Colder than Mars

RobertDyck · 2014-01-02 14:54:49

The media is making a big deal of our temperature. Yesterday's headline:
Winnipeg's temperature as cold as surface of Mars

Well... Actually Curiosity reported maximum temperature -29°C, while our low was expected to be -31°C, but actually was -32.2°C. That's real temperature, with windchill that works out to -40 to -50; exposed skin can freeze in less than five minutes. Comparing our low to Mars high? Well, it gets Mars in the news.

Today it's still cold. The media is again saying we're colder than Mars. According to Mars Weather website, today's high is -29°C and low -103°C. Winnipeg's weather is currently -24.5°C, windchill -33.

That's cold, but not the extreme. Three days in 2005 were colder: weather reports at the time projected overnight lows of -40.4, -40.6, and -41.0°C. Weather statistics say it didn't get quite that low, only -39.6°C. Real temperature, not wind chill. After living through it, close enough!

And that's not the all time extreme; one night in 1966 had a blizzard. The low was -45°C. Again real temperature, not wind chill. Add high wind, snow blowing horizontal, a white-out so you can't see the difference between ground and sky. I was only 4 years old, but do remember. It was cold! Frost on a wall inside the house that wasn't insulated well. In the morning, a snow drift covered the front of our house to the eve trough (American word is gutter). A bungalow. The living room window and front door were completely submerged in snow. But the back was mostly clear. I thought my father would have to climb out the kitchen window, but he managed to push the back door open. He waded through snow to the garage, and got a snow shovel. Shovelled out the house.

I should shovel my sidewalk, but weather reports say it'll get up to -10°C tomorrow. I'll stay inside until then.

Last edited by RobertDyck (2014-01-07 02:02:41)

GW Johnson · 2014-01-03 10:35:17

I know of what you speak, in spite of being a Texas flatlander. I spent two winters and a summer in southern Minnesota 1995-1997. Those were two record-setting winters for cold and snow, even by their standards. Real education for me. Feb 2, 1996 it was -31 F (-35 C) in Mankato where I was, -61 F (-52 C) at Embarrass, MN up near the Canadian border, and Winnipeg was reporting -85 F (-65 C). The afternoon high that day was -14 F (-26 C) in Mankato (same day in Dallas TX it was 97 F (36 C) with raging grass fires). I had a can of beer freeze solid that afternoon in less than 5 minutes, and not thaw for 3 hours after I took it back inside.

From New Year to mid-March 1996, it was always at least -20 F (-29 C) every morning, and never got above 0 F (-18 C) in the afternoons. Never had a place to plug in a block heater, so I just had to learn how to start a car dead cold-soaked. The next winter was about 10 F (5 C) warmer, but a whole lot snowier. 10 miles west of me, a man kept a 20-foot deep slit trench open all winter with his snowblower, just to get in and out of his house, on the second floor! His home was covered all winter by a 50-foot snowdrift. The snow that didn't melt came two days before Halloween, and we did not see the Earth again until mid-April. It all melted in 2 weeks and caused massive flooding.

All of that was an experience to remember, but not to repeat.

GW

SpaceNut · 2014-01-03 20:32:09

We are experiewncing a cold snap as the day was -2 F but tonight is going down to -14 F with a wind chill that will make it feel like -31F. Normally NH will see these kind of temperatures in Febuary.

JoshNH4H · 2014-01-04 02:18:42

I'm in Jersey, with a milder version of the same weather pattern. As of right now my phone is saying it's -17 C (-2 F) outside.

Tom Kalbfus · 2014-01-04 09:53:14

I think it is amusing that an Antarctic research ship that was there to study global warming got frozen in ice, and so did the Chinese ice breaker that was sent out to rescue them! Lots of global warming happening down there eh!

RobertDyck · 2014-01-07 02:36:04

GW Johnson wrote:

Feb 2, 1996 it was -31 F (-35 C) in Mankato where I was, -61 F (-52 C) at Embarrass, MN up near the Canadian border, and Winnipeg was reporting -85 F (-65 C). The afternoon high that day was -14 F (-26 C) in Mankato

Yea, it's cold. Complaining about the cold is a national pass-time. However, I noticed a lot of exaggeration in North Dakota and Minnesota. They report temperatures like this, but fail to tell you that isn't the real temperature. That's calculated wind chill. Real temperature never actually gets that cold in those states. And the formula they use for wind chill is quite exaggerated. Wind chill is supposed to mean with this humidity and wind it feels like that temperature. A university in Canada did a study a few years ago, with volunteers exposing themselves to cold. They came up with a new wind chill formula. The new numbers aren't nearly as extreme.

GW Johnson · 2014-01-07 10:32:18

Hi RobertDyck:

Most of the time you are right - people exaggerate horribly, misusing the wind chill notion. They're doing it again right now. I even heard one news reporter claim that because the wind chill had reached -40 F that car antifreeze wouldn't work any more. BS, the only thing that matters to physical effects is real air temperature. But, those two winters I spent in Minnesota I was very careful to sort that out and get the real air temperatures. Those two were century-scale record-setting cold and snowy winters.

That night it was so cold in Mankato, they were reporting 30 below all night, with 40 knot winds. It's true, too, I was there. You didn't leave town either. A couple of people who did, died that night. The corresponding wind chills were reported as -70 to -80 F. Actually, wind chill is almost meaningless once you're that cold. If you are not dressed for it, you're quickly dead. The numbers don't matter.

Those were real air temperatures that one morning, not wind chills. Point Barrow was reporting +32 F that very same morning it was -31 F in Mankato. There wasn't anybody in the Yukon reporting anything, but I'd bet it was actually warmer there that same day, as that's where the cold air mass came from. Before that air mass left the Yukon, I'd also bet it was pretty close to -100 F there.

GW

RobertDyck · 2014-01-07 11:27:38

-35C or -26C I believe. However -52C or -65C sound like wind chill. In fact the coldest temperature recorded in Winnipeg ever was -45°C; real temperature never did get to -65C. Not in Winnipeg.

Let's see... -100F = -73.33°C. That's extremely rare, but possible. The coldest temperature I read recorded in Siberia was -79.2°C. That's a very specific figure, all the CO2 has to freeze as dry ice snow or frost before it can get any colder. Phase change. I didn't think that could happen on Earth, but Vostok Station in Antarctica once reported -89°C. That means all the CO2 had to have frozen in that area.

Whitehorse, Yukon reports -4°C, tomorrows predicted high -7°C and low -12°C. For the next 2 weeks the projected low is -20°C. That's warmer than Winnipeg.

In Winnipeg, temperature of -32.2°C feels very cold, but it happens every winter. Nothing unusual or extreme. Right now it's -26°C.

louis · 2014-01-07 19:08:00

I prefer the Martian summers when it can get into double figures (postive) on a balmy afternoon. Very nice.

GW Johnson · 2014-01-09 13:02:11

RobertDyck:

You were right about cold temperatures in Winnipeg. I had the local weatherman, an aquaintence of mine, look up historical records. Feb 1 and 2, 1996, they were -41.8 and -41.2 C. That's -43 F. So the -85 F figure was a wind chill. Now I'm no longer sure of the -61 F figure for Embarrass, Minnesota, those same mornings. Those were supposed to be actual thermometer readings.

Where I was in Mankato (40 miles off the Iowa border in southern Minnesota), the -31 F was a real temperature. The wind chills had been reported as -70F to -80 F all the night before, but the real temperatures were -30 F (-34 C) class. It was 40-knot windy. Those temperatures were unusual record-setting lows for that vicinity.

All of that was a real education for a Texas flatland boy who had never before lived anywhere north of Dallas. I came home to Texas with a taste for airconditioning after that experience.

I did see the other day where a satellite thought it saw Antarctic high plateau temperatures of -136 F (-93 C) last antarctic winter.

GW

JoshNH4H · 2014-01-09 18:35:46

Kind of makes me wonder about the idea of freezing CO2 out of the atmosphere as a strategy to stop global warming. Rather than cool the planet by blocking significant amounts of sunlight, if we can get areas in the antarctic down to -85 C or so on a regular basis the CO2 will freeze out of the air and fall to the ground where it could conceivably be collected. To remove 200 ppm from the atmosphere involves removing 1.5e15 kg of CO2.

Snow has a high emissivity. Given the greenhouse effect I will approximate this as .5, and assume that 10% of the outgoing energy comes from CO2 solidifying (At these temperatures it is highly unlikely that there is any significant amount of water in the air, after all). At -83 C (190 K), this means that 3.7 W/m^2 is going towards freezing out CO2; Given a heat of sublimation of 570 kJ/kg, that is .0065 g/s per m^2 of CO2. If we can get 70,000 square kilometers down to this temperature we'll be doing pretty well. This can be done with a radius of 150 km, implying a mirror with an area under 4 km^2 (we are right at the south pole so you get a lot of area for not much mirror) if it can be positioned correctly, admittedly not including umbral effects as well as thermal transport. Realistically, the mirror's area will have to be on the order of a couple hundred or maybe thousand km^2. Still not that bad.

Anyway, at this rate we will be able to draw down almost 500 tonnes of CO2 per second, or 1.4e10 tonnes per year. That's nothing to sneeze at! Admittedly, it would still take quite a while to draw down everything. If we scale up by 100, to 7,000,000,000 km^2 we could undo the damage we've done within 100 years. Assuming, of course, that we cease emitting, because this would still be insufficient to reduce our effective emissions by more than ~1/3.

Coincidentally it would also turn Antarctica into a fantastic spot to observe the universe.

GW Johnson · 2014-01-09 19:46:57

Now THAT is an interesting idea (freezing out the CO2 to counteract greenhouse warming). I haven't got a clue as to how to figure out if it can work, much less how to make it work as a practical item.

Wow! Neat idea! First reversible geoengineering proposal I ever heard of! Reversible things are actually worth trying.

GW

SpaceNut · 2014-01-09 22:57:28

The antarctica winter I would think would be dark enough to do what was spoken of by JoshNH4H but even then why not collect and seperate it from pumping it into a chamber to allow for additional cooling.

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#1 2014-01-02 14:54:49

Colder than Mars

#2 2014-01-03 10:35:17

Re: Colder than Mars

#3 2014-01-03 20:32:09

Re: Colder than Mars

#4 2014-01-04 02:18:42

Re: Colder than Mars

#5 2014-01-04 09:53:14

Re: Colder than Mars

#6 2014-01-07 02:36:04

Re: Colder than Mars

#7 2014-01-07 10:32:18

Re: Colder than Mars

#8 2014-01-07 11:27:38

Re: Colder than Mars

#9 2014-01-07 19:08:00

Re: Colder than Mars

#10 2014-01-09 13:02:11

Re: Colder than Mars

#11 2014-01-09 18:35:46

Re: Colder than Mars

#12 2014-01-09 19:46:57

Re: Colder than Mars

#13 2014-01-09 22:57:28

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