Above: Photo taken at eye level of a sign already elevated because of seasonal snow issues. See below for photo of sunken boats in Valdez harbor due to snow loading.
The Valdez Alaska Dispatch writes:
All the experts say the effects of climate change will be felt most in Alaska, home of the ex-governor who contends climate change is no big deal.
Good thing she wasn’t in Valdez this week when the citizenry got buried under a record snowfall. We’re not talking about your ordinary little dump here. That was in Copenhagen, where world leaders were meeting to discuss what to do about global warming and the Bloomberg news service was warning that Barack Obama and the rest would “face freezing weather as a blizzard dumped 10 centimeters (4 inches) of snow on the Danish capital overnight.”
Valdez, Alaska got more than four inches per hour at the height of the snowstorm that began there Monday and ran through the week. By the time the citizens of Alaska’s only oil port finally caught a break, the snow was piled 5 feet, 8 inches deep.
Yes, you read right.
Five feet, 8 inches; over the head of your average American woman, up the nose of your average American man. The National Weather Service called it record.
================================
So much snow that snow loads sunk one boat in the harbor while other owners try to keep up with snow removal.
From NBC TV in Washington DC:
History has been made in Washington, DC also. The snow has already broken the 1 day record for DC. The old record of 11.5″ on December 17,1932 is now in 2nd place since National Airport has over 15″ with snow still falling. This storm is now in 6th place all-time and the February 1983 storm total of 16.6″ may yet be eclipsed.
h/t SPPI
Volcanic activity happens at an increased rate/intensity during solar minimums.
I cannot tell you why it does that.
I’m not even sure if there are any papers on it.
Must say it just crossed my mind that it would be an idea to form an ‘Anticlimactic’ party to fight in the UK elections [and US?]. In the UK over 50% of people are ‘skeptic’ but no party represents them – the environmental representatives of all three main UK parties all seem to be weeping copious tears over the failure of Copenhagen, and vowing to battle on.
MikeO (11:44:09) :
Don’t you silly people realise “Climate Change” means unlikeable weather. So that will be the new catch cry beware UW. To be serious Monckton made the comment that the solar activity is coming back does anyone have a reference?
If you look at Spaceweather now you see three spots.
Nor does a hot month in summer mean there IS GW.
Doesn’t this weather prove that Hopenhagen was a great sucess in forcing climate change? Just see how it got cold and snowey even before they went home :-D.
For solar activity, see
http://www.solen.info/solar/
this has a running account, in line graph form, of the past 3months of solar activity.
God really does have a sense of humor!
As I noted in my previous post, no one should use the Valdez story as an indicator of warming or cooling. Valdez is nature’s almost perfect snow machine. The reason is geography and geology rather than climate.
Valdez was chosen as the terminus of the Alaskan pipeline because it’s the northern-most, ice-free port. Geographically, it sits at the deadend of a warm Pacific current. Heat Energy from this current is expended by evaporating moisture which forms low lying clouds which pack into Valdez.
Geologically, Valdez is a partially submerged valley/fjord surrounded by very high mountain range (Chugach) whose passes are filled with Glaciers.
Past those mountains, the land is mostly flat all the way to the North Pole (The Artic Circle is a few hundred miles north of Valdez above Fairbanks).
So, the frigid air blows south over the glaciers and hits the moisture in the constantly available low clouds. That creates the snow just like a snow machine does for as long as the sea is warm enough to evaporate moisture and the wind coming over the Glaciers is available to precipitate that moisture out.
As Kim Mackey pointed out above, when the temperature drops to 0 and below, the air can’t carry enough moisture and the snow stops.
Notice that snowfall in Anchorage, Fairbanks in much less. And Barrow, the northern-most town, get practically none. They are not geographically and geologically suited to get snow as Valdez is.
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Now that is “Climate Justice”. I couldn’t make sense of slogan until I found out that Washington and Copenhagen both got dumped on.
On Friday, Stars & Stripes carried a full-page “report” on AGW.
According to the AP, this has been the warmest decade *evah*, with Eskimos startled by the sight of robins, Arctic ice at the lowest extent in history, and millions in India dying of thirst because the Himalayan glaciers are melting.
‘Bout the only bit of truth in the entire article was Eskimos seeing robins — but they shouldn’t have been startled, since the American robin’s summer range extends all the way to the Arctic Circle.
A letter to the editor is in the offing…
Well maybe the Eskimo’s were startled by the sight of Robbins, are the robins still around startling the Eskimo’s? There have been quite a few ooh’s and ah’s recently.
Including Obama and Washington DC being startled by the Blizzard of Ah’s…
Here in Oceania there will soon be no snow. There will only be precipitation. This will come about with the publication of the next edition of the Newspeak dictionary. Until then, please practise saying “precipitation”. For your own good.
Including Obama and Washington DC being startled by the Blizzard of Ah’s…
I don’t think “Ah” was the expletive they were considering…
Piers Corbyn’s latest predictions – see particularly Dec.28-30 major SWIP (solar weather impact period):
‘ere wasn’t that UN conference in Copenhagen successful. Only two days after they got everyone to agree that temperatures must not go up by more than 2 degrees and the biggest snowstorm for a 100 years brings the temperature right down. And of course as with all the UN’s great sucesses there is the usual daily death toll. But what is that set against such a great achievement.
Brian BAKER
in The Hay Barn, (freezing my nuts off)
England
Point taken Rob. Okay boys and girls, learn these two sentences off by heart:
“Heavy winter precipitation is caused by climate change”
“Summer heat waves are caused by global warming”
Can I be taxed now?
“Unprecedented winter weather in France”…causes Eurostar trains to break down. “Snow shields used to protect the electrics of its trains had worked for the 15 years it has been running services through the tunnel. But the company said the weather in northern France over the past few days had been worse than anything previously experienced in that time.”
rbateman (17:44:32) :
“Volcanic activity happens at an increased rate/intensity during solar minimums.
I cannot tell you why it does that. I’m not even sure if there are any papers on it.”
Hi Mr. Bateman
Here is an example of pseudoscience, pure speculation, which I posted elsewhere (eventfully to be banned from). May I point out that we are all free to speculate on this and maters of our interest (possibly 99.9% of the time wrong, but there is always that tiny chance of finding a nugget of gold).
The Earth’s iron core (source of the Earth’s magnetic field, i.e. the Earth’s dynamo) does not rotate around the same axes as the Earth itself, hence dislocation of magnetic poles. Jupiter-Saturn gravitational forces which pull the Sun around the barycentre also pull the Earth’s mass centre away from its orbital trajectory, due to its eccentricity the Earth’s iron core reacts differently to the rest of its bodily mass (liquid interior). It follows that a certain major planets configuration will cause disturbances within the Earth’s interior which may initiate major earthquakes (already linked to times of sunspot minima) and volcanic eruptions. It is important to state: the sunspot periods may be affected by a configuration of major planet’s magnetospheres, which follow similar but not exactly same timing as their astronomical configuration. Therefore, earthquakes and volcanoes appear to be linked to sunspot periods because they are initiated by the same cause.
Maybe just a coincidence, when confronted with lack of conclusive proof, my defence is : the nature is adverse to a coincidence; it is ruled by a cause and the consequence.
R. Kessel, F. Freund, G. Duma
Lab for Solar and Space Physics, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771 [ramona.l.kessel@nasa.gov
Department of Physics, San Jose State University and Ecosystem Science and Technology, NASA Ames Research Center, MS 242-4, Moffett Field, CA 94035-1000
http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/EGU06/01705/EGU06-J-01705.pdf
Most detailed work in this field was done by Frank Glasby in his book Planets, Sunspots and Earthquakes where he presents
http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&id=3VYThj_nYQMC&dq=frank+glasby&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=2j9ATJm87T&sig=kXt80beKvMlSVu6LMVPWcd2OIRE&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#v=onepage&q=&f=false
vukcevic (10:32:17) :
“…but the geomagnetic may save us from the worst. I’ve just started looking into oceans’ currents; here is first chapter of my initial attempt http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/41/83/04/PDF/NATA.pdf…”
Good stuff, I really enjoyed reading through your document and it could be a big part of the puzzle of why sudden cooling occurs, and we see conditions in NH suddenly turning nasty.
To build on your ideas and hopefully give a more complete picture, it may be worth your while looking at the following areas, which came out of a one-man brainstorm session:-
1. Strength, temperature and salinity of Gulf Stream, which feeds energy to Arctic basin, where it more easily radiates to space. Some information here (although for some reason not updated since November 2008?) :-
http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/gsf/
Perhaps changes in amount volcanic activity of North Atlantic ridge have short/long-term effects on Gulf Stream?
2. Precipitation in Arctic basin and corresponding amount of fresh-water being discharged by the larger Arctic rivers.
3. Strength, location and configuration of Arctic Polar Vortex which can vary greatly during NH winter. Does a breakdown of the vortex allow cold air to spill out and cause rapid short-term NH cooling?
Is it possible that the polar vortices are driven by electromagnetic effects and correlate to your work on ocean currents (perhaps features like the Beaufort Gyre are also driven by electric currents, rather than the other way round – cause and effect are often difficult to unravel when dealing with turbulent systems)?
4. Amount/position of ozone ‘layer’ in Arctic atmosphere. Link to ozone ‘holes’ and other compounds involved in atmospheric chemistry. Rapid Arctic atmospheric warming events may also provide some clues as to how these energy exchange mechanisms work.
5. Extra terrestrial gravity changes due to LOD, solar and planetary positions. Do these effect air and sea circulation patterns?
6. Effects of none TSI changes of sun during solar cycle – wavelength of light, solar wind speed and density, fluctuations in Earth/Sun coupled magnetic field – gamma ray bursts – x-ray bursts – large flares and CME’s… e.t.c.
With your ideas and the above list, I’ve just had a thought:-
Supposition.
THE PERFECT STORM CLIMATE CHANGE EFFECT
All climate is local! At no point on Earth would an observer experience the global mean.
Earth climate is driven by deterministic chaos. It exhibits fractal behaviour and has bifurcations caused by strange attractors pulling it from cold to warm mode, then back again over time.
Many different mechanisms act together to regulate the energy in, out and stored despite fluctuations to input.
When a set of events coincide within these related mechanisms, they conspire to start the cycle of change into the higher or lower.
This local change in the NH then triggers a global effect as rapid growth of snow and ice causes an albedo effect causing rapid global cooling.
The above is not well thought through, so any ideas which confound or enhance the Perfect Storm supposition are very welcome.
Very slightly off-topic, BUT anyone else see the UK “Transport Minister” Sadiq Khan today on Sky News? He was, er, “talking” about the Eurostar mess.
What an utter, complete prat. I nearly fell out of bed laughing. Apart from liberally throwing in the usual expressions of “Let’s be clear”, and “lessons have/will be/are being learned”, the sum total of what he said was – nothing, and in a pidgin-English, man-off-the-street way.
How can such a dimwit as this be a minister? On second thoughts, you only have to look at the Miliband juveniles, Prescott, Ainsworth, Harman, etc., etc. to realise they’re all the same – UTTERLY USELESS.
I felt so ashamed to be British. Good job I live in France now. Not a lot better (Teacozy’s sold on AGW, too) here, but generally saner.
Dirk (10:27:11) :
That we have winter storms in the US in December, doesn´t mean there is no GW. 😉
So, record cold temperatures and early snowfalls (e.g., Boulder, CO, in September) are actually *evidence* of Gorebull Warming?
Okaaaaayyyyyyy…
Patrick Davis (16:20:15) :
With all this global warming about you can understand why our “leaders” are so keen to have some legally binding emissions cuts and carbon trading systems in place before the 2012-2014 timeframe as I reckon there will be lots of brass monkeys about by then.
But they won’t be reproducing.
Tenuc (02:01:47) :
“Good stuff, I really enjoyed reading through your document
( http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/41/83/04/PDF/NATA.pdf )
and it could be a big part of the puzzle of why sudden cooling occurs, and we see conditions in NH suddenly turning nasty.”
Thank you for your note, it is appreciated, number of useful points there.
Gulf Stream of course, is the key, but as the North Atlantic basin climate is concerned, in addition to Hudson Bay phenomena, I believe that the Beaufort Gyre in conjunction with the Siberian geomagnetic anomaly (delay 2-4 or more years, with a built in feedback loop) are the main drivers. The draft of chapter two is in the pipeline and will be available on line soon. Also, the time line is extended back to 1600, showing a satisfactory correlation.
Today’s doublespeak
5 feet 8 inches? This is another global warming story. It would have been 6 feet without global warming.
Anyway, here’s another global warming story from Europe. Subzero temperatures in France are causing Eurostar trains to fail and leave tens of thousands of passengers trapped and stranded as the trains enter the warm tunnel and leading to condensation knocking out the electrical systems. Its caused by greater snowfalls than expected: They would have been even greater if it had not been for global warming. This global warming emissions case study has left the Christmas plans of 100,000 people in tatters
Thats global warming for you. Actually, I suspect its poor maintence and underinvestment – it ran very well until now
I have a nice photo of our record snowfall in the Virginia suburbs of Washington – which I enjoyed while reading about the demise of the Copenhagen summit.
See “The moral contradiction of global warming politics”:
http://vulgarmorality.wordpress.com/2009/12/19/the-moral-contradictions-of-global-warming-politics/
From Dr. Jeff Master’s blog (the founder of Weather Underground):
“Philadelphia, Pennsylvania has already recorded more than an entire winter’s worth of snow–a ridiculous 23.2 inches from this weekend’s storm, the second heaviest snowfall in Philadelphia history. The all time record is 30.7 inches, set during the January 1996 blizzard. The normal winter snowfall for an entire season is 19.3 inches.”
Dr. Master’s is an AGW believer. The irony of this blog post of his is that right below these comments of winter records, is a comment on Copenhagen.
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1403