Sea war meet climate in the 2^nd war week;
1^st Story on war winter 1939/40

General  – Posted 26th October 2017

          The most forceful meteorological blocking of the 20^th Century, if not during the last 200 years, established at the onset of the Second World War in autumn 1939. It followed the coldest winter in Northern Europe for more than 100 years, at some locations even more than 120 years. Uncountable strange, bizarre, extraordinary events produced three war winters in row, which caught meteorology completely off guard. While it was impossible to investigate and discuss the events and possible correlation and links to human activities during war time, there is no excuse today. Nearly eight decades have passed since WWII ended. Nothing has been done, although the meteorological material collected was huge, offering an excellent basis for testing climate modelling. Actually nothing has been achieved in this respect, although many extraordinary weather events can be strongly linked to the impact of naval warfare in the marine environment. This Blog will work on the matter during winter 2017/18, based on the Booklet [ HERE: Chapter A. How to change Climate; link at the top = Ch A (1-8) ] and my book (pages 220) of 2012 online

1^st Story Introduction– Cyclone at Heligoland

Presumably usual flow of circulation may have been affected by numerous war activities since the Deutsche Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht (German Air Force and Army) had begun the invasion of Poland at its western borders at 04:48 local time on September 1^st, 1939. Here I want to discuss only one example, which strongly links naval activities to the movement of a cyclone.  The story lasted from September 10^th to 13^th, and could be entitled: Cyclone attracted by naval warfare activities in the Heligoland Bight (German Bight).  

Naval forces at Heligoland

A huge number of the Kriegsmarine vessels were stationed in the North Sea from day zero, and were highly active. The Royal Navy and Air Force showed up several times around the island of Helgoland and the German coast with submarine, bomber and sea mine laying missions. The German Navy was particularly engaged in planting contact mines from Holland ’s coastal waters (off Terschelling) northwards across the German Bight up to the entrance of the Skagerrak, at a distance of between 50 and 100 km off the coast of Schleswig-Holstein and Denmark , called the “Westwall”. The most north-westerly point announced by the Germans as ‘Dangerous zone’ was the position: 56° 30’ North and 4° 25’ East. That was about half the distance between Skagerrak and Scotland . The first minefield locations were off Terschelling, Esbjerg , near Helgoland and two places off Jutland . (NYT, September 5,1939) As many as 300 mines an hour could be laid by one single minelayer. (NYT, February 18, 1940), and the German Navy had presumably several dozens in service to plaster the North Sea off the German coast with ten-thousand sea mines.  

Cyclone attracted:

   In the north of Scotland a low arrived on September 10^th, presumably bound to travel via Skagerrak eastwards to the Baltic and beyond. It almost did, but before entering the Skagerrak it swung southwards and moved straight to the center of naval activities, and further along Holland to the Belgium coast on September 13^th, as shown in 2nd & 3rd Fig. above. And again just two days later on the 15^th, at 8 a.m. , there was a small low-pressure center (1005 mb) north of Helgoland (not shown) close to the location of meanwhile already large sea mine fields.

The story has started and Poland did not get rain

From a climatic point of view the cyclone in the German Bight may have sucked some heat out of the sea, is it possible to make much out of it? Unlikely!  Unexpetively Poland was derived from rain it usually gets at the time of the year, while Western Europe from Germany to Grat Britain got three times as usually. The next post will raise this matter.