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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Seville in Spain gets its first snow in 50 years!
photon without a Higgs (05:40:34) :
“yonason (05:04:31) :
Thanks for the link. I burst out laughing! She actually said it!”
Did you happen to notice, she’s also a “Pulitzer Prize” winner.
“Political commentary from Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Cynthia Tucker of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.”
Must be giving them thar “Pullet Surprise”things out in cracker jacks boxes now, along with the Nobels.
(Heh, and that video is all about a hen-rustling critter that looks like Pachauri. How apropos!)
Very strange wheather. -30 degrees C in southern parts of Norway. +8 degrees C in Northern part.
The reason of course is the High pressure over southern parts is rotating clockwise, bringing Golf Stream air in over northern part.
“tallbloke (05:49:34) :
Patrick Davis (05:23:42) :
The original “Citroen 2CV” concept had very different design parameters to the Smart car. The Smart car would fail those parameters.
Eh alors! Il marche bien le deux chevaux. C’est le meilleur pour portez les peasants tous les temps! Construire avec les boites de sardine, avec un moteur gagne pendent le grand guerre deuxieme d’un motobicyclette Allemande.”
Indeed, peasants and chook eggs over ploughed fields, unbroken, to boot. Very light, stuff can be pulled off if, very complaiant, long travel, suspension, thin wheels and tyres. Not sure a Smart car can do all that. Ok so the Smart car is made from recycled plastic, which betters the 2CV’s recycled marzipan.
Oh Boy, Ms Tucker took a pasting.
http://blogs.ajc.com/cynthia-tucker/2010/01/08/despite-severe-cold-the-planet-is-still-warming/?cxntfid=blogs_cynthia_tucker
UPDATE: yesteday my sister, living in down town Berkhamstead, broke her wrist thanks to the 18 inches of global warming they have there. Silly cow.Should have hybernated till June.
Ian
Canberra
40C
rob m (19:41:01) :
Isn’t there an increase of precipitation when CO2 rises? (ie. Global Warming)
One doesn’t necessarily follow from the other.
That is, rise in CO2 does not necessarily imply global warming.
The very modest increase in global temperature predicted for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 is about one degree Celsius. This extra energy is available to evaporate more water. But think about the evaporation cycle. When water evaporates it takes latent heat from the surface which results in a cooling of that surface. The water vapor raises to the cloud tops where it condenses out to form clouds. Condensing water vapor releases latent energy which now being above most of the atmosphere (and above almost all of the water vapor which is the dominate greenhouse gas) is largely radiated back out into space as outgoing longwave radiation (OLR).
The AGW crowd would have you believe that the atmosphere retains that moisture, that is that the relative humidity will stay constant instead of raining out to keep the global greenhouse factor constant as required by the energy minimum principle. What warrant do they have to make that claim?
We have no where near doubled the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere. The natural variability in year-to-year rain/snow patterns is so great that it would be next to impossible to isolate any increase in participation due to increased CO2 out of the data. But, then again, I haven’t tried to do so either.
Mike Ramsey
@Ralph (04:17:41) :
>>Looks like the UK has a lot of snow. What does that do
>>to wind turbines? Blade unbalance, anyone?
“The worst problem is ice-shedding, which can be quite dangerous. If you get rime ice or snow build up on the blades, which can happen as they are rotating, it can and will get flung off in very large lumps onto the ground below – perhaps 100m or more away from the turbine.”
There may be a worse problem. Especially if you don’t live near them (But still have to pay for them, naturally!).
That is the fact that the birdshredders often don’t work when you need them most. No wind!
So far during this cold snap the electricity generated by the 2,300 UK wind turbines has amounted to less than 0.5% of the total energy needs. Coal fired stations are having to go at full capacity to keep the lights on. And thanks to the EU Large Combustion Plant Directive, that means they will have to be decommissioned sooner than the nominal 2015 cut off date.
Exactly the same thing happened during the January 2009 freeze up.
And the Government’s response?
http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/news/pn10_004/pn10_004.aspx
Why, only another £100 Billion!
And interestingly, guess where all the extra “Green Jobs” claimed might me:-
http://www.thelocal.de/sci-tech/20100109-24461.html
Quite ironic that one of the items on my science department agenda is LowCarbonDay 🙂 Encouraging all schools and school children to reduce their carbon footprint. Thats ok if it is aimed at reducing pollution, but it is yet another fear factor device. It si all about Global Warming and Clmiate Change…. On the days when most state schools are snowed in and not open!! Who says God does not have an ironic sense of humour? Looks like an opportunity for me to dispay lots of graphs from wattsupwiththat.com 🙂
I found it interesting that in the last week with this cold weather throughout the northern hemisphere, the concept of natural variability was discovered. So what is natural variability? It is so simple that even a 68 year old fart with a spreadsheet can do it. All you have to know is the equation of a straight line, how to use the SLOPE, INTERCEPT & STDEV functions and how to plot the data in Microsoft Excel. I go into details on how to do it on my web site:
http://www.socratesparadox.com.
Now that natural variability is out in the open, it is interesting to note that all of the years, from 1880 to 2008 fall within plus or minus 3 standard deviations. The plus or minus 3 standard deviations is frequently used to define the limits of natural variability. In a normal distribution, 1 out of 370 data points would fall outside these bounds. By contrast, the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) quality control procedure simply flags data points with a variance greater than 3 standard deviations and rejects those greater than 5 standard deviations. That would mean only 1 out of 1 million data points would be rejected. Their procedure is defined at:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/ghcn-monthly/images/ghcn_temp_qc.pdf
Mike Ramsey (06:35:23) :
Also, those clouds increase the albedo. Instead of reaching the earth to warm it, an increased fraction of sunlight is reflected back out to space, thereby further cooling the earth.
manfredkintop (21:12:45) :
Clive (20:46:42)
Next, we’ll be told that Chinooks are a result of AGW!!! Loving this warm ‘weather’ now!
Some one let the kids that struggled in physics class like Joe Romm know that the snow will melt from south winds and sunshine. It is not CO2 that will melt the snow. The laws of physics have not changed from the blizzards in the early part of the century.
Ask a global warming apologist how blizzards were caused 100 years ago. Then what changed?
Oh, that damaging snow! I like this post by Maurizio Morabito:
http://omniclimate.wordpress.com/2009/12/24/be-good-at-christmas-help-save-the-agwer
Be Good At Christmas – Help Save The AGWer.
If the consensus disappears then it will be game over for the AGWer.
Act now. Adopt now. Adopt an AGWer. With your continual support we can do more to help the AGWer in its struggle for survival.
ADOPT your AGWer HERE
Order now.
Et cetera…
Martin Brumby (06:47:51) :
“And interestingly, guess where all the extra “Green Jobs” claimed might [be]:-
http://www.thelocal.de/sci-tech/20100109-24461.html “
The article says, “Dogger Bank will cover 8,600 square kilometres of the North Sea…”
That wouldn’t be the “Artful Dogger” Bank. would it? “Hey, govner, wanna buy a windfarm? Maybe a slightly used bridge over the udson rivah?”
Ref- Frank (19:34:45) :
“What are the predicted effects of AGW? Is it colder and more snow? Or warmer and wetter? Hmm…”
___________
Absolutely!
Ref- Michael Jankowski (19:38:29) :
“Can’t wait for the “extreme weather events are consistent with the theory of anthropogenic global warming” statement.”
____________
They’ve included your comment in today’s press release.
Ref- rob m (19:41:01) :
“Isn’t there an increase of precipitation when CO2 rises? (ie. Global Warming)”
____________
Yes! You’re 150% correctamundo!
Isn’t it wonderful how AGW explains everything? Who needs proof? They say, “The devil is in the details” so they’ve done away with all the silly details. This is revolution without friction. This is “science” at it’s finest hour. Never have so many owed so much to so few. Never have so many been so dupped by so few. Humans have got to be the dumbest species on the planet. No wonder we’re here by ourselves in this issolated part of the universe. Someone must have known this day would come. Look what happened when there were just two of us in a garden of edan, sure enough, we blew it right from the getgo. If you think the 21st Century is going to be more peaceful than the 20th, you’re not paying attention folks.
yonason (07:12:42) :
Mike Ramsey (06:35:23) :
Also, those clouds increase the albedo. Instead of reaching the earth to warm it, an increased fraction of sunlight is reflected back out to space, thereby further cooling the earth.
Yes, you are correct. This is the negative feedback mechanism that Dr. Spencer has been working to elucidate.
One other thought for the AGW crowd; if the relative humidity stays constant as the temperature goes up, what is keeping it from being 100% over the oceans in the tropics right now. 🙂
Mike Ramsey
David Rose has an excellent long article in the UK Daily Mail.
“The mini Ice Age Starts Here”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1242011/DAVID-ROSE-The-mini-ice-age-starts-here.html#
Does not “talk down” to his readers and goes into some technical details in depth.
The work of Prof Latif and the other scientists refutes that view.
On the one hand, it is true that the current freeze is the product of the ‘Arctic oscillation’ – a weather pattern that sees the development of huge ‘blocking’ areas of high pressure in northern latitudes, driving polar winds far to the south.
Meteorologists say that this is at its strongest for at least 60 years.
As a result, the jetstream – the high-altitude wind that circles the globe from west to east and normally pushes a series of wet but mild Atlantic lows across Britain – is currently running not over the English Channel but the Strait of Gibraltar.”
The Daily Mail claims that it has the second largest UK readership with 8.5 million adults per week.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1242011/DAVID-ROSE-The-mini-ice-age-starts-here.html##ixzz0cJl40aOC
yonason (06:13:36) :
Cynthia Tucker of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Atlanta was covered in ice for days. Her viewpoint may not be selling well.
For readers outside the USA, Atlanta is in the deep south where cities don’t get ice covered for days.
The original “Citroen 2CV” concept had very different design parameters to the Smart car. The Smart car would fail those parameters.
Exactly, every today car would fail those parameters. Every part of the 2CV is thus constructed that it is as simple as possible, yet giving maximal functionality. The result is that it can be maintained by every handy person forever. Only a good rust treatment is needed after factory. The concept gives the most economic ride with the fewest use of resources but would turn manufacturers bankrupt in the end. Happily for them most of us are addicted to status.
“Climategate” notwithstanding,”;
“”Even if we’re warming, it doesn’t cancel the cold.”
“the planet continues to toast subtly”.
AGW: Gore Al’s Weather, aka Al Gore’s Weather.
…-
“This is global warming?
As teeth chatter, experts say, it’s exceptions proving the rule.”
“So what happened to global warming?
“Climategate” notwithstanding, the data suggest that the planet continues to toast subtly – but on the order of tenths of degrees, hardly enough to snuff out winter as we know it, said Gadomski. “No human being on earth experiences the global average temperature,” he said. “Even if we’re warming, it doesn’t cancel the cold.”
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/health_science/daily/20100110_This_is_global_warming_.html
OT I know but http://www.authonomy.com a very good website for aspiring authors backed by Harper Collins, is looking for short stories and fairytales, about global warming in conjunction with Act On Co2. To inspire people, they have the infamous global warming add from the UK.
All entries will be readable on Authonomy.
Could I suggest that GP Polar Bear goes to Washington is posted,
Submit here http://ad-emea.doubleclick.net/clk;220263951;43795207;g
View some of the entries here
http://www.authonomy.com/ReadBook.aspx?bookid=14926&chapterid=148297#chapter
40 Shades
Wow! Looks like a new Ice Age!. See, those little pebbles falling from the sky, those “cosmic rays”, which BTW still at high levels:
http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/webform/query.cgi?startdate=1964/12/11&starttime=00:00&enddate=2010/01/11&endtime=19:12&resolution=Automatic choice&picture=on
As being healthy and young proton males like to couple (as nature commands, in no way those self sex marriages being made at CERN) with beautiful electro femaless out there, to make up H-OH (clouds) which will make for mostly covered skies during next autumn and summer over most places..(wherever weather allows it).
Mike Ramsey,
You might also be interested in Wentz’s paper in Science. there was a significant increase in precipitation observed with the warming, presumably including snow. However none of the AR4 models reproduced more than half of this increase in negative feedback. Additionally, there was an earlier spring snow melt associated with the warming, especially in the 90s. Andreas Roesch reported that this positive surface albedo feedback was under represented in all the AR4 models. Perhaps the models were able to “match” the 20th century climate without heat from the under representing of the increased spring snow melt, by using heat from under representing of the precipitation increase. No wonder the IPCC WG1 authors were so confident in their model projections. It is nifty in nonlinear dynamic simulations when correlated errors can still cancel out. Hmmm, but in their simulations of “future” CO2 scenerios the models catch up with the spring snow melts adding extra heat to the systems, is precipitation going to catch up to? Perhaps the model CO2 doubling sensitivities are a bit exaggerated?
photon without a Higgs (05:40:34) :
Here’s another one for the loony bin.
http://hotairpundit.blogspot.com/2010/01/robert-gibbs-worldwide-record-cold-is.html
These people are either pathological liars, or the biggest #$%& fools on the planet. And the scariest part is they are in positions of either power or influence. I’m not sure which is worse, the weather or the politicians and the reporters who love them. (talk about a run away feedback loop.)