Keeling curve graph showing rising CO2 levels.

CO2 levels highest in over three million years

Temperatures may keep rising for decades after this level is hopefully stabilized

Atmospheric CO2 (carbon dioxide) levels on top of Hawaii’s Mauna Loa hit a record high of 401 parts per million earlier this month, and as we are still a month or so away from peak CO2 levels, this record will likely be broken. Just what does this mean? Let’s start off be looking at the

Possible El Niño developing this summer

Any large-scale change in the state of the Pacific is bound to have an impact elsewhere

I received an email the other day asking about El Niño and what effect it might have on our part of the world, should one develop. For quite a while now the Pacific has been in a neutral El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phase, but there is some mention of an El Niño event possibly


Will this be the coldest winter since 1918?

December, January and February have all been below the average just three times

There has been a fair bit of talk and media coverage on the cold weather we, and much of central and eastern North America, have seen so far this winter. For this issue I thought I would dig into the weather data and try to see just how cold we have been. First of all,

Snow and a barbed wire fence.

Warm, cold and the polar vortex

Believe it or not, December 2013 was one of the warmest ever for the planet

The global weather numbers are in for December 2013, and it turns out that despite the cold weather parts of North America have been experiencing, the planet on a whole continues to be running a temperature. According to data from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Climatic Data Center, NASA and University


2013 was colder than the average year

A month-by-month review of weather for agricultural Manitoba in 2013

The new year is a time to look forward and try to anticipate what the upcoming year will have in store for us, but it’s also a time to look back and reflect on what happened in the previous year. I’ve taken some time to do just that with the top weather stories from across



Milder air should win out

For the first time since late November, a number of places across southern and central Manitoba saw daytime highs above the freezing mark last weekend. For this forecast period we’ll see a bit of a temperature roller-coaster, with a couple more chances of seeing above-freezing temperatures. We start this forecast period off with a strong

Sixth-coldest December on record

It doesn’t matter which way you look at it, December 2013 was downright cold! After an average November, most people were looking ahead to a nice December that for most of us would bring some snow and fairly mild temperatures — conditions perfect for getting out and enjoying winter. Well, December started off exactly as


Cold weather and a curvy jet stream

Over the first half of December the Northern Hemisphere has seen some fairly wild weather. Our part of the world has seen some record cold weather, whereas Alaska and Florida have seen record warmth. Over Europe and the Middle East there have been wild temperature swings and early-winter snows in places that rarely see snow.

This week's map shows the total amount of precipitation that fell across the Prairies during the seven days ending Dec. 4. From the map you can see the track of the storm that affected different parts of the Prairies during this period. Heavier amounts of snow fell across western and southern Alberta as the system moved southeastward across that province and into the central U.S. The storm then curved to the northeast and borught measurable snow to south-central and southeastern regions of Manitoba.

Arctic high pressure dominates

This time last week I was saying that we’d either have dodged a big snowstorm or we’d be digging out from one. As it turned out, it was a little bit of both. Western regions pretty much missed out on the storm as it tracked southwestward through Alberta and southern Saskatchewan. The storm then curved