Now that the melting season is over it is time to follow up on the Century Breaks post I did in the first few weeks of the blog. Here's an overview of the last 6 years:
Total century breaks:
- 2005: 14
- 2006: 8
- 2007: 20
- 2008: 12
- 2009: 14
- 2010: 11
The score for this year was rather disappointing, as 2010 was leading the other years by a fair margin at the end of June, having scored 8 century breaks already. But here's what happened in July:
Century breaks in July:
- 2005: 10
- 2006: 3
- 2007: 11
- 2008: 4
- 2009: 11
- 2010: 2
And then a last century break on August 1st.
This reflected the disappearance of the Arctic Dipole Anomaly at the beginning of July, bringing low temperatures and clouds to the Arctic which blocked out the Sun while it was at its peak. Atmospheric patterns made the Beaufort Gyre stall and even reverse, practically eliminating all ice transport through Fram Strait. At a certain point, even the ice transport through Nares Strait reversed. I still find it amazing that despite this the 2010 minimum extent came in so low, and was actually artificially high.
So that was the story for century breaks this year. I'll finish the blog post with something amazing and very funny that happened a few days ago at the World Open in Glasgow. After potting a red and a black snooker genius Ronnie O'Sullivan asks the referee what the bonus is for scoring a maximum break of 147 points. If you haven't seen this (and like snooker), watch it and have a laugh:
Thanks for the Ronnie O'Sullivan video. Never saw it before. Brilliant!
Posted by: toby | September 23, 2010 at 20:00
Ronnie O'Sullivan is widely reckoned as the best snooker player in the history of the sport. See also this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btmB-p_0QFg
Posted by: Nick Barnes | September 23, 2010 at 21:29
I think you should close the comments on SIE update 31 while it is on 147 comments. ;-)
A very popular blog.
Posted by: Gas Glo | September 25, 2010 at 12:37