2017/18: winter ‘one of darkest ever’ for parts of Europe
Sunshine is in short supply across a swathe of north-west Europe, shrouded in heavy cloud from a seemingly never-ending series of low pressure systems since late November and suffering one of its darkest winters since records began.
If you live in Brussels, 10 hours and 31 minutes was your lot for the entire month of December. The all but benighted inhabitants of Lille in France got just two hours, 42 minutes through the first half of January.
“Sound the alarm and announce the disappearance,” read a despairing headline in photon-deprived northern France’s regional paper, La Voix du Nord. “A star has been kidnapped. We still have no sign of life from the sun.”
Belgium’s Royal Meteorological Institute has declared December 2017 “the second darkest month since 1887”, when it began measuring, after the 10.5 hours of sun recorded at its Uccle weather station last month were beaten only by a bare 9.3 hours in 1934.
France’s northern Hauts-de-France region did better with 26 hours of sunshine in December, but that was against a norm of 48.
But Météo France described the paltry 2.7 hours of sun recorded from 1 to 13 January in Lille, the region’s biggest city, as “exceptional”. The January average stands at 61.4 hours, according to the agency – meaning Lille and its unfortunate residents were deprived of perhaps 30 hours’ worth of rays in the first part of the month.
The previous low of 13 hours, dating back to 1948, could well be beaten, Frédéric Decker of Météo News told La Voix du Nord this week. “The forecast isn’t looking too great,” he said. “The weather’s going to stay pretty damp and dull.”
Rouen in Normandy had an even more depressing first half of the month, with just 2.5 hours of sunshine compared with a full-month norm of 58.6, Météo France said, while Paris’s 10 hours were also a far cry from the 62.5 hours the capital usually averages in January.
Even southern French sun-traps such as Bordeaux and Marseille fell a very long way short of their usual ray quota in the first half of the month, basking in just 10.3 and 26.9 hours respectively against monthly averages of 96 and 92.5.
Health experts say a shortage of sunshine can lead to seasonal depression, whose symptoms include a lack of energy, a desire to sleep and a perceived need to consume greater quantities of sugar and fat.
“Exposure to morning light inhibits the secretion of melatonin that promotes sleep and favours the production of hormones that will stimulate the body,” Matthieu Hein, a psychiatrist at the Erasmus Hospital in Brussels, said.
In the absence of light, we are “rather slow, tired, which is characteristic of SAD, or seasonal affective disorder”. Florent Durand, who runs a massage studio in Lille, told France 3 TV that his €39 light therapy sessions were booked out.
The inhabitants of north-west Europe, however, can count themselves lucky. Moscow recorded just six paltry minutes of direct sunshine in the whole of December, shattering the previous record low of three hours, set in 2000.
The Russian capital normally averages a bleak 18 hours of sunshine in the last month of the year. “December was just amazing,” Roman Vilfond of Moscow State University’s meteorological unit told the Tass news agency.
“The darkest month in the history of our weather observations. When they hear this, people will say: ‘Now I know why I was depressed.’” The daily Moskovsky Komsomolets reported a surge in visits to psychiatrists.
Read more at www.theguardian.com
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William Swiggart
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“Of course there are many things to explore, but I think the cosmic-ray/cloud-seeding hypothesis is converging with reality,” says Henrik Svensmark (quoted in Scientific American, 8/2011)
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Manfred
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The darkness doesn’t come close to darkness of eco-Marxist totalitarian bureaucracy typified by the EU and fevishly promoted by the UN and its various organs, the UNEP, ECOSOC, IPCC et al.
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Heidi
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Climate engineering isn’t just theoretical. Anyone with eyes can see it. The effects of these stratospheric aerosol injections by ongoing jet spraying don’t only cause ‘global dimming’ but also: The used aerosols rain down on us and the earth (sickening and/or killing us and other life forms), heat the earth (!), thin the ozone layer, cause droughts, weather whip lash scenarios, etc.
Why this reality can be kept secret is a beyond my comprehension. We humans are blind. We are silly and do everything possible without considering the consequences. We are ruining the biosphere we attempt to save and most don’t see it. But we all will have to live with it (or not).
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4TimesAYEar
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I swear someone misunderstood “con-trails” and thought someone said “chem trails”. They’re ice and water. They depend on humidity to form. There’s a site that explains them. Nobody is spraying us with anything. Think about it – they’d be spraying their own family and friends – and themselves. They’re not about to do that.
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Squidly
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I get a chuckle whenever I see someone talking about “chemtrails” .. it’s just laughable. Oh, I’m sure some governments (including ours) have experimented with such things somewhere, at one time or another. But to believe that all of our airlines are now spraying chemicals into the atmosphere is absolutely ludicrous. As you say, they would be spraying themselves and their families as well.
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Serafino Bueti
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Yes, keep laughing, fool. While the spraying continues to wreak havoc on our ecosystem. Idiot.
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John O'Sullivan
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Weather modification obviously is now very real and a tool used by governments with scant regard to long term impacts. International treaties focus on limiting military uses of it but it is becoming normalized thinking among ‘do gooder’ policymakers to want to invest in large scale carbon capture and sequestration projects. This is in itself a risky weather/climate/biosphere modification experiment at a time when ever more scientists are recognizing the benefits of increasing atmospheric CO2 levels for improved crop/plant yield/growth.Only an idiot would classify CO2 as a biosphere pollutant.
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Squidly
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Interesting? .. yes, a bit. Significant? .. eh, not for someone who lived through 25 years of winters in North Dakota. Not only would you go weeks without the sun shining, but even when it did you didn’t see it because it was so cold you couldn’t go outside anyway. This is why North Dakota holds the #1 spot for most number of gallons of alcohol consumed per capita. For 4-5 months per years, there’s nothing else to do but go bar hopping.
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James McGinn
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I worked there through 2 winters, Williston Basin. Bomac Drilling. I started as the worm. Then chain. Then Derricks. You don’t know what cold is until you have to climb to the top of the rig, in the middle of the night, January, to trip a mile and a half of pipe and collars. One time I got to the top and I wanted to dry my hands, so i took off my gloves. Big mistake. Instant wind chill. I had to stop to warm my hands. Driller hollering up at me wondering what is going on. Me hollering back to shut the F up.
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jerry krause
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Hi Squidly and James,
Very interesting to discover we have this common ‘bond?’. Bond because you have experienced something that most other people of the world have not. But Squidly, James went outside during the cold and did not only go outside to go bar hoping. But Squidly you lived there 25 years so I suspect, but do not know, that you experienced that the weather, climate had cycles. I am sure some winters had a lot of snow and others hardly any wherever you lived in North Dakota. I grew up in South Dakota about 100 miles south of ND. And I went to the U of SD about 260 miles south of ND. So for four years I experienced what a difference 160 miles makes. Then I lived for 30 years at Hibbing MN which is about 100 sorth of the Canadian border and 200 miles north of the Twin Cities. So for 300 years I experienced what difference 200 miles made.
Latitudes North Twin Cities 44.9+; Where I grew up 44.7+, U of SD 42.8+, Hibbing 47.4; Fargo 46.9; Williston 48.1
So I am very sure, know, there is commonly, during the winter season, a significant temperature difference from being a little north of 45N and a significant temperature difference of being a little south of 45N. However, I do not commonly read about this sharp dependence of winter temperature upon this 45N latitude factor in books about climate. And It has long been known that much of Europe is well above 45N but it is commonly much warmer than the similar latitudes east of the west coast mountains of North America. This we understand is the result of the Gulf Stream. So if Europe is suddenly colder then usual, I would study the Gulf Stream’s circulation to possibly understand this.
And here is a question for both, but prompted by Squidly comment: “go weeks without the sun shining,” : Why is it more likely consistently cloudy during cold temperatures?
Have a good day, Jerry
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jerry krause
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Hi James and Squidly,
I’m totally confused because I forgot we were commenting on two separate postings. And then I could not connect to PSI for a day or so. And after John O’Sullivan informed me that now the problem was at my end and I had to delete a history (which) I had never done before. So now because I could not remember my email password, etc etc I presently cannot reconnect to my email.
I really want to pick up what I consider was becoming a personal conversion as we learned we had something in common beside our interest weather-climate. Especially Jame’s review of his educational history.
I am going to submit this comment at the other posting also to try to make contact with you both to see if you are interested in picking up where we left off. So I will await a possible response.
Have a good day, Jerry
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James McGinn
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Hi Jerry,
I was kind of half hoping that you would show up at my meetup tomorrow evening where I will introduce my solution to Pauling’s error–the error that underlies all of the anomalies of H2O that you don’t recognize. I imagine it is too late now. But there will be another meetup in 4 weeks. Or, possibly, someday I will make it up to Oregon.
In the meantime I encourage you to contact me through email:
jimmcginn9 at gmail dot com
James McGinn
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