Bitterly cold, but no 11-city race for the Dutch

Post date: Oct 18, 2014 7:39:23 PM

Wednesday, June 12, 2013. With many days with temperatures below freezing, the February 2012 cold spell got all people in the Netherlands excited whether or not an “Elfstedentocht” could be held. In the end it could not. In our contribution to the paper “Climate Extremes in 2012” which has now been accepted for publication in BAMS, we discuss the February 2012 cold spell from the unusual perspective of the Dutch Ice-Skating community.

Figure caption. The cold spell 2012 as simulated by the KNMI ice-model, showing observed snow depth (green), 12-hourly temperature (thin black), 5-day average (thick black), and 1981-2010 climatology (purple), simulated water temperature (blue), and ice-thickness (red). The dashed lines indicate a simulation in a colder climate, while the dotted line indicates the ice-growth without snow. Data: KNMI.

Excerpt from the paper’s Introduction: “[...] After a mild start of the winter (December 2011 was the 5th warmest on record, an extensive high pressure area had built over Russia near the end of January 2012, and migrated slowly westward. With strong easterly to north-easterly winds, bitterly cold air was advected straight from the Arctic and north-eastern Siberia, in the direction of western and central Europe and even northern Africa. Many regions were exposed for more than two weeks to temperatures more than 10˚ C below average. The ice-skating community had high expectations since cold spell had been forecast very well by the meteorological institutes due its large spatial scale. Nevertheless, also in 2012 the 11-City Tour could not be organized due to lack of sufficient ice-thickness on many lakes and canals. “What prevented the ice from growing?”, and “Could climate-change be responsible for the insufficient ice-thickness?”, were among the most frequently asked questions asked in the aftermath of the cold spell. In this contribution we seek answers to these two questions [...]”