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
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.
Scott says:
May 13, 2010 at 10:34 am
“In my opinion, changes in snowfall (even over times as long as a decade) don’t necessarily mean yes or no to AGW.”
You miss the point of the post, Scott, Mr. Goddard opened his item with a quote; which he then obliterated by showing how cold and snowy the recent (unfinished) winter in the Northern Hemisphere has been, we in Britain have had the coldest May night since 1967 in parts of Yorkshire.
The underlying meme of Mr. Goddards post is; the AGW crowd are always banging on about how ‘winters have disappeared’ and seasons are ‘warming’ , runaway global temps’ etc.
Blowing holes in their blustering pontifications is an ongoing process.
Regards, Athelstan.
Viner and Parker could take their offspring a few hundred miles north to Cairngorm, where the Scottish ski industry is enjoying one of its best seasons.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/8657311.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/highlands_and_islands/8544972.stm
On that second video – I wonder what is the albedo effect of using explosives to prime avalanches at the tops of these mountains. Will we be hearing all about summit ice loss in July? Blamed on MMGW?
I’m sorry you are just not going to get a grant telling person there is nothing to worry about. If you must use facts re-phrase them along these lines: “Experts today insisted that due to unprecedented changes coming to your neighborhood really bad things will happen to you. According to Doctor C. Little of the Catastrophe Research Center and Tax Sink-Hole Institute (CRSTSI) there is exactly an 89.9571 percent chance that the sky will fall.
Accurate and truthfull forecasts from the warmists are a thing of the past.
“Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past”
It is bad day when you say something and the sceptics they despise point out the error.
Thanks Steve. And related to your referenced article from the Independent (Mr. Viner) we also had this story from the Independent dated September 2005:
If Co2 caused all that mayhem then maybe co2 is causing all this current snow and ice mayhem!!!! :o)
And western Canada has seen the mildest winter on record. What does the snowiest record in the northern hemisphere mean for global temperatures and global raming/cooling? Nada! Because we are talking apple and oranges. Global Ts have shot up recently because of El Nino superimposed on the forced warming trend and we had the warmest January and March on record – global, not British…check Roy Spencer’s satellite data! And, doesn’t increased precipitation coincide with warming?
Cherry pickers and brainwashers at work on this site!
There was a talk at the GeoCanada 2010 according to which the atmosphere cannot melt the sea ice as 9/10 of it is underneath the water. Ouch.
The audio file of the talk is here:
http://friendsofginandtonic.org/
I conclude: two half wits yield a dim wit!
The talk of warming tends to ignore how insignificant the temperature changes are in comparison to the range of temperature which is considered normal for any day of the year in any location. HADCET shows a 10/90% spread of maybe 10 degrees C. It’s going to take a significant amount of warming before the normal range is affected in a noticeable way.i
Scott’s point (above) is good and well made. This story isn’t much at all about distinguishing between weather and climate. It is much more poignant than that, in that it very clearly highlights the flaws in climatologists’ current understanding of the climate, and their gross misuse of short-term meteorological observations for the purpose of political grandstanding.
This article merely underlines the flaws in the science of climatologists both for their blatant AGW political advocacy and also their own abysmal lack of practical understanding of the thing itself.
“Snow a thing of the past.” Yeah! What’s up with THAT!?
Ah, the picture looks like Springtime in Colorado, I recognize the quivering aspen, evergreens and cottonwood trees.
Of course it depends on where you live. In New York State’s southern tier we had a mild winter with much less snow than normal. It rarely went below zero degrees Fahrenheit all winter.
I was in the field around Tonapah, Nevada last week to collect some samples from a lithium deposit. It was warm in Las Vegas when I arrived from Canada but when I got to Tonapah I had to borrow a parka to go into the field for the day (ice on horse troughs in the morning and a stiff breeze).
I am still counting the cost of the coldest winter for many years in my garden, and feeling pleased that I didn’t follow the advice of the doom-mongers to convert to a Mediterranean style garden with heat loving, drought tolerant plants. And this is in the North West of England, which normally benefits somewhat from the gulf stream, so much so that we have only seen lasting snow on a few occasions in 25 years.
Among the saddest losses was my fig tree – planted against a south-facing wall over 20 years ago and now a 30ft wide collection of sticks. Everyone in the area has lost their bay trees, and it is only now, after a late spring, that the gaps in the shrub borders are manifesting themselves.
So from a purely subjective viewpoint the so-called experts got it wildly wrong.
I made a pretty good forecast looking back 179yrs and 1 month.
112 Earth/Venus synodic periods.
http://climaterealists.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=350&sid=a537324a2269c0587656c7518de411d8#p7009
I should have followed the look back more though, and I would have got early January better. Check against CET or other temeperature series.
http://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/Solar
Good stuff – it is hard to argue with facts.
….Except, as we all know, for the most sophisticated CAGW proponents who are able to move smoothly from warming, to more snow, to global cooling, all caused by anthropogenic CO2, without batting an eyelid or exciting even the slightest critical thought from their ever attentive eco-journalists and politicians.
To convince such people an instigator for a strong counter belief is required, something along the lines of a statue with a permanent icicle, a snow drift in a cave somewhere that refuses to melt, or a talking polar bear complaining about the excessive cold and ice.
Deep solar minimum continues.
Although anecdotes prove nothing, they are nevertheless useful in the aggregate. I live at 8,000 feet at the base of the Snowy Range in Wyoming. I have two ponds of about 5 acres total. When I moved here 16 years ago, the ice cover on the ponds was half gone on the 10th of March. This year, half the ice cover was gone on April 15th, more than a month later. Ice reflects a lot more solar radiation than water.
But it is baby (single year) snow. Extent is not important it is volume that matters. It is weather wait till next year!
lol
Very cool in San Diego so far this year but I am sure all the “offical” data has us warmer than usual. I would instantly raise the BS flag, this has been the coolest spring in San Diego in the 20 years I have lived here. No snow except in mountains though.
Perhaps this is why Canada is showing sense: http://www.thegwpf.org/international-news/947-g20-climate-change-no-longer-a-priority.html
Tried yet again to post on tips and notes but as usual for me it wont work!!
Must be a way in that I can’t see.
[Reply: Sometimes changing the screen size will bring the heading into view. On a Mac it’s ⌘ and a + to expand the screen; a – to make it smaller. Maybe someone can give the PC commands. ~dbs]
Hey steve
Can you include a graph of northern hemisphere precipitation over the same period? The AGW proponent community’s newest line is that global warming will cause more precipitation events. A graph would be constructive to counter this argument.
It’s around five weeks until midsummer and the temperature here in Worcestershire, UK is having trouble making double digits. If it wasn’t for all those wise climatists telling me otherwise I would swear the world was getting colder. Still, they must know what they’re talking about, they use computers.
I live in a temperate part of Australia but have spent April/May in Europe/Canada/Alaska over years since the late 1970s. I don’t recall snow this late at lower latitudes until we were caught in a serious blizzard in Spain in April last year.
Here in Australia we had snow flurries 2 weeks ago coming across the Victorian high country, which was quite early for the onset of winter in Australia. All the trees had turned , as well, several weeks early according to our friends there. They say the leaves are turning at about the time they used to in the 1960s, and the colours are really bright as they remember from childhood.
This anecdotal stuff is never recorded by “climate scientists,” but they also never ask people who notice the movement of seasons.
…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.
I remember the winter of 1970 very well. I was in basic training at Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri, popularly known as “Little Korea” back then. The snow was a foot deep on the ground in January and February. We were out in it every day, marching in it, lying in it, camping outside in it, drilling, standing formation, etc. It seemed that I could never get warm, during those miserable 6 weeks. That summer, it snowed heavily on July 13th. at Ft. Carson, Colorado where I was stationed following Basic and AIT. The snow melted immediately as it hit the ground, but it snowed HARD for about half an hour. Being only 22 and coming from Kansas, I had never seen such a thing. The summer was very cool – with high temperatures rarely getting out of the mid ’80s in the Pikes Peak Region. At the end of that summer I became caught in a heavy blizzard in Pike Forest during a backpacking trip. The storm lasted for nearly 48 hours. If it hadn’t been for an abandoned cabin, I’d have been in serious trouble. That storm came right around the Autumnal equinox, and the same system killed a group of summer hikers up in the Cascades only a day before.
I’ve been following the postings here for some time, and it looks like similar conditions are developing. Today, May 13th., we’ve had light snow here in Colorado Springs. Anyone want to bet against a cool summer this year?
To Mailman,
The earth is a big place and you can have it both ways. The mid lattitudes got hammered this winter with cold and snow as this article points out but we were also in the midst of an El Nino in the tropics which is where most of the warmth was. The big difference was the artic oscillation which pushed more cold air from the poles to the mid-lattitudes where it met up with lots of warm moist air and got rung out as frozen precipitation. (I should know, I’m from Baltimore and we beat our old snow fall record by 50%.) The big question is what drove the artic oscillation this year to give us such a snowy year? Global circulation models certainly did not anticipate this.
@Mike D
‘CO2 has little or no effect on climate, but albedo does. Changes in albedo are what bring on Ice Age glaciations, and terminate them.’
So when everything was white, what then changed the “albedo” going from cold to warm, or vice versa. Because if everything comes down to albedo then it could have only been one albedo, the one that made everything too hot or too cold too boot. Imagine the snowball earth scenario, or the latest ice age, and if everything was up to albedo, how would it actually have become warmer?
If you believe it’s because of albedo, then which albedo effect?
And please try not to become a co2 believer. :p
As everyone in my small town can attest, I called the snowy winter long before it happened. I used the highest of scientific methods, too. Early last fall I slit open a few persimmon pits and saw that the seed was “spoon” shaped, thus I knew that we’d need the shovels come winter. Low and behold, I was right. It was so cold it chipped my concrete drive. It was so snowy I had to keep the Schipperke inside. Poor little bugger.
Of course watching the Sun in it’s doldrums for the previous few years helped with my forecast, but I kept that a secret. Folks round here think I’m a country genius; I see no need to baffle them with solar magnetism. Besides, persimmon pits often prove more reliable than the weatherman.
Y’all take care!
>> R. Gates says:
May 13, 2010 at 11:02 am
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. <<
Since the AGW religion states that anything is possible, nothing said here or elsewhere could possibly invalidate it, anymore than Catholicism can be invalidated.
What Steve does point out is how pathetic one of the predictions of the AGW priests turned out to be.
“R. Gates says:
[…]
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).[…]”
Sounds a little counter-intuitive, but let’s follow Mr. Gates here for a moment…
“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”.”
So Mr. Gates, your opinion about the connection between high temperature and snowfall seems to collide with the opinion of Dr. David Viner, expert senior climatologic scientist researcher of the CRU. Who should we poor skeptics believe now? Is it maybe that the lack of snow as well as plentiful snowfall both confirm AGW?
It is very sad that these scientists are churning out the same old tired cliches. Those who challenge AGW on sites like this have built up a very comprehensive range of reasons for doubting the AGW claims. These are never addressed by the “elite” in the field. It may be true that that they are simply defending the funding bandwagon that is fuelled by outragious catastrophic predictions, but surely there are some honest ones left?
Are they blindly supporting the alleged scientific consensus in some misguided sense of duty?
Perhaps they do believe in AGW and all the alarmist catastrophic predictions. In that case, they must have closed minds and should not claim to be scientists.
It appears to me the sun been trending to a quieter (few to none spots and declining flux) state. That and with the El Nino finally petering out, I am curious what kind of winter we will have…
“Dr. Schweinsgruber says:
[…]
And, doesn’t increased precipitation coincide with warming? ”
Yeah, exactly like drought, only more humid…
latitude says:
May 13, 2010 at 10:53 am
“But, common sense tells you that it has to be cold to snow, and more snow makes it even colder………….”
Its a bit more like a slightly warmer front coming in on a very cold region to make it snow. Winter precipitation works on temperature uplifts, the opposite of summer.
http://www.thegwpf.org/international-news/947-g20-climate-change-no-longer-a-priority.html
Too bad Steve continues to use such tactics as in this post. It’s not ok for a believer in GHG warming to say Katrina is evidence of GHG-induced warming, nor is it ok for Steve to say a snowy winter this year is evidence of non-GHG-induced warming. Guess Steve wants to have it both ways. Interesting how he completely ignores the fact that the Arctic was very warm this winter and interesting too how he doesn’t want to address the recent rapid pace of decline in Arctic sea ice extent. Wonder how he plans to gloss over the recent decline…should be a entertaining read…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/13/lots-of-new-cold-and-snow-records-in-the-usa-this-week/
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/opinion/blogs/Edmonton+breaks+weather+record/2336460/story.html
Russ Steele says:
December 13, 2009 at 9:43 pm
Edmonton breaks record by 10 degrees – 13 Dec 09 – “To break a temperature by 10 degrees is very exceptional,” said Environment Canada meteorologist Pierre Lessard. It was colder in Edmonton Sunday than anywhere else in North America.
Sunday also marked the coldest Dec. 13 in Edmonton’s history, said Lessard.
Environment Canada recorded a frigid -46.1 C, or -58.4 C with wind chill, at the Edmonton International Airport at 5 a.m., Lessard said. The old record of -36.1 C was set last year.
h/t Not by Fire but by Ice
……………………Enough from the snarky warmistas.
I know when they cherry pick information. They leave out inconvenient records.
As the calendar flips over to December, it’s now official that November 2009 will go down in history as the snowiest month on record at Whistler Blackcomb, dating back to when the collection of weather data began 30 years ago.
November 2009 has seen a total accumulation of 560cm (18 feet) of snowfall, nearly four times that of November’s average snowfall of 148cm (58 inches). This is an increase of more than 19 per cent over the previous record of 469cm (185 inches) set in January 2006, and a 22 per cent increase over January 1992’s record of 459cm (181 inches).
The 181 inches of snow and the 46 degrees below zero are facts. They tell us inconvenient truth.
This blog has done a great job of expressing how they take single readings and use them to average a large area. They also leave out extreems because they don’t support the dogma.
R. Gates says:
May 13, 2010 at 11:02 am
(…)
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.
—————
Reply: So what you’re saying is that the Northern Hemisphere is an “odd place”? That designation completely obviates your hypothesis.
R. Gates says:
May 13, 2010 at 11:02 am
But Mr. Viner from CRU said 10 years ago that snowfalls would become a thing of the past. All steve is doing is poking their faces in it as they always point to a lack of snow as a sign of global warming. AGWers can’t have their cake and eat it.
No matter how the UHI and AHI or even the -M sign can affect how models and even empirical results are tabulated and correlated, the simple fact that 0C (32F) determines rain or snow is an ultimate arbiter of cold. When it snows, it is colder than when it rains….period.
These failed predictions are classic. It’s time to create the Emily Litella Award. Given to those who just don’t get it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Litella
Looks like the warmists have been hoisted on the petard of never ending snow. It’s clearly obvious to everyone. We have some NH relatives that have had enough of shoveling and wished the warm would return.
R. Gates
Please explain how warm water in the South Pacific causes record snow cover in the an unusually cold Northern Hemisphere.
OT, but here’s a nice interview in The Examiner with Willie Soon, Harvard Astrophysicist:
http://www.examiner.com/x-32936-Seminole-County-Environmental-News-Examiner~y2010m5d11-Harvard-astrophysicist-dismisses-AGW-theory-challenges-peers-to-take-back-climate-science
Jeff L
Tamino insists that winter snow cover probably has been declining, but he just can’t prove it statistically yet. Perhaps he just needs a more powerful computer.
Another possibility is that the front half of his horse ran off, and the other half has been contributing to his research.
DirkH says:
“So Mr. Gates, your opinion about the connection between high temperature and snowfall seems to collide with the opinion of Dr. David Viner, expert senior climatologic scientist researcher of the CRU. Who should we poor skeptics believe now? Is it maybe that the lack of snow as well as plentiful snowfall both confirm AGW?”
—————————
Much like the “Arctic will be ice free by 2013” prediction, made by ONE scientist, specific predictions of lower or higher snowfall because of AGW are irresponsible and unsupportable. If AGW theory is correct, generally we’ll see more and less rainfall/snowfall– depending on where you happen to be talking about. The essential point is that there will be more climate extremes as the climate changes from the fairly stable conditions that homo sapiens have enjoyed.
My general point about snowfall is that it takes a lot of heat to make snow, and in general, colder means dryer. If the winters turn to colder and dryer for a period of a few decades, and the ocean heat content falls during the same period, I would say it would be a big hit on AGWT. But 2009-2010 have not been colder years, the ocean heat content (which dictates the evaporation of much of the moisture to create all that lovely snow) has been at record high levels as well. The last few years have been warm (based on global temps and ocean heat content) and wet (in terms of snowfall), and both are perfectly in line with AGWT.
Overall though, Steve is right how silly it is for any scientist to make specific near-term predictions about snowfall or sea ice extent based on AGW models.
rbateman says:
May 13, 2010 at 10:50 am
Which is more important: Why the pressure cells get stuck when the Sun goes quiet or the effects of the stuck pressure cells?
By the same reason there strong winds on Neptune (cold winds, btw):
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/arch06/060322sprite.htm
nednead
Did Katrina cover the entire Northern Hemisphere for a decade? I must have missed that.
I wonder if R.Gates is self aware enough to know what an object of risibility he is? At any rate, I’m grateful for the comic relief. Which will no doubbt continue even if most of the northern hemisphere is covered by an ice sheet.
By the way, January-March 2010 was the coldest three month period in Florida since modern record keeping began.
nednead, May 13, 2010 at 12:20 pm,
What is being observed is natural climate variability. Unless the observed fluctuations exceed past temperature parameters, or unless a testable hypothesis can be provided showing a direct connection between human emitted CO2 and global temperatures, the alarmist crowd doesn’t even have a hypothesis, they simply have a conjecture.
R. Gates
“Big snowfalls in odd places, etc. do not in any way invalidate AGW theory…”
Do you mean this winter and the USA, Europe, Russia, China etc? Now that’s odd!
nednead says:
May 13, 2010 at 12:20 pm
” Interesting how he completely ignores the fact that the Arctic was very warm this winter and interesting too how he doesn’t want to address the recent rapid pace of decline in Arctic sea ice extent. Wonder how he plans to gloss over the recent decline…should be a entertaining read…”
You only have to look at the quoted records set posted on this thread to see how severe this winter was in most regions. How often do you see such amounts of Sea Ice aroun N. Korea? If there is any GHC effect, it would have no influence at all on the magnitude of the completely natural phenomena of last winter. Here are the Arctic temperatures; http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
fairly average till March.
stevengoddard says:
May 13, 2010 at 12:36 pm
R. Gates
Please explain how warm water in the South Pacific causes record snow cover in the an unusually cold Northern Hemisphere.
————
First Steve, snow cover and as you put it “unusually cold” Northern Hemisphere are two different issues…resulting from at least two different cyclical climate events. Snowfall isn’t caused by cold, and the cold we saw in SOME part of the N. Hemisphere was the result of the multiple rounds of very negative AO index that we saw, where high pressure over N. Greenland and other parts of the Arctic shunted cold air directly south, so that we had snow in Florida etc., while at the same time we saw very very warm temps in those same places in the arctic where the cold air was being forced out of. But we’ve talked about this over and over again here on WUWT, and you know it well.
In term of moisture, we had a strong El Nino this winter, and much of that moisture that eventually fell as snow came from the tropical and subtropical regions where it was especially warm. So, when you combine a negative AO index (the cold air) with El Nino (the warmth and moisture)…Guess what you get?!
BTW, overall, the N. Hemisphere winter was not all that cold, but it just so happened that much of the cold occurred over populated areas while the Arctic enjoyed mild and even warm conditions.
Your claims is dishonest in 2 ways I will list.
1 April and November are not winter months. Winter begins in December
2 April is after March but according to your claim, It must be warmer in March than April.
The warmist mantra says hot and dry in the southwest. They must be wrong on that.
I do understand how prevailing southerly wind patterns bring up moisture to the Rockies. I also see the gulfstream influences the precip more than the calender.
Actual snowfall is condensation or reduction in energy.
Jimbo says:
May 13, 2010 at 12:29 pm
R. Gates says:
May 13, 2010 at 11:02 am
But Mr. Viner from CRU said 10 years ago that snowfalls would become a thing of the past. All steve is doing is poking their faces in it as they always point to a lack of snow as a sign of global warming. AGWers can’t have their cake and eat it.
Neither can you Jimbo, try completing the quote!
By the way Steve, I posted a reply to this when it first went up, still hasn’t appeared. That seems to happen a lot lately, what’s up with the censorship of contrary posts?
[Reply: no censorship, there were a lot of posts in spam today. A couple were yours. They are all posted now. If you don’t see your post after a reasonable time, make a comment. We get hundreds of spams, and the priority is moderating and approving the comments in the incoming queue. ~dbs, mod.]
nednead says:
May 13, 2010 at 12:20 pm
nednead, if, say, a guy called Lovelock, has a new theory, like for example, Gaia controls the climate ;
Let us say Lovelock claims that Gaia dont like that humans drive cars, and that Gaia will be angry and punish us.
If Gaia gets angry, it will snow less, Lovelock says.
Lovelock also says the sign of less snow means Arageddon is close, and we must repend, by giving him a new piece of paper, with Gaia printed on it. Lovelock says
he will print them, and they will be worth 10$ a piece. You must buy them from him.
He will then give these “car-driving-gaia-credits” to Gaia himself.
And say, you are a sceptic to the Gaia theory.
Then it snows more and more, year by year. instead if less. For 15 years.
And people continue to drive cars.
Would you ;
a) Conclude the Gaia theory is wrong.
b) Becomes sceptical, and decides to wait.
c) Still believe him, and buy Gaia-credits as fast as you can, even instead of food.
Then Lovelock says Gaia would also let it snow less. Because its the CHANGE of snowfall Gaia punishes us with! He adds (because he senses you are in doubt) that
its VERY URGENT to buy Gaia credits, because its only 50 days left before ARMAGEDDON starts. And, he adds, the Gaia theory is very robust.
What do you do then?
-Become more sceptical?
-Or buy Gaia credits?
-Ask for proof that Gaia exists?
They blow that theory away. 3 months cold in Florida is weather. 3 months extra heat would be labeled “climate change”
Kinda like Joe Romm on the Nashville flood. It was warming. 100 miles away there was no unusual rain records. That notation was irrelevant.
The Atlanta area flood broke a river water level last fall by .3 inches. The flood was man caused warming. The previous record of the 1920’s was caused by nothing.
Apparently the laws of physics are changing just as the climate changes.
R. Gates at 11:02 am said:
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?
So the past is determined by the future? That must be how the Thermos jug knows!
(Ah, you had to be there)
Really Gates, I love it when you pontificate and use those big fancy scientific terms like “snowiest”, “extreme negative”, “leftover effects”, “ground blizzards blowing”, Etc. (Hmm, anyone ever been in a calm blizzard?)
So Professor, how does that “evaporation energy” – opps, sorry it was “energy of evaporation” know what the AO “index” is – – or doing – – or will do? And where does all the energy go once it does its “evaporation” – – thing? process? Oh! and one more quick question: How many Gates does take to change a light bulb? HEY! I’m just kidding!
Here’s the real question: How much energy does it take for 1 US gallon of water to evaporate, at 50ft above sea level, in the shade of the old Oak tree? If you don’t know right off, maybe you could point me to where on the web the formula is located.
R. Gates says:
Really, more important to the discussion is how much of the record snowfall is due to the now waning El Nino…
That’s an interesting question considering 1997-99 (the years covering the strongest El Nino in a while) in that first graph shows a rather modest amount of snow cover. It’s not until 2000-2001 where snowfall seems to pick up.
R. Gates writes:
“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.”
This totally misses the point of the story – the abject failure of “climatologists” to predict future events.
It also illustrates how incredibly flexible “climatologists” are in their finely tuned backcasting skills!
Phil.
I’m not a moderator. I have no idea what happened to your post.
Henry chance says (about R. Gates):
Your claims is dishonest in 2 ways I will list.
1 April and November are not winter months. Winter begins in December
2 April is after March but according to your claim, It must be warmer in March than April.
_________
Henri, your term “dishonest” is very strong, and very wrong. March, November, and April are our snowiest months here in Denver, but not our coldest. You are right that April and November are not officially winter, and March is right on the border.
Why is March snowier than April? Obviously not because it is warmer, but because it is colder. April see more precipitation than March, (i.e. it is wetter than March), but generally because it is also warmer, that moisture usually falls as rain.
My general point is that it takes warmth to provide the energy for evaporating the moisture of snowstorms, and warmer air to hold that moisture and bring it to Colorado. Places like Antarctica are dry specifically because they are so cold. My general point is valid and there was nothing “dishonest” in what I said.
Oh, and Gates, the temp of the H2O and the air are exactly the same, it’s a calm day, humidity steady at 45% and the open top 1 US Gal pot with straight sides (holding the water) is carefully set in-place at 10am on a Friday morning – – in May – – in the Northern Hemisphere – – did I mention in the shade?
stevengoddard says:
May 13, 2010 at 12:44 pm
nednead
Did Katrina cover the entire Northern Hemisphere for a decade? I must have missed that.
Typical response from Steve. Now a decade of slightly more snow fall equates to non-GHG-induced warming, whereas 3 decades of sea ice reduction doesn’t mean anything to Steve. Seems he only allows that logic when it suites him. Talk about cherry-picking and biased reporting.
This little gem is found on the excellent swedish blog “theclimatescam.se”(by Maggie “the mind” Thauersköld Crusell)
http://www.theclimatescam.se/2009/01/28/smhi-det-har-varit-betydligt-varmare/
historic weather.
The article start out with explaining how difficult it is to analyse old weather, we have only mesured data from ca 1880 globally.
From proxy treemometers we know the years 1860-1880 to be unusually cold. Now I will guote from just above the red arrow:
“You start att a minimum.
We know from different sources that the climate has beensignificantly warmer (underlined) than now at many times in the past. In the Viking era Greenland was habitable but theese settlements must be abandoned sometime between the 1300-1400. Since then it got colder, in the history books we read that it was possible to march across the “Stora Bält” (Great Belt, it is open sea that usually doesnt freeze).
The point the authou, Sten Laurin at SMHI want to get across is that climate changes naturally, always has and we should not jump to conclusion when it continues to do so in modern times.
What makes his statement noteworthy is that he is working at SMHI, the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, which is a governmental institution, and we all know where governments stand on agw (and the prospect of taxing everything remotely connected to energy and production).
–
Now move down to the next article:
It is from 1898, februari 3, swedish paper “dagen”.
“Our mild winters are not extraordinary. In the year 1172 the winter was so mild, that already in februari the trees were ready to bloom and the birds where busy building nests. In the year 1289 there was really no winter to speak of. In the year 1421 the fruit trees were blooming in march and in the late of april the cherrys were ripe for picking. In januari of 1538 the gardens were already blossoming. The year 1572 much resembled 1172. Also the winters of 1607, 1512 and 1617 were exceptional in their warmth. The year 1659 saw neither snow nor ice. In the year 1782, one hardly needed to operate the cheramic oven (googel “kakelugn” for images). Also the winters of 1791, 1807, 1822 and 1894 were unusually warm.
–
This is written an unusually cold may 13, 2010.
Trees have not gone into bloom yet, and I live in the southern 1/3 of sweden, I have cherry trees, but they dont even show leaves yet. This is the coldest year EVER that I have experienced and I find it very strange that It should happen in a period of alarming warming of the planet. I can agree that cold years could happen in an agw-climate system, but cold records? How cold would this winter have been without the agw-warming of co2?
R. Gates says: May 13, 2010 at 12:42 pm – Much like the “Arctic will be ice free by 2013″ prediction, made by ONE scientist, specific predictions of lower or higher snowfall because of AGW are irresponsible and unsupportable…
Not so Mr Gates – The IPCC – your Bible – also states “Confirmation of global warming comes from warming of the oceans, rising sea levels, glaciers melting, sea ice retreating in the Arctic AND DIMINISHED SNOW COVER IN THE NORTHERN HEMISPHERE. ”
My general point about snowfall is that .. The last few years have been warm (based on global temps and ocean heat content) and wet (in terms of snowfall), and both are perfectly in line with AGWT.
In science if the prediction fails the hypothesis has to be rejected.
Your AGWT however seems to be somewhat miraculous. Something like Astrology. No matter what the outcome – the hypothesis is always correct.
Milwaukee Bob says:
“How much energy does it take for 1 US gallon of water to evaporate, at 50ft above sea level, in the shade of the old Oak tree?”
———–
To answer this we’d have to know:
1) The ambient air temperature
2) The shape and size of the container (especially the opening exposed to the air)
3) The amount of dissolved solids in the water if any
4) The relative humidity
5) Wind speed & direction (especially relative to the trunk of the tree)
Given those variables someone could probably get close.
Richard111 says:
“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 don’t know have to know how something happens to believe in it. I just have to witness it. I can feel and hear the difference on Texas mornings if the night was humid or dry. The humid nights somehow stay hot. I see it in the weather report, I feel it on the front porch as I smoke my morning cigarette, and hear it in the nonstop drone of A/C units. When we get a dry night, the report shows a lower temp in the morning, the morning smoke feels nicer, and the A/C units quiet down once in a while.
In the winter, I notice dry nights get cold faster too. And I hear that dryer places like Arizona get cold at night even though they get as hot in the day as we get here.
nednead
Yes. Sea ice has been declining for three decades – all the way to normal.
No. I am not going to play by your rules. I prefer to think.
It’s one of those crazy things that warmists can’t help but fall into: When we get excess snow in the winter it’s global warming because warming causes more evaporation and rain… when we get dry months in the summer it because of global warming because warming causes… what.. lack of evaporation and drought?
That which describes everything describes nothing.
If anyone disagrees with the numbers, please feel free to demonstrate that I am incorrect.
Otherwise, the snowiest October-March, and past decade of winters are statements of record – not opinion. Interesting that some here are incapable of distinguishing between the two.
R. Gates says:
May 13, 2010 at 11:02 am
“Denver Colorado, where I live has the warmer months of winter as the snowiest, i.e. March, November, and April in that order.”
So here at 11am R. Gates says March has more snow than April because it is warmer.
R. Gates says:
May 13, 2010 at 1:20 pm
“Why is March snowier than April? Obviously not because it is warmer, but because it is colder.”
Here 2hrs 20mins later, R. Gates says March has more snow than April because it is colder.
Thank you for a peek into the illogic and inconsistent thought process of an AGW advocate.
Amazing!
R. Gates
If you knew that global warming was going to cause more cold and snow, you should have warned Hadley and CRU when they were predicting the opposite. You could have saved them a lot of embarrassment.
R. Gates says:
Snowfall isn’t caused by cold,..
That’s interesting.
Steve, you’re really on a roll today…. great comments..
nednead says:
May 13, 2010 at 1:22 pm
Typical AGW advocate building a Straw Man to argue against so you may pound your chest like Tarzan. Perhaps you should extend your arms above your head to catch the points Steve and other people make. In this article he simply shows once again how a prediction from a climate scientist and the “convential wisdom” is not supported by the data. No where did I read that Steve said this disproved AGW.
Anyone else see that quasi 7yr signal?
http://climateinsiders.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/octobermarchnhsnowcover.png
Looks like the models need some serious updating… AGW seems to be less of a problem than predicted. Still AGW’ers confronted with new facts about cold weather try to save face chasing their tails with speculative explanations (so much for alarmism…). What a circus.
There’s still snow in the “melting Arctic” – shouldn’t that have disappeared by now (according to the exalted ‘theory’). Incidentally, one of the very best Arctic weather websites is – go take a look (disclaimer – I had nothing to do with it!).
Okay, I goofed on the link. Let’s see if http://www.kimmirutweather.com/ works or just look up kimmirut
R. Gates
The El Nino/Negative AO argument for this year just doesn’t hold water..(excuse the pun). The 1997-1999 El Nino was one of the strongest in many years and there was a negative AO for almost the entire 2 year span http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/month.ao.gif
Yet in Steve’s graph above, the snowfall in those years is average at best…
Rebuttal?
Ulric Lyons says:
May 13, 2010 at 1:47 pm
Its a bit like the change in fashion every 7yrs, 1969, 76, 83, 90, 97, 04, ect.!
http://climateinsiders.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/octobermarchnhsnowcover.png
I was just curious on the data source for the graphs it’s obviously not Rutgers http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_seasonal.php?ui_set=nhland&ui_season=1
Snow and cold? Can’t be….Think of the lizards!
“Rising global temperatures cooking lots of lizards”
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SCI_LIZARDS_THREATENED?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
sarc/off
Snow in Edinburgh, UK yesterday. I just don’t know what to make of it.
Weather is not climate. Agreed. So what is climate? Can we agree on a “reasonable” period of time over which any observed change could be said to be a shift in climate?
Richard111 May 13, 2010 at 11:11 am
Why should we believe explanations about how a “greenhouse gas” traps heat? Why doesn’t somebody do an experiment to check if it does?
I have seen a number of dreadful experiments that do no such thing and merely prove the incompetence of the “scientists” involved.
A proper experiment should check a whole range of levels of CO2 and have accurate means of measuring the temperature. I’d suggest keeping the equipment the same but changing the level of CO2, and having at least 10 sets of equipment running at the same time. Do not average the results together – I want to see the individual results plotted on a graph of CO2 percentage versus temperature.
There’s a challenge for some real scientists.
I am prepared to believe that there may be a slight effect but that it would be so tiny it is negligible.
MikeA
The data obviously is Rutgers and I provided a link in the article to the data.
http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/files/moncov.nhland.txt
R. Gates
A quick follow up to my last post, looking back further we see that 1976 was a strong LA NINA year with a POSITIVE AO. Yet it was a very heavy snowfall year….
Rebuttal?
.
We are at an impasse. I say winter is Dec 21 till March 21 depending on the Sun.. You say November is in the winter as is april.
Prove it!!
snowiest….big word alert
snowier…..More big words.
Do you make up words like you make up emotional arguments?
I take it you can’t understand how you contradicted your self. You say warmer is wetter and say March is wetter that November and April.
Your logic tells me you beleive what you say and believe March is warmer than April.
Algore is wettier or the wettiest scientist around. I can make up the big words also.
It takes energy to create evaporation. If you think like algore, can you tell me if condensation is by reason of adding or removing energy? Please show your work.
Bonus question for 500 dollars. You say heat causes snow, why doesn’t it snow in the Canary islands? The scirocco from Morroco “evaporates” all that water.
I should post my sources:
El Nino/La Nina
http://faculty.washington.edu/kessler/ENSO/soi-1950-98.gif
AO Index
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/month.ao.gif
Jon P says:
May 13, 2010 at 1:45 pm
Really, you believe that is what Steve is trying to say? And he equates weather with climate? You seem to forget that climate takes a long-term view whereas weather is chaotic making it difficult to predict. Climate averages out weather over time, removing the chaotic element. Climate models are forecasting climate not weather. Until you and Steve and others understand the differences between climate and weather you will continue with your biased reporting and cherry-picking of data.
And it is VERY interesting that Steve’s graph doesn’t match what Rutgers shows on their web site. Maybe a little massaging of the data was also done by Steve.
However they want to spin it, here’s how the water supply for the West is lining up:
http://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/cgibin/resvgrph2.pl?area=west&year=2010&month=05
Colorado reservoirs are about 106% of average. Idaho, Montana, Arizona, Washington and Montana, likewise are above average. California, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada all show below-average reservoir storage. Contrary to Steve Goddard’s appraisal, the Great Society politics do not appear to be as significant for climate as economic factors, especially states with high home mortgage defaults.
A lot of t
Eric says:
May 13, 2010 at 2:01 pm
R. Gates
A quick follow up to my last post, looking back further we see that 1976 was a strong LA NINA year with a POSITIVE AO. Yet it was a very heavy snowfall year….
Rebuttal?
No statistics are perfect in any sense. Just because there are strong correlations, even if you have say 90% of the variance explained between 2 variables that doesn’t mean it happens every single time that the two variables are related. Thus, any argument such as the above is invalid. You need to look at the entire physical system to see what else may have been going on at the same time and try to tease out how much of the snowfall is related to the ENSO, the AO, the PDO, etc. etc. Or perhaps there is no link, which is also possible.
Models predict a more negative winter AO state with the loss of summer sea ice, but that doesn’t mean this years negative AO state is a result of sea ice loss. I don’t know why that is so hard to understand. Climate is the long-term state, it is not the chaotic weather.
#
Henry chance says:
May 13, 2010 at 12:20 pm
This blog has done a great job of expressing how they take single readings and use them to average a large area. They also leave out extreems because they don’t support the dogma.
Bingo Henry! And the broken record that keeps spinning talking points such as “three decades of sea ice reduction”. Ok, just how long have satellites been tracking sea ice change? Is this the only verifiable, quantifiable method of doing so? If so, then how can we say with certainty that sea ice has not been as or more “reduced” in the past (prior to satellite technology) than the current historical low in 2007? What is the total (Arctic and Antarctic) sea ice reduction in “3 decades”(sq/km) ? What is the total sea ice reduction in the last 10 years? Obviously, you know where I’m going with this…
Here comes the Girl! (La Niña)
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/climate/indicator_enso.jsp?c=soi
“Can we agree on a “reasonable” period of time over which any observed change could be said to be a shift in climate?”
Sure, right after you tell me which lotto numbers to pick. 😉
There is no reasonable period of time to predict anything.
Because climate changes so much, you would have no way of knowing.
Obviously, climate scientists can’t do it with computer models either.
Regarding R. Gates discussion on warmth leads to more snow.
“A little learning is a dangerous thing.”
I too wondered if increased SST’s might be responsible for more snowfall. But instead of having my beliefs guide my conclusions, I checked the facts. Most precipitation in the eastern 2/3 of the U.S. comes from the Gulf of Mexico. That part of the ocean had negative temperature anomolies this winter. The West Coast gets most of its precipitation from the Pacific where El Nino was running in full force. The Western U.S. was remarkably dry this past winter. Check out DroughtMonitor.
From information presented so far, it would seem that we had “record” snowfall this past winter not because the oceans were warm, but because temperatures over land were cold.
As Steve has mentioned, this past winter does not prove or disprove AGW, but some of the widespread conclusions of AGW are more suspect because of the winter.
DirkH says:
May 13, 2010 at 12:12 pm
“Dr. Schweinsgruber says:
[…]
And, doesn’t increased precipitation coincide with warming? ”
Yeah, exactly like drought, only more humid…
Tut mir leid Dirk, non sequitur. In the arctic, warming appears to coincide with increased precipitation, which yields increase in sea-ice extent (2D) at decreasing volume (3D). And why not?
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Why-is-Greenlands-ice-loss-accelerating.html
I looked over the numbers for Montana and I don’t know how you arrived at 98%. The last 6 figures need to be dropped as they are all Wyoming. So how did you arrive at 98%?
Mike
nednead says:
May 13, 2010 at 2:05 pm
I go by what was actually written by Steve, not what you think he wrote. He led with the prediction of less snow by a climate scientist. Showed how a Google search would yield articles about less winter snow. And then he showed the snow cover data, for all to see. You are the one warping that into him saying “this disproves AGW”, which he did not. Really climate is weather over time without noise of fluctuation? Thank you Captain obvious. When I finished the article I thought “maybe those climate scientists should be more reserved in their predictions.” And I also thought “there seems to be very little correlation between warming (yes it has last 30 years) and winter snow cover, too bad the “conventional wisdom” and that climate scientist so wrongly thought there was. You on the other hand were in the mode of “how can I make snarky comments and defend my team!” You bore me now.
Climate is the long-term state, it is not the chaotic weather.
And there it is. The famous CAGW/CC battle cry -“climate is not weather”!
But, as with most of their “arguments”, it’s just a silly straw man. Funny how it doesn’t stop them from cherry-picking their climate period to show how “catastrophic” the warming has been. Even funnier that it in no way shows how C02 is “driving” the climate, let alone man’s piddly 3% contribution to atmospheric C02.
Poor Alarmists. They just can’t handle the truth, and it drives them up a wall that Nature simply isn’t (nor has it ever) conforming to their warmist ideology. It’s both hilarious and sad at the same time.
[Reply: no censorship, there were a lot of posts in spam today. A couple were yours. They are all posted now. If you don’t see your post after a reasonable time, make a comment. We get hundreds of spams, and the priority is moderating and approving the comments in the incoming queue. ~dbs, mod.]
Nice trick, hold a post in moderation for several hours then insert it about 100 posts back so it won’t get read.
Well here it is again, care to explain what puts it in the Spam?
Steve,
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.
REPLY: Phil, I’ll explain it for you. As a publicly funded professor at a major university who is too timid to put his name to his words, who uses a university email address and IP infrasturcture, and often posts inflammatory comments, all your posts automatically go to the penalty box along with SPAM for examination. When they are examined they get released.
Want more respect? Want to get out of the penalty box reserved for weasels on the public dole that are always critical but too cowardly to criticize on the same open level? Then have the courage to put you name to your words like I do every day and I’ll elevate you. Otherwise stop your whining. – Anthony Watts
What were you doing on the car?
😉
Enneagram says: May 13, 2010 at 2:14 pm
“Here comes the Girl! (La Niña) http://www.weatherzone.com.au/climate/indicator_enso.jsp?c=soi”
North Atlantic looks interesting too:
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.gif
R Gates.
The warmist argument, IE heat trapping gasses trap more heat, does not include the information on how the atmosphere itself evaporates water. It would seem to me that other forces evaporate water.
However, the warmist argument DOES suggest that the atmosphere itself contains a higher budget of energy due to trapped heat… Which suggests to me that the atmospheric carrying capacity of moisture should go up if extra energy is trapped? Why would our high energy atmosphere lose more moisture (as crystalline condensate) than a cooler low energy atmosphere? You can’t say “because there is more moisture there” because there is more moisture there due to the ability of the atmosphere to suspend it if it contains more energy.
Mike
How did I get the numbers for Montana. I used a super-secret spreadsheet equation
average() of all the Snotel sites listed under Montana.
You might note too that the stations around GNP are normal.
http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/snotelanom/basinswe.html
HaroldW
When you get hit by car riding a bicycle, the two possibilities are going over the car or under it. Better to go over it.
Bruce Cobb,
All you throw at us is empty statements backed with absolutely nothing other than a certain religious dramaturgy. Since you believe these statements, you don’t have to test them, and hence they cannot be wrong! Easy!
The opposite is the case with science, which is based on testable facts. And when something is wrong, the scientist has to go back to the desk and start again. A painful process. And when somebody within the large scientific community makes a mistake, cherry pickers take this as proof that the whole large body of science is wrong because of a conspiracy.
Good for you that you exclude yourself from this process of fallability.
How do you define alarmist:
(1) A climatologist who takes part in the conspiracy by the UN socialist government?
(2) A climatologist who does not take part but relies on his/her research results
(3) An amateur who pragmatically relies on the assumption that the broad body of science is not falsified
(4) Somebody who takes the results of the climatologists and exaggerates them to create a climate of fear (e.g. typical for any religion, old testament etc.)
(5) Algore
Here is another good one: http://friendsofginandtonic.org/
from skeptical science
Weather is chaotic, making prediction difficult. However, climate takes a long term view, averaging weather out over time. This removes the chaotic element, enabling climate models to successfully predict future climate change.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/weather-forecasts-vs-climate-models-predictions.htm
Oh, and speaking of the 3% CO2 in the atmosphere having no or little effect. Try mustard gas at low concentrations….
1DandyTroll May 13, 2010 at 12:03 pm says: So when everything was white, what then changed the “albedo” going from cold to warm, or vice versa. Because if everything comes down to albedo then it could have only been one albedo, the one that made everything too hot or too cold too boot. Imagine the snowball earth scenario, or the latest ice age, and if everything was up to albedo, how would it actually have become warmer?
Excellent question. Short answer from an albedo believer (without all the watts/meter nonlinear equations):
First, the principal albedo factor is clouds. More clouds, whiter albedo. During interglacials more evaporation leads to more clouds which leads to more reflected energy which leads to more snow which leads to whiter albedo, etc. The positive feedback effect terminates interglacials fairly rapidly (in geologic time).
Then during glacial periods the air dries out and clouds are fewer, but the snow continues to accumulate into continental ice sheets and perpetuates the whiter albedo which self-reinforces the cold. Glacial periods get colder and colder until after 100,000 years or so…
Milankovitch insolation approaches another peak and finally starts to melt the ice sheet surface which after 80 to 90,000 years has accumulated wind-borne soot from volcanic eruptions and fires in tropical and semi-tropical climes. As the ice sheet surfaces melt, the soot comes to dominate those surfaces, darkening the albedo and hastening the melt, similar to gravel on a roadside snowbank. Cloud cover is still much reduced and the dark albedo produces a positive feedback effect again, this time in the warming direction.
Then after the ice melts and the globe has warmed, the clouds come back and the whole cycle starts anew.
The rapidity (in geologic time) of the warming and the cooling phases indicates that positive feedback occurs during both, albeit in opposite modes.
nednead
It looks like once again you are warping one statement into something else entirely. I was posting in rebuttal to R. Gates claiming that the El Nino/Negative AO was responsible for this year’s large increase in snowfall by showing that low snowfall can happen during the same conditions and that high snowfall can happen under the extact opposite conditions (La Nina/Positive AO). This shows that his claim is meaningless. Are there other factors that weigh into the low/high snowfall conditions? Of course there are and I wasn’t arguing that. I simply proving his simple statement that the El Nino/Negative AO is the driving force wrong.
Phillip c (43): and if any have an older Firefox browser, try “view”, “page style”, “no style”. Works great here to get a single, no horizontal scroll working screen (and this is the only site that I have to use it on). This may work for other non accommodating browsers also.
nednead says:
May 13, 2010 at 2:05 pm
1) Weather is not chaotic, it is driven by changes in the solar signal that are highly predictable.
2) Without changes in the weather, you would have no changes in climate, period.
Living on Ynys Mon off the coast of North Wales we get pretty grim weather. What I have noticed this year is that the colder the weather in the North East Atlantic, the less ice appears to be in situ in the Arctic. When we get back to normal temps, the Arctic ice returns to normal for the time of year. Is there a genuine correlation?
“Oh, and speaking of the 3% CO2 in the atmosphere having no or little effect. Try mustard gas at low concentrations….”
You loose…..
but won the most ridiculous statement of the day!
Vuk etc. says:
May 13, 2010 at 2:49 pm
Enneagram says: May 13, 2010 at 2:14 pm
“Here comes the Girl! (La Niña) http://www.weatherzone.com.au/climate/indicator_enso.jsp?c=soi”
North Atlantic looks interesting too:
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.gif
==============================================
Nino3.4 is below 0.5 last few days; http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/indices.shtml Nino 1 is rising though.
Water vapour is low over Atlantic; http://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/Earth/action?opt=-p&img=vapour.bmp
To Gary in Arkansas » That’s interesting about the shape of persimmon pits, I’ve heard of that. What say you about solid jet black woolly-bear caterpillars with no red part indicating a cold winter?
Five VEI-4 volcanic eruptions in 2008-2009 was plenty to indicate a snowy winter for me. Many people just don’t realize the colossal amount of steam and particles (for the water vapor to eventually cling to) that are emitted during eruptions.
Eyjafjallajökull assures a wet and wild summer for much of the NH. If it keeps up a fairly high activity level in the coming months, this next winter will be real snowy too. There does seem to be a connection to solar minimums and more active volcanoes.
Ed from AR
Steve:
When I use the super secret spreadsheet formula I get 83.6%. You have to drop the last 6 because they are all in Wyoming. I used the last column for my figures.
Mike
Dr. Schweinsgruber
CO2 is 0.04% of the atmosphere, and most people don’t exhale mustard gas.
@gareth Phillips
‘What I have noticed this year is that the colder the weather in the North East Atlantic, the less ice appears to be in situ in the Arctic. When we get back to normal temps, the Arctic ice returns to normal for the time of year. Is there a genuine correlation?’
First off you wouldn’t know what would come to be the norm for this year, and since by your writing the extreme pertains to this year, you have not experienced it previously, where upon you then know nothing.
So essentially you only know what you know and that pertains to only this year alone, and only that.
So what is normal in that, of your, regard?
Qrious says:
May 13, 2010 at 2:54 pm
R Gates.
The warmist argument, IE heat trapping gasses trap more heat, does not include the information on how the atmosphere itself evaporates water. It would seem to me that other forces evaporate water.
However, the warmist argument DOES suggest that the atmosphere itself contains a higher budget of energy due to trapped heat… Which suggests to me that the atmospheric carrying capacity of moisture should go up if extra energy is trapped? Why would our high energy atmosphere lose more moisture (as crystalline condensate) than a cooler low energy atmosphere? You can’t say “because there is more moisture there” because there is more moisture there due to the ability of the atmosphere to suspend it if it contains more energy.
_________________
A few things:
1. What other “forces” other than the electromagnetic force would you think it should take to evaporate water? You have 3 other choices (possibly 4 if you think dark energy could be involved)
2. Yes, a warmer troposphere holds more moisture, and that moisture will stay in the vapor form until the dew point is reached. When lots of warm moist air collides with cold air you get lots of precipitation and big storms. A warmer atmosphere can give up more moisture because it has more to give up, just a like a saturated sponge can give up more moisture when you squeeze it than a less saturated one. A warmer atmosphere is a much more saturated sponge than a colder atmosphere.
It is very easy to trace the combination of events that went into the big snows that hit the east coast this past winter. El Nino provided the heat and moisture and the negative AO really brought down the cold in a big way. Combine the two at the same time over the east coast, and you get snow and lots of it. True, this is not always the case, as other factors can also play a role. Also, none of this necessarily does or doesn’t have anything to do with AGW. El Nino and the AO have been around far longer than humans have been spewing out CO2.
@Mike D. says:
May 13, 2010 at 3:09 pm
1DandyTroll May 13, 2010 at 12:03 pm says: So when everything was white, what then changed the “albedo” going from cold to warm, or vice versa. Because if everything comes down to albedo then it could have only been one albedo, the one that made everything too hot or too cold too boot. Imagine the snowball earth scenario, or the latest ice age, and if everything was up to albedo, how would it actually have become warmer?
Excellent question. Short answer from an albedo believer (without all the watts/meter nonlinear equations):
First, the principal albedo factor is clouds. More clouds, whiter albedo.’
But clouds can act both ways.
‘Then during glacial periods the air dries out and clouds are fewer, but the snow continues to accumulate into continental ice sheets and perpetuates the whiter albedo which self-reinforces the cold.’
That doesn’t make sense since drier air, weather, climate means less snow to boot, so the drier the “climate” the less it snows, the less it snows, or rains, the whooping longer it would take to make a dent of a difference, i.e. it would frakking show up like orange in the climate blah blah.
” Glacial periods get colder and colder until after 100,000 years or so…”
Sry for cutting this short, but essentially it’s because of all that other crap.
But you didn’t really count all that crap until you were forced too did ya’? 😉
If you count all that shite into your little calculation of the whole, what does the answer come to?
However you did manage to not answer any questions. Is that a boon or lack there of?
255 jobs at stake!
Thats what the letter is about!
Gary Hladik says:
May 13, 2010 at 10:42 am
That’s OK, we’ll still have a “barbecue” summer. Heck, the warmmonger politicians are already feeling the heat!
______________________________________________________________________
Gary, isn’t applying tar and feathers first the best way to “barbecue” a Congress critter? Do we need to wrap them in tinfoil too? snicker
stevengoddard says:
May 13, 2010 at 11:01 am
++++
Ahhh, the Johnson Effect. Yes, that’s accepted in all the best journals run by our friends and co-authors.
Phil. says:
May 13, 2010 at 1:01 pm
Jimbo says:
May 13, 2010 at 12:29 pm
R. Gates says:
May 13, 2010 at 11:02 am
But Mr. Viner from CRU said 10 years ago that snowfalls would become a thing of the past. All steve is doing is poking their faces in it as they always point to a lack of snow as a sign of global warming. AGWers can’t have their cake and eat it.
Neither can you Jimbo, try completing the quote!
—————————-
Hey Phil I’ll do more than that, here it is in its full glory and let me know if the past claims of snow being infrequent sounds any better for you:
Source:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
And something else to mull over Phil.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/global-warming-past-the-point-of-no-return-507030.html
And yet NOAA and Rutgers University claim April 2010 was by far the lowest snow cover extent of any April on record. How can that be?
The BOM ENSO wrap-up looks interesting for the coming winter in the south..
“The El Niño event of 2009/10 has concluded, with all the major indicators now below El Niño thresholds. Latest observations show that sea surface temperatures, trade winds, the Southern Oscillation Index and cloudiness over the Pacific have all returned to levels considered typical of neutral (i.e. neither El Niño nor La Niña) conditions. The timing of the decline in the 2009/10 El Niño event has been fairly typical, with the event peaking over summer then decaying during autumn.
Historically, about 40% of El Niño events are immediately followed by a La Niña. Current conditions below the surface of the Pacific Ocean show large volumes of cooler than normal water, indicating that further cooling of the surface is likely.
The majority of climate model predictions suggest the tropical Pacific will cool further during the coming months, with the possible development of La Niña conditions by late winter or spring. No climate models suggest a return to El Niño conditions. As autumn is a typical transitional period for ENSO, model predictions through and beyond autumn are generally less reliable than at other times of the year. “
Mike D. says:
May 13, 2010 at 3:09 pm
Rather fishy. It does not fit the nature of sudden temperature drops during the Holocene, or the complete last glacial period, (-2C to -5C in as little as 2 to 5 years) Why does the soot wait 85,000yrs before finally deciding to decrease albedo? The solar signal essentially controls cloud levels, low signal, less clouds, more sunlight gets in, higher day temp`s, lower night temp`s. Higher signal, more cloud, lower day temp`s, higher night temp`s. Its just natural balance like the ionosphere reacting to sunspot flares and filtering out more UV and X-rays. Cloud cover and albedo changes can`t drive the ice age sequence. And why such regularity, every 40979yrs for 50/60 million years on the dot like a Swiss train? and why the change to the c.100Kyr sequence 2 million years ago? I think Milankovich just found a proxy for solar variation, in Earth`s orbital variations.
Mailman says:
May 13, 2010 at 10:48 am
“This past winter has seen snow in north America…
…. 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?”
____________________________________________________________________
First remember the satellite data is taken well above ground level. Anyway, I asked that question of Dr Spencer (and Bob Tisdale) back in the beginning of the year. If I remember their answers correctly you have to look at the relationship between the ocean and the troposphere temp. A higher troposphere temp. means the oceans are loosing more heat to space and the net heat in the oceans is decreasing The same with hot sea surface temps. The ocean is dumping heat to the atmosphere. (note the article “The decrease in upper ocean heat content from March to April was 1C – largest since 1979″)
It is not quite that simple, since you are looking at a huge system with multiple inputs and loses. Just looking at the very rough estimate of the “global surface temp.” really tells you very little. You have to look at it as a system and where the energy is coming from and going to.
Bob Tisdale says:
February 4, 2010 at 6:30 pm
Gail Combs: You wrote, “…if I understand this correctly from Bob Tisdale the warmer sea surface actually translates into a DROP in the ocean heat content.”
For the tropical Pacific that’s true. An El Nino event releases heat from the tropical Pacific, and the La Nina event replaces it. Here’s the most current version from a post I should have up tomorrow morning:
http://i49.tinypic.com/2nut183.png
But globally, OHC and SST can and does rise at the same time. Over the last three decades they both have risen.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/04/january-uah-global-temperature-warmest/
Schweinsgruber, all you have to offer are straw man arguments, bluster, and bafflegab.
To wit: when somebody within the large scientific community makes a mistake, cherry pickers take this as proof that the whole large body of science is wrong because of a conspiracy. -straw man
Your 5 “definitions” of Alarmists – straw men
And of course the classic “weather is not climate” straw man.
The purpose of your link is unclear, but judging from the snarky comments including yours I suspect an ad hominem motive. I have never heard of Norm Kalmanovitch, and frankly have no interest in what he has to say.
Your mustard gas comment was priceless. Thanks for the laugh.
Mike
I’m guessing that USDA picks their Montana sites for a reason. But feel free to move things around however you want.
I love the comic relief that R. Gates provides. He reminds me of Monty Python’s Black Knight.
Schrodinger’s Cat says:
May 13, 2010 at 12:10 pm
“It is very sad that these scientists are churning out the same old tired cliches. …. but surely there are some honest ones left?
Are they blindly supporting the alleged scientific consensus in some misguided sense of duty?
Perhaps they do believe in AGW and all the alarmist catastrophic predictions. In that case, they must have closed minds and should not claim to be scientists.”
_____________________________________________________________________
They are protecting their paycheck, that trumps honesty every time except in rare cases (or retirees.) Others like Al Gore are promoting a world government but know people will be opposed to it so they hide the necessary world wide tax and regulations in “global warming” rhetoric. There may be some true believers out there still but by now they are few and far between at least in the top science ranks.
1DandyTroll says at 4:17 pm: That doesn’t make sense since drier air, weather, climate means less snow to boot, so the drier the “climate” the less it snows, the less it snows, or rains, the whooping longer it would take to make a dent of a difference, i.e. it would frakking show up like orange in the climate blah blah. … all that other crap… all that crap… all that shite… However you did manage to not answer any questions. …
Dandy, Dandy, Dandy. Watch your language please. I did answer your question in a considerate manner. Sry if you don’t like the answer, but try to be nice.
Let me try again. When it is warm there are more clouds. That means a brighter albedo. That causes the globe to cool off. It doesn’t happen overnight, Dandy. It takes years and years. Millennia, even. But eventually, the globe cools. And it continues to cool because the cooling is self-reinforcing, in part due to the continental ice which has a bright albedo. Also the globe cools due to diminishing insolation (not insulation, insolation — look it up) and diminishing water vapor in the atmosphere.
And in fact the globe has been cooling for the last 6,000 to 9,000 years. You can look that up, too.
Why has the globe been cooling? In part due to insolation decline, but also due to increased albedo. There are more areas of snow and ice today than there were 6,000 to 9,000 years ago. We know this because glacial melt waters contain organic matter from the vegetation that grew in those watersheds 6,000 to 9,000 years ago (when the glaciers weren’t there).
And yes, there is less precipitation today in many areas, and consequently more deserts than there were 6,000 to 9,000 years ago.
Furthermore, the globe is going to continue to cool, despite increased CO2, because CO2 doesn’t make much of a difference. The principal greenhouse gas is water vapor, and as water vapor declines, so do temperatures. And as temperatures decline, so does water vapor. That’s called positive feedback.
It’s a vicious circle leading to cooling and more cooling. There will be fits and starts, because insolation is not going to decline smoothly. There are going to be some slight upswings as the various orbital mechanics interact. But generally speaking, the pathway is downhill.
It will be another 80,000 to 90,000 years until the global temperature decline bottoms out and suddenly reverses itself, and the globe warms quickly into the next interglacial period. That sudden shift will be due to greatly increased insolation acting on the continental albedo which will have grown sooty and darkened. Evaporation and water vapor will increase and the globe will warm dramatically. Then almost immediately the cooling cycle will begin again.
That’s how it’s been for the last 1.8 million years. I don’t think anything human beings can or will do is going to change that. Maybe we will, but we have to be a lot smarter and understand that warmer is better, not worser, for the greater good of the planet.
REPLY: Phil, I’ll explain it for you. As a publicly funded professor at a major university who is too timid to put his name to his words, who uses a university email address and IP infrasturcture, and often posts inflammatory comments, all your posts automatically go to the penalty box along with SPAM for examination. When they are examined they get released.
Want more respect? Want to get out of the penalty box reserved for weasels on the public dole that are always critical but too cowardly to criticize on the same open level? Then have the courage to put you name to your words like I do every day and I’ll elevate you. Otherwise stop your whining. – Anthony Watts
For your information my post is not publicly funded and am not therefore on the ‘public dole’ as you put it, my university is a private institution. My reason for not using my name has been explained to you, I do not intend to have my communication with my students and colleagues disrupted as has happened before. I note that ‘geo’, ‘jinki’, ‘Slabadang’, ‘Scott’, ‘mailman’, Fred’ et al. are not subject to the same restrictions. I do not post ‘inflammatory’ comments I just produce scientific material that you and your posters sometimes don’t like, but this is supposed to be a science blog isn’t it? I now understand that my posts are being censored, contrary to what the moderator said.
REPLY: Well, you’ll have to prove your university is totally privately funded, and that no government money whatsoever goes there. The word of an anonymous griper carries little weight.
“I do not intend to have my communication with my students and colleagues disrupted as has happened before.” Well that didn’t happen from anything here. The saying is that “if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen”.
Oh and you have 1392 posts here, hardly supportive of your claim of censorship. Yes, a couple of your inflammatory comments have been deleted. Your hated “Smokey” has had posts that were out of line deleted too. Stop your whining. -A
R. Gates says:
May 13, 2010 at 11:02 am
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, let’s see now: The glaciers are caused by what again?
Yes, that’s correct: Snow, and LOTS of it. Cold summers and warm winters makes for lots of ice in the glacier places. Just ask Switzerland.
You might smug the rest of us with your smugness, but in the end it will be used to bury you.
stevegoddard @3:53pm
Climate Alarmists exhale mustard gas.
Dr. Schweinsgruber says:
May 13, 2010 at 11:23 am
I conclude: two half wits yield a dim wit!
*
*
And one dim wit —yourself— amounts to one nit wit.
Phil. May 13, 2010 at 6:13 pm:
“I now understand that my posts are being censored, contrary to what the moderator said.”
Too bad your posts are being censored, Phil…
…oh, wait…
R. Gates: “It is very easy to trace the combination of events that went into the big snows that hit the east coast this past winter. El Nino provided the heat and moisture and the negative AO really brought down the cold in a big way. Combine the two at the same time over the east coast, and you get snow and lots of it. True, this is not always the case, as other factors can also play a role. Also, none of this necessarily does or doesn’t have anything to do with AGW. El Nino and the AO have been around far longer than humans have been spewing out CO2.”
Once again you spew the extact same wrong headed information as if it wasn’t just refuted in 2 earlier posts of mine. If it is SO easy to trace what caused the snows this winter please explain how the exact same conditions produce a different effect or how the exact opposite conditions produce the same effect. Until you do that your hypothesis does not stand up.
@ Mike D. says:
May 13, 2010 at 6:13 pm
Let me try again. When it is warm there are more clouds. That means a brighter albedo. That causes the globe to cool off. It doesn’t happen overnight, Dandy. It takes years and years. Millennia, even. But eventually, the globe cools.
————————————————————
So as the Older Dryas was the coldest part of the last Ice age sequence, we must have been building up more and more cloud over 98,000yrs yes?
Blimey, caused some pretty rapid warming that soot.
899 says:
May 13, 2010 at 6:27 pm
“Yes, that’s correct: Snow, and LOTS of it. Cold summers and warm winters makes for lots of ice in the glacier places. Just ask Switzerland.”
Correct. A temperature jump in winter causes a jump in precipitation, and a temperature drop in summer causes a jump in precipitation.
Tommy says:
May 13, 2010 at 1:29 pm
“I don’t know have to know how something happens to believe in it. I just have to witness it. I can feel and hear the difference on Texas mornings if the night was humid or dry. The humid nights somehow stay hot…”
___________________________________________________________________
You are talking about WATER, H2O, rain, fog, sleet, snow, humidity and oceans. Most of us here like Dr. Roy Spencer or Bob Tisdale or little old me, will tell you we think WATER is a real big player in our climate. Water in all its forms, not some insignificant gas called CO2.
Look at the graphs below and you can see water is the big player. The only way AGW climate types make CO2 work as a climate driver is to some how couple it with water. Sort of like tying your chihuahua dog to a aircraft carrier and saying the dog is in control of where the ship is going.
Graphs
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Atmospheric_Transmission.png
http://www.freerepublic.com/~jim/
Smokey says:
May 13, 2010 at 6:43 pm
Phil. May 13, 2010 at 6:13 pm:
“I now understand that my posts are being censored, contrary to what the moderator said.”
Too bad your posts are being censored, Phil…
…oh, wait…
Those would be the ones that don’t make it here.
As you are one of those who is ‘too timid to put his name to his words’ you are presumably subject to the same restrictions.
REPLY: People like yourself who are working at publicly funded universities and who have public .edu email addresses, using publicly funded infrastructure are held to a higher standard than regular citizens here. If they are doing work on the public’s dime, and commenting here doing work hours (as you do) I have no compunction about holding them to a higher standard of transparency than regular commenters. AGW Fan boy “Eli Rabbett” who also works at a university gets the same treatment here as you do, so don’t feel like you are being singled out in the public sector.
BTW, as of this writing, you have 1392 comments on WUWT, so kindly withdraw your whining about censorship, you are in the top 10 commenters here. Clearly your post get through, but they get extra scrutiny.
I don’t have much respect for your position in this Phil, and I think your anonymous commenting here on the public dime is insulting to those of us that support universities through our taxes and donations. But you’ve got an opportunity to take the high road here, and put your name to your words. I’m betting you don’t have the character to do so.
But if you do, I’ll eat my words and apologize. Your move, public employee. -Anthony Watts
>> nednead says:
May 13, 2010 at 1:22 pm
Typical response from Steve. Now a decade of slightly more snow fall equates to non-GHG-induced warming, whereas 3 decades of sea ice reduction doesn’t mean anything to Steve. <<
To paraphrase: "Typical odd=prime denier. Now the numbers 9 and 15 equates to non-prime-numbers, where the numbers 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, and 19 don't mean anything."
Jimbo says:
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.
Heavy snow will return occasionally, says Dr Viner, but when it does we will be unprepared. “We’re really going to get caught out. Snow will probably cause chaos in 20 years time,” he said.
Seems like he was fairly accurate, of course you don’t get the same picture when only the first part is quoted.
Vuk etc. says:
May 13, 2010 at 2:49 pm
Enneagram says: May 13, 2010 at 2:14 pm
“Here comes the Girl! (La Niña) http://www.weatherzone.com.au/climate/indicator_enso.jsp?c=soi”
North Atlantic looks interesting too:
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.gif
__________________________________________________________________
Does anyone know if this means more or less rain for the eastern USA. I really really want some rain. 35F and 3 weeks of NO rain is not what I expect in North Carolina for spring!
Phil …
Perhaps you should cite which entries you claim never made it to this site – then this can be confirmed by Anthony et all. Because until then, I/we have no evidence one way or the other as to what you are claiming is true.
This is my real name, which I always put to my posts.
Dr. Schweinsgruber: “Weather is chaotic, making prediction difficult. However, climate takes a long term view, averaging weather out over time.”
I’d bet that climate is self-similar at all scales. This is a basic of systems exhibiting self-organized criticality. Climate is likely a chaotic system orbiting some sort of strange attractor, with that attractor being the energetic minimum in a very complex phase-space. Climate is one of Ilya Prigogines far-from-equilibrium dissipative systems, driven by continuous energy flux to a quasi-stable state.
Weather will shade into climate over longer times, but climate will exhibit as much variability as weather over characteristic time intervals. There will be many characteristic intervals. That being true, weather will never self-cancel over time to some uniform and predictable climate average. Climate itself will oscillate among micro-states (like weather) and will occasionally make larger jumps to another noticeably different quasi-stable state (i.e., ice ages & interglacials). Climate oscillations and jumps will never be predictable.
Climate models can’t even re-predict their own auto-generated pseudo-climates. Why should anyone think they can predict the climate of Earth?
Well, climate is not unlike averaging die rolls.
The only trouble is that the number of sides on the dice keeps changing. And we don’t even know from which to what.
Heck, I am a strict causalist. I don’t believe in chaos, as such (or even randomness). But climate (and the universe in general) is so incredibly complex that it appears chaotic to our very limited senses and powers of observation. And knowing it is not random is no help whatever in determining what is coming next.
If you could perceive, coordinate, and calculate every force and subatomic/molecular interaction you could predict every die roll. But you can’t, and knowing that if you had these abilities you could predict it, doesn’t help you for squat in the local craps game.
In short, this post was was predetermined billions of years ago, but I couldn’t have predicted it even ten minutes past . . .
“One thing leads to another.”
Phil…
The trouble, Phil, is that the AGW theory has been overhyped in the media, and politicians have latched onto AGW as a means of grabbing more power and tax. Also, local councils have been convinced by statements like “snow a thing of the past” and subsequently reduce their winter requirements for the aquisition and storage of snow clearing materials and equipment.
So please understand that in the real world, Phil, scientists like you and like David Viner, have the utmost reponsibility to ensure that any statements you make to the media will not be overhyped and/or misunderstood. There are agendas involved wherever humans are involved.
You are not isolated from the real world in your world of science, Phil. The real world is out there and it is happening, despite what your models are telling you. When your models tell you the world is warming and the ice is melting and the snow is decreasing, the real world spins on and outside your office/lab window, the weather – which doesn”t give a hoot what your models are saying – does what it damn well pleases. The polar ice does what it damn well pleases despite what your models are saying. Something, Phil, is wrong with your models.
Can you understand, Phil? Can you understand the exasperation of people like me, who see what scientists like you and others are saying? Can you understand that when we observe one of the snowiest Northern Hemisphere winters on record, the absurdity of the statements coming from the AGW scientists mouths?
So La Nina brings cooling? Maybe next winter will bring even more snow.
This statistic is amazing considering that El Nino brought warmth to Canada and less snow. So what will happen next year with El Nino gone now?
Ulric Lyons says at 6:54 pm: So as the Older Dryas was the coldest part of the last Ice age sequence, we must have been building up more and more cloud over 98,000yrs yes?
No, less and less cloud cover. The colder it got, the less evaporation, the less water vapor, and the fewer clouds. As the Wisconsin Glaciation went on, it got dryer and dryer and colder and colder. The Older Dryas (~14,500 BP), or possibly the Oldest Dryas (~18,000 BP), is thought to be the coldest stadial period in the last glaciation cycle. The Younger Dryas (12,800 to 11,500) was a little bit warmer.
Between the Dryas stadials were the Bølling/Allerød interstadials, times of sharp rises in global temperatures that were completely anomalous given the more or less steady decline of the previous ~100,000 years. Then the Younger Dryas ended and the Holocene began with a rapid warming of ~15 deg C (in Greenland).
It’s a real mystery as to what caused the sharp temp rise out of those coldest stadial periods. One thing we know is that the Milankovitch insolation was coming on. The peak was ~10,000 years ago. But the insolation had been increasingly slowly and steadily for thousands of years, while the deglaciation was sharp and radical, albeit staggered around the Dryas stadials.
So why the sudden extreme change? Basic dynamics says that the positive feedbacks that caused increasing cooling must have suddenly ceased and been replaced by a positive feedback system going in the other direction. At some point the system flipped and went the other way. One theory, and it is just a theory, is that the positively reinforcing bright albedo must have shifted to a dark one, somehow because of the increasing insolation, and then suddenly warmth broke out all over.
The albedo theory is an old one. It is generally accepted that ice sheet growth requires a positive feedback, the most obvious of which is that snow and ice have a much lower albedo than other ground covers. Ice and snow reflect more radiation back into space, thus cooling the climate. A drying atmosphere with less water vapor and fewer clouds are also a positive feedbacks for cooling.
Something changed all that suddenly, and the most obvious conjecture is that it was the albedo that changed. If you have a better theory, that’s fine. I’d like to hear it. BTW, I’m sure it wasn’t CO2. There was no CO2 burst before the warm bursts. The increase in CO2 came later — it was caused by the warming, not the other way around.
REPLY: People like yourself who are publicly funded and who have public email addresses, using public infrastructure are held to a higher standard than regular citizens here. If they are doing work on the public’s dime, and commenting here doing work hours (as you do) I have no compunction about holding them to a higher standard of transparency than regular commenters. AGW Fan boy “Eli Rabbett” who also works at a university gets the same treatment here as you do, so don’t feel like you are being singled out in the public sector.
BTW, as of this writing, you have 1392 comments on WUWT, so kindly withdraw your whining about censorship, you are in the top 10 commenters here.
I don’t have much respect for your position in this Phil, and I think your anonymous commenting here on the public dime is insulting to those of us that support universities through our taxes and donations. But you’ve got an opportunity to take the high road here, and put your name to your words. I’m betting you don’t have the character to do so.
But if you do, I’ll eat my words and apologize. Your move, public employee. -Anthony Watts
Evidently you didn’t read my response to your last comment.
I am not a ‘public employee’ and am not ‘commenting here on the public dime’ and I’d be very surprised if you were making donations to my (private) university. I do not have a ‘public email address’, nor use ‘public infrastructure’ (well no more than anyone else), in fact I mainly post from home over Verizon Fios which I pay for.
I was commenting on the fact that a number of my recent posts failed to show up here. Since I was restricted based on your mistaken belief that I was a public employee I look forward to being treated like the rest of the private sector.
REPLY: So Phil, your university has never, ever taken any public money then? Your department has never been funded in any way for any research by public monies? Totally private in every way, not one penny of taxpayer money, ever?
If so, prove it. Also, yes your email is public, right there on your university page with your name and phone number. Meanwhile, I’m not changing how your posts are moderated. You have a chance to rise above. Take it. Otherwise quit your whining. I’m tired of your constant telling us how wrong we are about everything without taking any personal responsibility for your own words. -A
Let’s try again: weather vs. climate [days vs. years!]
Climate: long term trend
Weather: sawtooth variations about this long-term trend curve
Weather sawteeth cancel each other out in the climate long run.
No, I did not invent these definitions, which have been used forever – but are obviously not understandable for some visitors of this site.
dr. schweinsgruber
http://friendsofginandtonic.org/
In the next lesson we talk about: what is a straw man.
Dr. Schweinsgruber says, May 13, 2010 at 3:06 pm:
“Bruce Cobb,
Oh, and speaking of the 3% CO2 in the atmosphere having no or little effect. Try mustard gas at low concentrations….”
3% CO2 in the atmosphere??
So much for “Dr.” Schweingruber. What’s the PhD in, doc? Sociology?
Phil.
Did you notice that the two lowest April snow extents were 1968 and 1990 respectively?
It does appear that spring snow shifted in 1987, most likely due to some change in ocean currents.
http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_anom.php?ui_set=1&ui_region=nhland&ui_month=4
dr. schweinsgruber …
<bloclquote cite=""Let’s try again: weather vs. climate [days vs. years!]
Climate: long term trend
Weather: sawtooth variations about this long-term trend curve
Weather sawteeth cancel each other out in the climate long run.
No, I did not invent these definitions, which have been used forever – but are obviously not understandable for some visitors of this site.
I completely understand the difference between weather and climate, thank you very much.
The trouble being that what the AGW scientists are doing is using a computer model to try to predict what the climate is going to do, decades from now, based on percieved trends now plus the conviction that atmospheric CO2 content is the primary driver of temperature for the planet.
The models are programmed like that – “more CO2 == more heat energy retained in the atmosphere”. Then the models are also told that CO2 is increasing, and that it will keep increasing ad infinitum. The models – having been told that more CO2 equals a warmer planet – have no choice but to declare “WARMING!”. They’re programmed that way because that is the AGW theory.
So what do these scientists get when they ask of their models “what will the climate be doing in 10/20/50 years time?”, the models will say “Yeah it gets hotter, OMG look at how hot it gets!”, and the disaster stories of the future are pumped out to the press and the politicians, who ALL love this stuff. It filters down into the education system and a new generation of kids get taught about how CO2 is evil, will kill the planet etc. etc. Now these kids grow up, some of them becoming scientists all with the belief that CO2 is bad for the planet. Some of them may become climate scientists and the cycle repeats itself.
It’s a positive feedback loop all based on an unproven theory of CO2 as the main cause of global warming.
But lets get back onto your trends – it has been stated here in the recent past that obervations are showing that the global temperature trend in the last decade has been either flat or is trending downwards.
In other words, dr. , your sawtooth is now beginning to travel back down.
I say – we do not have enough good data to either produce a DECENT climate model OR to say what will happen to the climate in 10 years time let alone 50 or 100.
Ugh, html tag failure!
Dammit anthony, when will you add in a preview plugin? 🙂
(Also, there are very decent comment plugins available too which would make it easier for blockquoting, formatting etc.).
REPLY: Answering this for the ten gazillionth time, this blog is hosted on wordpress.com and they don’t allow plugins for security reasons. I’d have to get my own server and run an installed copy of WordPress.
Climate Audit tried this, and it failed to handle traffic. So not going there. -A
Well Kevin,
The sawteeth would be really going down, if the measurements of outgoing radation that support the CO2 forcing were fudged or the internal variability was larger than and of opposite sign of the CO2 forcing (which is likely not the case for a longer period of time). But arguing from a position of ignorance by ignoring the hundreds and thousands of peer-reviewed journal articles published every year, or not being aware of them, will not change the laws of physics. If you consider the scientific work on this invalid/nonexisting based on [snip, let’s just not cast about labels or comparisons like that. Stay civil ~ ctm ] Do you homework before crying out nonsense. And what do you know about all the computer programs being run [crude generalisation; do you know all the parameters of each modelling program?] and what do they have to do with the measured outgoing radiation?
Dr. Schweinsgruber
http://friendsofginandtonic.org/
R. Gates says:
May 13, 2010 at 11:02 am
“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.”
Then it makes ice cores from which extraordinarily accurate scientific findings about global temperatures can be extracted.
Tommy May 13, 2010 at 1:29 pm
I note you have faith, enjoy.
jaymam May 13, 2010 at 2:00 pm
Exactly, where are the experiments confirming “heat trapping”???
My simple (minded?) suggestion; a tethered balloon carrying
a downward looking device tuned to say the 15 micron IR band.
An IR video camera may be able to do this (suitably filtered)?
Launch the balloon from say the middle of an airfield and allow
it to rise to say 3,000 meters and haul it down again.
The changing “brightness” of the surface with relation to altitude
should tell you something. Won’t cost much. Some camera buffs may
already have the equipment.
Kevin Cave says:
May 13, 2010 at 9:14 pm
“…..I say – we do not have enough good data to either produce a DECENT climate model OR to say what will happen to the climate in 10 years time let alone 50 or 100.”
__________________________________________________________
Actually with the majority of the climate “scientists” stuck looking at CO2 as THE major diver, the chances of climate “scientists” actually identifying all the major factors effecting climate are vanishingly small. If you have CO2 blinkers on you will never acknowledge seeing any observations that do not fit AGW. Therefore the climate models have no hope of being useful because the scientists are not looking for answers – they already “found them”.
Anthony…
Ah, I didn’t know WordPress.com disallow plugins. (I did know this site was hosted there).
Please accept my apologies. At the moment I run wordpress blogs on my not insignificant server at home (2 for me one for my wife), where I have the luxury of using plugins. If I ever get to the point where the traffic gets overpowering I’ll consider a hosted server. 🙂
Regards.
dr. schweinsgruber
You are doing a lot of talking, but are completely failing to address the fact that this past October-March was the snowiest on record and the past decade was the snowiest on record. Unless you want to shovel my driveway with peer-reviewed papers, I don’t see any relevance to the article. Peer review doesn’t create a barbecue summer or a mild winter.
Nature couldn’t care less about the ” thousands of peer-reviewed journal articles published every year.’
R. Gates,
Its been a long day for you. I’m only just now getting to this post after a busy day at work, but I see a good number of your posts all day. Sorry its taken me so long to offer comment. With regard to your comment before noon…
“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).”
You must realize, of course, that California is starting to look at how to fund massive infrastructure investments to prevent the cataclysmic projections that AGW adaptation theorists say are threatening the West Coast. These include building sea walls to stave off increasing sea levels (never mind neglecting an inferior levee system that may not provide adequate protection of the new development in flood plains in northern CA) and finding ways to protect against draught because of lower snowfalls and snow pack available for water supply.
So this year the snow pack is almost 150% of normal. Does that mean we had record heat that caused the snow? Where was it? Will we be flooded when the heat finally materializes and melts the snow pack? Will the levies protect us from the increased runoff flows? Are we spending our monies to protect against the right potential catastrophes?
And as to your later, but still early afternoon post…
“My general point is that it takes warmth to provide the energy for evaporating the moisture of snowstorms, and warmer air to hold that moisture and bring it to Colorado. Places like Antarctica are dry specifically because they are so cold.”
Really? So during periods of glaciation, when snow builds ice structures of glaciers up to twenty thousand or more feet high over 100,000 years, this is surface snow blow? How do the glaciers build when its cold, colder than now? These are snow drifts from warmer snow areas?
My point is that you are stretching credibility far beyond the means of many rationale people to follow. As highly as you think of yourself, this may be a situation where you should think twice before you quit your day job unless Mike or Gavin came through with an offer… or you got a new grant.
Dr. Viner wasn’t making much of a forecast when he said snow would be a thing of the past for most British children, because as he well knows the majority of the population of the UK live in England where there hasn’t been much winter snow since the end of the little ice age. In fact it only snowed four times on Christmas Day in London during the last century. It has, however snowed in Scotland every year since his prediction, and in the Welsh Hills.
I live in East Anglia where the weather in the winter was extremely cold during the winter months (It once snowed in June) and every year up to 1988 we had snow cover for 5 days or more as well as freezing winds. Then, like someone switching of a light, it stopped abruptly in 1988 and we had mild winters until this last one just passed. We had snow cover but the temperatures were certainly higher. It was this abrupt change in temperature that led me to question the whole hyphothesis of AGW, surely nature can be arbitrary, but CO2 increases in the atmosphere could hardly have caused such an abrupt change in the weather.
dr. schweinsgruber …
(I’ll save doing the blockquote thing as it’s not worth it)
I was probably shielded from a lot of invective, bile and insult by CTM (thanks CTM). Way to go to put your point across 🙂
So you’ve played the old “thousands of peer-reviewed papers” card? Is that it? Nice argument from authority there.
My response : A billion peer-reviewed papers all saying the same thing will not be proof of human-caused global warming, until the models based on your sacred papers reflect an accurate and complete model of how this planet’s climate and weather systems work.
Until that day happens, then the science is not settled, and no amount of peer-reviewed paper stacked sky-high will change that.
“My general point is that it takes warmth to provide the energy for evaporating the moisture of snowstorms, and warmer air to hold that moisture and bring it to Colorado. Places like Antarctica are dry specifically because they are so cold. ”
I don’t know why people are arguing this point, it’s quite basic science. I wouldn’t base my argument against AGW on higher snowfall.
We’ve had early snow here in Australia. About mid-April I saw a webcam image of early snow in Threadbo. Didn’t see it reported in MSM of course. Like last winter, snow falls in Australia are early again this winter.
Jon P says:
May 13, 2010 at 1:39 pm
I think that is a misunderstanding. The sentence could just as easily be interpreted as meaning ‘in the order of the snowiest’ as ‘in the order of the warmest’. Poorly constructed, but so easy to do.
This thread is brilliant. It’s now 9.30am in South Lincolnshire in the UK. I’ve spent the last 3 hours reading all the comments. Like many in the UK who woke up to this thread (If WUWT is your home page), I’ve been unable to suppress the tears of laughter running down my face to the point that I nearly did’nt make it to the bathroom on time. This morning my wife is unable to understand me – as everything I try to say is overtaken by hysterical laughter and uncontrollable muscular spasms just below my rib cage.
R Shearer’s analogy of Python’s ‘Black Knight’ likened to R.Gates is spot on. I’m so glad that R.Gates is probably tucked up in bed somewhere on the other side of the Atlantic. When he awakes, he just has to watch the video.
I also support Anthony’s stand. Most of the 1,392 comments posted by Phil on WUWT seem to be about Phil’s previous defence of Phil’s previous comment about the one that Phil left before the last one he did before and after the previous one before that!
However entertaining it all is, as a faithful skeptic, can those people please calm down tomorrow and allow the real responses to Steve Goddard’s ‘snow and cold’ report to be more prominent – factual and genuine comments less shrouded by personal vendetors, arguments and contradictions. Peter Plail’s comment about the loss of his 20 year old Fig Tree ticks all the right boxes. Like him, we should all be grateful to Anthony’s blog to help convince our better judgement on the scandalous belief of the whole warmism hoax.
Can we also take a step back for the benefit of those who are just beginning their journey of skepticism. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere (as mentioned in some comments):-
Most of us already know that as a heavy ‘trace-gas’, CO2 makes up only 0.038% of the whole of our Earth’s atmosphere (380 parts per million). In fractions – this means that 1/2,632th (one x two thousand six hundred and thirty tooth!) of the natural air around us is Carbon Dioxide. About 4% (of this 1/2,632th of CO2) is man-made – albeit from stuff like Alka Seltzer, Beer Brewing, carbonated drinks or when you descale your kettle.
One commenter a few months back used the swimming pool anology. I’ve taken this a step further. If you still need further persuasion, another way to look at the potential warming impact is to think of all our air born man-made CO2 as five tiny 28ml bottles of red food colouring. These are the same size as you normally buy in the supermarket and if you convert these to imperial measures, they add up to 6.4 fl.oz.
Now, mix together our five bottles of colouring with water to make one gallon of bright red liquid. [6.4 fl.oz (4%) + 153.6 fl.oz (96%) = 160 fl.oz (1 gallon) 100%]. If we now poured this into a swimming pool filled with 2,632 gallons of water (our atmosphere), would we notice any difference? No. Not a jot.
Many other people – and bodies – presented as experts actually have little or no knowledge of the science involved. Gullible politicians and gullible media men and women have repeatedly fallen for it – along with hucksters, profiteers, world-government fanatics and, of course, the EU (always searching for an excuse to increase its power) – have all latched on to it. Huge public subsidies, including the carbon-trading racket and the tragicomic building of hideous, worse-than-useless wind farms, now depend upon it. It is because the scale of vested interest is so great that too many people have too much at stake to lose if we now admit that the planet is not warming up as a result of man-made CO2 emissions.
Oh, and by the way, it’s still cold outside.
GeeJam
@gareth Phillips
‘What I have noticed this year is that the colder the weather in the North East Atlantic, the less ice appears to be in situ in the Arctic. When we get back to normal temps, the Arctic ice returns to normal for the time of year. Is there a genuine correlation?’
Response from Dandy man
First off you wouldn’t know what would come to be the norm for this year, and since by your writing the extreme pertains to this year, you have not experienced it previously, where upon you then know nothing.
So essentially you only know what you know and that pertains to only this year alone, and only that.
So what is normal in that, of your, regard?
Response from Gareth
Many thanks for that. I don’t actually know anything about this paticular possible correlation, I was just pointing out an observation to see if there were others who had observed the same this year, or indeed such a correlation at any other year. Sometimes us non-experts and our observations can occasionally contribute to the debate.
Steve, I’d keep a copy off all the Warmist’s running around crying but weather is not climate then when they start crying that we’ve had the warmist summer in 1/2 an hour you can point to there comments.
What i find funny is that the BBC has been showing some great program’s on the solar systema and the history of science, I wonder what the program’s would look like in 100 years, TV commentator “and at the beginning of 2000 science enter the dark ages again where all scientific advancement was placed into models, Science for the next 50 years was sent back to the dark age’s and has only just recovered from these prctices of guess work”
Mike D. says:
May 13, 2010 at 8:11 pm
You missed my sarcasm. Yes the Dryas are dry, makes sense eh, why did it not warm again with this progressively drying climate with decreasing cloud cover? Must be a change in the heat source I guess.
Would you like me to map out the astronomical forcing Bølling/Allerød interstadials for you?
This year being the snowiest on record is very interesting. A few posts ago on WUWT, it was pointed out that tropospheric temperatures were quite high, particularly April. It was speculated whether it had to do with ocean cooling observed in the Pacific, and transfer of heat to the atmosphere. The troposphere is showing fairly high temperatures, yet Arctic ice has recovered, and the northern hemisphere has had record snow. Any thoughts on why these apparently opposite situations coincide?
Kevin Cave says:
May 13, 2010 at 11:56 pm
“dr. schweinsgruber …
So you’ve played the old “thousands of peer-reviewed papers” card? Is that it? Nice argument from authority there.
My response : A billion peer-reviewed papers all saying the same thing will not be proof of human-caused global warming,….”
______________________________________________________________________
Thanks Kevin you beat me to it. Oh and if you are going to “argue from authority”, you better make sure that “authority” has standing. Somehow the “standing” has gotten real tarnished lately.
“…I have decided to withdraw from
participating in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC). I am withdrawing because I have come to view the
part of the IPCC to which my expertise is relevant as having become
politicized…..” Dr. Landsea Resignation Letter
Time Line of Climate corruption:
Here is a tiny example of the corruption:
e-mail about changes made to the US temperature record
Graph of changes made to the US temperature data
National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Unable To Justify Official Temperature Record:
“…..I think the startling conclusion that we cannot tell whether there was any significant global warming” at all in the 20th century is based on numerous astonishing examples of manipulation and exaggeration of the true level and rate of “global warming”.
That is to say, leading meteorological institutions in the USA and around the world have so systematically tampered with instrumental temperature data that it cannot be safely said that there has been any significant net “global warming” in the 20th century….” Source
The origin of the claim of “consensus”
The corruption of science:
Professional Discourtesy:
The data upon which your “peer-reviewed” studies are ALL based has been grossly manipulated and changed and then Phil Jones “lost” the raw data so there is no going back to independently verify the global temperature record. Without independent verification of the RAW data and the math used to manipulate it there is no science just a bunch of advocacy papers.
Sorry Doc after working with scientists for over thirty years as a chemist/lab manager, I have seen too much data manipulation, fabrication and out right lies to ever believe what another scientist says without checking his data. The basic principle in “Climate Science” according to Phil Jones at the UK Parliamentary inquiry was that “Climate Science” does not provide the data along with the paper for peer review. Therefore the peer review ain’t worth bovine excrement.
Phil. says:
May 13, 2010 at 6:13 pm
I note that ‘geo’, ‘jinki’, ‘Slabadang’, ‘Scott’, ‘mailman’, Fred’ et al. are not subject to the same restrictions.
++++
How’d I get on that list? Anthony knows who I am. You can too if you like, I’m on the front page of the surfacestations database “recent updates” at the moment. I don’t post from .edu domains, however.
geo,
My feelings are hurt. I wasn’t on Phil’s list, which is now only about ‘restrictions.’
I wonder what happened to his complaint about being “censored”? That sounds just like James Hansen complaining that President G.W. Bush was censoring him… then people started pointing out the hundreds of interviews Hansen had given [it’s interesting that it is Obama who has apparently told Hansen to shut up, since we don’t hear from him any more].
To see actual government sponsored censorship in action, go to realclimate and tell them to falsify the null hypothesis.
Once more you waltz in and pronounce.
R. Gates, why don’t you reply based on the point of the article. I’ll repeat that, based on the point of the article. Not deception, not misleading, not misdirecting. You may very well be correct in what you say, but what you said has nothing to do with the MODEL PREDICTIONS THIS IS TALKING ABOUT.
They, as in you, have been prediciting by their (your) models, that by 2010, 2011 DISASTROUS things will have been occuring. Like NO SNOW AT ALL. EVER AGAIN. Quit changing the subject. The point here, if I need to explain it to you, is that the models and predictions were wrong. Erroneous. Incorrect. Non-Predictive. What part of that don’t you understand?
Now to continue the logic, if you need some help with that, if the predictions have been so wrong in the past and present, why should we believe any current predictions. YMMV.
Smokey,
Speaking of censorship and university types, I wonder if we will ever hear from Dr. Schweinsgruber again or if he has decided to take his marbles and go home since we do not act like his awe struck students. One thing you can say for Phil and R. Gates, they are tenacious makes the site fun to read instead of dead dull like Real Climate.
Keith Martin says:
May 14, 2010 at 4:10 am
This year being the snowiest on record is very interesting. A few posts ago on WUWT, it was pointed out that tropospheric temperatures were quite high, particularly April. It was speculated whether it had to do with ocean cooling observed in the Pacific, and transfer of heat to the atmosphere. The troposphere is showing fairly high temperatures, yet Arctic ice has recovered, and the northern hemisphere has had record snow. Any thoughts on why these apparently opposite situations coincide?
________________
1. Troposphere is showing near 20 year record high temps- some transfer some oceans and some unknown (possibly AGW). Afterall, we’ve got the highest level of GH gases in the troposphere in many tens of thousands of years, and the troposphere is exactly where the GH gases “do their thing” (i.e. absorb and re-radiate LW radiation). The warming of the troposphere is exactly the primary effect expected by AGWT.
2. This myth (propagated primarily by AGW skeptics) that arctic sea ice has recovered to some longer term norm is just that– a myth. A simple glace at the longer term charts tells you that. Arctic sea ice has not shown a positive anomaly since 2004, when on average it should occilate into the positive anomaly range and then into the negative anomaly range. Instead, it’s been in the negative range for nearly 6 years. Also, it’s volume has been way down.
3. As discussed over and over again, the two ingredients that caused the record snow are the negative AO index combined with El Nino induced moisture. Bring the two together, and you get snow. The entire N. Hemipshere was not bitterly cold this winter, as we had warmer than average temps in the arctic as high pressure forced all that cold air south. These high arctic temps by the way, are one of the main reasons were seeing such a dramatic melting around Greenland and over into the Barants Sea. The first year ice in those regions didn’t get as thick this winter because of the higher temps, and this all relates back to the negative AO index– the cold air was forced south, leading to snow in Florida and other regions of the deep south.
R. Gates
Must be a lot warmer in Denver where you live. I’ve been freezing my rear off a few miles to the north.
Mike D. says:
May 13, 2010 at 8:11 pm
Being serious though, starting say at the peak of an interglacial, warm with lots of water vapour to provide a natural greenhouse, it would appear to me that the solar output is slowly decreasing, and the atmosphere, naturally gradually drying. This peaks at the last Heinrich events (including their quarter divisions, like the 1157yr period between LIA, the Dark Ages, and the Greek/Homer Dark Ages) such as the Dryas episodes. Then in a relatively short time (saw tooth), it bounces right back up again. I can map out the astronomical causation of a Heinrich event and its inverse, and am cuurently working on why they cascade down more and more Diminished, and then re-set to the Augmented condition. The older 41kyr sequence comprises 43, returns of Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus that also harmonise with the Earth/Venus synodic period, at 953yrs (43*953=40979), but does not fit the 4627.33yr Heinrich event period. These I would suggest cascade down in the same manner. The more recent 100kyr sequence, where we can clearly see Heinrich event periods, would plot out to 21 or 23 x 4627.33yrs, 21 is the better harmony with the 953yr period that I have shown has direct correlation to the N.H. winters of AD 829, 1010, 1784, 1963.
The nature of the modern and Ice Age sequence of 100kyr is very severe (bigger highs and lows than the 41kyr seq) and is the lowest that World temperatures have been for many tens of millions of years. Surely we should be looking into this more, rather than a nice bit of sunshine and rain?
Larry Geiger says:
May 14, 2010 at 6:04 am
Once more you waltz in and pronounce.
R. Gates, why don’t you reply based on the point of the article. I’ll repeat that, based on the point of the article. Not deception, not misleading, not misdirecting. You may very well be correct in what you say, but what you said has nothing to do with the MODEL PREDICTIONS THIS IS TALKING ABOUT.
They, as in you, have been prediciting by their (your) models, that by 2010, 2011 DISASTROUS things will have been occuring. Like NO SNOW AT ALL. EVER AGAIN. Quit changing the subject.
———————
First of all, I think you are confused about what a model does or doesn’t specify, and what a “prediction” is. For example, prior to the very low summer sea ice in 2007, the models were showing the summer being ice free by in the next century or so– a pretty wide target. That’s about as close a models can get. Then, based on the summer of 2007, one (not too brilliant) scientist made the prediction of an ice free summer by 2013. The models never said this, nor could they be that specific.
As far as N. Hemisphere snow goes, the models show that sometime in the next century or so, the winters will get warm enough that snowfall will be reduced. This does not mean we won’t get moisture in the winter– in fact, some regions will get much more than they have been getting on average, but over the next century, the AGW models show that a warmer troposphere will inhibit snowfall. No models predicted no snowfall for the winter of any specific year. Steve’s point, which is really about weather, has no validity in terms of climate models…just as the statement, “look, it’s snowing in Florida, where’s the global warming?!” has no validity, and would only be spoken by an ignorant person.
stevengoddard says:
May 14, 2010 at 7:51 am
R. Gates
Must be a lot warmer in Denver where you live. I’ve been freezing my rear off a few miles to the north.
——————-
It’s been a cold spring in Colorado, that’s for sure, and I’ll be coming up to Ft. Collins later today in fact to pick up my son at CSU for summer break. I’ve also noticed most of my plants bloomed a bit later. Somehow I can’t help but think the negative AO is somehow connected to all this. If global temps were running so high, I might start to think this is more than just weather variability, but global temps and ocean heat content continue to run high, and we’ve got several years of increasing solar activity until the solar max in 2013. I see no reason for global temps not to go higher…despite the late season cold and snow here in Colorado
[snip] Continued use of the D-word will have repercussions. ~dbs, mod.]
[snip]
[snip]
Because more snow means colder? Is that what we are saying here?
NS says:
May 14, 2010 at 12:23 am
“My general point is that it takes warmth to provide the energy for evaporating the moisture of snowstorms, and warmer air to hold that moisture and bring it to Colorado. Places like Antarctica are dry specifically because they are so cold. ”
I don’t know why people are arguing this point, it’s quite basic science. I wouldn’t base my argument against AGW on higher snowfall.
By your Logic, it should snow the most in the Summer, does it do that where you live?
Please check the average global temperature anomalies as determined by University of Alabama Huntsville from data from the advanced microvave sounding unit of the AQUA satellite (http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/). Dr. Roy Spencer, who runs the UAH data analysis, is a well known AGW skeptic. UAH data shows that January 2010 was the warmest January on record, and the months of Feb through April have been exceptionally warm. All that in spite of heavier than normal snowfall in the US and Europe. 2010 is on track to be the warmest year ever.
R. Gates says:
May 14, 2010 at 8:21 am
“….. Somehow I can’t help but think the negative AO is somehow connected to all this. If global temps were running so high, I might start to think this is more than just weather variability, but global temps and ocean heat content continue to run high, and we’ve got several years of increasing solar activity until the solar max in 2013. I see no reason for global temps not to go higher…despite the late season cold and snow here in Colorado.”
_____________________________________________________________________
Correct me if I am wrong. If I recall Dr Spencer stated to me that the higher troposphere temps at the beginning of the year indicated that heat was being transferred from a warm (El Nino) ocean through the troposphere and out to space. After he made that statement the earth saw a large drop in ocean temps. “The decrease in upper ocean heat content from March to April was 1C – largest since 1979″ How is a major drop in upper ocean heat content and the waning of the El Nino “ocean heat content continuing to run high”, especially when Trenberth can not find the “missing heat”
Second you state “..we’ve got several years of increasing solar activity until the solar max in 2013” How do you figure that???
Using Cycle 23 as a template and this graph we are about 55 to 60 months into cycle 24. In cycle 23 the maximum was around 50 to 60 months so we should already be at solar maximum. According to this article the cycle length “has decreased from around 11.5 years to less than 10 years” in recent times.
If you go with Tamino the end of solar cycle 23, and the beginning of solar cycle 24 was October 2007 then we are 31 months into cycle 24 and if you use <a href="layman’s count“>cycle five as a template we should see ramping up within the next year. This also agrees with Dr Svalgaard’s prediction of a2011 maximum . But so far all we see is the sun headed into another funk with F10.7 dropping again.
Anyway you slice it I do not call the one or possibly two years until solar max “several”
Owen says:
“2010 is on track to be the warmest year ever.”
That statement is ridiculous. There are records going back hundreds of thousands of years. Here is one from Vostok going back 10,000 years.
Today’s climate is well within the parameters of natural variability.
Ok, R. Gates, I’ll bite:
“(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.”
Please define for all of us the usually easily understandable term, “within a few years”.
From R. Gates “the models were showing the summer being ice free by in the next century or so– a pretty wide target.” Once more, just a little misdirection? Again, I’ll ask, what does “within a few years” mean?
From R. Gates “but over the next century”. Once more, just a little misdirection? Again, I’ll ask, what does “within a few years” mean? 5 or 6? A decade? 5 decades? A century?
Larry Geiger says:
May 14, 2010 at 11:51 am
Ok, R. Gates, I’ll bite:
“(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.”
Please define for all of us the usually easily understandable term, “within a few years”.
From R. Gates “the models were showing the summer being ice free by in the next century or so– a pretty wide target.” Once more, just a little misdirection? Again, I’ll ask, what does “within a few years” mean?
From R. Gates “but over the next century”. Once more, just a little misdirection? Again, I’ll ask, what does “within a few years” mean? 5 or 6? A decade? 5 decades? A century?
__________________________________________________________________________
That is a real easy question to answer Larry.
R Gates stated [May 14, 2010 at 8:21 am] “..we’ve got several years of increasing solar activity until the solar max in 2013″ It is now May of 2010 and several years has been defined by R. Gates as the time between now and 2013 or a maximum of four years, rounding to the nearest whole number and December 2013 being the latest date specified. Since few is less than several then few must mean 3 or less years.
See a simple bit of logic.
The hubris of Government climate analysts, highlighted by Climategate, has shown up again in New Zealand. CRU-trained Jim Salinger acted as a missionary down-under, finding 1.0°C warming in the country’s official temperature record and co-publishing 9 papers with Phil Jones in 9 years.
But Dr Salinger’s reign is over, and his firing by the Government’s climate agency has been the subject of a high-profile case in the Employment Courts. More importantly, his CRU temperature adjustment methods have been blown out of the water. See today’s article at http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2010/05/crisis-in-new-zealand-climatology.
Smokey, pardon my imprecision. 2010 is well on its way to being the warmest year on record (i.e., since direct and accurate measurements made calculations of an average global temperature possible).
We have experienced a persistent rise in surface temperature of over one degree over the past century. We have seen an increase in mean sea level that closely parallels the temperature rise. We now see through the GRACE mission accurate measurements of decreasing ice mass in both the Greenland and Antarctic land ice sheets (with an acceleration in the rate of loss in both areas the past 3-4 years). We have seen a steady and now accelerating loss in the volume of arctic sea ice (http://psc.apl.washington.edu/ArcticSeaiceVolume/IceVolume.php). All of these effects are in lockstep with increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The physics of CO2 absorption of long wave thermal radiation provide a clear quantitative mechanism to explain the warming phenomenon.
Please don’t tell me the mechanism is natural variablilty – be specific and identify the forcing agent for the profound changes we have seen in the past century.
Owen
Let me correct some more of your imprecision. Had-Crut has 2010 as fifth warmest year so far, and the GISS long term trend is only 0.65C/century.
Ulric Lyons says:
May 14, 2010 at 8:03 am
Mike D. says:
May 13, 2010 at 8:11 pm
Being serious though, starting say at the peak of an interglacial, warm with lots of water vapour to provide a natural greenhouse, it would appear to me that the solar output is slowly decreasing, and the atmosphere, naturally gradually drying. This peaks at the last Heinrich events (including their quarter divisions, like the 1157yr period between LIA, the Dark Ages, and the Greek/Homer Dark Ages) such as the Dryas episodes. Then in a relatively short time (saw tooth), it bounces right back up again. I can map out the astronomical causation of a Heinrich event and its inverse, and am currently working on why they cascade down more and more Diminished, and then re-set to the Augmented condition. The older 41kyr sequence comprises 43, returns of Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus that also harmonise with the Earth/Venus synodic period, at 953yrs (43*953=40979), but does not fit the 4627.33yr Heinrich event period. These I would suggest cascade down in the same manner. The more recent 100kyr sequence, where we can clearly see Heinrich event periods, would plot out to 21 or 23 x 4627.33yrs, 21 is the better harmony with the 953yr period that I have shown has direct correlation to the N.H. winters of AD 829, 1010, 1784, 1963.
The nature of the modern and Ice Age sequence of 100kyr is very severe (bigger highs and lows than the 41kyr seq) and is the lowest that World temperatures have been for many tens of millions of years.
So what caused the change in frequency of the glaciation series so recently? can we really assume that the current 100kyr cycle is here to stay? There are clues.
Owen says: at 1:00 pm
physics of CO2 absorption of long wave thermal radiation provide a clear quantitative mechanism to explain the warming phenomenon.
No it doesn’t. The theory of: “Increased CO2 causes an ever increasing delay of molecular energy moving to higher altitudes and dissipating into space, through a so called “forcing via reradiating” of long wave thermal radiation (IR) to moisture (vaporized H2O) in the atmosphere at the tropospheric level, primarily above the tropics” is what supposedly explains “the warming”… Of course, the only place that has (virtually) ever occurred is inside of a super computer where only a few mice live.
Steve, To see one emerging picture of 2010, take a look at http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/execute.csh?amsutemps which is the daily update by Roy Spencer of the average global temperatures at various levels of the troposphere. Spencer instructs us to use channel five. Using that channel, plot 2010 data versus all other years shown. 2010 clearly stands out (thus far) as being exceptionally warm. The strong agreement with the microwave-based and surface temperatures, both completely independent of each other, gives me great faith in the satellite measurements.
Owen says:
May 14, 2010 at 1:00 pm
“We have seen an increase in mean sea level that closely parallels the temperature rise.”
Owen, look here on sealevel;
http://www.climatechangefacts.info/ClimateChangeDocuments/NilsAxelMornerinterview.pdf
Larry Geiger says:
May 14, 2010 at 11:51 am
Ok, R. Gates, I’ll bite:
——————
Larry, again, you cite a specific prediction made by a single scientist, and models are not so precise. “Arctic ice free by 2013” , “Snowfall a rare and exciting event in a few years” etc. are all irresponsible scientific prediction that has no basis in anything that AGW models tell us. However, for a scientist to look at the models and say, “based on the modesl there is a reasonably good chance that your great great grandchildren will see an arctic that is ice free in the summer” is an accurate and responsible statement. Considering that a human life span is 70+ years and your great great grandchildren have likely not even been born yet, this easily falls within the range of even the average AGW models.
Phil. says:
May 13, 2010 at 7:31 pm
Jimbo says:
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.
Heavy snow will return occasionally, says Dr Viner, but when it does we will be unprepared. “We’re really going to get caught out. Snow will probably cause chaos in 20 years time,” he said.
Seems like he was fairly accurate, of course you don’t get the same picture when only the first part is quoted.
——————
Sorry to reply so late but:
How was her fairly accurate? Is ‘fairly’ being like a climate scientist? And what about my second serving regarding tipping point. Can you please address that Phil.
Correction:
——————
Sorry to reply so late but:
How was he fairly accurate? Is ‘fairly’ being like a climate scientist? And what about my second serving regarding tipping point. Can you please address that Phil.
Owen
Please read my article about satellite temperatures and El Nino
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/14/satellite-temperatures-and-el-nino/
Gail Combs says:
May 14, 2010 at 11:45 am
“Correct me if I am wrong. If I recall Dr Spencer stated to me that the higher troposphere temps at the beginning of the year indicated that heat was being transferred from a warm (El Nino) ocean through the troposphere and out to space.”
————–
Don’t know how the honorable Dr. Spencer can possibly say that all the LW radiation coming from El Nino warmth is going directly THROUGH the troposphere into space. This is exactly what does not happen with GH gases, as the LW radiation is absorbed and re-emitted in multiple directions, and only a portion of it would ever go directly into space. The more GH gases, the more LW radiation that is specifically NOT transmitted into space, but is either back-scattered toward the surface (land and water) or is absorbed and re-transmitted immediately by other GH gases in the troposphere.
————
Gail Combs also says (about R. Gates):
“Second you state “..we’ve got several years of increasing solar activity until the solar max in 2013″ How do you figure that???
—————
To be honest, I think the graphs you use and the data you cite are complete nonsense. I’ll go by this graph, where we see the Solar Max will hit sometime in early 2013…
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/
So, we’ve got the rest of 2010, 2011, and 2012…about 2.75 years until Solar Max…I call that “several”. I think you find very very few credible solar experts who would no believe that the Solar Max for cycle 24 is anything other than about 2.5 to 2.75 years away…
“Disruptive snowfall” was a self-fulfilling prophecy. By predicting the end of snow, they caused cities to stop preparing for it.
For Phil
“Also, local councils have been convinced by statements like “snow a thing of the past” and subsequently reduce their winter requirements for the aquisition and storage of snow clearing materials and equipment.”
And cold weather deaths in the UK are still very high this winter. All this blogging is not just about people with opposite points of view but it’s about people dying. Get a sense of responsibility and decency. Your mortgage is not more important than a poverty stricken war pensioner’s life living in South London.
Follow the money!!!!!!
Phil. says: May 13, 2010 at 7:31 pm Jimbo says:
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.
Heavy snow will return occasionally, says Dr Viner, but when it does we will be unprepared. “We’re really going to get caught out. Snow will probably cause chaos in 20 years time,” he said.
“Seems like he was fairly accurate, of course you don’t get the same picture when only the first part is quoted.”
How does it seem fairly accurate to you Dr Phil? Aside from the fact that heavy snowfall has caused chaos since then, does it appear, from the snow cover chart, that winter snowfall is getting to be “a very rare and exciting event”?
Or are you saying he was accurate based on the unpreparedness of officials, as a judgement on their efficiency, and not on snowfall as such? Any minor weather disturbance does seem to catch them flatfooted.
Or can you see into the future and know this will be accurate in 2020?
Kwik – Since 1993 three different satellites (topex/poseidon, jason I, and jason II) have been measuring the average sea level by precise and accurate altimetry measurements (an uncertainty of 3 mm). These satellite measurements ( http://sealevel.colorado.edu/ ) closely match the more direct tidal gauge measurements. The agreement of the two very different methods provides powerful confirmation of the sea level measurements.
Ulric Lyons says May 14, 2010 at 2:30 pm: So what caused the change in frequency of the glaciation series so recently? can we really assume that the current 100kyr cycle is here to stay? There are clues.
Ulric, I think our discussion is much more interesting than all the repartee with trolls. The article above did relate to albedo changes, after all.
Personally, I would not discount Milankovitch forcing, even if we don’t understand how that forcing actually works. The correlations have been too strong for too long. And it is certainly true that Milankovitch cycles are orbital mechanics and therefore affected by other objects in the the Solar System. How it works on the Earth’s surface is the question.
On a shorter time scale some postulate solar output dynamics alter global temps. One mechanism hypothesized is cosmic rays, which when you drill into it is an albedo theory.
Another mystery, which you allude to, is the remarkable longevity of warmer temps in this interglacial.
Some say the Holocene is like MIS 11 (Marine Isotopic Stage) 11, from 420 to 360 ka, allegedly the longest and warmest interglacial interval of the last 500 kyr. But the evidence is sparse and contradictory. It was a long time ago, and there aren’t many cores in relation to the breadth of the world’s oceans. Besides, it’s a comparison, not an explanation.
Some say anthropogenic burning has prolonged the Holocene, either by increasing atmospheric CO2 or by changing the albedo. Without delving into all the (sparse) evidence either way, I tend to favor the anthropogenic prolongation hypothesis, with emphasis on albedo darkening. As a forester and student of historical human influences on the environment, the evidence I am familiar with strongly suggests that human beings have been torching much of the terrestrial surface of the planet in a big way for a long time, especially during the Holocene (or Anthropocene as some wags would have it).
I speculate that historical anthropogenic albedo alteration does not correspond well with gravitational dynamics or solar output. People burned the landscape whether there were sunspots or not, whether Venus was in retrograde or not, all the time and whenever they felt like it. Fire is as much a part of who we are as opposable thumbs.
So while astronomic forcing may have induced Heinrich events during the last Glaciation, astronomic influences during the Anthropocene are understandably of little significance.
I am coming late into this discussion and admit I have not read all the 240 odd comments however I have seen some that state snow represents positive feedback because snow has a high albedo (in the visible) and therefore reflects incoming solar energy reducing the amount abosorbed. I am continuously amazed about how readily and with what glee people claim positive feedback in our climate system. I am not at all sure that snow represents positive feedback.
Yes it does mean a higher albedo reflecting more incoming energy away -no doubt of that. Remember however that this is only half the story – the surface also radiates thermal infra red to space and that also depends on surface emissivity. So lower emissivity reduces both the absorption of incoming energy and the radiation of energy away to space.
I know that researchers claim the emissivity of snow in the infra red is 1 ie: a perfect emitter and that they have done the measurements to prove it. I have read at least one of those peer reviewed studies and I have to say (as someone who has spent the last 35 years doing research into spectroscopy instrumentation) that if I had reviewed the paper I would have recommended it be rejected because in my view the methodology used is seriously flawed. The researchers have simply assumed the instrument gives correct answers without thinking about how it works and what they are doing. Their methodology assumes that snow is completely opaque, with all reflections coming from the surface. This is patently very far from the truth. Snow is quite translucent (take a cm of snow on a glass plate – does some light get through the cm of snow?) so some and possibly a substantial amount of the reflection will come from deep below the surface. Their methodology will exclude this reflected light giving an artifically low albedo or high emissivity. At the same time the Nimbus data is only explicable if we assume the surface of snow has a relatively modest emissivity in the thermal infra red. Then there is the more qualitiative data. For example, most of us have been in caves and can testify to how cold they are. The walls of a cave will have an absorptivity/emissivity close to 1 and are typically at about 10C. The walls of an igloo are below 0C and if they also have an emissivity of near 1 an igloo should be far colder – in fact as cold as stepping into a walk in freezer with metal walls. Yet all the reports I have read state that igloos are surprisingly warm. How come unless of course snow has a low absorptivity/emissivity and hence reflects most of the body heat straight back.
Mike D. says:
May 14, 2010 at 9:56 pm
Milankovich 100kyr coerrelation only works back just over 1myr, why did it change from 41kyr for 50/60myr like that? Sudden orbital dynamics change? I don`t think so.
As the LIA was the coldest event since the Younger Dryas, I do not see any sound reason to consider that anthropogenic burning has prolonged the Holocene.
I would expect sinusoidal changes from slowly changing orbital patterns, the glaciation pattern is very sawtooth, it doesn`t fit, and the only parameter that really matters is the tilt of the Earth`s axis, which if more upright would leave the poles essentially at the Equinoxes, which means they never get a full winter. If the axis was more tilted then the poles would get better summers and worse winters. Changes to the anomalistic orbit shape are purely seasonal in their effect, and too small to be of consideration to account for the magnitude (and shape) of a glaciation cycle.
There are patentently much larger solar variation factors to consider, from January to January, being close to the Sun then doesn`t make all that difference compared to the speed of the solar wind in any given January.
Orbital changes do not account for any important detail or sub cycles whatsoever.
Astronomically driven solar changes through the Anthropocene, is our temperature history. Through all these minmums and maximums;
http://www.geo.arizona.edu/palynology/geos462/holobib.html
mapping the rise and fall of civilisations, and changes in the natural landscape, right down to the cold winter we just had, and the blaze of heat just round the corner.
It is a number of event patterns that cycle, and are modulated by longer cycles, the immediate concern is the seasonal events that determine cold winters or droughts.
From philip c on May 13, 2010 at 11:48 am:
Troubleshooting:
1. Can you click on the link at the top of page? Does your browser then try to load the T&N page? If not, try the following direct link:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/tips-notes-to-wuwt-5/
2. If the browser is trying to load the page:
The T&N page tends to be very long. On dial-up it can take several minutes to load. You may have insufficient memory to fully load and display the page.
a. This may be relative to the browser, you may have insufficient cache memory available. With Firefox (and other Mozilla-based browsers) in the location bar you can type “about:cache” (no spaces), this will bring up info on your RAM and disk caches, even the location of your disk cache. To increase size, type in “about:config” (note the “Enter if ye dare” warning) and use “cache” for the filter word. Both your disk and memory caches should be enabled of course (right-click and select Toggle otherwise). Disk cache size is specified in kilobytes, default value on mine is 50000 (50 thousand KB or 50 MB). Unless you’ve got a small hard drive and/or little free space, increase to 200 or more MB, then try loading T&N again.
(Note to first-time configuration adjusters: You do not “Save” when done, just go Back to where you were, close the tab, or go somewhere else. The cache size change is dynamically-implemented, restarting the browser isn’t required.)
b. Your system may have too little physical memory (RAM) and using “virtual memory” ain’t cutting it, you need more physical memory for the system to process that page. An upgrade is indicated.
I just upped my disk cache to 300MB, and got a rather fast loading of T&N as opposed to last time, on dial-up. There were 1,559 comments when I checked. Yup, it can take a lot to load all that into memory and display it.
michael hammer says:
May 15, 2010 at 2:32 am
This is patently very far from the truth. Snow is quite translucent (take a cm of snow on a glass plate – does some light get through the cm of snow?) so some and possibly a substantial amount of the reflection will come from deep below the surface. Their methodology will exclude this reflected light giving an artifically low albedo or high emissivity.
Try doing the same experiment with IR at about 10 μm.
PS – Re: Phil. I am uncomfortable with his mail being pre-censored.
I greatly admire you Anthony Watts and in part because there is no censorship on this site. On the other hand I do not like Phil. I crossed swords with him early on – on Climate Audit on a thread on sea ice where he challenged me on a quote by Al Gore, I have forgotten what. I had another listen and realised that Phil. was right. It no way changed the broad picture of Al Gore’s bull, but Phil. delights catching people’s errors and, if possible, thoroughly humiliating them.
He did this with some character on WUWT regarding the freezing of CO2 from the atmosphere. CO2 cannot freeze (sublime) on Earth because, though temperatures reach less than the freezing point of CO2 at 1 atmospheric pressure which is only -57C, because CO2 is just a trace gas on Earth, the partial pressure of CO2 on Earth dictates that the temperatures have to be far lower, much lower than those found on Earth. This discussion came up later and I chanced upon it and I was referred to Phil.’s discussion on it earlier with some other guy. I read that post and sized up Phil. from that. Instead of pointing this out to the fellow and referring him to a phase diagram of CO2, which I am sure Phil. has and that fellow hadn’t, Phil. drew him out and then thoroughly humiliated him in quite a nasty manner. I wonder if he treats his students the same way? I would put my money on it.
Having said that, to paraphrase Voltaire – I disapprove of Phil. and his surly obnoxious manner, but I defend his right to say it. Freedom of speech is in peril in today’s world, as we have just seen in the University of Upsalla. The effect of a person being shouted at and head butted while giving a lecture has resulted in him being debarred from the University. A sad state of affairs.
I am not suggesting that freedom of speech is in peril here, and there is no need to compare this site with RealClimate, but why give anyone the slightest handle to complain?
Dr. Schweinsgruber said on May 13, 2010 at 11:23 am:
“…”
“I conclude: two half wits [sic] yield a dim wit [sic]!”
To my mind it takes a special kind of dimwit to not know how to spell his own name.
The German/Swiss name that your chosen name here very closely approximates to is Schweingruber (i.e., without an “s” after the “Schwein”). I am not sure how this name was historically derived, but it straightforwardly translates from pure German as “pig inhabitant of a pit” or maybe “inhabitant of a pig pit”. There is a possibility, however, that the “gruber” part of the name could alternatively derive from the German Yiddish “grub” meaning “rude and impolite”, so possibly your medieval antecedents had a reputation for the kind of behavior that you are exhibiting here and earned themselves the nickname “pig ignorant” which then stuck.
Ah, but your name is not the same because it has that extra “s” in it, doesn’t it. Well actually, not here it doesn’t:
http://friendsofginandtonic.org/page1/files/d161515b8af3f9f02f59f47706182ee8-0.html
where you sign your letter “Derek L. Schweingruber, PhD”.
So, how is it that you can’t remember, or can’t decide, how to spell your (presumably real) own name?
And then there is also the matter of your claimed doctorate. Obviously you use it as a form of argument from authority (to put us natives in our place, as it were), so, it is therefore legitimate for us to question what subject your doctorate is in and which university you got it from. I have to say that I have searched the Web for answers to these questions but the only presence that I have been able to establish for a Dr. Schweinsgruber or a Dr Shweingruber is in connection with your Friends of Gin and Tonic blog. In fact, it is almost as if you didn’t exist before you established it.
R. Gates. I’m going to try and educate you about energy. You say that we had a cold snowy winter because of global warming putting more moisture in the air. Therefore, more moisture to produce snowfall. Where I think you miss is that the temp difference is relative. For example, hurricanes happen because of moisture and pressure differences, not because we had a hot summer. It’s why fog can happen on a cold morning. The ground can be cold and the air above it just a little warmer, allowing moisture evaporate and then hit another layer and condense. We’ve had plenty of rain without much daytime heating thanks to massive cloud cover. The rain happens from instability brought about by the differences of high and low pressure and, of all things, a dry line. So, no, it’s not the heat energy that drives the snow storm. In fact, in years like 1998, there was less cloud cover and the temps were warmer. And, with less cloud cover, there were less snow storms. Heat doesn’t cause snow storms, clouds in cold areas do. So, what drives the cloud formation? Cosmic radiation. It enters the atmosphere, causing aerosols upon which moisture can condense and form clouds until they become so laden they drop the moisture (sunshine storms, where the moisture rises until it reaches cooler air and is condensed back to liquid, falling as rain and pulling cold air down with it.)
I dare you to answer this. If CAGW states that CO2 from man is increasing latent heat holding ability and, as you wish to state, increased heat is causing increased evaporation to cause increased clouds, how can it be hotter? It is an observed fact that years with less cloud cover are warmer because more sunlight is hitting the Earth. Why? Because clouds have an high albedo or reflectivity to reflect heat and radiation back out to space. That’s why a cloud covered day is cooler. That’s called negative feedback. Unless you want to say that increased CO2 inhibits the production of clouds which would go against the crux of the AGW theory that CO2 increases cloud production by retaining heat to cause more evaporation.
Which also violates the law of Thermodynamics. A particle releases its heat to a cooler object. That original particle is now cooler. Period, paragraph, new book. So, a section of ocean heats up and moisture evaporates to the air. That spot of ocean is now cooler. Until heated up again by an outside source. By the way, CO2 is not a source of heat. It is a translucent gas with no albedo to speak of, good or bad. But that moisture is not going to collect as a cloud unless it undergoes a pressure difference or reaches a cooler layer of air and then it will proceed to precipitate. Having particulate, such as aerosols from sub-atomic collisions of cosmic radiation with particles in our atmosphere gives it something to coalesce upon.
Following your thinking, we should have our rainiest months in Texas in July and August. We get days and weeks of 100 F and we call that August. And usually begin a drought around the end of June. It gets hot around here, a high pressure cap builds which prevents rainstorms. So the idea of higher temperatures automatically producing more clouds and more precipitation fails when dealing with actual evidence.
So, the moisture goes elsewhere where the high pressure cap is not in place. It’s a matter of how gas releases its heat when it enters a lower pressure and it is why your air conditioner works, as well as with the other laws of Thermodynamics. And it’s all about relative temp differences, not what is the highest temperature. I’ve watched this happen in my own area. We can get a high pressure area that covers 5 or 6 counties. A storm blows up somewhere else and moves along, hits the “wall” of our high pressure area and dissipates. I live not too far from Lake Texoma, at one time, the third largest man-made lake. It does affect local weather, at times.
There is precipitation at the South Pole. Actual collected data shows that it has been getting thicker by inches to a foot per year. That doesn’t happen by magic. It happens by precipitation, with a relative minor temperature differential but is due more to moisture and pressure differentials. As you correctly pointed out, Antarctica is a desert continent.
Even if CO2 could drive more cloud production (it doesn’t and not you or any one has proven that), it would result in negative feedback. In order to have snow, surround temps must be at 32 F or below. And the moisture is not a result of the highest heat, it is the result of moisture and pressure differentials and it is why a pot of water boils.
Scientists warned the public here in Norway (on the TV-news this evening) that we are heading for a new Ice Age.
First its Globull Warming, and CO2 tax .( 1/3 of the electricity bill in Norway is CO2 tax, and yet we are 100% self-contained with hydro-power)
And now a new Ice Age.
They must conclude its globull warming that is the cause of the Ice Age.
How fitting for the governmint that electricity will cost more, if we are heading for a cooling period!
R. Gates says:
May 14, 2010 at 4:55 pm
Don’t know how the honorable Dr. Spencer can possibly say….
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Oh, Mr. Gates, there’s a lot you don’t know.
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.
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It’s good to let the public know global warming predictions are wrong.
“I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crises. The great point is to bring them the real facts.”
— Abraham Lincoln
Dr. Schweinsgruber says:
May 13, 2010 at 11:23 am
And western Canada has seen the mildest winter on record.
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That was caused by El Nino. The typical pattern from El Nino causes that.
http://forces.si.edu/elnino/exhibition_3a1.html
But your cherry picking didn’t present that.
R. Gates says:
May 13, 2010 at 12:55 pm
……while the Arctic enjoyed mild and even warm conditions
Were people walking around in t-shirts ans shorts?
Could you tell us how the “warm” was “enjoyed” in the arctic? Please, tell me.
R. Gates says:
May 13, 2010 at 12:55 pm
……while the Arctic enjoyed mild and even warm conditions
I mean really, you said “enjoyed”. Do you even have a slightest clue how stupid that is?
So it was -51F instead of -54F? Is that was made for “enjoyed” “warm conditions”?
stevengoddard says:
May 13, 2010 at 1:40 pm
R. Gates
If you knew that global warming was going to cause more cold and snow, you should have warned Hadley and CRU when they were predicting the opposite. You could have saved them a lot of embarrassment.
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R. Gates is unable to stop himself from being embarrassed. I can’t see how he can stop others.
Richard says:
May 15, 2010 at 8:09 am
He did this with some character on WUWT regarding the freezing of CO2 from the atmosphere. CO2 cannot freeze (sublime) on Earth because, though temperatures reach less than the freezing point of CO2 at 1 atmospheric pressure which is only -57C, because CO2 is just a trace gas on Earth, the partial pressure of CO2 on Earth dictates that the temperatures have to be far lower, much lower than those found on Earth. This discussion came up later and I chanced upon it and I was referred to Phil.’s discussion on it earlier with some other guy. I read that post and sized up Phil. from that. Instead of pointing this out to the fellow and referring him to a phase diagram of CO2, which I am sure Phil. has and that fellow hadn’t, Phil. drew him out and then thoroughly humiliated him in quite a nasty manner.
Actually your memory is a little flawed on this. When a post was made referring to CO2 freezing at the antarctic I posted that it was wrong and provided a phase diagram. I was told quite rudely that I didn’t understand phase diagrams and was spouting nonsense! Consequently the matter escalated, for example another posted the following:
“please apologise and remove this nonsense from this website about CO2 freezing out of the atmosphere at the Earth’s South Pole. Then please go and read, as a matter of some urgency, about the subject of vapour pressure.”
The thread continued for sometime and spawned a successor and the issue was settled against the original poster (who was banned from posting here for about six months because of his attitude concerning this matter).
When the same subject was brought up previously by George Smith it was discussed in a civilized manner and George subsequently thanked me for explaining it to him.
“And I believe it was Phil back then who disabused me of my silliness.
Even at -90 C the vapor pressure of CO2 is way above 385 ppm of earth’s atmospheric abundance.
And I have the phase diagram of CO2 right under my nose, thanks to Phil’s tuition.
Man; the thrill one gets when you finally understand some of this stuff and can yell Eureka ! I got it, how could it ever have been so hard to understand.
So Nyet ! on the Gopher getter ice at Vostok; we are cleansed of that science pestilence once and for all.
Thanks Phil; dunno how to thank you for the insight; whatta dummy I am at times.”
Phil,
I’m concerned you did not address my concerns regarding your challenge to my assertions.
By the way regarding censorship, I can tell you a thing or two about Gavin’s mob over at RC where he called one of my posted links “crap.” I challenged him to simply post it and let his supporters attack it and I was there to defend it. No reply!!!! Now that’s censorship.
Here was the link which Gavin called “crap”:
http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html
Phil 6:53 am; you may or may not be right but I would be much more confident if this was demonstrated by reliable experiment rather than just a bald assertion. Then again if you are right please explain why Nimbus records the black body emission temperature in the atmospheric window over the antarctic as 180K when there is nowhere on the surface (or in the atmsphere for that matter) which is as cold as 180K. Also please explain why igloos are as warm as they are. For the record, I am not stating catagorically that the albedo of snow is high at 10 microns, I am saying that the methodology of the experiments I have read which show it to be near 1 have flaws which render their conclusions questionable. The studies should have indicated that they considered the possibility of deep penetration and reflection from below the surface and took steps to allow for it or prove it a non issue.
kwik says:
May 15, 2010 at 3:04 pm
Scientists warned the public here in Norway (on the TV-news this evening) that we are heading for a new Ice Age.
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How intriguing. Do you have a link that we can follow? I’d like to see what they are referring as indicators.
Thanks
Ulric Lyons says at May 15, 2010 at 3:50 am: As the LIA was the coldest event since the Younger Dryas, I do not see any sound reason to consider that anthropogenic burning has prolonged the Holocene.
Consider that widespread anthropogenic burning declined significantly during the LIA. Old World diseases led to the die off of 90 to 95% of the New World indigenous population. Indian burning in the Western Hemisphere all but stopped. Ditto in India and other regions “colonized” by Europeans. Euro conquest led to massive landuse changes, which had the effect of turning albedos from millennia of charcoal black to green and reducing wind-borne soot. Ruddiman and others make that argument — that human influences have prolonged the Holocene, and that conquest and subsequent aboriginal die-off altered albedos and thus caused the LIA.
The Holocene seems to be a lengthy interglacial. What other explanations are there for that? (Hint: one of them is anthropogenic CO2. I put more stock in anthropogenic albedo control myself).
Regarding solar changes, the actual mechanism according to Svensmark involves clouds and changes in the albedo of the lower atmosphere. I don’t deny solar theories; I am merely pointing out that the most plausible involve albedo.
As to the reflectivity of snow (Hammer, May 15, 2010 at 2:32 am) I do not claim snow is a perfect reflector. But compared to charred earth… Albedo is a relative phenomenon.
Regarding positive feedbacks, is there any other explanation for the radical climate shifts at glaciation/interglacial transitions? Whether longterm (100kyr) changes are due to orbital mechanics or an as-yet-undetected solar output cycle, the sudden shifts point to some sort of positive feeback on/off switch.
PS – maybe a post about albedo someday is in order Anthony? It is hard to carry on this discussion in this thread, now past ripe and moldy with trollations.
Mike D. says:
May 16, 2010 at 10:44 am
Year by year through the LIA, there was cold weather, but there was hot weather too, as there was very cold episodes during the otherwise generally warm 1100`s.
Only the sun can be forcing these fast seasonal or monthly changes.
I would not trust ice cores enough to evaluate exactly how long previous inter-glacials were. CO2 did nothing to mitigate last winter or any winter to any measurable degree.
Svensmark has the wrong end of the stick, cosmic rays are the inverse proxy for the solar wind, being the forcing factor for cloud formation (eg. the heat).
On the glaciation/interglacial transitions, I am still working on that, but I can map through the last 8000yrs astronomically well, and pick out individual cold N.H. winters.
Something that chaps my hide that a lot of “scientists” do:
Generalize way too much based on relatively localized data.
“October Through March Was the Snowiest On Record In The Northern Hemisphere”
If this is the claim, then did they take the measurements of snowfall from the whole Nothern HEMISPHERE ang average it for all those years?
I know the United States and a lot of Europe got record High snowfalls last winter.
However in parts of Canada we got record LOWS…. I used my snow shovel 4 times all winter!
The year before it seemed I was shoveling non stop for 3 months.
It seems the main “snow belt” just “shifted” this last winter.
Then we have this gem:
“(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.”
this could be true… for southern England…
I just love Sensationalism…
I do believe Human activity is affecting/going to affect the global climate.
I also believe we need much stricter environmental laws worldwide.
A thought to leave you with:
(This number varies greatly depending on the source)
It takes 20 trees to produce enough oxygen for ONE person.