"Keith (Southend)G" wrote in message

A colleague has just passed a copy of yesterday Daily Express to me
and I have been reading this article. What I was going to say is the
Express have probably got it's facts right on this occasion. I have
noted the cold in Siberia, Canada and Greenland, together with the
snow events around the world that it mentions, infact the latest Greek
snow event isn't included.

.... the global temperature anomalies, according to this page:-

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts.txt

a December 2007 +0.60degC
January 2008 +0.31degC

so for this winter *globally* to approach, say, that of 1994 (anomaly
for DJF +0.14), then this February would need to have an anomaly of
around -0.48degC. Now obviously, I can't say now whether this value
(for February) is going to approach that, or even whether the anomaly
might be greater (-ve), but then neither can the Daily Express. We
haven't reached the end of February.

I'm not quite clear why the stories publicised in this peice are so
unusual? We've always said time and time again, that even in a
globally warmed world (which we are in, whatever the cause), there
will be areas which experience 'proper' winter weather. Certainly snow
in Jerusalem and Kabul is not unusual. Also, we should be wary of
believing stories that such-and-such snow event is the 'worst in
decades'. What young sub-editors in the media don't realise is that
for 50-odd years, we haven't known in detail about life in mainland
China and associated winter privations; Afghanistan may be important
to us now, but not since the British left India has that part of the
world been of detailed interest to us. Back in the 1980s/early 1990s,
when we (at STC) were providing forecasts for surveillance of the
Soviet operations in that country, I can distinctly remember having to
brief on severe winter weather in that region - so the past winter
ain't that novel.

Martin.