WUWT readers surely recall this most often quoted prediction about snow. From the Independent’s most cited article: Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past by Charles Onians:
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.
It seems despite the sage advice from that East Anglia CRU scientist, a new record for snowfall has been set for the month of December.
From the Rutgers University Snow Lab, we have this graph for the Northern Hemisphere for all months of December. December 2012 was a clear winner.
![nhland12[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/nhland121.png?quality=75)
Source: http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_anom.php?ui_set=1&ui_region=nhland&ui_month=12
Increased evaporation combined with more heat loss in the Arctic due to a record low amount of Arctic sea ice is the likely cause.The Great Arctic Cyclone of 2012 was a big factor in this.
To be fair though, lets look at all the data for all months. The 70’s were peak years, so was 1993 (post Pinatubo eruption) as was the winter of 2002/2003.
![anom_nhland[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/anom_nhland1.gif)
Source: http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_anom.php?ui_set=0&ui_region=nhland&ui_month=12
While we surely don’t have a new annual snow record yet, the winter is not yet over and it remains a possibility. We’ll revisit this come spring.
h/t to Pierre Gosselin via Marc Morano
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Dr Viner now runs the Climate Change programme at the British Council (the UK’s English Language and Cultural global outreach programme. You may well ask why such a programme exists, to which the only answer must be a BC adeptness at leaping on to a (funding) bandwagon. Their website offers Dr Viner for interviews, but if you request an interview and pitch in skeptical questions in advance, he refuses to talk. At least he did to me!
Consider the .2C temp anomoly for Dec. with all the latent heat released by the snow formation. Unless there was a whole lot of evaporation in the souther hemisphere the world has cooled considerably. Back to baseline for the first half of next year?
So, where is Dr. Viner now? Here he is, at Mott-MacDonald:
20 November 2012
Mott MacDonald appoints Dr David Viner as principal advisor for climate change
“Mott MacDonald has appointed Dr David Viner as principal advisor for climate change. An internationally recognised expert, David brings with him 20 years of experience working in the area of climate change.”
About Mott MacDonald
The Mott MacDonald Group is a diverse management, engineering and development consultancy delivering solutions for public and private clients world-wide.
…
David was a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for his contributions to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change between 1993-2007.
…
Mott MacDonald’s uniquely diverse 1 billion global consultancy works across 12 core business areas.
—
So he is now a highly paid climate consultant (and, like Mike Mann, a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize!). Long live the Climate Ca$h!
(PS: Mott-MacDonald is not affiliated with either Mott the Hoople or MacDonalds Restaurants…)
In defense of Viner’s prediction, all that’s required to set things right is to doctor the good doctor’s words in his prediction : replace “less” with “more,” “never” with “always,” and insert
“not” before each of his verbs. With these minor adjustments, see how close he came to being spot on? Amazing.
Trevor Jones
What was Your awkward question ? Was it anything along the lines of :
“So Dr Viner , now that snow is a thing of the past , what ARE We going to call all this cold white stuff My car is buried under ?”
Perhaps you’d also like to look at temperature records in NE Eurasia this winter – seems currently to be rather cold over there.
The Cryosphere Today Sea-Ice map, on Anthony’s “Sea Ice Page,” also shows snow-cover (although I’m not sure how accurate it is.) As the snow-cover first started extending south in September it was startling how swiftly nearly all of Russia was covered, right down into China.
On that same “Sea Ice Page” you can compare the current Cryosphere Today map with one from the low-ice year of 2007. While everyone else was focusing on the regrowth of the sea ice, I was noticing how much less the snow-cover was in 2007 than it is this winter.
Things have changed.
Snow cover might not equate to snowfall, it might relate to snow cover “endurance”. I got one inch of snow before Christmas and that’s about it, and two weeks later there still is one inch of snow on the ground. Even the snow on the deck hasn’t melted. It was mostly cloudy and cold all those days but it seems rather odd that it isn’t melting.
For Byron, my awkward question was: ” I really liked your statement about winters being free of snow, because it felt like a falsifiable bit of prediction. In view of the run of cold winters we have had, what are your views now?”
How do the GCMs implement an albedo change due to a change in snow coverage?
“winter is not yet over”
Had enough of it already Anthony? And I thought winter just started two weeks ago.
I doubt the missing ice theory. Today’s precipitable water does not come from that small bit of ice-free Arctic in September, but from bulk of Atlantic and Pacific oceans. There were both positive and negative records in 70ties, so an individual record is hardly *tiable* to anything specific.
Frank K. says:
January 4, 2013 at 5:44 am
“…
David was a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for his contributions to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change between 1993-2007.
…
”
Waitaminnit…
To quote British Rail of yesteryear:
“It wos the wrong type of snow wot done it.”
Wasn’t it Yogi Berra who said something along the lines of, “Predicting the future ain’t what it used to be.” Whether it’s snow, drought, rain, temperatures, sea level rise, or as in the case of predicting the number of salmon to return to the Sacramento River to spawn, the envirofools are almost never even close to correct. An yet, they keep their jobs, keep making massively wrong forecasts and the media keeps printing and broadcasting the baloney as if it’s the true, revealed word of God. Just as with the results of the last election, the only explanation is a truly ignorant populace that will believe anything.
I lived in East Anglia from 1979 through most of 1982. While the winters were not as harsh as those I had experienced in the US upper Midwest (western South Dakota, to be exact), there was one near-blizzard storm that struck just before the winter solstice in December 1981. Unlike most of the snow falls we experienced, that one paralyzed transportation for a day or two and the snow was deep and persistent. At the time, the local response to a snow fall was “let it melt,” but that one didn’t oblige.
and
I have to ask what caused those peak years? I’m no weatherman, just asking.
Frank K. says: January 4, 2013 at 5:44 am
Showing your age there. Me too.
@Scott
I have the same nit-pick. What is the snow mass v.s. what is the snow cover. Freezing water expels CO2. If there is a lot of extra snow and ice globally, then the CO2 level should rise. If you look at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/ you can see the kicking upwards as the North goes into the winter freeze. If the slope of that line is steeper upwards than other years, we could surmise the amount of water freezing is greater than usual. If not, it is a dusting over a larger area.
I have been unable to locate a ‘snow mass’ and ‘ice mass’ index. We do have one WUWT reader here in Point Barrow AK who notes there is a relatively rapid rise or fall in the local CO2 level that might be caused by ice/snow. Perhaps he can commment. The low temps in AK right now should be pushing out extra CO2.
I tried quoting Viner at a warmist true believer at The Guardian recently only to be told that this was so long ago and predictions have moved on.
Of course they have, as soon as the predictions are proved wrong new predictions come along with zero change to the belief system which produced the wrong predictions in the first place or acknowledgement that they were talking rubbish then and equally might be doing so now..
In that very same Independent newspaper we have this EXCLUSIVE back in the day.
[My bolding]
Now what’s so shocking is he was wrong twice in the same sentence.
Below is evidence of ice free Arctic Ocean summers during the last ~11,000 years.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2010.08.016
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007AGUFMPP11A0203F
http://geology.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/21/3/227
To be fair (for once) he was referring to the UK and we haven’t got much snow (other than in the far north of Scotland) just a load of floods and the second wettest UK since records began in the 1950’s.
Of course this rather mucks up the Mediterranean climate we were supposed to get with Global Warming
I hope we can get a lively discussion going about whether the evaporation of the Arctic Ocean contibutes much to snowfall totals. A few Ideas I’ve had, just thinking about it:
1.) It seems evaporation of the Arctic Ocean would contribute most in the early winter. Already a lot of the Arctic Ocean is frozen over.
2.) From memory, looking only at the Cryosphere maps, 2007’s “open” Arctic Ocean didn’t have the same effect. What was different?
3.) Another definate influence is whether you have a zonal pattern or a blocking pattern. A zonal pattern keeps the cold air bundled up at the pole, however a blocking pattern has big loops in the jet stream, which allows surges of cold to spill south and generate snowstorms.
Isn’t it amazing how you can talk complete b*ll*cks about climate and climate change and then a few years later (without a trace of embarrassment) a different set of rubbish AND people still want to pay you for advice. It must be the nearest thing to perpetual motion you can get.
The UK has had a 2001 conference on how farmers will cope in a wetter world – 2012 conference on how to cope in a drier world (see article below)
http://www.fwi.co.uk/Articles/12/03/2012/131835/Climate-change-predictions-are-drying-up.htm
Now the UK is flooded only 9 months later- the old 2001 PowerPoint must be being dusted off ready to go.
Couple of odd things in the graph provided.
Note that it is FALL snow cover that peaks in the various past years, with the exception of what looks like 76 or 77, where Winter snow cover peaked. I think Curry et al did a study on Arctic sea ice cover and general snowiness in the Norther hemisphere.
A peek-a-boo analysis (eyes only) looks like the 21st century NH is having less snowy springs and summers, and more snowy falls and winters.
I have some doubts about the quality of the graph, as there are two instances of high SUMMER snow cover — 67 and 76 — I am having trouble remembering either of these summers with an extra 4 million sq km of snow.