Alberto Berlini February 20, 2024
When we first saw this video, we thought of popular blockbusters like Geostorm or The Day After Tomorrow, Hollywood disaster films that show the vagaries of a climate gone mad by playing a little with science and a little with eco-disaster. . This is why when people saw the images from China, they first raised their eyebrows and then turned up their noses. Meanwhile, the facts. The released images were posted on social media on Monday, February 19th.
Among the first to spread it in Western media was popular Chinese writer and Falun Gong activist Jennifer Zeng, now a refugee in Australia, who reposted videos already circulating on Beijing's social networks, focusing on the the devastating effects of climate change. Therefore, it would be natural for most people to think about the connection between the “warming” of the Earth's climate and the apparent effects of an ice age. To provide clarity, we consulted climatologist Giulio Betti, meteorologist at the Lamma Consortium.
“As strange as it may seem, it is a fact that falls into the scientific literature,” Betti tells Today.it after analyzing the video. According to the geolocation of the images, we are actually in the Xinjiang region, in the heart of the Mongolian steppe, where one can “normally” breathe a decidedly Siberian cold at this time.
As several images published in local newspapers show, in recent days whole flocks have been living along the Aksu River, which was only half frozen despite the winter period. This is because winter in China had very important positive anomalies: “We are talking about several degrees above the average of the period. If we assume that in Italy, in these Asian regions, we have had a mild winter since the beginning of winter, temperatures have been between 4 and 6 degrees Celsius higher than normal and in recent days the positive anomalies have been even 10/12 degrees higher than what we could have expected for this time of year,” explains the Cnr climatologist.
But between February 16th and 18th there was a veritable thermal collapse with temperatures returning to the average for the period, even below average, resulting in a negative anomaly of 12 degrees Celsius on February 19th. “We are talking about a drop in temperature of around 30 degrees in a few hours, caused by the arrival of a cold front from Mongolia.”
In China, temperatures drop to -52 degrees: massacre of waterfowl
This is how the images of the “suddenly polar era” are quickly explained. “Obviously it wasn’t the case that the wild animals suddenly froze, and they didn’t just wait idly for their fate,” explains Betti. “It is very likely that the birds tried to escape and move away when the cold currents came.” However, the strong descending currents may have trapped the animals, disorienting them and causing them to fall back into the lake, which, as the temperatures dropped, froze over, trapping ducks, geese and anyone else who couldn't move away as the absolute temperatures dropped to -52 degrees Celsius.
“The real anomaly was the heat, the thermal collapse was just a return to normality,” climatologist Betti explains to Today.it
This is an anomaly linked to climate change, where unusual temperatures prevail for long periods of time, which also causes animals to become accustomed to them. The first impacts of a new world in which we will have to learn to live with sudden temperature fluctuations and extreme events linked to the great energies in the atmosphere.
Radical atmospheric change in Italy (maybe) until mid-March
A new ice age for Europe: “Gulf Stream collapse likely as early as 2025”