No Winter for Europe - WARMEST AUTUMN IN FOREVER

[StrictlyRockers]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,453041,00.html

December 07, 2006 WARMEST AUTUMN IN FOREVER
No Winter for Europe
Central Europe is experiencing its warmest winter in 500 years and the Alps haven't been this warm in over a millenneum. Ski resorts are suffering, as are the bears.

Only two weeks before the official start of winter, Europe is sweating. An unusually warm autumn -- which was last week credited for Germany's fourth quarter economic surge -- is forcing ski resorts to market hiking holidays, and bears to seek out places cold enough to hibernate.

Indeed, Germany is experiencing its warmest autumn in 500 years. Germany's average temperature from September to November this year was 12 degrees Celsius (54 degrees Fahrenheit), a full 3.2 Celsius degrees higher than the median temperature from 1961 to 1990.

Scientists are basing the claim on temperature records -- collected as far back as 1659 -- and information derived from other sources like monks' journals in old monasteries. "Weather historians have assembled all the available information for each given month," Jürg Luterbacher, a climate researcher with the University of Bern climate researcher, told SPIEGEL ONLINE.

More importantly, Germany's not alone. "An exceptionally warm autumn in a region proves very little," Luterbacher told the online magazine Nature. "But the data are consistent for the whole of Europe -- from Iceland to Greece."

Alps are warmest in 1,300 years

Indeed, Germany's warm autumn is only part of a larger trend. Reinhard Böhm, a climatologist at Austria's Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics, says Europe's Alps are warmer today than anytime in the past 1,300 years.
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Alarming news about global warming. Sounds like Al Gore is right.

SR