Better late than never, we got a little bit busy this week.
Image above from data supplied by Dr. John Christy and rendered by the San Francisco Chronicle from their story here. An excerpt:
John Christy, the Alabama state climatologist who authored the study, said the amount of snow in the mountains has not decreased in the past 50 years, a period when greenhouse gases were supposed to have increased the effects of global warming.
The heaping piles of snow that fell in the Sierra last winter and the paltry amounts this year fall within the realm of normal weather variability, he concluded.
“The dramatic claims about snow disappearing in the Sierra just are not verified,” said Christy, a climate change skeptic and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. “It looks like you’re going to have snow for the foreseeable future.”
Here’s the Press release from UAH:
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (Feb. 14, 2012) — During some winters a significant amount of snow falls on parts of California. During other winters — like this one (so far) — there is much less snow. But more than 130 years of snow data show that over time snowfall in California is neither increasing nor decreasing.
The analysis of snowfall data from as far back as 1878 found no long-term trend in how much snow falls in the state, especially in the critical western slope of the Sierra Nevada mountains, said John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville.
“There isn’t a trend significantly different from zero for the whole period,” Christy said. “I also looked at just the past 50 years and there is no trend over this recent stretch either.”
Details of Christy’s research have been accepted for publication and released on-line by the American Meteorological Society’s “Journal of Hydrometeorology.”*
This line of research was spurred by recent concerns that snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains had decreased in recent years, perhaps due to man-made climate change, Christy said. Those worries, however, were not supported by credible, long-term data.
A native of Fresno, Christy wondered if the snow he remembered covering the Sierra Nevada’s peaks is actually disappearing. His preliminary investigation found a potentially useful set of data: Records of snow measurements at stations along the Southern Pacific Railroad.
“They took great care to measure snowfall because they had to know how much snow fell before sending trains through the mountain passes,” Christy said. “No one else had looked at this data in detail. The records are pretty thorough and the measuring tools — a device resembling a tall, sturdy yardstick — are easy to use and obviously don’t need power, so there aren’t many gaps in the record.”
There was, however, one catch: “They were good at measuring snow but the data they collected in written records had never been keyed in into a computer dataset. Before I could do the analysis I had to manually input 100,000 station-months of data.”
The railroad data was coupled with data from other sources, including hydro-power and regional water systems vitally interested in knowing how much water would be available from snow melt. Other data was collected from logging and mining companies, as well as National Weather Service stations and volunteers. That data had already been digitized by the National Climatic Data Center.
Christy divided the state into 18 regions, based on the amount of snow that falls and on the quality of the records for that region.
“There are six or seven regions with good, robust data going back to the late 1800s,” he said. “In each of those there are five to 15 stations with good records.”
Global warming theory says rising temperatures might reduce snowfall in some areas, while snow might increase in others. That sounds counterintuitive, but it does make sense: At lower, warmer elevations rising temperatures raise the altitude of the snow line, potentially reducing snow fall at lower elevations.
Warmer air also can hold more water vapor than cold air, so rising temperatures should increase the amount of water vapor available for snow and other precipitation.
In high elevation mountain regions where winter temperatures would be below freezing even if they rise two or three degrees, snow would still fall. Those still-cold temperatures combined with the extra water vapor suspended in the warmer air could increase snowfall at higher altitudes.
That’s the theory.
Looking at both the 130-year record and the most recent 50-year record — which includes the 1975 to 2000 period when global temperatures rose — the California data show no long-term changes in snowfall in any region.
“California has huge year-to-year variations and that’s expected to continue,” said Christy, a graduate of Fresno State University. “California is having a snow drought so far this winter, while last year the state had much heavier than normal snowfall. But over the long term, there just isn’t a trend up or down.
“Not to be a scaremonger, but if you go back and look at the paleoclimate reconstructions for the past thousand years, there have been some colossal droughts lasting 50 years or more,” he said. “Those have not been around since the 1400s, although nothing we know about climate science says they can’t come back — global warming or not.”
In earlier research, Christy also showed no long-term warming in the Sierra Nevada mountains.
— 30 —
Here’s the paper:
Searching for information in 133 years of California snowfall observations
| Abstract |
|---|
Monthly snowfall totals from over 500 stations in California, some of which date back to 1878, are examined. Most data were accessed through the NOAA archive, but several thousand station-months of data were separately keyed-in from image files of original documents. Over 26,000 of these entries were new relative to the NOAA archive, generally providing data prior to 1920.
The stations were then subdivided into 18 regions for the construction of representative time series of each area. There were problems with the basic data, the most difficult with which to deal was the increasing presence of “zero” totals which should have been recorded as “missing.” This and other issues reduce the confidence that the regional time series are representative of true variations and trends, especially for regions with few systematically reporting stations. Interpreting linear trends on time series with infrequent large anomalies of one sign (i.e. heavy snowfall years) and unresolved data issues should be done with caution. For those regions characterized by consistent monitoring and with the most robust statistical reproducibility, we find no statistically significant trends in their periods-of-record (up to 133 years) nor in the most recent 50 years. This result encompasses the main snowfall region of the western slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
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Eric (skeptic) says:
February 18, 2012 at 6:09 am
Doug Cotton, can you explain the increase in measured downward radiation from clouds at night? For example: http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0450%282002%29041%3C0734%3ATIOSVA%3E2.0.CO%3B2 in figure 3.
Probably due to increased water vapour – seems pretty obvious to me.
If that measurement in that figure is accurate, wouldn’t that decrease the nighttime cooling potential (as explained in the rest of the paper)?
No for the reasons explained in my post above. The paper makes incorrect conjectures about the effect of radiation from a cooler source because, if such were to slow the rate of cooling of a warmer surface, then it would be violating the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The authors do not appear to be aware of some of the basics of physics and, like you, have been misguided by those who promulgate the greenhouse hoax.
It would be appreciated if you could read my posts and try to understand my points before responding, as you have a tendency not to do so in numerous responses you have made to my posts of other forums and here, in all of which you merely quote biased papers which are not based on correct physics.
William M. Connolley says:
February 18, 2012 at 12:52 pm
Look at the anomoly in my linked post. We are colder now than in 1945, in fact, colder now even than in 1950. This is indisputable.
Yes, the long term trend is up, that is also indisputeable, but the 2011 recorded anamoly is below 1945, and potentially through the early 50’s anamoly..
1951 approx .535 to .54 anamoly
2011 .30 anamoly.
I had not realized we had cooled below the late 1940’s, early 1950’s level.
William M. Connolley: “I’m curious that so few people pick up on DC’s wrongness.”
If we chose to debate him on every thread then every thread will be the same. But despite the tediousness of reading it all, I appreciate the efforts of yourself, Joel Shore, R. Gates and others to explain things to Mr. Cotton. In the other direction, Mr Cotton makes the rest of us reexamine what we believe to be true. We could have some concepts wrong.
Ian W: “Water condensing gives up latent heat and presumably this can be measured. It would be interesting to see if the same level of downward radiation is visible when temperatures are increasing.”
It seems to me that a lot of that condensation in clouds is around freezing, and the clear sky temperature is -20 or -30C, but it’s probably a bit more complicated than that.
R Gates according to you the snow record is then showing no change in ocean temperature for over 100 years, so no Increase in temperature for 100 plus years!
REdcar54:
The quality of the data prior to ARGO makes the error bars so large that one can not say with any degree of certainty what the temps of the oceans were 100 years ago.
There have been too many changes……buckets to XBT’s to different XBT’s…to……one only wonders.
The ocean temps prior to 2004 have very little statistical meaning.
RockyRoad says:
February 18, 2012 at 10:25 am
“”Klas says:
February 18, 2012 at 3:27 am
Warming causes more moisture in the air which leads to more extreme precipitation events. This includes more heavy snowstorms in regions where snowfall conditions are favourable. Far from contradicting global warming, record snowfall is predicted by climate models and consistent with our expectation of more extreme precipitation events.””
Unless, of course, your assumption is incorrect and there has been NO meaningful warming–at least not enough to impact the evaporation/precipitation balance (the SIerras being a typical example, albeit not a compilation of all snow-accumulating areas).
And of course the fact that relative humidity appears to be dropping might also have some bearing.
Camburn says:
February 18, 2012 at 12:28 pm
Oh OH…… magnitude:2
You surprised me too! That is until I figured out what was happening. According to the raw data, January 1950 had an anomaly of -0.469. And this is what is plotted when the normal graph is done. However since you requested “magnitude” the negative sign was omitted and it came out as +0.469. But having said that, there may be the odd points on the real graph that are higher than the present point. Specifically, August 1945, at 0.352, is higher than December 2011 at 0.252 at
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3gl.txt
The media is showing its bias again. What else is new? It’s pretty hard not to notice that whenever the media publishes anything on global warming that disagrees with the CAGW scare that the author gets “climate skeptic” attached to his name. But when they publish anything that does agree with the CAGW scare, “climate alarmist” is never attached to the author’s name.
Werner Brozek says:
February 18, 2012 at 3:08 pm
Thank you……I was thinking……..this is impossable…….but the graph is showing this……
Shows that I don’t understand what using magnitude on those graphs means.
And how foolish I now appear…..oh well, not the 1st time.
@William Howard M. Connolley
Sort of. Its a bit more complicated than that, if you’re actually interested:
1. GW makes the world warmer; and this (to first order) makes for more WV and hence more precipitation.
2. In areas well below zero, the snow remains snow, even if it warms. But with more WV, there is more precipitation, hence more snow.
===============
IPCC:
“Warming in western mountains is projected to cause decreased snowpack, more winter flooding, and reduced summer flows, exacerbating competition for over-allocated water resources”
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/spmsspm-c-12-north-america.html
Eric (skeptic) says:
February 18, 2012 at 1:16 pm
Ian W: “Water condensing gives up latent heat and presumably this can be measured. It would be interesting to see if the same level of downward radiation is visible when temperatures are increasing.”
“”It seems to me that a lot of that condensation in clouds is around freezing, and the clear sky temperature is -20 or -30C, but it’s probably a bit more complicated than that.””
It really doesn’t matter what temperature the water is at when it condenses or freezes it will always give up the latent heat of state change. Stefan Boltzmann does not apply to latent heat output.
That’s what your side is saying NOW, after their original predictions of decreased snowfall failed to pan out.
Reviewer not sure about measuring snow depth? Ever heard of a marked stick in the ground?
http://www.thestormking.com/tahoe_nuggets/Nugget_205/Nugget__205_2011_Mar_Alpine__Snowstake.jpg
The consistancy over time beats the heck out of SSTs that used buckets, intake water, etc. (BA… Before Argo) or tree rings. I’d say Christy has reasonable data to work with to come up with those results.
Well my eyeball-ometer says a very slight negative trend, but I am guessing not statistically significant.
I don’t think thus kind of study proves very much.
1. There is a very vague claim of what climate models are supposed to say. I am betting that the climate models or climate scientists in general are NOT actually claiming that we should be seeing significant reductions in Sierra snow falls.
2. The effect of higher temperatures on snow is not simple. In general it is expected that the snow line will move up and the snow thickness will increase with changes in the degree of compaction also complicating things.
3. We can expect different effects at different locations. Parts of the Sierras will behave differently from the whole and from the rest if the USA.
4. Time is a factor. Warming has barely begun. Predictions about seriously reduced snow in the Sierras may refer to 50 years from now. So trying to make judgements based on the last 50 years is not valid.
LazyTeenager:
The effect of higher temperatures on snow is not simple.
It’s fine for you to be vague about that now, especially given the last few winter seasons 🙂
However, we all need to recall that statements of a far more definitive and alarmist nature were made prior to the recent winters and their substantial snow falls. For example:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
Redcar54 says:
February 18, 2012 at 1:31 pm
R Gates according to you the snow record is then showing no change in ocean temperature for over 100 years, so no Increase in temperature for 100 plus years!
——-
Actually, quite the contrary, the record shows the highly variable nature of surface temperature in he regions of the central and western Pacific that are linked to providing the energy and moisture that eventually finds its way to CA.
-REP
You may want to check your graph again.
Or you may want to put your glasses on
http://virakkraft.com/PDO-snow-2.png
William M. Connolley says:
February 18, 2012 at 9:09 am
DC > Hence radiation from a cooler source can only have frequencies which can resonate with those of a warmer body.
This is wrong (or, perhaps more accurately, Not Even Wrong). Whether radiation is absorbed or not has nothing to do with the temperature of the body-that-might-absorb it.
_________________________________________________________
No it is you who is mistaken William. Go back and read in any physics textbook why the Second Law of Thermodynamics would be violated if any radiation “beam” from any cooler point transferred thermal energy to any warmer point at any time.
[snip]
[Moderator’s comment: this is off topic – I point you to the policy page under ‘About’:
“Some off topic comments may get deleted, don’t take it personally, it happens. Commenters that routinely lead threads astray in areas that are not relevant or are of personal interest only to them may find these posts deleted.”
Remain on topic or be snipped ~jove, Mod]
[snip]
William Connely says
richard verney> Isn’t the the temperature record for the US showing no warming and possible cooling?
This says warming, since 1976 (in DJF – but we’re talking about winter snowfall, no?). Or you can see the distribution of trends by month if you like. I imagine someone else will find a suitable period to get a different result.
=================================
Mr Connely, you know 1976 was the bottom of the cylical ocean driven cooling from the prior 1940s warm period. Please, at a minimum, choose a sixty year time frame and then your comments may be cogent.
@John F. Hultquist says:
February 18, 2012 at 10:45 am
Steven L. Schwab says:
February 18, 2012 at 3:43 am
Steven,
…The material in this post was authored by John Christy, the Alabama state climatologist. It is doubtful that the Great State of Alabama reimburses him on an article by article basis.
……………………
It is common for universities (sometimes supported by funds from central government) to pay the department on a per-paper basis. That sum is usually divided into two portions, on of which (perhaps 30%) goes to further the research of the authors. In this way publication of results is appreciated and encouraged. The authors cannot have the money themselves in most cases – i.e. to spend on skiing vacations in the Sierras’ the non-shrinking snow pack.
In South Africa the universities gets ZAR75,000 per paper (to the Department from the federal gov’t) with up to 1/2 going to the author(s) for further their research. This portion might be ZAR20,000 depending on the institutional rules. None of it is personal income. Prolific Departments doing high quality work can build considerable programmes in this way.
Roger Knights says:
“That’s what your side is saying NOW, after their original predictions of decreased snowfall failed to pan out.”
This has been said for at least 20 years. Please re-read 1st assessment report chapter 7-2 and tell me in what way that is different from what I wrote! (and FAQ 3.2 in the most recent report) What I wrote is not new in any way; However, it seems to take forever to communicate.
Paul says
It’s fine for you to be vague about that now, especially given the last few winter seasons 🙂
—————
Well the message about the non-intuitive relationship between global warming and snow has been around for 10-20 years. So it’s old news. Apparently you missed it.
Paul says
However, we all need to recall that statements of a far more definitive and alarmist nature were made prior to the recent winters and their substantial snow falls. For example:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
—————
Paul somehow you read the article and then the good ole intellectual blinkers then came down. From the very same article Viner says this:
“Heavy snow will return occasionally, says Dr Viner, but when it does we will be unprepared. “We’re really going to get caught out. Snow will probably cause chaos in 20 years time,” he said.”
If people want to quote mine , fine go ahead. But remember that I know what you guys are like and so I fact check on a regular basis.
http://en.skiinfo.com/snow-history-details/whistlerblackcomb-ECAWHIST-5831-en.jhtml?season=2011&tp=1y&report_type=mh&tab=4#destLinks
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b331/kevster1346/wolframalpha-20120118164548020.jpg
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=whistler+bc+temperature