That’s from the avalanche center in the Tetons, and here is a current web-cam view up Yosemite Valley towards still-closed Tioga Pass (in the left background):
AP has a nice roundup of late snow and snowpack news (including the Teton quote). Just weather. No mention of climate. Nothing this time about snow and cold being caused by global warming. Now if we could just get the press to do the same when there is a regional hot spell. Still, it’s progress. Remember the spinning on last winter’s snowzilla?
Most amusing was Al Gore’s quote from “the scientific community“:
A rise in global temperature can create all sorts of havoc, ranging from hotter dry spells to colder winters, along with increasingly violent storms, flooding, forest fires and loss of endangered species.
A click on Gore’s link showed “the scientific community” to be Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page. Gore should also have quoted Page’s credentials, which Page listed in his next line:
That’s simple science even for me, a guy whose scientific education pretty much ended with the old “Watch Mr. Wizard” TV show and a subscription to Popular Mechanics.
Unfortunately, Gore could have quoted some actual scientists to the same effect, as Andrew Bolt quoted the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research:
The overall warming of the earth’s northern half could result in cold winters… Recent severe winters like last year’s or the one of 2005-06 do not conflict with the global warming picture, but rather supplement it.
But as Bolt also quoted, the Potsdammer’s IPCC bible had predicted the opposite:
Fewer cold outbreaks; fewer, shorter, intense cold spells / cold extremes in winter” as being consistent across all model projections for Europe
What, are there no takers this time around? Are they tiring of the ridicule?
R. Gates says:
May 29, 2011 at 5:38 am
“…. Etc.”
Bill Sticker says:
May 29, 2011 at 7:20 am
Here on Vancouver Island people are openly wondering what happened to spring.
Look no further than the temperature of the waters off your coast. The Pacific Ring of Fire looks like the Pacific Ring of Refrigeration at sea.
Pamela Gray,
Where did I say anthropogenic factors were THE cause of current conditions? I surely don’t believe it, so I surely would not have said it. I never said what was causing anything, but rather made the generally point about the long term well established ice core record the show a warmer, not cooler climate leads to greater snowfall accumulations. A general point that many would do well to understand is that when the next glacial advance begins it will not be marked by increasing snowfall accumulations, but rather, lower accumulations that simple won’t completely melt in the cooler summers. The ice core record is quite clear on this.
“Icarus says:
May 29, 2011 at 6:20 am
In view of the fact that global warming is accelerating, and is already running at about 0.2C per decade,”
Icky, is it OK if I call you Icky? I think you will get a better reception here if you are a bit more meticulous in your choice of numbers. Defensible values might be somewhere in the range 0.11C to 0.17C And you’d do well to explain where the numbers came from and why they are superior to more modest estimates.
Cherry picking high values to suit your preferences isn’t good science and it is probably going to get you roundly bashed in this venue. Deservedly so perhaps.
Also, you seem to be under the impression that the rate of change of temperature is accelerating. Presumably that would be because rate of change is a direct function of the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere or the injection of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is accelerating significantly. It might not be surprising that you believe that as “Climate scientists” have been less than completely candid about many aspects of climate change. In fact, neither they nor the IPCC seem to believe either of those things. (Although at times, it is a bit hard to figure out what they do believe).
Joe Lalonde says:
May 29, 2011 at 4:33 am
Alec,
Been hearing the same reports in Canada that we are going to have an above average heat this summer and dryer.
So far it ain’t happened yet.
Tons of rain and lower than normal temperatures.
Yup. 1C last night when I got home from my gig in Calgary. But at least we are seeing some sunshine after a week of Newfoundland weather.
Just weather:
http://www.arapahoebasin.com/ABasin/snow-conditions/web-cams.aspx
91 inch base
There be June snow ski reports coming from the rockies.
Pamela Gray says:
“While you attribute these conditions to CO2, the natural systems are entirely capable of driving these conditions.”
That is true, not that Gates can ever be convinced. He has the ultimate true believer’s closed mind. As Prof Richard Lindzen explains the situation:
“For small changes in climate associated with tenths of a degree, there is no need for any external cause. The earth is never exactly in equilibrium. The motions of the massive oceans where heat is moved between deep layers and the surface provides variability on time scales from years to centuries. Recent work (Tsonis et al, 2007), suggests that this variability is enough to account for all climate change since the 19th Century.” [my bold]
Everything we observe today can be fully explained through natural variability without resorting to the extraneous variable of CO2.
Tom t:
Everything is interesting to me, except those who regurgitate talking points without thinking for themselves. There is virtually no facet of climate study that does not interest me and you shouldn’t mistake me for one who is blindly faithful to any point of view. I go where the facts and data lead. The decade of 2000-2009 was the warmest on instrument record. If the decade of 2010-2019 is not warmer than the previous one, that will be interesting to me and might indicate that a quiet sun is more potent than any amount of AGW can counter, but this would not mean that there is no effect from human activites, for we can’t say how much cooler still a quiet sun period would be if we didn’t have 40% more CO2 then we had just a few hundred years ago.
On my post above about the North Cascades Highway, I meant to add that temps in ghe region have been lower that average by 10-15 degrees all fall, winter, and spring. So no, the snow in the passes and lowlands here was not due to warmer conditions, either on the ground or at altitude.
Gates says:
“The decade of 2000-2009 was the warmest on instrument record.”
Word games. Look at the trend.
I am sitting here in SW Albera at 1143m elev…a few km to the north is fresh snow about 100m higher. My son drives a one-ton, 4 by 4 and yesterday nearly got stuck in several inches of gloppy snow trying to get to a popular campground that should have been open for a couple of weeks now…and is still closed. The official snowpack across SW Alberta is HUGE and we just came thru “high streamflow” advisories. When all of that snow melts, it will get dangerous with new advisories. BUT it is also silly cold here and the melt could be slow. I predict in 2011 there will still be snow in the mtns in usually clear places by the time of the first snow next September.
The snow pile in Lethbridge Alberta (from street cleaning) will last until August 2011. I can’t wait for the year that the street snow pile (from last winter) last until the first snowfall of the next winter. Might actually happen. ☺
R. Gates, I love that you are certain about what ice cores are saying. It makes my job so much easier.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/reports/trieste2008/ice-cores.pdf
A general note: some of you would do yourself a huge favor by studying what the ice core data really say about colder and thus more dry periods of glacial advance and warmer periods that see greater snowfall accumulations. For example, England had record snows this past winter but now is warm and in a drought. Think outside the talking points folks…
tallbloke: What’s remarkable is that the world has still been warming even during the deepest and longest solar minimum for 100 years –
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/pmod/from:1980/mean:12/offset:-1365.6/plot/uah/from:1980/plot/uah/from:2001/trend
That has rather distubing implications for the warming we can expect to see over the next few years as solar irradiance rises again, and the consequences of that warming, don’t you think?
Smokey, I guess when the facts are not what you like they are simply word games. If that’s your brand of science, count me out…
Bill Sticker says:
May 29, 2011 at 7:20 am
Here on Vancouver Island people are openly wondering what happened to spring.
2011 might be considered a “Lizzy” May. VI’s lone greenie must also be wondering quietly, but not aloud.
The last couple of years we have seen snow packs at about the 30 year norm after several years of below normal. The below normal years had the alarmists crowing – now they are silent about snow pack.
This year in Washington the snow pack is 250% of normal.
http://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/ftpref/data/water/wcs/gis/maps/wa_swepctnormal_update.pdf
The normal (1971-2000) doesn’t capture known deep snow years in the late 40’s and early 50’s, but it does include the 70’s when we had a few big snow years with persistent late season snow. Those years made the folks at Whistler in BC happy as they had just opened the resort.
Similar snotel based maps for the western US are found at the NRCS site below:
http://www.co.nrcs.usda.gov/snow/snow/state/current/daily/maps_graphs/index.html
“ Icarus says:
May 29, 2011 at 6:20 am
. . . at high latitudes where polar amplification . . .”
Someone has suggested that attenuation is the opposite of amplification. Either way, the polar region is sufficiently small compared to the ocean between the Tropics that it is hard to believe the Arctic controls the world. Nonetheless, snow in the middle latitudes (for example, the Yosemite area) affects albedo and deep snow lasts longer and the attenuation extended. Such might also be called a negative feedback.
Others (tallbloke @ur momisugly6:35; Ed_B @ur momisugly 6:38) have previously commented on “your facts.” You are, of course, entitled to your opinions but you are not allowed to have your own facts. Stating that warming is accelerating says you think this is a fact. When questioned about this you need to provide proof. With none forthcoming the rest of what you say is nonsense.
Our own similarly scarred mountain is also covered in snow. The following picture (if the link works) is a summertime shot taken in the Eagle Cap Wilderness (Wallowa Mountain range section of the Blue Mountain range in NE Oregon).
http://blog.oregonlive.com/terryrichard/large_EagleCap.jpg
We’ve needed the central heating back on the last few days, and the woodstove lit in the evening. My feet are freezing cold as I type this. I think we must have had our summer back in April. I believe ‘flaming June’ is supposed to be just around the corner.
R. Gates says:
May 29, 2011 at 7:57 am
Eric (skeptic) & Sam Glasser:
I go by what the long term data tell us and could care less about any taking points on either side of the AGW issue. Ice core date unequivocally show greater accumulation of snowfall during warmer, not cooler climates. Why this fact bothers some people I just don’t fully understand. I have no problem with seeing the phases of the ENSO cycle as having all sorts of effects around the globe, as surely there are, just as I have no problem with seeing the multiple inputs to create earth’s climate, from the long term astronomical Milankovitch cycles to short term ENSO cycles, volcanoes, long and short term solar changes, GCR flux, and yes, even anthropogenic factors such as GHG’s, urban heat islands, black carbon, land use, etc.
You keep on justifying the more snowfall when it is warmer by reference to ‘ice cores’,
Now you may have noticed that these ice cores can only exist in areas where it remains below freezing ALL year – otherwise there is no ice to core.
So what you are really saying is that at the arctic and antarctic circles when it gets colder (really much colder) there is less snow fall. As at the poles there is generally descending very very dry cold air this is to be expected and it is only when warmer more humid air moves in that snow precipitates out.
This is NOT the case in the temperate zones of the planet where the air is always humid enough for precipitation if it cools, and the normal Ferrel cell circulation and fronts ensure that there is humidity and it snows when the lower atmosphere is cold enough. if the lower atmosphere is warm – precipitation will be as rain. (Strange to have to explain this to an adult).
Your logic of using polar ice cores to indicate whether it is snowing more in temperate regions when they are warmer is flawed.
Tornadoes, snow, hail the size of baseballs. We have serious mid-atmosphere cooling. don’t know if a trend has commenced (last winter was also very snowy), but it was not modeled.
It doesn’t matter whether it is wetter or drier, colder or warmer, windier or calmer, higher water levels or lower, or even stuck in normal. Whatever the case may be, it’s bad, and it’s caused by global warming.
Does that apply to temperate climes? As I mentioned above. It’s been colder and wetter in Western Washington since last Fall. I think the colder=drier situation applies in extreme cold conditions, like one sees in Antarctica, but not in lower latitudes.
Icarus
You switched gears so fast you may want to stop in at an Aamco.
What happened to “accelerating” temperature trends?