Guest post by Steven Goddard
According to Rutgers University Global Snow Lab, last week’s Northern Hemisphere winter snow extent was the second highest on record, at 52,166,840 km2. This was only topped by the second week in February, 1978 at 53,647,305 km2. Rutgers has kept records continuously for the last 2,227 weeks, so being #2 is quite an accomplishment.
Daily Snow – February 13, 2010 (Day 44)
Source : Rutgers University Global Snow Lab
According to Rutgers University data through mid February, Northern Hemisphere winter snow extent has been increasing at a rate of over 100,000 km2 per year.
As discussed on WUWT, the implication is that Northern Hemisphere snow cover has only extended this far south one other time, since Rutgers University started keeping records. Additionally, North American snow extent broke its all time record last week. Canada is normally completely covered with snow in the winter (except for Olympic venues) so the implication is that the US had more snow last week than has been seen in at least the last 44 years.
Two of the fundamental precepts of global warming theory are that the tropics are supposed to expand, and the Arctic is supposed to warm disproportionately and shrink.
Expanding tropics ‘a threat to millions’
By Steve Connor, Science Editor The Independent
Monday, 3 December 2007
The tropical belt that girdles the Earth is expanding north and south, which could have dire consequences for large regions of the world where the climate is likely to become more arid or more stormy, scientists have warned in a seminal study published today. Climate change is having a dramatic impact on the tropics by pushing their boundaries towards the poles at an unprecedented rate not foreseen by computer models, which had predicted this sort of poleward movement only by the end of the century.
Arctic Ice Melting at Alarming Pace as Temperatures Rise
New studies show that the region is warming even faster than many scientists had feared
By Thomas Omestad
Posted December 16, 2008
New studies being released this week indicate that climate change is exerting massive and worrying change on the Arctic region—reducing the volume of ice, releasing methane gas into the atmosphere, and dramatically raising air temperatures in some parts of the Arctic. The findings will give fresh urgency to international deliberations on the next global climate change pact planned for December 2009 in Copenhagen. The studies also will likely intensify international pressure on the incoming Obama administration to embrace major cuts in the emission of greenhouse gases in an effort to help stabilize global temperatures. NASA scientists will reveal that more than 2 trillion tons of land ice on Greenland and Alaska, along with in Antarctica, have melted since 2003. Satellite measurements suggest half of the loss has come from Greenland. Melting of land ice slowly raises sea levels.
The World Meteorological Organization, a United Nations agency, is also reporting that ice volume in the Arctic this year fell to its lowest recorded level to date.
Experts from the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado will further reveal that temperatures this fall in some Arctic areas north of Alaska were 9 or 10 degrees Fahrenheit above average. The long-predicted phenomenon is known as “Arctic amplification.” As global air temperatures increase, the Arctic tends to show greater changes because the ice pack that once reflected solar heat is reduced in scope. More heat is therefore absorbed. The study is being discussed at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.
The last time that snow extended this far south was in the 1970s, when climatologists were worried about the onset of an ice age, and some suggested that we needed to melt the polar ice caps by covering them with soot.
Newsweek, April 28, 1975
Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.
Time Magazine Monday, Jun. 24, 1974
Telltale signs are everywhere —from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest.Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7° F. Although that figure is at best an estimate, it is supported by other convincing data. When Climatologist George J. Kukla of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory and his wife Helena analyzed satellite weather data for the Northern Hemisphere, they found that the area of the ice and snow cover had suddenly increased by 12% in 1971 and the increase has persisted ever since. Areas of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, for example, were once totally free of any snow in summer; now they are covered year round.
During the 1970s the southern snow cover was seen as a sign of an impending ice age, and the solution was to melt the polar ice caps. In 2010, the nearly identical snow cover is a sign of out of control global warming and the solution is to shut down modern civilization.
Ice age or a fiery tipping point? What do readers think?
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Spring coming sooner? Not according to the BBC who had me choking on my cereal this morning as they announced that spring was three weeks late “owing to the very cold winter”… shome mishtake shurely?
You can’t fool mother nature. Or is it you can fool the mothers at Nature. The socialist frauds that inhabit the MSM, academia and government will not be easily swayed to change their political thinking about the collaspe of the AGW fraud. I wrote congresswoman (D) CA. explaining the AGW CRU scam and she wrote back that it has not changed her mind one bit. The only way to defeat these non american socialist democrats is to vote their rears end out of office in the next elections.
Please note “Kyle” is a troll..
Last Spring/Early Summer, Utah had unusually wet spring which increased the relative humidity in dry climate. With the higher humidity, there was a cooler summer. It seemed to me that there was the same solar heat input, but the humidity kept the temperatures cooler than normal. More energy is required to heat the water in the air.
If the northern hemisphere follows the same pattern of increased humidity because of increased snow cover, it seems a cold summer is coming in the north.
PC (10:49:13) :
Looks like panic has set in over at RealClimate…read the comments
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/02/whatevergate/
Post 19 gives the game away, I reckon.
Steve Goddard (13:17:04), BillyBob (13:45:23) :
Here’s the annual northern hemisphere snow extent for the whole Rutgers’ dataset:
http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/9341/annnhsnow.png
The trend is a statistically significant snow loss of 40,000 +/- 11,000 km^2 a year.
Actually, to report more accurately, snow cover showed no trend from 1989 through 2002. The increasing snow cover trend is manifest only in the last 8 years, pretty consistent with warming that stopped about 12 years ago. If all of the warming biases in the surface record were corrected there has probably been a cooling trend since about mid 1997, logically followed with some delay by increasing snow cover..
” shut down modern civilization ” Why is it that climate skeptics who totally distrust climate models freely accept the output of economic models?? Way back about 1993 Nordhaus started forecasting the economic disaster that would result from climate mitigation efforts. His work was renewed about 2007, before Kyoto, and picked up by other economic modellers, with testimony before Congress in 1998. In 1998 I had a running discussion with one of the modellers who testified, and learned that there were two fundamental, but unstated, assumptions underlying the models. The first was that there was no possibility of efficiency gains because possible efficiencies would already have been implemented by rational economic man (people don’t leave $10.00 bills lying on the sidewalk). The second treated the USA economy as a closed system, without taking into account the trade balance benefits of reducing fossil fuel imports. That is to say, the output from the models was meaningless. I have no idea how the referenced model is constructed, but I sure wouldn’t believe the output of any economic model until it had undergone the scrutiny that skeptics have applied to climate models.
The problem is that most climate skeptics want to believe that measures to address global warming (even if it did exist) would be disastrous. Actually, actions aimed at energy efficiency, nuclear and renewables would have major economic benefits. Be consistent you guys, distrust economic models too.
“dave ward (13:42:14) :
O/T I’ve just seen the following post which reveals that SkepticalScience.com have released an “App” for the iPhone to enable users to rebuff any of us nasty “Deniers”
”
Does it automatically fudge data? So you need no climatologist to fudge it?
BTW i have a new name for the AGW cult: Climatepunk. It’s not really science, it’s sort of punk, Climatepunk, like Steampunk or Cyberpunk.
Damn damn damn! Someone beat me to it:
Climatepunk
http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/2009/11/04/the-next-big-punking/
Why did I choose 1989 as the start date? Because that is when the upwards trend started. It is also the period of time when we have experienced “unprecedented global warming” and have been told repeatedly that snow is disappearing at an alarming rate.
I don’t know if you’ve noted this yet: Christopher Horner of the CEI finally received the FOI response from NASA, originally requested in Aug. 2007. (only after his Notice of Intent to Sue). His Part 1 of a 4 Part Series can be found today at:
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/climategate-2-0-—-the-nasa-files-u-s-climate-science-as-corrupt-as-cru-pjm-exclusive-—-part-one/?singlepage=true
leftymartin,
Look closer at your graph. The blue lines are winter and show a strong upwards trend.
http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_anom.php?ui_set=0&ui_region=nhland&ui_month=1
The entire year also shows an upwards trend since 1989.
https://spreadsheets.google.com/oimg?key=0AnKz9p_7fMvBdHBkREJtSmNlbm9xNnlza0JEcXUwZ2c&oid=1&v=1266440928003
Hey, what do you bet that if it is shown that we are in a cooling phase, and more than just a “blip” in Global warming, that:
a) it is still caused by fossil fuel burning
b) the solution is the same whether we are warming or cooling….
Well, lets face, if Al Gore is expecting to make $$billions trading Carbon credits.
Presumably, as an even handed sort of guy, if we are cooling instead of heating it will make sense (to Al) to trade the credits back the other way and so Al can rake his share off the top whichever way the trade goes.
So carbon is not an actual root cause of anything, its just a means of keeping score. And that means that even if we prove to everyone’s satisfaction that CO2 has only a minor effect on the climate, it will have become our new eco-standard currency. (Just like most currencies were originally backed by gold but now the gold is unnecessary).
Incidentally, when burning fossil fuels, how much heat is contributed to the atmosphere from combustion and how much from CO2? does anyone know?
Ray,
You are correct. GISS shows a much smaller spike in January temperatures than UAH or RSS. I think the TLT satellite data at 14,000 feet is tainted by the strong negative AO, which created warmer air at higher elevations over Canada and Greenland. Satellites also showed a much larger spike than GISS during the 1998 El Nino.
Sam the Skeptic (14:20:29) :
Direct link to the comment in question:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/02/whatevergate/#comment-160576
Wow, I’m kinda surprised that one got through. Really hits the nail on the head doesn’t it?
davidmhoffer (14:12:23) :
Give this guy at least 100 additional mod points.
Just looking at John Steward. Making fun of Global Warming, Al Gore and scary stories.
Thats a tipping point.
R. Gates (12:25:50) :
To keep this in perspective, it is very important to look at the snow cover anomalies over the past 44 years:
http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_anom.php?ui_set=0&ui_region=nhland&ui_month=1
Do you see a trend? It certainly isn’t up…
Where did all that moisture for the snow come from? Warmer, not cooler, oceans. Warmer oceans are part of AGW models, not some pending Ice Age.
January 2010 also saw record warmth in the troposphere. Is there pattern here? Yep…warmer oceans, warmer troposphere, more snow in Winter, all part of AGW models, until winters in get so warm that the precip falls as rain. But of course this will fall on deaf ears as some will get thier laugh at the thought of warmth and snow combined as they fail to understand the finer nuances…
R. Gates
The statement you make could very well be a true one. I keep hearing this in the Media. Global warming has increased the moisture content in the air and thus in winter it means greater snowfall. I do not mind such conjecture but in order to be science you must provide some data. There are thousands of weather stations in the United States. They not only record daily temperature but also relative humidity. If you wanted to prove your theory then shouldn’t you provide some data proving that the air moisture content has actually trended up? Recording stations overall should show more moisture content. Relative humidity combined with the temperature of the day will give the actual moisture content of the air at that time. One should be able to prove it this theory is correct. Without the evidence to support it you should not declare it as a certainty.
Well this all makes sense and you have certainly presented the evidence in a logical and reasonable fashion. But I still believe in global weirding.
There’s no need to call liar, if the long term data supports Trenberth’s claim. But it is also useful to point out (as Steve has) that the last 20 years have shown a slight incline. If, in Trenberth’s case he is using declining snow cover as an indication of GW, then Steve has shown that for 20 years there’s been nothing to really get excited about. You can’t exactly prove ‘accelerating’ GW with this data. I think that’s the point.
Steve Goddard (13:11:39) :
I plotted the weekly data for the entire year (not just winter) and it turns out that for the last twenty years there has been an upwards trend of almost 14,000 km2/year.
Care to put an error bar on that trend?
To put the second week of Feb, 1978 into perspective.
Jan 25-27, 1978 (from wiki)
Late on January 24, the surface maps revealed a moisture laden Gulf Low developing over the southern United States while a separate, and unrelated low pressure system was present over the Upper Midwest. In about 24 hours, the merger of the subtropical (containing a wind max of 130 knots) and polar (containing a wind max of 110 knots) jet streams would lead to an unusual convergence of these two low pressures over the Ohio Valley, known as “phasing”. Such a phenomenon usually leads to explosive development of the surface low and the Great Blizzard was no exception. The low over Gulf States underwent bombogenesis as it moved rapidly northward during the evening of January 25 (record low pressures were logged across parts of the South and Mid-Atlantic).[1] Bombogenesis events require a storm’s central pressure to drop more than 24 millibars in 24 hours; the Great Blizzard deepened by a remarkable 40 millibars in that span of time.[1]
As the storm headed for Ohio, this resulted in a “storm of unprecedented magnitude”, according to the National Weather Service, who categorized it as a rare severe blizzard, the most severe grade of winter storm. Particularly hard hit were the states of Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and southeast Wisconsin where up to 40 inches (102 cm) of snow fell. Winds gusting up to 100 miles per hour (161 km/h) caused drifts that nearly buried some homes. Wind chill values reached −60 °F (−51 °C) across much of Ohio where 51 of the total 70 storm-related deaths occurred.[2] The lowest atmospheric pressure ever recorded in the United States, apart from a tropical system, occurred as the storm passed over Cleveland, Ohio. The barometer fell to 28.28 inches of mercury (958 mbar) on the morning of January 26. Nearby Detroit, Michigan fell to 28.34 inches of mercury (960 mbar).
Feb. 5-7, 1978
The storm’s great power was made apparent by its sustained hurricane-force winds of approximately 86 mph with gusts to 111 mph and the formation of an eye-like structure in the middle of the storm.[5] While a typical nor’easter brings steady snow for six to twelve hours, the Blizzard of ’78 brought heavy snow for an unprecedented full 33 hours as it was blocked from heading into the North Atlantic by the strong Canadian high pressure area.[3]
An atypical vertical development of storm clouds brought unusual thundersnow to southern New England and Long Island. These storms resulted in lightning and thunder accompanying the snowfall as it fell at 4 inches (10 cm) an hour at times. Boston received a record 27.1 inches of snow, as did Providence, Rhode Island with 27.6 inches of snow.
NickB. (13:13:02) :
The Gore effect is mindboggling.
I’m not superstitious, but this man carries a curse with him.
You do not want this guy speaking in your area in winter unless you are in the snowplowing business.
It’s bad news.
Al Gore’s Weather (AGW).
“There probably has been something of a sceptical wave regarding climate change, and I think we’re possibly caught up in that.”
“*And Pachauri?”.
…-
“Setting the climate record straight (IPCC co-chair “discusses recent criticisms.”)
A co-chair of the IPCC’s beleaguered second working group discusses recent criticisms.
Climate researcher Martin Parry at Imperial College London co-chaired the second working group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — the group charged with assessing the effects climate change is likely to have and how these might be mitigated — for the IPCC’s fourth assessment. During the past month, the IPCC has corrected an error about the amount of melting anticipated for the Himalayan glaciers and defended its estimates of the financial costs of damage caused by natural disasters. Nature talks to Parry, who has been busy juggling…
–snip–
Why do you think all of these accusations are bubbling up now?
There probably has been something of a sceptical wave regarding climate change, and I think we’re possibly caught up in that. Which is unfortunate, because I fear it leads the public to a view that climate science may be less reliable than it really is.
I think the IPCC should be open to any scrutiny and should respond by clarifying any queries. Now, that clarification can take time. Science can’t shoot from the hip, and it’s not about making statements to meet 24-hour news time lines.
There has been some criticism of the IPCC, and of Chairman Rajendra Pachauri in particular, for the way in which the affair has been handled.
The IPCC is not like a political party with a manifesto that it’s preaching and a rapid-rebuttal office. But the IPCC will need to decide whether it is in the business of simply undertaking its five-year assessments or being the source of information and being able to respond, on an ongoing basis, to enquiries.
And Pachauri?
Yes, I certainly have confidence in Dr Pachauri as chairman of the IPCC, and in the IPCC itself.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2453631/posts
…-
“*And Pachauri?”.
“THE HINDU(sic)
“No doubt, Himalayan glaciers are melting fast: Pachauri”
http://beta.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/article107810.ece
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/mt/mt-comments.cgi
Sam the Skeptic (14:20:29) :
PC (10:49:13) :
Looks like panic has set in over at RealClimate…read the comments
I read them over a beer at the pub, (OK that marks me as a hopeless recidivist), “not a leg to stand on” it appears.
First time I’ve visited that website, probably the last too, is that really the mind set of the catastrophe brigade?
Good Grief!