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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Weather is not climate and more snow is proof of Global Warming. Really, you people should know this by now.
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
———-
Reply: Here’s my contribution to their navel-searching “Whatevergate”:
All I know is that the IPCC is a joke. They’ve got so many “gates” they’re like a giant slalom course at the Olympics. I’m a geologist so I’ve been skeptical about the whole hysteria aspect of the IPCC for years. Maybe now we can get down to some serious science. But I’m not holding my breath; for that to happen, we’d have to have some DATA, but Jones says it is nowhere to be found. Oh well, next crisis!
Sam the Skeptic
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>
Post 19 is worth a read because it is well said and accurate. The panic, though, I think was better summed up in Post 2:
“2.Unfortunately, I think the only thing that will turn the public back towards reality is a few globally really hot years”
Yes… all we need to prove global warming to the skeptics is for the globe to actually warm. They’re just too dense as a group to believe in global warming when the globe doesn’t actually warm. Morons, every one of them. Too stupid to understand that the globe doesn’t actually need to warm to prove global warming. If only there was some way to convince these idiots the truth of global warming without the temperatures going up. We tried showing them data with higher temperatures and they’re so dumb that they actually demanded actual temperatures from actual measurements instead. This planet is doomed to be destroyed by global warming unless the globe hurries up and warms enought to convince them.
“”” Tom P (13:18:58) :
George E. Smith (13:07:21) :
“So Rutgers included data from 1965 and the author chose data only from 1990??. Is this true?”
Steven Goddard will confirm that he only chose data from 1989 in his plot. But only he can tell you why. “””
Well that Rutgers Quote is certainly not from me; maybe it was from something somebody else said that I excerpted; but I definitely did not say that; nor did I comment on what Steven said about it.
So i’m not sure what your point is.
I am watching a movie filmed in 1964 in NYC. There is about six inches of snow on the ground in Central Park, and it looks like it had been there for a while, judging by the number of footprints and the way they had gone through a freeze and thaw and freeze. I think I noticed the same thing in the Movie “Hair”, but I could be remembering that wrong.
I welcome skate boarders to Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics to enjoy the city streets with the tropical weather we are enjoying as a result of the alleged AGW hypothesis that has the tropics moving north… it’s a good nature trick that the tropics pulled off skipping over the USA and hitting Vancouver! Sweet way to hide the decline of cooling. Thanks for that one Mann. [:)]
pwl
http://PathsToKnowledge.net
” davidmhoffer (16:07:29) :
We tried showing them data with higher temperatures and they’re so dumb that they actually demanded actual temperatures from actual measurements instead. This planet is doomed to be destroyed by global warming unless the globe hurries up and warms enough to convince them.”
David… this is the funniest thing I’ve read in a while! Thanks for the laugh.
Tom P,
When Hansen writes of “unprecedented warming” why doesn’t he include the MWP? Why doesn’t he include the Jurassic?
When scientists write of “unprecedented Greenland melt,” why do they only study the years 2003-2007? Talk about cherry picking.
I was reading an article on the history of Star Trek and was surprised to learn that in the first episode they got the model of the ship upside down and so had to stick with it that way for the rest of the series. I just realized that this applies to global warming. They’ve got the effing hockey stick on the graph upside down and now they have to stick with it. You really have to feel for them. Can you envision how hard it would have been for the producers of Star Trek to turn the model the right way after presenting it wrong for the first time?
Looks to me like ALL science fiction writers have a similar problems with first presentations….
Lake Erie freezes over, for 1st time in 14 years.
http://www.morningjournal.com/articles/2010/02/17/news/mj2316036.txt
Man I hate this Global Warming, must be the extra moisture falling down as ice on top of the lake. I’m sure GW scientists anticipated this on their global warming PC games.
Norman said:
” 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…”
The trend toward increasing water vapor in the troposphere is well documented and of course represents another GH forcing. Many great charts out there but to begin, especially for water vapor anomalies, see:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/images/water_vapor.jpg
Water Vapor levels rise with warmer oceans and create a positive-feeback loop much like methane seeping from the melting permafrost. There is more evidence now that CO2 also has a positive feedback loop in the release of CO2 from the soil with increasing temps.
Despite the excitement here, the extreme snow events of this winter are more consistent with a warming earth, not a cooling one. The coldest place on earth, Antarctica, is also one of the driest…though this would seem counter-intuitive to many.
As much as I enjoy pushing AGW noses into the snow (as it were), it is important for skeptics to remain aware that while records are an important part of the evidence that refutes the AGW creed, there are still important parts of their unproven hypothesis that still need to be broken.
The positive feedbacks that make the models unstable, for instance. I know there has been recent evidence showing neutral to negative feedbacks (Lindzen & Choi, etc.), but these are yet only weak evidence with little or no funding to allow more thorough testing.
Still, I am greatly enjoying the present weather “climate” in the press.
Hmmm. So the UK is completely snow free????
Ref – R. Gates (16:37:19) :
“…Despite the excitement here, the extreme snow events of this winter are more consistent with a warming earth, not a cooling one”…
____________________
I’ve been curious for sometime about where all the ice in an ice age comes from. As far a we know, at this time (it would seem) we’ve got two choices (well three or four if you want to think of something wierd like a comet or an intragalactic dust/gas cloud).
OK, number one is it comes from snow falling from the sky and pileing up for eons — how does that happen? Number two, it’s not snow but ice that comes from the North and South Poles, spreading toward the Equator. How does that happen?
It would seem that the most obvious is a combination of the two. For that to happen we need a lot of water vapor to come into the equation somehow. How does that happen?
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…
To be fair, you have to read the history of their data collection. Simply looking at the data there is an apparent step function at 1980-85ish. The changed landmasks circa 1981, and claim neither the old nor the new are exact. So simply plotting all the data and declaring a change in trend is not looking at the data.
However, I would tend to agree with their plot, knowing the beginning was the cooling period 40s-70s. Now we’re back into 30 years of cooling so we should see the anomaly go positive. That would be a meaningful plot if it started at 1920 or earlier to get in the first warming cycle of the 20th century.
RE: Norman (15:11:19)
You might also consider that increased moisture (absolute humidity not relative) due to higher water temperatures would generally cause more clouds which increases reflected sunlight and is thus a negative feedback mechanism. Not that the real mechanism is that simple but hey looks like everything might just be normal afterall!
APE
Purely on Science terms and based on “hope and promise” we are left with reality.
The issue is Stewardship and I’d like to hear from any (the world would like to hear from any) “Scientist” who can currently prove that we are going about this in the “RIGHT” way.
“The IPCC is not like a political party with a manifesto that it’s preaching”
Isn’t there a cartoon to go with that?
R. Gates – moisture without cold is called rain.
Murray (14:23:57) :
” shut down modern civilization ” “Why is it that climate skeptics who totally distrust climate models freely accept the output of economic 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.”
Uhmm, not sure about the modeling. I don’t buy into any of it, I look at it as a cost/benefit and practical application perspective. It is correct to assert efficiencies will occur without an outside forcings(regulatory mandates). It is the nature of man to use less energy to accomplish more.(We’re lazy.)
Windmills are a great example. It has been mandated for my electric coop to purchase %25 of our energy from qualified renewables. Living in Kansas, wind energy is the presumptive source. So, windmills have cropped up all over the state because of the mandate. Given that the wind will not blow at the times we wish, (THERE IS NO MAGICAL BATTERY TO STORE AC POWER.) we have to maintain a separate generation plant. It has to be natural gas because of immediate load switch necessities. These have to be built also because traditionally we have relied on coal and nuclear. Further, transmission infrastructure has to be rebuilt because the wind and gas generation plants will necessarily be built in other locations as the coal and nuke plants.
So far, we’re only building, we haven’t even addressed cost of production. (Let me know when you see any efficiency in this mandated efficiency upgrade.) I’ve been told, that it emits 42 metric tons of CO2 to build one of those windmills. I’ve also been told that it is expected to save 62 metric tons of CO2 per windmill.(any real study is very difficult to cite or sight) The life expectancy for the windmills is 20 yrs. Given all the construction, steel fabrication, lubricant use, ect., we’re not really doing much for the stated goal. So why proceed? Perhaps savings? No, not really. As it is now, we’ll buy the wind generated electricity at about 9 cents kwh. Of course, we’ll have to charge our members significantly more than that to remain in existence. Gas generated electricity is worse, its running us about 12 cents/kwh. Of course, that evil coal and nuke come in at about 2-3 cents/kwh. Given the current lack of disposable income for many Americans, exactly how is this helping anything? Where is the efficiency? Redundant use of our natural resources?(In the form of steel, copper and aluminum and fuel necessary for construction, ect.)
Don’t even get me started on the asinine Automatic Meter Reading and the tech cycle most of us COOPs are now on. (newer faster better computer techs every 4-7 yrs) as opposed to the one meter can last 20 yrs and longer.
Sigh, I apologize for the length of the rant and lack of citations, but almost all are burdened with very heavy bias’ one way or the other, you’ll just have to accept my practical application experience or perhaps find someone else with a different perspective.
“Despite the excitement here, the extreme snow events of this winter are more consistent with a warming earth, not a cooling one. The coldest place on earth, Antarctica, is also one of the driest…though this would seem counter-intuitive to many.”
So, if you use all the data,
http://img514.imageshack.us/img514/396/snowextent.png
does that mean that the Earth is cooling?
R. Gates (16:37:19) :
But why is it snowing…in Florida?
Why were there extreme snow events in the 70s?
Why is the “blizzard of ’88” (as in 1888) still the benchmark for severe blizzards?
And why were we being told just a few years ago that children in England and in Washington DC would be denied the experience of snow because of AGW?
If all of this precipitation was caused by global warming, shouldn’t it be rain, especially in the US southern states?
if its not the “RIGHT” way then what “Should be occurring?”
Somewhat related …
Permafrost Line Recedes 130 Km in 50 Years, Canadian Study Finds
The southern limit of permanently frozen ground, or permafrost, is now 130 kilometers further north than it was 50 years ago in the James Bay region, according to two researchers from the Department of Biology at Université Laval.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100217101129.htm
Grandfather told of all the cattle on open range freezing to death from around Wichita Falls Tx North some where around 1900 1905 or so. He was 1/2 apache his mother full apache she told of other times when the cold forced the apache tribes down into the area of Mexico in the winter.
From the “weather is not climate” dept.
Snowstorm hits Tokyo, disrupting traffic…
http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/snowstorm-hits-tokyo-disrupting-commuter-traffic
Here in Koriyama City, FUkushima-ken, it’s been snowing a bit too – I made the mistake of changing my route this morning and a 40-minute trip to work took 1.5hrs.
I wish people would be a bit more confident driving in the snow.