QUEENSLAND CROPS “WIPED-OUT” BY RECORD-BREAKING COLD
Unseasonal rain and record-smashing cold is wiping out Queensland’s fruit and vegetable crops.
Prices have soared for fresh produce like lettuce and strawberries in recent weeks; now the cost of other fruits and vegetables are set to follow suit after inclement conditions have torn through the state’s key growing regions, reports freshplaza.com.
Widespread rain and record-busting polar chills have dominated Queensland’s weather in recent days, in what the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) has described as abnormal conditions for this time of year.
The BoM, unsurprisingly, is keen to underplay the fierce nature of the freeze, focusing instead on the flooding as that’s more easily correlated to their CAGW narrative; but the data doesn’t lie — hundreds of ‘monthly’ and even a host ‘all-time’ low temperature benchmarks have fallen this week, and many by some measure, too .
One of Australia’s largest fruit and vegetable growers, Cross Family Farms, is registering major losses in Bundaberg.
“A lot of our beans have all died because of the wet weather, so that’s probably our most impacted. Those and the snow peas,” said farmer Trevor Cross. “Zucchini plants are in the ground, but they don’t like the rain. The harvest drags out a lot because it’s too cold for them to grow. You’ll see a lot of cracking in the tomatoes, as well as leaf disease.”
Cross is expecting issues with anything and everything that’s currently growing outside in these unusually harsh conditions.
The polar cold hasn’t just been confined to Queensland, with hard frost and fog noted in coastal towns in South Australia, too.
At Ceduna, for example, the mercury plunged to -3.7C (25.3F), and as was the case with many other Eyre Peninsula locations, an icy mantle was discovered by morning risers.
The BoM has said frosts gripped west of Ceduna early Thursday morning, too; and looking ahead, the agency is forecasting additional, record-challenging cold through the weekend and into next week — a prediction supported by latest GFS runs:
GFS 2m Temperature Anomlaies (C) to July 13
HEAVY SNOW HITS ARGENTINA
Harsh lows and heavy snows have been battering swathes of Argentina this week.
Caviahue, a village located in Neuquén Province, suffered a sizable dumping on Wednesday:
The avalanche occurred between the Venus and Neptuno slopes, and was reportedly triggered by the two skiers as they descended the expert Ceñidor slope.
Both skiers are now being cared for in Buenos Aires, with one suffering cerebral hypoxia due to asphyxiation caused by snow crushing. The patient, a 60-year-old male, was admitted to intensive care for neurological and pulmonary function and pain monitoring.
STRONGEST NOCTILUCENT CLOUD ACTIVITY IN DECADES
On Wednesday morning, July 6, sky watchers in Europe woke up to some of the brightest noctilucent clouds (NLCs) in years.
The clouds were observed ACROSS the continent, from backlighting the Eiffel Tower in Paris…
STRONGEST NOCTILUCENT CLOUD ACTIVITY IN DECADES
On Wednesday morning, July 6, sky watchers in Europe woke up to some of the brightest noctilucent clouds (NLCs) in years.
The clouds were observed ACROSS the continent, from backlighting the Eiffel Tower in Paris…
Very bright noctilucent clouds
Taken by Daniel Fischer on July 6, 2022 at Bochum, Germany.
But what is their significance?
NLCs are Earth’s highest clouds. Seeded by meteoroids, they float at the edge of space and form when summertime wisps of water vapor rise up to the mesosphere, allowing water to crystallize around specks of meteor smoke. Crucially, upper atmospheric temperatures need to be exceptionally COLD for the clouds to form.
Early-July is, traditionally, a good time to see NLCs in the northern hemisphere, but this July is proving truly exceptional.
Looking down on Earth’s north pole, NASA’s AIM spacecraft is seeing some of the strongest NLC activity in at least 15 years:
The charts above display the frequency of NLCs at two northern latitudes: 69o and 80o — the red line represents 2022; the gray traces 14 previous seasons, back to 2007.
“This season appears to be a strong one throughout the polar region,” says Cora Randall, a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. “In fact, although day-to-day variability is substantial, on July 2nd AIM measured higher cloud frequencies at 69N latitude than in any other year since the spacecraft was launched.”
As touched on above, extremely cold temperatures –as low as -150F– are required for NLCs to form.
These night shining clouds are also more prevalent during solar minimum conditions, when there is less solar energy heating the extreme upper atmosphere–and there has been an stark uptick in NLC sightings in recent years — the clouds have been spilling out of the Arctic Circle and descending farther south than ever before.
Prior to 2019, no sightings of Noctilucent clouds at the mid-latitudes existed. Then, from around mid-June 2019, NLCs were observed as far south as Joshua Tree, CA (34 deg. N) and Albuquerque, New Mexico (35 deg. N).
In 2020, Lynn Harvey of the University of Colorado Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics noted very low mesospheric temperatures: “At polar latitudes (60N-80N) temperatures have been breaking 14-year records … In fact, mid-latitude (35N-55N) temperatures in late May were the coldest of the AIM record”.
This mesospheric cooling is thought to be key piece in the increasing NLC puzzle.
Other theories see the water vapor from rocket exhausts potentially boosting the seeding of these clouds. Rocket launches have been increasing in recent years — last month alone saw 16 launches, all of which would of added water to the upper atmosphere. However, what the ‘rocket exhaust theory’ doesn’t explain is the zero NLC sightings at the mid-latitudes prior to 2019, nor does it take away from the fact that the mesosphere is cooling. The link between rockets and NLCs is an area of active research.
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