By Steve Goddard
The experts at East Anglia and CRU told us in 2000 that :
(March, 2000) According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”. “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.
David Parker, at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Berkshire, says ultimately, British children could have only virtual experience of snow. Via the internet, they might wonder at polar scenes – or eventually “feel” virtual cold.
The 255 experts at the AAAS denouncing “climate deniers” in an open letter described this past winter in these cleverly sarcastic terms :
The planet is warming due to increased concentrations of heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere. A snowy winter in Washington does not alter this fact.
I appreciate that government bureaucrats believe that there is no world outside Washington, yet nature has given us the opportunity to grade both the predictive and observational skills of the experts. And it looks like they deserve a rather poor grade. According to data collected by Rutgers University Global Snow Lab, this past October through March period was the snowiest on record in the Northern Hemisphere – with an average monthly snow cover of 39,720,106 km2. Second place occurred in 1970 at 39,574,224 km2.
‘
We also know that the past decade had the snowiest winters on record.
A month ago I discussed an AGW sacred cow – Glacier National Park. At that time, a WUWT reader (Craig Moore) expressed his concern about the lack of snowcover in Montana this year. The good news for Craig is that as of yesterday, snowpack in Montana is 98% of normal. California is 117% of normal. Arizona is 175% of normal. Wyoming is 101% of normal, etc.
Every good and conscientious citizen knows that snow cover is disappearing due to global warming. Google turns up over 100,000 hits on that topic. This is what the disappearing snowcover looked like in my neighborhood yesterday morning.
With lots more cold and snow on the way.
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp1.html
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There’s still snow in the “melting Arctic” – shouldn’t that have disappeared by now (according to the exalted ‘theory’). Incidentally, one of the very best Arctic weather websites is – go take a look (disclaimer – I had nothing to do with it!).
Okay, I goofed on the link. Let’s see if http://www.kimmirutweather.com/ works or just look up kimmirut
R. Gates
The El Nino/Negative AO argument for this year just doesn’t hold water..(excuse the pun). The 1997-1999 El Nino was one of the strongest in many years and there was a negative AO for almost the entire 2 year span http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/month.ao.gif
Yet in Steve’s graph above, the snowfall in those years is average at best…
Rebuttal?
Ulric Lyons says:
May 13, 2010 at 1:47 pm
Its a bit like the change in fashion every 7yrs, 1969, 76, 83, 90, 97, 04, ect.!
http://climateinsiders.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/octobermarchnhsnowcover.png
I was just curious on the data source for the graphs it’s obviously not Rutgers http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_seasonal.php?ui_set=nhland&ui_season=1
Snow and cold? Can’t be….Think of the lizards!
“Rising global temperatures cooking lots of lizards”
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SCI_LIZARDS_THREATENED?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
sarc/off
Snow in Edinburgh, UK yesterday. I just don’t know what to make of it.
Weather is not climate. Agreed. So what is climate? Can we agree on a “reasonable” period of time over which any observed change could be said to be a shift in climate?
Richard111 May 13, 2010 at 11:11 am
Why should we believe explanations about how a “greenhouse gas” traps heat? Why doesn’t somebody do an experiment to check if it does?
I have seen a number of dreadful experiments that do no such thing and merely prove the incompetence of the “scientists” involved.
A proper experiment should check a whole range of levels of CO2 and have accurate means of measuring the temperature. I’d suggest keeping the equipment the same but changing the level of CO2, and having at least 10 sets of equipment running at the same time. Do not average the results together – I want to see the individual results plotted on a graph of CO2 percentage versus temperature.
There’s a challenge for some real scientists.
I am prepared to believe that there may be a slight effect but that it would be so tiny it is negligible.
MikeA
The data obviously is Rutgers and I provided a link in the article to the data.
http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/files/moncov.nhland.txt
R. Gates
A quick follow up to my last post, looking back further we see that 1976 was a strong LA NINA year with a POSITIVE AO. Yet it was a very heavy snowfall year….
Rebuttal?
.
We are at an impasse. I say winter is Dec 21 till March 21 depending on the Sun.. You say November is in the winter as is april.
Prove it!!
snowiest….big word alert
snowier…..More big words.
Do you make up words like you make up emotional arguments?
I take it you can’t understand how you contradicted your self. You say warmer is wetter and say March is wetter that November and April.
Your logic tells me you beleive what you say and believe March is warmer than April.
Algore is wettier or the wettiest scientist around. I can make up the big words also.
It takes energy to create evaporation. If you think like algore, can you tell me if condensation is by reason of adding or removing energy? Please show your work.
Bonus question for 500 dollars. You say heat causes snow, why doesn’t it snow in the Canary islands? The scirocco from Morroco “evaporates” all that water.
I should post my sources:
El Nino/La Nina
http://faculty.washington.edu/kessler/ENSO/soi-1950-98.gif
AO Index
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/month.ao.gif
Jon P says:
May 13, 2010 at 1:45 pm
Really, you believe that is what Steve is trying to say? And he equates weather with climate? You seem to forget that climate takes a long-term view whereas weather is chaotic making it difficult to predict. Climate averages out weather over time, removing the chaotic element. Climate models are forecasting climate not weather. Until you and Steve and others understand the differences between climate and weather you will continue with your biased reporting and cherry-picking of data.
And it is VERY interesting that Steve’s graph doesn’t match what Rutgers shows on their web site. Maybe a little massaging of the data was also done by Steve.
However they want to spin it, here’s how the water supply for the West is lining up:
http://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/cgibin/resvgrph2.pl?area=west&year=2010&month=05
Colorado reservoirs are about 106% of average. Idaho, Montana, Arizona, Washington and Montana, likewise are above average. California, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada all show below-average reservoir storage. Contrary to Steve Goddard’s appraisal, the Great Society politics do not appear to be as significant for climate as economic factors, especially states with high home mortgage defaults.
A lot of t
Eric says:
May 13, 2010 at 2:01 pm
R. Gates
A quick follow up to my last post, looking back further we see that 1976 was a strong LA NINA year with a POSITIVE AO. Yet it was a very heavy snowfall year….
Rebuttal?
No statistics are perfect in any sense. Just because there are strong correlations, even if you have say 90% of the variance explained between 2 variables that doesn’t mean it happens every single time that the two variables are related. Thus, any argument such as the above is invalid. You need to look at the entire physical system to see what else may have been going on at the same time and try to tease out how much of the snowfall is related to the ENSO, the AO, the PDO, etc. etc. Or perhaps there is no link, which is also possible.
Models predict a more negative winter AO state with the loss of summer sea ice, but that doesn’t mean this years negative AO state is a result of sea ice loss. I don’t know why that is so hard to understand. Climate is the long-term state, it is not the chaotic weather.
#
Henry chance says:
May 13, 2010 at 12:20 pm
This blog has done a great job of expressing how they take single readings and use them to average a large area. They also leave out extreems because they don’t support the dogma.
Bingo Henry! And the broken record that keeps spinning talking points such as “three decades of sea ice reduction”. Ok, just how long have satellites been tracking sea ice change? Is this the only verifiable, quantifiable method of doing so? If so, then how can we say with certainty that sea ice has not been as or more “reduced” in the past (prior to satellite technology) than the current historical low in 2007? What is the total (Arctic and Antarctic) sea ice reduction in “3 decades”(sq/km) ? What is the total sea ice reduction in the last 10 years? Obviously, you know where I’m going with this…
Here comes the Girl! (La Niña)
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/climate/indicator_enso.jsp?c=soi
“Can we agree on a “reasonable” period of time over which any observed change could be said to be a shift in climate?”
Sure, right after you tell me which lotto numbers to pick. 😉
There is no reasonable period of time to predict anything.
Because climate changes so much, you would have no way of knowing.
Obviously, climate scientists can’t do it with computer models either.
Regarding R. Gates discussion on warmth leads to more snow.
“A little learning is a dangerous thing.”
I too wondered if increased SST’s might be responsible for more snowfall. But instead of having my beliefs guide my conclusions, I checked the facts. Most precipitation in the eastern 2/3 of the U.S. comes from the Gulf of Mexico. That part of the ocean had negative temperature anomolies this winter. The West Coast gets most of its precipitation from the Pacific where El Nino was running in full force. The Western U.S. was remarkably dry this past winter. Check out DroughtMonitor.
From information presented so far, it would seem that we had “record” snowfall this past winter not because the oceans were warm, but because temperatures over land were cold.
As Steve has mentioned, this past winter does not prove or disprove AGW, but some of the widespread conclusions of AGW are more suspect because of the winter.
DirkH says:
May 13, 2010 at 12:12 pm
“Dr. Schweinsgruber says:
[…]
And, doesn’t increased precipitation coincide with warming? ”
Yeah, exactly like drought, only more humid…
Tut mir leid Dirk, non sequitur. In the arctic, warming appears to coincide with increased precipitation, which yields increase in sea-ice extent (2D) at decreasing volume (3D). And why not?
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Why-is-Greenlands-ice-loss-accelerating.html
I looked over the numbers for Montana and I don’t know how you arrived at 98%. The last 6 figures need to be dropped as they are all Wyoming. So how did you arrive at 98%?
Mike
nednead says:
May 13, 2010 at 2:05 pm
I go by what was actually written by Steve, not what you think he wrote. He led with the prediction of less snow by a climate scientist. Showed how a Google search would yield articles about less winter snow. And then he showed the snow cover data, for all to see. You are the one warping that into him saying “this disproves AGW”, which he did not. Really climate is weather over time without noise of fluctuation? Thank you Captain obvious. When I finished the article I thought “maybe those climate scientists should be more reserved in their predictions.” And I also thought “there seems to be very little correlation between warming (yes it has last 30 years) and winter snow cover, too bad the “conventional wisdom” and that climate scientist so wrongly thought there was. You on the other hand were in the mode of “how can I make snarky comments and defend my team!” You bore me now.
Climate is the long-term state, it is not the chaotic weather.
And there it is. The famous CAGW/CC battle cry -“climate is not weather”!
But, as with most of their “arguments”, it’s just a silly straw man. Funny how it doesn’t stop them from cherry-picking their climate period to show how “catastrophic” the warming has been. Even funnier that it in no way shows how C02 is “driving” the climate, let alone man’s piddly 3% contribution to atmospheric C02.
Poor Alarmists. They just can’t handle the truth, and it drives them up a wall that Nature simply isn’t (nor has it ever) conforming to their warmist ideology. It’s both hilarious and sad at the same time.
[Reply: no censorship, there were a lot of posts in spam today. A couple were yours. They are all posted now. If you don’t see your post after a reasonable time, make a comment. We get hundreds of spams, and the priority is moderating and approving the comments in the incoming queue. ~dbs, mod.]
Nice trick, hold a post in moderation for several hours then insert it about 100 posts back so it won’t get read.
Well here it is again, care to explain what puts it in the Spam?
Steve,
While you were at the Rutgers site did you notice that the values for April were almost the lowest for the period (41/44)?
Northern Hemisphere
Month Rank Area Departure Mean
4-2010 41/44 28265 -2234 30500
3-2010 18/44 40621 290 40330
And for N America:
North America
Month Rank Area Departure Mean
4-2010 44/44 10996 -2185 13181
3-2010 37/44 14968 -718 15686
Overall their data shows earlier snowfall in the fall and earlier melt in the spring.
REPLY: Phil, I’ll explain it for you. As a publicly funded professor at a major university who is too timid to put his name to his words, who uses a university email address and IP infrasturcture, and often posts inflammatory comments, all your posts automatically go to the penalty box along with SPAM for examination. When they are examined they get released.
Want more respect? Want to get out of the penalty box reserved for weasels on the public dole that are always critical but too cowardly to criticize on the same open level? Then have the courage to put you name to your words like I do every day and I’ll elevate you. Otherwise stop your whining. – Anthony Watts
What were you doing on the car?
😉