Cold snap claims nearly 200 lives in Russia, Eastern Europe

(Times of India) A vicious cold snap across Russia and Eastern Europe has claimed nearly 200 lives, officials figures showed today, as forecasters warned it would last until Christmas Eve.

In Russia, the cold has killed two people in the past 24 hours, the Ria-Novosti agency reported, citing medical sources, bringing the total number of deaths over the past week to 56.

The freeze had also left 371 people in hospital. Thermometers have been stuck below minus 20 degrees Celsius (minus 4 Fahrenheit) in Moscow — and below minus 50 degrees (minus 58 F) in some parts of Siberia — for a week.

Russian weather forecasters said temperature in the Khabarovsk region in eastern Russia had dropped to minus 43 Celsius, while Krasnoyarsk in Siberia reported minus 47.

This "abnormal" frost would last till Monday because of a persistent anticyclone, they added.

In Russia's European region, meanwhile, the mercury is expected to fall to minus 31 degrees Celsius on Christmas Eve before rising rapidly afterwards.

Other European countries hit hard by the extreme temperatures were counting the toll as temperatures gradually started to return to normal.

Authorities in Ukraine, which has been battling heavy snowfall for weeks, said 83 people had died of cold, with 57 of the victims found on the street.

The homeless are traditionally the hardest-hit by the region's bitter winters.

Another 526 cold victims were reportedly receiving hospital treatment in Ukraine.

Overnight temperatures in Ukraine reached an average minus 15 degrees Celsius, which is common at this time of year.

Ukrainian authorities said 93 villages -- mainly on the Crimean peninsula in the south of the country -- were still hit by a power outage.

In Eastern Europe, police in Poland said today that 49 people had died of exposure this month, with most of the victims homeless, as temperatures plunged to minus 10 degrees Celsius.

At least six people have died of exposure in Lithuania in the past weeks, police and emergency services said there.

In Latvia, temperatures reached minus 14 Celsius today morning. In the capital Riga, authorities decided to drop public transport fares to encourage drivers to leave their cars at home and prevent crashes and jams.

On Christmas Eve temperatures in Latvia are expected to drop to minus 28 Celsius, a record low.

Welcome the Winter Solstice

(LiveScience) In the very likely event that we survive Friday's rumored Mayan apocalypse, those of us in the Northern Hemisphere will at least get to experience another cosmic occasion: the winter solstice.

On Friday, Dec. 21, the sun will appear to make its lowest, quickest trek across the sky all year, resulting in the shortest day of 2012 and the official start of winter.

Earth is tilted on its axis 23.5 degrees, so it leans one way as it spins around its axis while orbiting the sun. On Dec. 21, the top half of the planet (everything north of the equator) will face away from the sun, leaving the North Pole in complete darkness.

Since the summer solstice on June 20, 2012, the altitude of the midday sun (or its height above the horizon) has been getting lower as its direct rays have been gradually migrating to the south. Technically, after the exact moment the winter solstice occurs Friday — 6:12 a.m. EST (1112 GMT) — the sun will turn around and start on its journey back north. So starting Saturday, the days will slowly start getting longer, but that doesn't mean it will start getting warmer. In fact, the coldest days are yet to come.

Daylight in the mid-latitudes lasts for around nine hours close to the winter solstice, compared with about 15 hours around the summer solstice (when the Northern Hemisphere is tilted toward the sun). With less sunlight energy hitting us, temperatures plummet. And even though the days will get longer during January, Northern Hemisphere oceans continue to cool in the relative lack of the sun's rays, and ocean temperatures drive much of the weather on the continents.

Our trek around the sun does more than choose our daylight hours, it has been the basis of calendars as far back as the fourth century B.C. People in the Americas even built solar observatories of stone to mark the solstices and other times that were critical for planting or harvesting crops. Shrines and even tombs were also designed with the sun in mind.

40-day period of harsh winter 'Chillai Kalan' begins in Kashmir today

(Indian Express) 'Chillai Kalan' today made an anti-climatic entry as bright, sunny and clear skies marked the first day of the harshest 40-day period of winter in Kashmir instead of the expected snowfall.

Gulmarg skiing resort in north Kashmir and Pahalgam in south Kashmir and some other areas in the periphery of the Valley have witnessed snowfall last week but the weather has remained dry since then.

The clear skies have, however, resulted in drastic drop in night temperatures across the Valley with Gulmarg recording a low of minus 10.8 degrees Celsius last night.

Pahalgam resort also saw the mercury dipping to a low of minus 8.2 degrees Celsius while in rest of the Valley the minimum temperature stayed around three degrees below freezing point, an official of the MET department said.

Leh town was the coldest place in the state recording a minimum of minus 17.2 degrees Celsius followed by Kargil town at minus 13.8 degrees C, a drop of over 5.0 degrees compared to this day last year at both places.

The cold wave in the Valley began earlier this year than the normal period of 'ChillaiKalan' due to snowfall in higher reaches during the last week of November and early December.

Due to the cold weather, traditional gowns (pherans), made of woollen or tweed fabric, have become a common sight on the roads. Kangri, the earthen fire pot in a wicker basket, has also made a comeback into the lives of Kashmiri people.

However, the recent cap on number of subsidised LPG cylinders has rendered gas heaters almost obsolete. Even electric heaters are rarely used due to frequent load shedding.

Chillai Kalan is the period when the chances of snowfall are maximum and the most frequent as well. The winter games at the world famous skiing resort of Gulmarg are scheduled to coincide with it.

A good snowfall will ensure that the games like skiing, ice skating and snow boarding would go on for a longer period at the hill resorts like Gulmarg, Pahalgam and Patnitop in Jammu region.

Traditionally, Kashmiris used to dry vegetables like tomatoes, turnips, brinjals and gourd during summers to be used during winters when the Valley would remain cut off from rest of the country. The tradition continues in remote and far flung areas of the Valley.

However, with the Jammu-Srinagar National Highway becoming almost an all-weather road, fresh vegetables are available in the market throughout the year and the tradition of drying vegetables is no more seen in cities and towns of the Valley.

Dried fish, popularly known as Hokh Gard in Kashmiri, is, however, still used as a delicacy during the winter. Chillai Kalan is considered a treasure of Kashmiri literature and folk music. The bare trees, snowfall and winter chill of this period have provided content for many folk songs and poems.

Towards the end of January, the Chillai Kalan comes to an end but that does not mark the end of chill in Kashmir. It is followed by a 20-day long Chillai Khurd (small cold) and a 10-day long Chilai Bachh (baby cold).

Climate Change Draft Undermines U.N.'s Claims!!!

(Investors.com) The United Nations' global warming panel is writing up a report from its most recent meeting. Are we doomed? Hardly. From the looks of leaked drafts, it appears the U.N. has at last discovered reality.

As it's done many times before, the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change met in November to assess the threat of man-made global warming. And now it's working on a report intended to scare the masses into believing that humans are burning up their world.

We don't doubt that the final version of the IPCC's fifth report due next year will indeed make the usual attempt to frighten everyone. But for now those who trade in global warming alarmism are having to smooth out a troublesome bump in the report's draft.

Skeptic Alec Rawls, who signed on as a reviewer, leaked a passage from the draft that indicates the IPCC is actually admitting that a factor outside man's activities is playing a significant role in our climate.

"That sentence is an astounding bit of honesty," says Rawls, "a killing admission that completely undercuts the main premise and the main conclusion of the full report, revealing the fundamental dishonesty of the whole."

The contradictory passage Rawls is referring to goes like this:

"The forcing from changes in total solar irradiance alone does not seem to account for these observations, implying the existence of an amplifying mechanism such as the hypothesized GCR-cloud link. We focus here on observed relationships between GCR and aerosol and cloud properties."

In other words, galactic cosmic rays (GCR) are related to cloud and aerosol formation, which affects temperatures. This activity has been demonstrated in an experiment by scientists at Aarhus University in Denmark.

The Rawls leak is getting a fair amount of attention, particularly from alarmists, who contend it means nothing, and the IPCC, which in essence says,

"Hey, it's just a draft and that passage might not appear in the final report anyway."

Which is typical for the IPCC, given its habit of removing findings and passages from final reports that cast doubt on its speculation that man is to blame for warming the planet.

While the IPCC works overtime to spin the Rawls leak, another headache has emerged for the group. Figure 1.4 from the draft shows that the models used to predict warming have projected temperatures higher than the observed temperatures we've seen.

The chart also shows that observed temperatures, rather than climbing ever upward, are where they were 15 years ago.

Skeptic Anthony Watts calls the chart a bombshell. The media have yawned. Meanwhile, another reviewer is pointing out that the draft is omitting a study that found no change in global water vapor even though the alarmists predicted that it would increase as carbon dioxide emissions climbed.

Yet again, the IPCC shows it's not interested in scientific inquiry but rather politics that serve one group while countering another. Like so much of the U.N., it has nothing useful to offer.