By Steve Goddard
The experts at East Anglia and CRU told us in 2000 that :
(March, 2000) According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”. “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.
David Parker, at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Berkshire, says ultimately, British children could have only virtual experience of snow. Via the internet, they might wonder at polar scenes – or eventually “feel” virtual cold.
The 255 experts at the AAAS denouncing “climate deniers” in an open letter described this past winter in these cleverly sarcastic terms :
The planet is warming due to increased concentrations of heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere. A snowy winter in Washington does not alter this fact.
I appreciate that government bureaucrats believe that there is no world outside Washington, yet nature has given us the opportunity to grade both the predictive and observational skills of the experts. And it looks like they deserve a rather poor grade. According to data collected by Rutgers University Global Snow Lab, this past October through March period was the snowiest on record in the Northern Hemisphere – with an average monthly snow cover of 39,720,106 km2. Second place occurred in 1970 at 39,574,224 km2.
‘
We also know that the past decade had the snowiest winters on record.
A month ago I discussed an AGW sacred cow – Glacier National Park. At that time, a WUWT reader (Craig Moore) expressed his concern about the lack of snowcover in Montana this year. The good news for Craig is that as of yesterday, snowpack in Montana is 98% of normal. California is 117% of normal. Arizona is 175% of normal. Wyoming is 101% of normal, etc.
Every good and conscientious citizen knows that snow cover is disappearing due to global warming. Google turns up over 100,000 hits on that topic. This is what the disappearing snowcover looked like in my neighborhood yesterday morning.
With lots more cold and snow on the way.
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp1.html
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Politicians and warmers keep saying it’s actually warmer. So has the German Weather Service. The public agrees – but with a wink of the eye. They haven’t forgotten the winter – the worst in 46 years.
CO2 has little or no effect on climate, but albedo does. Changes in albedo are what bring on Ice Age glaciations, and terminate them.
I am a CO2 skeptic but an albedo believer. Snow reflects light to a much greater degree than any other ground cover. Snow has a positive feedback effect on climate – more snow leads to more snow.
Steve, I think you need to apply for a research grant to determine if indeed this might have been the snowiest winter on record in the last 2,000 years.
In my opinion, changes in snowfall (even over times as long as a decade) don’t necessarily mean yes or no to AGW.
However, what it DOES do (and this is the same as any “weather”-based observation) is go to show how little the “climate experts” know/understand. When they make horribly wrong predictions, they need to be called out on it, and I think Mr. Goddard does an excellent job here in doing that.
While one snowy/cold winter certainly doesn’t disprove AGW, it DOES show that the CAGW folk were wrong in their predictions, which is very useful to do. And like Mr. Goddard, I keep pointing out the cold winter this year. I’ll stop doing so as soon as the CAGW crowd stops blaming Hurricane Katrina (and tons of other one-time events) on CAGW. It’s frustrating when a hot summer is because of CAGW but a frigid winter is just weather.
Now, looking at Steve’s picture, I’m trying to find out where he lives in Fort Collins. It looks like a curvy street, which is rare in FC…I’m guessing maybe the east side close to Lake Sherwood?
Thanks for the post Steve,
-Scott
That’s OK, we’ll still have a “barbecue” summer. Heck, the warmmonger politicians are already feeling the heat!
Can someone help me out here?
This past winter has seen snow in north America, the uk, northern Europe and mother Russia YET it is still claimed that this winter was the warmest evah!!!
So, was it! Through my observations I noted that winter in the uk wax pretty bloody cold BUT according to the warmists it wasn’t cold at all?
Who do we trust? What was observed or what NASA et al measured?
Mailman
Al bedwetters can be cured of their peeing by taking a bath in a frozen lake or river. By the same token they will be convinced that their beloved Gaia it is not warming up.
Scott
I live not far from a university. ;^)
I just got a new Peloton bike. My old cycle got run over by a car (with me on it) and I took the new one over the hogback to Bellevue on Sunday. It did great and will probably do Horsetooth Reservoir this weekend if the weather isn’t too awful.
The politicians have an excuse: they’re not scientists. But that excuse is wearing thin, they know it, and November approaches.
The Warmers, on the other hand, know it’s just a game to get rich, and are dragging thier heels.
Watch the hopscotch to the S. Hemisphere.
The public will remember the blown forecasts of the N. Hemisphere’s Winter, and it will be heavy on thier minds as the next one comes around in November…voting time.
What’s interesting to me is the fade-out of Solar Activity and the stuck weather pattern off the Pacific Northwest. A repeating pattern the last few years.
Which is more important: Why the pressure cells get stuck when the Sun goes quiet or the effects of the stuck pressure cells?
As an avid ice fisherman, I conduct my own sampling surveys of climate….I don’t go out on ice less than 6″ thick, and don’t take chances.
This past season in Illinois was rather extraordinary, we had a solid freeze from about mid-December through mid-March. The ice melt in northern Illinois keeps coming later and later….They are probably still fishing on the ice up in Park Rapids, MN!
Works for me!
but but but
Everyone knows that warming puts more moisture in the air, which leads to more snow.
But, common sense tells you that it has to be cold to snow, and more snow makes it even colder………….
It’s a shame they can’t have their cake and eat it too. 😉
In examining your 1st graph, it looks like the general trend has been upwards for the last 20 years, yet the alarmists keep saying snow is a thing of the past – clearly they don’t look at the data, or maybe they don’t let data get in the way of trying to create some sort of alternate reality which fits their worldview.
geo says:
May 13, 2010 at 10:32 am
He can get a grant, as long as Steve promises to “discover” that the past 2000 years on average had much more snow than the present decades.
There is a natural oscillation in both winter and summer temperatures with a period of 50-60 year long. The CET summer trend turned down 5-8 years ago, while the winter trend is in the process of doing so.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CETt.htm
The CET’s FFT power spectrum shows noticeable ~50 year dip.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CETs.htm
There is nothing to believe. Just data to check… and a lot of mechanisms still to understand before comitting economical suicide.
While you were at the Rutgers site did you notice that the values for April were almost the lowest for the period (41/44)?
Northern Hemisphere
Month Rank Area Departure Mean
4-2010 41/44 28265 -2234 30500
3-2010 18/44 40621 290 40330
And for N America:
North America
Month Rank Area Departure Mean
4-2010 44/44 10996 -2185 13181
3-2010 37/44 14968 -718 15686
Overall their data shows earlier snowfall in the fall and earlier melt in the spring.
We had snow in Vermont and New Hampshire just a few weeks ago. Overall, though, it’s been a warmer Spring than last year.
Britich Columbia lower than normal snowpack, La Nino. http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/rfc/bulletins/watersupply/
geo
I used tree ring proxies until 1967, but then substituted in measured data in order to hide the decline. I call the technique MNT which stands for ” Manbearpig’s Nature Trick.” Tree rings stopped being reliable when Lyndon Johnson was elected to his second term, for reasons which have been well documented in peer reviewed literature.
I love it when you talk about snow cover and snow in general. We know that it takes energy to produce snowfall, and specifically it takes the energy of evaporation to get all that moisture into the atmosphere, hence, Denver Colorado, where I live has the warmer months of winter as the snowiest, i.e. March, November, and April in that order. So the fact that we’ve had a snowy season means that there is a lot of heat in the climate system to evaporate all that moisture to make that snow. The coldest place on earth (Antarctica) is not the snowiest, but in fact, one of the driest in terms of precipitation. Most of the snow that blows around down there is from the ground blizzards blowing it around.
Now if the winter had been Cold and Dry, then I might be thinking that AGW is showing signs of being wrong, but the fact that we’ve had so much snow, means we’ve got lots of heat in the system evaporating all that snow, and record snow would mean record heat (which is exactly what we’ve seen for the first few months of 2010).
Really, more important to the discussion is how much of the record snowfall is due to the now waning El Nino, how much is related to the extreme negative AO index, how much is related to the leftover effects of the long and deep solar minimum, and how much might indeed be related to the longer term AGW?
Bottom line: Big snowfalls in odd places, etc. do not in any way invalidate AGW theory, and could, depending on the other factors mentioned above, tend to validate it.
We had snow again yesterday in Casper, Wyoming. Not alot of AGW believers out here.
It’s May and there is still snowfall.
Climate Progress said hot dry and permanent droughts.
“From The Independent on 20 March 2000 we got the headline: “Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past”. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/29/crus-forecast-winter-snowfall-will-become-a-very-rare-and-exciting-event/
Re: geo
I’ll bet trees can act as snowmometers. More snow will result in more broken branches which will impact growth. I’m sure we could get a hockey stick graph out of the tree rings. We might have to carefully choose our calibration period and reject any trees that aren’t acting as snowmometers but thats an approved technique in climate science
This site might benefit from having a widget to share articles to facebook, etc. I often link articles there and a quick link would increase readership. Keep up the great work!
I am still hoping somebody will/can (?) explain to me how a so called “greenhouse gas”
traps heat. Until I get that explanation I will remain a sceptic.
I do know some physics so don’t attempt any BS.