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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With the comments about the transition from ‘weather’ to ‘climate’ one needs to remember…the Climate Prediction Center starts their climate forecasts period 2 weeks into the future.
There is the short-term climate, medium-term climate & long-term climate. However, it is all averaged weather.
Climate *is* weather…averaged.
Regards,
Jeff
Climate Progress has a piece denigrating Andy Revkin for daring to challenge, ask questions about AGW orthodoxy. Also, another funny piece about Anthony Watts’ conflict of interest for selling weather stations. I wrote this. It disappeared from the “moderated” pile to the wastebasket in minutes. Having written it, thought it might amuse your readers. ….Lady in Red
“I dunna know, folk! This isn’t hanging together for me, and I’m not even a scientist.
But what I “see” as a reader is hysterical AGW screaming. There is no “science” that is allowed challenging AGW. It’s all lockstep: more warming, more warming.
I watched an interview on the BBC with the head of the British Met Office which missed predicting the awful snow storms there at the end of December. He hemmed about that mistake, admitted, sadly, that seasonal weather predictions were much much tougher to do than anything else — and the Met Office was working on that. Finally, he explained, beaming, that what the Met Office did really perfectly was predict long term climate change. Is that funny? From the people who can’t get the weather right next week, or the seasons, we’re supposed to believe their long term climate models? Why?
The folk on the “other side of the aisle” – those who contend we’re not warming at all; those who contend we may be warming, but we can’t affect it significantly; those who contend warming ain’t all bad – there seems to be a consistent impartial (attempt, anyway…) to examine facts and data. They “call” the AGW group the AGW group.
You, on the “other side,” don’t communicate with scientific dispassion. There is a kind of hysteria over here. Anyone who asks a question is an “anti-science denier.” Is that nice? Poor Andy Revkin writes a thoughtful piece, and I’m imagining one of you putting a bomb in his mailbox! Never read Revkin again! No! Cover my ears, close my eyes and scream lalalalala until he disappears!
And, you’re the “science side” of this argument? It is unattractive, at the least.
I was also amused by your charge of Anthony Watts’ conflict of interest because he sells weather stations! Say what? The money that is flowing into the AGW community is awesome. Is there anyone in the US who has gotten any NSF grant in the last half dozen years challenging or checking any AGW hypothesis? Maybe one? Smile…. For balance…?
I would like to read a more nuanced blog here, without the damning snipes at Revkin, the revulsion at Watts, etc. Hell, I like Jeff Id at NoConsenses.com, too. He has an interesting piece, today, about the assumptions which must be confirmed in order to “play” in the IPCC funding game. I dunno. It was thoughtful, which is more than I’m seeing on this side of the church.
PS: And why I ask myself is it necessary for you and DeepClimate and Real Climate to moderate comments? Don’t you want an honest exchange of ideas? And ClimateAudit, NoConsenses and WattsUpWithThat do not. (Steve McIntyre snips rants sometimes, once in a blue moon, to maintain quality of tone, or off-topic stuff, but that’s all.) Why is the “science side” so fascistic about controlling ideas, thoughts?”
To J. Hansford,
Summer in north Queensland sounds delightful. I have just finished shoveling the driveway and sidewalks clear of approximately 17 inches of snow here south of Baltimore, Maryland. While my muscles are sore, I console myself with the thought that every such winter storm increases the probability that the atrophied brains of our dinosaur-like U.S.A. politicians will awaken to the wild exaggeration of the effects of man-made CO2.
Romm is saying Permanent dust bowls. Not rare, not cycles but permanent
http://climateprogress.org/2009/01/26/noaa-climate-change-irreversible-1000-years-drought-dust-bowls/
When he jumps on the band wagon and claims wet and extreme weather events were predicted by his model, It looks like he is flip flopping and thinks no one reads.