A year isn't that much longer than a season, and of course it's easier to predict global temperature than local if the accepted absolute error is the same (like ±0.5C), since the local variability is much higher. I'm very sceptical towards publishing seasonal forecasts and calling it science when ...

Is that forecast credible?  The UK Met Office issues seasonal forecasts, and their success rate is roughly the same as amateurs depending on folklore.

There's a nice conjunction of Mars, the Moon and Venus tonight.  And over here a pretty sunset to top it.

December at Longyear airport was the 73rd consecutive month with a temperature above the normal (defined as the 1961-1990 averages).  That's a pretty long "heatwave".  And it shows that the climate in the Arctic is quite different from the rest of the world.

Let's continue the thread in the old forum

It's been a warm year in the Arctic. Longyear airport at 78N managed to average +0.1C for the year, which I believe is the first time a yearly average above 0C has been recorded in Spitsbergen. Only a few days in 2016 had lows below the normal temperature ...

Bloody sunset.
[youtube]g46DY0WPHCM[/youtube]

My intuition tells me that this is complex and that the heat plays a major role her, but whether a doubling of speed can be exchanged for a quadrupling of mass at this scale with little difference in effect, I don't know. Yes, the water jet is terrifying.

On a much smaller scale, I made a video ...

Let's continue the thread in the old forum.

A new asteroid impact simulation
But it's odd that the video does not mention another, extremely important factor: impact speed, which is much more important than size for the total energy involved, unless the airburst scenario really is higher speed.

Fun fact: If you stand on top of the great pyramid of Giza, the gravitational force on you due to the Pyramid is equal to the gravitational force on you due to the Moon.
Isn't that surprising? Imagine we remove Earth, so you float in space and have this huge pyramid blocking almost your entire ...