Arctic Ice

In October ice levels continue to rise as expected (see graph) and continue to be better than levels recorded in 2007.

However, when you look at the overall trend for the last 60 years there is a long way to go before any improvement can be confirmed. A small bit of good news is that the current 12 month moving average is within 3 and 2 standard deviations from the mean value of 1968 to 1996. In the period 2005 to 2007 the 3 standard deviation control limit was broken so if this happens again over the next few years there will be further cause for major concern.

And here is the percentage reduction over the last 30 years using the September mean for each year (this September was 20% down on the 1979-2000 mean):

Growth Rate of Irish Population 2

The ERSI predicted this week that the Irish Republic's population will grow to between 4.7 million and 5.1 million by 2021. This matches the predicted growth in the charts I published 2 months back (reproduced again). Anyone holding property for the long term should be encouraged as the population would grow by nearly 80,000 in the next 12 years.

 

Country Suicide Rates by Latitudinal distance from the Equator

Recent studies have shown that latitude is one influencing factor of a country's suicide rate. So I took the latest suicide rates per 100,000 males on Wikipedia and plotted them by mean latitudinal distance from the equator. Although there is a lot of variability in the data there does seem to be some influencing factors on suicide rates depending how far north or south of the equator a particular country is. For example, Alaska has the highest suicide rate in the US. The results of these studies also show that suicide rates peak in June and dip in December in the Northern hemisphere and peak in December and dip in June in the Southern hemisphere.

Here is the raw data:

Country	Mean Latitude	Male Suicide Rate
Ecuador	2	10.4
Colombia	4	8.9
Suriname	4	17.8
Guyana	5	33.8
Venezuela	8	8.4
Panama	9	11.1
Peru	10	1.1
Brazil	10	6.8
Costa Rica	10	10.6
Trinidad	11	20.9
Barbados	13	1.4
Philippines	13	2.5
Saint Vincent	13	6.8
El Slvador	13	10.3
Saint Lucia	13	10.4
Nicaragua	13	11.1
Guatemala	15	3.4
Thailand	15	12
Belize	17	13.4
Peurto Rico	18	10.9
Dominican Rep	19	2.9
Zimbabwe	20	10.6
India	20	12.2
Mauritius	20	13.2
Cuba	21	18.6
Singapore	22	12.9
Hong Kong	22	22
Paraguay	23	4.5
Mexico	23	7
Bahamas	24	6
Bahrain	26	4.9
Australia	27	17.1
Kuwait	29	2.5
South Africa	29	25.3
Chile	30	17.8
Israel	31	10.4
Uruguay	33	24.5
Argentina	34	14.1
Malta	35	7
China	35	13
Japan	36	34.8
South Korea	37	29.6
USA	38	17.7
Turkey	39	2.3
Tajikistan	39	2.9
Greece	39	5.9
Portugal	39	17.5
Azerbaijan	40	1.8
Armenia	40	3.2
Spain	40	12
Turkmenistan	40	13.8
Albania	41	4.7
Ukbekistan	41	8.1
Macedonia	41	9.5
Kyrgyzstan	41	15.3
New Zealand	41	20.3
Georgia	42	3.4
Italy	42	11
Bulgaria	43	19.7
Bosnia	44	20.3
Serbia	44	28.4
Croatia	45	30.5
Romania	46	21.5
France	46	26.4
Slovenia	46	42.1
Switzerland	47	24.7
Austria	47	24.7
Moldova	47	31.5
Hungary	47	42.3
Slovakia	48	22.3
Kazakhstan	48	45
Luxembourg	49	17.7
Czech Republic	49	35.5
Ukraine	49	40.9
Belgium	50	31.2
Germany	51	19.7
Netherlands	52	12.7
Poland	52	27.8
Ireland	53	16.3
Belarus	53	63.3
UK	54	10.4
Denmark	56	19.2
Lithuania	56	68.1
Latvia	57	42
Estonia	59	35.5
Canada	60	17.3
Russia	60	58.1
Norway	62	15.7
Sweden	62	19.5
Finland	64	31.1
Iceland	65	16.2

Arctic Ice Levels Showing Signs of Recovery?

A small piece of good news for anyone worried about global warming and the reduction of the ice caps with the resultant raising of sea levels. Here is the latest graph showing Arctic ice levels over the last few years compared with the average from 1970-2000. Hopefully, this is not a blip and is an indicator of some form of receovery from the lows of 2007. The good news is that current 2009 figures seem to be about 3 Standard Deviations from the average of 1970-2000. I will continue to monitor.

Irish Summer Weather Part 2

The Armagh weather data for the month of August has been posted. I could use other weather stations like the one in Ashford County Wicklow but Armagh has been gathering weather data for over 200 years. Overall, using the Armagh data this summer was well above the trend for number of Mean Sunshine Hours and for Mean Maximum Temperature. See graphs below. The overall trend for Mean Sunshine Hours has decreased by about 30 hours per summer since 1880.

The overall trend for Mean Maximum Summer Temperature has increased slightly from 18.35 to 18.75 degrees Celsius since 1844.

The overall trend therefore is for slightly wetter (see last post), warmer and cloudier summers for the future.

Irish Summer Weather

One useful comparison between countries would be to check the weather over a period of time in a particular region. The Armagh Observatory has being publishing weather data for the last 200 years. The summers (June, July & August) in Ireland have been really bad over the last 3 years. For example, here is the rainfall data since 1838 for the 3 month summer period. You can see a peak rainfall datapoint to the right of the graph that represents the amount of rainfall for Summer 2007 (377mm) which was the worst rainfall since summer of 1958 and before that we did not have as much rain in a summer since 1861.

Despite the heavier than normal rainfall over the last 3 years the trend is down slightly over the period of 170 years (slightly drier summers on average with a reduction from 235mm to just over 200mm). Hopefully we might get a decent summer again like in 1995 when we got just under 80mm of rain during the summer and a decent amount of sunshine (more later when I collate the sunshine data).

Growth Rate of Irish Population

The CSO released the latest population growth statistics this week. If the population continues to grow at the same linear rate as the last 10 years then we would see the population doubling by 2050. Unlikely I know but it would be interesting to track to see how long this trend continues.

The Red line in Graph 1 is the actual population growth increase from 1999 to 2008 and the Blue line is the extrapolated growth line giving the actual total population in Graph 2.