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AFTER AN EXCEPTIONALLY mild Christmas Day, temperatures dropped close to freezing this morning to make for a cold and blustery Monday.
It will be a cold and windy today across the country, with highest temperatures reaching seven to nine degrees in strong and gusty westerly winds.
There will be scattered showers across the country, becoming heavier at times across western and northern counties.
It will remain mostly dry on the east coast.
The strong winds will ease tonight and it will get colder across the country. Lowest temperatures will be 0 to -2 degrees with a widespread ground frost.
The outlook for the rest of the week is mostly dry, with temperatures during the day averaging at about six to 10 degrees.
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Hopefully we’ll get a few weeks of heavy snow first. Keep the shops and the daily hummadum-drum closed until at least the middle of February
It’s a comfortable 21C in the Canary Islands this morning
30 in Cape Town.
Its going to get up to the low 20s here in Portugal, not a cloud in the sky here.
Just back from the beach. Lovely.
Where is the global warming?
Val Martin, its here further south than you are
Stupid question…. climate is all around us.
Val, for someone who is on here continually purporting to know about climate change, it’s pretty revealing that you don’t even know the difference between climate and weather.
Val have you not been around the last few days? http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38417198
@Val Martin: I told you before about SSW and global warming. Yet you still ignore it?
It would be a great way to approach 2017 by completely overhauling the view on planetary climate, at least for those who can escape the hype and consider that all planets in the solar system possess a climate and determined by the degree of inclination -
http://calgary.rasc.ca/images/planet_inclinations.gif
If the Earth had an inclination like the 3° of Jupiter there would be very little change in the weather conditions through a year during its annual orbit around the Sun. If the Earth had the 82° inclination of Uranus there would be wild swings in weather across latitudes as large areas of the Northern hemisphere would be in complete sunlight for half the year while simultaneously large areas of the Southern hemisphere would be in complete darkness and visa versa after the Equinoxes.
Planetary climate is therefore best understood in terms of a climate spectrum between 0° or an Equatorial climate and 90° or a Polar climate. Jupiter has an Equatorial climate while Uranus has a Polar climate with the Earth , due to its 23 1/2 ° inclination has a largely Equatorial climate with a sizable but minor Polar input.
The modellers have being trying to squeeze climate into weather modelling but this is disruptive for genuine research and especially finding common traits that express planetary climate for all planets and not just own home planet.
Gerald…don’t forget the all important distance from the Sun or if a Planet has an atmosphere or not.
Ah lads, too many of us have barely functioning grey matter this morning. Too heavy for the day that’s in it!
@Gerald Kelleher: we can’t do anything about the inclination of the planet, distance from the sun solar flares but we can try to ameliorate the increase in anthropogenically caused greenhouse gases.
@Tomred:
Think of it as one of those puzzles you see are Christmas and provide a bit of a challenge for those who like these things. All planets, including ours, have two separate rotations to the stationary and central Sun which causes the temperatures to rise and fall daily and separately rise and fall annually.
Although these two separate rotations of the Earth can be viewed but unfamiliarity prevents people from looking closely at the time lapse footage but with the planet Uranus these rotations can be seen clearly using the Hubble Space Telescope
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=612gSZsplpE
Once again, if daily rotation is subtracted the entire surface of the Earth turns once to the Sun unlike the moon which keeps the same face to the Earth. This causes the temperature to rise and fall seasonally where the orbital surface rotation combines with daily rotation so you will feel warm in July and cold in January.
The degree of inclination determines how quickly and how dramatically those temperatures rise and fall across an annual orbit hence the climate spectrum between Equatorial and Polar. This is not for people who point at petrol pumps as a means to understand climate, it is for those who want to encounter climate in a neutral or enjoyable astronomical setting with joined up reasoning.
Gerald – lighten up! It is quite obvious that your knowledge (and interest) of the subject far exceeds mine and consequently restricts my ability to conduct a nerdy discourse.
@Gerald Kelleher: Funny if the Earth’s gravity is changing again and funnier if the last time it did, it killed the dinosaurs? Just a mad thought?
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