From the Independent, March 20th, 2000:
However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers. 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.
According to reports I’ve read, that is the Independent’s most viewed story of the past 10 years. It has become the modern equivalent of the famous “Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus“.
Now, for the second year in a row, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales is covered with snow. Meanwhile, AGW proponents like George Monbiot are furiously spinning to make it look like AGW causes more snow, rather than less, as the CRU scientist said 10 years ago.
(Update) WUWT commenter Murray Grainger writes:
The very same Independent has already published the rebuttal:
Expect more extreme winters thanks to global warming, say scientists
It isn’t working. Give it up kids.
I was alerted in Tips and Notes to this image from sat24.com by WUWT reader Joel Heinrich, but found an even better one from the Aqua satellite. See below.
Here is the image from the AQUA satellite, as you can see, except for a small part in the Southwest, snow is everywhere.
Click image to enlarge.
The image above has been cropped and annotated. Original source here
See last year’s image here
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Re Myrrh
December 25, 2010 at 5:40 am:
Mauna Loa is far from the only CO2 monitoring station in the world. Here is a very interesting animation that plots all the CO2 monitoring stations and their readings over time:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/history.html
Claude Harvey says:
December 24, 2010 at 9:42 am
Being wrong about most everything carries no penalty in a world where mainstream media assists in reinventing reality. In a world where folks will substitute a media account for what they can see outside their own windows, “truth-telling” is a lonely and impoverished profession.”
Wow, isn’t that the truth! People believe global warming because publicly funded “scientists” tell them a chunk of ice thousands of miles away is melting, in spite of the fact that they feel the cold right outside their own doorsteps.
Onion,
The planet is not showing increasing CO2 levels are dangerous and ocean cycles dominate natural climate. You can’t keep saying this nonsense when there is no scientific evidence. Just saying x ppm of CO2 increase is not evidence it is actually having significant influence on climate. The rate of warming is no different recently to what has been measured in the instrumental record in the past. Most the the warming has been in short bursts with very little underlying trend. Despite this lack of significant warming with an increase of 4o percent in CO2. Hence, the 40 percent increase in CO2 has added nothing extra that can be determined different from any other natural climate change.
R. de Haan says:
December 24, 2010 at 10:46 am
Potsdam Climate Institute now says to expect warmer colder winters
http://notrickszone.com/2010/12/23/potsdam-climate-instutute-now-says-to-expect-warmer-colder-winters/”
Where therefor a comment by:
‘DirkH
23. Dezember 2010 at 12:58 | Permalink | Reply
“Es bleiben im Raum: Keitel, Jodl, Krebs und Burgdorf.”’
Oh could someone please make an AGW spoof of that famous scene in “Downfall”‘ that has been spoofed so many times already!!!!!!
Myrrh says:
December 25, 2010 at 5:40 am
Keeling cherry picked this 280 ppm figure for CO2, he was against coal in the fledgling environmentalist movement. He then put his measuring stick on top of the worlds most active volcano surrounded by active volcanoes, pumping out CO2 with great abandon.
Myrrh, while Mauna Loa is at the flanks of an active volcano, the CO2 measurements that are influenced by the outgassing (+4 ppmv) are not used to calculate the averages. In fact these are used to calculate the amount of degassing of the volcano. Neither are the CO2 levels with upwind conditions (-4 ppmv) used, because these are somewhat depleted by the vegetation at the valleys. But even including or excluding these outliers, that doesn’t change the average or trend with more than 0.1 ppmv over a year. The measurements are rigorously controlled by different persons, different organisations and different labs with different methods. See:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/about/co2_measurements.html
Further, as Onion already said, there are lots of places (some 70) nowadays which monitor CO2 from near the North Pole (Alert, NWT, Canada) to the South Pole, all as far as possible away from local sources/sinks. See the carbon tracker at:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/iadv/
The measurements at the South Pole even started before these of Mauna Loa. Yearly averages of all stations are within 2 ppmv within each hemisphere and within 5 ppmv between the hemispheres (due to a NH-SH lag, as most of the emissions are in the NH). For an in-depth study, see my web page at:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_measurements.html
Thus whatever the personal opinion of C.D. Keeling (I have no knowledge that he was involved in some anti-coal movement), the CO2 measurements since 1958 were and are reliable.
The pre-industrial 280 ppmv was based on a selection of older measurements, based on a-priory selection criteria, over which one can have a firm discussion. First by Calendar, later by Keeling. But even if the criteria may be discutable, their selection was confirmed 40 years later by Antactic ice cores…
Onion says:
December 25, 2010 at 11:38 am
That’s a fair argument. I am not saying that reducing CO2 emissions is safe. I am saying that increasing CO2 emissions at the rate we are is dangerous (both can be dangerous, they are not mutually exclusive). There are no reassurances from the past that what we are doing is safe. Maybe we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
I don’t think that it will make any difference for climate if the atmosphere increases 100 ppmv at once or 100 ppmv over 5,000 years (as happened in the glacial-interglacial transition). The net effect on the energy balance is the same and follows the CO2 levels immediately, and the response of the oceans needs about 30 years, which is quite rapid too. Most climate models use the sudden increase method to calculate what happens with increased CO2.
The main point if there will be problematic events is what the real impact of CO2 is on temperature. Most models assume some 3°C increase for 2xCO2. That is not based in CO2 alone: a doubling of CO2 gives not more than 0.9°C increase, based on its absorption bands. Including (already contestable) water vapor feedback that might increase to 1.3°C. All the rest of the feedbacks is very questionable, including clouds (positive in models, negative in reality). And some other forcings like aerosols probably are overestimated (even the sign may be wrong) and solar changes underestimated.
There are few periods where we may know the effect of changes in CO2. During the ice ages, there is often a huge overlap between temperature and CO2 changes (but CO2 was lagging temperature), thus the models may include a huge feedback for CO2. But there is an interesting period at the end of the previous interglacial (the Eemian): temperature (and CH4 levels) were already at a minimum before CO2 levels started to drop. The subsequent drop of 40 ppmv CO2 had no discernable influence on temperature:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/eemian.html
That means that the influence of CO2 on temperature/climate is quite low.
The faint sun paradox has many other explanations than CO2 only: less clouds more open oceans, other constituents of the atmosphere, less GCR’s,… See:
http://news.discovery.com/earth/early-earth-sun-liquid-oceans.html
http://www.bioinf.uni-leipzig.de/~ilozada/SOMA_astrobiology/taller_astrobiologia/material_cds/pdfs_bibliografia/Sun_Paradox_Science_1997.pdf
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0306/0306477v2.pdf
Hijack of Met
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/12/hijack-of-met.html
@Myrrh
Willis Eschenbach made a very good case for Mauna Loa on this blog in the past. The observatory is perfectly located. And the CO2 figures from Mauna Loa Observatory are more reliable than the land temperature data.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/04/under-the-volcano-over-the-volcano/
Re Matt G says
December 25, 2010 at 12:51 pm:
“The planet is not showing increasing CO2 levels are dangerous”
It’s not what’s happened so far that’s the issue, but what will unfold over the next century (and beyond)
Re Ferdinand Engelbeen
December 25, 2010 at 1:44 pm:
I was more thinking about the implications of effects happening in just 200 years than over 5000.
“The main point if there will be problematic events is what the real impact of CO2 is on temperature.”
Im not so sure. if climate sensitivity is low because clouds increase, what impact will increased clouds have on climate? Low climate sensitivity is really just shifting some of the response from temperature to something else. Ultimately something is going to change quite abit. Changes in cloud cover might not impact sea level but they could modify weather patterns just as changes in temperature could. Maybe the change in humidity will be enough to impact things. It’s a bit like a how a world with both a CO2 forcing of 4wm-2 and an aerosol forcing of -4wm-2 wouldn’t equal a world where both were roughly zero.
“. But there is an interesting period at the end of the previous interglacial (the Eemian): temperature (and CH4 levels) were already at a minimum before CO2 levels started to drop. The subsequent drop of 40 ppmv CO2 had no discernable influence on temperature:”
I guess the problem is knowing where temperature would be if the CO2 hadn’t dropped in order to tell there is no discernible difference. Perhaps without the CO2 drop that section would have ended up higher.
“The faint sun paradox has many other explanations than CO2 only: less clouds more open oceans, other constituents of the atmosphere, less GCR’s,… See:”
Yes I was only pointing out CO2 being 3000ppm long ago doesn’t necessarily mean temperature should have been way higher than today. The faint sun paradox could indeed be due to less clouds, that seems to make sense.
“I wonder how the Russian convoys of WWII got on with all the sea ice in the Barents sea? If we have lost the ice now then I would expect there to have been at least some ice back in the 1940s. A bit odd then that convoys ran from June 1941 to May 1944 in almost every month.”
Not odd at all. The Barents Sea never freezes completely, due to the influence of the Gulf Stream. Murmansk was built exactly because this is the only part of the north coast of Russia that is always ice-free. During the very coldest years of the 1860’s and 1870’s the ice nearly reached Murmansk a few times, but never since.
On the other hand the Kara Sea always freezes over in winter.
So to say that the Kara Sea and Barents Sea were frozen in the past and ice-free now is quite wrong. At the most one can claim that the Kara Sea freezes slightly later in the season now and that there is a bit more open water in the Barents Sea in winter, particularly in the area west of northern Novaya Zemlya.
I’d like an AGWer, even a witless one like Onion, to have a go at finding Warm Eras in the past that have harmed either life in general or human society and civilization in particular. There are a trunkload of examples of cooling catastrophes, but I can’t find any “excess warming” instances. In fact, Warm Eras appear to be boom times for all.
Bring on the heat!
Snow…
“…a very rare and exciting event”
Yeah so rare we have had it fall in the hills in Australia, during summer. WHat’s the betting we’ll get an early start to the skii season, maybe 4-6 weeks.
Met Office / Heathrow shame
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/12/25/article-1341610-0C942107000005DC-6_634x395.jpg
Onion says:
December 25, 2010 at 3:21 pm
Changes in cloud cover might not impact sea level but they could modify weather patterns just as changes in temperature could. Maybe the change in humidity will be enough to impact things. It’s a bit like a how a world with both a CO2 forcing of 4wm-2 and an aerosol forcing of -4wm-2 wouldn’t equal a world where both were roughly zero.
There is an about 6% increase in inflow from the Siberian rivers into the Arctic Ocean over the past 60 years, due to some warming of the oceans. Not really problematic, and difficult to attribute to CO2 or natural causes (PDO, NAO) or both. Compared to earlier warm periods (the Holocene Optimum) not even enough to get the tree line back to the same latitudes.
And the balance of cooling aerosols and the impact of GHGs is an interesting one: if the influence of aerosols is (probably) overblown, the impact of GHGs is overblown too, which is more and more visible in the deviation of the temperature forecast (sorry, “projection”) from reality. This was discussed at RC some years ago:
http://www.realclimate.org/?comments_popup=245
with my comment at #6
And here a comparison for different estimates of the aerosol impact:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/oxford.html
One can halve the impact of GHGs, with a similar retrofit of temperature simply by estimating a lower impact of aerosols. Thus halving the effect of 2xCO2 in the future…
Re Matt G says
December 25, 2010 at 12:51 pm:
“The planet is not showing increasing CO2 levels are dangerous”
It’s not what’s happened so far that’s the issue, but what will unfold over the next century (and beyond)
Onion,
The planet is also not showing dangerous climate change when taking into account what should unfold later and beyond. Every conjecture claimed to support this problem has been falsified not long after. The planet is showing that natural changes are much bigger then any underlying CO2 effect. The rate is much less then the 0.2c per decade when natural changes are taken into account. This has consequences further down the line indicating a worrying rise in global temperatures is just not happening. The planet does not show a temperature rise in 100 years time more than 1c and that is not a issue to unfold to worry about. This can only be maintained by the rate of CO2 continuing to increase with it being non-linear. Current scientific knowledge suggests that there will not be enough fossil fuels to burn to even achieve this rise. The sensitivty of CO2 on climate is now shown to be low.
To get more extreme weather in terms of hot, dry and more severe storms (especially convective or tropical) then more zonal/poleward jets is fine. That could hold true and that is just what was suggested.
AGW claimed that human induced warming was making the jets more zonal.
The trouble is that the jets have now gone more equatorward/meridional despite CO2 still increasing.
With more meridional jets one can include more cold episodes too but you cannot do so for more zonal jets.
So what we have here is a complete volte face.
30 years of telling us we would have more zonal jets with more heat drought and more convective storms then just as the CO2 link with jet positioning collapses they start telling us to expect more meridional jets with cold extremes in the mix.
We have a choice of two possible scenarios:
i) AGW theorists have now got it right despite the obvious fact that jetstream behaviour is unaffected by CO2 quantities and despite reversing their previous position.
ii) The world is doing its own thing and is in the process of changing to a cooling trend.
I know which I think is more than 95% likely to be correct.
Spinning onions are a rare and exciting event. Sorta like my green tomatoes last summer that never turned even a hint of red in color. Maybe this year my tomatoes will do better depending on the spin of the onion.
Spinning onions are a rare and exciting event only if you’re impressed with PITAs. Do you enjoy the PITA-patter of overblown tweets?
On the Vikings-in-Scotland meme popping up in this thread, I’ve always wondered about my own ancestry given that my family harkens from the Northern Coast. As to the relative merits of moving in versus dragging the fierce but beautiful scot maidens to the longboat, I expect there were some unfortunate moments for the lovelorn viking youths full of passion and hormones. For aside from facial hair it might not have been easy to discern the gender of young scots in the heat of a raid, especially at night, given that the men wore skirts (of a sort). What was it the Germans called the scots and their blood-curdling pipers coming across the battlefield in WWII — “the Ladies from Hell”?
Given the cold trend in UK winters, I wonder if some bright person is marketing a line of men’s thermal pantyhose designed to be worn under a kilt? 🙂
A bit OT but it reminds me of a favourite highland yarn:
Jock was in love with Mary and wanted badly to impress her. So one day he took her out for a stroll in the Highlands wearing his finest kilt, which he had made himself.
“Ooh, Jock”, says Mary, “I’ve always wanted to know what it is that a Scotsman wears under his kilt!”
Well, Jock was mortified. Truth was, he didn’t know what was generally worn, but as for himself, he wore NOTHING under his kilt.
Embarrassed, he said, “Mary, it’s not something a proper scotsman should discuss with a young lassie on their first stroll. It is a very serious matter of pride. But if you will agree to accompany me in the hills again next Saturday then I promise you won’t be disappointed.”
Mary agreed.
That week, Jock went to the weavers and obtained four yards of the finest, soft, silk tartan material he could find and spend the next two days inventing a beautiful pair of (very modest) highland underwear for himself.
He was so proud he could hardly sleep thinking of how Mary would be so impressed by his skill at sewing, his resourcefulness, and the beautiful silk tartan material he had obtained. He liked the underwear so much he was happy that he had enough left over to make himself three more pairs just like it.
By the time Saturday came around Jock was so excited about the upcoming walk through the hills that he dressed in a daze — and forgot altogether about his newly made underwear. He put on his kilt as he had always done, with nothing underneath, and didn’t give it a thought.
When Jock and Mary came to a nice resting place along their walk, Mary sat down and Jock said, “Mary, are you ready to learn what it is that a Scotsman wears under his kilt?”
“Yes Jock, I’ve been waiting eagerly all week!”
So Jock stands in front of her and raises his kilt for her to see.
“Ooh, Jock!”, she says, her chest heaving with emotion. “It’s so lovely! It is more beautiful than I had even imagined!”
Jock beamed with pride.
“Well, Mary, I’m glad you like it. And you’ll be happy to learn that I have three more yards of it back in my house!”
Onion
Dec 25, 2010 at 11:41
Mauna Loa is far from the only CO2 monitoring station in the world. …
From what I have read, all stations are adjusted to fit Mauna Loa – The Poster Child Station for AGW – which is always presented as a “pristine” site for measuring “background CO2 levels”, with “pristine” defined as being without contamination from local sources. Quite regardless that it is situated below the summit of the worlds largest active volcano, surrounded by active volcanoes with all the associated volcanic activity, thousands of earthquakes every year, vents etc., above land and below in the sea, and, over one of the earth’s greatest hot spots creating volcanoes from the earth’s crust, and, in a warm sea which releases CO2 to the atmosphere which is aided and abetted by the strong wind systems in play around these volcanic mountains and islands. “Pristine” it certainly isn’t. It is utterly ludicrous to call it a “pristine site” for measuring, this so called, “background” CO2 levels.
Your link gives a graph of CO2 levels over time, from 800,000 years ago. Again I’ll ask, if the levels of CO2 remained practically unchanged over that huge length of time and didn’t begin to rise until the Industrial Revolution, then CO2 played no part whatsoever in the great and dramatic changes every 100,000 years during this period; when temperatures began to rise quickly putting an end to the glacials and bringing in the hot interglacials, such as we are coming to an end of now, which melted the vast and deep ice in the northern hemisphere which caused the sea level to rise around 350 feet. For example, the North Sea did not exist until this happened in our present interglacial, we could have walked to France and Ireland from England. That’s Global Warming.
Hippos used to live in the Thames estuary 100,000 years ago, the climate was like East Africa now. http://onlinegeography.wikispaces.com/Changes+in+the+amount+of+ice
Joanne Nova has a page on the Vostok graph in greater detail chunks making it easier to see these changes: http://joannenova.com.au/global-warming/ice-core-graph/
But, again, another weird graph from AGW, where’s the 800,000 year span exactly?
There’s also another piece on a Nova page worth reading to help appreciate the reason for the paucity of actual information conveyed by AGW graphs, as the one you linked to which says nothing. Sometimes they’re fudged with so much detail that only with concentrated effort can one see that the information on the graphs does not match the spiel. There’s one showing a spaghetti of different colour lines from various surveys which are hard to distinguish between, and mixing up temperature using K and C on the same graph – but, with the famous tick at the end of ‘instrumental data’ prominent, the overall impression at quick glance is that temperatures have never been higher, even though that’s not actually what the graph is saying.
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/10/is-the-western-climate-establishment-corrupt-part-9-the-heart-of-the-matter-and-the-coloring-in-trick/
Jump to “The Theory of Man-Made Global Warming Failed an Empirical Test” for the problem AGW had because it had falsified its own claim, and its solution by use of colour to fudge the fact.
If this was one example from one scientist in any genuine scientific endeavour, he would lose all credibility in the scientific community. This kind of sleight of hand is only used by con artists. AGW is rife with it.
But here remember, that the AGW claim is that CO2 has only just begun to rise after hundreds of thousands of years of being practically flat. That this shows categorically therefore that levels of CO2 played no part in the great changes every 100,000 years in the dramatic rises and falls in temperature, going into interglacials and back to ice age conditions, it actually means that CO2 is irrelevant to global warming.
Why then after 800,000 years of it being irrelevant should we care what’s it’s doing now?
You might just as well be saying that it’s the rise of electric power and it’s increased usage which is causing global warming.
This, I’m sorry to say, is at the level of superstition. So likewise the elite wielded authority over the populations in South America by claiming they kept the sun in the sky and rain in due season by ripping out hearts of sacrificial victims.. It works until the climate changes and they are shown to be incapable of controlling it, and so losing credibility the societies implode. Let’s not encourage this..
.. forcibly decreasing CO2 emissions and the payment of green taxes in recompense for the elite’s dedication to saving us from ourselves will not make any difference.
And also note the sleight of hand as presented in this “unprecedented rise in CO2”, it does not mean unprecedented rise in temperatures any further back than the LIA. A lot of effort went into brainwashing people to believe that the MWP and LIA didn’t exist which is actually a distraction from the fact that CO2 has been shown by observation to have been irrelevant in even greater changes from hot to cold.
I’ll come back later today to reply to the other posts addressed to me.
Onion, spin this.
Its not just Britian thats having the cold snowy winter, it’s Canada, Germany, USA etc. etc.
A warmer planet has always been better for humanity. Historically a colder planet has been catastrophic and brought nothing but misery for humanity. For the past 15 years science, politics and the MSM have been lamenting our good fortune of living in a warming period. Those pursuing the filthy lucre of CAGW and its weird science may get some nasty personal surprises.
I suspect the good times are over and we are going to have to actually start using our intelligence to adapt to the coming cooling period. I never thought I would be witness to such an example of global delusion as CAGW, incredible.
I wonder if part of this prediction that snow will be a rare event has to do with some AGWers thinking the AO would stay primarily positive (as it was this past decade). However, there appears to be a natural oscillation during winter months and we may very well have flipped to the negative phase. So much for the prediction of positive AO’s in our future due to global warming.
Some background from NOAA:
“The AO is a natural pattern of climate variability. It consists of opposing patterns of atmospheric pressure between the polar regions and middle latitudes. The positive phase of the AO exists when pressures are lower than normal over the Arctic, and higher than normal in middle latitude. In the negative phase, the opposite is true; pressures are higher than normal over the Arctic and lower than normal in middle latitudes. The negative and positive phases of the AO set up opposing temperature patterns. With the AO in its negative phase this season, the Arctic is warmer than average, while parts of the middle latitudes are colder than normal. The phase of the AO also affects patterns of precipitation, especially over Europe.”
So in the negative phase the strength and height of the vortex pressure flip flops depending on latitude. In the negative phase the outermost latitude of the vortex is weak. This allows warmer Arctic waters to be sent to lower latitudes as it is currently doing out Fram Strait. It also allows for the much greater snow precipitation occurring in the Northeastern US and across Europe.
http://jisao.washington.edu/ao/
Here is the historical AO data to 2010
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/JFM_season_ao_index.shtml