By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM, ICECAP
Map of US weather records for week ending 4/6/09 click image to enlarge or here for source. Map created by HAMWeather,
UPDATE: NOAA predicts the Red River Will Crest Again in Fargo-Moorhead in Late April here possibly again at records levels.
Just a week after the last major northern plains blizzard another significant snowfall occurred this weekend. Models did poorly with the location of the heaviest snow bands and generally overdid the magnitude. These models sometimes have difficult with the first 48 hours, but Susan Solomon and friends tell us you can depend on cruder models to predict the climate 100 years or even a thousand years in advance.
Several inches of snow fell in parts of Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa, southern Minnesota into southern Wisconsin. This will include parts of the Red River Basin already in flood and with deep snowcover (click here to enlarge).
The northern plains has been hit hard this year. Fargo set a record for snowfall and precipitation for March, Bismarck also in North Dakota had record snowfall in December and the second snowiest March, the first year with with two monthly totals in the top ten enlarged here.
Bismarck is on the northern edge of this storm. If they get more than 1.4 inches of snow from this (or some later) storm, they will set an all-time snow record. See the enlarged listing shown below here as of April 1 after the big blizzard. See all the watches and warnings here.
The National Weather Service said International Falls, with the reputation as the nation’s icebox, recorded 124.2 inches of snow this winter. That tops the old record of 116 inches set in 1995-1996. The nearly 9-inch dump from this week’s snowstorm pushed International Falls over the edge. The Minnesota-Ontario border area has been pummeled with snowstorms this winter.
And from KOMO News Weary Spokane residents who are sick of snow can at least now be consoled by the fact that they were a part of history.
A snow storm on Sunday has made this the snowiest winter on record in Spokane. The National Weather Service said 93.6 inches of snow has been recorded at Spokane International Airport this winter, breaking the record set in 1949-50 by a tenth of an inch. It took snowfall of 3.9 inches of Sunday, a record for the date, to break the all-time record. This is the second-consecutive heavy winter in Spokane. Last year, more than 92 inches of snow fell on the Lilac City, third most since records started in 1893.
Spokane’s Top 5 Snow Years:
RANK WINTER SNOW TOTAL
1 2008-2009 93.6
2 1949-1950 93.5
3 2007-2008 92.6
4 1974-1975 89.0
5 1992-1993 87.3
Spokane is also mired in unseasonable cold. Normal high temperatures at the of March are in the low 50s, but this month has seen highs in the 30s and 40s.
See here how an amazing 358 lowest temperature records and 409 snowfall records were broken for the week ending Apr 2, 2009.
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Pamela Gray wrote: “If you live in an arid climate away from ocean breezes, you might green up under global warming. If, on the other hand, we have global cooling, you will turn into dust which will get blown into the air, caught in wind patterns, and probably land in an ocean somewhere.”
I’m sorry but that was worth repeating. Pamela the Poet is at it again. You kill me, Pamela. Can I use that two-liner someday with your permission?
;~)
Chris
Norfolk, VA
“Matt Bennett (20:24:54) : Science is apolitical.”
You better convince Al Gore and all the other politicians around the world like him of that so they will stop abusing science.
Other than the Vikings who sailed the Arctic with ease in the Medieval Warm Period, there have been many tries at passing through the Northwest Passage and some sucesses in the 20th century.
– 100 years ago, Amundsen became the first to navigate the Northwest Passage, from 1903 to 1906, on Gjöa.
– Since then, about 25 sailboats have successfully completed the passage, the most recent being: «Vagabond», in 2003 from the East to the West; «Nuage», in 2001/2002…
I loved the Canadian group that sailed through on an ice yacht so they could sail in the water and over the ice.
This hardly means the Arctic is ice free. Matt, please let me know when there is no ice anywhere to be found on this planet. Then we will no longer be in an ice age and that has happened before also.
“Matt Bennett (05:37:35) : decades of carefully gleaned knowledge from thousands of climate specialists,”
Shouldn’t you have said “cherry picked” instead of “gleaned”?
And I don’t think they were so careful when they went about it. Their clumsy, even barbaric, Mann Hockey Stick Graph that does away with the Medieval Warm Period is some pretty sloppy work.
Check out this real-time web cam this April 8th early in the AM at Beech Mountain, North Carolina [the highest incorporated town in eastern North America at 5,000 feet].
http://www.highcountrywebcams.com/webcameras_Beech_Charlies.htm
Temp: 19F
Snowfall: 6.5 inches
THIS IS VERY HARD TO DO INTHE GOOD OLE’ SOUTH in the Spring, especially since our magnolia-producin’ spanish moss-wavin’ sultry cousin (her initials are AMO) is in her warm “period”.
[Sorry—snippable LOL]
I venture to guess that her bigger, badder cousin [she is a female gladiator no doubt], her initials are P.D.O. [think PMS] is already at that point in her cycle and she is exerting her cyclic influence on all the other girls [as alpha females tend to do].
Hell hath no fury…..
I know when my mom is mad at me its like the earth stood still [or at least slowed a bit]. i can’t imagine what it would be like to have PDO or AMO mad at me at the same time {and Pamela Gray mad at me as well].
Yikes. Perhaps this late season snow is a harbinger of the wrath of PDO, she is already making herself known.
Run for the floridas! Or the ski-slopes…depending on your pleasure
Chris
Norfolk, VA
Once cold settles in as an entire entity, the weather systems should calm to just plain ars cold with equally cold dry wind. It is the clash of warm and cold fronts and different pressure systems that cause storms. But once the cold covers like a blanket, like it does during ice ages, the ice sheets just continue to grow southward year in and year out. The edge is snowy and stormy, to be sure, but the interior will be freezing cold with wind that sucks whatever warmth you have out and gone in minutes. It is so cold, you will wish for snow! In a word, it is “stupid” cold.
I’ve worked in the Ivory towers of research and published. It is anything BUT apolitical. I became very disillusioned very quickly.
“Benjmain P. (19:00:25) : Well above average temps in the PNW the last couple of days…”
What does this mean?
“Eve (20:25:38) : many tries at passing through the Northwest Passage and some sucesses in the 20th century”
Both sides already know this. I suppose there could be some new comers and it would be great for them to know about this.
But the AGW alarmist side knows this. They will never mention it though. They will just act like the Northwest Passage opening two summers ago was something totally new and highly unusual. That’s their game plan. They talk, and talk, and talk, and talk, and talk, and talk, and talk, putting up a smoke screen– and don’t care about the truth.
Pamela Gray wrote: “Pamela Gray wrote: “I’ve worked in the Ivory towers of research and published. It is anything BUT apolitical. I became very disillusioned very quickly.”
All the aforementioned observations precisely why your opinion and elegant posts are valued very highly….
Chris
Norfolk, VA
“There is a clear attempt to establish truth not by scientific methods but by perpetual repetition.”
–Richard Lindzen
HEADLINE :
“Expert Says Arctic Ocean Will Soon Be an Open Sea”
Recent news? No
New York Times, February 20, 1969
from article :
“In fact Dr. Budyko (Dr,. Mikhail I. Budyko) argues that an ice-free Arctic Ocean is the “normal” situation.”
The current conditions in the Arctic are nothing new.
“Pamela Gray (20:37:15) : It is anything BUT apolitical.”
“Science is not value neutral. Science has a political dimension that is determined by the person who funds the science. So, it is by no means pure.”
–Dr. Gary Shiller, M.D. at UCLA, from “Voices of the Shoah”
Anthony,
I apologise unreservedly for the tone of my posts and will do my best to keep it polite and relevant henceforth.
It is very interesting to see though, just how partisan, snide and crude can be the commentary here, generally with reference to hard working scientists and educators, without the slightest indication that it has stimulated the moderators
to even lift a finger. It seems it’s a bit of a one way street. Your pejorative, I realise, but it doesn’t do much for your claims of balance to be so touchy about genuine dissent, while giving right-wing conspiracy rants free rein. Interesting.
Austin,
I sure would put my money on it, what’s the bet?
Your post above is full of stories about localised or hemispherical trends and is not really that pertinent to the global average. While you’ve been shovelling snow, we’ve been recovering bodies from infernos that raged across unprecedently hot/dry forests, with temps hitting 120 degrees (in your units). It all balances out – ALMOST. The problem lies in the ‘almost’. When you take the temp of the globe annually it’s trending strongly up over the long term. This won’t stop while we’re pumping the CO2 into the atmosphere.
Let me ask you, where exactly will it leave your opinion if, for arguments sake, over the next five to ten years we have two or three more record-breaking years and the anomoly moves to +1 degree C above average while the summer sea ice sets another record low? Would you consider that you might be wrong and that the scientists whose job it is to work these things out actually do know what they’re talking about?
To those of you who think it’s naive or ‘touching’ for me to trust the up-to-date findings of climatologists, I would ask you – do you have your own special (and supposedly equally valid) versions of general relativity, quantum mechanics or biochemical evolution? Or are you willing to hand over to the experts on these ones because they don’t clash overtly with your politics?
“To those of you who think it’s naive or ‘touching’ for me to trust the up-to-date findings of climatologists,”
Who on being challenged cannot reproduce their data or the massaging they have performed on it. There are enough real scientists around to realize that when these grant-hunting charlatans say “You’ve got to believe us, because we are REAL scientists” then it is time to make sure they start behaving scientifically.
So yes, Matt Bennett, I think you are dangerously naive for believing ‘scientists’ who will not behave scientifically.
You challenge sceptics to face the facts if warming turns out to true, but there are three extremely stupid people pushing their nomination for a Darwin Award to the very limit right now.
How can you guys tell what a fact is?
Matt Bennett (01:23:12) : “When you take the temp of the globe annually it’s trending strongly up over the long term. This won’t stop while we’re pumping the CO2 into the atmosphere.”
OK Matt, what should the correct temperature of the globe be? Was it the temperature in 1979? How about 1934? How about 1867? How about 1254 or maybe 930? Once you determine that can we all vote to get a concensus? I vote for a constant 88F with SST 85F, annual rainfall at 70″, light breezes with occasional stronger winds (for the sailors and hangliders). While we are at it, why don’t we vote for 16 hours of daylight everyday, I could get in a lot more golf that way.
Sandy,
Your distorted view of the way science works is so far from reality I wouldn’t know where to start. The fact that you and many others round these parts insist on using words like “grant-hunting”, “alarmism”, “wacko”, “Al Gorian”, “Left loonie”, “freedom stealing”, “tax-grabbing” etc (to name just a handful I’ve seen on here) shows that, for these people, the issue is a political one. Science only describes what is, not what should be. That’s what I mean by it’s apoliticality. Of course, given that science is carried out by humans, it is inescapable that there will be conflicts of interest and political advocacy. But at the end of the day, there’s no hoax, no conspiracy, no real disagreement about the CO2 causation amongst those best placed to comment and certainly no claim that we know everything there is to know about this issue.
This whole picture we have of what is going on globally does not rely on Al Gore or computer models or one particular set of adjusted data. It is the result of literally millions of (wo)man hours of exhaustive investigation along multiple lines of converging evidence and those who think it stands or falls on one paper or another are sadly mistaken. You should try reading the peer-reviewed literature for a first-hand account of how they came to work all this out. It is complicated and the picture is ever gaining resolution but the key finding that CO2 is the over-riding forcing AT THIS TIME (not always, maybe not even mostly but right now) is not in doubt amongst those whose work passes peer review. As I say, do you have problems/opinions with other areas of science or is this the only area where you can’t trust genuine research? Remember that you enjoy whatever standard of living you do have thanks almost entirely to this rigorous process. I somehow doubt it is broken just because it may be politically expedient to wish it so.
That is what I mean by the extreme arrogance of people on here to assume they know better than someone whose life’s work they are criticizing. Trying to understand why climatologists have reached their conclusions and deferring to their better judgement is driven not by naivity, but by humility.
“Science is not value neutral. Science has a political dimension that is determined by the person who funds the science. So, it is by no means pure.”
I have been close to pure research for decades and agree wholeheartedly. Last I checked scientists were either men or women.
“Trying to understand why climatologists have reached their conclusions and deferring to their better judgement is driven not by naivity, but by humility.”
Main Entry: humility
Part of Speech: noun
Definition: humbleness, modesty
Synonyms: abasement, bashfulness, demureness, diffidence, docility, fawning, inferiority complex, lack of pride, lowliness, meekness, mortification, nonresistance, obedience, obsequiousness, passiveness, reserve, resignation, self-abasement, self-abnegation, servility, sheepishness, shyness, subjection, submissiveness, subservience, timidity, timorousness, unobtrusiveness, unpretentiousness
Maybe not.
“Let me ask you, where exactly will it leave your opinion if, for arguments sake, over the next five to ten years we have two or three more record-breaking years and the anomoly moves to +1 degree C above average while the summer sea ice sets another record low? Would you consider that you might be wrong and that the scientists whose job it is to work these things out actually do know what they’re talking about?”
Matt, are you willing to change your opinion if the anomoly continues to drop and arctic sea ice continues to recover?
This paraphrase is one of my favorites: “yes, we know it was warmer in the MWP, we dont’ know why, but we know it’s not the same thing (CO2) that’s driving the climate now” I wish I saved the link to this article. Over a short term (last 100 years) a good case is made for co2 driving the climate. Unfortunately, at least for me, it breaks down after that. When you look at ice core data, you realize we are several degrees above “normal” for 100k+ year averages. Other interglacial periods have peaked at a higher temperature than the current interglacial. In fact, this interglacial has apparently had a more stable tempature. And much to humankinds demise, this interglacial will come to an end.
Matt Bennett (05:55:04) :
You should try reading the peer-reviewed literature for a first-hand account of how they came to work all this out.
Based on what I have seen, what passes for peer review in the climate community is pretty poor.
This whole picture we have of what is going on globally does not rely on Al Gore or computer models or one particular set of adjusted data. It is the result of literally millions of (wo)man hours of exhaustive investigation along multiple lines of converging evidence and those who think it stands or falls on one paper or another are sadly mistaken. You should try reading the peer-reviewed literature for a first-hand account of how they came to work all this out. It is complicated and the picture is ever gaining resolution but the key finding that CO2 is the over-riding forcing AT THIS TIME (not always, maybe not even mostly but right now) is not in doubt amongst those whose work passes peer review.
While I agree that there may not be much doubt with those whose work “passes peer review,” this statement is quite circular at best. Those whose work passes peer review are those doing the peer review. There is also plenty of peer reviewed literature that disagrees with the CO2-warming hypothesis, and not every paper that mentions warming agrees that it is the result of CO2 or that it is the primary source of the warming. The fundamental conclusions that are reached by “the climate community” actually originate from only a few dozen or so scientists, so any claim of “consensus” (which is an immaterial concept to begin with) is weak at best.
Furthermore, the key finding that CO2 is the over-riding force IS a result of computer models, quite contrary to your clearly erroneous claim. There are no other “lines of evidence” that show cause and effect (CO2 cause, temperature effect) other than computer models. All those “millions of (wo)man hours” have shown is that the planet has warmed, and CO2 has risen, nothing more, nothing less – everything else is a consequence of a warming planet, something few even in here disagree with. Such a correlation (which is numerically quite weak) does not provide any causative relationship until models are considered, models which known to be quite lacking in many areas, the largest of which is potentially the key climate driver (cloud cover).
As I say, do you have problems/opinions with other areas of science or is this the only area where you can’t trust genuine research?
This is a blatant strawman argument. Any position on this area of science is irrespective of positions of other areas of science. You of the holier-than-though attitude might get a little more respect if you were capable of making an argument that didn’t contain numerous fallacies such as this. The list is long, and not all are of the informal type.
Remember that you enjoy whatever standard of living you do have thanks almost entirely to this rigorous process. I somehow doubt it is broken just because it may be politically expedient to wish it so.
It is not broken because it is politically expedient to wish it so, it is broken because it has become purely political.
That is what I mean by the extreme arrogance of people on here to assume they know better than someone whose life’s work they are criticizing.
It is equally arrogant of you to assume the same, i.e., that we (or anyone) do not know better. Pot.Kettle.Black.
Trying to understand why climatologists have reached their conclusions and deferring to their better judgement is driven not by naivity, but by humility.
You mean, climatologists like James Hansen… driven by humility? How about Michael Mann lying to Congress in sworn testimony, failing to report adverse results. Statements that “we need to get rid of the MWP” and “why would I give my data to someone who only wants to find fault with it” or even “it’s OK to exaggerate” (all slightly paraphrased) are commonplace in the climate science arena and somehow we’re expected to defer to the “better judgment?” Also, the list of egregious manipulations and outright fabrications in climate science is long, and growing, yet you wish us to believe that these people, the ones that are actually pushing the “science” the most, are driven by humility? Puhleeze.
Mark
Steve M. (08:57:15) :
Matt, are you willing to change your opinion if the anomoly continues to drop and arctic sea ice continues to recover?
Steve, your answer here sets you up to agree with his hypothesis regardless of its own truth. In other words, you’ve basically said that “if it does warm, then it must be CO2.” There’s no reason the planet can’t continue to warm independent of the change in CO2.
Quite frankly, I would be rather happy if it continues to warm, even if CO2 is the boogey-man in the closet. There is no reason that “warmer” should be equated with “worse.” I don’t know why the environmental movement and all the climate science community has gotten it into their collective heads that warming must be bad. Why does no one consider the numerous benefits from a warmer planet (this is semi-rhetorical because I am quite certain I know why)?
Mark
Mark T (09:13:22) wrote:
===
Steve M. (08:57:15) :
Matt, are you willing to change your opinion if the anomoly continues to drop and arctic sea ice continues to recover?
===
“Steve, your answer here sets you up to agree with his hypothesis regardless of its own truth. In other words, you’ve basically said that “if it does warm, then it must be CO2.” There’s no reason the planet can’t continue to warm independent of the change in CO2.”
No he hasn’t. He’s made a win/no-lose bet. If the climate continues to cool, then that severely stresses the CO2 thesis, which makes no allowance for substantial long-term natural deviation from the CO2 “forcing.” I.e., if CO2 continues a steady rise, but temperatures no longer rise in step with it, or even start to decline, as has happened in the last few years, that means the CO2 hypothesis will start to need epicycles pasted on to it to save it.
But if temperature rises, that could be due to natural causes. E.g., if the oceanic oscillations reversed (unlikely) or the sun became very active.
PS: Or continued warming could simply be due to a continuation of the warming trend since about 1800–i.e., to a rebound from the Little Ice Age.
Hmmm… one observation. Our boy “Matt” suggested there are different “versions” of other branches of Science, and he is right. Perhaps, though, he is unaware of the often vicious and loud battles over various things, including relativity, evolution, heliocentricity, continental drift, etc. etc. ad nauseum.
Science is not determined by who has the most supporters, whose work is best financed, who is a pop-culture figure, who makes a preposterous movie that wins an oscar, or who happens to work for Nasa. In the end, Science is not even determined by the longevity of beliefs or positions.
The AGW proponents have very little supporting evidence, and the current cooling trend is practically decimating their hypothesis. There is very little, if any, correlation between their hypothesis and real world observation. Unfortunately, by politicizing the issue they have established an undeserved longevity to their hypothesis.