Green Room
This edition of Green Room takes a look at the fallout from the deluge of snow that has hit various corners of the northern hemisphere, and offers you a seasonal suggestion on what to do with your Christmas tree once 12th night has passed.
The heavy snowfalls soon lost their magical appeal as it caused travel chaos in many parts of the US and Europe
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. While it may be the season to be jolly, for many people the weather outside has been a little bit more than frightful.
Thousands of people in the US and Europe found their holiday plans disrupted.
as snow storms swept down the eastern side of the country, reaching as far south as Florida.
In Europe, being dumped in a short space of time struggled to deal with the recent conditions.
Even Russia鈥檚 transport infrastructure, which most of us would assume could cope with the worst that nature could throw at it, suffered amid the bleak mid-winter power cuts. until the problems were sorted.
It has also been a bad year for a number of species. , according to US wildlife officials.
They attributed 244 of the deaths to "cold stress", as most occurred during January, which included the state鈥檚 coldest 12-day period since 1940.
Forecasters have found themselves in the eye of a storm as people vented their frustration over what they saw as a lack of preparation for the arrival of the big chill.
The UK Met Office鈥檚 chief scientist, Julia Slingo, said the past 12 months of extreme weather highlighted .
She told Nature News that they needed four times the computing power currently available to forecasters:
鈥淭he science is well ahead of our ability to implement it. It's quite clear that if we could run our models at a higher resolution we could do a much better job - tomorrow - in terms of our seasonal and decadal predictions. It's so frustrating.鈥
However, the Met Office says its severe weather warning system .
One project is looking for unwanted Christmas trees in order to make wooden stools
The one place in the northern hemisphere you would expect to be firmly in the grip of the frozen winter is the Arctic. Yet, shows that sea-ice extent is unusually low. It is too early to tell whether this is an anomaly or an indication that 2011 will set a new record low.
And finally, just in case you are wondering how you should make the most of your Christmas tree when the time comes to wrap your baubles in cotton-wool for another year, here is an idea.
The treehugger blog suggests that, once 12th night has passed, you that will make a rather fetching stool to help take the strain of the extra pounds accumulated during the festive season of excess and over-indulgence.
