Local weather

It still seems unusually warm and humid in Brisbane for this time of year.  

I see that there is a cyclone watch for Far North Queensland, although no one seems to think it will affect the weather this far South.    Yet the nights have been still and clammy - it feels like the prelude to a cyclone even down here.

(And by the way, these new "wind speed visualisations", one of which is at the previous link, are very cool, no?) 

In other, not so local weather, (unless you live in the Arctic Circle, I guess)  there is considerable interest in the fact that the winter maximum extent of Arctic ice seems to have occurred very early this year, and is also very low.   Whether this means that the summer ice minimum will be a new record is anyone's guess at this time, but the current conditions are at least consistent with such a possibility.   Only 6 months to go til we know.

There was also a new study out last week indicating that long term measurements, including those by submarine, show a very substantial thinning of Arctic ice.

And finally, I haven't seen the GISS  temperature figure for February yet, but even the UAH satellite series shows that, despite it being very cold in parts of the US, it was not a globally cold month at all.