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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Sorry…. OT I know but after a brief lull it appears the BBC are right back on it! Global Warming the child killer!!!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8533937.stm
Have we heard too much about climate change? Are people switching off the subject, particularly as we in the UK go through the coldest, snowiest winter for many years, and the media is full of stories about the climate sceptics?
The Lancet medical journal has had two special editions on the subject during the last year, which show that children, the most vulnerable in any community, are already dying in large numbers in poor countries as a result of a warming world.
To a paediatrician, this would be a devastating response, coming just as health professionals are accepting not only that lives are being lost by global warming, but that the potential health benefits of a low carbon lifestyle would be very, very big.
Little has been said in the media about climate change and health – usually what we hear about is polar bears, loss of the ice cap, dying species and flood risks.
But much hard data has come out in recent months to show that health is being hit now.
The Lancet medical journal has had two special editions on the subject during the past year, which show that children, the most vulnerable in any community, are already dying in large numbers in poor countries as a result of a warming world.
Re: Pascvaks (16:57:20) :
“Warmest? and Snowiest? Somehow I just knew there had to be a logical connection. Beautiful! This explains everything!”
Of course. More H2O in the air, is just an AGW-prediction you probably forgot. Maybe you consider a temperaturechange from -7 to -4° C as, well, what? Cooling?
How does the snowcover in March hold out?
How about trends in duration of snowcover?
I have seen a number of posts here trying to explain why global warming causes more snowfall – a case of post rationalisation if ever I have seen one.
The point that numerous contributors are making is that the models used to predict future climate trends said that snowfall would decline.
The models made a prediction (well actually they made a lot of predictions) but they got the snowfall one clearly wrong by a large margin.
If I were a climate modeler, I would have to start thinking about revising my model in the light of experience. I would then make a further prediction and wait to see how that model works out before suggesting that people radically change their lifestyles at massive cost on the basis of an as yet unproven model.
There have been sufficient failures of prediction, IMHO, to seriously question the validity of the model(s) used. The excuses given to account for these failures should instead be built into revised models and then tested, otherwise they appear to many rational observers to be attempts to cover embarrassment rather the genuine moves to improve the poor performance of current models.
The reason behind ‘Global Warming’ ( in the UK )
Dr. Richard North of the ‘eureferendum’ blog has posted the reason for global warming in the UK,
It is political, and financed by the UK taxpayer, here are the results:
Grants for global warming
EPSRC (engineering and physical sciences research council)
grants to study the effects of global warming:
pounds sterling 63,245,372
NERC (natural environment research council )
Grants to study the effects of global warming:
pounds sterling 166,500,521
total $344,631,889
this is only 2 of the government departments that have released their figures,
there are many, many more that have not been released.
It was just a few years ago the state of Vermont was suing(?) the US Govt over global warming reducing their snowfall and thus their tourism. They wanted special aid because of this “fact.”
It is amazing. This stinking dead elephant is lying in the middle of the room and they keep saying he is just asleep. It is good they don’t have the power to burn heretics anymore.
Steve,
There is a very good correlation to the snowfall and the signs of an increasing trend.
1967 the oceans surface salinity started to change. Around the equatorial areas where this started and expanded. This salinity change effected the evaporation cycles and created massive draughts. The past 8 years, the north Atlantic salinity declined. Last year a massive die off of salt water salmon that were suppose to return to spawn.
Any sign here?
wayne (00:00:52) :
the points plotted against time are pointing up, level, or downward within a certain range, no continuation of confidence said, meant, or implied.
The observed snow cover [that has no trend] is compared to the models’ predicted trend the next hundred years. There is the continuation, said, meant, and implied.
OT? “Family in Argentina … killing each other in a global-warming inspired suicide pact”. What is Al Gore saying about it?
And how many people, kids are out there, having fears, just not killing themselves? It’s a shame.
HectorK,
“The Lancet medical journal has had two special editions on the subject during the past year, which show that children, the most vulnerable in any community, are already dying in large numbers in poor countries as a result of a warming world.”
Dying in large numbers due to warming? How? Can you provide some actual examples that this is due to a world that is 0.6C warmer than it was a century ago, and not the result of, say, poverty?
So that most “sensitivie” of all measurements of global warming – snow cover – has shown no trend whatsoever in the last 40 years.
And to think that Al Gore was just putting his finishing touches to his theory of how warming makes more snow. What a shame.
Steve,
The AGW debate is just the tip of the iceberg. The physcists and scientists have pickles up their butts when it concerns missing any significant research that should have been included in their researches. Science took the wrong turn in not including rotation when they were doing research and theories. So a great deal of science is incorrect including what we think how and what our planet core is created with.
Remember peer review is of like minded people and anyone who doesn’t conform to these areas are automatically dismissed. Even if all the physcial evidence and experimentation are included.
Ziiex Zeburz (03:31:57) :
EPSRC (engineering and physical sciences research council)
grants to study the effects of global warming:
pounds sterling 63,245,372
NERC (natural environment research council )
Grants to study the effects of global warming:
pounds sterling 166,500,521
total $344,631,889
Oh, why are people content with the scraps from the table when there’s a real feast: Renewable obligation worth £1billion/year, so far I guess that is a total of: £5,000,000,000. To which the £50,000,000 spent on (failed) wind energy research is peanuts.
Ok, so all calamities aside, I’m sure there must be some scientific paper(s) describing the mechanisms that a fractional positive change in temperature causes an increase in snowfall.
I mean, you know, like, settled science, yeah?
Not that I’ve seen an increase in snow. True, it snowed in SC and many other places which see limited snowfall, but isn’t this simply a weather event? Cold fronts and all that?
Steve Goddard (20:09:32) :
Willis,
I completely agree that the earth has to have a thermostat, given that temperatures have remained in a narrow band for hundreds of millions of years.
Is our sun the thermostat?
“If I were a climate modeler, I would have to start thinking about revising my model in the light of experience.”
This is not ‘standard practice’ in Climate Science (which apparently operates under a different version of the Scientific Method than other branches of science). In Climate Science, when the model does not conform to reality, you question reality, not the model.
Hey, Al Baby!, What happened with your Inconvenient Truth…or it´s that you received an Inconvenient Nobel from your Progressives Colleagues?
You have to give it back if you are not a “baby” but a grown up man…are you?
“True, it snowed in SC and many other places which see limited snowfall, but isn’t this simply a weather event? Cold fronts and all that?”
It is only a ‘weather event’ when it contradicts AGW, if it supports it, it is a ‘climatic change.
@jaypan:
Have you read Michael Crichton’s “State of Fear”?
He said that the biggest problem he had was finding a real ecological disaster that he could model his eco-terrorist threat on.
Chernobyl, which should have been the biggest, baddest, terrifyingest, just didn’t stack up.
Why?
Because MORE PEOPLE DIED FROM THE SCAREMONGERING than from any physical effects.
AGW is going down exactly the same track. Will the scaremongerers ever cop to the deaths they cause?
To ask is to answer: it is always “someone elses fault” with these people …
Ziiex Zeburz (03:31:57) :
The reason behind ‘Global Warming’ ( in the UK )
Dr. Richard North of the ‘eureferendum’ blog has posted the reason for global warming in the UK,
It is political, and financed by the UK taxpayer, here are the results:
Grants for global warming
EPSRC (engineering and physical sciences research council)
grants to study the effects of global warming:
pounds sterling 63,245,372
NERC (natural environment research council )
Grants to study the effects of global warming:
pounds sterling 166,500,521
total $344,631,889
this is only 2 of the government departments that have released their figures,
there are many, many more that have not been released.
And here’s the hypothesis:
If you spend all this money, you have two outcomes:
There are essentially no global warming effects;
There are significant global warming effects.
If the former result is presented, the accountability office is going to question such great expenditure to give no results. You could easily have spent a couple of dollars to reach the same conclusion.
Also of note is that the premise has been ‘built in’: it’s given that global warming is happening. And not the ‘good’ kind – ‘global warming’ tends to have an implicit ‘anthropogenic’ component, whereas a ‘warming of the globe’ implies that the globe is warming with no preconceptions.
Suffice to say, it’s not possible to obtain a grant or any funding from any source to prove a negative, because there is no higher authority to hold any accountability.
Hi,
Even though i agree with you on many point, i think that taking Dec-Feb is IMHO kind of a biased way to make your point.
If you take the sum of snowcover over each calendar year (Jan-Dec) for NH, you see a smal downward trend from 1970 to 2009.
Same thing if you take Nov-Feb.
I see no reason in taking Dec-Feb.
It’s like the biased IPCC graph showing Northern Hemisphere snow cover for March-April.
Mick (05:01:51) :
Is our sun the thermostat?
No, it is getting steadily ‘warmer’. Its luminosity increasing about 1% in a hundred million years.
I have just finished watching a weather forecast from the BBC. The forecaster explained that although it has been the snowiest and coldest winter in the UK for 31 years it has been particularly dry, especially in Scotland. The northerly winds bring snow but far less moisture than the winds that normally prevail from the Atlantic.
Perhaps the apologists for the AGW movement who have posted above would like to reconsider their claims and perhaps comment further here.
David Segesta (18:02:33) :
“Does anyone have the quotes from the IPCC or Al Gore saying there would be less snow in the future?”
AR4 Chp 10 pp750 “As the climate warms, snow cover and sea ice extent
decrease”.
pp770 “Decreases also occur at high latitudes, where
snow cover diminishes”.
pp772 “Because of this temperature association,
the simulations project widespread reductions in snow cover over
the 21st century (Supplementary Material, Figure S10.1).” “At
the end of the 21st century the projected reduction in the annual
mean NH snow cover is 13% under the B2 scenario (ACIA,
2004). The individual model projections range from reductions
of 9 to 17%. The actual reductions are greatest in spring and late
autumn/early winter, indicating a shortened snow cover season
(ACIA, 2004). The beginning of the snow accumulation season
(the end of the snowmelt season) is projected to be later (earlier),
and the fractional snow coverage is projected to decrease during
the snow season (Hosaka et al., 2005).
AR4 SPM pp5 “Mountain glaciers and snow cover have declined on
average in both hemispheres.”
Chp 9 pp665 “The observed decrease in global snow cover
extent and the widespread retreat of glaciers are consistent
with warming”.
Chp 11 pp 850 “Snow season length and snow depth are very likely to decrease in most of North America except in the northernmost part of
Canada where maximum snow depth is likely to increase”
Box 11.1, Figure 2. “(12) Very likely decrease in snow season length and likely to very likely decrease in snow depth in most of Europe and North
America”.
Theres more but I gave up for now.
Caleb (02:31:53) : “If I was judging the winter simply by how often the water buckets froze in my barn, I’d have to call it a mild winter, in New Hampshire. I thank the warm phase of the AMO, but know that is going to change in the next few years.”
That and the the high latitude Greenland block and the accompanying tanked Arctic Oscillation was SO successful, that some of that warmth and higher than normal heights backed into Atlantic Canada and the Northeast.
During the last big storm that brought all the snow to New York City and points west and southwest, but rain to Albany, the polar vortex had plunged south into West Virginia.
It was 40 F and raining in Albany NY and Boston, 32 F with heavy snow in Central Park, and 19 F with near blizzard conditions in Boone, North Carolina.
Truly an “upside down” storm if there ever was one and a testament to such a successful high latitude block, for sure…not to mention the last gasps of a very robust cycle of the AMO, as you say.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Benjamin,
Dec-Feb is defined as meteorological winter and is when peak snow always occurs.