At https://phys.org/news/2020-12-evidence-massive-paleo-tsunami-ancient-tel… … evidence of a massive ancient tsunami wave that struck near Tel Dor on the Levantine coast around 9000 years ago. This is not that distant from the Storegga Shelf collapse in the North Sea, usually dated around 8000 years ago. Was something odd going on around the world?
Underwater marine archaeologists have been researching the coastline of the eastern Mediterranean, or the bit of it that is part of the modern state of Israel. They say a massive tsunami wave struck an ancient settlement near the Bronze Age remains of Tel Dor. The study is published in PLoS ONE by researchers from Scripps. Tsunami waves are actually failry common place along the coastline, we are told, with an average of one per century over the last 6000 years. It is a tectonically active region. The ancient one is defined by an early Holocene deposit across what was a wetland, or marshy environment at the edge of the Mediterranean, at a much lower general sea level. The wetland existed between 15,000 and 7,800 years ago – which brings us down to the major sea level change around 8000 years ago [contemporary Storegga]. The coastal wave rose, it is estimated, as high as 16 to 40m in height. Potentially, it could have wiped out PrePottery Neolithic villages and NMatufian sites along the coast. The new coastline, after 8000 years ago, sprouted a new line of settlements, higher up. See also https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243619
At https://phys.org/news/2020-12-great-earthquakes-arctic.html … a story that won't get much traction in the media. A new study suggests great earthquakes caused Arctic warming – in the modern world. The study admits, as we know if we bother to look, that Hubert Lamb, Britain's first climate scientist, also said the Arctic Ocean had a low level of sea ice, in the 1920s and 1930s, as it had in the 1990s and 2000s. Well I never. I almost fell of the chair. Surely not. How did that get past the peer review system? Quite easily in fact as it is a Russian study – untrammelled by western woke culture. In spote of that it was published in PLoS ONE. Leopold Lobkovsky is a member of the Russian Academy of Science – but not a global warmer we might imagine. This paper is of course an hypothesis. Unexplained abrupt temperature change is featured anmd the disappearance of a lot of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean, 'could' have been triggered by geodynamic factors [tectonics]. We have already had the recognition that volcanoes under the West Antarctic peninsular cause ice melt and now we have a similar hypothesis pertasining to the Arctic. Lobkovsky points a finger at two specific major earthquakes in the Aleutian Arc, shortly preceding the 1920s and the 1980s. See https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences.10110428 or full article at www.mdpi.com/2076-3263/10/11/428/htm
Going back a bit further we have https://phys.org/news/2020-12-british-people-weathered-exceptionally-col… … which concerns cold weather events in the UK from the perspective of The Conversation. It really should be applied to western Europe in general but I suppose the records are derived from the UK. Like most of the missives at the The Conservation the full story is missing. We have only a limited number of cold weather events. They target 1795, 1815, and 1940. Whilst the Climate Change lobby talk in terms of our children and grandchildren being lucky to see snow when they grow up, here we have some historical examples of snow fall in the UK. How much snow arrives in western Europe is all to do with the prevailing winds as wet and rainy weather turns up on a regular basis from the direction of the Carolinas. If it meets cold weather coming from the east or the north there is a chance it will snow – as we can see this week. In central and eastern Europe all they need for snow is an Arctic blast or a cold wind from Russia. They don't enjoy the kind of wet and muggy weather that makes up most of the winters in the UK. Interesting read if you are interested in weather in the recent past. One may note that 1795 is very close to the year of the French Revolution which had as a backdrop a lot of hungry people. In other words, the cold weather wasn't confined to 1795. The article also seems to ignore the more notable and society changing cold weather events of the mid 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, although it does factor in 1939. More notable as far as snow in the UK is concerned was 1947. And they worry about warm weather. Back to front thinking it would seem.