Watch the skies and land and oceans

The AMOC is rapidly slowing down.
The Gulf Stream (AMOC) shutting down could be one of the biggest signs or tipping points in the start of a new Ice Age - either a smaller one like the Maunder Minimum in the Middle Ages or a full return to the Ice Age from the current Interclacial period which started 12,000 years ago.

The biggest effect of the Gulf Stream shut down would be of course felt in Western and Northern Europe, with places like Britain becoming more like Canada.
 
Old article from 2020, but it seems that this guy was right.

Climate change has led to more temperature inversions and the rise of 'super pollution events'

Residents of the Mon Valley, a cluster of townships along the Monongahela River 20 miles south of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, endured some of the stinkiest and most polluted air in the nation during Christmas.

Starting Dec. 21, the region’s air exceeded federal safety standards for daily levels of particulate matter — microscopic particles that penetrate the lungs and can trigger heart attacks and respiratory disease — for six consecutive days. One of the region’s air monitors recorded the worst air quality in the entire United States and registered in the “Code Red” range for several hours on multiple days.

Residents complained that the air smelled like “rotten eggs,” “sewer backup,” “burning plastic” and “hospital waste,” and reported symptoms such as wheezing, coughing and choking, nausea, stinging eyes and headaches through the SmellPGH app, which uses crowdsourcing to map smells and symptoms associated with air pollution.

The monitor that registered the Code Red sits near U.S. Steel’s Clairton Coke Works plant, which converts coal into “coke” used in steelmaking by cooking it at extremely high temperatures. The plant — one of the region’s primary sources of air pollution — is notorious for breaking clean air laws and sickening residents. But this time the facility was operating in full compliance with its permit, according to the Allegheny County Health Department, which oversees air quality in the greater Pittsburgh region.

The unhealthy air was caused by a combination of U.S. Steel’s emissions and a temperature inversion, which occurs during unseasonably temperate winter days when a warm air mass sits above a colder air mass, trapping pollutants that typically blow away close to the ground. The same type of inversion also caused the worst air pollution disaster in U.S. history — the 1948 “Donora Smog,” which killed 20 people in the Mon Valley town of Donora, just 13 miles south of the Clairton Coke Works Plant, spurring the creation of the Federal Clean Air Act.

Temperature inversions such as these are historically unusual, even in a place such as the Mon Valley, which, like all valleys, is especially prone to stagnant air as the surrounding hills and mountains hem in it. But the last five years were the hottest recorded on the planet, and inversions are becoming more frequent: While the Mon Valley saw just four inversions of this scale in the previous decade, this was the second one to hit the region so far in 2019.

Some experts say that trend is likely to continue, and that cities around the world could see an influx of similar “super pollution events” as Earth continues to warm.

For the last at least 60 years we have data for, we can clearly see a trend of increasing temperature inversions in midlatitude regions,” Shiliang Wu, an atmospheric chemist and associate professor at Michigan Technological University, told EHN. “I believe this trend will continue in the coming decades, which will likely lead to an increase in extreme air pollution episodes.”

Midlatitude regions are the temperate zones between roughly 30 to 60 degrees north or south of the equator. The midlatitudes encompass about 36 countries, including the United States and most of North America, and are home to more than half of the world’s population.

Wu co-authored a 2016 paper on long-term changes in extreme air pollution meteorology, which he believes was the first to look at six decades of global meteorology data, to learn how events such as temperature inversions and heat waves have changed over time. He found that heat waves in the summer and temperature inversions in the winter — both of which can lead to extreme air pollution events — have increased by up to 50 percent in the last 60 years in most midlatitude regions.

There’s still some debate in the scientific community about the increase of inversions in winter, and about exactly how future changes in weather patterns will affect levels of particulate matter pollution. Wu believes the data from the last 60 years points to a clear and growing increase in wintertime temperature inversions, and that policymakers in urban areas should take note.

 


WINTER STORM POTENTIAL NEXT WEEK: Here are the key points on what we expect next week across Alabama and the Deep South...

*The coldest air so far this season arrives Sunday with temperatures holding in the 30s, an icy north wind, and sub-freezing wind chill indices.

*The northern half of Alabama will see lows well down in the teens Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday morning. Temperatures stay below freezing all day Monday and Tuesday. For a few places over far North Alabama, sub-freezing temps are possible from Sunday through mid-morning Thursday.

*Prepare now for 4-5 days of very cold Arctic air; this is the high confidence part of the forecast.

*Concerning the winter storm potential, all global models are showing a signal, but are all over the board with details. This is to be expected when looking at the various deterministic output 5-6 days out.

*The ensemble probabilities haven't changed much today, but they have shifted a bit to the south, with the higher snow potential for now over South Alabama. This could change again, of course.

*Snow? Freezing rain/ice? How much? Accumulation potential? Timing? Travel impact? We still can't answer any of those questions now. We should have more clarity tomorrow, and then we have potential to get into specifics over the weekend (especially by Sunday).

Keep an eye for updates over the next few days!

While calm high pressure weather continues to prevail here, a Mediterranean low is causing heavy rainfall, storms and the risk of flooding from the coast of Algeria to the mountainous eastern sides of Sardinia & Sicily and as far as Calabria.https://kachelmannwetter.com/de/modellkarten/deu-hd/2025011612/190d91cf31fbbf4ebedfa690d9227f71/akkumulierter-niederschlag/20250120-0000z.html /LD

Cold front 24 will enter Mexico between Saturday 18th and Sunday 19th. Have you seen the purple colors that represent the cold air mass? For Mexico City, the coldest temperature will be felt on Tuesday 21st during the morning #Abriguense #Cuidense 🥶

INCREASING CHANCE OF FLARES: The sun has been quiet for more than a week. That's about to change. Two new sunspots (3959 and 3962) have unstable delta-class magnetic fields that harbor energy for X-class solar flares. Don't be surprised if one of them explodes before the end of the week. Solar flare alerts: SMS Text.

SUNSET COMET ATLAS: Three days after it dive-bombed the sun, Comet ATLAS (C/2024 G3) is still putting on a good show. Dirk Ewers photographed it shining through yesterday's sunset from the Canary Islands:


"At an altitude of 1350m in La Palma, the comet offered great views in binoculars and scopes," says Ewers. "The tail shows a nice curve with some detail and was clearly more visible than the day before. Beautiful sunset colors accompanied the event."

According to observers reporting to the Comet Observation Database, the comet's magnitude is now near -1, much dimmer than it was a few days ago, but still bright enough to photograph in twilight and even blue sky daylight.



 

Rain and Floods. Florianapolis-Brazil

Following heavy rains since last Friday, the Florianópolis and Camboriú sectors of Southern Brazil have been hit by flooding, landslides and road chaos, and it has been announced that the territory is under an ‘emergency situation’, ‘In 24 hours more than 200 millimetres of rain fell’, in Camboriú, several entire neighbourhoods were completely flooded, while in Florianópolis, flooding affected both urban areas and key tourist sectors.



With the arrival of this cold air mass has formed a huge and alarming cloud or cloud platform as a harbinger of a storm that has spread in the region of Sorocaba, in Sao Paulo (Brazil), residents are more than surprised.
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I was about to post something about that planetary alignment, here's a bit more context.

Since the beginning of January, six planets have been rising in unison above the horizon: Mars, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, reports NASA. To enjoy the view of the first four, all you need is a clear sky and an environment away from city lights. However, to see Neptune and Uranus you will need powerful binoculars or an amateur telescope.

But there is more: on 28 February, Mercury will join the six planets already aligned, bringing the total to seven and making for a complete and rare planetary alignment. This month, the red planet will also reach its ‘opposition’ to Earth, coming closer to our planet than it has for the past two years. As a result, it will appear larger and brighter in the night sky, further accentuating the planetary alignment.
 

Record rainfall in São Paulo, Brazil

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The heavy rains that have been recorded in São Paulo, Brazil since December reached their heaviest intensity on 24 January with devastating floods in two hours of rainfall of 125 litres per square metre, half the amount recorded in the whole month of January. As a result, one person died, bringing the total number of deaths in the state to 16. The Civil Emergency Department issued alarm messages to the mobile phones of São Paulo residents informing them of a severe risk of rain and recommending that they take shelter in a safe place.
Meteorologists warn that the storms will continue until the end of January.

 
After storm Floris (January 26), France and Spain are weathering the storm Herminia.

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Red alert as storm Herminia leaves historic flooding in France and comes to Spain.
 
Rain & strong winds in the west this Wednesday. Still unstable on Thursday. Return to calm at the end of the week. ➡ https://meteo-express.com/previsions/pre
 
England suffers bitter cold

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January 18, 2025

It was the 7th coldest January since 1659. After claiming that "very cold winters are now highly unlikely due to global warming", the UK's Met Office has some explaining to do. This January 2025 is not only very cold, it is also historically cold.
Remarkably, despite the ravages of "catastrophic global warming", England is on course to have its seventh coldest January in 366 years, second only to January 1716, 1963, 1740, 1814, 1684 and 1795.
According to the AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) hypothesis, such a cold first half of January should be virtually impossible by now. It's time to revise that assumption!

And the cold is not about to stop.

Some possible developments concerning the polar epidemic about to hit the United States...
One plausible outcome, according to the ICON model, suggests that stronger high pressure systems in the south-east could push colder air southwards. This shift could result in conditions that are too cold and dry to allow precipitation in areas such as Atlanta.
According to the GFS model, the polar front would collapse directly into the Gulf of Mexico. In this scenario, the South would remain largely dry, with no snow expected until next Wednesday, but the cold would be biting, breaking records. In any case, America needs to be prepared.

In the Northern Hemisphere, negative anomalies should dominate until the end of January:
In fact, much of the planet appears to be receiving negative anomalies.

As Ryan Maue, PhD, writes on X: "Over the next two weeks, extreme cold over the northern hemisphere continents could be enough to bring global temperatures down to the 1991-2020 average, temporarily erasing the last five years of global warming". This should lead to a significant drop in the UAH index for January.

COLD WEATHER is back and that means lower crop yields, strain on energy networks and, ultimately, increased mortality. Prepare accordingly.
"I'm beginning to wonder what's going on," concludes Maue.

If this continues, you can imagine that there will be serious economic consequences...
Source
 

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