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I've been away from the board for a couple of weeks so apologies if this is old news, but I can't see a topic on it.

Falls Church News (who run many PO articles) have an interesting one on possible weather impacts this winter:
http://www.fcnp.com/533/peakoil.htm
It refers to a UK Govt planning meeting reported in the Times and a met office prediction that the North Atlantic Oscillation - the air current that keeps us mild in winter - may fail this winter. With obvious (to us) consequences for gas supplies...

The met office forecast is here

The Times report is here and says the meeting is next moth (Nov)

Anyone know any more?

There's a one in three chance of them getting it right apparently. But apparently going back thru history there is a definite correlation between the na oscillation and winter temperatures, something to do with how it affects currents and air temperature.

We have had approx 10yrs of unseasonably warm winters - all have been above average temps.

Some background from an oceanographer friend of mine who's studying the North Pacific analog of NAO. He says:

We don't really know how to predict it yet, or even what causes it, really. Well, we have some ideas...

Take a look at the NAO index on this page:

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/tiempo/portal/datanao.htm

It doesn't take a scientist to see that we're due for an NAO flip soon.

Here's the background:

http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/NAO/

However, I don't know how interesting I find all this. The winters will be colder when the NAO flips, but in England the covariance of air temp with the NAO s only about .5 deg C, so they won't be much colder. Now, Leningrad, they've got something to worry about... covariance of 2.5 deg C.