Intro
Hello weatherwatchers! Welcome to the April edition.
I thank you for your interest and hope these e-zines will prove useful in
the weeks to come. This author feels there needs to be a greater sharing
of free climatological data by the met-service industry, in the interests
of safety at sea and on land. There needs to be far more public debate on
global warming and related issues, lest NZ be bled dry by wasted
tax-payers funds channeled into useless research. I have been receiving
comments and questions by email for some time now. Very often the same
questions arise. Largely for these reasons this column has been created.
This edition is the first, so I have stacked it somewhat! I welcome
questions on any aspect of climate, the Moon or my methodolgy and will
reprint answers in this forum. So feel free to have your say. Please share
this e-zine with friends, family and colleagues, and let's get some good
debate going about a subject that ultimately affects us all.
Weather: NZ
General
The remnants of tropical cyclone "Neil" certainly hit NZ around April 19th
and as expected brought some heavy falls. There was little wind
accompanying 'Neil', because Moon in apogee (furthest away on 24th) always
dishes up light winds. If you recall, the March apogee (27th) was right in
the middle of the Americas Cup finals. As rain very often falls after the
Full Moon for a day or two, we should not have been surprised to see a
fast-moving front blowing across from the SW. As the Moon approaches 3rd
Quarter (April 27th), any rain is likely to be accompanied by thunder. 3rd
Q is always the most likely Moon phase for thunderstorms. But a big high
is coming from the West, bringing four or five days of clear skies. It's
dragging its feet!
Ý
Weather: weeks coming
It looks like clear weather after Easter and for the remainder of the
month for most districts, except for parts of Canterbury, Otago, West
Coast and Southland. These may get a dollop of rain around April 29th and
May 1st.
Ý
Rain in May
Heavier falls can be expected in these areas:Northland 9th-10th and
24th-26th; Canterbury, Southland, Westland and Otago 23rd-24th and
30th-31st.
Ý
Dry
For May, most of NZ can look forward to less than normal rainfall,
especially parts of Hawkes Bay, Wairarapa and Marlborough, which look set
to have drier conditions right till mid-June.
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Weather: around World
Sydney, Brisbane and Darwin look set for a very dry May, with only one
rain day each. Adelaide receives about 15 days with Melbourne about 7 rain
days. Rain will fall in Melbourne about 4-6, 17, 22, 31; in Adelaide 4-9,
14, 21, 29; in Sydney around 17th, Perth 27, Cairns 2, 14, 30, and
Canberra 16th.
London also has a dry month, the only rain falling 11th-12th. Paris has only two rain days,1st and 19th, but most of the month will be cloudy. Paris in the springtime..
New York sees rain for two days, 19th and 31st, otherwise skies will be clear. Los Angeles sees no rain ALL MONTH, and Chicago has falls 16th, 27th and 30th.
New Delhi sees 3 rain days:7th, 22nd and 24th, and Tokyo sees rain on 2-3rd, 9th, 12th and 31st.
If anyone is travelling to other places and wants to know whether to take a brolly, email me on - ken@weatherman.co.nz
Weathercharts on website If you haven't checked - www.predictweather.com lately, it might be worth a visit if you want to see all of April and May's weather at a glance. In colour! UK and Aussie readers are also now catered for too. I am now going to use that format from now on because people tell me it is easier to read.
Viewpoints
'Assignment' on TV1, April 20th, highlighted some sceptics' views re
global warming. Apparently NZ is going to try to boss the world into
reducing fossil fuel emissions, regardless of the fact that the US, Japan,
China and much of Europe, who consume most of the world's fossil fuels,
think there is no immediate danger to the global environment and will not
be signatories to the Kyoto Accord.
- http://www.ncpa.org/hotlines/global/pd111398a.html
Ý
It seems odd that a country that allows cigarette smoke to fill the air,
permits the off-flow of sewerage into its rivers and lakes and lets
pesticides and hormone sprays cover its productive farmland, should
presume to dictate environmental cleanliness to the rest of the world. Is
the one crucial Green Party vote needed so badly that NZ can risk looking
like the bananas of the South Pacific?Ý The harm that it may do to our
credibility as a mature and logical people offsets any global harm that
MIGHT be happening to the environment. In the weighing of economic
factors, one would think that continuing to trade with the industrialised
giants was not only necessary to our well-being, but an earned privilege,
not to be thwarted by a group of behind-the-times scaremongers who still
argue amongst themselves and who are living far from the impact of any
imagined future-global damage.
G. Balfour
I doubt if we all want nuclear power stations to dot the NZ landscape. It
has not so far occurred to the Greens that they may be acting as unwitting
agents of nuclear interests by their unwavering belief in Greenhouse
warming. Their dilemma is that they oppose nuclear power on the one hand
AND uphold the very Greenhouse theory which justifies nuclear expansion.
Do we really believe that windmills and solar panels are going to energise
the world? It could be viable for Maungaweka, but New York? So far I
haven't heard any talk of the electric aeroplane.
J. Daly
(John Daly is Australia's leading anti-global-warming campaigner)
Ý
In 1991 50 leading scientists of the American Meteorological Society gave
a disturbing message to the Rio Earth Summit, condemning the "highly
uncertain" scientific theory that the burning of fossil fuels causes
global warming. Most of the issues on which the IPCC have since shown to
be in error were listed - the unacceptable inaccuracies of the climate
models, the effect of clouds, the LACK of any temperature trend indicated
by the new satellite data, and the time taken for the atmospheric CO2 to
double. In 1995, the European meteorological institutes officially told
IPCC that THEIR VERY OWN records showed that, between 1951 and 1990,
temperatures were within the range of natural variation. It was not a
message that IPCC wanted to hear - so nobody heard it.
P. Toynbee
(Peter Toynbee was the Director of Coal Research Assocn. of NZ)
An unprecedented number of American scientists - more than 15,000, including over 10,000 with advanced academic degrees - have now signed a petition against the climate accord adopted in Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997. This kind of news goes unreported in the NZ media. In signing the petition within a period of LESS THAN SIX WEEKS, these 15,000 experts expressed their profound skepticism about the science underlying that Kyoto accord. The available atmospheric data simply do not support the elaborate computer-driven climate models that are being cited by the United Nations and other promoters of the accord as "proof" of a major future warming. Environmental 'scientists' are today falling over themselves to outdo each other's hysterical predictions of a global catastrophe by heat wave.
(Thanks to contributors)
Interesting Websites
Global warming rubbished
- http://www.vision.net.au/~daly/dalybio.htm
- http://sightings.com/general/climate.htm
- http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-329es.html
- http://www.ncpa.org/hotlines/global/gwhot.html
- http://www.junkscience.com/news2/singer28.htm
Earthquakes, latest in NZ
- http://www.gphs.vuw.ac.nz/seismology/igns_report.html
Photo of NZ from satellite
- http://www.bom.gov.au/weather/national/satellite/IDE00005.latest.shtml
Stone circles in NZ
- http://www.celticnz.co.nz
- http://www.kilts.co.nz
Q: Of greatest interest to me is how your South Island glaciers are doing.
They, to me, would seem to be a good climate change indicator.Ý Do you
have data about them?
(R. Thompson, Crescent City, N.Cailf)
A: Some. Scientists flew over them recently and reported in the NZ Herald (29/3/00)that a rocky ridge was now visible that was last visible 20 years ago. The snowline has apparently receded to that mark again. Scientists from the same organisation claimed in 1989 that the glaciers were at a lower level than ever recorded. But it is at the end of the summer - there has been no rain down there. Er..hello. And from 1980-1989 and 1989-1999, the snowline mysteriously magically restored itself. Otherwise there would be no snow left by now. It obviously hasn't occurred to them yet that we could be looking at a cycle of natural fluctuation.
Q: Any idea exactly how much frozen (ie expanded water) is locked up on
landbound form (permanent mountain top snow fields and glaciers) compared
to how much is locked up as sea bound ice (Arctic and Antarctic ice floes?)
(B.Mitchell, Huntly)
A: The poles take up 2.8% of the earth's surface. Less than half of that is over land. But even if it is 2% over land, which it isn't, I doubt that 2% in the 75% that is ocean on this planet would make much of a difference. Imagine that the 2 is a regular 2 inch long icecube. We're talking then of an icecube suspended over a pool about 6 feet in diameter(2inches in 75 inches) Just a drop in the ocean. As the floating ice when melted could decrease the water level anyway, because ice takes up more volume, then the tiny increase from that suspended icecube will probably bring up the pool level to roughly what it was before. Once the icecube has melted and the water level has risen(it would be less than a 1mm over a six foot wide surface)the rising will stop, there being no more ice to melt. The popular picture is of a sea-level that keeps rising..and rising.
Contact
Editor: Ken Ring
Phone: land. 09-817-7625, fax. 09-817-2203, mobile 021 970-696
Postal: P.O.Box 60197 Titirangi, Auckland 7, New Zealand.
E-mail: ken@weatherman.co.nz
Internet: http://www.predictweather.com
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