The Beast from the East and European Energy Security
European energy security is a subject I return to time and again normally prompted by some kind of event. This time it is severe cold weather and snow that has spread from Siberia over the whole of North and Western Europe, rather late in the season, at a time when gas storage is depleted. There are some compounding factors like the Groningen gas field in the Netherlands is substantially reduced and the UKs biggest gas storage facility – Rough – has been closed. Will the lights stay on? Probably yes, but only because governments may ask large industrial consumers to scale back or shut down their operations. At a time when social services are being cut to the bone, is this really the time for government energy policies to be eroding national GDP?
The Beast from the East
This cold weather pattern has been christened the beast from the East by the British press. So what is it? Essentially atmospheric circulation has gone into reverse. Instead of receiving normally mild south westerlies, we are getting a very cold easterly air stream as Figure 1 shows. As I have said repeatedly on this blog, the likely reason for this anomalous behaviour is changes to solar spectrum linked to low magnetic activity and circulation within the solar plasma. We observe all this complexity as changes in sunspot number and length of the sunspot cycle.
Figure 1 Screen capture ~ 18:00 hours from Windy.com (HT Gunther) Tuesday 27 February. All the arrows over Europe are pointing West. London -3˚C, Paris -3˚C, Berlin -7˚C, Warsaw -11˚C and Oslo -11˚C. Energy for heating will be in high demand.
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