Just considering some comments about areas being above normal temperature. Just questioning if everyone is looking at temperature change the same way. I recently with some numbers from some wildfire weather stations in Canada. First we looked at 40 years of data for average daytime high temperatures from a selection of weather stations. We could not see any change in daytime high. Then we did the same calculation but looking at the overnight low temperatures, and we found that the average of overnight low seems to be trending 3 to 4 degrees warmer than it was 40 years ago, even though daytime temperature did not seem to change. This has an effect on fuel drying rates, cured grass, overnight condensation, number of consecutive frost free days, length of fire season and growing season, lots of things us wildfire guys care about. So my question – when we read comments that a certain area of the arctic is 4 or 5 degrees warmer than normal, are they looking only at daytime highs being warmer, or are they also considering overnight lows, or hourly temperature? Is there consistency in how this is looked at? Maybe the overnight low is 6 or 7 degrees warmer than normal. Need to look at both ends of that diurnal fluctuation.

More contaminants on their way north! "About 670 million litres of waste spilled from a coal mine in Alberta on Oct. 31 (the original estimate was 1 billion litres) in what is believed to be Canada's largest ever coal slurry spill." "Among the contaminants found were aluminum, manganese, lead, cadmium, mercury and cancer-causing compounds." http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/alberta-coal-spill-plume-slowly-moving-north-1.2438641 http://ecowatch.com/2013/11/14/water-contamination-coal-slurry-spill/ Have a great day!

"I wondered whether this was a case of journalists not knowing how to deal with science stories" Yup, most journalists are trained that every news story has three components, 1. a Victim, 2. a Villain, and 3. a Hero. If they can't find those three components then it isn't news. When we provide a story to the media we sometimes need to play their game and outline three components for them.