Coldest Arctic summer in more than half a century Perhaps much longer

                      
  

10 Sep 10 - According to the Centre for Ocean and Ice at the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI), during almost this entire summer (June to August period), mean daily temperatures in the Arctic remained below the corresponding daily temperatures over the past half century.

It wouldn't surprise me if temperatures were the lowest in almost a full century, but DMI records don't go back that far.
 

Daily mean temperature and climate north of the 80th northern parallel.               Red line represents this year’s temperatures.               Green line represents record since 1958.

Of even greater significance is the graph’s blue line (the horizontal line) indicating the freezing point of water, says author Lawrence Solomon. When the red line appears above the blue line, temperatures are above 0 degrees and ice will melt. "With temperatures in September now plummeting," says Solomon,  "2010 is unlikely to log any more melt days, and the Summer of 2010 will go down in the history books as yet another year in which the Arctic did not melt."link

Last Ice Age happened in less than year say scientists

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around the time of the start of the myna calender

By angus howarth

THE last ice age 13,000 years ago took hold in just one year, more than ten times quicker than previously believed, scientists have warned.

Rather than a gradual cooling over a decade, the ice age plunged Europe into the deep freeze, German Research Centre for Geosciences at Potsdam said.

Cold, stormy conditions caused by an abrupt shift in atmospheric circulation froze the continent almost instantly during the Younger Dryas less than 13,000 years ago – a very recent period on a geological scale.

The new findings will add to fears of a serious risk of this happening again in the UK and western Europe – and soon.

Dr Achim Brauer, of the GFZ (GeoForschungs Zentrum) German Research Centre for Geosciences at Potsdam, and colleagues analysed annual layers of sediments, called "varves", from a German crater lake.

Each varve records a single year, allowing annual climate records from the region to be reconstructed.link