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?
John Freeland (13:22:23),
You addressed neither of my points. Instead, you went off on this tangent, as if there are not natural cycles in sea ice as in everything else:
“The Arctic sea ice ‘deficit’ is much larger than the Antarctic Sea ice ‘surplus.’ The current global sea ice anomaly is abut 1 million square kilometers below the 1979-2008 mean.”
However, just last winter the S.H. anomaly was ≈2 million sq km. Here’s the trend line: click. Global warming of a fraction of a degree could not have caused that large of a drop in global sea ice. Winds, perhaps?
So, I ask once again: why all the emphasis on the Arctic, while ignoring the opposite condition in the Antarctic? And, is CO2 the main cause of the Arctic ice loss?
John Freeland,
The Arctic Circle may be at 67N, but the “normal” boundary of sea ice is much further north than that in September. Much of the Arctic Sea is constrained by land closer to 80N.
Also, with the $billions being spread around, never discount the possibility of fudging the numbers: click [blink gif – takes a few seconds to load]
You can believe the “adjusted” Nansen chart. Or, you can believe the University of Bremen: click
Show us the millions of square kilometers of supposedly declining Arctic ice over those three years… if you can see it. I can’t; it looks to me like the ice cover is increasing.
@Steve Goddard: Yes, the boundary of sea ice may be farther north in September and it has been progressively farther north over the last 29 years. Note the differences in sea ice shown in this side-by-side image of September data from 1980 and 2009.
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=09&fd=01&fy=1980&sm=09&sd=01&sy=2009
@Smokey: Is CO2 the cause? I don’t know. I don’t know all the complexities of the global climate and how we interact with it through our human activities. I don’t think you do either. Given the stakes, though, I’m glad scientists are studying it.
Clearly there is only one “correct” interpretation to all that record snow fall:
“Record Snow Melt in Spring!” 😉
See, it’s just a matter of a tiny bit of spin…
@ThinkingBeing:
Water stays hot longer. As we cool, the air over land cools first. Now the giant ‘lava lamp’ that is the earth has hot wet air rising poleward for a few years until the oceans cool. The heat dumps out the poles to space, the cold air heads south. Along the way the hot and cold currents run into each other and we get LOADS of snow (also dumping lots of heat at altitude and out into space). Repeat for a decade or three before your ‘cold is less snow’ can have a chance to start. The whole ocean has to cool first, and that takes a loooong time.
BTW, we’re not warming. Take the unadjusted temperature data and then find the dT/dt and it’s barely enough to cover UHI in populated areas. Mostly empty areas are flat.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/dtdt-agw-ddt/
ThinkingBeing (09:24:44) : It looks to me that there are clear patterns emerging in the last twenty years
Well, that’s about 2/3 of a PDO 1/2 cycle or 1/3 of the whole thing. Now just factor in the 176-8 range solar oscillations and season with the 1500 year Bond Event cycle and maybe an observation or two of the 400-800 year range cycle and you can begin to allow for the known natural and cyclical variability that we are immersed in.
But building phantasy CO2 systems based on 20 years data? You are just asking to get creamed when one of those natural cycles turns…. Like, oh, when 1998 was a TOP and we’ve been down hill ever since. That PDO thingy… Made for a cold ’60s. Hot 90’s. Now cold until about 2030…
If you have not got that known cycle worked into your thinking, you are just making up stuff to feel good about yourself.
E.M. Smith — Your understanding of the science and the mechanisms is so week that it doesn’t even warrant a reply. Hit the books. Stop making stuff up that sounds good.
Oh, and if you don’t trust the ground stations, go visit Dr. Spencer’s satellite temperature observations here: http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/execute.csh?amsutemps+002
That’s 14,000 ft, which is Dr. Spencer’s recommended altitude for gauging global temperature anomalies.
The pretty green line is 2010. If you want, check all the boxes for all of the years, including 20 year record highs, hit redraw, and tell me what you see.
What are you guys going to do when the “temperatures are flat or falling” lie turns out to be indefensible?
E.M. Smith — And by the way, these record highs are happening during a solar minimum (“it’s the sun, of course”) and during a *weak* El Nino.
John,
Walt Meier at NSIDC has warned me about comparisons vs. the early 1980s, when Arctic ice was unusually extensive.
@Steve:
Fair enough. NSIDC uses median sea ice extent from 1979-2000 data as a baseline when comparing current measurements. Today, the anomoly is more than 2 standard deviations below that median.
I don’t know who Walt Meier is but here’s something else they say at the NSIDC:
“Arctic sea ice reflects sunlight, keeping the polar regions cool and moderating global climate. According to scientific measurements, Arctic sea ice has declined dramatically over at least the past thirty years, with the most extreme decline seen in the summer melt season. ”
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
John,
NSIDC records go back 30 years. This is what the US Weather Bureau Reported in 1922.
http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/050/mwr-050-11-0589a.pdf
Crippled by a blizard DC announced a new Global Warming Agency by phone!
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/02/crippled_by_blizzard_dc_announ.html
ThinkingBeing (21:04:04) :
“E.M. Smith — Your understanding of the science and the mechanisms is so week that it doesn’t even warrant a reply”
TB go to the blogroll go to E.M. Smiths blog and find out about him. Many if not most of the commentators here are professionals in the physical sciences.
We don’t always get it right but you aren’t going to convince us by parroting positions that change every 5 minutes and have already been disproven. Yes the original AGW theory predicts dramatic warming at the poles. This means dramatic decrease in available storm energy. Not to worry there is no evidence for dramatic, or even any warming, at the poles.
Baltimore’s three snowiest winters have all been since 1995.
http://instaweatherinsights.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/tt_snowiest_winters1.jpg?w=426&h=239
That does not sound like declining snowfall.
@Steve Goddard:
Pretty amazing, considering a negative temperature anomaly in 1922. Wonder what was going on in Antarctica.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A.lrg.gif
I downloaded the North American Rutgers data of monthly snow cover from 1967 to 2009, and normalized the data to the monthly averages and then calculated the deviations. (Normalizing the data supresses noise caused by small relative changes in larger absolute snowfall cover numbers – e.g, if I lose 8 kg, its only 10 percent of my body weight, but if a sick 32 kg child loses 8 kg, that’s a serious change). A plot is at http://www.imagenerd.com/uploads/sno_cover_anomaly-gZZqa.jpg
John Freeland,
Temperatures in Greenland (and most of the Arctic) were were warmer in the 1920s than they are today.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=431042500000&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
Brian Dodge,
I’m guessing that you aren’t located in Washington D.C.