Guest post by Steven Goddard
Photo above from: NY Daily News: Record Snowfall in New York
Now that we have reached the end of the meteorological winter (December-February,) Rutgers University Global Snow Lab numbers (1967-2010) show that the just completed decade (2001-2010) had the snowiest Northern Hemisphere winters on record. The just completed winter was also the second snowiest on record, exceeded only by 1978. Average winter snow extent during the past decade was greater than 45,500,000 km2, beating out the 1960s by about 70,000 km2, and beating out the 1990s by nearly 1,000,000 km2. The bar chart below shows average winter snow extent for each decade going back to the late 1960s.
Here are a few interesting facts.
- Average winter snow extent has increased since the 1990s, by nearly the area of Texas and California combined.
- Three of the four snowiest winters in the Rutgers record occurred during the last decade – the top four winters are (in order) 1978, 2010, 2008, 2003
- The third week of February, 2010 had the second highest weekly extent (52,170,000 m2) out of the 2,229 week record
The bar graph below shows winter data for each year in the Rutgers database, color coded by decade. The yellow line shows the mean winter snow extent through the period. Note that the past decade only had two winters below 45 million km2. The 1990s had seven winters below the 45 million km2, the 1980s had five winters below 45 million km2, and the 1970s had four winters below 45 million km2. This indicates that the past decade not only had the most snowfall, but it also had the most consistently high snowfall, year over year.
It appears that AGW claims of the demise of snowfall have been exaggerated. And so far things are not looking very good for the climate model predictions of declining snowfall in the 21st century.
Many regions of the Northern Hemisphere have seen record snowfall this winter, including Washington D.C, Moscow, China, and Korea. Dr. Hansen’s office at Columbia University has seen record snowfall, and Al Gore has ineptly described the record snow :
“Just as it’s important not to miss the forest for the trees, neither should we miss the climate for the snowstorm,”
A decade long record across the entire Northern Hemisphere is not appropriately described as a “snowstorm.”
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Steve Goddard (20:00:23) :
You seem to be complaining about your own inferences.
This is the point I was also trying to make.
kate,
Good catch. It certainly is not surprising that scientists would support their funding sources.
“the data are surely wrong.
Our observing system is inadequate.”
Oops…forgot.
“it is a travesty”
I made a graph of GISTEMP vs. snow cover. If there is a correlation between snow cover and temperature, I sure can’t see it.
http://docs.google.com/View?id=ddw82wws_442cfr5k9cw
“And more snow is incompatible with Global Warming how?”
It isn’t the amount of snow. One could have “more” as in deeper snow with Global Warming. But what is incompatible with AGW is the extent of the snow. Imagine you have an area that was just barely at the snow line. If you warm the climate, that snow line should move North. So while one might expect greater precipitation amounts during warming climate, the precipitation would fall as rain in that location and the snow line would be expected to move North.
What we have seen this year is the snow line moving South of where it has been in recent years in both North America and Eurasia. This would tend to contradict a warming climate. But climate change can manifest in many different ways.
The Younger Dryas is considered a cold period when climate returned to near ice age conditions for a while but during the Younger Dryas, the Midwestern US had hotter Summers than before the event. The climate became more extreme during the Younger Dryas in many areas with both hotter summers and colder winters than before the event or even today (Shuman et al., 2002; Grimm and Jacobson, 2004) . So you can have a “cold” period that produces record high summer temperatures.
But generally, snow lines move according to general climate. Lets see how the next 10 years look.
Great post, great comments. Pretty entertaining for an essentially flat line, but how come we can’t compare raw to the adjusted data ?? Did the climate charlatans not agree as to whether they should adjust it up or down, ha ha ha.
Quite a bit of discussion above about Al Gore and his predilection for telling whoppers. Surely, this most recent one has to be his most obvious ?? It’s sort of set in the present as opposed to most of his whoppers of the future.
A massive lie to start his recent WSJ essay (credit to the person who wrote it for him):
Al Gore would be relieved if his raison d’etre for the past 20 or 30 years turns out to be a pile of crap ?? Eh ?? Anybody believe that ??
Wayne R (20:14:26) :
Yeah, yeah, if the warming is causing more oceanic evaporation thereby causing increased snow, why didn’t it come down as nice warm rain?
———
Reply:
Don’t you remember the teeter-totter analogy? When its warmer over the ocean, evaporation offsets that higher temperature by snowing over the continent. What happens is that the evaporation process makes it cool in one place and the process of condensation into snow makes it warm in another. It’s that simp…. wait…. Let me think about that again. 🙁
Hang on a minute, this data hasnt been through Tamino’s statistical analysis yet. Im sure that there must be a decline somewhere in there to be found with an R2 of at least 0.1
Terry,
I’m looking forward to Tamino demonstrating how snow cover has declined to a record decadal high. We can call it “Tamino’s snow trick.”
Steve Goddard (20:00:23) :
You seem to be complaining about your own inferences. I can’t take credit or responsibility for your thoughts.
Some models, e.g. INM-CM3.0 predict an increase until 2025, but in any case since the models start their ‘prediction run’ in about year 2000, there has not been enough time to validate or invalidate their claims on a statistically valid basis. Post again around 2020, when we should know which way the wind blows.
Steve Goddard (20:00:23)
Well, lets see:
1. I don’t see any complaining in what I said.
2. I didn’t criticise your article or the data presented, I merely tried to place it in a wider context. In fact, I used the data you used.
3. I never asked you to take credit or responsibility for my thoughts.
In short, I don’t understand your point. My point was that although this is the snowiest decade in a while, overall the data show no trend at all.
If you’d like a comment on your article, since you have only five data points and they vary by only ~ ±1%, the difference is not statistically significant.
Better?
Jet stream shows signs of a collapse back to the fifty degree latitude line. Uooo…, what could it mean? Cooler arctic for the summer? AO back to positive? And the sun, it’s now 1/4 wave of the last cycle’s heat max, the Arctic ice minimum. Is there really such a thermal lag? Watching… waiting…
http://squall.sfsu.edu/scripts/nhemjetstream_model.html
Your post’s appreciated Steve, keep ’em coming.
See, knowing that more snow equals CAGW, that’s proof positive that we’re in uber melt mode!!!!! You guys can’t deny that now!!!!
So I find myself cheering for sea ice…
Arctic Sea Ice Extent is on an upswing;
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
and making a run at the arbitrary normal range used by NCIDC:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png
Global Sea Ice Area also appears to be making a run on average:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
and Antarctic Sea Ice Extent is again above average:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_stddev_timeseries.png
There are certainly no signs of the catastrophic, accelerating, extremely rapid, alarming, faster than we predicted only a few years ago, sea ice free arctic summer and drowning polar bear type melting we’ve heard so much about…
wayne,
Thanks for the Jet Stream link. After five months of miserable cold, snow and ice at 45N in Colorado, we finally had a warm afternoon today. We definitely felt the shift in the Jet Stream.
@ur momisugly Willis Eschenbach (17:46:17) :
Thank you for the graph! That is quite telling, and while I agree with your annotation, “snow cover” and “snowiest decade” are two completely different things, at least as I interpret them. “snowiest” suggests to me that there has been MORE snow (ie: deeper snow, more of it), while “snow cover” suggests to me larger COVERAGE (ie: larger areas affected, etc.). Two different measurements.
willis,
OK, thanks for clarifying. The graph and trend you presented was for year round snow cover. I’m just discussing winter snow cover though.
The point I am making is that winter snow cover is not declining and I think we are in agreement.
Al Gore: “Just as it’s important not to miss the forest for the trees, neither should we miss the climate for the snowstorm.”
Steven Goddard: “A decade long record across the entire Northern Hemisphere is not appropriately described as a “snowstorm.”
Well said, and great post, Steven.
I think you and Willis [and Leif] are talking past each other in different languages, while saying the same thing: There is no trend.
I get what you are pointing out, that this snowfall increase defies the predictions of the warmists [or now, in their latest claim that more warming means more snowfall….does it? LOL]….and turns out that you agree with Willis on the longer scale…so we are all fine.
Thanks, Steven, Willis, Leif, Anthony, and everyone else who is working hard to set the record straight….as that is the way science should work.
On a side note of the spurious “more warming means more snow”….
I don’t think they realize how difficult and how “special” conditions need to be to support snow in the temperate climes.
Unlike rain, snow requires specific dendritic snow growth zones in the atmosphere.
Competing with dewpoint-raising factors like the subtropical jet, the Gulf of Mexico, or the Gulf Stream, the “Pineapple Express” in the Pacific, or whatever, snow has a hard time forming, let alone even reaching the surface….unless you are Steamboat Springs, CO.
My own locality on the coastal plain of Virginia [where snow is an anomaly, for sure] saw a change over to brief heavy snow this evening, as adiabatic cooling did its dirty work. But that ended pretty quickly, as there is no arctic air in place, and the Atlantic air took back over.
Speaking of “no arctic air”….it should be pointed out, as Joe Bastardi and other meteorologists on his site have recently opined: There has been little true arctic air in the pattern for this cold, snowy winter.
The persistent high latitude block that sent the Arctic Oscillation into its abyss, has made sure of that. The block has worked so good, that it prevented a true cross-polar flow to set up over the winter.
[Can you imagine how bad it would have been if we would have had true “vodka cold” outbreaks? I remember my brother calling me about the below zero temps (F) in Bend OR in December….there was some damn cold for sure…but not as bad as it could have been.]
Truly an interesting winter season.
All part of that nearly flat line that Willis points out….but the variations from season to season….can be quite dramatic!
Enough to fool people like James Hansen and Michael Mann, for sure.
But, given their shoddy performance so far, is that so hard to do??
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Well, lets see. Warmer=more evaporation from the oceans (no more worries about sea level rise), which causes more precipitation to fall (no more worries of droughts and water shortages), and finally, more snow (no more worries of receding glaciers or low level snow pack).
Hmmm, you’re right, it all sounds pretty good to me. Crisis averted… we’re all saved! And to think, all this goodness from a little “global warming”, who’da thunk it?
Willis Eschenbach (21:15:27) :
Steve Goddard (20:00:23)
Willis, Leif,
I can’t and won’t try to carry a bucket for you guys in respect to climate, but……….lol, you girls are much more knowledgeable about climate/whether than I ever wish to be. That being said, that information is as meaningful, if not more, than the decadal data given to us by the warmistas. At the very least, it shows an irrelevance to the alarm we’ve heard over and over again about the decline of winter. As Anthony pointed out in an earlier post, it has to be colder to snow; Reading the article, I haven’t seen any inferences other than what has been stated. Nothing earth shattering,
Kindest regards,
James Sexton
Is this a homogenized record or are we stuck with the raw data.
Steve is this how the data is normally compiled, or is this special run … Just curious, because I haven’t heard of ‘decade snowfall’ records before.
I think it’s just snow cover, does this say anything about amounts?
@ur momisugly Snowguy716 (19:13:01) :
Go take a look to your Northwest (Fargo, ND) for 1997/98, and you will find a completely different story (snowiest, coldest). 97/98 winter produced 137 accumulated inches of snow in Fargo (most ever recorded) and caused “The Flood of The Millennium” that spring (Discovery Channel production, Google it).
Steve Goddard (20:32:49) :
I made a graph of GISTEMP vs. snow cover. If there is a correlation between snow cover and temperature, I sure can’t see it.
Just take data from different graphs and splice in it in to create what you want. That’s a ‘standard practice’ ‘trick’ in global warming science. It could be worth millions to you.
aMINO aCIDS iN mETEORITES (21:49:02) :
/sarc off now/