England Buried In Snow – image from The Times
According to the Rutgers University Global Snow Lab, last month had the second greatest December Northern Hemisphere snow cover since records were started in 1966. Snow extent was measured at 45.86 million sq. km, topped only by 1985 at 45.99 million sq. km. North America set a record December extent at 15.98 million sq. km, and the US also set a December record at 4.16 million sq. km.
Source: December Snow Cover from Rutgers University
Source: December Snow Anomalies from Rutgers University
This is not an isolated event for 2009, as can be seen in the graph below. Seventeen of the last twenty-one Decembers have had above normal snow cover.
Source: December Snow Cover Anomalies from Rutgers University
Nor is it an isolated trend for the month of December. January, 2008 was the second snowiest January on record, and six out of the last eight Januaries have had above normal snow.
Source: January Snow Cover Anomalies from Rutgers University
October, 2009 was the snowiest October on record in the US, and sixth snowiest in the Northern Hemisphere. Twelve of the last fifteen Octobers have had above normal snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere, similar to the pattern of the 1970s.
Source: October Snow Cover Anomalies from Rutgers University
A favorite mantra of the global warming community is that reduced snow cover will reduce the albedo of the earth and provide positive feedback to global warming – causing additional warming. Clearly that is not happening, at least not during the October through January time period.
2010 is also getting off to a fast start. Most of Europe and North America is covered with snow, as is much of Asia.
Daily Snow Cover from Rutgers University
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Looking at the October snow anomalies, you’d say that there was a definite sinusoidal pattern with full cycle of around 30 – 40 years.
Does the data go back further to confirm or refute that suggestion?
With the flip in 1977, you’d hazard a guess it was linked to PDO cycles??
Alvin (19:43:04) :
Do the Brits have snow tires?
No we don’t (over here they are Tyres).
When I was a lad in the sixties in Scotland we used to have winter tyres but of course that was when we were expecting an ice-age any minute.
Do you suppose that all this warm weather we are having has anything to do with the following?
source
I live in South Colorado (near the New Mexico border) since 1991, and this is the first year in my memory when the snow cover didn’t melt for a single day since November. Usually in our neck of the woods snow goes away after two or three sunny days. Not this year. Temperatures are consistently below 0C almost all the time. I feel like in Siberia (home sweet home); politically, too.
December temperatures are among the most volatile.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET2.htm
Here it can be seen that the volatility is poorly represented by moving averages (but useful to show general trend).
Summer / winter temperatures trend:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CETt.htm
More temperature records at
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/GandF.htm
Michael Jankowski (19:38:29) :
Can’t wait for the “extreme weather events are consistent with the theory of anthropogenic global warming” statement.
http://www.newssniffer.co.uk/articles/298120/diff/17/18
Mr Cameron said: “To be fair this is a very long and a very deep cold snap, so I think we have to be fair about that.
“But we are going to see more extreme weather events and we have to prepare for them better, and we probably do need to have larger stocks to make sure councils have larger stocks so they can cope with longer sessions.”
“Seventeen of the last twenty-one Decembers have had above normal snow cover”
A small comment about terminology – I think the use of the word “normal” in contexts such as these should be replaced with the word “average” , after all measurements such as snow cover, rain, temperatures, etc etc are generally never going to be “normal”, as they’ll either be higher or lower. It’s an average value it’s being compared with, else it’s normal to be abnormal!
Great blog, I love reading the posts. Keep up the good work.
At the risk of being 2ldr (too long didn’t read)
There are a few large factors “they” don’t consider in the models, (that were supposedly proven useless in the 50’s, before computers and peer review came around.)
The Moon drives the tides in the oceans (that they know) the Moon in it’s declinational (North to South) movement moves the atmosphere around and is the strongest driver of global weather patterns. (this is the problem with the models with handling time scales past 3 days to 20 years)
The answers can be found to both enhance short term, (3 days to monthly) forecasts and climate models out to about 15 years or more, by incorporating the periods of the Lunar declinational atmospheric tides and their resultant effects on the Rossby waves and Jet stream patterns, into the models.
I am offering here for your use, the process to fix these problems. If you look at the “forecast maps” generated by the aft mentioned process, you will see they did much better than the NOAA forecasts in the article above.
Notice also the large spring outbreak of tornadoes coming around the 22nd through 25th of march of 2010, is mentioned, hidden in the middle of this rather lengthy read, (maps of the days mentioned can be found posted on the site, updates under the national maps will be updated 2 months in advance to reflect areas of the states expected to be affected, by this outbreak of severe weather.
One of the problems with the current models is the reference time frame is very narrow for initial conditions, and changes with in the past three days, a lot of times, will introduce presistance of inertia, to the medial flows, for several days, consistent with the actual flows, as the Lunar declinational atmospheric tides, make their runs across the equator from one poleward culmination to another.
Then as the tide turns and we have the severe weather bursts at declinational culmination, they get confused, or surprised, as the initial inertial effects reverse for about four days before the sweep to the other pole, that brings back the smooth flows, the models understand.
So that when the Lunar declination went to Maximum North on December 3rd, turbulence and shear introduced into the atmosphere, from the turning tide, (the models do not know about), surprised them with the usual couple of tornadoes. Now (12-13-09) that we are ~20 degrees South Lunar declination, the models have a full buffer, of five days of linear inertial movement, from the Moon’s trip South across the equator (12-09-09) and is slowing it’s movement.
Coming up on the Southern extent culmination, producing a secondary tidal bulge in the Northern Hemisphere, bringing us to the mid point of a 27.32 day declinational cycle (one of the four routine patterns that cycle on an 109.3 day period). This particular one (#1) that started back on Dec 3rd, has incursions of polar air masses that come down from Western Canada, through Montana and the Dakotas, to make up the Northern part of the atmospheric tidal bulge.
So I would expect to see a large invasion of cold dry air sweep almost all the way to the Gulf coast again, then the produced frontal boundary with the interesting weather, that includes change state intense precipitation. Freezing rain, where the warm over runs cold, and snow where the cold undercuts the more sluggish warm air, still moving North East by inertia alone, severe weather to form in that trailing edge of the warm moist mass, that gets over taken from behind by the polar air mass that tries to follow the tidal bulge back to the equator, which for the next 4 of 5 days powers up the cyclonic patterns generated by carolis forces, and finishes out as the Moon approaches the equator again.
Expect the same type of interaction again for a primary bulge production by the passage back North, culminating on 12-30-09, pumping in a solid polar air mass very consistent with the pattern we had on 12-03-09, (the North “lunar declination culmination”)[LDC], then (#2) the next Rossby wave / jet stream regime pattern, comes back into play with much more zonal flow, and air masses invading from the Pacific, (of the two sub types of) phase with lesser amounts of Gulf moisture entrainment in this one, more in the other #4.
The (#3) third 27.32 day pattern with polar air masses invading in from the Minnesota / Great Lakes area and sweeping out through the Eastern sea board, and mostly zonal flow out west, from 01-27-10 till 02-23-10, comes next.
The fourth 27.32 day cycle, that looks very similar to #2 but with much more moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, usually has more hail and tornadoes associated with it than Pattern #4, and typically flows up Eastern side of tornado alley. Will be in effect from 02-23-10 through 03-22-10, and should produce the first big surge of severe tornado production, from about March 20th 2010, until about March 26 or later as the Next polar air mass cycle is coming out of western Canada, and should make for steep temperature gradients, and ion content differences.
Richard Holle
http://www.aerology.com/national.aspx
From a viewpoint of how the assemblage of parts seamlessly fits together,the only thing you have to do, is to watch the (short but seemingly) endless stream of (every 15 minute) infrared and/or vapor satellite photos animated, (after fixing the jumping around of the originals, due to lack of foresight, that they might be useful some day), and synchronized by 27.32 days periods, to see the repeating cycles.
To set up five tiled windows, in the first show day #1 through #27 sequentially, then as they continue on in the same stream, the cycle of the first 27 days continues anew in window #2, synchronized by Lunar declination to #1. Till they spill over into window #3 stepping in phase with the other two, #4 the same idea gives you the four basic patterns of the Rossby wave 109.3 day cycle, of global circulation, that then repeat but seasonally shifted.
In window #5 then would be the first repeat of window #1 in the same phase of the same pattern, and should look a lot like window #1. As the progression through the total series, proceeds, when you get 6558 days into the five stacks, a 6th window opens and the original day #1 in window #1 opens as #1 in window #6. As the series progresses on, real data can be viewed, in the real interactions going on.
This would give you a look into the cyclic pattern that develops from the repetitive interaction of the inner planets, and tidal effects, caused by the Lunar declination, phase, perigee/ apogee cycles.
By adding a sliding ball, vertically moving up and down a +-30 degree scale bar (referenced from the Equator), on the side of each tile space, that shows the plot of the current Lunar declination for the time of each frame. Which will allow you to see the shifts in the Lunar declinational angle’s effects, as the 18.6 Mn signal progresses.
By adding another slide bar of +-30 degrees (with the heliocentric synod conjunction with Earth, as the zero reference), at the top, of each tile you could view each outer planet as we pass them, as color coded discs labeled, J, S,U, N, shifting from left to right. From viewing this progression of the outer planets, the merit of their influences, can then be seen in the additional surges in ion flux as they go by. You can watch the changes in the normal background, of the global circulation driven by the moon and inner planets, affected by the outer planets.
By adding in the surface maps for the past historic temperatures, dew points, precipitation, types, and amounts, as overlays onto the IR/VAPOR photos, the patterns will be abundantly clear to 10 year old school kids. At the same time, generating a good long term forecast, set of analogs to base the models upon.
Once the amount of additional angular momentum, and the process of it’s coming and goings can be clearly seen, it can then be measured, it’s effects calculated, and incorporated into the climate models, as a real quantized feedback. thereby giving us a much better picture, of the interactions, of all of the parts of the puzzle.
All of the necessary data is in the archives, and free to use, to those that have the where with all, to assemble the real truth, be it inconvenient or not. I will probably spend the rest of my life, trying to do it alone, out of my own funds, as I have done so far.
If you bothered to read the above, you will understand that there are four patterns of global circulation that alternate, (as stated above) from ones of high zonal flow to ones of High medial flow.
This is why the weather patterns run warm during the high zonal flow patterns ( September and November 2009) then cold during the alternate months of October, and December2009.
The patterns induced by the Lunar declination run for 27.325 days at a cycle, as this is just short of a month the pattern slews into and out of phase with the “Monthly periods” so data stored “by Month” has problems with this slewed cyclic corruption. It would help if “they” used sets 27.325 days long to plot trends as they would see sets of clean alternating trends in resultant data sets.
“They” could filter for the long term cyclic patterns, to reduce the noise in the composite signal, to the point that low frequency patterns caused by solar cycle shifts in activity, could also be filtered out leaving the residual surges in solar wind flux caused by the outer planets influence. Then when that is found, and defined well enough to filter out.
What would be left should be the CO2 long term forcing, that will probably be very small, but conform well to the CO2ppm increases, in the atmosphere. THEN we would be able to decide rationally what if anything, needs to be done, about carbon foot prints, and suggestions for controls.
Richard Holle
Here is a nice article from the dailymail about a starting mini ice age.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1242011/DAVID-ROSE-The-mini-ice-age-starts-here.html
Regards
Dirk
But “it’s a warm snow!” … It must be. If we’re to belive the all time record burning up earth distroying warmth story, then we must have “warm snow” if we’re covered in the stuff.
Anyone know how to write a grant request? I’d like to get a grant to study “warm snow”. I fugure $2 million, 4 or 5 tops, ought to do it. I’ll start with Snow in the Mexican mountains (and I understand it even survives indoors in something called a “frozen Margareta” and then head off to Brazil, where I’ve heard they got “Southern Snow” last year. After that, maybe some Hawaiian Snow ( “Blended Pina Collada?”) and I’ve even heard stories of Snow in Africa. Now THAT has got to be something!
Finally, an in depth study of this odd phenomenon of snow on the Mediterranean coast of France for about a year, with a comparision study of the snow in northern Italy and the Swiss Alps as a control for another year.
After that, a slow careful search for warm snow via a series of stops ending in the south of Greece; where after a “few years” writing up my results, I’ll present them to the U.N. and collect my followup grant money 😉
Isn’t that how this all works? It’s what I see all the other guys doing…
Mark.R (00:00:57) : We had snow down to 1000metres here in canterbury new zealand last night in mid summer.
You got a summer this year? I’m so jellous ! /sarcoff >
Unfortunately, ” I’ve got a bad feeling about this “…
We’re watching a turn in a system that moves incredibly slowly and we bounced off the top in 1998 / 1999. We’re now into it 10 years of acceleration and the sun is not holding up it’s end of the cyclical bargain…
Even if things DID start to decelerate, we’ve still got a bunch of years of “run from the top” built up. Somehow I think this is only the beginning…
E.M.Smith (01:40:21)
I want to sign up. Can I cover the ‘special’ kind of snow that survives even in very warm temperatures in Colombia. A few hundred thousand should do it….
As (anti)cyclones move they cool/heat one area, leaving their source areas to experience the opposite. GLOBAL temperaturesare a different matter. The warmist environment columnist in the UK D Telegraph has correctly shown a world map of temperature differences (undated, but recent). This shows that north of the current snow falls the arctic is much warmer than usual.
If that data is freely available then WUWT should show it.
Alarmists are always talking about the loss of albedo involved, if the ice in the Arctic Sea is less. But what about the increase in albedo when a winter like this one occurs? Even in cases where snow cover only lasts a few days, during those few days a huge amount of solar radiation must be reflected into outer space. Calculations, anyone?
Another factor came to my mind via Dr. James Hansen, of all people. At some point, when pressured to explain the current lack of warming, he stated a lot of the atmosphere’s “available” heat becomes “latent” heat, when water changes from the solid state to the liquid state. His point was that heat was being gobbled up by the melting ice caps, glaciers, and so forth.
The problem is, this same process works in reverse. When liquid water becomes solid water, a lot of “latent” energy is released and becomes “available.” (The same occurs when gaseous water becomes liquid.)
Therefore the creation of this huge snow-cover should have released a lot of heat to the earth’s energy budget. The creation of all the snow should have created a slight up-tick in world temperatures. I couldn’t see any. However I imagine a lot of the freezing occurred way up in the upper reaches of blizzards, where the heat was easily lost to outer space.
In any case, the snow is now laying about. To melt it, “available” energy will get sucked up, becoming “latent.” This should create a slight down-tick in world temperatures.
We’ll see.
More and more I am seeing temperatures, as measured by thermometers, are only a partial measure of the larger and more fascinating energy-budget of a wonderful planet.
Off topic but there’s no comment box in Tips & Notes…
From the Times about the Met Office:
Climate change experts clash over sea-rise ‘apocalypse’
Climate science faces a new controversy after the Met Office denounced research from the Copenhagen summit which suggested that global warming could raise sea levels by 6ft by 2100.
Link: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6982299.ece
Jason Lowe, a leading Met Office climate researcher, said: “These predictions of a rise in sea level potentially exceeding 6ft have got a huge amount of attention, but we think such a big rise by 2100 is actually incredibly unlikely. The mathematical approach used to calculate the rise is simplistic and unsatisfactory.”
E.M.Smith (01:50:43) :
But “it’s a warm snow!” … It must be.
You should also, for purposes of your study of course, visit England where often there is ‘a wrong kind of snow’, which is hardly surprising since occasionally there is even ‘ a wrong kind of rain’.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/4434770/Snow-Britain-Wrong-kind-of-snow-strikes-again.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article821624.ece
Hi,
two remarks:
1- it should be noted that the IPCC atually knows about and recognizes the increased snow precipitations in NH high latitudes
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch3s3-3-2-3.html
2- let’s take a look again at the figures for 2009. The snow cover has been well below mean during the spring and summer months. This is the time of the year where insulation is the longest and thus the albedo effect is the most important. Moreover, the cummulative anomaly is largely negative, meaning that, on average, 2009 was well below average in terms of snow cover.
SandyInDerby (01:03:37) :
Winter tyres are a bargain, if you consider the alternative. A lost no claims bonus is just the starter. The risks of death or injuries are much greater in snow.
Two Federal Himalaya WS2 205/50 R16 87H tyres for my automatic front wheel drive Volvo V70 T5 cost me only £92-80 and are mounted on two inexpensive steel wheels. Selecting “winter mode” enables me to drive around High Wycombe (well named) and permit speeds up to 130 mph, where applicable. http://www.mytyres.co.uk/
I’ll refit the Eagle F1 summer tyres in April. The Federals should be good for 3 seasons.
Yes but the snow is rotten.
E.M.Smith,
The warm snow hypothesis could catch on: Scientists discover that CO2 raises melting point of snow. Warmer world will lead to more snowy disasters.
From the Daily Mail (UK) part of the MSM.
If this is the start of a long cooling period then I don’t see how AGW can survive the onslaught of mother nature (and WUWT). :o)
[Reply: I wonder if anyone told Mark Serreze? RT – mod]
John O (00:40:32) :
I live in Eastern Oz. The last month and a half has been summer. Apparently. It’s been the coldest wettest summer I can remember.
I fear an ice age is just around the corner and that will be much more dangerous then a warmer world.
Hi John,
I live in Melbourne. 44C today. Enough to freeze your nads right off.
And seven weeks of frigid summer to go.
Solar system is like an old longcase ‘grandfather clock’. There is a fine tuned mechanism driving an oscillating pendulum of the solar activity, geomagnetism, oceans’ oscillations and climate. No man can do much about it, but observe, take note and hopefully try to comprehend its magnitude and majesty !
“ShaneOfMelbourne (03:22:48) :
Hi John,
I live in Melbourne. 44C today. Enough to freeze your nads right off.
And seven weeks of frigid summer to go.”
But that isn’t unusual for Victoria…in summer.
“ShaneOfMelbourne (03:22:48) :
John O (00:40:32) :
I live in Eastern Oz. The last month and a half has been summer. Apparently. It’s been the coldest wettest summer I can remember.
I fear an ice age is just around the corner and that will be much more dangerous then a warmer world.”
It has been cooler in Sydney and the inner west, one indicator are flies. There are none! Just like last year, the coolness has killed them off. We will get a warm day tomorrow, the weather South Australia and Victoria had, but here’s my prediction, it’ll be cooler than the forecast (Just like the last warm bit of weather a few weeks back) and then it’ll be back to cooler again.
Interesting. Iceskating on the canals in Amsterdam. Lots of AGW there.
http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_anom.php?ui_set=1&ui_region=nhland&ui_month=6
…this data almost suggests that summers and winters are both becoming more extreme… thoughts?
This is the very type of thing in climate that causes the greatest pressures on agriculture. Untimely and extreme weather ruins yields.
And such times we have recorded in history and literature left as a warning signal to us. The warm times are the good and stable times, for the most part.
The cooling times are the worst of times and pose the greatest danger.
A lackadaisical sun, though it has happened before, is not a good sign, and it is neither here nor there that it doesn’t fit like a glove.