Now colder than December 20th

If you look at the picture from Dec. 20, the day before the solstice, several observations can be made. The center of Australia and South Africa are warmer than Dec. 20th (the pink areas are present on the 26th) , while the total land area that is dark magenta colored is larger than the 20th. Northern Europe has turned a dark blue. The dark blue cell over Tibet has joined with the area over Siberia. The green area next to Iceland has shrunk.

This trend of cooling should accelerate over the next few days. Africa and Australia should cool also as the energy withdrawal continues at a faster rate than the normal heating trend for the southern hemisphere at this time of year.

To give you some idea of how much energy is going to be withdrawn from the world weather system, I will compare it to a 10 Megaton nuclear bomb. The energy withdrawn from the weather system will probably be on the order of 1000 - 5000 of those bombs!