Home/BlogThe unusually frigid air over the central and eastern U.S. caused this relatively rare “lightsaber” display of light pillars in Lebanon, New Hampshire, on the night of December 27, 2017.
Light pillar photo by Stephanie Graudons, Lebanon, NH.
The effect is caused when flat-plate ice crystals falling through cold air reflect light sources on the ground like tiny mirrors. The pillars themselves are half way between the light source and the observer.
According to the photographer’s fiance’, and as reported at SpaceWeather.com,
“An unexpected sight at 3 am, these light pillars were amazing enough that I dragged my fiance out of bed and out into the -14 degree night to photograph them! Shivering in a foot of new snow in a nearby baseball field, we watched until they faded away. It was well worth the lack of sleep, and I’d definitely do it again.”
Thank you for posting this. I was noticing this effect in Calgary, on a pre-dawn drive to the airport in -30C, and wondered what it was. Now I know.
“However, in terms of the level of cold, actual temperatures in many locations will be in the lower 5 percentile for all years on record for late December and early January, according to the National Weather Service.
Standout years for record cold in the Northeast at this point in the season were in 1880-81 and 1917-18. In the Midwest, the years 1967-68 and 1973-74 left a mark with subzero F cold.”
https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/piercing-cold-blast-to-feel-subzero-in-central-northeastern-us-in-time-for-2018/70003687
Yes this winter could feature record cold in the N.E .
Bring it on . In the meantime overall oceanic temperatures down to + .152c deviation from sum
er reading around +.35c
lOVE THAT PICTURE
Meanwhile, at NOAA headquarters, they are huddled around a climate model furiously trying to find a way to eliminate the North America record cold temperatures from the NOAA surface database.
Gordon, are they huddled to keep warm or to stave off loss of funding?
lewis…”Gordon, are they huddled to keep warm or to stave off loss of funding?”
Good question. I’m hoping they have changed management to get NOAA back to doing good science.
I recall years ago when a NASA executive wanted to fire James Hanson of GISS but was prevented from doing so from higher up, likely by friends of Hanson’s like Al Gore.
I have nothing against NOAA in particular, they just seem to have been infiltrated by climate alarmists.
“I recall years ago when a NASA executive wanted to fire James Hanson of GISS but was prevented from doing so from higher up, likely by friends of Hansons like Al Gore.”
If you don’t know details, don’t make them up — that’s why you’re know here as a serial liar.
And you as a serial whiner.
Happy New Year! Hopefully you’ll get a life.
DA…”If you dont know details, dont make them up thats why youre know here as a serial liar”.
Only by you, Davey, and occasionally, Barry.
Perfect timing in light of the President’s tweet this morning.
rick…”Perfect timing in light of the Presidents tweet this morning”.
He got bad press from the politically-correct media who failed to see the irony in the statement. It is ironical that we should be having record cold temperatures during so-called catastrophic global warming.
The alarmists assure us the cold was predicted by AGW theory. I fail to see the logic.
Today the globe is +0.5 C above the 1979-2000 baseline. The northern hemisphere is +1.0 C:
http://cci-reanalyzer.org/wx/DailySummary/#t2anom
Trump doesn’t understand the science (or much of anything), and has no desire to.
Turnabout is fair play and as you noted above that, “If you dont know details, dont make them up thats why youre know here as a serial liar” it’s only fair that I point out your hypocrisy vis GR above.
You’ve never met President Trump and you have zero actual knowledge of his actual understanding on any of a myriad of issues. Moreover, were you to query him on the construction of highrise buildings, the utilization of subcontracted operations, the general management of a design-build construction project you’d learn he is incredibly intelligent on multiple levels in many areas. Or, perhaps you’d be interested in his extensive and comprehensive knowledge of golf course design and reconstruction. Or maybe international business deal negotiations. Moreover, he plays biased media types and their fanboys and girls like a fiddle through social media; politically brilliant by any standard as the results speak for themselves (landslide electoral college win, widespread regulation reform, tax code overall that has resulted in substantial growth of the U.S. economy and a commensurate rise in stock valuations.
In short, keep your uninformed opinions to yourself and stick with actual knowledge you can prove.
It’s extremely clear that Trump understands very little — we can tell that from how he speaks about things — “Believe me!” — and from many media accounts and interviews. Trump tries to fake his way through but it’s never convincing and often shameful.
Example: Trump thinks he’s “saved” coal.
Example: Trump thinks he’s repealed the ACA.
Example:
“Afterward, German officials expressed relief among themselves that Ms. Merkel had managed to get through the exchange without embarrassing the president or appearing to lecture him. Some White House officials, however, said they found the episode humiliating.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/us/politics/trump-world-diplomacy.html
DA…”Its extremely clear that Trump understands very little we can tell that from how he speaks about things Believe me!”
No different than Lyin’ Willie (Bill Clinton to those unfamiliar with the term) who claimed “I did not have sex with that woman”. He was referring to a female employee with whom he had just had an inappropriate sexual encounter in the Oval Office.
Or how about Tricky Dickie Nixon, who amazed the world by claiming “a lie is not always a lie”.
There’s little doubt that Trump plays people, and quite successfully. It’s dupes like you who can’t see through his rhetoric and fall prey to his mastery of you.
I’ll give him this, he understands the fallacy in catastrophic global warming theory. You still don’t get it that you have been royally had.
DA…”Some White House officials, however, said they found the episode humiliating.
No doubt a load of Obama lackeys.
Trump has kicked a lot of politically-correct hacks up the butt and they are sore about it. The NY Times is sore because they called the election in favour of Hillary Clinton and they got to look stupid.
Trump is playing the media like an old violin and none of them get it.
I think I agree with post above. You don’t understand Trump.
So there is no GW at the southern hemisphere at the moment. Nice to know that.
DA…”Today the globe is +0.5 C above the 1979-2000 baseline. The northern hemisphere is +1.0 C:”
According to the cheaters at NOAA, maybe. On the UAH graph, I am seeing 0.36C above the 1979 – 2010 baseline and it has been falling since February 2016, when the 2016 EN peaked.
Is it necessary to point out that the cold is due to a La Nina and that the record warming brayed about by alarmists was caused by El Ninos?
They are both natural processes that have dominated warming/cooling so much recently that uber-alarmist Kevin Trenberth was driven to lament that they cannot find the anthropogenic warming for the ENSO influence.
Some more open-minded scientists might want to examine ENSO and other oscillation like the PDO and AMO rather than wasting more time and money on fictitious catastrophic anthropogenic warming.
When I claim the cold is due to a La Nina, I mean it is an underlying force. Of course, the cold is due to Arctic air descending from up north where the ice is allegedly melting. It would be too much of a coincidence to claim La Nina and the severe Arctic air are not related.
Calm down GR. The world does not revolve around Canada and the USA.
“Most of the nation (Australia) will post another year above average – with Sydney notching its 25th in a row – as warming from climate change gradually bumps background temperatures higher regardless of the fluctuating influences of El Nino and La Nina events.”
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/weather/2017-brought-another-year-of-weather-extremes-as-drought-and-heat-took-its-toll-20171228-h0atea.html
prof p…”Most of the nation (Australia) will post another year above average – with Sydney notching its 25th…”
You don’t seriously expect me to believe anything out of the Australian alarmist community do you? The government sanctioned propaganda down there competes with NOAA in the US and Had-crut in the UK for seriously fudged data.
If you want the truth, check into this site for the satellite record. No average warming for the best part of 18 years.
In Australia will be a lot of rain because of La Nińa.
http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mtpw2/product.php?color_type=tpw_nrl_colors&prod=ausf×pan=24hrs&anim=html5
GR – that is a pretty weak response to a simple factual report. Even by your low standards.
Except for Canada and the US midwest and east, the globe is quite warm:
http://cci-reanalyzer.org/wx/DailySummary/#t2anom
The global 2-meter temperature for today is +0.5 C above the 1979-2000 baseline.
The northern hemisphere anomaly is +1.0 C.
Gordon Robertson says:
“If you want the truth, check into this site for the satellite record. No average warming for the best part of 18 years.”
Gordon willfully lies — he was just corrected about this the other day.
18-year trend for UAH global LT v6 = +0.13 C/decade.
That’s the same as the dataset’s total trend since inception.
profp…”GR that is a pretty weak response to a simple factual report. Even by your low standards”.
You call it factual, I call it propaganda. Since governments began interfering in science through the IPCC, scientific organizations have been forced to follow the party line. BOM is no different than NOAA, NASA GISS, or Had-crut, they are all politically-affected yes-men.
da…”Gordon willfully lies he was just corrected about this the other day.
18-year trend for UAH global LT v6 = +0.13 C/decade”.
Is there another kind of lying than willfully lying? There is a boldface lie, by you, like the UAH trend you are trying to misrepresent, that is made up of 18 years of anomalies below the baseline. That means 18 years of the trend we due to re-warming, in part, from the aerosols produced by volcanoes.
The next 18 years of data was flat, but of course you have bought into the lies of NOAA, who retroactively fudged the data to give a trend. So a liar enabling a liar is supposed to add up to a truth?
Scientific protocol with which I do not agree requires UAH to issue a number-crunched trend that does not fit the reality. I do not blame Roy or John of UAH, they are only going by standard practices.
Of course, fools like you come along and take the number-crunched value literally and try to use it to represent your pseudo-science of AGW.
Prof P,
The Age! The Leftist rag read by the low IQ Left inner city ‘elite’ that are the least knowledgeable on climate that you could possibly have linked to.
Note that the article makes no attempt to explain the recent historical temperature behaviour in its remarks of ‘record’ ‘5th warmest’ ‘3rd warmest’ etc etc.
The data will of course break records and be above average relative to temperatures previous to the 1987/98 El Nio, because it was after this El Nio that the global step change in surface and troposphere temperature occurred. All subsequent annual temperature’s will be of course be more likely to break records and/or be in the ‘top ten’ years in record (135 odd years for Australia) because of the fact that the annual temperatures post the 1997/8 El Nio are post the step change and are fluctuating around the higher baseline as a result of the step change. No warming since 1998. Just fluctuating annual anomalies around a higher baseline relative to pre 1998.
But keep posting The Age! That will really impress!
I would advise you to adapt.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_a_f/gif_files/gfs_z100_nh_f240.png
Sorry. The forecast leaves no illusions. La Nińa will help, because there will be less water vapor over North America.
Another weak response from a deluded denier.
1. There is no step change.
2. There is no pause.
3. The report quotes the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.
prof p…”1. There is no step change”.
What do you call that sudden warming circa 2001 following the 98 EN spike? The EN spike drove warming from below the baseline to 0.8C then it diminished to just under the baseline where it was before 98. Then, suddenly, in 2001 the average jumps 0.2C and essentially remained there till 2008.
All of this is based on the red running average curve on the UAH graph Roy maintains on this site. Thanks Roy.
A similar 0.2C step change occurred in 1977, later identified as an effect of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. That means 0.4C of all claimed global warming occurred in 2 step changes of unknown origin.
Are Australians afraid of warming?
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2017/anomnight.12.28.2017.gif
No record heat down under mate suggest you find a better source than the age
Cooling will also be in Europe, when the blockage of the polar vortex will move further over the Atlantic.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_a_f/gif_files/gfs_t100_nh_f00.png
Prof P,
“1) There is no step change
2) There is no pause
3) The article quotes the Australian Bureau of Meteorology”
1) Look at the satellite data. Yes, step change.
2) The IPCC WG1 AR5 must be wrong then. Or you must not understand that aggregating ocean temperature into surface and troposphere does not a pause buster make. Unless you subscribe to the cartoon world where land surface energy and troposphere energy magically navigates its way directly into the ocean from above the ocean, without a geophysics mechanism. But in claiming that there is no pause, then you must know. Would you like to tell me how land surface energy and energy in the atmosphere navigates its way directly into ocean?
3) I don’t see anything relevant being quoted from the Bureau of Meteorology that supports your claims in point 1 or 2.
The IPCC AR5 is out-of-date; new and better data have come in.
“Would you like to tell me how land surface energy and energy in the atmosphere navigates its way directly into ocean?”
Would a heat lamp above a basin of water make the water warmer?
The sun above a basin of water will also make the water warmer.
DA,
IPCC AR5 is ‘out of date’! Oh! That data in the technical reports stood the test of time, didn’t it! Come IPCC AR6, you’ll be screeching about the ‘conclusions’ from the Policy Maker’s report as if its gospel. How long with that last for?
So tell me, is it Karlization that you’re referring to that makes AR5 data ‘out of date’?
No a heat lamp (I’m presuming you’re referring to infrared) will not heat water from above water if the water is free to evaporate and the container holding the water is perfectly insulated, exposing only its surface tension to the heat lamp.
But IR isn’t what is being exclusively referred to when the anti science proponents spew that the ocean’s are the anthropogenic warming. They also hedge the illusion dressed as science for the unwitting by suggesting thermalised energy caused by IR at the surface and in the atmosphere penetrates directly into the ocean from above the ocean. Also does not occur.
*spew that the ocean’s ATE the anthropogenic warming
Yes, the 5AR is out-of-date; in particular about the “hiatus” claims — new and better data have come in since then (Karl et at 2015; UAH v6, RSS v4). That’s the way it goes in an active field such as climate science.
That’s why they do ARs every several years, and not just write one and call it quits.
DA,
No, you’ve got it all back to front. Karlization of data occurs when ideologues seek to mathematically remove from reality that which is sought to be removed – like say, basic geophysic reality.
DA…”new and better data have come in since then”
How can new and better data come in 15 years after the fact? You are claiming in effect that data manipulated in a climate model to what Karl et al thought it should have been is more reliable than the actual data collected at the time.
AR5 stands, NOAA is the crowd being investigated by a US senate committee essentially for scientific fraud.
DA…”Would a heat lamp above a basin of water make the water warmer?”
Where is this heat lamp in the atmosphere? In general, most of the atmosphere is colder than the oceans and the 2nd law states that heat cannot be transferred from a colder body to a warmer body.
The oceans heat the atmosphere above them. In fact, they heat the western coasts of North America and Europe so much that we in Vancouver are above 0C while the rest of Canada is generally -20 C below.
NOAA cheated. They tried to erase the pause in cahoots with the Obama administration who were trying to snow the world on a fiction-based climate action plan.
The pause stands.
*El Nino (script won’t accept lowercase ‘n’)
Solar shield without sunspots and coronal holes on the solar equator.
http://pics.tinypic.pl/i/00953/c1miigk69eeq.png
Temperature and pressure anomalies over the polar circle.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_ANOM_OND_NH_2017.png
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_HGT_ANOM_OND_NH_2017.png
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/blocking/real_time_nh/500gz_anomalies_nh.gif
Magical.
Yet isn’t it in fact even more of that disgusting back radiation, here even a visible focused form of it absorbed by human eye ?
The various morons who so copiously “comment” here won’t be happy with this ugly duckling of the “GHE hoax” showing up again.
And how do you determine
1) That long wave radiation is causing the effect of what’s visible
2) That the long wave radiation is not OLR
1) If “long wave radiation” means IR i(infrared) radiation nobody claims it “is causing the effect of whats visible”. That question would just be nonsense.
2) I might answer if you tell me what OLR means.
gamma…”I might answer if you tell me what OLR means”.
OLR = outgoing long wave radiation. Kind of a redundancy since all outgoing radiation is long wave. Although it’s claimed that solar energy is generally short wave radiation that is nor really correct. Half of it is in the IR band.
I guess what they really mean is that IR emitted by the surface has a wavelength so long its spectrum sits right outside incoming solar IR spectra. That kind of puts the boots to the theory of some alarmists that backradiated IR can be added to incoming solar energy.
Temperature in Ottawa, Montreal and the northeast of the US.
http://files.tinypic.pl/i/00953/gtrytddjbl96.png
Wow, that looks like what I’ve imagined The Angels coming down must look like. Seen some ice fog but nothing quite like that. I’ve seen the Fata Morgana a few times though. Once almost the entire Alaska Range inverted atop itself. Most fascinating.
Very low magnetic activity of the Sun.
http://www2.irf.se/maggraphs/rtplot_flux2_solarq_abs_24.png
Sorry.
http://www2.irf.se/Observatory/?link=Magnetometers
Devils Lake, North Dakota
Current Conditions – F | C As of 6:09 AM on Saturday 30 Dec 2017 (Local Time)
View 1 Active Weather Alert
P Cloudy Partly Cloudy
-27F
Feels Like: -46
Wind Chill: -46 Ceiling: NA
Heat Index: -27 Visibility: 10mi
Dew Point: -33 Wind: 7mph
Humidity: 71% Direction: 300WNW
Pressure: 30.83″ Gusts: NA
The jokes are over.
http://files.tinypic.pl/i/00953/1jreut1b9sf2.png
The Great Lakes are rapidly freezing over, which will disrupt/delay cargo shipments through the lakes. The ice level is up to 16.7% as of yesterday, well above average for this date, with at least another week of sub-freezing high temperatures in the forecast.
https://www.glerl.noaa.gov//data/ice/#currentConditions
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/12/29/great-lakes-ice/989619001/
https://www.wunderground.com/forecast/us/oh/cleveland/44199
Your first link seems to be for last winter (2016-17), not this winter.
1. Absence of doubt
2. Intolerance of debate
3. Appeal to authority
4. A desire to convince others of the ideological truth
5. A willingness to punish those that dont concur
https://judithcurry.com/2017/12/28/jcs-unmotivated-reasoning/
Laura, I agree wholeheartedly with your characterisation of deniers here.
Funny fail.
As you drown, please do justify your “agreement”, point by point.
OK Laura, let me try. Off the top of my head:
1. Name me one denier who can provide a numerical probability that the GHE is real (I have never met one). Warmists continually refine their uncertainty estimates.
2. Name me one credible, reputable, scientific publication by a denier (I don’t know of any).
Tell me how many years warmists have been debating this issue (it could be longer than your age in years).
3. Name me one credible authority on the denier side.
4. Ideology? Are you referring to the claim that global warming is a UN confection designed to bring about world dominance by Al Gore (give me a break!)
5. Who wants to punish NASA, NOAA, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, James Hansen, Michael Mann etc etc ?
Without going through the numbers, 5: who has called for the jailing of those who deny AGW?
Actually, I find the list identifies many on the far left and far right. They end up the same place: totalitarianism. In the instant debate it is easy for a person who is not convinced that AGW exists to be chastised and marginalized and hounded. See too the emails from Mann etc describing how to tout their religion.
Prof, people like you can’t even get the basics right. You call co2 carbon pollution, people like you talk about blankets of co2 trapping heat. How do you expect “deniers” to take you seriously?
Cold is cold no matter its source, your defence of agw in the face of this cold is embarrassing. Rather than declaring it a nothing event try to explain how it occurred and how it can happen in this warming world or conversely STFU.
Crakar
I posted this on a different thread, but more appropriate here:
Number of U.S. All-time temperature records during the past year:
High max: 61
High min: 118
Low max: 7
Low min: 7
https://www.ncd😏c.noaa.gov/cdo-web/datatools/records
Crackar24 – get out of bed on the wrong side today?
I will assume that STFU stands for my Scientific Thoughtful Forensic Understanding of the issues. Thank you.
dr no…”Laura, I agree wholeheartedly with your characterisation of deniers here”.
You are, of course, referring to those who are in denial that AGW has been disproved.
It was interesting to read about Donald Trump’s tweet in the Sydney Morning Herald. It read: “In the East, it could be the COLDEST New Year’s Eve on record. Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against.”
In the Australian issue of The Guardian, it published an opposing view, from climate scientists who “have long warned against using individual weather events to ponder the existence or otherwise of global warming. Weather, they point out, refers to atmospheric conditions during a short period; climate relates to longer-term weather patterns.”
The issue I have here is that when the temperatures are colder than normal it is weather. When the the temperatures are warmer it is due to climate change.
Go figure.
When there is cold and snow in winter, that is likely just “weather”. But, RECORD cold and snow, in some cases breaking long-term records, is likely much more than just “weather”.
Translation: AGW/GHE is a hoax.
When was the last record-low global temperature anomaly?
Hint: my teenage son was not born yet.
top tuna…”Weather, they point out, refers to atmospheric conditions during a short period; climate relates to longer-term weather patterns.”
Did they also point out there had been no average warming for 18 years between 1998 and 2015. 15 years of that flat trend has been corroborated by the IPCC.
With no average warming for 18 years, how do they explain climate change?
We have had about three times as many high temp records this year as low temp records in the US. This continues a trend from the last couple of decades. The imbalance is indicative of warming because without warming the ratio would be closer to 50-50 every year.
One cold event means nothing about global warming since by definition global warming refers to long term global averages.
Of course, G.R. will tell us the data is faked, or it is due to UHI. I think it is very likely that the current cold records are being fudged all over the country. If you look at where the records are being broken, it is mostly in rural areas that tilt Trumpian. I smell a conspiracy.
JD
Exactly.
jim…”We have had about three times as many high temp records this year as low temp records in the US. This continues a trend from the last couple of decades. The imbalance is indicative of warming because without warming the ratio would be closer to 50-50 every year”.
Due to the effect of a record El Nino. The previous 18 years did average out to 50 – 50 since the trend was flat.
Three times more warm than cold temp is relavent
Regard
Harry
Irrelevant
Sorry my typo mistake
Regards
Harry
I agree with irrelevant considering the 0.13C/decade increase in temp is undisputed as caused by natural forcing. Logically one can assume more high temp records.
If you live in a home where outdoor faucets are not winterized get to it. I live just north of Houston and Tues forecast is 22 low. I put the covers on today in preparation.
stevek…”If you live in a home where outdoor faucets are not winterized get to it. I live just north of Houston and Tues forecast is 22 low. I put the covers on today in preparation”.
Don’t you have an interior shut-off valve where you can shut off the outside pipes and drain them?
Pierre, South Dakota
View 1 Active Weather Alert
Cloudy Cloudy
-24C
Feels Like: -32
Wind Chill: -32 Ceiling: 2560.3
Heat Index: -24 Visibility: 14.48k
Dew Point: -27 Wind: 11kph
Humidity: 69% Direction: 0N
Pressure: 1045.04mbar Gusts: NA
The current temperature in the northern US.
http://images.tinypic.pl/i/00953/19ygk12o95wg.png
The dangerous, bone-chilling deep freeze that has broken or tied cold-weather records in Detroit and Flint in recent days is expected to stick around for another week as officials are warning people to be extra careful.
Flint on Thursday had its third consecutive day of record-breaking cold, said Ian Lee, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in White Lake Township.
It dropped to minus-18 degrees in the morning at the city’s Bishop International Airport the lowest temperature ever recorded there not only on Dec. 28 but for the entire month of December.
Temperatures at Detroit Metropolitan Airport reached minus-3 degrees, nearly tying the record of minus-4 degrees set back in 1924. The previous day, Wednesday, the cold-weather record for Dec. 27 of minus-4 degrees was tied.
https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2017/12/28/cold-records-michigan/988925001/
ren…”It dropped to minus-18 degrees…”
There’s that degrees again with no C or F. Obviously, -18 F, which translates to -27.7 C.
Not all that cold as record colds go. I was in Regina, Canada one winter’s day when it was -35C.
Regina is not that far north of Flint, Michigan. The Great Lakes must have a mitigating effect on the cold.
Don’t know.
America probably does not remember such a cold New Year’s Eve.
https://scontent-frx5-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/26047475_755630264642922_50756201020289197_n.png?oh=e292162c3ce71c5e6f8895acb2a8c429&oe=5AF7B96D
Forecast of the polar vortex in the lower stratosphere on January 4, 2018.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_a_f/gif_files/gfs_z100_nh_f120.png
jan 4 could result in snow storm for NE
2C in Vancouver, Canada with a humidity of 91%. Slight wind at 2 kph.
Feels like -22C with the high humidity. Glad I’m here, however, and not suffering what the poor souls are suffering elsewhere.