And that’s not all, for the week ending Dec 13th, there were 815 new snowfall records set. December 2009 is shaping up to be quite the snowmaker. Here’s a map showing continental USA records:
Here is the daily count data from NCDC, with links to tabular reports and source for the snowfall records:
Dec 20th 124
Dec 21st 50
Dec 22nd 75
Dec 23rd 71
Dec 24th 170
Dec 25th 235
Dec 26th 152
Total 877 (CONUS and Alaska)
Many of the records have been bested significantly, and there were a number of all time records broken as well.
For example, December 24th and 25th all time records:
Click tables for original source reports from NCDC.
Note that we saw the majority of records from the most recent snowstorm in places that are fairly far south of the major USA snow belt.
| 24 December 2009 | Lat | Lon | ASOS/
COOP |
COOP/
WBAN ID* |
Record
New (4) Tied (0) |
Previous
Record |
Previous
Date |
Period
of Record |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UNIV OF MINN ST PAUL, MN | 44.98 | -93.18 | COOP | 218450 | 6.7 in | 4.0 in | 9 Dec 2009 | 31 |
| SHERBURN 3 WSW, MN | 43.63 | -94.77 | COOP | 217602 | 4.0 in | 3.0 in | 22 Dec 2009 | 62 |
| OK CITY WILL ROGERS AP, OK (KOKC) | 35.39 | -97.60 | ASOS | 346661 | 14.1 in | 8.4 in | 10 Mar 1948 | 69 |
| POST, TX | 33.20 | -101.37 | COOP | 417206 | 9.2 in | 9.0 in | 15 Mar 1969 | 100 |
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Slioch, you’ve got the propaganda in high gear. You surpass most others who use sophistry and cherry picking.
“Slioch (04:46:19) :
Since the Arctic is warming rapidly this then contributes to the warming shown in the NASA GISS series.”
Wouldn’t that lead to a melting of the ice cap?
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic
Looks rather normal to me. No significant melting. Are you sure your data is correct?
Wayne S (18:22:13) :
A C Osborn (06:59:41)
I am not arguing climate warming or cooling here. That will sort itself out over the next decade by the art of careful data gathering and interpretation, not by diatribe on a website like this.
For art substitute creative adjustment of reality and interpretation substitute change it to show MMGW.
@ur momisugly photon without a Higgs (17:25:16) :
” Despite the fact that the earth stopped warming in 1998 …”
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/trend – It’s not statistically significant, but the trend IS up; skeptic used to say “its been cooling since 1998”. No fair moving the goalposts. [ Results 1 – 10 of about 897 from wattsupwiththat.com for “cooling since 1998”]
“If that’s not good enough then start with 1000 A.D.”
http://www.imagenerd.com/uploads/law10be-GtkrA.jpg – A plot of Law Dome borehole temperature and 10Be isotope level(a proxy for GCR/TSI). The Medieval Warm Period wasn’t a global phenomenon – it would be more accurate to call it the Medieval European Warm Period.
“There has been a cooling trend on earth from all of these times until now.”
George Will may think so, but the data don’t support this claim.
“Manmade global warming is not happening—unless you want to talk about UHI—”
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/about/response-v2.pdf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_0-gX7aUKk (really snarky)
“The foremost factor of climate that is now being the debated the most is the sun.”
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/window/fourier/from:1/to:50/magnitude/plot/sidc-ssn/window/fourier/from:1/to:50/magnitude/scale:0.01
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/pmod/offset:-1366.5/mean:10/scale:0.5/plot/hadcrut3vnh/mean:30/from:1900/plot/esrl-co2/scale:0.008/offset:-2.6/plot/sidc-ssn/scale:0.002/mean:10/from:1900/offset:-0.2
The largest component of solar variation in the last 100 years has been the solar cycle, but there isn’t any corresponding frequency modulation in the temperature record. For the full accurate record of satellite monitoring of TSI, the sun has dimmed slightly, while CO2 and temperatures have risen.
“Co2 does not control climate. ”
Start with http://www.wag.caltech.edu/home/jang/genchem/infrared.htm The same mathematical models that allow one to calculate CO2 IR absorption spectrum ab inito allow calculations of the greenhouse effect of CO2, H20, CH4, and so on.
Then read http://web.lemoyne.edu/~giunta/arrhenius.html His model, simplified to allow him to do the math by hand, was inaccurate, but not wrong.
@ur momisugly Smokey (05:39:05) :
“Please provide even one solid piece of empirical evidence that CO2=”climate instability”. Just one. That’s all I ask.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok_420ky_4curves_insolation.jpg
When the sinusoidal forcing of the Milankovic cycle starts warming the oceans, they start releasing CO2 (feedback), which captures more IR (forcing), which increases temperature, which increases CO2, which Increases temperature…..
This instability causes the rapid rise at the end of the Ice ages, changing the sinusoidal Milankovic oscillations to astable multivibrator triangle waveforms of temperature and CO2. The lag is the time required for ThermoHaline Circulation to change the dissolved CO2 feedback into atmospheric CO2 forcing.
Smokey (05:39:05)
There are four errors/misconceptions/platitudes in your first paragraph, which is pretty good going.
1. “the Earth is emerging from the LIA” Do you believe it just rebounds, like a rubber ball, or do you accept that for the Earth to warm there must be a cause. If so, what is that cause?
2. “the planet has been warming naturally ever since … the last great Ice Age ” No. Temperatures on a millennium scale have generally been falling very slowly since the Holocene climatic maximum – with some relatively minor fluctuations like the MWP and LIA. They are now rising relatively rapidly.
3. “Nature goes in cycles” Try telling that to the dinosaurs. But, of course, there are cyclical climatic processes; often associated with orbital changes which themselves are cyclical. But are you seriously suggesting that ONLY cyclical events can occur? Incidentally, the very slow decline in temperatures since the HCM mentioned above is probably in response to the slow decline in NH solar input due to orbital changes. That that has suddenly reversed should start you wondering why, because NH that orbitally induced solar input decline is still present.
4. “not, as you claim, only “for the last few decades.”” I made no such claim. The “only” is a figment of your imagination.
The data for NASA GISS is publically available and is not missing, as far as I am aware, though I haven’t looked at it myself. Realclimate have a data page which may be of assistance: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/
If you can’t find what you want, why not ask there? Or are you actually not remotely interested in the truth about the data but just prefer throwing mud in the hope that some will stick?
You then resort to a silly comment about “sinister acts of evil humans”, and then provide a few passing insults “wild-eyed raving” “We wouldn’t want to think you’re a lunatic”.
Do you really think that those sorts of comments strengthen whatever point you are trying to make? If you think that there is something incorrect about identifying climatic instabilities with the problems I mentioned then try to phrase your concerns coherently.
As for “CO2=”climate instability””. I wouldn’t put it quite like that, but basically the evidence boils down to the following points:
1. There is a natural greenhouse effect that maintains the Earth’s surface at about 33C above what it would otherwise be.
2. CO2 is one of those natural greenhouse gases. This is shown by its ability to absorb infra-red radiation of particular wavelengths and by satellite observations of those wavelengths being absorbed.
3. Anthropogenic emissions of CO2 have increased atmospheric concentrations by over 38% since 1750 and CO2 levels are currently increasing at a rate about 60 times faster than at any time during the last more than 800,000 years (evidence from ice cores).
4. Numerous studies involving paleoclimatic data indicate that doubling of CO2 (from approximately present concentrations) eventually (after several decades) causes an increase in average global temperature of about 3C.
5. Increase in temperature is an important aspect of climate instability but in its wake causes other effects such as changes in rainfall distributions that cause disruptions to agricultural capacity. Such changes are already occurring (East Africa, Andes, Australia) and may be linked to AGW, though of course changes occur naturally also, so disentangling anthropogenic and natural causes is not easy.
But let me ask you one question myself. Is there some evidence that you think that we should be seeing already, if AGW is real, that we are not seeing? What “measurable, testable, real world evidence” can you provide that falsifies the proposition that AGW is occurring?
Though I’m afraid I may not have time to reply – I have other things to do. But I will try.
Brian Dodge (08:45:11) :
@ur momisugly Smokey (05:39:05) :
“Please provide even one solid piece of empirical evidence that CO2=”climate instability”. Just one. That’s all I ask.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok_420ky_4curves_insolation.jpg
When the sinusoidal forcing of the Milankovic cycle starts warming the oceans, they start releasing CO2 (feedback), which captures more IR (forcing), which increases temperature, which increases CO2, which Increases temperature…..
This instability causes the rapid rise at the end of the Ice ages, changing the sinusoidal Milankovic oscillations to astable multivibrator triangle waveforms of temperature and CO2. The lag is the time required for ThermoHaline Circulation to change the dissolved CO2 feedback into atmospheric CO2 forcing.
If as you say the CO2 is forcing the Temperature, please explain the rapid temperature decline after every rise, why did they all not continue to force ever higher temperatures and burn off the atmosphere?
Did we run out of CO2?
DirkH (05:56:58)
You are looking at the wrong graph if you want to see the trend over recent decades. Try this one for size:
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/total-icearea-from-1978-2007
(second graph down).
This also, about millennium scale temperature changes in the Arctic, might be of interest:
http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2009/arctic2k.jsp
It states, “Arctic temperatures in the 1990s reached their warmest level of any decade in at least 2,000 years, new research indicates. The study, which incorporates geologic records and computer simulations, provides new evidence that the Arctic would be cooling if not for greenhouse gas emissions that are overpowering natural climate patterns.”
A C Osborn (09:58:07) :
“If as you say the CO2 is forcing the Temperature, please explain the rapid temperature decline after every rise, why did they all not continue to force ever higher temperatures and burn off the atmosphere?
Did we run out of CO2?”
If you look at the CO2 concentrations from the Vostok core (or indeed Dome C that goes back 800,000 years) you will find that CO2 concentrations never exceeded 300ppmv (up from about 180ppmv) during all of that time. That is c.87ppmv below what they are at present. The increase in CO2 was enough to augment the Milankovitch warming but not enough to sustain it when the the orbital changes turned negative.
Brian Dodge (08:45:11),
I should have known Wikipedia would be used as if it were an unbiased resource. Here is a graph showing more relevant detail: click. Notice that the rise in CO2 follows the rise in temperature.
So now you can start over and try to find empirical evidence that CO2 causes AGW. Avoid Wikipedia unless you’re very, very desperate. And remember that empirical evidence excludes all model “evidence”, which is not evidence at all. Models are tools, like Jimmy Wales [don’t miss the links & comments].
@ur momisuglyA C Osborn (09:58:07) :
“…why did they all not continue to force ever higher temperatures and burn off the atmosphere?”
http://www.ccsm.ucar.edu/publications/jclim04/Papers/PWG1.pdf or
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=%22last+glacial+maximum%22+gcm+correlation+holocene&btnG=Search&as_sdt=2000&as_ylo=2004&as_vis=0
The temperature forcing with CO2 varies as the log of concentration. The thermal infrared radiation varies as the 4th power of temperature. The exposure of cold northern water as the sea ice cover retreats acts as a competing CO2 sink. The albedo feedback decreases as the perennial ice cover declines.
@ur momisugly Smokey (10:24:56) :
“Notice that the rise in CO2 follows the rise in temperature. ” That’s what I said – “The lag is the time required for ThermoHaline Circulation to change the dissolved CO2 feedback into atmospheric CO2 forcing.” When more CO2 is dissolved in the cold oceans at the peak of the glaciation, it is not a forcing. When the forcing of the Milankovic cycles come along, the temperature of the ocean starts to rise, and CO2 is emitted into the atmosphere, capturing more IR, and exaggerating the temperature rise. The CO2 rise lags the temperature rise because of the time required for THC to bring deep, cold, high CO2 to the surface where it warms and adds CO2 to the atmosphere; this additional atmospheric CO2 increases the rate of temperature rise, transforming the slow Milankovic variations into a “sawtooth” waveform. Your linked graph swaps the X axis(big deal) and shows the same data at the graph from wikipedia, but omits a plot of the slow Milankovic forcing. Some people call omitting data “cherrypicking”.
Slioch:
“Is there some evidence that you think that we should be seeing already, if AGW is real, that we are not seeing? What ‘measurable, testable, real world evidence’ can you provide that falsifies the proposition that AGW is occurring?”
First, scientific skeptics have nothing they must falsify. It is the burden of those pushing the CO2=AGW hypothesis to provide convincing evidence of the hypothesis’ validity. They have failed.
But since you asked, the Earth itself is falsifying the AGW hypothesis: as CO2 rises, the global temperature continues to decline: click.
By artificially ‘adjusting’ earlier temperatures downward, GISS [unlike the 3 others graphed here] pretends to show that the temperature is rising: click.
The most cooling has taken place since 2002: click1, click2.
And Lucia shows how wrong the IPCC’s numbers are: click.
Furthermore, the AGW hypothesis states that warming should first appear at the poles: click.
Also, your link to Arctic ice is obvious cherry-picking of one hemisphere while disregarding the other hemisphere because it negates your argument. What matters is global ice cover: click1, click2. Total global ice cover is increasing.
Finally, when measuring CO2 why go back only 800K years? Let’s look at some real geologic history: [click on the image to expand]. Notice that CO2 levels have been many thousands of ppmv, for over a hundred million years at a time, without causing runaway global warming. Life flourished. And the planet warmed and cooled, regardless of the high CO2 content.
Today’s CO2 level is one-tenth what is shown. There is no empirical [real world] evidence that CO2 will cause runaway global warming. As CO2 rises, the planet is falsifying the CO2=CAGW conjecture by cooling.
The scientific method is constantly avoided by the alarmist crowd. All raw and adjusted data, and all methodologies used to construct a hypothesis, must be provided openly, transparently and completely, so that other scientists can attempt to falsify the hypothesis. That is how scientific truth is learned.
But as we have seen time after time, the alarmist clique of climate scientists stonewalls all requests for information on data and methods. Why? Because if they provide that information, their hypothesis will be promptly falsified — just as Michael Mann’s hockey stick paper was falsified once the data was teased out by McIntyre and McKitrick. And Briffa’s claim that there was no MWP was destroyed by the revelation that his “evidence” came down to just one tree [YAD061]. These people make it up as they go along, to keep the grants flowing. There is no grant money in telling the world that the climate is behaving normally.
Finally, the burden is not on scientific skeptics to prove anything. The burden is on the purveyors of the new CO2=CAGW hypothesis to show that their hypothesis explains reality better than the long accepted theory of natural climate variability. They have failed, because their so-called “evidence” consists primarily of computer climate models, none of which were able to predict declining temperatures for most of the past decade, or even the severity of the last Northern Hemisphere winter.
The failed CO2=Catastrophic AGW conjecture is based on deliberately fabricated numbers, as the CRU emails show. The numbers were invented to show global warming because of a corrupting motive: many millions of dollars in annual grant money — which would stop flowing if the truth were widely known. That government grant money is abetted by millions more from leftist foundations and NGOs that have an AGW political agenda; honest science has nothing to do with their payola.
I have said it before in other forums, so I might as well say it here: anything for which the only proof offered is computer models of a chaotic dynamical system with unmodeled and potentially unknown in puts is, in fact, unproven.
It is hardly surprising that the predictions of the AGW-supporting computer models, which are the only supports for the anthropogenic causal theory, are being falsified by actual observations–from the lack of a hot-spot in the troposphere over the tropics to the recent general lack of warming if not outright cooling.
It is not a travesty that the ‘hockey team’ can’t explain the observations–it wasn’t a travesty that Newtonian physics couldn’t explain the precession of the orbit of Mercury–the real travesties are that they are rushing about inventing “gaseous Vulcans” to try to save a theory for which the original evidence was no evidence at all, but conclusions adduced from an apotheosis of SimEarth run on supercomputers, and that others are still advocating hobbling the world economy or worse on the basis of a flimsy scientific theory that is in the process of collapsing.
“Slioch (10:10:39) :
You are looking at the wrong graph if you want to see the trend over recent decades. Try this one for size:”
Thanks!
Smokey (11:38:48)
Very briefly:
You provide a number of graphs showing declining linear trends of global average temperatures since 2002. You apparently think these graphs are statistically significant: they are not. If you had bothered to look you could find similar downward linear trends elsewhere in the global temperature series of the last few decades at times when no-one disputes that global temperatures were rising.
For example, both HADCRUT3 and NASA GISS show a declining temperature “trend” over the period from 1990 to 1997, see:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1990/to:1997/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1990/to:1997/plot/gistemp/from:1990/to:1997/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1990/to:1997/trend
Tamino has recently examined the question: “how long a time span do we need to establish a trend in global temperature data?” using the NASA GISS series as an example. His conclusion: “we need at least 14 years of GISS data (from 1996 to the present) to draw a confident conclusion about the most recent trend.”
See:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/how-long/
In other words, your many graphs are statistically insignificant. You are reporting on noise and not signal, and it is the signal that is significant with respect to anthropogenic greenhouse gases. They give no information about whether the climate is behaving as expected with respect to anthropogenic greenhouse gases.
The following, slightly earlier article, discusses the question of Climate Observations Compared to (IPCC) Projections.
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/03/26/recent-climate-observations-compared-to-ipcc-projections/
February of 2008 the Gallup Organization polled members of the American Geophysical Union and American Meteorological Society, the two professional groups for climatologists. Only 17 percent said warming trends so far convinced them that an artificial greenhouse effect was in progress. According to http://www.versusview.com
Brian Dodge (11:34:12) :
@A C Osborn (09:58:07) :
“…why did they all not continue to force ever higher temperatures and burn off the atmosphere?”
http://www.ccsm.ucar.edu/publications/jclim04/Papers/PWG1.pdf or
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=%22last+glacial+maximum%22+gcm+correlation+holocene&btnG=Search&as_sdt=2000&as_ylo=2004&as_vis=0
The temperature forcing with CO2 varies as the log of concentration. The thermal infrared radiation varies as the 4th power of temperature. The exposure of cold northern water as the sea ice cover retreats acts as a competing CO2 sink. The albedo feedback decreases as the perennial ice cover declines.
So as you have so rightly proved, we don’t have anything to worry about even if CO2 keeps going up then!
A C Osborn (07:30:49)
If by “worry about” you mean that a slight increase in CO2 will not of itself cause a runaway temperature increase of the Earth’s surface until it reached a temperature equal to that of the surface of the sun, then no, of course we don’t need to worry. The above gives the basic reason why not.
But then, no-one with any sense has ever suggested that it would. No-one is suggesting that an increase in CO2 will ” force ever higher temperatures and burn off the atmosphere”. That is just a straw-man argument – you make an absurd suggestion, wrongly ascribe it to those you wish to discredit, and then demolish it. It is one of the more discreditable ways in which those who wish to deny the reality of AGW try to prop up their fallacious arguments.
Climatologists assess the likely effect of doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration (from the kind of levels experienced historically) as ‘climate sensitivity’. Most calculations arrive at a figure of about 3deg.C for a doubling of CO2, once various feedbacks have kicked in and short/medium term equilibrium has been re-established. That takes several decades. Some suggest that longer term feedbacks, such as changes to vegetation, which alters albedo, might increase that figure to as much as 6deg.C eventually. As stated above, no climatologist suggests that it would cause runaway temperature increase.
Wayne S (18:22:13) :
I am not arguing climate warming or cooling here. That will sort itself out over the next decade by the art of careful data gathering and interpretation, not by diatribe on a website like this.
A C Osborn (07:53:23) :
For art substitute creative adjustment of reality and interpretation substitute change it to show MMGW.
No, I think I’ll stand by my original statement. Not sure why you think your substitutions convey my thoughts.
DNY (18:33:42) :
“I have said it before in other forums, so I might as well say it here: anything for which the only proof offered is computer models of a chaotic dynamical system with unmodeled and potentially unknown in puts is, in fact, unproven. ”
Unproven? A model is not a proof. It’s a tool.
Are you denouncing the input data, the modeling algorithm, or models in general?
If you are denouncing the first two, are you making contributions to fix the problem(s) that you have perceived?
If you are denouncing the latter, you are trashing all of science, technology and some of philosophy since it’s beginnings. Mathematics itself is merely an abstraction tool that we use to quantify the observations we can measure. Science takes these observations, organizes them into mathematical models and attempts to predict behavior. Technology uses these models developed by science to create all the widgets that have brought us into the the modern age.
If you were to remove all the every day items that were derived by a model, there would be nothing left but a “Garden of Eden”.
If you set out to predict the future climate, the only tool you have is a model, unless you have some sort of communication link with a deity.
Or you can sit back or denounce and hope that every thing turns out OK. Your choice.