2010 warmest winter on record (2009 second warmest year on record follow-up)

I'm deeply disturbed that our southern neighbor has had such outrageous discomfiture this winter but I would like to suggest that the Inue kill, skin and sell the pelts of the starving polar bears to rich Swiss and buy cans of only slightly mecury ladden tuna to replace the plenty that climate change has deprived them of. Spring is only 30 days early where I live in the wet coast but in an unsettled climate frost will occure in June.

I live in snow country, and we have not had a significant snowfall since before Christmas. Since the first week of February, there has been no snow on the ground here whatsoever. And it's due to what is called the Arctic Oscillation combined with the Gulf Stream Current flowing north to the Arctic instead of crossing the Atlantic as it always does. I don't know if global warming is behind this phenomenon or not.

Spring has arrived one month early here too, in Tiohtia:ke~Montreal! Maybe we'll still get another blast of winter at some point in March? And this winter they did get a foretaste of what a new weather climate pattern will be like for them in Europe, sans Gulf stream, didn't they?

They purportedly do not have anything to do with global warming per se. I'm certainly not a meteorolgist but can offer the following:

- we are currently at the tail end of a "strong" El Nino ENSO period that had built up since last summer. It wasn't anticipated to be a strong El Nino but eventually became recorded as such.

- It's center of activity occurs in the eastern equatorial Pacific, so doesn't relate directly to Gulfstream phenomena, even so the ENSO phenomena is considered to be one of the widest ranging=globally impacting cyclical ocean phenomenons.

- Even while it is a not a thoroughly well understood phenomenon, enough historical recording and modelling has been done to show that a trend of anomolous ENSO activity cycles may also now be emerging, such as a newer distribution pattern described as a horseshoe shaped occurrence of abnormal sea temperature elevations spread more across across the mid to eastern Pacific, instead of the 'classic' linear stretch along the eastern Pacific equator line, which has been hypothesized from models as possibly having to do with changing distribution patterns due to global warming, but GW still generally appearing to be considered as individual hypothetical research results by most accounts at this point, if global warming does become established as a factor it may be a classic example of climate change caused by global warming... adding this understanding to sub-surface sea temperature anomolies and deep ocean currents seem as also needed to begin to actually understand this...

-NOAA is one of the better data sources; interesting to note that the Australian weather bureau also regularly provides interesting perspectives, and the site RealClimateScience provides serious scientific discussion on this and other emerging phenomena.

Missed this the first time around: Budget puts climate action on ice

excerpt:

The Harper government has taken a pause in financing federal action on climate change.

In his budget speech Thursday, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty was literally silent on the issue - climate change was not mentioned, though the government has in the past described it as one of the major challenges of the age.

Rather than provide new spending for programs to reduce Canada's greenhouse-gas emissions, the government is standing pat as it prepares to regulate emission reductions in transportation, electricity and industrial sectors.

Environmental groups say Ottawa is failing to stimulate the development and adoption of the technologies that are needed if Canada is to meet its emission targets.

"Just when we thought that it couldn't get any worse, [Thursday's] budget is a monumental failure of this government to do what it takes to address climate change in a meaningful way," said Graham Saul, executive director of Climate Action Network Canada.