You really can’t make this stuff up!
Eugenio Hackbart, the Chief Meteorologist for MetSul Weather Center in Sao Leopoldo, Brazil, published the following Tuesday at ICECAP, the International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project (emphasis added throughout):
May 2007 will go to history as one of the coldest starts to climatic winter ever observed in South America. A brutal cold wave brought record low temperatures, widespread frost, snow and major energy disruption. The death toll for the 10-day cold wave was the highest for any single weather event in Argentina in recent history.
Think Katie, Charlie, or Brian will be reporting this any time soon?
Temperatures hit the freezing point or dipped below for three successive nights in the Argentinean capital. Such cold is rare for the southern-hemisphere autumn in Buenos Aires, which normally sees temperatures in the 40s and 50s Fahrenheit or higher this time of year. According to the Servicio Meteorologico Nacional (Argentina’s National Weather Service), the low temperature of 0.3ºC registered in Downtown Buenos Aires was the lowest for the month of May since May 29th, 1962. The city also suffered the lowest windchill value observed in May for the last 36 years.
Hackbart elaborated in the following document posted at the end of his ICECAP blog (emphasis added throughout):
In the town of Monte Hermoso, also in the Buenos Aires Province, the local authorities described the snowfall as unprecedented in recent history, only comparable to events witnessed in the 60’s and 80’s.
[…]
The snow also fell in the city of Cordoba, where it is unusual to snow. The snow event was the first in the month of May since 1971.
[…]
In the southern portion of Brazil, frost was widespread. The capital of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, registered its lowest low temperature for May since 1993. The high temperature of 10.0 degrees Celsius was the lowest ever observed in May since the records began in 1910. Many locations saw the coldest nights for the month of May since the 60’s.
In the city of Sao Joaquim, located at 1.300 above sea level in the state of Santa Catarina, considered the coldest town in Brazil, the temperature dropped to 6.3 degrees Celsius below zero, the coldest in May since 1968. There was hard freeze. Winchill fell to minus 22 degrees Celsius due to the wind gust of 40 mph. Sao Joaquim had it 8th coldest month of May since records began in 1955. See the ranking of the top ten coldest May in the town with the monthly average and the respective low temperatures.
Hackbart then explained in scientific terms why it’s so cold now in South America, and why it is actually predictable (albeit only for those not affiliated with the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change!):
La Niña conditions are historically associated with severe winters or extreme cold events. During the month of May typical La Niña conditions were observed in the Pacific, mainly in the Niño 1+2 region that has a profound repercussion in Southern Brazil temperature and rainfall regime. The last 50 years show that the most important cold spells in Southern Brazil occurred under La Niña conditions. The great cold waves of 1955, 1957, 1965, 1975, 1984, 1988, 1994, 1999, 2000 and 2007 all took place under La Niña events or cooling of the Niño 1+2 region.
The same can be applied to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. The most important cold eruptions to reach Southern Brazil during the last 60 years were observed during negative periods of the PDO as 1955, 1957, 1965, 1975 and 2000. Regarding rain regime, the most catastrophic flooding took place during periods of strong positive signal in the Equatorial accompanied by positive values of the PDO as in 1941, 1983 and 1997.
[…]
All those historical cold events in Southern Brazil illustrated in the photos (1957, 1965, 1975, 1984, 1996 and 2006) have another aspect in common. They all took place around the 11-year Sun cycle solar minimum. Compare the dates of the historical episodes just mentioned to the solar cycle graphic below. Note that all of the events quoted occurred near the solar minimum of the 50’s, 60’s, 70’,s, 80’s, 90’s and in this decade.
As the Sun is under the solar minimum of this cycle now in 2007 its [sic] is not a surprise this major cold spell in May here in the Southern Hemisphere. History proves that there were always extreme cold events near or at the solar minimum in the recent decades in Southern Brazil. As there is no surprise to see South Africa also facing record breaking low temperatures as well as Australia and New Zealand in 2006. Australia, by the way, was an amazing site for extreme weather events last year and one astonishing episode was the snowstorm observed during the Christmas period in the higher grounds of the country last December. The firemen that were facing brutal forest fires suddenly were whitened by snow and not ashes. As the Pacific is still in negative phase, the PDO monthly values are near zero and the Sun is under its decadal solar minimum (graphic below), more extreme cold weather events should be expected in the coming months in the Southern Hemisphere.
Why is it that scientists all over the world, and fifteen-year-olds in Maine, can understand weather patterns better than anyone working for the IPCC or traveling on tour buses to spread global warming alarmism?
