I just came across a story by Reuters that quotes scientists who say the odds of a “white Christmas” in temperate parts of the northern hemisphere have diminished in the last century because of climate change and will likely decline further by 2100.
It seems the probability of snow on the ground for Christmas is already lower than it was just 50 years ago.
Even a northern city like Oslo in Norway will rarely have a Bing-Crosby-style “White Christmas” in the decades ahead.
But Reuters also quoes a climatologist from the German Weather Service,Gerhard Mueller-Westermeier,as pointing out that there are some areas in temperate zones that will have snow, for instance higher areas like the Alps. And it seems Munich is the city to go for a fair chance of a white Christmas – even in a warming world.

I took this photo in the Black Forest just under two weeks ago. There has been a fair bit of snow on higher ground in some areas of Germany.
But right now, Christmas is right around the corner and it’s grey and very mild here in Bonn on the banks of the Rhine. Yesterday, the days started to get longer again. But I can’t say it’s noticeable in this kind of weather. I have a Danish colleague, and her joke this morning was that climate change was making Germany feel like it was north of the polar circle – as far as the lack of light in winter is concerned! Temperature-wise, it seems to be doing the opposite. There’s far too much fresh green in the garden for December in this part of the world.
Meanwhile, my friend in Seattle enjoyed an unusual fall of snow.I wonder if all the people in those parts of the US struggling against extreme cold and heavy snowfall still play “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas”? Somehow I doubt it. If any of you are reading this, drop me a mail or put in a comment with your views. Somehow people are reluctant to enter public comments on weblogs, but I’m glad you still send mails.
Helen in Perth, Australia, has asked when the Ice Blogger will be out on the trail again. Still working on the travel plans, Helen, but as our IPY project is still running, there will be more blog entries from icy areas in the course of 2009.
There will be an important Arctic conference in Tromsö, Norway in January: Arctic Frontiers. The organisation has an interesting website:
Website for the Arctic Frontiers network
All eyes will be turned to the USA in the New Year with Barack Obama taking office. It looks as if there’s reason to hope for a major turnaround in US climate policy.
IPS Earth Alert on Scientists in new US administration
If you have time to listen to a half-hour of radio feature over the festive period, you can hear the long version of this year’s original Ice Blog trip to Arctic Alaska with the Climate Change College.
Unbaking Alaska on Deutsche Welle’s Living Planet
Happy Christmas when it comes!

That’s a quote from David Barber, an Arctic climatologist at the University of Manitoba, speaking to IPS at the International Arctic Change conference in Quebec, Canada.
Read the whole article here
He thinks the Arctic will be ice-free in summer by 2015. And he’s not alone in thinking that.
Even the worst-case scenarios looked at by the IPCC didn’t consider that possibility for another 50 to 70 years.

The latest NASA satellite data also indicates continuing rapid ice melt. More than 2 trillion tons of LAND ice in Greenland, Antarctica and Alaska have melted since 2003, more than half of it in Greenland. This is all based on measurements of ice weight by NASA’S GRACE satellite. More figures will be released in San Francisco later today, at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco.
AGU website with more info
You’d think hard evidence like that using the best technology we have would convince even the staunchest sceptics and provoke action. I often tend to think it will. Normally I say I’m a born optimist. But is it optmistic to think people will be convinced by potentially catastrophic data?
That’s a question for the philosophers.
Meanwhile the World Meteorological Organization has said the past 12 months have been cooler than previous years, but longer-term trends show the world is still warming because of climate change. The MTO explain the slight dip in temperature by a La Nina event. And the organisation is concerned about the ice in the Arctic Sea having dropped to its second-lowest level during the melt season since satellite measurements began in 1979.
More on the WMO website
So in the light of all that, what do you make of the outcome of the Poznan conference and the EU’s latest climate of climate measures?

The planet has lost an alarming 19 percent of its coral reefs, according to the 2008 global reef update.
The Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network has just published its latest report at the climate conference in Poznan.
It warns many of the remaining reefs may also be lost over the next 20-40 years, if current trands in carbon dioxide emissions continue.
Some 500 million people depend on coral reefs for their livelihood.
Coral reefs are threatened by several factors. Climate change is considered the biggest danger, with increasing sea surface temperatures and the acidification of the sea water.
Overfishing, pollution and invasive species are other factors putting pressure on coral reefs.
Carl Gustaf Lundin, Head of the Global Marine Programme at IUCN – one of the organizations behind the Reef Monitorin Network, says atmospheric carbon dioxide will double in less than 50 years if nothing changes. He warns the carbon will be absorbed by the oceans, making them more acidic and damaging a wide range of marine life, from corals to plankton communities and from lobsters to seagrasses.
Clive Wilkinson, Coordinator of the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, says the report details the strong scientific concensus that climate change must be limited to the absolute minimum. If nothing is done to cut emissions substantially, he says, we could effectively lose coral reefs as we know them, with major coral extinctions.
Download the briefing paper:

More information from
IUCN website
Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network reports:

On Indian Ocean research and development. See CORDIO:

…are particularly likely to be female, poor and living in developing countries, says the International Union for Conservation of Nature IUCN.
More info on the IUCN website

The organisation used the Poznan conference, now into its 2nd week, as a platform to launch a training manual aimed at policy- and decision-makers, to make them take gender into account in climate change strategies.
The training manual