Where’s that “global warming” when you really want it? 😉
This map from NOAA’s National Snow Analyses page shows the snow depth data:
![nsm_depth_2012122605_National[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/nsm_depth_2012122605_national1.jpg?quality=83)
Source: http://www.nohrsc.noaa.gov/nsa/
Automated Model Discussion:
December 26, 2012
| Area Covered By Snow: | 61.4% |
| Area Covered Last Month: | 18.6% |
| Snow Depth | |
|---|---|
| Average: | 5.1 in |
| Minimum: | 0.0 in |
| Maximum: | 1351.5 in |
| Std. Dev.: | 10.6 in |
| Snow Water Equivalent | |
| Average: | 0.9 in |
| Minimum: | 0.0 in |
| Maximum: | 650.5 in |
| Std. Dev.: | 2.4 in |
This is a perfect time to recall climate researcher Dr. David Viner’s famous missive from back in the year 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.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
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Posted on December 26, 2012 by Anthony Watts
Where’s that “global warming” when you really want it? 😉
Must be hiding in the same place as the Mediterranean climate that the Met Office promised us here in UK.
William Marshall says:
December 26, 2012 at 1:24 pm
Did you know the concept of a White Christmas was thought up by Charles Dickens, when the first decade of his life there was a ‘White Christmas’ every year! Or is it an urban myth?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/05/has-charles-dickens-shaped-our-perception-of-climate-change/
Dickens knew climate change.
CHAPTER 1. Sun and Shadow
Thirty years ago, Marseilles lay burning in the sun, one day.
A blazing sun upon a fierce August day was no greater rarity in southern France then, than at any other time, before or since. Everything in Marseilles, and about Marseilles, had stared at the fervid sky, and been stared at in return, until a staring habit had become universal there. Strangers were stared out of countenance by staring white houses, staring white walls, staring white streets, staring tracts of arid road, staring hills from which verdure was burnt away. The only things to be seen not fixedly staring and glaring were the vines drooping under their load of grapes. These did occasionally wink a little, as the hot air barely moved their faint leaves.
There was no wind to make a ripple on the foul water within the harbour, or on the beautiful sea without. The line of demarcation between the two colours, black and blue, showed the point which the pure sea would not pass; but it lay as quiet as the abominable pool, with which it never mixed. Boats without awnings were too hot to touch; ships blistered at their moorings; the stones of the quays had not cooled, night or day, for months. Hindoos, Russians, Chinese, Spaniards, Portuguese, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Genoese, Neapolitans, Venetians, Greeks, Turks, descendants from all the builders of Babel, come to trade at Marseilles, sought the shade alike—taking refuge in any hiding-place from a sea too intensely blue to be looked at, and a sky of purple, set with one great flaming jewel of fire.
The universal stare made the eyes ache. Towards the distant line of Italian coast, indeed, it was a little relieved by light clouds of mist, slowly rising from the evaporation of the sea, but it softened nowhere else. Far away the staring roads, deep in dust, stared from the hill-side, stared from the hollow, stared from the interminable plain. Far away the dusty vines overhanging wayside cottages, and the monotonous wayside avenues of parched trees without shade, drooped beneath the stare of earth and sky. So did the horses with drowsy bells, in long files of carts, creeping slowly towards the interior; so did their recumbent drivers, when they were awake, which rarely happened; so did the exhausted labourers in the fields. Everything that lived or grew, was oppressed by the glare; except the lizard, passing swiftly over rough stone walls, and the cicala, chirping his dry hot chirp, like a rattle. The very dust was scorched brown, and something quivered in the atmosphere as if the air itself were panting.
Blinds, shutters, curtains, awnings, were all closed and drawn to keep out the stare. Grant it but a chink or keyhole, and it shot in like a white-hot arrow. The churches were the freest from it. To come out of the twilight of pillars and arches—dreamily dotted with winking lamps, dreamily peopled with ugly old shadows piously dozing, spitting, and begging—was to plunge into a fiery river, and swim for life to the nearest strip of shade. So, with people lounging and lying wherever shade was, with but little hum of tongues or barking of dogs, with occasional jangling of discordant church bells and rattling of vicious drums, Marseilles, a fact to be strongly smelt and tasted, lay broiling in the sun one day.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/963/963-h/963-h.htm
So….
Low arctic sea ice = colder arctic oceans = negative feedback
Low arctic sea ice = more snow = negative feedback
more snow = positive feedback
Continuing that thought ….
“Classic” (low latitude, or 45 degree to 75 degree latitude – north OR south) albedo-enhanced CAGW theory holds that
“less sea ice” =>
“more exposed (darker) ocean water” =>
“more sunlight absorbed into ocean” =>
“hotter ocean water” =>
more melted sea ice … A net positive feedback for global warming.
And, indeed, at the latitude of the southern Antarctic sea ice band at 62 south latitude, MORE antarctic sea does indeed mean more reflection of solar energy and a cooler southern world and a (strongly negative) feedback on world temperatures.
BUT …
at the latitude of the melting Arctic sea ice at 81 to 82 degrees NORTH latitude, more exposed ocean water means ONLY that more evaporation occurs through the newly exposed (or formerly covered) ocean areas. The sun’s energy is coming in so low in the sky (less than 8 degrees above the horizon for so short a time each day in mid-September at the time of minimum sea ice extents) that no additional energy is absorbed by the water. In fact, more energy is lost from the sea surface by evaporation than is absorbed from the sun each 24 hour day.
Thus, less sea ice (in the arctic) actually means lower Arctic ocean and air temperatures, more evaporation, and more snow coverage. Thus, will lower Arctic sea ice begin the next ice age? That evaporated water has to go someplace each winter.
Anthony, I have some doubts about the statistics. There can not be less snow than zero as implied by the average and SD. I suspect that the snowfall at one site is approximately a Poisson distribution (as is the case with monthly rainfall) in which the SD is equal to the average ie the average should be about one SD above zero. I am not a statistician but I would think it is not correct to average snowfall occurring in different places. As Willis indicates above it maybe possible to average the area covered by snow overtime.and calculate an SD on that. I suspect that would also result in a Poisson distribution rather than a normal binomial distribution.
Ric Werme says:
December 26, 2012 at 2:54 pm
“I filled the gas tank on the snowblower. Seemed to make more sense than doing it after the storm.”
Yup – me too. There are three things I learned after moving to New Hampshire 16 years ago.
(1) Buy snow tires. And not just two – buy four. And put them on in October/November. Money WELL spent (don’t ask me how I know this…).
(2) Buy a good quality, gas burnin’ snow blower. And supplement that with a quality snow shovel that keeps its edge. 12 – 18 inches of snow is NO place for just a snow shovel alone, especially when the city plow comes by and deposits a giant chunk of street snow at the entrance to your driveway!
(3) Remove snow as soon as you can. If you don’t do it now, you will NEVER get the compacted ice/snow layer off your driveway until April! (also, don’t ask me how I know this…). Sometimes, this rule can be violated if you have a few bags of potent ice melt (driveway salt for you southerners… :).
Simon says: December 26, 2012 at 11:49 am
I hear this is set to be the warmest year ever for the US… and not by a small margin.
==============================
This should be good. I can’t wait for the propaganda mill to start cranking out “the warmest year evah” while people are digging themselves out of the deepest snowpack evah. You can explain that it is all due to “global warming”. Oh, boy!
E.M. Smith
l had a hint back in August that northern asia could in for a very cold winter. The jet was very weak over Russia at the time and l knew if that lasted it would let winter set in early.
Following on from clipe’s Dickens’ quote, there is this from Samuel Butler’s “The Way of All Flesh”:
In those days the snow lay longer and drifted deeper
in the lanes than it does now, and the milk was sometimes brought in
frozen in winter, and we were taken down into the back kitchen to see it.
I suppose there are rectories up and down the country now where the milk
comes in frozen sometimes in winter, and the children go down to wonder
at it, but I never see any frozen milk in London, so I suppose the
winters are warmer than they used to be.
http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2084/pg2084.txt
I have 12-16″ due tomorrow (Maine) and you know what?
its typical.
some years were less, some were more.
but I would love some warming, 12 deg mornings are not that cool hehehe
Ah, an obvious expert on physiology, neurology and general cognition. Please enlighten me: what critical facilities are necessary for breathing? I don’t mean to be critical, but are you, perhaps, indulging in some slight degree of hyperbole? I fear that someone less charitable than I would accuse you of what our beloved Christopher Monckton would term ‘intellectual baby talk”. I have faith in you though. Surely, expert that you are, you have a reasonable explanation of your remark. Surely you aren’t the idiot that the naive and unthinking would think that you are.
All through this winter, I’ll be shovelling global warming in the morning.
Shane Harris says:
I didn’t take any bait. But apparently you are waiting under the bridge like a troll with an agenda.
I almost hate to say this, but I think he may have a point…
Eric Berne wrote wonderful books about how people talk to each other, he called it transactional analysis. I think I see all three ingredients that make up a “Game”, the hook, the switch and the pay-off.
Third White Christmas in four years here in NW Texas. Thank goodness snow is rare anymore!
In March 2009 prior to the 2010 Winter Olympics David Suzuki’s Foundation issued a report which predicted that the average cross-country ski season in Quebec will be cut in half in 10 years and a complete wipe out a few decades later. “Canada’s winter sports melting away, report warns” was the headline in the Toronto Globe and Mail.
I recently saw a weather consultant’s report for Toronto predicting that the annual snowfall in Toronto was going to drop to 48.1 cm from 153.8 cm. It was 216 cm in 2008.
These are baseless scare predictions to get politicians and the public to spend more money for climate research and green industry.
The decadal annual average sunspot number during the decade 2000 was 49 .6 For the last 10 years the annual average is only 29.3. These figures are comparable to the figures from 1880-1910 when they were in the range of 35.5 to 45.9 [per SIDC DATA]. That may be why we have been seeing all these record cold temperatures like during that period of 1880-2010 in UK, Eastern Europe, Russia and Alaska.We maybe seeing a lot more snow and colder temperatures for the next 2-3 decades if the next two solar cycles are also going to be low like #24.
Physics Major says:
December 26, 2012 at 12:45 pm
“Maximum snow depth = 1351.5 inches (113 feet)? Where would that be?”
I’ll start by saying that automated mapping of the sort used in the snow depth map at the top assumes quite a bit. For instance, the lowest value is fixed at zero but the highest value is unknown. One way of constructing a map is to take the highest value for the set of data for the specific day of interest. Next the number of categories has to be selected. One issue, then, is that the category boundaries might change as the seasonal snow accumulates. One solution is to fix a maximum value above the possible real maximum based on previous records. Like this:
http://classic.mountainzone.com/news/99/bakerrecord.html
This reports a 1998-99 seasonal snow fall of 1,140 inches. About a 3 hours drive from where I live. There may be a new record. The point is that using the number you question is simply a mapping convention. The actual map shown only has an upper category that goes to 787 inches. Much of the season is still to come.
Here at the house we have had about 2 feet of snow so far. A few warmish days and this has settled to about 10 inches. A kindly neighbor came with a large tractor and cleaned the driveway out. Now it can snow some more. Just thinking ahead. Same with the map.
Back in the Neolithic age when I was at University, i read a paper about the _absence_
of Ice in the Arctic Ocean as a trigger for Ice Ages. This was in the early 1970’s when the
Ice Age scare was starting…
I cannot remember much else or whom the the Author was…
I thought extremes of weather were expected with AGW?
I don’t get it. Anthony is mocking David Viner’s statement, “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” by showing all the snow.
How is, “Weather is not climate,” even a counter-argument at all? Isn’t that actually an argument against Viner’s original claim?
After a while… weather is climate. You just have to wait for it.
@Simon December 26, 2012 at 11:49 am
You wrote [So there is snow on the ground in winter… So Watt? I hear this is set to be the warmest year ever for the US… and not by a small margin.”]
++++++
Simon, do you know why the US has a warm spout over the Midwest and Central US? It’s because the water off CA was cooler and drier. That left drier air over the Midwest and Central states. The drought led to warmer temperatures.
But of course, weather is not climate so I do not know what your point is, other than you don’t understand.
Simon says “I hear . . . ”
Did not someone calculate that 2012 could NOT be a record year? I read that! Don’t remember where. Maybe Simon can’t remember where he heard that it would be.
On the other hand, I copied a statement from the UK MET office with a forecast for 2013: They claim it will be between 0.43 degrees C and 0.71 degrees C warmer than the long-term global average. Actually, I snagged a small image and stuck it in a file called “UK Met Office 2013 warm forecast” in the hope I will be able to find it late in 2013.
It might get ‘disappeared’ – nay, they don’t do that sort of thing, do they?
Anthony’s reply to Shane Harris (if that’s who he really is): “…Ah, you took the bait, thanks! Weather is indeed not climate, except when the climate activists (and some weak minded individuals) say it is. Such as tornado outbreaks or heat waves. Those aren’t climate either…”
Why don’t we EVER see the climate scientists discussing the longest heat wave in history – at Marble Bar, Australia?
“…Marble Bar has an arid climate with very hot summers and mild to warm winters. The town set a world record of most consecutive days of maximum temperatures of 37.8 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit) or more, during a period of 160 such days from 31 October 1923 to 7 April 1924.
http://www.bom.gov.au/lam/climate/levelthree/c20thc/events/r3204-9.gif
During December and January, temperatures in excess of 45 °C (113 °F) are common, and the average maximum temperature exceeds normal human body temperature for 6 months each year. Rainfall mostly occurs in the summer months…”
If this place is getting hotter and drier, then maybe they’ve got a point. Maybe this is the place that Dr. David Viner had in mind – I’ll bet that children there don’t know what snow is).
@Willis:
Here’s the link to the NOAA page where the following claim is made (hit page-down twice). We’ll probably be hearing a lot about this in a month:
Most importantly, weather is climate if you can recognise the signs.
@davidmhoffer
Interesting observations on the inverse correlation of snow cover and length of winter. One wonders, though, if the local and the global effects of the snow cover may be different? The snow cover may locally keep the ground warm, but globally cause heat loss due to increased reflection of visible light into space.