From the “weather is not climate unless it supports global warming department”, Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. responds to the claim elevated by Joe Romm (and now picked up by Time Magazine) that the east coast snowstorms are indicators of global warming. While you ponder that, click to watch the DC blizzard in progress via the US Senate live stream:
Comment on Time Article “Another Snowstorm: What Happened to Global Warming?”
There is an article in Time magazine (h/t to Marc Morano for alerting us to it) by Bryan Walsh titled
Another Snowstorm: What Happened to Global Warming?
The article correctly writes
“….it’s a mistake to use any one storm — or even a season’s worth of storms — to disprove climate change (or to prove it)…”
and
“Weather is what will happen next weekend; climate is what will happen over the next decades and centuries. And while our ability to predict the former has become reasonably reliable, scientists are still a long way from being able to make accurate projections about the future of the global climate.”
However, the article contains misinformation. I briefly comment on two issues presented in the article.
1. It is written
“The 2009 U.S. Climate Impacts Report found that large-scale cold-weather storm systems have gradually tracked to the north in the U.S. over the past 50 years.”
The current set of snowstorms in the Middle Atlantic states this winter actually have become intense further south than average. New England is certainly accustomed to these nor’easters. In an earlier post (see figure top), illustrates that the jet stream (as represented by the lower tropospheric temperature anomalies) was well south of its average position across the northern hemisphere. It is the polar jet stream which is where winter storms develop and intensify.
2. It is written
“As global temperatures have risen, the winter ice cover over the Great Lakes has shrunk, which has led to even more moisture in the atmosphere and more snow in the already hard-hit Great Lakes region, according to a 2003 study in the Journal of Climate.”
A new paper in EOS titled Severe Ice Cover on Great Lakes During Winter 2008–2009 [subscription needed]
writes
“After a decade of little ice cover, from 1997–1998 to 2007–2008, the Great Lakes experienced extensive ice cover during the 2008–2009 winter. The area of Lake Superior covered by ice during the 2008–2009 winter reached 75,010 square kilometers on 2 March 2009, nearly twice the maximum average of nearly 40,000 square kilometers. By this time, Lake Superior was nearly completely ice covered, as were Lake Huron, Lake Erie, and Lake St. Clair, a small basin between Huron and Erie (Figure 1a). Even northern Lake Michigan experienced severe ice cover.”
These news articles would be more accurate (and effective) if the actual behavior of the climate system were presented.
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For those interested, here is a typical winter pattern when we have an El Nino – Anthony
Luboš Motl also weighs in on the issue of linking these snows here
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Pascvaks (10:25:14) :
“Joe Romm (and now picked up by Time Magazine) that the east coast snowstorms are indicators of global warming.”
I keep looking upstream from the East Coast, trying to find that massive tropical heat wave.
Anybody’s seen my global warming dragon?
I left him tied up in Vegas, but he seem’s to have gotten off again.
Here spot, here boy. Come and get some nice jalapeno pepperoni.
Brute @ur momisugly 10:22:18 says it’s the wind.
When just glancing at the “Live Stream of U.S. Capitol” nothing appears to be happening. Watch the darker areas with the background of trees and you can see the snow blowing sideways, from right to left. There is no accumulation of snow on the tree limbs as they shake violently at times.
[Opinion from Dec. 2009] RFK, Jr. 15 months ago: Global warming means no snow or cold in DC
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/RFK-79834057.html
RFK, Jr. 15 months ago: Global warming means no snow or cold in DC
East Coast Blizzards equals Man-made global warming.
Tough sell.
And if that’s what it’s come to…
They’re on the losing end of that card game.
Paddy (10:31:50) : “The AGWers and MSM have cleverly merged weather and climate into synonyms that are applied to fit whatever circumstances they choose. Proper definition and use of these terms is essential for refutation of AGW rhetoric.”
Right you are, and it is a neverending battle as those who seek to control do so through deliberately re-forming meaning constantly in our living language.
Words change meaning, and those in the vanguard of the deliberate change then use them to manipulate those who think they understand what’s being said to them–two groups (deliberately) miscommunicating because they are working with differing accepted definitions.
Who controls language controls quite a bit, unfortunately.
Claims that the cold and snow are due to excess heat are absurd. Heat does not produce cold.
My 12 year old asked last night – “if all this warm air is going to the Arctic and melting the ice, shouldn’t it be warm here too?” I thought it over for a minute and told him that it made perfect sense.
DC – Baltimore. 30+ inches on the ground with more falling and considerable drifting.
For folks in NJ, NYC, Long Island and SE New England….do not be deceived about the light rain and the lull this morning.
Already that has begun to change.
A wall of white, a blinding winter cyclone, is cranking up and headed your way.
This AM I went running in a surprisingly intense wraparound snowband that set up over our area, as the arctic front collapsed toward the coast on west-southwest gales.
Rapid, explosive cyclogenesis off the Delmarva coast right now…so do not be deceived about the lull points north.
Make no mistake about it…a white hurricane is headed your way….
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
ShrNfr (09:39:57) :
(…) I predict ice age hysteria in about 30 years.
Why wait that long? We can get ahead of the curve, start now, and avoid the rush.
We’re about 2000 years overdue for the next ice age, long-term cycles are heading towards cooling, and the Sun is not cooperating.
Therefore we clearly need more nuclear power, right now. When the long-term cold hits, we will need reliable power. And travel could become restricted, we don’t want coal plants shutting down because the supply trains can’t get through. Northern reserves of oil and gas could become unreachable and unusable, as pumps and pipelines get buried under snow and ice. If we have to hunker down for a very long time, an energy supply that requires the least amount of transportation to produce and maintain would be best, and that is nuclear.
So bring on the ice age hysteria, and get those nuke plants built! Go with the “precautionary principle” as well, if we do get warming instead, well then, wasn’t carbon-free power what was needed anyway? Do it!
Pascvaks
There was a day that if TIME had it between the covers you could pretty much figure it was so. The same could have been said about most of America’s top periodicals and newspapers.
—————————————
I’m sure around the world most people thought that their own major, serious news outlets at least reported the facts honestly even if one found their opinions of what those facts meant debatable.
However, I have to wonder now how much of that confidence was always misplaced.
If it hadn’t been for the internet most of us would have had no solid reason to doubt the “scientific consensus”. Even if we had a vague doubt we may not have realised that anyone else in the world felt the same and we certainly wouldn’t have benefited from the information and dissection by those with the skills to evaluate the information.
If it wasn’t for the internet most of the MSM would still be suppressing any hint of scepticism – how often in the past have they done so with major issues, scientific or otherwise, while we have been blissfully unaware?
This is not inconsistent. There were times in the past where it was very cold
and temperatures were rising! There is a tipping point.
http://tinyurl.com/ylnxxfd
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/09/chinese-climatologist-ipcc-reform
Pascvaks wrote:
“The same could have been said about most of America’s top periodicals and newspapers. Now we have propaganda rags in place of these once great sources of news pushing corporate agendas.”
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I grew up in the 1950’s and notice the same decline in reliability of print and broadcast media as you. I actually first started noticing this back in the late 60’s and early 70’s with the coverage of the Vietnam War. I’ve been a long-time listener of shortwave broadcasting (since I was ~10) and I’ve noticed the same on the radio dial. Everyone wants to push some agenda down your throat instead of just telling you what happened and letting you form your own opinions about it. It was a dark day indeed when I could no longer rely on VOA and BBC World Service to do what they used to do so well – just report the facts. What had been beacons of sanity had become no better than Radio Moscow or Radio Beijing.
But take heart pascvaks, there was a story floating around the net yesterday or the day before about Time’s circulation being down 9.1%. At that rate, they’re not long for this world.
To me, the role of the media in becoming shills for the AGW crowd verges on the criminal. Now that the AGW hypothesis is finally being exposed to the harsh light of reality, some media people and organisations are moving away from their previous positions, but the American press in particular, seen to have way too much invested in sticking with their AGW story, no matter how much it hurts them.
There are patterns of Natural Variability in the weather that have longer periods than younger people’s memory spans. I have put together a natural analog weather forecast using these sorts of patterns, that shows the repeating patterns are usable as a forecast.
Quite simply the last three times ~18 years apart we had this same type of weather shows up again this time. To look at Maps of the past weather, that work for forecasting the future, (Today even);
http://www.aerology.com/national.aspx
weather is how the natural variability is unfolding in this cycle, climate is the patterns generated over many compounding interacting cycles, of different lengths. To solve the weather or climate forecasting problem, all you have to do is demodulate the compound signal, into it’s separate component parts then, recombine the known parts to generate the on going pattern.
The more segments of the nonrandom cyclic components you can define and consider the more accurate the forecast. Obviously more cyclic components are yet to be identified and added to the methods that mainstream meteorological models are using.
Maybe the colder weather is the result of negative feedbacks from the recent warming (more evaporation, etc). Thus the positive feedback mechanisms may not be as significant as the IPCC have predicted.
This climatic balancing act probably happens as long as there is no other natural event affecting the system (eg volcanoes. rotation, etc).
Traditionally, March has some very bad blizzards as well.
Given the strength of the current and last Arctic Oscillations, we could see one in March and one in April this year if the AO keeps up.
Pop your popcorn and stock up!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Storm_of_the_Century
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Blizzard_of_1888
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1955&dat=19820406&id=X_wxAAAAIBAJ&sjid=YuQFAAAAIBAJ&pg=2220,3459100
The only way that I find it useful to think about short term weather and long term climate together, is to use yearly and decadal temperature trends as a way to calibrate results of climate models. You can’t say a climate model has any relevance until it is well calibrated against reality (that is merely necessary, but not sufficient, to have any trust in climate models).
Romm is misguieded. He begs how can the message be changed so people will believe in warming to a greater extent. Well truth will help people believe it is cooling. George Soros has deep pockets and Romm will support the eco agenda.
He is paid to.
From the article:
“Weather is what will happen next weekend; climate is what will happen over the next decades and centuries. ”
I disagree. Weather is what will happen next weekend, next month, and for the rest of the year. But if the same “weather” happens for 3 or 5 or 10 years, then it’s climate.
What will happen in decades is still climate, but the probability is that it won’t be the same “climate” as “now”. What will happen in centuries is also climate, but the probability is that it won’t be the same “climate” as the intervening “decades.
Now THAT’S funny…
I can watch the snow scenes in Washington, New York and Philadelphia on Fox news.
Or I can look out the window here in Normandy, France and watch the snow scene. We have our own Nor’easter going too, 28 degrees and heavy snow falling. Six inches forecast…
wws (09:30:27) :
What must be driving Romm crazy is that even Dem senators now admit that Climate Change legislation is dead this session. They’re blaming it on the snowstorm, but as we know it was dead long before this
Not for a good lawyer. The devil’s counselor would say. See:
1.Snow it is made of water.
2.Water evaporates because of warming.
3.It’s global warming/climate change!
4.We must pass the Cap&Trade legislation urgently!
@ur momisugly Luc VC (10:44:37)
Your information on the Dutch team is very interesting, it would be nice to see this information on other delegations, I have taken the liberty of quoting your comment on another site ,hope this is OK 🙂
Steve Goddard (10:57:21) :
Like a hot knife through the buttery logic.
Art Linkletter loved to get kids to talk.
Yes, if all that tropical searing-hot global warming air is headed to the Arctic to melt it, it should be 75 degrees shirt-sleeve weather in DC right now. The snow plow drivers would be sipping mai-tais at the pool, not pulled over in their plows in a sea of white slush.
When a meteorologist can’t take it any more:
Snowpocalyse now.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mCmNZkD2rQ&hl=en_US&fs=1&]
Scence we’d like to see: Forecasting in a MAD Magazine Jugular Vein.
Anthony, can you add a laugh track for these type posts? It would spruce up the place and not leave a lot on the ground.
Now if it were 100 degrees wouldn’t that be proof of global warming, of course supported by the fraudulent hockey stick.
Weather isn’t climate but neither is atmospheric CO2.