Now, new research suggests that some of the cold, snowy winters that parts of the world have seen lately aren’t due just to random variations, but could in fact be caused by climate change. Yes, global warming might be causing more cooling and snow.

Led by Judah L. Cohen of Atmospheric and Environmental Research, the new study explains the effect this way:

1. The Arctic, which is warming more strongly than other parts of the globe, now sees more sea ice melt all the way into late summer and early fall;
2. The warmer conditions over open Arctic waters (remember, dark waters absorb heat from sunlight while light-colored ice reflects it) lead to higher moisture levels in the air. More moisture means more clouds that can bring on more precipitation;
3. Over Siberia, where it’s still cold enough for snow instead of rain, those additional clouds and moisture mean more snow than normal, especially in the fall;
4. Increased autumn snow cover in Siberia can help bring on the winter phase of what’s called the Arctic Oscillation, a variation in surface atmospheric pressure patterns. That can affect the jet stream and other prevailing wind patterns, bringing blasts of Arctic air deep into lower latitudes, especially in the eastern United States, southern Canada and northern Eurasia.

That line of reasoning would help explain why the Northern Hemisphere has seen a trend of more extreme winter weather — both bitter cold spells and heavy snows — since around 1988, the researchers say.

“(E)vidence suggests that summer and autumn warming trends are concurrent with increases in high-latitude moisture and an increase in Eurasian snow cover,” they write in an article published in Environmental Research Letters. And that, they continue, “dynamically induces large-scale wintertime cooling.”

There you go: warming causes cooling.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the US this year saw $52 billion in weather- and climate-related disaster damages. It also set a new record in number of billion-dollar weather/climate disasters — 12 — breaking the previous record of nine billion-dollar disasters set in 2008. The year also saw a costly human toll, with more than 1,000 lives lost across all weather categories, according to the National Weather Service.

For the cost imposed by 2011′s disasters, the US could have instead paid for:

• 1,477,273 Nissan Leafs (MSRP of $35,200, not counting after-purchase tax benefits);
• The installation of rooftop solar photovoltaic systems on four million homes (based on costs calculated in a new study from Queen’s University in Canada);
• Weatherization assistance to eight million households (based on the current federal spending limit of $6,500 per household); or
• Delivery of broadband internet access to nearly 15.5 households, more than twice the 7 million currently believed to lack access in the US.

Any of those investments could have gone a long way toward helping the US cut its carbon emissions, reduce its dependence on imported oil and take cars off the road by enabling more telecommuting and virtual work. Instead, another $52 billion has gone down the climate-change drain, with not much hope for a better outcome next year, considering the lack of meaningful action at the latest round of international talks in Durban.

“Weather is what gets us,” says Cullen, a senior research scientist and interim CEO at the non-profit Climate Central and author of the new book, The Weather of the Future: Heat Waves, Extreme Storms, and Other Scenes from a Climate-Changed Planet. “We’re going to see climate change through our weather.”

That means a greater likelihood of more Hurricane Katrinas in the future, along with an increased chance of more Russian-style heatwaves, Pakistan-style flooding and Europe 2003-style killer summers. That’s not to say climate change alone was responsible for all of these incidents, Cullen explains. But climate change ups the odds of such events and, the longer we fail to act, the greater those odds become.

“Climate is like a big orchestra,” Cullen says. “You have all these different instruments playing. But there’s a steady drumbeat of climate change in the background.”

That steady drumbeat will affect future weather patterns which, in turn, will have a significant impact on people. It was concern over that impact that drove Cullen to write her book. She was working at The Weather Channel, where she served as the network’s first on-air climate change expert, when Hurricane Katrina roared into the Gulf Coast and remembers watching the developing storm with dread.

“I felt completely helpless,” she recalls.

While global warming, to many, conjures up images of melting glaciers and ice caps, myriad other effects could have a more direct impact on people’s lives. From changes in rainfall patterns to a rising number of 100 degree F (38 degree C) days, these are the effects that could radically alter our lifestyles. Cullen wrote her book to help people better understand what changes are likely in different parts of the world and these could affect them on a more personal level.

The American Southwest, for example, is already experiencing significant drying and solidly understood climate models show that condition will steadily grow worse.

“Overlay that on population growth,” Cullen says, and “that’s how disasters are born.”

While Cullen says she isn’t aiming to be a climate activist, she adds she believes it’s her responsibility as both a weather expert and a climatologist to help people understand the issue better.

“We’re just trying to fundamentally keep people out of harms way,” she says.

With a certain amount of warming already “built in,” no matter what we do from here, one way in which to do that is to focus on adaptation strategies. That means investing in infrastructure to ensure better protection from the extreme weather events that will become more likely. For example, she says, rebuilding New Orleans’ levees back to pre-Katrina conditions isn’t good enough.

“For every dollar we spend today in infrastructure, we save $4,” Cullen says. “A lot of people point to the Dutch. They protect to the one-in-10,000-year event.”

Carbon capture and storage technologies will also likely have a role to play in our efforts to mitigate climate change, Cullen says: “We need to get rid of carbon dioxide.” But “shoot-junk-into-the-atmosphere”-type geoengineering isn’t a solution.

“If we’re really trying to reduce climate impact, that strategy doesn’t address what we need to do,” she says. “We know it would alter the jet stream. That’s really not the root of what we’re trying to help.”

Nor is denial or inaction the right response anymore.

“Climate change has so many policy implications,” Cullen says. “These are decisions we’d all be so much better off making now.”

With this year’s late spring expected to lead to a late-arriving autumn, theWeather Club aims to enlist the help of a virtual army of Britons to document fall’s arrival and see whether that prediction actually comes true. Dubbed “The Great British Weather Experiment,” the effort will invite schoolchildren and interested adults to take photos of trees, plants and other things in nature to document autumn’s arrival across the UK.

“Some interesting things could happen,” said Bentley, who has also worked as the chief instructor of forecasting at the Met Office College and manager of the BBC Weather Centre. “The more regionality we get, the better.”

While the Great British Weather Experiment is just being taken for a test drive, theWeather Club — being formed by the Royal Meteorological Society to promote an appreciation and understanding of the weather — itself will be here to stay. Bentley says it’s an initiative that’s long overdue, considering the large community of British gardeners, sailors, walkers and others who have reason to be interested in the weather. Where the US has long had the Weather Channel to meet that need, “the UK doesn’t really have that,” she says.

“It’s a big void at the moment,” she says.

Set to officially launch on 14 September, theWeather Club site is already live, although it will feature much more content after its formal debut. During the launch week — “Weather Club Week” — Bentley herself will be out on tour around the UK with a great big blue “theWeather Club” camper van and a 4×4 vehicle loaded with weather instruments that the public can check out.

In addition to providing lots of insights, information and a public forum for discussing the weather, theWeather Club will also carefully tackle the subject of climate change. Bentley said she and others had “quite a bit of discussion” regarding how to handle the topic, which she acknowledges is “still a little bit of a hot spot.”

Ultimately, theWeather Club’s official stance is “to focus on education and to allow discussion to take place … theWeather Club will address the science and impacts of climate change, but will not be a campaigning body or take a political stance.” Sceptics will be able to have a voice in the forums, Bentley says, although she adds theWeather Club will take care not to let any discussion get hijacked.

While the media have, for the most part, moved on since the drama of “Climategate” late last year, public opinion has not yet fully rebounded, Bentley acknowledges.

“It could be a few years for the British public to get back to where it was,” she says.

For more information, visit theWeather Club at http://www.theweatherclub.org.uk.

Scientists have theorised that high concentrations of carbon dioxide must have fueled a greenhouse effect that kept Earth warmer than it otherwise would have been. However, researchers studying the mineral content of 3.8-billion-year-old marine rocks from Greenland found that wasn’t the case.

Instead, they suggest, the early Earth was relatively low on actual landmass compared to today, but rich in water. They believe the global ocean back then was vast enough that it could absorb a far greater percentage of incoming solar energy than today’s oceans can … and that that level of absorption was enough to keep our planet from becoming a giant ball of ice.

The crux of the theory is that because oceans are darker than continents, particularly before plants and soils covered landmasses, seas absorb more sunlight.

“It’s the same phenomenon you will experience if you drive to Wal-Mart on a hot day and step out of your car onto the asphalt,” said Dennis Bird, a professor of geological and environmental sciences at Stanford University. “It’s really hot walking across the blacktop until you get onto the white concrete sidewalk.”

Another key component of the theory is in the clouds: “Not all clouds are the same,” Bird said.

Clouds reflect sunlight back into space to a degree, cooling Earth, but how effective they are depends on the number of tiny particles available to serve as nuclei around which the water droplets can condense. An abundance of nuclei means more droplets of a smaller size, which makes for a denser cloud and a greater reflectivity, or albedo, on the part of the cloud.

Most nuclei today are generated by plants or algae and promote the formation of numerous small droplets. But plants and algae didn’t flourish until much later in Earth’s history, so their contribution of potential nuclei to the planetary atmosphere of four billion years ago would have been minimal. The few nuclei that might have been available would likely have come from erosion of rock on the small, rare landmasses of the day and would have caused larger droplets that were essentially transparent to the solar energy that came in to Earth, Bird explained.

“We put together some models that demonstrate, with the slow continental growth and with a limited amount of clouds, you could keep water above freezing throughout geologic history,” Bird said.

However, scientists hoping to unlock the climate secrets held within the rings of these preserved kauri trees are in a race against time, as the timber is also highly prized by local furniture-makers and craftsmen. At the rate at which they’re being used today, the ancient trees could be gone within 10 years.

That’s why researchers from Exeter and Oxford universities are setting out to study the tree rings before their climate secrets are lost forever. Funded by a grant from the Natural Environment Research Council, they plan to carry out carbon dating and other analyses of the kauri tree rings. While the study will focus on the last 30,000 years, some trees actually date back 130,000 years.

The trees, which can measure up to four metres across and live for up to 2,000 years, store an immense amount of information about rapid and extreme climate change in the past. For instance, wide ring widths are associated with cool dry summer conditions. The scientists believe their findings will help us understand what future climate change might bring.

Tree rings are now known to be an excellent resource for extracting very precise and detailed data on atmospheric carbon from a particular time period. The researchers say this study could help plug a large gap in our knowledge of climate change by extending historical weather records that only date back to the mid-nineteenth century.

There is nowhere else in the world with such a rich resource of ancient wood that spans such a large period of time.

“This gives us a unique opportunity to increase our knowledge of the Earth’s climate and human responses to it at the end of the last Ice Age,” said Christopher Ramsey, a professor in the school of archaeology at the University of Oxford. “The radiocarbon measurements should give us important new data that will help us to understand interactions between the atmosphere and the oceans during this period when there was rapid and dynamic change. Equally exciting is the prospect it will give us of more precise dating of archaeological sites from this period — illuminating the only window we have onto how humans responded to these major changes in the environment.”

“We are facing a race against the clock to gather the information locked inside these preserved trees,” added lead researcher Chris Turney from the University of Exeter. “It is fantastic to have this funding so we are able to gather this information before it is lost forever. While it will be fascinating to find out more about the earth 30,000 years ago perhaps more importantly we will have a better appreciation of the challenges of future climate change.”

What’s next?

• An evolution exhibit that “teaches the controversy” with displays showing Homo neanderthalensis cavorting with Stegosaurus stenops?
• A human health display that caters to both those who believe in the link between cancer and tobacco, and those who do not?
• A timeline on space exploration that features a section on trick photography that might have been used to stage a fake Moon landing?

All we can say is, tsk, tsk.

Barbecue or formal dinner? Theme party or boat cruise? Each one has its vocal defender, and nobody seems willing to give up his or her personal favourite.

Finally, you throw up your hands and suggest, “Why don’t we just buy So-and-So a really nice gift instead?”

Really? Do you really believe that decision will be any easier for the lot of you?

The world as a whole today appears to be facing a similar dilemma. Years of discussion culminating in last December’s meeting in Copenhagen have left us still without a global agreement on how to reduce carbon emissions and avoid the worst of climate change. The response? Let’s set up an international framework for geoengineering.

Yes, it’s absolutely critical, as climate scientist Ken Caldeira has acknowledged, to carefully study the potential impacts of artificial schemes for cooling the planet’s fever, whether it’s by injecting sulphur particles into the air or by some other method. We need, as he has said, to explore the viability of possible “seatbelts” for our climate if our global, carbon-dioxide-fueled drive takes us to a state of emergency.

But, he adds, “thinking of geoengineering as a substitute for emissions reduction is analogous to saying, ‘Now that I’ve got the seatbelts on, I (can) just take my hands off the wheel and turn around and talk to people in the back seat.’ It’s crazy.”

So, yes, while it might be welcome that the Royal Society announced today that it’s launching a “major new initiative to ensure strict governance of any plans for solar radiation management (SRM) geoengineering,” the news should also give us pause. If we can’t come to an agreement on how to reduce carbon emissions globally, are the odds for coming to an agreement on whether or not to mess with the climate in other ways — and how — any better?

“Our work is to capture data which scientists would otherwise not be able to get, it is just so hard to operate in this environment in the winter,” Daniels said before embarking on the expedition. “The expedition focus is on ocean acidification which some scientists describe as the Earth’s ‘other carbon dioxide problem.’ “

The team’s Twin Otter plane dropped them off late Sunday at 85°32′ N, 77°45′ W  after a seven-hour flight from the town of Resolute in northern Canada. Daniels and fellow explorers Martin Hartley and Charlie Paton have since begun heading north, hauling sledges weighing up to 120 kilograms over pressure ridges, rubble fields and swimming across leads of open water.

This is the second such expedition for Daniels and Hartley, who along with explorer Pen Hadow, last year completed a 73-day, 435-kilometre journey across the sea ice as part of the first Catlin Arctic Survey. (Paton was the ice base manager for last year’s survey.) Their mission last year was to take measurements to help determine how long the Arctic Ocean’s sea ice cover might remain a year-round feature.

Their conclusion last year: there is a significant probability that, within the next 10 years or so, only 20 per cent of the region will still have sea ice cover during the summer months.

Both Catlin Arctic Surveys have been organised as a unique collaboration between ice-trekking explorers and research scientists who operate from an ice base in Canada. The effort aims to gather more information about carbon dioxide’s impact on the region, where research is especially scarce in the winter and early spring.

“Scientists really want to know more about what is going on in this region of the ocean, but to operate on the Arctic Ocean in winter is extremely hard,” said Hadow, who is the survey’s director again this year. “Our expedition is not only giving the scientists a way of working there themselves by providing experienced polar guides, but enabling survey data to be obtained far beyond the areas of the ocean where it is safe for them to work by sending our explorers to do that work for them.”

During the survey work, the teams will face temperatures as low as -45 degrees C and wind-chills of down to -75 degrees C.

Some scientists believe that, based on current projections, the pH of the world’s oceans could by 2050 reach levels that have not been seen on Earth for 20 million years. If this occurs, there could be serious consequences for marine life in the Arctic and elsewhere.

“We understand from models projecting future ocean chemistry that the Arctic Ocean is particularly vulnerable to ocean acidification because cold water absorbs CO2 more effectively than warm oceans, so much so that it may become corrosive to some shelled organisms within a few decades,” said Carol Turley of the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, one of the academic institutions participating in this year’s survey.

“Ocean acidification is the ‘other carbon dioxide problem,’ ” added Jean-Pierre Gattuso of CNRS-Université Pierre et Marie Curie, which is also taking part in the survey. :The oceans absorb about a quarter of human-made CO2. This has been limiting the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere and mitigating climate change. However, the massive amounts of CO2 absorbed considerably upsets the ocean chemistry by increasing the acidity of sea water. It is certain that it will impact marine ecosystems, although we do not fully understand how all marine species will cope at the levels of acidity projected later in this century.”

First, investigative journalists need to focus on the real crime regarding the hacked emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit … that is, who dunnit?

“In my mind, it is so necessary now to find out who distributed the emails,” Nasheed said during a talk today at Freie Universität Berlin. Who hacked it? Where was it placed? How did it (make) the rounds? How did it find its way to newspaper headlines? Where is the investigative journalism on that line? Where is the investigative journalism on the criminal element of it all?”

He continued, “I believe that there is a conspiracy and I think any responsble journalist — and I believe all responsible students — really would have to think of this element. Why is it coming out on and on and on? Who is behind this? Who is the devil? We have to find it and we have to point that finger and we have to again make the science as credible as in fact it is. We have to get rid of the perception that there is something wrong with the science. There’s nothing wrong with the science. We are just simply stupid, I would say, that this is the height of ignorance.”

World leaders, on the other hand, need to stop focus on the process of climate talks and simplify the path to real and substantive action, Nasheed said.

“There are clear planetary boundaries and you cannot give this to a country and take that from this country,” he said. “It doesn’t work like your ordinary negotiations. These are not world trade negotiations. These are not disarmament negotiations. These are not negotiations. These are facts and you better believe it and act accordingly.”

Nasheed’s talk comes on the same day that more than 150 scientists have signed and sent an open letter to US federal agencies calling to “bring the focus back to credible science, rather than invented hyperbole, so that it can bear on the policy debate in the United States and throughout the world.”

The letter notes that the National Academies of Sciences is soon set to release a series of assessments on climate research published since 2006, adding that those studies are expected to confirm the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change … “ie, that the climate change issue is serious and real.”

“Given these findings,” the letter adds, “we believe that the climate change issue deserves the urgent and non-partisan consideration of the country’s legislative and administrative leaders. We feel strongly that exaggerated focus on a few errors from 2007 cannot be allowed to detract from open and honest deliberations about how to respond to climate risk by reducing emissions and promoting adaptation at home and abroad.”