By Steven Goddard
As reported on WUWT, NOAA is warning of “earlier snowmelt and extended ice-free seasons.” But what NOAA isn’t saying is that snow is falling earlier and heavier in the Northern Hemisphere. Rutgers University Global Snow Lab has reported that January was the sixth snowiest on record, and that six out of the last eight Januaries were above normal snowfall.
January, 2008 saw the second greatest snow extent ever recorded. December was the third snowiest on record in the Northern Hemisphere and seventeen out of last twenty-one Decembers were above normal snowfall. November was above normal snowfall and fifteen out of the last nineteen Novembers have had above average snowfall. October was the sixth snowiest October on record and seven out of the last ten Octobers have had above average snowfall.
Source : Rutgers University Global Snow Lab
The data shows unequivocally that snow is coming earlier and heavier than it used to. Perhaps the snow season is shifting, rather than shortening? NOAA’s failure to mention this is negligent at best.
As far as their claim of “extended ice free seasons” goes, Roger Pielke Sr. has reported :
The finding in this data is that there is no clear evidence of a delay in the start of the later summer/early fall freeze up or [an earlier] start of the late winter/early spring melt despite the well below average areal sea ice coverage.
So why isn’t NOAA highlighting the other half of the story? Do readers have any ideas?
What NOAA Isn’t Saying About Snow and Ice
As reported on WUWT, NOAA is warning of “earlier snowmelt and extended ice-free seasons.” But what NOAA isn’t saying is that snow is falling earlier and heavier in the Northern Hemisphere. Rutgers University Global Snow Lab has reported that January was the sixth snowiest on record, and that six out of the last eight Januaries were above normal snowfall. January, 2008 saw the second greatest snow extent ever recorded. December was the third snowiest on record in the Northern Hemisphere and seventeen out of last twenty-one Decembers were above normal snowfall. November was above normal snowfall and fifteen out of the last nineteen Novembers have had above average snowfall. October was the sixth snowiest October on record and seven out of the last ten Octobers have had above average snowfall.
Source : Rutgers University Global Snow Lab
The data shows unequivocally that snow is coming earlier and heavier than it used to. Perhaps the snow season is shifting, rather than shortening? NOAA’s failure to mention this is negligent at best.
As far as their claim of “extended ice free seasons” goes, Roger Pielke Sr. has reported :
The finding in this data is that there is no clear evidence of a delay in the start of the later summer/early fall freeze up or [an earlier] start of the late winter/early spring melt despite the well below average areal sea ice coverage.
So why isn’t NOAA highlighting the other half of the story? Do readers have any ideas?
The Times (UK) yesterday http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article7018438.ece carried an article by the Principal of Jesus College(Oxford). One of the claims he made is –
“Nevertheless, over time, science is self-correcting because someone will have the courage to challenge the prevailing view and win the argument, provided he or she has sufficient evidence. ”
He took a bit of a hammering in the comments.
Today there was a response from someone slightly closer to the ground http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/letters/article7019709.ece in the Times’ letters page. I don’t think that that would have appeared even a month ago.
Why didn’t they mention the other half of the story? I can answer that in one character: $
@wolfwalker,
The y axis isn’t measuring absolute area. It is showing the annual deviations from the average area (for an extended period) which is why some of the numbers are negative.
RR Kampen (06:49:39) :
“…warming should imply more precipitation.”
Then how do you explain the increasing droughts and expanding deserts that are routinely claimed to be the result of AGW?
From my very unscientific observations I can tell you it’s getting colder sooner, at least here in SW Missouri. I participate in the MS Bike Ride every September here. What used to be a warm Summer-feeling ride, with occasional Summer rain showers, has become a very wet and cold Fall ride. 2005-2007 rides all have had me starting in 50-60 F weather. 2008 was just about the most miserable year I’ve ever ridden, with a start temperature of 48 F, then rain with temps never getting past 58 F. Smaller riders were quitting with hypothermia symptoms setting in. Like a fool I gutted out the 100 mile day, rest stops were kept to a minimum though so my core and muscles would keep warm. The next day’s rides have been equally wet and cold, with many getting canceled. I decided to skip last year’s ride. The report from friends who did ride was that it was a carbon copy of the previous five years, wet and cold.
Herman L (07:04:01) :
I love the Snowfall chart, top of the list for daily snowfall 1913.
ThinkingBeing (05:27:50) : Thanks for the linkies. I noticed in your sciencedaily link the sidebar had the stories about the decadal decline in water levels on the Great Lakes being used as exhibits of global warming effects. I’m just curious whether the recent rebound in water levels to within inches of the long term mean (see: http://www.lre.usace.army.mil/hh/GreatLakesWaterLevels/GLWL-CurrentMonth-Feet.pdf ) is an exhibit which discredits the earlier exhibits.
Maybe, just maybe, the Great Lakes undergo cycles of rising water levels and declining water levels due to climate, or even the hydrostatic rebounding of southern Lake Huron, offset to some extent by the dredging of the Huron Cut and the Seaway Channel at the south end of the St. Clair River.
But it’s just easier to blame the CO2, isn’t it?
To “ThinkingBeing”
Firstly, “thinkingbeing” is an arrogant name, as in ‘I am, and you are not, a thinking being…”
But secondly, your thinking has stopped short of full analysis. For example, you imply that the great snowfalls recently in the mid-atlantic states is an example of the counterintuitive effects of global warming (you use the weasal words “climate change”, but you clearly mean global warming, not global cooling), with the sno due to increased moisture in the air from warmer oceans, turning into snow because of high altitudes are cooler. However, the midatlantic states are flat, for the most part, and hence at low altitudes. The snow is due to shifts in the jet stream, ocean currents and oscillations, etc. There is no scientific basis for invoking global warming to explain this snow. Your comments reflect mindless religiosity, not a being who thinks.
KW
This website sucks as usual.
REPLY: OK that makes three of these identical comments. Since you have nothing of relevance to contribute, into the troll box you go.
Stephen Wilde (04:52:58) :
What you have outlined here appears to be a climate control mechanism !! a complete set of feedback balances.
DBates,
I spend a lot of time in Colorado and am a soccer player. Starting in 2007, the fall soccer season started getting slammed with cold, rain and snow, and last year was almost a complete white out. Remember the Rockies playoff game which got snowed out in early October? Soccer is fast becoming an indoor sport in Colorado because both spring and fall have become too cold.
One more:
Buck Smith, unlike ThinkingBeing, is a thinking being.
I too have wondered why there is not more discussion about the process of evaporating ocean water rising into the troposphere and condensing acting as a conveyor of heat energy into the atmsphere, from where the heat energy (in rising thermals) can be conveyed into the upper troposphere, from where a substantial portion can be radiated into space, being now above most of the GHG’s (which of course are water vapor far more than CO2). This would seem to be a powerful negative feedback mechanism for the temperature of the ocean/atmosphere system. Which global climate models include terms for this process and on what scientific basis do they quantify it?
KW
RR Kampen and ThinkingBeing just show that if your bias is strong enough you can find a justification for anything. This is not unusual but the calm way they present WAGs as if they were established fact is what sets me off. I could almost accept RR Kampens WAG on precipitation; warming should increse precipitation and plant water use efficiency. That would mean howeve,r rapidly shrinking deserts. If you want to use this argument in the future, please present it with evidence of shrinking deserts. The routine claims of increasing droughts and floods along with the warming causes cooling rubbish has crossed the line from proposing hypothesis into agenda promotion.
Claude Harvey (06:07:54) :
Claude, you came closest to the answer of the question of why. But you stopped short. The answer is money, but also competition. Obama has retasked NASA to advocate AGW, and NOAA competes with NASA for funds. So they have to “one up” NASA in the eyes of the Obama administration to maintain their funding levels.
Kwinkertkorn (08:20:23) —
You have part of it, but not all of it. Yes, warming will bring more water up into the upper troposphere, and heat with it. But water is a GHG itself, so the net effect is far more cooling than from CO2 alone (the amplifying effect, i.e. positive feedback, of water vapor). At the same time, the heat is radiated back down (as well as up, that’s basically the GHG effect), rewarming the surface. But most of the water vapor doesn’t rise all that high, so as a means of getting the air out into space… not so much.
Wondering Aloud (08:21:37) —
Why would warming universally produce increased precipitation? And why would you expect to see obviously detect such far reaching changes in a matter of decades?
The fact is, warming will cause droughts in some places (the already water starved southeast region of North America being one, and the dangerously-susceptible-to-drought Amazon being another). It may also cause increased precipitation in areas like the Sahara. But even then, the precipitation may not be year round. Many regions, like Southeast Asia, may see greatly increased monsoon seasons and a net increase in precipitation, but long drought-like conditions in other seasons which have a net desertification effect.
It’s all very hard to predict, but arguing that it hasn’t happened yet so it’s not true is foolish.
Wondering Aloud,
“I could almost accept RR Kampens WAG on precipitation; warming should increse precipitation and plant water use efficiency. That would mean howeve,r rapidly shrinking deserts.”
Stop wondering. Man made climate change causes reduced precipitation where precipitation is most needed, and increased precipitation where none is wanted.
Blaming droughts on global warming is typical cherry-picking alarmism. Droughts come and go no matter what the global temperatures are, and no matter what the CO2 levels are.
There have been claims that global warming would increase snowfall at higher elevations of Greenland and Antarctica, but the pattern seen here is increased snow cover at lower latitudes (i.e. further south.)
I doubt you will find a serious scientist anywhere who will attempt to blame that on global warming.
Pamela Gray (05:20:40) :
“Bush didn’t listen. Now Obama isn’t listening. Great. Just great.”
Pamela, I’d advise you to finally rid yourself of the Bush Derangement Pacifier, at least in regard to the War On Terror. The only thing Obama really had going for him coming in was the successful Bush policy in the WOT, and if he had any relevant practical brain power he would have known it.
But he doesn’t and is now undoing the Bush WOT policy, actually partly by using your argument: “Bush didn’t know what he was doing [in any way whatsoever].” Yes he did, as well proven compared to the previous policy on terrorism, which Obama is objectively and quickly regressing toward.
The main difference is that Obama lives totally in a narcissistic Fantasyland. He doesn’t listen to anything other than its “Maxisant”, latte’ Commie Dictates, including its oso “enlightened” tactics, supplemented, of course, by his own self-annointed ability to channel the Ideal, which makes him always perfect even when he is objectively failing. But I didn’t know he, along with his upper level Administration “Progressives”, was that uncynically stupid and instead thought he’d recognize a cynical propagandistic tactic for what it was, just that, only a tactic. But, no, he actually believes all that junk.
Speaking of which, Nasa, Noaa, and the EPA have gone off the rails so I just can’t wait for the CDC to start issuing AGW Disease Alerts.
A warming troposphere pushes the air circulation systems poleward and so allows a widening of the subtropical desert regions.
The additional convection in the tropics has to descend somewhere and it does so in the high pressure cells over the subtropical regions.
No need to worry though. The air circulation systems have been moving equatorward for the past ten years so the sub tropical deserts have narrowed and moved back equatorward to the positions adopted in the 1960s and early 1970s.
Adverse drought effects occur in regions near the margins of the natural latitudinal range of movement of the subtropical high pressure cells.
Droughts can also occur in the northern mid latitudes when the air circulation systems move equatorward because at such times the polar high pressure cells move equatorward over northern mid latitudes. If anything that is the scenario to look to in coming years if the present latitudinal positions persist.
ThinkingBeing (08:33:16) :, Vincent (08:38:06) : ,
It’s time to stop handwaving and start looking for verifiable predictions. For example, precipitation in the southwest is strongly affected by El Nino / La Nina conditions. El Nino is associated with a more southerly storm track, such as what we’re seeing this winter. AGW is supposedly associated with an increase in the number and magnitude of El Nino events. So shouldn’t AGW be associated with a decrease in drought conditions in the SW United States? Hasn’t the Sahara been shrinking in recent decades?
Throwaway lines such as “Man made climate change causes reduced precipitation where precipitation is most needed, and increased precipitation where none is wanted.” are great for politicians who are aiming for impact not truth, but are useless in a discussion such as this. Unfortunately, it makes you look like a troll or paid commercial advocate, not a seriously concerned citizen.
From Drudge:
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2010/02/08/noaa-blizzard-rearranges-climate-change-announcement/
Your tax dollars at work. Vote Republican in November. Maybe we can stop these idiots in their tracks. Take away their funding!
/Mr Lynn
Droughts? Never fear AGWers, half of the CO2 driven GCM Models predicted the greening Saraha:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090731-green-sahara.html
The other half didn’t.
Pamela Gray (05:20:40) :(I think you meant: primrose, not “prime rose”.)
Roger Knights (07:14:11) : To further both of your thoughts; I am probably more cynical, but it seems to me that those who would ‘save’ us from the surely catastrophic consequences of our actions, whatever they may be, tend to make us as miserable as possible first, that we might more easily succumb to their design.
I am not trying to be obtuse, rather more inclusive of the issues at hand. For example, creating a financial crisis to ‘save’ us from, allowing restructuring/eliminating the free market system, the financial system by gov’t takeover. The effort to get energy costs as high as possible is the only way to make ‘green’ solutions look viable, when there is no need for energy costs to be higher. The government has never handled/solved anything efficiently, why should one expect that now? If there is a real need, and money to be made, other than taxes and lobbyist incentives, a private individual will make it happen.