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THE HEAVIEST SNOW in decades in Tokyo and other areas of Japan has left at least 11 dead and more than 1,200 injured across the country, reports said today.
As much as 27 centimetres of snow was recorded in Tokyo by late yesterday, the heaviest fall in the capital for 45 years, according to meteorologists.
The storm hit Tokyo on the eve of its gubernatorial election.
Observers said the weather may affect voter turnout in the city of 13 million people. As of 6pm turnout was down more than 10 percentage points from a previous poll during the last mayoral election. The government-backed candidate Yoichi Masuzoe was today announced the winner.
People walk against blowing snow in Tokyo today (Image: Koji Sasahara/AP/PA).
As a depression moved along the Pacific coast yesterday, the northeastern city of Sendai saw 35 centimetres of snow, the heaviest in 78 years.
Local media said at least 11 people have been killed with one person also in critical condition in snow-linked accidents – mostly crashes after their cars skidded on icy roads.
In central Aichi prefecture, a 50-year-old man died after his car slipped on the icy road and rammed into an advertisement steel pole, a local rescuer said.
Public broadcaster NHK reported at least 1,253 people were injured across the nation, many of whom had slipped on the ground or fallen while shovelling the snow off their roofs.
A child holds a ball of snow near a half buried motorcycle in Yokohama, near Tokyo (Image: Junji Kurokawa/AP/PA).
More than 20,000 households were without electricity early today while airlines cancelled more than 400 domestic flights a day after over 740 flights were grounded.
Nearly 5,000 people were stranded at Narita airport Saturday as traffic linking the airport to the capital was disrupted, NHK said.
Further snowfall is expected today in the northern part of the country, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.
- © AFP 2014.
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We are living thru a natural cycle or as some call it climate change
Possibly but those “cycles” are becoming more extreme….
I imagine its heading towards its peak so it may just get worse before it gets better
Maybe some would call it climate change because the climate is changing?!
The climastrologists tried AGW and Catastrophic Climate Change and a few variations I guess they will calm down and settle for plain old climate soon.
ipsum why do you persist with your anti-science stance? When you say climastrologists you mean the world’s national and international scientific institutions, climatologists and other earth scientists. I am guessing you are weirdly trying to conflate science with astrology – a ridiculous comparison!
When you say they have tried anthropomorphic global warming, what you mean is that they have all the evidence they need to say that the current rapid global warming cannot be explained any other way than as a result of our emissions of CO2 – the science is clear on that now.
When they say catastrophic climate change do you mean the fact that 97% of the world scientists across a range of disciplines are warning us strongly that (given the effects of CO2 in the environment will keep multiplying for hundreds of years after it we put it up there) if we do not curb our emissions we face catastrophic climate change – they mean that we are taking our climate out of the ‘Goldilocks climate – eg just right’ it has been in for the whole of human history on this planet… we are doing it at a rapid rate of a hundred years as opposed to the hundreds of thousands of years in the past that climate typically changed over. that has never been seen except in the past with catastrophic events like massive meteor strikes – which led to mass extinction in the decades after!
That is what they are saying and you offer nothing but your oil industry apologist claims with no scientific evidence whatsoever. Who do you expect us to believe?
Why are people so against the fact that the climate is changing? There is so much evidence to support it that you are a fool to say otherwise.
Why are people getting all upset because climate is changing as it always does? The IPCC confirmed in its fifth assessment report from last September: There has been no statistically significant warming in the last one and half decades, so global warming has stopped – and has done so even while CO2 emissions have increased. Could alarmists be persuaded to actually read the IPCC 5th assessment ?
ipsum you keep repeating this and it is a blatant lie!
To say climate is changing as it always has betrays your absolute ignorance!
Never mind, I am sure that given a choice between your uneducated ramblings and the weight of scientific evidence and absolute consensus among those who really are the experts, readers will not choose you!!!
Those of us who have read the report know that you are lying and relying on the fact that most readers online here won’t have read it.
Everybody knows that there are vested interests lined up to try to discredit and misrepresent the IPCC’s respected reports, which have involved the countries of the world and thousands of scientists in their open and transparent process.
This is a summary of points from the Summary for Policymakers from their last report:
“Warming of the atmosphere and ocean system is unequivocal. Many of the associated impacts such as sea level change (among other metrics) have occurred since 1950 at rates unprecedented in the historical record.
There is a clear human influence on the climate.
It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of observed warming since 1950, with the level of confidence having increased since the fourth report.
“Halldór Thorgeirsson, a UN official, has warned that, because big companies are known to fund the undermining of climate science, scientists should be prepared for an increase in negative publicity at this time. “Vested interests are paying for the discrediting of scientists all the time. We need to be ready for that,” he said.”
I’m so looking forward to this wonderfully titled film that exposes the secretive millions of funding that the fossil fuel industries have ploughed into undermining the science of climate change and stopping action on climate change.
They should be ashamed of themselves putting their own profits ahead of our children’s future.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2069784/
I can’t post a direct link because one of the words is a swear word, but you can find the website here if you replace the * with an s!
http://www.greedylyingba*tards.com/
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-natural-cycle.htm
Something here Foxy on why it is definitely NOT a natural cycle!!!
Yup…never seen weather like this before…except the bigger storm 45 years previous as noted in the article…
Couldn’t meet nicer people and a great country. hope they will be ok.
Your man with the broom is at nothin’!
Like watching council workers
Must’ve been some heavy snow.
Tonnes of it
USA February 7, 2014 Area Covered By Snow: 67.4%. Parts of southern Europe like Austria and Slovenia have seen heavy snowfalls and ice storms. The USA has also been hard hit by polar conditions this winter where 4406 U.S. cold weather records and 1073 snowfall records were set. 13 people have died of cold in Romania over the last week as temperatures there have dipped to -18°C. Since November 1, at least 52 people have died of cold in Poland. Even Thailand has suffered.[ data compiled from world-wide newspapers]
And we’re facing a higher carbon tax this year !! Just tax sugar or something but stop pedalling the lie that is man made global warming.
I noticed met Eireann have taken a pretty neutral view on it over the past weeks but the RTE newsroom remain brainwashed.
Public opinion shifting quickly however – you can’t fool all of the people all of the time I suppose
This was always about politics and money, the climastrologists came in handy to spread the scare.
God ipsum is that your new word. The sad thing is that I believe you know you are spreading misinformation anti.
When you talk about this being about politics and money, you could not be more right. The fact is that the oil industry has cynically spent millions specifically to spread doubt on the science of climate change… I cannot believe so many have fallen for it!
Your point about the cold weather shows your absolute ignorance about the difference between weather and climate. Climatologists who know more than you about the subject are suggesting that the warmer air in the Arctic (which is warming much faster than the rest of the globe) is affecting the polar vortex and bringing unusually cold weather down to parts that would not usually get it.
You are shooting yourself in the foot somewhat when you talk about so many records being broken, are you not? Weather records are being broken across the planet alright, in what some are calling global ‘weirding’ of the weather. It is basic meteorology that warmer air holds more water, which can then fall as rain or snow when cold air comes along… accounting for the unusually heavy snowfalls.
http://science.time.com/2014/01/06/climate-change-driving-cold-weather/
I note you do not refer to the fact that Australia had its hottest year since records began last year – funny that… Overall, the planet continues to warm. There is nobody with any credibility whatsoever saying otherwise. Cold regional weather in winter does not disprove this fact!!!
As to Met Eireann – here’s what they think about how summers in Ireland are getting hotter and winters getting rainier with increasing possibility of flooding… http://www.met.ie/news/display.asp?ID=217
It is an absolute lie to suggest that Met Eireann take a neutral view on climate change. They do not and they would be morons to do so, given the fact that the evidence grows stronger every year.
Lindzen: ‘As the discrepancies between models and observations increase, the IPCC insists that its confidence in the model predictions is greater than ever’ -’Support of global warming alarm hardly constitutes intelligent respect for science’
Here’s something from NASA (who monitor global temperatures via satellite) on the consensus on climate change: http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus
and the US scientific institutions that all support that view…
Here is a list of the reputable scientific institutions worldwide who support the fact of manmade climate change: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change
The scientific community is more sure than ever and public opinion is shifting with that, not away from it. People are not stupid.
You consistently quote the one or two people who are outside of the overwhelming scientific consensus. Why would you do that? All of their work has been rebutted comprehensively. It really does seem a bit desperate.
Here’s a good article with links to actual real scientific papers that rebut the ridiculous statements of Linzen… http://www.skepticalscience.com/Richard_Lindzen_arg.htm
He is a man in the wilderness simply because the science does not stack up in his favour.
Here is a great rebuttal of Lindzen’s work by some very serious experts such as physicists Professor Sir Brian Hoskins at Imperial College; Professor John Mitchell, of the University of Reading and the UK Met Office; Professor Keith Shine, University of Reading; Professor Tim Palmer, University of Oxford; and Professor Eric Wolff, British Antarctic Survey Science Leader.
Enjoy!
Ipsum,
Give it up. The global warming alarmists have become like religious fanatics. This is their religion, nothing anyone can say will change their minds, and if you don’t agree…or point out science that challenges their belief…they label you a “flat earther” (or worse). Take comfort in the fact that people are starting to rise up and demand that their governments stop the nonsense (see Australia). The uprising has begun in the US as well…
Give up ipsum. Your energies would be better directed elsewhere. Let the paranoid fools from the New Religion freeze. As I am doing.
But lads its such fun to see them do their dance :-)
It is kinda fun isn’t it!
the latest CSIRO survey shows 53% of the Australian population don’t agree that “humans are causing climate change, I guess the CSIRO will now be out of favour with the alarmists. With Europe now dumping the panic merchants it will be just a matter of months before the USA follows suit. This will no doubt trigger even more hysteria from the ecoloons.
PS The MET office has admitted, on the record, to the UK Parliament, that the global temperature has stopped rising. Bad news all round for the alarmist cult.
ipsum, the Australian Met Office says that 2013 was the hottest year in Australia since records began, so again we have what people wish to believe against the actual real facts:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/annual/aus/
Can you give a link to where the Met Office have said that the global temperature has stopped rising because that is just not true.
Again, when you say the alarmist cult, you mean the whole of science as opposed to your minority opinion!
Here’s a paper from the Australian Met Office demonstrating that ‘cooling’ is a myth… there’s a lot of science in it, but worth doing the work to read it…
http://www.aussmc.org/documents/waiting-for-global-cooling.pdf
The climatrologists like Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, said that ‘within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.
“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.
I think he’s turning Japanese
Why did all the wamists and climatrologists make such wild predictions, none of which have come to pass? Why did they all misbehave as shown in the Climategate emails? They can’t even agree with their gurus any longer.
BBC to Phil Jones “Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming?”
Jones reply Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.”
Santer et al. “Our results show that temperature records of at least 17 years in length are required for identifying human effects on global-mean tropospheric temperature.”
RSS and 5 other data sets now show that the 17 year mark was passed last September.
the IPCC confirmed in its fifth assessment report from last September: There has been no statistically significant warming in the last one and half decades. [...]
Thus global warming has stopped – and has done so even while CO2 emissions have increased unhindered.
Maybe some of the warmists might like to actually read the IPCC 5th assessment ? The leaked summaries are nothing like the final issue and were just media fodder.
oh dear god, you are off again with disinformation! You put this exact same wording in another post and I rebutted it there…
You cherry pick a bit of one interview with Phil Jones. What he is saying is that there is a warming trend but it’s not statistically significant. He’s not talking about whether warming is actually happening. He’s discussing our ability to detect that warming trend in a noisy signal over a short period. To demonstrate this, look at the HadCRUT temperature record from 1995 to 2009. The linear trend is that of warming. However, the temperature record is very noisy with lots of short term variability. He also said in the same interview:
“I’m 100% confident that the climate has warmed. As to the second question, I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 – there’s evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity.”
But why wouldn’t he be sure about manmade global warming, since that is the evidence-based consensus of the scientific community the world over, and every single national and international scientific institution on the planet!!! Here’s a good list posted on NASA’s website: http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus
I hope NASA is not another one of your left-wing conspiracists! They are one of the many hundreds of organisations collecting data on global warming – theirs is by satellite.
Santer is a scientist whose papers have shown that the IPCC UNDER-estimated global warming. You have picked one tiny statement here which is in response to the denialists who do not look at overall trends and if an upward trend flags for a few years (as they do), even though the line is still persistently going up, but just not always so sharply – denialists seize on this as global warming having stopped. It is a deliberate twisting of the truth.
On ice, you are utterly wrong. Here is a link about the Arctic Report Card from the NOAA, who are one of the many scientific organisations observing the ice:
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2013/20131212_arcticreportcard.html
“The Arctic caught a bit of a break in 2013 from the recent string of record-breaking warmth and ice melt of the last decade,” said David M. Kennedy, NOAA’s deputy under secretary for operations, during a press briefing today at the American Geophysical Union annual meeting in San Francisco. “But the relatively cool year in some parts of the Arctic does little to offset the long-term trend of the last 30 years: the Arctic is warming rapidly, becoming greener and experiencing a variety of changes, affecting people, the physical environment, and marine and land ecosystems.”
The IPCC did NOT say there has been no warming in the past 15 years. You are cherry picking surface warming only, which is not the only measure. Scientists now know that the oceans have taken up much of the warming…
You must be really desperate if the best you can offer as a rebuttal to the many thousands of papers supporting AGW is Climategate! Several independent investigations were carried out into that department and they found no wrong behaviour whatsoever, no altering of any kind of statistics, and no bias.
Try again.
Karma for the Japanese immense cruelty and killing of dolphins each and everyday in Taiji, Japan. Google ‘The Dolphin Project’, a dolphin rescue volunteer group set up by the trainer of “Flipper” the dolphin, Ric O’ Barry. http://dolphinproject.org/ He also was responsible for the making of a very thought provoking movie “The Cove”, which was made in 2009, won an Oscar in 2010, and documents the dolphin killings at Taiji. #tweet4taiji
Mother Nature has it in for them.
For everyone as it seems, Iran and even Cairo has had snow, looks like the warmist religion has hit a brick wall as it’s predictions and models fail.
Indeed anti, the world’s climate is going crazy… we are getting warmer weather globally in the summer, and more rain and snow in the winter – as predicted. I don’t know how much you understand about meteorology but warmer air holds more moisture and this can then fall as precipitation – whether rain or snow. This is kind of a basic of meteorology!
Now scientists think that the fact that the Arctic is warming at a much faster rate than the rest of the globe (as was predicted) means that the warm air is disrupting the polar vortex and channelling cold air down to regions that are not used to it. It’s pretty basic science really.
So really the new extremes across the globe (last year hottest year on record in Australia; California facing record prolonged drought) are really proof that it’s all going a bit pear-shaped (as predicted!).
End of inter glacial warming period. What part of your religion forces you to denounce the flipping obvious, Miss Filed? We are tumbling headling into a new glaciation. Wake up and deal with the true horror of climate change. Jeez…
The goddamn Arctic ALWAYS melts prior to glaciation of (at best) the Northern hemisphere. Forces the jetstream further south, blocks the north Atlantic conveyor (gulf stream) leading to extensive glaciation of Europe. Carbon dioxide levels rise before, during and long AFTER total glaciation. Glaciation means ice at least one kilometre deep over all Europe. Vostok Ice Cores. Ah what’s the point.
It’s obviously getting warmer. Faith is wonderful. Saves many from having to confront the vicious, icy reality that is imminent.
Jose, it is a somewhat pathetic and ironic trope of the anti-science brigade to call people who believe in the scientific evidence ‘religious’.
The fact you have to face is that nobody supports what you are saying – the science is all on my side – so it is hysterical your calling me the one with faith!
Just because you believe that the world’s scientific community, including meteorologists, paleoclimatologists, and other relevant earth scientists, have failed somehow to come to the conclusion that you have, does not make you right!
The interglacial argument has been robustly rubbished by people who actually know what they are talking about.
If you think these experts are wrong in rejecting the inter-glacial theory, then you should get onto them and give them the benefit of your wisdom! I would be interested to hear their response!
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