Similar information was obtained from a report by Red Cross staff writer Stephanie Kriner, who wrote about some other cold-induced disasters.  She reported, for example, that in the first week of January 2001, many people died "as a result of a bitter cold front sweeping across northern India," which brought "the coldest temperatures to hit the region in several years."  Kriner noted that the same cold front also swept into Pakistan, threatening the lives of hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees.  In China, she says that "the worst winter weather conditions in decades" left many people dead, and that Barbara Wetsig of the American Red Cross feared that thousands of other people were "at risk of frostbite, hypothermia and starvation," especially "the poor, homeless, elderly and children."  In fact, Kriner says that the Inner Mongolian Branch of the Russian Red Cross estimated that up to 1.35 million people were affected.  She also reports that "the worst snowstorm in 50 years" stranded "tens of thousands of herders and their livestock" in Inner Mongolia, and that blizzards paralyzed South Korea in what weather forecasters there described as "the worst snowstorm in 20 years," adding that the Central Asian state of Kazakhstan was subjected to "its coldest winter weather in 40 years."

At a time when we’re told the world is hotter than it’s ever been in the past thousand years, this information is not exactly what one would expect to hear, unless, of course, this claim is wrong.  And indeed it may be; for a number of recent papers provide evidence that Asian temperatures during the past century and beyond were at times much warmer than they are presently.  Furthermore, some of them suggest that temperature trends of the past few decades have been negative, rather than positive.

Kadioglu et al. (2001), for example, analyzed temperature trends in Turkey over the period 1930-1996, finding significant cooling during this period.  Zeeberg and Forman (2001) also found a recent decline in temperature for the Russian Island of Novaya Zemlya.  They report a significant and accelerated post-Little Ice Age glacial retreat observed there during the first and second decades of the 20th Century.  In the second-half of the 20th Century, however, the recession of over half of the glaciers stopped, and many tidewater glaciers began to advance.  Such advances were likely provoked by a sudden decrease in temperature, where in the four decades since 1961, summer temperatures declined by 0.3 to 0.5°C and winter temperatures declined by 2.3 to 2.8°C.

Additional data supporting a regional cooling in Asia since the mid-20th century come from Vaganov et al. (2000).  In analyzing temperature variations for the Asian subarctic, they report a cooling trend since about 1940.  Furthermore, analyses of their data, which extend back in time 600 years, reveal that the amplitude of 20th Century warming "does not go beyond the limits of reconstructed natural temperature fluctuations in the Holocene subarctic zone."  These findings have been confirmed by Naurzbaev and Vaganov (2000), who analyzed a 2200-year temperature record derived from Siberian tree rings over the period 212 B.C. to 1996 A.D.  Several warm and cold periods were noted throughout their 2000-year record: a cool period in the first two centuries A.D., a warm period from 200 A.D. to 600 A.D., cooling again from 600 to 800 A.D., followed by the Medieval Warm Period from about 850 A.D. to 1150 A.D., the cooling of the Little Ice Age from 1200 A.D. though 1800 A.D., followed by the recovery warming of the 20th century.  In regard to this latter warming, the authors note that it is "not extraordinary" and that "the warming at the border of the first and second millennia [1000 A.D.] was longer in time and similar in amplitude."  Reconstructed temperatures for the mid-Holocene, approximately 5000 years ago, revealed an even warmer time period, when temperatures averaged 3.3°C higher than those of the past two millennia.

Given the results of the studies referenced above, we wonder how climate alarmists can continue to claim that 20th century warming is unprecedented over the past millennium.  Clearly, this has not been the case for various parts of Asia, which have, in fact, exhibited negative temperature trends that are in direct contradiction of climate alarmist claims.

References
Kadioglu, M., Sen, Z. and Gültekin, L.  2001.  Variations and trends in Turkish seasonal heating and cooling degree-days.  Climatic Change 49: 209-223.

Naurzbaev, M.M. and Vaganov, E.A.  2000.  Variation of early summer and annual temperature in east Taymir and Putoran (Siberia) over the last two millennia inferred from tree rings.  Journal of Geophysical Research 105: 7317-7326.

Vaganov, E.A., Briffa, K.R., Naurzbaev, M.M., Schweingruber, F.H., Shiyatov, S.G. and Shishov, V.V.  2000.  Long-term climatic changes in the arctic region of the Northern Hemisphere.  Doklady Earth Sciences 375: 1314-1317.

Zeeberg, J. and Forman, S.L.  2001.  Changes in glacier extent on north Novaya Zemlya in the twentieth century.  Holocene 11: 161-175.