Lake Superior last froze over in 2003. It has now, again, frozen over. The frequency of freeze overs has historically been around once every 20 years. Now, in the last decade, we have seen two freeze overs.
The picture below is a beautiful satellite photo of Lake Superior from yesterday. With the well below freezing temperatures seen over the region Thursday night (-20 F), any isolated open water could have frozen.
The NWS in Marquette MI writes:
Due to the recent cold spell and below normal temperatures for much of the winter of 2008-2009, ice covers nearly all of Lake Superior. Only small areas of open water remain. This image was taken on Tuesday, March 3rd. If arctic air does not return in the next couple of weeks, it is likely that this will be the day of maximum ice cover on Lake Superior for this winter as warmer weather and periods of stronger winds through the end of this week will cause open water areas to expand. Click on the image to view a higher resolution satellite picture (image is large — just under 1mb).
Source:
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/mqt/?n=lake_superior_ice
h/t to Kevin Klimek
RE: Brits at North Pole … a tad OT …
With any luck the Brit explorers will be able to witness Arctic penguins as shown by NBC last April. Here is a link to penguins in the North Pole…has to be true it was on TV! ☺
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/2/d/8/63987/articpenguins-0.jpg
Background: Last April 27, NBC ran a story about some British lass (it must be the tea, eh?) who had made the trek to to the North Pole. During the narration they ran some “B roll” … one of the video clips showed penguins on an ice floe. ☺
The image is a “screen capture” of that NBC video story. And, no, I did not Photoshop in the penguins. It was just some sloppy “research” work by the video techs and editors who (mostly) are scientifically clueless. But it also tells a sad story about sloppiness and sensationalism in reporting. Nothing like some polar bears or penguins drifting to their doom to get the masses all worked up.
Clive
Checkout the refreeze the last 10 days at Antarica:
http://www.klimadebat.dk/forum/opdaterede-sol-is-hav-temp-grafer-osv–d12-e424-s260.php#post_11160
I pointed out Wilkins ice shelf. This area is remarkably ice free. Other places on Antarctica are on the contrary extremly ahead in ice coverage.
So lets focus on Wilkins…
Oops, it looks like I mixed up my positives, and negatives, huh?
“Why is using short term weather as gloating /dreaming / wishing / against all evidence commenting such a popular meme for denying there are effects happening from man’s increasing the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere?”
I recently had a discussion on what would turn public opinion on AWG. “Weather events” was one very real posible answer. It isn’t scientic, but sadly, I have to agree. Weather will be more convincing to the public than anything else.
I once heard Al Gore to proclaim on a hot summer day “If this doesn’t prove global warming, I don’t know what does” Lot of truth in that statement.
timbrom,
nitpicking, surely Baikal isn’t “fresh water” these days 🙂
I’ve engaged several local AGW proponents and usually get the “weather is not climate” line from them every time any observsation of cold and snow is mentioned as a curiosity and indication that it’s not real warm. 🙂
Yet these same people will use Katrina and othere weather event to demonstrate AGW. The hypocrisy knows no limits.
You should not be allowed to post pictures like this. They are very disturbing. I have a lot of respect for Al Gore and his fight to save the planet. You are making his job harder.
So what if it is getting colder? We still have to save the planet. If we don’t, who will?
You should stop worrying about facts, and embrace the larger truth that we need cap and trade and higher taxes to make the world safe for all.
Kum Dollison
Here are some good references for AMO
http://www.pnas.org/content/101/12/4136.full.pdf+html S EE Figure 4 of this article especially.
http://digitaldiatribes.wordpress.com/2008/12/23/a-look-at-the-atlantic-multidecadal-oscillation-amo-index/
http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/data/timeseries/AMO/
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/amo_faq.php
North Pole Ice Survey trek: Gotta give them credit. I’ve spent time camping in -40F west of Lake Superior and it’s a challenge, to say the least. It’s also beautiful country! They seem to be “keeping their chins up”. I’m skeptical of the manual drilling in view of the physical effort required to pull sleds and just survive. We’ll hope for good data, but don’t hold your breath. I have a couple of observations from my look at the web site: 1) Dr. Ron Kwok’s (Senior Research Scientist) quote headlining the home page that these measurements will give us an “unprecedented set of snow and ice data that will allow us to better characterize the current state of the Arctic ice and project its declining trend…”, and 2) the Google earth depiction of the expedition is so obviously not in real time. Regarding #1: This “science” has preconceived conclusions. As for #2: Where’s all the REAL TIME ice throughout the Northern Hemisphere?
http://www.catlinarcticsurvey.com
North Pole Ice Survey trek:
Last lot of green wannabe save the world hippies got frostbite as it was not as warm as Al Gore led them to believe & came back with their tails between their legs. Must admit, I’m hoping for the freezing conditions to give this crowd a serious blast of global warming so people pay more attention to their folly than the pro AGW data they probably prepared before they left.
I love this image. It shows the very strong effect wind has on ice compaction, not too dissimilar to that seen on Arctic ice in 2007.
I still wonder why colder winters aren’t viewed in the same vein as “warmer” summers, and why seeing this body of water freeze as it has be deemed “abnormal” as the temps have warmed so “dramatically”.
One tiny part of planet earth gets cold weather while the planet experiences the hottest temperatures ever recorded during a solar minimum which coincides with a La Nina – http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/ .
Time to face the reality that you picked the wrong side of the “debate”.
rick.
cooling = warming. Haven’t you heard?
We are definitely headed for a cold cycle. Just about mid march, and -35 C temps predicted for this week.. As for the CO2 argument:
“The atmospheric greenhouse effect, an idea that many authors trace back to the traditional works of Fourier (1824), Tyndall (1861), and Arrhenius (1896), and which is still supported in global climatology, essentially describes a fictitious mechanism, in which a planetary atmosphere acts as a heat pump driven by an environment that is radiatively interacting with but radiatively equilibrated to the atmospheric system. According to the second law of thermodynamics, such a planetary machine can never exist. Nevertheless, in almost all texts of global climatology and in a widespread secondary literature, it is taken for granted that such a mechanism is real and stands on a firm scientific foundation. In this paper, the popular conjecture is analyzed and the underlying physical principles are clarified. By showing that (a) there are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effects, (b) there are no calculations to determine an average surface temperature of a planet, (c) the frequently mentioned difference of 33° is a meaningless number calculated wrongly, (d) the formulas of cavity radiation are used inappropriately, (e) the assumption of a radiative balance is unphysical, (f) thermal conductivity and friction must not be set to zero, the atmospheric greenhouse conjecture is falsified.”
FALSIFICATION OF THE ATMOSPHERIC CO2 GREENHOUSE EFFECTS
Mike Kelley (09:19:59) :
“Thanks for posting this. It will never make the “news”, though.”
Mike I was just thinking!
We are supposed to live in a democracy but on a mental level we are already living under a Totalitarian Regime.
These kind of remarks makes me conclude that people have “given up” and lost all confidence.
Really weird if you ask me.
Dave Andrews
Like I said, what’s left is anything but!
“DJ (13:46:24) :
Time to face the reality that you picked the wrong side of the “debate”.”
Here I was thinking the science is settled and there is no debate to be had – at least that’s Big Al’s approach. I’m quite happy being on the side I’m on thanks all the same DJ.
As for “weather” shifting people’s perception and further to an earlier thread in which is was mooted that when the public starts laughing at the AGW crowd things will begin to improve, recent experience lends hope. Pretty much at random I’ve been trying this out on my work mates and passing strangers. The UK Met Office claims that it may have been the coldest winter for 13 years (or whatever), but if it wasn’t for Global Warming it would have been even colder. The response has been 100% mirth.
Ron de Haan (13:49:13) :
Ron, you are right, we are living under a “soft” or mental level totalitarian Regime for sure. And many of us have given-up because we have lost confidence.
We had better gain some good’ole american courage and do whatever it takes to turn this situation around. We will have political peace when we have won the political war.
markm
My wife and I are both from da Soo, eh? We were up there around the 1st of January. Their winter has been like I remember winters there in the 1970s.
MarkM,
“We had better gain some good’ole american courage and do whatever it takes to turn this situation around. We will have political peace when we have won the political war.”
True, Mark we better not act like this guy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0kse4y-OyY&feature=related
They are very short… the second is the worst type of denial…
According to this chart from the Canadian Ice Service there was more ice in 2003 but this year is still well above the median. It looks like since 1973 there have only been 5 years with more ice than this year at this stage of the year (as of March 5).
“Roy Spencer (14:20:29) :
My wife and I are both from da Soo, eh?”
Hello fellow Yooper,
I went to school at Northern for 2 years. I could see Lake Superior from my dorm room at Payne Hall. I had a friend who went to Houton Tech. Tech wasn’t at the end of the world… but you could see it from there.
“Their winter has been like I remember winters there in the 1970s.”
I remember snow at Thanksgiving back then, not just white Christmases. My family tells me both happened again there this year for the first time in years.
p.s., you and da wife been out fer a snowmobile ride lately? ‘Yer in da U.P. now, look out fer dat snow plow!”
Whatever statistics of once per 20 years and now twice in a decade are supposed to infer. Anthony Watts may or may not have heard of the Arctic Vortex Having been split into 2 with a warm stream having push the to parts over North America and Siberia. There you have a large part of that second time in a decade occurance of cold.
Seeing Roy Spencer post just now, meantime ‘his’ UAH just released global Feb.09 of 0.35C up from 0.307C in January.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/library/pics/UAH_LT_since_1979.jpg
Kind of a 0.55C resurfacing of heat since April 2008.
Snow cover for the NH was also down for February per Rutgers. Below the trend line.
Yes a comprehensive picture of global cooling if one adds the Arctic Sea Ice smack on the downward pointing trend line… with an extended solar minimum… and long may it last… climate scientists are loving it, not coming at a better time.
DJ (13:46:24) :
“One tiny part of planet earth gets cold weather while the planet experiences the hottest temperatures ever recorded.”
I think you are living ten years in the past! In the current decade, global temperatures have plumetted. Half the planet was covered in snow???
Whilst they now face imminent extinction, there are still small colonies of pro AGW scientists clinging to the remaining warm areas such as the antarctic peninsula. We should all pray for their lost souls and hope that they can agree to form a commitee that agrees to start the generator with all it’s wonderful CO2 emissions before they freeze to death.
Time to face the reality that you (DJ) picked the wrong side of the “debate”.
GREEN CUSTARD, GREEN CUSTARD. GET YOUR GREEN CUSTARD HERE!