By Matti Vooro
The European Environment Agency recently (March 2011) updated their European temperature data by adding the data for the years 2010 and the winter of 2011. The data can be found at EEA 2010, KNMI (http://climexp.knmi.nl), based onClimate Research Unit (CRU) gridded datasets HadCrut3 (land and ocean) and CruTemp3 (land only) from http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk
WINTER TEMPERATURES 1948-2011
European winters seem to have gone through an alternating warm-cool –warm- cool cycle since the 1940s and now appear headed for a cooler cycle like the 1962-1987 period.
A LOOK AT THE MORE RECENT WINTER TEMPERATURES 1998-2011
European winter temperatures have been cooling more recently since 1998, and especially 2009-2011.
European annual temperatures warmed from 1998-2007 but have started to cool over the last 3 years in a row since 2008.
SUMMER TEMPERATURES 1998-2010
On the surface, European summers seem to be getting warmer since 1998. However the higher warming summers of 2003, 2006, and 2010 were all preceded by or affected by an El Nino, just before or as the El Nino partly happened during these summers. So the extra warming may be due to a natural El Nino cycle. If one discounts these El Nino years, the summer temperatures are quite flat and show no real base warming due to global warming. For more detail information on El Nino years see the NOAA site http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov.
HISTORIC MEAN WINTER TEMPERATURES FOR BERLIN, GERMANY – IMPACT OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC OSCILLATION
For those Europeans who still believe that their climate is primarily affected by human generated carbon dioxide, the graph below illustrates that the NAO level seems to be a much more significant cold winter factor affecting temperatures in Berlin, Germany. The temperature data is from GISS Station Temperature Data and NAO data is from CGD’s Climate analysis Section of Jim Hurrell http://www.cgd.ucar.edu. According to the NOAA:
The NAO consists of a north-south dipole of anomalies, with one center located over Greenland and the other center of opposite sign spanning the central latitudes of the North Atlantic between 35°N and 40°N. The positive phase of the NAO reflects below-normal heights and pressure across the high latitudes of the North Atlantic and above-normal heights and pressure over the central North Atlantic, the eastern United States and western Europe. The negative phase reflects an opposite pattern of height and pressure anomalies over these regions.”
There is nothing in the above graphs and figures that would warrant the drastic reductions being planned for carbon dioxide emissions and the extremely expensive green energy options being planned by Europe in light of the most difficult economic environment that exists in Europe and the globe. Surely there are much more pressing problems that confront the world and Europe than solving an apparently non-existing problem that is only speculated to exist 100 years from now.