Climate stuff noted

First, the New York Times has a good, balanced article on the question of the cold European and American winters this year and last, and whether it can reliably said to be all part of global warming. (The answer is: a definite maybe, but we need to do more research.)

In case you haven't heard, as with last winter, the far north of Canada has been remarkably warm:

Yet while people in Atlanta learn to shovel snow, the weather 2,000 miles to the north has been freakishly warm the past two winters. Throughout northeastern Canada and Greenland, temperatures in December ran as much as 15 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit above normal. Bays and lakes have been slow to freeze; ice fishing, hunting and trade routes have been disrupted.

Iqaluit, the capital of the remote Canadian territory of Nunavut, had to cancel its New Year’s snowmobile parade. David Ell, the deputy mayor, said that people in the region had been looking with envy at snowbound American and European cities. “People are saying, ‘That’s where all our snow is going!’ ” he said.

It's interesting to see scientists openly acknowledging that they need to be cautious in what they say:

In interviews, several scientists recalled that in the decade ending in the mid-1990s, the polar vortex seemed to be strengthening, not weakening, producing mild winters in the eastern United States and western Europe.

At the time, some climate scientists wrote papers attributing that change to global warming. Newspapers, including this one, printed laments for winter lost. But soon after, the apparent trend went away, an experience that has made many researchers more cautious.

John M. Wallace, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington, wrote some of the earlier papers. This time around, he said, it will take a lot of evidence to convince him that a few harsh winters in London or Washington have anything to do with global warming.

This is fair enough, but given the way climate change skeptics will use any cold snap to bolster their case, it's important that articles at least talk about the possible mechanisms by which the winter weather may indeed be consistent with AGW.

Second: there are a few climate change blogs I've started reading more regularly lately, and I've added them to the blogroll. AGW Observer, being run by a Ari in Finland, seems a particularly useful collection of just published papers on climate change. I hope he keeps it going.

I've also been enjoying Michael Tobis, even though he seems to be getting pretty desperately pessimistic, and Tamino is always good to check on despite his not too frequent posts.

Funny, I can't find any climate change skeptic blog worth adding. Watts Up With That can be trusted to bring any new skeptic claim to light, anyway.

Third: early figures comparing Brisbane's last two floods show that 1974 Brisbane floods were indeed based on a lot of rain:

But weather experts suggested "peak rainfalls from the 1974 event were substantially heavier than those in 2011".

Brisbane's three-days and one-day totals were 600mm and 314mm in 1974, compared with 166mm and 110mm in 2011.

"However, in 1974 the heaviest rains were closer to the coast whereas in 2011 heavy rains spread further inland," the bureau said.

The bureau is still crunching the numbers, and it will be interesting to see if the widespread nature of the 2010/11 floods is unusual in Queensland history. Certainly, I don't recall flooding all the way from Brisbane to Rockhampton and far inland in such a short period before; but I don't exactly keep precipitation charts on my bedroom wall.