Guest post by Steven Goddard
Photo above from: NY Daily News: Record Snowfall in New York
Now that we have reached the end of the meteorological winter (December-February,) Rutgers University Global Snow Lab numbers (1967-2010) show that the just completed decade (2001-2010) had the snowiest Northern Hemisphere winters on record. The just completed winter was also the second snowiest on record, exceeded only by 1978. Average winter snow extent during the past decade was greater than 45,500,000 km2, beating out the 1960s by about 70,000 km2, and beating out the 1990s by nearly 1,000,000 km2. The bar chart below shows average winter snow extent for each decade going back to the late 1960s.
Here are a few interesting facts.
- Average winter snow extent has increased since the 1990s, by nearly the area of Texas and California combined.
- Three of the four snowiest winters in the Rutgers record occurred during the last decade – the top four winters are (in order) 1978, 2010, 2008, 2003
- The third week of February, 2010 had the second highest weekly extent (52,170,000 m2) out of the 2,229 week record
The bar graph below shows winter data for each year in the Rutgers database, color coded by decade. The yellow line shows the mean winter snow extent through the period. Note that the past decade only had two winters below 45 million km2. The 1990s had seven winters below the 45 million km2, the 1980s had five winters below 45 million km2, and the 1970s had four winters below 45 million km2. This indicates that the past decade not only had the most snowfall, but it also had the most consistently high snowfall, year over year.
It appears that AGW claims of the demise of snowfall have been exaggerated. And so far things are not looking very good for the climate model predictions of declining snowfall in the 21st century.
Many regions of the Northern Hemisphere have seen record snowfall this winter, including Washington D.C, Moscow, China, and Korea. Dr. Hansen’s office at Columbia University has seen record snowfall, and Al Gore has ineptly described the record snow :
“Just as it’s important not to miss the forest for the trees, neither should we miss the climate for the snowstorm,”
A decade long record across the entire Northern Hemisphere is not appropriately described as a “snowstorm.”
Sponsored IT training links:
If want to improve TK0-201 score then go through 646-230 exam dumps and self test RH302 exams and get guaranteed success in first attempt.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Good work Steve.
Warmest? and Snowiest? Somehow I just knew there had to be a logical connection. Beautiful! This explains everything!
(Please don’t ask what;-)
http://www.easternuswx.com/bb/index.php?showtopic=227130&st=460
Sounds like typical proof of global warming to me.
We must save the polar bears!
Pascvaks,
The areas of record snow this winter also saw well below normal temperatures.
“Don’t believe white lies, says Al Gore, record-breaking snow is due to global warming”
he has even forgotten the modelling he espoused in “An Inconvenient Truth” where it indicated that the snows of winter would be a memory only.
Some memory !
What’s with 1981? I know the scale starts at 40 million so exagerates it, but it still stands out. Was there something unusual that year that reduced the snowfall?
Wait a sec: the “warmest decade on record” is also the snowiest? Has AGW raised the melting point of snow? Yikes, IWTWT!
From The Simpsons:
Homer: See, Lisa, looks like tomorrow I’ll be shoveling ten feet of global warming.
Lisa: Global warming can cause weather at both extremes, hot and cold.
Homer: I see, so you’re saying warming makes it colder. Well aren’t you the queen of crazy land. Everything’s the opposite of everything.
Not bad for nine-year decade!
But it’s “rotten” snow!
Chalk up another failed AR4 prediction.
Yes, but it’s “rotten” snow, so it doesn’t count. ;->
Judging by the graph, does this not disprove the AGW theory that, as we warm, we get more snow? It appears to me, judging by the graph, that the warmest decades had less snow than the cooler ones. For example, the 70’s decade has almost as much snow as this decade, whereas the 90’s (supposedly the most severe of warming) had the least snow. So, when Al Gore says that “more snow is consistent with Gorebull Warming”, he is lying out his posterior, is he not?
Steve:
If I’d known that it would be so important, I’d have kept better memories. Here in Southern New England I remember much colder, much snowier winters throught the 50’s and 60’s. Long Island Sound had a two or three mile fringe of ice in 1976. During the most recent warmest decade ever I have not been tempted to turn on the air-conditioning once. Everyone else has been hit with snow this winter, but here in West Haven I’ve had to shovel only once. I’m seriously starting to wonder if all our records are merely anecdotal. My experience doesn’t seem to match anyone else’s. Billions for modeling, but chicken-feed for well-sited, well-staffed, well-reported stations?
Maybe climate, like politics, really is local.
Okay, so now we have to buy sulfate/particulate credits to offset the snowmaking cold, right? Surely there is a climate model that can be co-opted to show the relationship of snowy doom, right? We will be able to legislate changes to industry to ensure that the snow goes down, right?
Charlie Brown, Lucy, football, repeat as often as you can get away with it.
“It appears that AGW claims of the demise of snowfall have been exaggerated. And so far things are not looking very good for the climate model predictions of declining snowfall in the 21st century.”
The 1967 – 1980 period was the prediction of the next ice age. Not because of snow, but because of temperature.
CO2 levels have increased since then.
People that say CO2 = warmer = more moisture = more snow.
Moisture without cold is called rain.
This was not the rainest decade on record!
While all good sport I suppose – we all can giggle (two can play at that game!) – this kind of analysis makes me nuts.
1) Choose your metric (snowfall, rainfall, temperature, hurricane intensity, hurricane numbers, tornado numbers, etc.)
2) Choose your baseline (past month, past year, past decade,since 1973, whatever)
and
Invoke your correlation! Causation – inferred by reader or politician du jour.
This kind of analysis is what got us to this point. I gotta call it on BOTH sides of debate, sorry.
Well, there’s graphs, and there’s graphs. I always like to start out with a graph that shows the actual data, not some kind of reduced anomaly. That puts things in the proper perspective, and allows us to see how big the changes actually are. I used the same data used by Steve Goddard, starting in 1971 to avoid early gaps in the dataset.
Here’s that graph:
As you can see, all that this proves is that there is nothing unusual in the data. As I have argued before, there is nothing to be explained. There is nothing unusual about the temperature data. There is nothing unusual about the snowfall data. As far as I know, there is nothing in any climate data outside natural variations, nothing to require an explanation, whether it is CO2 or anything else.
In fact, the unchanging overall nature of the climate, with only minor up and down natural changes, strongly argues for my hypothesis that the earth has a thermostat.
It is clear from your graphs that the snow cover has been flat since the beginning of the data [1967] with no trend whatsoever.
“Average winter snow extent during the past decade was greater than the 1960s by about 70,000 km2” which only goes to proove (switching to Alarmist mode) that it is getting warmer.
Willis, update your graph to include 2010, so you get that little up-tick on the end.
😉
Might be worth pointing out that cities with huge UHI receive less snow, simply because they’re warmer. Tokyo is an excellent example.
So if cities are recording record snowfall, the “recorded” temperatures vs. actual should be even more suspect.
Does anyone have the quotes from the IPCC or Al Gore saying there would be less snow in the future?
There’s probably too much CO2 in the snow–deadly to the plant and animal life you know.