Oh noes!
Then, suddenly, this week, in summer no less, nature decides that snowfalls won’t be a thing of the past after all, and makes bozos of the BBC:
I hate it when that happens.
h/t to Ron De Haan and to Richard North, who has more examples of this hand wringing over snow at his blog, the EU Referendum.
Visited Kerry, Ireland a few weeks ago.
Lots of semi tropical plant species that thrived over the last 30 years are now brown skeletons. I doubt that there are many cordyline plants still living in the entire UK.
The jets are shifting equatorward again with an oceanic induced weaker ENSO cycle and a solar induced more negative AO.
I saw the shift start to occur back in 2000 and it is now digging in deep.
We currently have a strongly negative AO again during the peak of northern hemisphere solar insolation.
Something is up and it is not AGW.
Caesar: What’s the weather like in Rome centurion?
Centurian: Hail Caesar!
🙂
The original story muddles ‘snow’ and ‘hail’ which are entirely different anyway.
The Snowdon picture shows a layer of hailstones which fell during a burst of thundery precipitation.
Hailstones are familiar enough in thunderstorms almost anywhere in the world I would think.
The original story does mention ‘snow falling’ after the hail storm chilled the air enough.
I has been a chilly week for June but nothing much out of the ordinary.
Wucash says:
June 12, 2011 at 3:47 am
To be fair, in 2007 trends showed it to be true. Since then though, snow has recovered world-wide. I guess there’s a lesson for everyone here and on the other side of the debate; weather and climate are too difficult to predict because they are unstable in nature.
Saying that, who knows? Maybe in 2022 all the snow will be gone. You can’t say without a doubt that won’t happen.
_____
Actually, there is a huge distinction between projecting future climate and predicting weather that some people fail to fully grasp. Through ice cores, tree rings, ocean sediments, stalactites, etc. we can put together a pretty good picture of past climates, and while the climate can be subject to “black swan” events, such as a volcanic eruption, comet strike, etc. We can look at cycles such as the Milankovitch cycle and see the patterns of climate, and more remarkable is that those Milankovitch cycles line up so well with what was found in the deepest ice cores going back 800,000. Weather, on the other hand, is far more unpredictable and variable. Think about it…we know what Milankovitch cycle the earth was in 100,000 years ago, but we can’t tell you exactly what the high temperature will be in London in 7 days.
But the essential truth to take away from this is…don’t use the weather to predict the climate.
Even the year after the 2007 article, I remember reading about the weather delays building the new summit building.
This will do – http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/north_west/7513155.stm says in part:
Nice to see things did get finished and used.
BTW, at New Hampshire’s Mount Washington, which also has a cog railway, there’s a chance of snow in the forecast. From http://www.mountwashington.org/ :
16:25 Sat Jun 11th
Cold, Windy, and Rainy Summit
While I will not say this very often, I think today has been a good day not to be out on the trails. Other than watching the large cap cloud pour over us into the Great Gulf early this morning (as Mike mentioned below), it has been pretty crummy hiking weather all day. The Summit has been in the clouds with minimal visibility, frequent rain showers, and temperatures hovering around the mid-30s. [1 -2 °C] Walking around the Sherman Adams building and working down in the Observatory gift shop, I have not come across too many hikers with smiles on their faces. In fact, for the first time since I’ve been working in the gift shop, I think we sold more winter gloves, socks, and rain gear than Marty [Marty is a cat that lives at the weather observatory] memorabilia! Something tells me hot chocolate sales were at a record high upstairs as well. For those hikers who are braving the weather out there (tomorrow’s forecast looks pretty similar to today’s), make sure you have proper footwear for wet rocks and bring enough clothing for potential hypothermic conditions.
Stephen Rosenman – Summit Intern
R. Gates says:
June 12, 2011 at 9:32 am
Actually, the ice core data does not line up that well with the Milankovitch Cycles. At best, it’s somewhere around 65%. There are too many instances of the Interglacials coming in 2 lesser waves, which nobody has bothered to address.
Why?
Wucash says:
June 12, 2011 at 7:11 am
The wider point I was making is the near certainty some people here talk about the future; ie the apparent coming cooling period (ice age according to some!)…Making those kind of predictions is in my view similar to the Beeb’s and the Met’s scaremongering bs.
Ignoring your little straw man for the moment, only a complete idiot would compare comments made on a blog to the avalanche of irresponsible propaganda scaremongering perpetrated by the MSM during the past couple of decades.
With regard to cooling, there is certainly far more of a basis for prediction of a period of cooling in coming decades than there is for warming. Here’s the kicker, though: the Warmist agenda involves a complete restructuring and even dismantling of our way of producing energy, forcing energy prices up, and harming economies worldwide all based on their alarmist predictions. That is not science, but ideology. Skeptics, or climate rationalists on the other hand, are simply interested in the truth about climate, which can only be arrived at through proper scientific principles.
Stephen Wilde (June 12, 2011 at 9:14 am)
“Visited Kerry, Ireland a few weeks ago.
Lots of semi tropical plant species that thrived over the last 30 years are now brown skeletons. I doubt that there are many cordyline plants still living in the entire UK.”
Ones local to me are dead too (http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2011/03/20/casualties-of-cold/ ) however I know of some that survived due to microclimate condtions near where some friends live. I have thought it would be a fun thing to do to map them with a GPS when I go to visit them in a few weeks time. If there are enough live/dead in the locality it could make for an interesting temperature map when compared with some of the local temperature sensors
3×2 says:
June 12, 2011 at 3:56 am
Here in Yorkshire it’s bloody cold and bloody wet (and has been since early may) so I have no idea which counties are apparently baking in the hot sun.
As I can verify being a Yorkshireman myself, it is indeed “bloody cold and bloody wet!” Still, all this rain will do wonders for the lush greenery round here. I love so-called “miserable weather” as I’m very pale skinned (I burn easily) and can’t abide hot weather. If this is one of the warmest and driest springs in memory (as the BBC tells us) then I’d REALLY love to see a cold, wet one.
Knuts says:
June 12, 2011 at 4:38 am
“The BBC (amongst others) have also been telling us how its been the driest Spring here for 100 years and drought orders are coming into force and were all going to starve to death with crop failures. What they fail to mention is that the Met Office decided to move the goalposts by declaring that Spring now starts on March 1st and ends June 1st, its currently tipping it down here in the middle of the UK.”
Astounding! Has the BBC reported this? Let us all pray that the lot of them reap what they sow.
Snowbird snowpack 525 percent of normal
http://www.iceagenow.com/Snowbird_snowpack_525_percent_of_normal.htm
John Brookes says:
June 12, 2011 at 4:44 am
“Thinking about a post about the heat in the US? Or does that not interest this site?”
I have been watching it very closely. The story is a total yawn. The several places that I have lived in the East are experiencing unexceptional temperatures. That includes the supposed hotspots of Raleigh and Richmond. UHI effects I cannot speak for.
R. Gates says:
June 12, 2011 at 9:32 am
“Actually, there is a huge distinction between projecting future climate and predicting weather that some people fail to fully grasp.”
Can you explicate this in ordinary language without appeal to esoteric theory? If you can, I will most certainly doff my hat to you. If you cannot, I will most certainly understand that you do not know what you are talking about.
Don K says:
June 12, 2011 at 7:20 am
“I think bad judgement about climate and weather must be contagious. There’s so much of it around. It’s June for heavens sake. June is a WARM month in the Northern hemisphere.”
There is a powerful psychological effect from the Left’s propaganda, the Left especially including the MSM. Today is cooler here in Central Florida. Yesterday we hit 90 degrees F. June temperatures here are expected to be at least 90. I have to remind people where we live, what the temperature is, and what season it is.
@Bruce
I disagree. Even though warming hasn’t been as severe as some people would have liked, the planet has still been warming. The truth is we don’t know how much warmer it’s going to get. We were very close to warmest year on record a year back, and even the cold rebound hasn’t been extreme enough to bring the running average back to ’79 levels. Trends are what they are. What I dislike about MSM is tying warming (then cooling and snow ironically enough) to carbon dioxide, and the whole agenda of changing the world you mentioned.
As for comparison between people who for example proclaim the new ice age and MSM – they both have agendas. They use a medium to spread their unfounded BS about. One has more reach and money and power than the other but the intent is the same.
Looks to me like the heat wave in the South has moved on, with the US returning to cool Spring conditions:
http://www.intelliweather.net/imagery/intelliweather/tempcity_nat_120x90.jpg
Snowpacks are not melting like they should be in the West and North.
Will they melt (making an awful mess of summer) or will they last out until Fall?
Somehow, for me, R. Gates continual attempt to divorce weather from climate, ends up making the term “climate” meaningless. Length of summers, frost dates, what plants will survive, those for me define climate. Climate changes. Weather changes. There is no such thing as a permanent “climate.”
John Brookes says: “Thinking about a post about the heat in the US? Or does that not interest this site?”
It’s summer. It gets hot in the summer. When it gets cold in the summer, that’s something to remark about. Meanwhile, here in California, we’re still running the furnace to get warm, waiting for the Svensmark clouds to blow away.
R. Gates says: ” Through ice cores, tree rings, ocean sediments, stalactites, etc. we can put together a pretty good picture of past climates…”
Not from tree rings, unless you successfully hide the decline by tacking on data from other sources. Tree ring growth is affected by mineral exhaustion, humidity, precipitation, microclimate, fungal and insect attack, local variations in albedo, CO2, and Bambi’s arboreal migrations. Worse, the response of tree rings is not linear with temperature, having inversions is some species. Forget about tree rings. They only work in Michael Mann’s dreams.
The word in Welsh for July is “Gorffennaf” This roughly translated mean “the end of summer” I often wondered about this as a youth, but with the 4th cold wet summer in row ( where exactly is the UK drought?) I’m beginning to understand why the ancients noted that July heralded the end of Summer and start of Autumn. By the way R.Gates, how many bad summers from a weather perspective does it take to equate to a climate issue? I may not agree with all your posts, but you are a real hero for sticking to your guns and challenging peoples ideas. If you were a sceptic on a AGW site you would probably get harassed and called a Denier, but hopefully here you get treated reasonably well most of the time. Keep it up!
The story continues, in the Northern Ireland Edition
http://autonomousmind.wordpress.com/2011/06/12/the-story-continues-northern-ireland-edition/
ann r says:
June 12, 2011 at 12:50 pm
You’re right, climate never sits still.
Neither does the Weather.
It’s a stormy relationship at times 🙂
A draught has been declared here in lincolnshire and there has been little rain in the spring but I admit that it has just just stopped raining as I type this.I don’t think that the rain that we have just had is anything that we have not seen earlier in spring and to call this the end of the draught would be premature,it depends what happens in June/July.The AO and the NAO have been positive this spring and are not strongly negative now,The jet stream forecasts don’t look that unusual westerly winds from the Atlantic have not being blocked
To my knowledge no mountain in the UK (even Ben Nevis, a mere 4600ft) has a permanent ‘snow cap’. By July and August there is seldom any snow left except occasionally in north facing corries. I have visted the Cairngorms in Scotland since a child (and that is more than 60 years ago) and remember my father occasionally pointing out the odd tiny patch of snow on Ben Avon (weighing in at ~4400ft) as if it were surprising.
I’ve just realised that my last comment is what the IPCC would regard as a ‘peer reviewed’ paper on AGW in the UK so I’ll await its appearance in their new report.
ann r says:
June 12, 2011 at 12:50 pm
‘Somehow, for me, R. Gates continual attempt to divorce weather from climate, ends up making the term “climate” meaningless. Length of summers, frost dates, what plants will survive, those for me define climate. Climate changes. Weather changes. There is no such thing as a permanent “climate.”’
Very well said. The secret of it all is that for Warmista there is only the great cloud of manmade CO2 that embraces Earth and is their sky god. For Warmista, climate is that CO2 cloud. They have no way to make a connection between their sky god in their Gaia Model and anything that humans on Earth might experience.