Guest post by Steven Goddard
As we have been discussing on WUWT, three of the last four months have seen top ten Northern Hemisphere snow extents and the decadal trend has been towards increasing (and above normal) snow extent during the autumn and winter. It appears that this month will achieve snow extent among the top two Februaries on record.
As you can see in the Rutgers University maps below for mid-February, the excess snow cover is necessarily found at lower latitudes. Snow cover radiates out from the pole, so the only place where snow extent can increase is towards the south.
The implication of the observed trend towards increasing snow extent is that the Northern Hemisphere autumn/winter snow line is moving southwards over the last ten to twenty years.
Daily Departure – February 13, 2010 (Day 44)
Source : Rutgers University Global Climate Lab
Daily Snow – February 13, 2010 (Day 44)
Source : Rutgers University Global Climate Lab
We see southern snow cover this year in places like Greece, Northern China, and Alabama that are not normally covered with snow in mid-February. The map below shows the “normal” snow extent measured since 1966.
Daily Climatology – February 13 (Day 44)
Source : Rutgers University Global Climate Lab
Some people have been claiming that the anomalous snow this winter is due to warming temperatures. The New York Times reports on the record snow :
Most climate scientists respond that the ferocious storms are consistent with forecasts that a heating planet will produce more frequent and more intense weather events.
It doesn’t make a lot of sense that warming temperatures would cause the snow line to move south. Lower latitudes normally receive rain rather than snow, because the air is already too warm for snow. Further warming would be expected to move the snow line north – not south – and that is exactly what the climate models predict. Indeed, Time Magazine claims that this has already happened: “large-scale cold-weather storm systems have gradually tracked to the north in the U.S. over the past 50 years.”
As far as snow depth goes, Washington D.C. recently broke their 1899 snow record of 54.4 inches and now has a new record of 54.9 inches. We are told that the new record is due to “extreme weather” caused by “global warming.” If so, what caused the nearly identical “extreme weather” over a century ago? Alarmists tell us that heavy snow used to be caused by cold, but now is caused by warmth. The 1899 record was set long before the hockey stick brought temperatures to “unprecedented levels.”
Now lets take their poor logic one step further. Ice ages occur when the snow line moves very far south. If “most climate scientists” are claiming that global warming is causing the snow line to move south, then the logical corollary is that ice ages are caused by further warming temperatures. Clearly that is not true.
Wikipedia map of the last ice age
Furthermore, Hansen correctly tells us that as the snow line moves south, the earth’s albedo increases causing further cooling.
The sensible theory is that the snow line moves south when the climate is cold, and north when the climate is warm. And the record snow we are seeing this winter is due to cold, not warm temperatures.
Today’s NBA All-Star game in Dallas is covered with snow. Last time I checked, Texas was in the South.
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As glaciers expand, will sealevels drop, thus providing more land for we Northerners to move South too? I am making friends in Venezuela, so we might have a warm place to go (once they chuck Chavez into the dumpster.)
Has Al Gore been dug out of the snow yet?
THE TROUBLE is that people have been so focused on proving or disproving warming that as a whole they are largely COMPLETELY UNPREPARED for a very severe prolonged COOLING TREND. Google “The Year Summer Never Came”. Late 1700s, I think, During the lifetime of the author of Frankenstein, who documented this as well. It was like a plague. It became very very cold. Millions died, in Europe and in North America, and there were vast crop failures. Are we wasting valuable time now?
[REPLY – 1816. Eighteen-hundred-and-froze-to-death. The Tambora eruption (inter alia). ~ Evan]
Rotten snow!!!
Well, every religion must have it`s miracles!
That albedo thing can be a real problem for calculating radiative equilibrium.
It snowed in Rome over the weekend, the first time in a generation?
Sorry that’s weather not climate?
OT: Anthony gets yet another front page citation, this time from Telegraph Online
on poorly sited temp stations
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7236011/UN-global-warming-data-skewed-by-heat-from-planes-and-buildings.html
As far as snow depth goes, Washington D.C. recently broke their 1899 snow record of 54.4 inches and now has a new record of 54.9 inches. We are told that the new record is due to “extreme weather” caused by “global warming.” If so, what caused the nearly identical “extreme weather” over a century ago?
=================================================
Important question.
Watch OUT! Soon the glaciers will start growing again and it’ll be panic stations, they’ll be engulfing towns.
I would have thought glaciers receding is good, more land!
more snow is in the forecast for tonight and tomorrow in the ‘Deep South’ of the US:
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100214/D9DS1MSO0.html
And it looks like it’s headed toward Washington where they’ve already had record snow:
http://www.intelliweather.com/popup/nat_rad_popup.htm
“Most climate scientists respond that the ferocious storms are consistent with forecasts that a heating planet will produce more frequent and more intense weather events.”
Who are these climate scientists? Did the NYT reporter, John Broden, actually conduct some sort of informal survey of climate scientists from around the world in order to arrive at that conclusion? Or did he just email his pals over at RealClimate and use their opinions as a proxy for the opinions of “most climate scientists”? Broden has so expertly mastered the art of crap-alarmist-junk-journalism that I suspect he’s being groomed to take Andy Revkin’s place.
1816 also became know as the Poverty Year. The following poem from Eileen Marguet summed up the year:
It didn’t matter whether your farm was large or small.
It didn’t matter if you had a farm at all.
Cause everyone was affected when water didn’t run.
The snow and frost continued without the warming sun.
One day in June it got real hot and leaves began to show.
But after that it snowed again and wind and cold did blow.
The cows and horses had no grass, no grain to feed the chicks.
No hay to put aside that time, just dry and shriveled sticks.
The sheep were cold and hungry and many starved to death,
Still waiting for the warming sun to save their labored breath.
The kids were disappointed, no swimming, such a shame.
It was in 1816 that summer never came.
http://www.history-magazine.com/volcanoes.html
The Year Without a Summer
The eruption of Indonesia’s Mount Tambora on 5 April 1815 was one of the largest eruptions in history. Tambora spewed sulphur-rich gases that rose to a height of 28 miles and created a giant sun filter in the northern hemisphere that caused the spring and summer of 1816 to be extremely cold across Europe and North America. Snowfalls and frost occurred in June, July and August and all but the hardiest grains were destroyed. Destruction of the corn crop caused farmers to slaughter their livestock. Soup kitchens were opened to feed the hungry. Sea ice formed in the Atlantic shipping lanes and glaciers advanced down mountain slopes to exceptionally low levels. Hundreds of thousands died of starvation as crops failed, touching off a wave of migration to the American South and Midwest. Farmers repeatedly tried to get a crop in the ground, but each time a killer frost withered the tender roots. Corn and grain prices shot up to $5 and $10 per bushel and oats that had been 12 cents a bushel rose to 92 cents. Riots erupted in Britain and France as starving citizens broke into grain warehouses and left them empty. Violence was even worse in Switzerland where the government declared a national emergency and grain purchases from Russia were intercepted at the border and confiscated by hungry citizens.
This looks serious. Thank heaven I still have IPCC to keep me worried about Global Warming.
OT.
Some feedback from the Australian ABC regarding questions posed about their somewhat biased climate timeline.
Attention is drawn to the Ordovician Ice age, Roman Warm Period and NIPCC that remain missing in action, The Medieval Warm Period that remains poorly referenced, and Al Gore’s movie that remains un-corrected by a British judge. Information about the Northern sea passages remain uncertain.
If anyone has further suggestions please feel free to leave a comment.
http://abcnewswatch.blogspot.com/2010/02/climate-time-line-or-time-lie-response.html
So we can infer that as the globe gets warmer, then there should be an increase in precipitation. Yet, as the EPA data shows, warmer does not equal wetter.
Doesn’t a US Govt department publish frost lines? I believe it’s important for the integrity of buildings and structures etc as well as agriculture.
Would be interesting to see if the frost line has also shifted south.
Quite right, Mia Nony. All our great leaders are looking in the wrong direction. The Great Polar Bear, in the meantime, may be sneaking up behind us and will catch us unawares.
As David Archibald says in his excellent book ‘Solar Cycle 24’ when discussing interglacials, ‘Relative to the last four interglacials, we may be somewhere near the end of the current interglacial. The end of the Holocene will be a brutal time for humanity.’
But then we must not be alarmist. We’ve paid enough for that kind of thing already.
‘But then we must not be alarmist’. Perfectly true, but it may be time to raise the concern flag.
Perhaps its got something to do with the movement of the magnetic north pole…
Just one small point:
This logic is faulty. If A implies C and B implies C, then this does not mean that A and B are the same.
Taking the (ridiculous) statement of global warming is causing the snow line to move south as a given, and that in ice ages, the snow line moved south, that doesn’t mean that global warming = ice age. All it means is that the result (snow line moving south) can be achieved by more than one mechanism.
Having said that, I could possible accept an argument that global warming has altered ‘traditional’ weather patterns, and has resulted in severe winters in part of the globe, but even with that argument I’m yet to be convinced. I’d need more evidence (as shown by long term altered wind patterns, for example) before I’d accept it.
I think there must be some context to the ‘warming temperatures produce more snow’ etc.
It’s pretty clear to me that the following is true:
Snowfall is MOST EXTREME when the temperature is around ZERO.
If it’s minus twenty it’s too cold to snow enormous amounts. Plus six and it’s rain instead.
So my take is this:
Places with cold, cold winters will get more snow if the temperature is a bit warmer.
Places with winters around zero may get less snow and more rain if the temperature is a bit warmer.
So the net effect of warming might be:
Higher snowfall in the upper mountains, thereby replenishing glaciers at the top end. Higher snowfall in interior Siberia, China, interior Alaska/Canada and the Antarctic.
Lower snowfall at the margins, in Alpine lowlands, at the southern extremes of mountain ranges like the Rockies, the Italian Apennines, Lebanon etc.
The net effect of cooling might be: greater snowfall further south in the midwestern plains of the US, more snow in Spain, more snow in North Africa, more snow in Australia and more snow in South Africa.
Of course, with the complex climate we know about, you might get a mixture of the two – warmer arctic temperatures and cooler interior temperatures. That might produce more snow both in the polar regions AND on the southern extremities of the winter snowline.
And for those who accept the data of ice cores etc, you will see that prior to each ice age is a rapid rise in temperatures followed by a big, rapid drop.
Is the polar warming/interior cooling option a possible way to trigger an ice age??
“The sensible theory is that the snow line moves south when the climate is cold, and north when the climate is warm.”
“Sensible” being the operative word.
Steven Goddard,
Looking at the Rutgers seasonal data there is no significant trend in the fall and winter snow extents for the northern hemisphere. As for spring and summer, the trend is significantly down over the last few decades.
http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_seasonal.php?ui_set=nhland&ui_season=3
Your post should have been titled: “The Snow Line is Moving North.”
True? Hell’s teeth, I hope Global Warming will make it cooler here in Oz. Bloody hot here right now, but don’t panic, it always is in Summer! Damn it’s got to come a long way down for it to snow here, though.
Please – I’m joking!
I don’t think the AGW Leviathan has died yet, but I’m hoping the silver bullet will hit it’s tiny brain soon and stop this farce. We can only hope that a lesson in caution on behalf of our populace and politicians is learn’t this time…