While some other bloggers and journalists insist that recent winter snows are proof of global warming effects, they miss the fact that models have been predicting less snow in the norther hemisphere. See this 2005 peer reviewed paper:
Frei, A. and G. Gong, 2005. Decadal to Century Scale Trends in North American Snow Extent in Coupled Atmosphere-Ocean General Circulation Models. Geophysical Research Letters, 32:L18502, doi: 10.1029/2005GL023394.
It says exactly the opposite of what some are saying now. – Anthony
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Guest post by Steven Goddard
A 2005 Columbia University study titled “WILL CLIMATE CHANGE AFFECT SNOW COVER OVER NORTH AMERICA?” ran nine climate models used by the IPCC, and all nine predicted that North American winter snow cover would decline significantly, starting in about 1990.
In this study, current and future decadal trends in winter North American SCE (NA-SCE) are investigated, using nine general circulation models (GCMs) of the global atmosphere-ocean system participating in the upcoming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report (IPCC-AR4)…
all nine models exhibit a clear and statistically significant decreasing trend in 21st century NA-SCE
Some of the models predicted a significant decline in winter snow cover between 1990 and 2010.
Climate Model predictions of Snow Cover Decline
As we know, winter snow cover has actually increased about 5% since it bottomed in 1989, and is now close to a record maximum.
Below is another interesting graph. It shows the number of top 100 snow extent weeks by decade. I took the top 100 weekly snow extents (out of 2227) from the Rutgers record and sorted them by decade. The past decade has been at least as snowy as the 1970s.
The past decade has had the most weeks in the top 100 since 1966.
Above are images from NASA showing snow extent from 2001 to 2004. Below is an image from 2010, showing snow cover in all 48 states.
NOAA Image – February 12, 2010
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UPDATE: Here is a new graph of north American winter trend produced by Steve at the request of commenters:
So far, the climate models have the wrong polarity on their predictions of winter snow cover changes.
Awesome, Piers Corbyn!
I’d love to know if/how close groups of significant volcano eruptions are factored into predictions by you?
http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/largeeruptions.cfm
Piers, Steven;
Show the whole story. Let’s see monthly plots of snow covered area, for all months, and for the entire period of record, and let the data speak for themselves. This is not an example of a failed prediction, nor is it superb reportage. It is simply a fail.
jose,
You imply that the climate models are correct, which means that you believe that snow cover has been decreasing over the last 10-20 years. Good luck with that concept.
Interesting…
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/AOSOI.pdf
In April 2009, we talked about Mt Redoubt’s eruption (and later Russia’s Sarychev) and the effect it might have on high latitude blocking and cooler summer and winter.
Oman et al (2005) and others have shown that though major volcanic eruptions seem to have their greatest cooling effect in the summer months, the location of the volcano determines whether the winters are colder or warmer over large parts of North America and Eurasia. According to their modeling, tropical region volcanoes like El Chichon and Pinatubo actually produce a warming in winter due to a tendency for a more positive North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and Arctic Oscillation (AO). In the positive phase of these large scale pressure oscillations, low pressure and cold air is trapped in high latitudes and the resulting more westerly jet stream winds drives milder maritime air into the continents.
It goes on to explain how volcanic eruption location makes for colder and snowier NH winters… You might like this Steve.
kadaka (14:56:11) :
RockyRoad (09:28:31) :
“You’re saying “the climate models have the wrong polarity on their predictions of winter snow cover changes”??
That’s easy to fix: Just reverse polarity on the batteries and everything will be just fine.
Duh.
Then the diodes and other semiconductors blow up or otherwise self-destruct, leaving you with a worthless lump.
Which doesn’t change the relative value of the climate models, but may make for some smoke and an adrenaline surge.”
May I suggest the easiest trick to fix this problem is to invert the graph and use it as is, upside down. IIRC this is a method with some precedent in climate “science.” Oh, mann.
@ur momisugly Leif Svalgaard (10:01:13) re Will’s graphics:
I was curious also and looked into the page source for that matter. Quite simple if you have an URL.
The North America Winter snow extent graph: how is that defined?
Maximum during the winter?
Some sort of mean through the period?
Makes a difference in how you intepret what it mean…..
Robert (11:29:43) : It’s not a strawman.
do you really think that
“several references to the idea that more intense storms may be more common in a warming world”
is different in meaning to:
“recent winter storms.. proof of global warming.”
then if you do, a career in law, with its subtle nuances of distinguishing one word from another, is for you.
I would think most people would see these arguments as identical.
AR4 referred to more warm events and fewer cold events. I think they were wrong.
Robert (16:49:54) : “We have an instrument record that goes back a hundred a thirty years. ”
Yes we do Robert – and what does it show?
I quote:
“The Central England Temperature (CET) record, starting in 1659 and maintained by the UK Met Office, is the longest unbroken temperature record in the world.
Temperature data is averaged for a number of weather stations regarded as being representative of Central England rather than measuring temperature at one arbitrary geographical point identified as the centre of England.
A Scottish Chemist, Wilson Flood, has collected and analysed the 351 year CET record. “Summers in the second half of the 20th century were warmer than those in the first half and it could be argued that this was a global warming signal. However, the average CET summer temperature in the 18th century was 15.46 degC while that for the 20th century was 15.35 degC.
Far from being warmer due to assumed global warming, comparison of actual temperature data shows that UK summers in the 20th century were cooler than those of two centuries previously.”
and the second oldest continuous record?
Prague’s Clementinum hosts the world’s second oldest continuously working weather station. The records go back to 1770 and haven’t been interrupted or modified since 1775.
Luboš Motl Pilsen undertook a statistical analysis with the conclusion that ” you can’t see any unexceptional behavior in the late 20th century. “
There’s a large and increasing list of AGW predictions that are turning out as to be as wrong as it’s almost possible to be. In any normal science this would pretty well have destroyed AGW as a serious theory. But hey, (as Steve M likes to say) this is climate science….
To Piers Corbyn,
Very nice to hear from you. Keep up the good work!
Chris
Ric Werme,
When people publicly nitpick about minor details, they create the impression that they disagree with the conclusions. Read the comments about Leif on Tamino’s site for reference. Everyone over there is convinced that Leif is saying that there is no upwards trend in snow cover.
Peer review normally occurs before publication and behind the scenes, and takes months or years. Do you see the climate science community publicly airing minor disagreements?
Leif’s graph is more accurate along the X-axis, but is less accurate along the (more important) Y-axis. 2000 had three top 100 years, and I surmised that 2010 still had three missing top 100 years – based on the past week and the weather forecasts. So by munging 2010 into the 2000 decade I probably came up with the correct height of the bar, whereas Leif’s was too low. In the absence of complete 2010 data, there was no completely clean way to make the graph. And by including the partial 1960s data I accounted for all 100 weeks.
There are good reasons why I constructed the graph the way I did. It is not misleading about the trend since the 1970s, which was the point. If you or Leif disagree with the point or the conclusions, fire away – but don’t nitpick about minor points in this forum, please. Do that in private.
marky48 (11:30:39) : Thanks for the tool.
It seems to this groping layman that while heating increases evaporation, thus injecting more water vapor into the atmosphere, precipitation, in whatever form, requires cooling.
Or maybe I don’t know my dry bulb from my wet bulb?
jose (21:36:59) :
“Show the whole story. Let’s see monthly plots of snow covered area, for all months, and for the entire period of record, and let the data speak for themselves. This is not an example of a failed prediction, nor is it superb reportage. It is simply a fail.}
Help me out Jose. I thought the model predictions were for northern hemisphere winter snow cover, predicting a decreasing trend, and that the data showed the opposite sign and an increasing trend over the same period.
It looks to me like the models “fail”, not the article. Please feel free to explain what I missed, and link to your own graph.
rbateman (14:05:47) : Steve Keohane (13:54:41) : I’m at about 39°N28′, but in western Colorado. They have upped the forecast ante from 5-10″ on 2/19 to 36″ as of this morning. I-70 is closed both directions at Vail Pass, there are avalanches on the highway, and CDOT is setting off more so they don’t happen naturally. I have another new foot to clear this morning, which better get done so I don’t have two to move later.
And the spring and summer snow cover are declining, as predicted.
since 1995 spring and summer snow cover appear to be rising
http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j237/hausfath/Picture41.png
Leif Svalgaard (10:01:13) :
> Question:
> Willis, how did you manage to include an image in your comment?
Willis didn’t post in this thread, I think you’re referring to
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/18/why-is-winter-snow-extent-interesting/#comment-322340 .
I looked at the source, and there’s nothing special there:
<p><img src=”http://homepage.mac.com/williseschenbach/.Pictures/Northern_Hemisphere_Snow_Area.jpg” alt=”Snow area” /></p>
My guess is that Willis has special privileges that allow him to make guest posts and perhaps that includes the ability to use <img>.
(I think this will post as I intended. Apologies if WordPress thinks differently than I do.)
Perhaps someone should inform Obama. He’s saying snow in Dallas is due to global warming.
http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2010/02/breaking-obama-blames-record-dallas.html
Steve Goddard;
mods if this thread is dead please post as appropriate or perhaps e-mail Steve?
If you are studying NA snowfall extent I may have stumbled across a proxy that you might be interested in. I live in Winnipeg which has pretty harsh winters. Snow that lands in November doesn’t melt until spring. Melting periods in spring are pretty short, so when there is a lot of snow, we get serious flooding. The major river in the area is the Red River which has a catchment area 500 km long and combined with the Assiniboia about 30,000 km^2. I would think that peak flow rates would be pretty much proportional to total winter snowfall in the catchment area. There’s some pretty decent data available about annual peak flow rate back to 1892:
http://gsc.nrcan.gc.ca/floods/redriver/historical_e.php
estimated flow rates of major flood years back to 1826:
http://cgc.rncan.gc.ca/floods/redriver/table1_e.php
and a reconstruction identifying major flood years going back 400 years:
http://www.gov.mb.ca/stem/mrd/geo/pflood/p_pdfs/geoscientificcontributions.pdf
The flow rate data stops at 2000, but I can advise that we had flooding in 2009, though not as massive as in 1997. In brief, lotsa snow lately but I don’t see a trend that jumps out at me vs temp, or co2. sunspots perhaps?
Steve Goddard (05:30:31) wrote:
> …
> When people publicly nitpick about minor details, they create the
> impression that they disagree with the conclusions.
> …
That is simply not the case. Nobody is more strongly opposed to the insanity that is the AGW scam than I am. It is precisely for that reason that we need to be above reproach when presenting data. The crowd-sourced “peer-review” that you have been receiving here is a strength of the grass-roots process. Your article makes a convincing case that the decrease in Winter snow cover predicted by the AGW models has been proven dead wrong, and that the decrease in Summer snow might be better explained by soot than by warming. That should be enough.
Leif and I disagree with your conclusion that recent Winters have defined a new upward snow trend that is distinct from the range of variation seen in the last 43 years, and I have defended my disagreement with objective measures of the data. That doesn’t mean we are haters on the side of AGW.
You can see my relevant graphs at my blog (click on my nickname) or by going here (I wish I could post pictures like Willis did):
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_w7fygMMfkv0/S4BTB0ztPhI/AAAAAAAAADM/apFyaERXqyc/s1600-h/NHSnowCover2.png
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_w7fygMMfkv0/S3_tV3TrijI/AAAAAAAAADE/zUmKqB8S7Hk/s1600-h/NHWeeklySnowCover2.png
You still haven’t said how you computed the Winter 2010 snow data point with 1-2 weeks of February remaining. This time of year the NH snow decreases at an average rate of 1 million km^2 per week, so the remaining weeks will almost certainly bring the average for the season down.
Best Regards,
-Peter
caveman,
No one said the trend was outside the range of the last 43 years. Those are your words. What I said is that there was an upwards trend for the last 20 years. Period.
davidmhoffer,
That is very interesting and useful information, thanks.
Pierce – {and the winter Olympics in Vancouver are very mild’}
Just our way of making our guests feel welcome. Watching the games on the tube has been nothing if not phenomenal with the beautiful blue skies as a backdrop, and gorgeous evergreens standing guard. If you look closely at the shots from in town, you can see the Japanese Cherries already starting to bloom. Magnificent!
And people actually able to watch comfortably, not having to be zipped up in parkas so thick that they can’t really move (alla the movie ” A Christmas Story).
Also the golf courses are not so busy right now!
MikeC (13:37:35) :
“This should be no surprise… a warming world means a moister atmosphere which means more snow”
+++++++
I don’t mean to pick on you Mike, but there are several repetitions of this ‘moister means more snow’ in these posts and occasionally on other threads.
One of the fallacies promoted by AGW proponents is ‘Because the atmosphere is warmer it will evaporate more water and therefore rain more because the air will be wetter.’ What follows also applies to ‘cloudiness’.
I want to caution that wetness is relative. The air above the moister air will also be warmer, and the air above that and so on because the warming is ‘global’. In order to have precipitation air has to cool to the dew point. The temperature is irrelevant. If it is warmer rather than cooler, it won’t rain (or snow) any more than it does now because it will cool less by the same amount that it is warmer elsewhere.
Although the absolute humidity of the air will be higher when it is warmer, the relative humidity is very likely to stay exactly the same – it has to do with the amount of ocean surface, primarily. It will rapidly move to an equilibrium (on global average) in a day or two. A 2 degree Kelvin rise in temperature (0.6%) will pick that much more moisture and hold onto it, raising the baseline.
Just being warmer will not detectably yield more precipitation because the dew point will also rise, as will the temperature to which things cool.
The snowfall (instead of rainfall) pattern in the US this year is the result of lower temperatures, not Global Warming as there hasn’t been any for years. It is not because of Global Cooling either, because there hasn’t been much of that. It is an El Nino event combined with a longer term deepening (North-South) of the jet streams. This deepening was beautifully demonstrated last year when the Northern States of the US were rained on (massively) because of the ‘Omega’ wind pattern which stalled on its Eastbound track. Again this NH winter the deepening was evident several times.
Yes I know there are other processes and atmospheric limitations and possible drying of the upper atmosphere from increased storm height, larger ocean surface area which will cause other effects… My main point is that it won’t rain or snow a lot more if it is warmer. In order for that to happen, the warmer air would have to be over the ocean and it would have to /not/ be warmer over land – extremely unlikely. And if there were to happen the warming would not be global.
Warmer/cooler world: substantially the same precipitation.
Steve Goddard (22:37:40) :
davidmhoffer,
That is very interesting and useful information, thanks>
If you do anything serious with it I would appreciate knowing about it. I’ve “lived” through a lot of that data so would be pretty interested. 1997 was an exciting year, the “lake” surface that formed exceeded the lake surface of one of the Great Lakes, and the flooding in 1826 was supposedly much larger. There’s also an 800 year tree ring chronology to reconstruct precipitation records for the same area that doesn’t show the flood year spikes at all (tree rings don’t record info in the winter, who knew!) that I can find again if you want.
In any event, additional questions or results from your work, please feel free to email me david.hoffer@mts.net