Gray-Wolf

Is it not an insight to how such situations arise Pete? If we can look at ENSO phase, QBO,AMO,PDO as giving a tilt to how patterns will develop then why not the instant impacts of snow/ice loss? Now we are back in a period of negative snow anoms will the heat this allows to our north have no impact on our systems as they develop and travel?

So the Scottish 'clearences' were not just to get rid of the folk living there but to give a better form of land management a chance?????

Maybe they weighted their conclusions wrongly and should have looked more to the arctic changes for the driver of the Jet's recent 'excursions' . to me it is no mistake that , post another 18% drop in ice levels, we should see a similar 'switch' to the one we saw with the 07' 22% drop in ice cover? Shift the jet on a cycle and troughs become peaks and peaks become troughs ( sorry Mid europe but it's your turn now!)

I'd imagine renewable sources like The 'super grower' Willow? or a move back to the Coppicing that used to be so common in the wooded valleys around here? When we look at using stuff it doesn't always mean 'killing' a thing but more 'harvesting' it? Then I think back to the many types of hemp that used be be so 'popular' in our area ( esp. Stockport?) to service the 'rope ' needs of our fleet? Current research on the modern varieties show it's potential from medicine, through clothing, through paper, through biomass? I believe it also 'fixes' nitrogen in the soils so 'crop rotation without needing have fields lay 'fallow' ( so the poor Farmers can maximize 'profit'). If we were really being serious about such things we would also look at how 'cost effective', per acre, livestock really is? when you think of how much 'food' is used to produce this 'food' it does appear a very decadent use of our resources?

I would hope we are advancing in our understanding of such things Four? The fact that NASA is able to show us the orbital track for Ison is surely an advance on the data we had for the 1680 comet??? The NASA chappie who highlighted the 'double whammy' of debris impact, apart from being a well respected expert in his field, seems to think this is an 'unprecidented' happening so the positioning of the trail must be somewhat uncommon? That said i am looking for input from folk more knowledgable on such matters to 'fill in the blanks' that I have raised? For me I am still at the 'dirty Snowball' stage of understanding comets and their makeup but that leaves me thinking that there is a rich variety of constituants buried in the ice? We are still being told that it will only be on it's close approach that we will know if the comet will be the 'show stopper' it has the potential to be and we still do not know if it will survive it's 'sun Dive' and emerge from the contact ( we only have lovejoy as a guide...being smaller and yet surviving the initial encounter?) The likes of Hubble are studying it now but it will only be when it is getting in to Mars's orbit that the solar wind will begin to properly 'melt out' the water ice to produce the tail ( current images of the 'tail' are of gas emmisions as it is still to far out for the 'ice' to play a role)? So if anyone does have solid information as to why NASA is so confident that the particles we will encounter from Jan 12th will only be 'microns' across , and not be a mixture of sizes capable of giving a 'traditional' meteor shower' then please post?

I take it 'surfs up!' along the California coast though?

especially when applied to certain folk and their behaviours........

If you look to the mega highs that inner continent get then the 'drying of the land' makes it easier for the high to maintain. So the longer it lives the more likely it is to live longer?( and become ever hotter???). if you look back to 03' and 06' I think you can see this effect in the major blocks we had then?

From looking to past years, when similar has arrived, it is only once it is with us that the models 'catch up' with it in terms of longevity and strength?

We live in a society ever more dependent on the sats above but just how safe are they? We hear tales of massive CME's causing onboard fizzle failures and are also told of the amount of debris mankind has placed in orbit amongst them so just how safe are they and how much of an impact would the loss of them cause to mankind and our current level of 'civilisation'? I'm barred from the discussions of Ison's impacts on our climate but have to wonder just how 'sure' NASA is that the debris stream we are set to encounter, from Jan 12th 2014, will be just ' benign dust of only microns diameter'? We have a number of named 'meteor showers' each year, that are just us encountering other 'comet Tails', so why , for a first time visitor to the inner solar sytem, are NASA so sure that this week long ( full global) encounter will not pose a threat to our sats ( and ISS) as their recent posts suggest? I , for one, would expect the debris stream to be a mix of dust, small grains and rocks? What shows us, whilst still between jupiter and Mars, that it should be any different to any other 'average' comet? Should we find the ISS being left 'un-manned' from early Jan next year ( with some odd story as to why the crew were recalled?) I will be a little less 'assured' that the predicted 'dust shower' , and early noctilucent show, is all that we are set for? Think about it, we pass through ( according to NASA's orbita lplot) the dead centre of the comets path on it's approach to the sun. We expect to encounter both the debris following the comet and also the debris from beyond us ( pushed into us by the solar wind) for upwards of a week ( like most other 'meteor showers') and we are told to only expect to pass through dust mere 'microns' in diameter? I'm sorry but this is one old Wolf that isn't comfey with what he is told to expect.

I think many folk do not question agri-business's use of pertro based fertilisers Knocks? They quote top forecast grain yields as a proof that society has nothing to fear from overpopulation and then fudge the greater impacts of such follly? Question it and they will insist you want to live in a cave????

Helps ease to boredom before we enter peak storm period though?

Certainly ain't no re-run of last year? I wonder what has changed to break that run of 'stuck' weather over us?

I'm sure nature does her level best to turn adversity into advantage but there must be limits to just how far she can bend? I'd hate to think that the discovery of such a thing leads to folk veiwing such pollution as less of an problem?

They have to accept you as much as you accept them J'? You don't have to run out and yell 'Boo!' but i've found that they can 'read' you and so will not see you as a threat or interference to their business? Nothing better than having your own little 'St. Francis' moment with the critters around you eh?

Hi Coast! The big 'Splash' one, you can see ripples for quite a distance around the 'splash'? Would the central splash not have subsided by the time the outer rings of ripples had travelled that far from the impact???

It appears that even the small ones could cause issues if they 'air burst' like the russian one earlier this year? As such do we have the instrumentation to pick out the sizes that are more common impacters?

Why not fit Bodicea-esque blades to front and rear wheels of the Laser and donut your way across the rear lawn?

Hi BFTV! I've had to strip chrome as it was producing BSOD's and taxing the CPU? I do not know if this is an issue with IE 10 'fighting' for resources but if you have IE10 on your system maybe try and revert the 'update' back to IE9? ( God Bless Mr Gates......)

Let us not discount , Jax, the possibility that this comet may also be a force for good? Could it warm the strat (reversing the AGW cooling we measure) by the inclusion of dust particle that hold onto , and re-emit, solar input? I'd also agre,e BFTV, that a 3 mile Comet is not going to spark a CME of significance and also figure that the comet would be on the lower limb of , or behind, the sun were it to be overcome by it's gravity? It would be a good point of study with the full solar disc now able to be seen at any one time? We have seen CME's looking like an impact has caused them so it would give the science more info on such events?

Thank you for the graphs chaps. i think 4 knows full well that after a 'pause' in methane increases recent years have seen a worrying 'uptick' in levels esp. worrying are the releases now being measured across the north during spring thaw through to autumn re-freeze. NASA has an ongoing mission across Alaska to measure such releases there. i wonder what temps in the 90's over the past week has done to those measures? We then could also do with some idea of how long it takes such output to ascend to the top of the stratosphere? Are we already seeing the recent uptick in CH4 releases in the Noctilucents recent increase in both numbers and range? Are we yet to see such a response? The dust from Comet Ison will hit us from two directions , one from the cloud trailing the Comet itself and another from the dust driven outwards by the soalr wind so we will find ourselves in the 'unique position of having the dust impact the whole globe at once. We also know that the dust will take many months to settle through the atmosphere and years for it all to settle out to the surface. I merely wonder what such an increase in cosmic dust may have on our planet?

I wonder if comet Ison could affect the weather? I remember some research looking at the filling ofthe black sea and paleo records of a 500% increase in precipitation around the time of the 'filling' of the Sea. One suggestion was that a 'Sun grazer' impacted the Sun and spawned a CME that heated the atmosphere to the point that we suffered this massive increase in rainfall totals? Ison is an unknown quantity in this respect. This is it's first trip into the inner solar system and it is predicted to come close to the sun so might it impact instead of 'graze'? The other 'impact' are these predicted Noctilucents. Do they impact the strat temperature? I know we have been debating 'clouds' in the trop as to whether they act as a positve reinforcement of warming or a negative impact on our warming. At present the opinion seems to be well in the 'reinforces' court. Seeing as the strat is already cooling as a responce to warming of the trop so will this trend reverse if we blanket the high lats with a layer of cloud? Will the load of dust itself actually allow 'warming' of the strat? Maybe there is more to Ison than just a pretty Christmas star?

Though we know little about these clouds it may be that increased levels of methane have helped with recent years of good noctilucent seasons. Apparently the methane rises to the top of the strat where it oxidises with H2O as a by product of this breakdown. We are set to pass through the debris stream of comet Ison on jan 12th next year and take up to a week to exit it. the dustthis deposits in the upper atmosphere will form condensation nucliei for any H2O it encounters. Chances are that the recent upspurt in CH4 from the loss of permafrost will place more moisture into the strat so enabling a number of years of pretty stunning displays from the Noctilucent season and a very early start (Jan) to next years season!!!

Evolution depends upon a large enough Gene pool for 'adaptations' to arise that better suit the changing environment. such changes are generally occuring over Geological time scales. The current speed of change far outstrips the abilities of critters to 'adapt' to there new living conditions so they just go extinct. We are in the midst of one of , if not 'the' greatest, extinction events the planet has seen and we still cannot agree on just how 'impacted' our planet will be by our current climate shift. As it is the areas we can see change occuring in are far outstripping the 'worse case scenarios' that we saw modelled in the early noughties. We end up back in 'A Winters Tale' and Perdita's " I'll not have those $astards in my garden" against the Princes " we are of nature and so our impacts are'natural'" We either mourne the losses and do our best to save as many species as we can or we just accept that it is all part of the 'natural evolution' of the planet?

During the river floods last June the crown gathered to watch at our bridge ( before the waters passed over the bridge) saw a Mink suddenly appear feet away. Un- phased by the crowd she went back to the edge of the furious torrent and fetched up a pup and then re-entered the river to rescue a very unhappy ( screaming) second pup. She did not move far from us all and calmed the screaming infant. Normally the mink is near as hard to see as an Otter is but not under such circumstances. Thanks to the 'animal liberation' crew the Calder Valley is now being over run by mink (who are as bad as Humans for killing without need) due to a 'liberation' from a Mink farm in Elland back in the 80's. I hope they realise just what an eco tradgedy this stupid crime is now costing us in terms of losses to native species.