Paging Joe Romm:
In fact, this record-breaking snowstorm is pretty much precisely what climate science predicts. Since one typically can’t make a direct association between any individual weather event and global warming, perhaps the best approach is to borrow and modify a term from the scientific literature and call this a “global-warming-type” deluge.
From Columbia Earth Institute, home to NASA GISS:
“This paper explains what happened, and why global warming was not really involved. It helps build credibility in climate science.”
See PR below and a link to the full paper follows. Hemisphere winter snow anomalies: ENSO, NAO and the winter of 2009/10, Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, L14703, doi:10.1029/2010GL043830.
Via Eurekalert: Converging weather patterns caused last winter’s huge snows
The memory of last winter’s blizzards may be fading in this summer’s searing heat, but scientists studying them have detected a perfect storm of converging weather patterns that had little relation to climate change. The extraordinarily cold, snowy weather that hit parts of the U.S. East Coast and Europe was the result of a collision of two periodic weather patterns in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, a new study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters finds.
It was the snowiest winter on record for Washington D.C., Baltimore and Philadelphia, where more than six feet of snow fell over each. After a blizzard shut down the nation’s capital, skeptics of global warming used the frozen landscape to suggest that manmade climate change did not exist, with the family of conservative senator James Inhofe posing next to an igloo labeled “Al Gore’s new home.”
After analyzing 60 years of snowfall measurements, a team of scientists at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory found that the anomalous winter was caused by two colliding weather events. El Niño, the cyclic warming of the tropical Pacific, brought wet weather to the southeastern U.S. at the same time that a strong negative phase in a pressure cycle called the North Atlantic Oscillation pushed frigid air from the arctic down the East Coast and across northwest Europe. End result: more snow.
Using a different dataset, climate scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration came to a similar conclusion in a report released in March.
“Snowy winters will happen regardless of climate change,” said Richard Seager, a climate scientist at Lamont-Doherty and lead author of the study. “A negative North Atlantic Oscillation this particular winter made the air colder over the eastern U.S., causing more precipitation to fall as snow. El Niño brought even more precipitation—which also fell as snow.”
In spite of last winter’s snow, the decade 2000-2009 was the warmest on record, with 2009 tying a cluster of other recent years as the second warmest single year. Earth’s climate has warmed 0.8°C (1.5°F) on average since modern record keeping began, and this past June was the warmest ever recorded.
While the heavy snow on the East Coast and northwest Europe dominated headlines this winter, the Great Lakes and western Canada actually saw less snow than usual—typical for an El Niño year, said Seager. Warm and dry weather in the Pacific Northwest forced the organizers of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver to lug in snow by truck and helicopter to use on ski and snowboarding slopes. The arctic also saw warmer weather than usual, but fewer journalists were there to take notes.
“If Fox News had been based in Greenland they might have had a different story,” said Seager.
While El Niño can now be predicted months in advance by monitoring slowly evolving conditions in the tropical Pacific Ocean, the North Atlantic Oscillation— the difference in air pressure between the Icelandic and Azores regions—is a mostly atmospheric phenomenon, very chaotic and difficult to anticipate, said Yochanan Kushnir, a climate scientist at Lamont-Doherty and co-author of the study.
The last time the North Atlantic experienced a strong negative phase, in the winter of 1995-1996, the East Coast was also hammered with above average snowfall. This winter, the North Atlantic Oscillation was even more negative–a state that happens less than 1 percent of the time, said Kushnir.
“The events of last winter remind us that the North Atlantic Oscillation, known mostly for its impact on European and Mediterranean winters, is also playing a potent role in its backyard in North America,” he said.
David Robinson, a climate scientist at Rutgers University who was not involved in the research, said the study fills an important role in educating the public about the difference between freak weather events and human-induced climate change.
“When the public experiences abnormal weather, they want to know what’s causing it,” he said. “This paper explains what happened, and why global warming was not really involved. It helps build credibility in climate science.”
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Here’s the full paper (PDF, thanks to Leif Svalgaard)
Abstract:
Winter 2009/10 had anomalously large snowfall in the central parts of the United States and in northwestern Europe. Connections between seasonal snow anomalies and the large scale atmospheric circulation are explored. An El Niño state is associated with positive snowfall anomalies in the southern and central United States and along the eastern seaboard and negative anomalies to the north. A negative NAO causes positive snow anomalies across eastern North America and in northern Europe. It is argued that increased snowfall in the southern U.S. is contributed to by a southward displaced storm track but further north, in the eastern U.S. and northern Europe, positive snow anomalies arise from the cold temperature anomalies of a negative NAO. These relations are used with observed values of NINO3 and the NAO to conclude that the negative NAO and El Niño event were responsible for the northern hemisphere snow anomalies of winter 2009/10.
Citation: Seager, R., Y. Kushnir, J. Nakamura, M. Ting, and N. Naik (2010), Northern Hemisphere winter snow anomalies: ENSO, NAO and the winter of 2009/10, Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, L14703, doi:10.1029/2010GL043830.
Conclusions
[11] In winters when an El Niño event and a negative NAO combine, analyses reveal that there are positive snow anomalies across the southern U.S. and northern Europe. In western North America and the southeast U.S. snow anomalies are associated with total precipitation anomalies and southward shifts in the storm track. In the eastern U.S., north of the Southeast, and in northwest Europe positive snow anomalies are associated with the cold temperature anomalies accompanying a negative NAO. The relations between large‐scale climate indices and snow anomalies were used to attribute the snow anomalies for the 2009/10 winter with notable success in pattern and amplitude. We conclude that the anomalously high levels of snow in the mid‐Atlantic states of the U.S. and in northwest Europe this past winter were forced primarily by the negative NAO and to a lesser extent by the El Niño. The El Niño was predicted but, in the absence of a reliable seasonal timescale prediction of the NAO, the seasonal snow anomalies were not predicted. Until the NAO can be predicted (which may not be possible [Kushnir et al., 2006]), such snow anomalies as closed down Washington D.C. for a week will remain a seasonal surprise.
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And yet after all that, Columbia still had to put this piece of CYA as a subtitle in their Press Release:
here we go again….
AFP: Climate change could spur Mexican migration to US: study
Researchers led by Michael Oppenheimer of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University estimated the sensitivity of migration to climate change and predicted the number of Mexicans who would migrate under a range of different climate and crop yield scenarios.
In the worst-case scenario would occur if temperatures were to rise by one to three degrees Celsius (1.8 to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2080, if farming methods had not been adapted to cope with global warming and if higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide had not spurred plant growth. This would mean crop yields in Mexico would fall by 39 to 48 percent, the study said.
“In that case, the increase in Mexico’s emigration as a share of population would be between 7.8 percent and 9.6 percent,” said the study, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences…
But the findings are relevant to the many countries in Africa, south Asia, and Latin America, and even to Australia, where the authors of the study predict migration will become a “significant issue” as climate change drives temperatures up and crop yields down
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/usmexicoclimatefarmimmigration;_ylt=AqXPnfdPZao5hxRzeKQH1Aes0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTQzZW02N3NqBGFzc2V0A2FmcC8yMDEwMDcyNi91c21leGljb2NsaW1hdGVmYXJtaW1taWdyYXRpb24EY2NvZGUDbW9zdHBvcHVsYXIEY3BvcwM0BHBvcwMxBHB0A2hvbWVfY29rZQRzZWMDeW5faGVhZ
Climate change linked to mass Mexican migration to US
Los Angeles Times – Anna Gorman – 8 minutes ago
Global Warming Means More Mexican Immigration?
National Geographic – 51 minutes ago
Mexican ‘climate migrants’ predicted to flood US
Nature.com – Zoe Corbyn – 3 hours ago
Climate Change May Mean More Mexican Immigration
Scientific American – David Biello – 3 hours ago
re J Peden and Kate above: The new “Might makes Right” derived of Post Normal Science and its “Precautionary Principle” as applied to CAGW: “It Might warm up and that Might be bad, so we have the Right to force you to change how you live to how we want you to live.”
Khwarizmi says:
July 26, 2010 at 11:15 am
Thanks for your collection of links. The first thing that crossed my mind while reading the article was something like; “I thought they were claiming just a few weeks ago that children won’t even know what snow was?” I have been searching the CBC for a piece with none other than Andrew Weaver of UBC, going on for close to an hour about how snow has been predicted to be a thing of the past due to climate change/global warming/crazed carbon kittens. The show was hosted by one Claire Martin BSc, the mother corps newest Euro import weather lady/climate hysteric. Funny, but I cant seem to find it… Memory hole?
To Gail Combs
Do you have a link to the data for the graph you are posting? Thanks.
rbateman says:
July 26, 2010 at 3:01 pm
“…How quickly they forget the jet stream loops that stretched 2-3000 miles N-S, carrying the heat up to the Pole from whence it escaped….
That interests me. Some others here have from time to time written about the effect of the jet streams. As I understand them, the four jet streams occur at the interfaces of the Hadley cells, the Temperate cells and the Polar cells.
If the Pacific is in El Nino phase, shouldn’t the Hadley cell (north version) really be cranking heat and mass into the system, which would tend to expand the northward reach of the Hadley cell, thus forcing the northern mid-latitude jet north? As I observe winter here in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, given a map of the northern mid-latitude and polar jets and a map of winter storms entering the West Coast, I can fairly well predict whether and when a major snowstorm is going to arrive on my doorstep.
Maybe Willis’s next phase of the Thermostat Hypothesis is to look at how the various convective cells interoperate to move heat and moisture north and south.
Just an observation, backed by no real knowledge. And probably something that others have addressed ad nauseum, but I didn’t follow the links. Apologies in advance.
No, the 2000-2009 decade was NOT the warmest on record. “Record” has been manipulated by the interested parties to show warming where there was none. Any article asserting this is a totalitarian propaganda of lies.
R. Gates says:
July 26, 2010 at 12:10 pm
(SUPERFLUOUS PAGES REMOVED)
stevengoddard says:
July 26, 2010 at 11:31 am
Cold and snow in Florida is clearly due to warmth. The hotter it gets, the more snow and cold we can expect.
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Steve, I do recall us talking about this very issue last winter. I pointed out the convergence of weather systems (El Nino + the negative AO index) as the cause of the snow in Florida. We also talked about the fact that Colorado’s snowiest months are not the coldest months. Cold air can’t hold as much moisture of course. Also of course, everyone knows that the one of the driest regions on earth in terms of precipitation is also the coldest…Antarctica.
REPLY: You had 4 pages of quotes from the thread, which was too large and looked like a copy/paste error on your part. I’ve pared it down to the relevant quote which I think you are responding to. – Anthony
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Thanks…I was hoping you’d do that.
MattN says:
July 26, 2010 at 10:35 am
“The El Niño was predicted but, in the absence of a reliable seasonal timescale prediction of the NAO, the seasonal snow anomalies were not predicted”
Didn’t Bastardi predict it rather accurately?
REPLY: There’s a huge difference between pattern recognition (skill based) and model forecast output. – Anthony
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I think I do remember Joe Bastardi factoring in the North Atlantic Oscillation.
Creation belief is far more rational. There is at least no physical evidence which falsifies the concept of creation, best I know of. There is physical evidence after physical evidence which falsifies at least one of the assumptions that is required to be true for AGW to be true. “Underlying assumptions” is what I call the underlying assumptions, which all have to be “true”, each and every one, for the hypothesized concept to be “true”.
Saves a lot of time, ferreting out these underlying assumptions, to see if any have been falsified since when. Lots have been falsified, but it takes a long, long time for the word to get out, all of the real and useful scientific research being done these days, most of the findings by scientists who don’t want to make any waves. Even so, these scientists still have to use the words, “climate warming” or “climate change” somewhere in the paper to avoid getting themselves blacklisted, never to get government grants for research again.
And I am certainly not a creationist in any way, shape or form.
MattN says:
July 26, 2010 at 10:35 am
IIRC, he and Joe D’Aleo were both calling for a very cold New England. We were certainly on track for that in December with 13 days where the high temperature was below freezing. However, January had only 14 despite normally being the coldest month of the year, and February had 7 – the last day was the 8th!
Hmm the first half of January had 10 cold days, the other three were the last three days of the month. The effect was pretty dramatic on my heating bill, so that helped make up for the pitiful snow season we had (hey, at least the snow went to DC!)
What happened was that the record-setting AO brought maritime air up into Canada and what would typically be frigid continental polar air flow to us from the northwest was the far more moderate maritime-sourced air. So yeah, Joe and Joe both had pretty good forecasts, but the weather was a bit more extreme than they expected.
If someone discussed this statement about the NAO, I missed it
“While El Niño can now be predicted months in advance …, the North Atlantic Oscillation— the difference in air pressure between the Icelandic and Azores regions—is a mostly atmospheric phenomenon, very chaotic and difficult to anticipate, said Yochanan Kushnir …”
Wait, what? – I though the NAO cycle was on the order of 20-30 years between positive and negative switches. Is he referring to the same NAO? What am I missing here?
I see this study was funding by a grant from NOAA. It would be nice to know how much of our taxpayer money was wasted on this study when those of us whose have some experience and expertise in weather pattern recognition were predicting it months in advance. I also wonder if NOAA’s Lawrimore will reconsider his statements on relating the snow in DC & Baltimore to global warming.
Oh well, at least it is nice to know R Gates was “was right last winter about the anomalous weather”. I’m sure he used his influence to correct his warmist friends on the fact that it wasn’t global warming that caused the snow and he didn’t just show up here to tell us he was right.
Dave in Deleware: I think you are getting the NAO and the AMO (Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation) mixed up.
Anthony:
(Slightly off on a tangent, but semi-briefly…)
(…preaching to the choir stuff, I guess, too…)
Anthony, I have to say that I don’t accept that to be true. We all seem to accept the adjusted values, even when we all KNOW there are lots of specific met stations where the adjustments are demonstrably WRONG. We do NOT have to keep throwing them a bone about “warmest decade ever.”
Poppycock!
When all the raw data is finally in, and we can see what they’ve done to bastardize (homogenize) the data, and when they use REAL adjustments for every specific met station, not globally averaged adjustments – and those adjustments use corrected UHI values, I am pretty damned certain that the real averages are going to be right at about the average for the last century or so (allowing as we ARE coming out of the Little Ice Age which ended only 160 years ago).
I don’t even see that this position makes me into some kind of extremist, either. It is THEY who need to demonstrate their declarations.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. One guy’s un-backed-up work is not enough. Their allegations are only that so far – until someone outside their coterie replicates their work. We who “deny” their claims – why should WE be the ones who need to meet higher standards? They make the claims, then deny Steve M et al the information with which to persuade ourselves that they are correct. (We all know that if they ere confident of their results they would have made it easy for anyone to access their data and know their methods.) We do not need to push their agenda for them.
TOB adjustment values for regions is bad science, lazy science. Cherry picking trees in Yamal. Dropping over 80% of met stations at a time when we have much greater computer capacity to deal with data. Bad code writing. Intentionally increasing adjustment values, over time, written into code. 69% of US surface stations rated only “Fair,” “poor” or “worst.” Hiding declines. Sloppy data management. All bad science. None of it is verified, except by their pals. Therefore any claims based on the bad science are hollow claims that we should not go around repeating without caveats.
So, no, I don’t accept that “the period 2000-2009 was the warmest on record” is a fact. Not at all. Even if you do.
I want to see solid science first. Call me old-fashioned.
Feet2theFire says:
July 26, 2010 at 6:33 pm
“…I want to see solid science first. Call me old-fashioned….”
Couldn’t have said it better. This “warmest this and warmest that” stuff has got to be challenged, and I believe, refuted. They are cooking the books, so to speak.
Feet2theFire says:
July 26, 2010 at 6:33 pm
When all the raw data is finally in, …
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You can also add that the raw data also can also contain errors. I occasionally collected temperature data in the early 80’s from a Stephenson’s Screen while in graduate school. This was the old fashioned method of looking at the gauge, guessing what it read and writing it down. I would guess there was a couple of degrees in error in that data. I really hope none of that temperature data is actually being used to determine 0.1 C temperature anomalies. But don’t blame me, I was in the Geology department at the time. The Atmospheric Science people should have known better 🙂
[REPLY – You happen to remember the location or the station number? ~ Evan]
[REPLY – You happen to remember the location or the station number? ~ Evan]
It was in Monroe, LA. I checked the USHCN sites via the surfacestations site and it was not listed. Thankfully! I would have hated to find out that I contributed to GW 🙂
“This paper explains what happened, and why global warming was not really involved. It helps build credibility in climate science.”
Why this obsession with “credibility?” Credibility will come when it achieves accuracy, which should be the goal of any scientific enterprise.
And the sun does not cause climate issues – sure is funny that last negative phase in North Atlantic also occurred at a SOLAR MINIMUM. Is that coincidence or is that solar irradance?
“The last time the North Atlantic experienced a strong negative phase, in the winter of 1995-1996, the East Coast was also hammered with above average snowfall. This winter, the North Atlantic Oscillation was even more negative–a state that happens less than 1 percent of the time, said Kushnir.”
pat: July 26, 2010 at 3:40 pm
here we go again….
AFP: Climate change could spur Mexican migration to US: study
In the worst-case scenario would occur if temperatures were to rise by one to three degrees Celsius (1.8 to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2080, if farming methods had not been adapted to cope with global warming and if higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide had not spurred plant growth. My emphasis.
That is an atrocious sentence, even by Princeton’s currently-malleable standards — *and* it says nothing will happen because whatever might have happened has already been forestalled by things that have already happened.
[REPLY – You happen to remember the location or the station number? ~ Evan]
I collected the data from a Stevenson screen min/max thermometer for five years at the USDA Central Great Plains Research Station in Akron, CO. Why do you ask?
If records have a random occurrence, the following test can be used to determine it:
Take the snowfall amounts per winter for, say, Philadelphia starting from the time recordkeeping began. Count the first year as one and then count the first one to surpass the year-one’s level as two, the next year to surpass level-two and so on until the most recent record. If the period covered is sufficiently long – say x= 50 years or so- then the number of records broken since year one should be ln x. This relates to a random ordering of a series of numbers. Incidentally, ln 50=3.91 so there should have been around 4 snowfall records since and including year one (I haven’t checked this – anyone interested?). ln 100 is only 4.6 so we’re likely to break last year’s record only once during the next 50-70 yrs or so. I’ve done this with Red River (of the north) flood records and found this randomness (I’ll wait for a suitable thread to pass this bit of math magic along).
So this paper is saying that winter weather converged to affect almost all of that part of the globe that was undergoing a winter?
I thought “converged” implied some kind of concentration.
Ref – David Middleton says:
July 26, 2010 at 10:42 am
David, Texas is different! Always has been! Always will be! It’s an anamoly. And big too.
I finally got around to reading this paper.
Excuse me, but how does the following get published in a “peer reviewed” journal?
What a load of crap.
Would this ever make into GRL?
“The wintry winter has encouraged global warming alarmists and those supporting decreased availability of and more expensive energy, to make a mockery of climate science.”