By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM, AMS Fellow
As we reported, the eco-pressure group, the Union of Concerned Scientists, as part of a continuing misinformation campaign sponsored a teleconference yesterday with a very confused Jeff Masters of Weather Underground, opportunist Mark Serreze of NSIDC and a UCS environmentalist. Their performance was a scientific disappointment to say the least as one scientist wrote me “Masters lost all my respect. Serreze never had it”. He didn’t mention the UCS. It is the crazy uncle no one talks about.
The Union of Concerned Scientists recall had sponsored a workshop on Mt. Washington in 2007 in which they promised ski areas that snow would be hard to come by even in northern areas and they might consider another profession. That very winter, northern New England set a record for the greatest seasonal snow and ski areas had the best year in their history. Across the hemisphere that winter was surpassed only by 1977/78, 2009/10. Through January this winter, the Northern Hemisphere had more snow than any of those years and will rank likely in the top 5.
The UCS was not alone in predicting warming means less snow. NOAA in their CCSP and the EPA in their TSD said most cities with winter avergaes near freezing (the case of most metros in the east) would see more rain and much less snow. Recall the IPCC stated: “Milder winter temperatures will decrease heavy snowstorms”. Recall RFK Jr. in 2008 promised DC children would be deprived of the fun of sledding due to warming – of course all-time record snows fell in 2009/10 and sleds and skiis were the only way to get around the DC area.
Now the alarmists have flipped their position claiming warming means more snow although it is a major stretch to think that would apply to Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, New Orleans, and Atlanta in a warming world. But back to the teleconference.
“Heavy snowstorms are not inconsistent with a warming planet,” said scientist Jeff Masters. “In fact, as the Earth gets warmer and more moisture gets absorbed into the atmosphere, we are steadily loading the dice in favor of more extreme storms in all seasons, capable of causing greater impacts on society.” “The old adage, ‘It’s too cold to snow,’ has some truth to it,” said Masters. “A colder atmosphere holds less moisture, limiting the snowfall that can occur.”
First of all the winter was colder than normal not warmer as can be seen by this preliminary analysis from NOAA CPC.
Second the global oceans are colder than normal, especially around the United States as seen from this UNISYS SST anomaly analysis.
Third the amount of moisture in the air this winter was below normal (blues) in all the areas that had abnormal snow.
The actual tropspheric precipitable water content from surface to 500mb shows most the tropical atmosphere has over ten times the water content of the polar and middle latitudes.
Marc Morano collated other scientist responses on Climate Depot. He adds (1) tropospheric relative and specific humidity has significantly declined since ‘safe CO2 levels’ of 1948, 2) atmospheric water vapor has declined since satellite measurements began in 1983, 3) there has been no statistically significant global warming since 1995.
The snow resulted from a rapid cooling as we went from a strong El Nino to a strong La Nina and high latitude blocking consistent with a warm AMO mode and a still quiet sun (maybe some residual help from the high latitude volcanoes of recent years). Global temperature anomalies may have plunged more than a whole degree (F) from their peak last summer and early fall. February 2011’s anomaly (UAH) came in as -0.018F relative to the 30 year average. Recall global temperatures lag ENSO by about 7 months. Global teleconnections are most similar to the late 1950s, 1960s and 1970s when frequent snowy cold winters caused the world to increasingly think an ice age was coming.
Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, said less sea ice in the Arctic translates to more moisture in the atmosphere, and could also cause an atmospheric circulation pattern in polar regions known as Arctic Oscillation.
“It’s still cutting-edge research and there’s no smoking gun, but there’s evidence that with less sea ice, you put a lot of heat from the ocean into the atmosphere, and the circulation of the atmosphere responds to that,” Serreze said.
He would not know cutting edge research if he fell over it. Forecasters were using the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation in forecasting temperatures for over a decade. It correlates very strongly with the Northern Hemispheric temperatures and with wintertime North Atlantic Oscillation and the Arctic Oscillation. Even the IPCC talks about the natural cyclical behavior of the AMO (60-70 year cycle). The warm AMO mode which began in 1995 biases the atmosphere towards a negative AO and NAO. It also contributes to less arctic ice as the warmer than normal waters near the Barents Sea work their way under the ice and thin it from the bottom. See.
Before Serreze took over NSIDC seeing the huge grant funding windfall opportunity, an honest scientist in their blog in 2007 admitted the roles of the oceans in arctic ice and the uncertainty that existed in the science:
“One prominent researcher, Igor Polyakov at the University of Fairbanks, Alaska, points out that pulses of unusually warm water have been entering the Arctic Ocean from the Atlantic, which several years later are seen in the ocean north of Siberia. These pulses of water are helping to heat the upper Arctic Ocean, contributing to summer ice melt and helping to reduce winter ice growth. Another scientist, Koji Shimada of the Japan Agency for Marine – Earth Science and Technology, reports evidence of changes in ocean circulation in the Pacific side of the Arctic Ocean. Through a complex interaction with declining sea ice, warm water entering the Arctic Ocean through Bering Strait in summer is being shunted from the Alaskan coast into the Arctic Ocean, where it fosters further ice loss.” Many questions still remain to be answered, but these changes in ocean circulation may be important keys for understanding the observed loss of Arctic sea ice.”
CO2 has nothing at all to do with it. Cold open arctic waters serve as a major sink of CO2 just as the warm tropical waters serve as a source. Roger Pielke Sr. suggests the ocean heat content (OHC) as a more robust measure of temperature trends. Models suggest OHC should be rising rapidly as the greenhouse gases build, especially in the tropics. Here is the buoy based OHC in the top 300 meters of the equatorial from NOAA (between 5 degrees north and south of the equator) Pacific from 130 E to 80W. During El Ninos, the eastern half is warm and the west cool, in La Ninas the eastern half is cool and the western warm. The fact there is not net warming, instead actually a slight cooling of the entire belt may the most damning proof that global warming is nothing more than a government funded political campaign.
Meanwhile, check out the interesting snow stories as we enter the last quarter mile of the winter season. Ask the people in these areas whether they think global warming is something to worry about.
And Central Park’s snowiest months:
Chicago had a helleva February.
Minneapolis is climbing the top ten list of snowiest winters.
As is Boston.
The UCS was not alone in predicting warming means less snow. NOAA in their CCSP and the EPA in their TSD said most cities with winter avergaes near freezing (the case of most metros in the east) would see more rain and much less snow. Recall the IPCC stated: “Milder winter temperatures will decrease heavy snowstorms”. Recall RFK Jr. in 2008 promised DC children would be deprived of the fun of sledding due to warming – of course all-time record snows fell in 2009/10 and sleds and skiis were the only way to get around the DC area.
Now the alarmists have flipped their position claiming warming means more snow although it is a major stretch to think that would apply to Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, New Orleans, and Atlanta in a warming world. But back to the teleconference.
“Heavy snowstorms are not inconsistent with a warming planet,” said scientist Jeff Masters. “In fact, as the Earth gets warmer and more moisture gets absorbed into the atmosphere, we are steadily loading the dice in favor of more extreme storms in all seasons, capable of causing greater impacts on society.” “The old adage, ‘It’s too cold to snow,’ has some truth to it,” said Masters. “A colder atmosphere holds less moisture, limiting the snowfall that can occur.”
First of all the winter was colder than normal not warmer as can be seen by this preliminary analysis from NOAA CPC.
Second the global oceans are colder than normal, especially around the United States as seen from this UNISYS SST anomaly analysis.
Third the amount of moisture in the air this winter was below normal (blues) in all the areas that had abnormal snow.
The actual tropspheric precipitable water content from surface to 500mb shows most the tropical atmosphere has over ten times the water content of the polar and middle latitudes.
Marc Morano collated other scientist responses on Climate Depot. He adds (1) tropospheric relative and specific humidity has significantly declined since ‘safe CO2 levels’ of 1948, 2) atmospheric water vapor has declined since satellite measurements began in 1983, 3) there has been no statistically significant global warming since 1995.
The snow resulted from a rapid cooling as we went from a strong El Nino to a strong La Nina and high latitude blocking consistent with a warm AMO mode and a still quiet sun (maybe some residual help from the high latitude volcanoes of recent years). Global temperature anomalies may have plunged more than a whole degree (F) from their peak last summer and early fall. February 2011’s anomaly (UAH) came in as -0.018F relative to the 30 year average. Recall global temperatures lag ENSO by about 7 months. Global teleconnections are most similar to the late 1950s, 1960s and 1970s when frequent snowy cold winters caused the world to increasingly think an ice age was coming.
Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, said less sea ice in the Arctic translates to more moisture in the atmosphere, and could also cause an atmospheric circulation pattern in polar regions known as Arctic Oscillation.
“It’s still cutting-edge research and there’s no smoking gun, but there’s evidence that with less sea ice, you put a lot of heat from the ocean into the atmosphere, and the circulation of the atmosphere responds to that,” Serreze said.
He would not know cutting edge research if he fell over it. Forecasters were using the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation in forecasting temperatures for over a decade. It correlates very strongly with the Northern Hemispheric temperatures and with wintertime North Atlantic Oscillation and the Arctic Oscillation. Even the IPCC talks about the natural cyclical behavior of the AMO (60-70 year cycle). The warm AMO mode which began in 1995 biases the atmosphere towards a negative AO and NAO. It also contributes to less arctic ice as the warmer than normal waters near the Barents Sea work their way under the ice and thin it from the bottom. See.
Before Serreze took over NSIDC seeing the huge grant funding windfall opportunity, an honest scientist in their blog in 2007 admitted the roles of the oceans in arctic ice and the uncertainty that existed in the science:
“One prominent researcher, Igor Polyakov at the University of Fairbanks, Alaska, points out that pulses of unusually warm water have been entering the Arctic Ocean from the Atlantic, which several years later are seen in the ocean north of Siberia. These pulses of water are helping to heat the upper Arctic Ocean, contributing to summer ice melt and helping to reduce winter ice growth. Another scientist, Koji Shimada of the Japan Agency for Marine – Earth Science and Technology, reports evidence of changes in ocean circulation in the Pacific side of the Arctic Ocean. Through a complex interaction with declining sea ice, warm water entering the Arctic Ocean through Bering Strait in summer is being shunted from the Alaskan coast into the Arctic Ocean, where it fosters further ice loss.” Many questions still remain to be answered, but these changes in ocean circulation may be important keys for understanding the observed loss of Arctic sea ice.”
CO2 has nothing at all to do with it. Cold open arctic waters serve as a major sink of CO2 just as the warm tropical waters serve as a source. Roger Pielke Sr. suggests the ocean heat content (OHC) as a more robust measure of temperature trends. Models suggest OHC should be rising rapidly as the greenhouse gases build, especially in the tropics. Here is the buoy based OHC in the top 300 meters of the equatorial from NOAA (between 5 degrees north and south of the equator) Pacific from 130 E to 80W. During El Ninos, the eastern half is warm and the west cool, in La Ninas the eastern half is cool and the western warm. The fact there is not net warming, instead actually a slight cooling of the entire belt may the most damning proof that global warming is nothing more than a government funded political campaign.
Meanwhile, check out the interesting snow stories as we enter the last quarter mile of the winter season. Ask the people in these areas whether they think global warming is something to worry about.
And Central Park’s snowiest months:
Chicago had a helleva February.
Minneapolis is climbing the top ten list of snowiest winters.
As is Boston.
I’m trying to figure out it the % precipitation as snow vs. rain would be informative.
I live in Iowa. We usually get a mix of rain, freezing rain and snow during winter. We got roughly normal amounts of snow, but hardly any of the rain/freezing rain we normally get this year. If the warmer=more moisture=more snow hypothesis were true, we should have also seen more rain/freezing rain. That hasn’t happened.
So the general trend seems to be less precipitation, and the “mix” of precipitation we do see is skewed heavily towards snow instead of rain. That’s all consistent with colder, and totally inconsistent with warmer.
Serreze said “Climate science, like any other field, is a constantly evolving field and we are always learning.”
Meaning, of course, “we need to continually move the goal posts, even switch to another field if necessary in our heroic efforts to push the CAGW propaganda. It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it”. “We are always learning” is Warmspeak for “We are always spinning”.
Excellent analysis and data Dr. D’Aleo. It is astounding how much of the so-called main stream media ignores the obvious and dishonest flip-flops of the global warming alarmists in pushing the climate fear political agenda. Even more disingenuous are the alarmists tactics of hiding their data and analysis precluding replication of results by independent scientists which violates the most fundamental principle of the scientific process demonstrating that politics drives climate fear science.
Frank K. says:
Yes – I use http://www.intellicast.com. Awesome radar (100x better than weather underground), and the overall presentation of the forecasts is better.
Thanks!
Looks like a nice clean layout.
Also, weather underground recently “revamped” their site appearance, and now it’s pretty bad – confusing layout and it’s harder to see the forecast for several days in a row.
Yeah, I noticed that. It looks more “clean” but also very “empty”… and kind of hard to get anything you wanted in the first place.
Per the “classic look” link, those usually go away after a short while…
The monumental fraud of AGW, like many evil enterprises is going down with all guns blazing, but going down it is, and the rats will be leaving that sinking ship. Watch out for them
ntesdorf
Another site that might be worth a look is http://www.weathertap.com. Very good radar displays and a clean easy site to navigate. May not have detailed “local” coverage but has good regional coverage.
The political picture in Australia has reached a very interesting stage.
The PM has been pushed by her need for support from the Greens to stay in power.
She is clearly acting against her own understanding of the climate, or at least her understanding of how taxes on CO2 emissions will reduce her chances of re-election.
(Remember she and Wayne Swan forced Kevin Rudd, when prime minister, to drop his plan for a cap and trade system).
She now fears the imminant collapse of her coalition more than being defeated at the next election which is scheduled for two years or more into the far distant future.
(Worrying about 2100, or even the long term destructiveness of killing effecient coal fired electricity generation? – you’ve got to be joking).
Keeping it all together for the next few weeks and months is the urgent subject in focus.
In the meanwhile, Tont Abbott keeps attacking and attacking and the Liberals / Nationals keep rising in the polls.
Yes we do live in very interesting times in Ausie land.
It is quite serious though.
A CO2 tax, once enacted, would never be repealed.
The government would never be able to forgo the extra tax revenue.
Our economy would be permentantly damaged if this hare brained scheme ever went ahead.
Hobo says: “When will the global warming-colding scientists get a clue that they have lost the battle, and the war.”
When the media flip over in bed and start making fun of warmist lunacy.
It’s hard.
Getting on the [trimmed] list of this guy:
http://climateprogress.org/2011/03/04/anthony-watts-wattsupwiththat-readers-shout-down-comments-section/
But you did it Mr Watts. That’s not good…not good at all.
Anthony, I am a huge fan and very grateful for all the work you do. However, I really don’t think it is helpful to encourage people to “shout them down in the comments section”.
There are already claims that sceptics are part of an astroturfing conspiracy covertly funded by Big Oil (I’ve been accused of being paid astroturfer several times, and nothing could be further from the truth). Let’s not give the accusers anything which they could hold up as “evidence” that their claims are true.
That was a comment I added not Anthony. There were a flurry of comments to Forbes that appeared to be a concerted effort to convince the readers that the ideas that ‘cold is really warm and warm means more snow’ made perfect sense. Not everybody in the science arena read Forbes. ‘Shout down’ was a poor choice of words.
‘Add your voice’ would have been more appropriate. Romm et al just trying to deflect attention from yet another major embarrassment to the movement.
Please add your voice of support to shout them down in the comments section.
What for? What difference exposing this particular absurdity going to make to CAGW dogmatists’ stranglehold on mainstream media?
Blogosphere is a real challenge to conventional wisdom as presented in MSM. And the climate skeptic blogosphere is head and shoulders above the MSM with regard to the climate change issue. Today is just another day. Nothing to be exceptionally upset about.
See Lorrie Goldstein’s article at:
http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/lorrie_goldstein/2011/02/02/17129376.html
“As for Gore, if, as he argues, climate scientists have predicted for decades that global warming would make “snowstorms more severe” and lead to “colder winters,” why was there no mention of this in his “documentary,” An Inconvenient Truth?”
“In fact, as the Earth gets warmer and more moisture gets absorbed into the atmosphere, we are steadily loading the dice in favor of more extreme storms in all seasons, capable of causing greater impacts on society.”
Did he bother to reference where he got this “fact?” Was it from a model? Has he measured any moisture in the atmosphere or the change in stomata lately? When will journalists learn to think about what they are told?
The prediction of warmer winters and lack of snow in the Northeast is for the future, when the global temperature anomaly gets to be substantially above its current value of about 0.8C. Climate change is not necessarily a linear process.
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2011/2011-03-02-02.html
“If the climate continues to warm we should expect an increase in heavy snowstorms for a few decades,” Masters said. “But eventually, with winters getting shorter, we may reach the point where it’s too warm to snow heavily.”
We will always have weather. What we are experiencing today was predicted last fall, by weather forecaster Judah Cohen, who claims it is related to the late melting of Arctic Sea Ice, causing increased snow in Siberia, and a resultant cold pocket of air, due to higher reflection of solar radiation in that region. This combined with La Nina cause a shift in the polar air southward, where it clashed with the moist southern air causing snow storms. The late melt of Arctic Ice is a consequence of global warming.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/28/putting-a-siberian-snow-connection-to-the-test/
eadler says:
March 5, 2011 at 10:17 am
“…Judah Cohen, who claims it is related to the late melting of Arctic Sea Ice, causing increased snow in Siberia, and a resultant cold pocket of air, due to higher reflection of solar radiation in that region. This combined with La Nina cause a shift in the polar air southward, where it clashed with the moist southern air causing snow storms. The late melt of Arctic Ice is a consequence of global warming…”
Utter gibberish clearly written by someone who hasn’t got a clue about how climate operates and the role that the poles play in the heat engine which we call climate.
Nigel McDougall says:
March 3, 2011 at 11:08 pm
It’s all about tax dollars, nothing to do with reality. Most governments are happy to play along with the Al Gore gag.
I’ll be submitting an article shortly which will be a story of how I went from being a left-wing greeny eco-tard to a skeptic and then what we can do in Australia to repeat that in as many people as possible. Galvanize!
I would say “short term average” instead of “normal”, because we simply don’t know what normal is.
Tenuc says:
March 5, 2011 at 1:06 pm
eadler says:
March 5, 2011 at 10:17 am
“…Judah Cohen, who claims it is related to the late melting of Arctic Sea Ice, causing increased snow in Siberia, and a resultant cold pocket of air, due to higher reflection of solar radiation in that region. This combined with La Nina cause a shift in the polar air southward, where it clashed with the moist southern air causing snow storms. The late melt of Arctic Ice is a consequence of global warming…”
Utter gibberish clearly written by someone who hasn’t got a clue about how climate operates and the role that the poles play in the heat engine which we call climate.
I did not come up with this theory. I paraphrased Judah Cohen’s explanation. Judah is in the business of making long range weather forecasts, and gets paid to do this.
http://www.aer.com/news-events/bios/judah-cohen
Dr. Cohen joined Atmospheric and Environmental Research in 1998. Prior to AER, he spent two years as a National Research Council Fellow at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies after two years as a research scientist at MIT’s Parsons Laboratory. Cohen received his Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences from Columbia University in 1994 and has since focused on conducting numerical experiments with global climate models and advanced statistical techniques to better understand climate variability and to improve climate prediction. Cohen develops AER’s long range forecast products for commercial clients who include some of the largest investment firms in the US. He’s been interviewed on television, the Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and Investor’s Business Daily, among others. His work is highlighted by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
If you claim he hasn’t got a clue about how climate operates, it is pretty clear you don’t know what you are talking about. Check out the link that I provided if you want his explanation first hand rather than my paraphrase.
The Union of Concerned Scientists never fails to amaze me. Like the “March of Dimes”, the whining charity (founded ligitimately to help victims of polio in the 1920’s and ’30) which now is the “Mother’s March Against Birth Defects”…the UCS started as an Anti-nuclear weapons group. During the ’80’s, probably at the behest of their “Soviet Masters”, they became also Anti-nuclear power. Unlike the pro-nuclear groups, which always published their funding, and their members (I know, I mailed to the Atomic Industrial Forum, one time, after requesting a member list) the UCS has steadfastly refused to reveal their funding nor their membership.
A survey of 1800 randomly selected people from the “Who’s Who of American Men and Women in Science and Engineering”, in the 1980’s got ONE response of affirmative to the question, “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists. That means that this index, of over 90,000 prominent scientists, Engineering and Science professors, technical managers, etc, would include less than 170 (statistically) who would be members of the UCS. A pretty dismal representation.
YET the Media continues to give them “credibility” due to their “gullibility”. Time for an “unmasking” of their silliness.
Max