Alps experiencing warmest period in 1,300 years, climatologist says
http://www.breitbart.com/news/na/cp_g120502A.xml.html
VERONIKA OLEKSYN VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Europe's alpine region is going through its warmest period in a millennium, the head of an extensive climate study said Tuesday.
"We are currently experiencing the warmest period in the Alpine region in 1,300 years," said Reinhard Boehm, a climatologist at Austria's Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics.
Boehm based his comments on the results of a project conducted by a group of European institutes between March 2003 and August 2006. Their aim was to reconstruct the climate in the region encompassing the Rhone Valley in France to the west, Budapest, Hungary, to the east, Tuscany, Italy, to the south and Nuremberg, Germany, to the north over the last 1,000 years.
Boehm said the current warm period in the alpine region began in the noting that a similar warming occurred in the 10th and 12th centuries. However, the temperatures during those phases were "slightly under the temperatures we've experienced over the past 20 years."
Humans first had an impact on the global climate in the 1950s, Boehm said, noting that at first, the release of aerosols into the atmosphere cooled the climate. Since the 1980s, however, greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane have warmed it, he said.
"It will undoubtedly get warmer in the future," Boehm said.
Sponsored by the European Union, the project sought to homogenize climate data collected in the Alpine region over the last 250 years. Climate reconstruction focused on seven parameters, including temperature, sunshine periods and cloud cover. Tree rings and ice core measurements were also taken into consideration.
The unseasonably warm weather this fall has caused concern in Austria's ski resorts, where slopes are still largely covered in green grass instead of snow. Many have had to postpone the start of their skiing season and some have tried attracting tourists with alternative programs, such as hiking.
Austrian ski resorts usually open at the end of November.
In some cases, organizers have had to be creative to make sure their events take place as planned.
In Hochfilzen, Tyrol, organizers of an upcoming international race went to the Grossglockner - Austria's highest mountain - to get snow they needed to prepare their track.
It took about five days to truck between 7,000 and 8,000 cubic metres of snow to the Grossglockner, said organizer Thomas Abfalter.
The Canadian Press, 2006
There is no need to post such stories. Someone else will simply post one about a record cold day in some town in Wisconsin and deny that there is even such a thing as global warming.
What happened to the MWP, did they wish it away?