I was in a series of meetings halfway up a London skyscraper listening to the remnants of Blizzard/Winter Storm Jonas last week, so my news of Storm Gertrude is slightly belated. Before Gertie arrived one of our number had to jump on a train back to the North of England to deal with a personal flooding problem thanks to the amount of precipitation that ex Jonas deposited on the already sodden soil up there. He wasn't the only one affected:

More on When Henry Met Gertie (and Jonas, and Imogen?)

It's not often that we devote an article to a learned academic article, but then again it's not often that such an article is published concerning one of our hobby horses here at econnexus.org.uk. It's also not often that an academic paper is published just as the sort of weather it discusses is obligingly demonstrating itself. It's unheard of that such a journal article is introduced by a video! As the St. Jude day storm was causing flood alerts on the River Exe and many other Devon rivers yesterday Dr. James Screen of the University of Exeter had a new paper published in The Institute of Physics journal "Environmental Research Letters" entitled "Influence of Arctic sea ice on European summer precipitation". Here's his introduction:

More on Does the Arctic Sea Ice Influence Weather in the South West?

South West England is already very damp. Following a number of flood alerts earlier in the month, the Environment Agency issued several amber flood alerts in Devon yesterday,  followed by a red flood warning this morning for the River Char near the Dorset Coast:

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My headline for today paraphrases matters only slightly. The exact words of Professor Stephen Belcher, head of the Met Office's Hadley Centre, were as follows:

We think that these are really some cutting edge science questions to be addressed here. No-one in the world can answer these questions, it's really important to emphasise.

as you can discover for yourself if you skip straight to about 4 minutues 35 seconds into the following video:

More on Met Office Says "No-one in the World" Can Explain Weird Weather

The United States' National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC for short) has just issued a press release about the amount of ice in the Arctic at the moment. You may be wondering why on Earth that is relevant to you, but please bear with me as I endeavour to explain, with the help of a few videos. Here's the first one which shows summer 2012 in Sidmouth, a seaside town down here on the not so sunny south coast of Devon:

More on Why Should I Care Where The Arctic Sea Ice Went?