than a mile thick, according to Science Daily. Why is it important?
"Understanding the sensitivity of the ice sheet to climate change is extremely important," Robertson said, "because it contains enough water volume to raise sea level by 7 meters," or about 23 feet.

Earth's freshwater reservoirs

This ice sheet and the one that covers most of Antarctica contain more than 99 percent of the freshwater ice on Earth, says the National Snow and Ice Data Center. The sheets influence weather and climate, the center's site says, with plateaus at higher altitudes changing storm tracks and conjuring cold winds that move downslope close to the surface of the ice.
A news release on the study, by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, explains that as the thick sections of the Greenland ice sheet melt, the surfaces at high altitude eventually sink to lower and warmer altitudes, which in turn accelerates the melting.
"Also, the ice reflects a large part of solar radiation back into space," the release says. "When the area covered by ice decreases, more radiation is absorbed, and this adds to regional warming."
The temperature threshold for melting the ice sheet entirely is about half what was once thought, according to the study.
"We expect that (2.9 degrees Fahrenheit) global warming above preindustrial temperatures is enough to switch Greenland from being a stable ice sheet to one that is in decline and will eventually disappear," Robertson said.
He called that threshold a "tipping point" for the ice sheet. The previous best estimate, he said, was 5.6 degrees.
How long will it take to melt the sheet completely?
That "very strongly depends on how high the temperatures are above the estimated threshold," Robertson said. If temperatures remain close to the threshold, the melting would happen much more gradually, "on the order of tens of thousands of years."

Dire prediction

But if global warming continued apace, which Robertson called "a business-as-usual scenario" on greenhouse gas emissions, "the entire ice sheet would melt within 2,000 years."
"In that case, about 20 percent of the ice sheet would disappear in the first 500 years," he said, "which implies continuous sea level rise into the foreseeable future."
Once the melting has begun, Robertson said, it can prove impossible to put on the brakes: "What we show is that even just losing 10 percent of the ice sheet can be enough to make the process irreversible."

http://www.startribune.com/nation/143060746.html

Coldest, deepest Antarctic water 'mysteriously shrinking'

The coldest deep ocean water that flows around Antarctica in the Southern Ocean has been strangely disappearing at a high rate for the past few decades, a new study has revealed.

This mass of water is called Antarctic Bottom Water, which is formed in a few distinct locations around Antarctica, where seawater is cooled by the overlying air and made saltier by ice formation (which leaves the salt behind in the unfrozen water).

The cold, salty water is denser than the water around it, causing it to sink to the sea floor where it spreads northward, filling most of the deep ocean around the world as it slowly mixes with warmer waters above it.

The world’s deep ocean currents play a critical role in transporting heat and carbon around the planet, which helps regulate the Earth’s climate.

Previous studies had indicated that this deep water has become warmer and less salty over the past few decades, but a new study has found that significantly less of this water has also been formed during this time.

Oceanographers examined temperature data collected from 1980 to 2011 at about 10-year intervals by an international program of repeated ship-based oceanographic surveys in the Southern Ocean.

They found that Antarctic Bottom Water has been disappearing at an average rate of about 8 million metric tons per second over the past few decades, equivalent to about 50 times the average flow of the Mississippi River, according to statement from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which helped fund the data collection.

“In every oceanographic survey repeated around the Southern Ocean since about the 1980s, Antarctic Bottom Water has been shrinking at a similar mean rate, giving us confidence that this surprisingly large contraction is robust,” said lead author of the study Sarah Purkey, a graduate student at the University of Washington in Seattle.

What’s causing the reduction and what it means are things the researchers must still investigate.

“We are not sure if the rate of bottom-water reduction we have found is part of a long-term trend or a cycle,” said co-author Gregory C. Johnson, an oceanographer at NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle.

Changes in the temperature, salt content, dissolved oxygen and dissolved carbon dioxide of this prominent water mass have important ramifications for Earth’s climate, including contributions to sea level rise and the rate of Earth’s heat uptake.

“We need to continue to measure the full depth of the oceans, including these deep ocean waters, to assess the role and significance that these reported changes and others like them play in the Earth’s climate,” Johnson added.

http://www.deccanchronicle.com/channels/sci-tech/climate/coldest-deepest-antarctic-water-mysteriously-shrinking-530