One cold winter isn’t enough to convince everyone that naval war can be as destructive to climate as a major natural event. Therefore, we will analyse here the first three war winters and will demonstrate that there is an important connection between the arctic war winter and the naval warfare.

The war winter 1939/40 has already received considerable attention in our previous chapter, in which we have established its dramatic development and possible causes. Over a very short period of just four months of naval war, heat was eliminated from the North European seas to such an extent that they could not prevent arctic air from taking control over the northern part of the continent during January and February 1940.

General conditions of the war winter of 1940/41 in Northern Europe are easy to explain. Even if the winter was very cold, it did not equal the winter of 1939/40 (Germany, the Netherlands, Britain) or the third war winter of 1941/42, particularly in Sweden and the Netherlands. In Germany, the winter of 1940/41 ranked the 20th among about 150 other harsh winters; in the Netherlands, it ranked the 33rd among about 150 ‘ice winters’ between 1706 and 1946; and in Sweden it ranked the 23rd among the cold winters since 1757, while the winter of 1939/40 was on the 9th or 10th place in the top of the coldest winters.

Three known cities from Norway and Sweden mark roughly the sea area called Skagerrak, or the Strait of Skagerrak. In geographic terms, this refers to the waters among Denmark, Norway and Sweden, north of 57°North and 7°East. It was precisely here where the record-breaking events occurred during the 2nd war winter. It was extremely cold all over the Northern Europe, but Southern Norway,Western Sweden and Northern Denmark won the ultimate cold temperature trophy. In Oslo, January 1941 was by far the coldest month since 1816, with an average of-13°C8.

In April 1940, seven months after the beginning of the WWII, Adolf Hitler sent the German Navy on attack missions to Norway. The well-prepared invasion plan known under the name of “Weserübung” was to take control in only one move. A minimum of six locations were targeted, Oslo and Kristiansand (Skagerrak), as well as Stavanger, Bergen, Trontheim, and Narvik, covering a distance of about 2,000 km, with numerous fjords, bights, islands and rocks.

When evaluating any war at sea, we must be aware of the fact that the impact of stirring and churning the seawater body down to a depth of 60-80 meters is nothing compared to the situations which affects lower water masses. Due to a complex current system with quite different water masses coming from different sources, Skagerrak makes it even worse. This may certainly be interesting for the ocean science but not so relevant for our investigation. Fine tuned observation may not be needed if we are rather interested in brute force experiments. Carrying out war operations in the deep water areas of Skagerrak and along the Norwegian south-western coast is nothing more than a grand climatic adventure. The already altered seawater structures will inevitably influence and finally change winter conditions.

How can one make an arctic winter and how can one prove it? The first condition for an interesting climate experiment is to exclude the sun. We did it by concentrating research on the winter period during the 1st and the 2nd war winters of WWII. The second condition for improving experimental conditions is to exclude the external influence of the water influx coming from different sources, e.g. the Atlantic Ocean. The Baltic Sea is almost completely disconnected from the oceanic system, salinity is low or inexistent (Gulf of Bothnia) and the current system affected by local forces (wind, temperature, salinity, and influx of river water). For the completion of an excellent climate change, the third condition is easy to imagine: the forceful stirring and shaking of the water basin. This all happened between June and December 1941 and the following winter proved the effectiveness of the experiment. Northern Europe fell pray to a record icy winter.

Under the codename ‘Barbarossa’, Germany planned and ambushed Russia with an Army of 3,000,000 men, 3000 tanks, 7000 artillery pieces, 2500 aircrafts and other war relevant equipment. This happened on the 22nd of June 1941, along a battle line of 2000 km.

The Germans mobilised about one hundred naval vessels: 10 large mine layers, 28 torpedo boats, and 2-3 dozen minesweepers. Air support was entrusted to the Luftwaffe. Russians had six big war ships, 21 destroyers, 65 submarines, six minelayers, 48 torpedo cutters and 700 airplanes. The considerable number of ships and airplanes were active in six months. The Kriegsmarine lost 35 ships. Russia alone lost 50 naval vessels when evacuating the Reval naval base. The total number of ships, which sank in the Baltic Sea during the second half of 1941, is of about 370, which may sum up 500,000 tons.

Yet, the record conditions lasting a longer period of time and offering a wider perspective are more important than the small and short incident at Malgoviks primary school. Stockholm is a good place to demonstrate the situation. Sweden was not a war party. The Swedish meteorologist Goesta Liljequist expressed his amazement about the winter of 1941/42 as it follows: After the two hard winters of 1939/40 and 1940/41 and the difficulties they generated for shipping and fuel supply for the country, one has awaited and expected that the winter of 1941/42 would bring a return of the mild winters, which had recently predominated. Instead, winter became one of the toughest, if not the severest of all winters during the last 200 years . In 1943, Goesta Liljequist made a thorough assessment of “The severity of the winters at Stockholm, 1757–1942”. The following data have been collected from his work

Circumstances of the churning of the Baltic waters and devastating arctic conditions on the Russian territory prove without any doubt the interconnection between these two events. Insofar, it is easy to establish that Adolf Hitler shot himself in the feet. His “Blitzkrieg” failed, extreme deviations from statistical weather forecasts hindered his plans. Had German war machinery not touched the Baltic and the North Seas, the weather would not have experienced such major modifications. The harsh weather conditions prevented his army from reaching Moscow. Not having reached Moscow before the end of the year was the beginning of the end for Hitler’s ruthless activities. And in so far, we were fortunate that meteorologists were not aware of such a connection back in the 1940’s and thus could not advice Hitler and his army that they would endanger military goals against Russia by simultaneously conducting extensive naval warfare in the nearby seas. Arctic winter conditions quickly stopped his “Blitzkrieg” in the East in December 1941.

Three extremely cold winters in a row are another striking evidence that naval war generated ice age conditions in Northern Europe. A demonstration could already be made on the basis of the statistics of the three winter temperatures in De Bilt, Oslo and Stockholm. Evidence is based not only on the sudden and extreme cold wave, which hit the Northern Europe and the maritime locations, but also on the fact that such a situation had never been observed before. Fortunately, the ‘three-year package’ theory doesn’t rely only on temperatures in order to prove that war at sea was the cause of the cooling phenomenon, but can rely on a number of additional aspects. For example, snow covered the British Isles, sea ice covered the Baltic Sea and the regions, which had the most significant naval activities, had to deal with record cold temperatures during the next winter.

As already indicated above, G. Liljequist observed: Three successive ice winters are very rare . After almost 200 years of weather observation in Stockholm, there are only two periods that come close to the most recent one in 1939-42. But none of the previous ‘three-winter periods’ (we take into account the average temperature of three coldest months) had been as cold as the winters of 1939-42, which were 0.6°C colder than the winter-group 1802-1805.

Even during the „Cold Epoch“ (ca. 1810–1850), when 9 winters out of 42 were colder at Kew Observatory/UK than the 1939/40 “winter package”, none of these winters was so closely followed by subsequent cold winters as during the winters of 1939/40, 1940/41 and 1941/42 , which were furthermore commented upon: “The present century has been marked by such a widespread tendency towards mild winters that the ‘old-fashioned winters’, of which one had heard so much, seemed to have gone for ever. The sudden arrival, at the end of 1939, of what was to be the beginning of a series of cold winters was therefore all the more surprising. Since the winters of 1878/79, 1879/80 and 1880/81, there have never been three winters in a row as severe as those of 1939/40, 1940/41 and 1941/42.”

Before moving to the next issue, temperature differences between maritime and inland locations, as mentioned in a previous chapter, should be included in a comprehensive ‘three-year package’ list. While record cold winter results were achieved throughout Northern Europe, the difference between sea and land is remarkable. Land values for January and December were only slightly below the previous record (Paris 1,2°C, Basel 0,1°C, and Wiesbaden managed only second place), while close-to-sea locations (De Bilt, Oslo and Stockholm) broke the previous cold records with extraordinary temperature differences from 1,6 to 2,7°C. This is strong evidence that the North and Baltic Seas played a major role in generating the three arctic winters. While warm Atlantic water arrives in Europe as usually, colder North Sea water is recorded by the British weather reports.

There are two necessary conditions in order to have a snowy winter: an abundant supply of aerial humidity combined with cold air. During the war Great Britain floats like a battleship in a bath tub, surrounded by warm water and bathing water steaming off. Cold continental air could quickly turn moist air into fog, rain, ice-rain or snow.

Snow in Britain is a rare phenomenon. In the south-east of England, snow can be expected only every 10 days. Any deviation should raise questions and suspicion. During the winter of 1939-1942, the monthly snow rate was 400% higher.

Lewis made the following two statements concerning the snow-cover of the British Isles during the months of January and February of the severe winters of 1940, 1941 and 1942. “The three consecutive winters of 1940, 1941 and 1942 were, however, unusually severe; the snow was considerable and the number of days of snow-laying comparatively large”. “Three such severe winters in succession as 1940, 1941 and 1942 appear to be without precedent in the British Isles for at least 60 years, a similar succession occurring from 1879 until 1881.”

In 1942, at Kew Observatory, A.J. Drummond realised an exceptional situation: “Since comparable records began in 1871, the only other three successive winters as snowy as the recent ones were those during the last war, namely 1915/16, 1916/17 and 1917/18, when snow fell on 23%, 48% and respectively 23% of the days”. The naval warfare caused more humidity in the air and facilitated the inflow of cold continental air over The Isles, thus generating rain, ice-rain and snow in quantities, which are above all statistical values. The intensive naval activities that took place in the English Channel and in the southern area of the North Sea lead inevitably to abundant snowfalls in the South-East of England.

Hesselberg & Birkeland point out significant climate deviations during the first three war years, as illustrated in the following table. Therefore, we should pay particular attention to the winter and spring seasons

An accurate indicator of the severity of a winter in the Baltic Sea and in its bordering countries is the annual icing phenomenon. Taking into account the extent of the icing phenomenon during the three war winters of 1939-42, it is possible to provide ample proof that this extraordinary situation could only have been generated by intensive military activities in these waters, over the time period in question. The main aspects can be summarised as it follows: The first and the most significant argument: the suddenness and the severity of each of these ice winters for which we could find no other cause but the war at sea.

Another important argument which supports our thesis that nothing but the war at sea had turned the Baltic Sea into an ice age sea is the extent of the ice cover during the three years in question. According to a graph made by the Finnish Institute and showing the ice cover in the Baltic Sea, 57° North latitude (ca. Visby - Riga latitude), there has never been one group of three successive years with such an important extent of ice cover as the ice phenomenon of the war years of 1939-1942 since 1720 (when such observations were recorded).

It is interesting to observe that certain regions reported record climatic events, on one hand, and that there have been intensive military activities, on the other hand.

There is no change without a cause. The three arctic war winters of 1939-1942 are no exception to the rule. At a global level, people, air and sea are bound to law of physics. The mechanism is simple. Any stirred hot soup lets steam off and cools down. Any warm lake, sea or ocean that is churned and stirred during winter season lets off steam and cools down quickly. The result is obvious. The three war winters of 1939-1942 were by far the coldest ever recorded during the last two centuries, and may be the coldest series even since the last ice age. One can only wonder why science pays no interest to this matter and remains silent on the issue of the WWII winter. Only four months after WWII commenced, North Europe’s winter went back to icy conditions previously experienced more than 100 years ago, during the ‘Cold Epoch’. Two extreme winters followed during the naval warfare that was fought in North European waters and in other waters adjacent to them. Nothing is completely explained yet. Conducting a war has devastating consequences, but not such chaotic ones. Three cold winters were the logical consequence of war at sea in sensitive waters. Ending a series of three arctic winters (1939-1942) was only “natural” after Japan had dragged the United States into the war, on the 7th of December 1941, and naval warfare went global on an unprecedented scale. A temporary regional cooling impact became a worldwide phenomenon for four decades.