By Paul Homewood
It seems that every time we get some snow, another “scientist” is wheeled out to explain that, no matter how cold it gets, it is all down to global warming.
In the last week or so, we have had the International Arctic Research Centre announcing a study by three Chinese scientists, “Weakened cyclones, intensified anticyclones and recent extreme cold winter weather events in Eurasia “, with the headline “Climate change brings colder winters to Europe and Asia”. Then, we had WWF Russia blaming the blizzards in Russia on global warming.
But let’s, for one moment, remind ourselves of some of the “scientists” who have said the exact opposite.
UK Met Office
As recently as 2011, Julia Slingo and her team published an extremely thorough paper, “Climate: Observations, projections and impacts”. Running to some 153 pages, it looked at recent trends and future projections, both for the UK and the rest of the world. It made the following points:-
- Analysis of mean temperatures in the UK showed a warming trend during the winter months of 0.23C/decade.
- Describing the extreme cold in December 2010, it states:-
Severe winter weather affected Western and Central Europe throughout the first three weeks of December 2010, with the UK experiencing the coldest December for more than 100 years. This extreme cold weather was due to advection of cold arctic air associated with a strongly negative Arctic Oscillation.
The UK experienced two spells of severe winter weather with very low temperatures and significant snowfalls. The first of these spells lasted for two weeks from 25th November and saw persistent easterly or north-easterly winds bring bitterly cold air from northern Europe and Siberia. This spell of snow and freezing temperatures occurred unusually early in the winter, with the most significant and widespread snowfalls experienced in late November and early December since late November 1965. a second spell of severe weather began on 16th December as very cold Arctic air pushed down across the UK from the north.
- Continuing its analysis of the 2010/11 winter, it finds that:-
The distributions of the December-January-February (DJF) mean regional temperature in recent years in the presence and absence of anthropogenic forcings are shown in Figure 7. Analyses with both models suggest that human influences on the climate have shifted the distributions to higher temperatures. The winter of 2010/11 is cold, as shown in Figure 7, as it lies near the cold tail of the seasonal temperature distribution for the climate influenced by anthropogenic forcings (distributions plotted in red). It is considerably warmer than the winter of 1962/63, which is the coldest since 1900 in the CRUTEM3 dataset. In the absence of human influences (green distributions), the season lies near the central sector of the temperature distribution and would therefore be an average season.
- The winter time-series show a decrease in the number of cool days and cool nights.
So, to summarise, the Met Office believed that winters have been getting warmer, and that the winter of 2010/11 was caused by a natural event, the Arctic Oscillation, and, but for “human influences”, would actually have been a fairly average winter. (According to NOAA, similar conditions existed during the even colder winter in the UK of 1962/63).
Dr Myles Allen, and a few more!
In 2009, Dr Myles Allen, head of the Climate Dynamics group at Department of Physics, University of Oxford told the Daily Telegraph, during another spell of bad snow “Even though this is quite a cold winter by recent standards it is still perfectly consistent with predictions for global warming. If it wasn’t for global warming this cold snap would happen much more regularly. What is interesting is that we are now surprised by this kind of weather. I doubt we would have been in the 1950s because it was much more common. “
The report goes on to say “a study by the Met Office which went back 350 years shows that such extreme weather now only occurs every 20 years. Back in the pre-industrial days of Charles Dickens, it was a much more regular occurrence – hitting the country on average every five years or so.
This winter seems so bad precisely because it is now so unusual. In contrast the deep freezes of 1946-47 and 1962-63 were much colder – 5.3 F (2.97C) and 7.9 F (4.37C) cooler than the long-term norm.
And with global warming we can expect another 1962-63 winter only once every 1,100 years, compared with every 183 years before 1850. “
Meanwhile Dave Britton, a meteorologist and climate scientist at the Met Office, said: “Even with global warming you cannot rule out we will have a cold winter every so often. It sometimes rains in the Sahara but it is still a desert.”
Even Bob Ward, PR man for the warmist Grantham Foundation, keen to stop people thinking that cold winters did not mean global warming had stopped, said “Just as the wet summer of 2007 or recent heat waves cannot be attributed to global warming nor can this cold snap”
Don’t forget NCAR & NOAA!
Over in the US, they were just as keen to keep on message. An article in Phys.Org, “Experts: Cold snap doesn’t disprove global warming”, which was published in January 2010, had this to say:-
Whatever happened to global warming? Such weather doesn’t seem to fit with warnings from scientists that the Earth is warming because of greenhouse gases. But experts say the cold snap doesn’t disprove global warming at all – it’s just a blip in the long-term heating trend.
“It’s part of natural variability,” said Gerald Meehl, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. With global warming, he said, “we’ll still have record cold temperatures. We’ll just have fewer of them.”
Deke Arndt of the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., noted that 2009 will rank among the 10 warmest years for Earth since 1880. Scientists say man-made climate change does have the potential to cause more frequent and more severe weather extremes, such as heat waves, storms, floods, droughts and even cold spells. But experts interviewed by The Associated Press did not connect the current frigid blast to climate change.
So what is going on? “We basically have seen just a big outbreak of Arctic air” over populated areas of the Northern Hemisphere, Arndt said. “The Arctic air has really turned itself loose on us.”
In the atmosphere, large rivers of air travel roughly west to east around the globe between the Arctic and the tropics. This air flow acts like a fence to keep Arctic air confined. But recently, this air flow has become bent into a pronounced zigzag pattern, meandering north and south. If you live in a place where it brings air up from the south, you get warm weather. In fact, record highs were reported this week in Washington state and Alaska.
But in the eastern United States, like some other unlucky parts of the globe, Arctic air is swooping down from the north. And that’s how you get a temperature of 3 degrees in Beijing, a reading of minus-42 in mainland Norway, and 18 inches of snow in parts of Britain, where a member of Parliament who said the snow “clearly indicates a cooling trend” was jeered by colleagues.
The zigzag pattern arises naturally from time to time, but it is not clear why it’s so strong right now, said Michelle L’Heureux, a meteorologist at the Climate Prediction Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Conclusion?
It seems to me that these these theories, that global warming will lead to colder winters, need to pass three tests before they can even cross the starting line:-
1) Explain how winters were as colder, or colder, and as snowy or snowier, in earlier periods such as the 1960’s and 70’s, when the NH was cooling, and Arctic ice expanding.
2) Explain how winters grew milder in the 1990’s and early 2000’s, at a time when the earth was warming, and Arctic ice was declining.
3) Prove what was wrong with earlier models that predicted milder winters.
Until these tests are passed, the theories really don’t get off the ground.
Footnote
Looking more closely at the Chinese study, mentioned above, by Zhang, Lu and Guan, their abstract states:-
Extreme cold winter weather events over Eurasia have occurred more frequently in recent years in spite of a warming global climate. To gain further insight into this regional mismatch with the global mean warming trend, we analyzed winter cyclone and anticyclone activities, and their interplay with the regional atmospheric circulation pattern characterized by the semi-permanent Siberian high. We found a persistent weakening of both cyclones and anticyclones between the 1990s and early 2000s, and a pronounced intensification of anticyclone activity afterwards. It is suggested that this intensified anticyclone activity drives the substantially strengthening and northwestward shifting/expanding Siberian high, and explains the decreased midlatitude Eurasian surface air temperature and the increased frequency of cold weather events. The weakened tropospheric midlatitude westerlies in the context of the intensified anticyclones would reduce the eastward propagation speed of Rossby waves, favoring persistence and further intensification of surface anticyclone systems.
Their methodology also tells us that the data used is from 1979-2012.
What they are saying then is that, in the 1990’s, conditions changed to a weakened state of cyclones and anticyclones, and therefore milder winters. In the last few years, it has changed back to a strengthened state. Although they have not analysed data back, at least, to the 1960’s, (which seems an amazing omission, that hugely undermines their work), the implication is clear, that recent conditions have returned to close to the ones that existed prior to 1990.
But none of that stops Zhang from saying “Decreased sea-ice cover favours further extension of warm air into the central Arctic Ocean. When this warm air propagates to the lower-latitude Eurasian continent, it gets cooled due to radiative heat loss. Anticyclones accordingly form or intensify.”
Before going on to say “We need to evaluate whether climate models can realistically capture weather-scale physical processes”, which, translated, means “Please send us some more grant money”.
[*NB* the word “fraudsters” gets a post dropped in the spam bin for human attention . . mod]
Here are some more past winter claims. First, we have one for colder winters and the rest for warmer. Today, we are told to expect colder winters. I wish these funding fraudsters would make up their bipolar minds [pun entirely intende].
http://youtu.be/4Ne4UshIgXQ
For all those in reverence of the BBC. It is a news and entertainment organisation, which occasionally produces good dramas and documentaries. David Attenborough is an observer of animal behaviour, and an animal lover, not a physicist or atmospheric scientist.
As an organisation, it feels it has the power to comment on matters in which it has no expertise.
They take their cue from the Met Office, whose contradictions are already public knowledge
The Met are brilliant! Couple of nights ago on telly, the met presenter solemnly opined that there was a huge column of freezing air coming down from the Antarctic!
Notice I used the word ‘presenter’, rather than in the old days when we had real meteorologists who knew what they were talking about!
I think the majority of sceptics are getting as carried away in detail and sophistry as the Eco-hysterics themselves.
To most of you I would say, you are missing the point.
A rumination is not science unless it offers both a hypothesis AND crucially a null hypothesis. AGW rumination doesnt clearly offer a former and more importantly never offers the latter. The important thing in respect of their discussion of weather is not the minutiae of climate and meterorology but the simple fact that they offer no circumstances which would confirm a null hypothesis. WHATEVER happens (colder, warmer, wetter, drier) they have a way of rationalising it as due to only one “cause”.
By that yard-stick alone it should be easy to ram home the fact that this is not about science but pseudo-science. Falsifyability is an alien concept to them. The basic notion common to all real science that correlation does not indicate causation is something that they ignore continually.An under-graduate in any topic, even psychology, should recognise thesetraits easily. For sceptics to allow these big sticks to go unused and get tangled up in the maze of sophistry woven by the pseudo-scientists is not really acceptable.
Sceptics may be right about those details, as I am certain they are about the bigger picture, but it is an utter waste of time arguing over it. “You” neeed to get your act together and you could learn a few things by studying how Environmentalists influence debate.
To illustrate this…PWilsons comment about the BBC is exactly correct but lacking in force and will be forgotten instantly by most who read it.
Apologies Mr / Ms Wilson, I agree with you BUT, a rather more strident way to address the BBC is warranted. EG:
“The BBC exists to generate revenue distributed as inflated salaries among its higher staff echelons. To get a sense of the scale of the BBCs money generating enterprise it is necessary to compare it with a comparably large and expensive organisation. NASA is engagaged in the most expensive activity short of warfare (space exploration). The turnover of the BBC is more than half that of NASA. Per capita, the BBC costs the British citizen several times as much as NASA costs the US citizen. Whilst NASA conducts some very major,important and serious research, for the comparable investment the BBC broadcasts shows made by others (mainly US), some home-made garbage in the form of cheap chat and cookery shows and repeats of Dads Army. This situation is not simply outrageous but utterly disgusting. It is iniquitous.”
Accosted in a dark alley by the likes of the BBC I would not recommend polite disagreement, go for the testes then smash their knees before stamping in their face.
This is how Environmentalists conduct debate. It is why they succeed. It is why there is no hope of defeating them irrespective of the facts until sceptics learn to reciprocate.
This Harvard professor came up in something I am working on involving Paul Ehrlich and sought cultural evolution via education. When I searched her out, this article came up.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shoshana-zuboff/global-warming-lightning-strikes_b_1471783.html
Attributing lightning strikes to Global Warming. Just too good not to post.
Wamron says:
February 9, 2013 at 4:46 am
By that yard-stick alone it should be easy to ram home the fact that this is not about science but pseudo-science. Falsifyability is an alien concept to them. The basic notion common to all real science that correlation does not indicate causation is something that they ignore continually.An under-graduate in any topic, even psychology, should recognise thesetraits easily. For sceptics to allow these big sticks to go unused and get tangled up in the maze of sophistry woven by the pseudo-scientists is not really acceptable.
Accosted in a dark alley by the likes of the BBC I would not recommend polite disagreement, go for the testes then smash their knees before stamping in their face.
This is how Environmentalists conduct debate. It is why they succeed. It is why there is no hope of defeating them irrespective of the facts until sceptics learn to reciprocate.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
This. It bears repeating. Some have caught on. We need many many more.
If arctic air plummeting down onto the lower latitudes is an indication of global warming, what is the implication of warm lower latitude air rushing north to replace that south wandering air mass? More global warming?
So if we experience cold lower latitude air rushing north to replace south rushing warm arctic air what would we call that? More global warming?
Final case: Air is just sitting around on its arse, not going north or south. Hazard me a guess – more global warming, right?
I’d like a piece of that 20% EU budget over the next 7 years, please.
This site gives links to articles about things that have been blamed on global warming. http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/globalwarming2.html One Article says the Atlantic is becoming less salty. The next article says the Atlantic is becoming more salty. Hmm! But my favorite is this one; brothels struggle. Gee what isn’t due to global warming?
Global warming used to cause me to wear a bikini. Thank goodness that stopped.
Maybe your wearing of a bikini was CAUSING global warming! 😉
David S says:
February 9, 2013 at 8:31 am
“But my favorite is this one; brothels struggle. Gee what isn’t due to global warming?”
UN diplomats are immune from prosecution so they don’t pay, I guess.
dp says:
February 9, 2013 at 8:25 am
“I’d like a piece of that 20% EU budget over the next 7 years, please.”
Apply here.
http://cordis.europa.eu/home_en.html
If humans are the root of climate change, then graph human population against millions of years of climate. Results are?
Now, let me get this straight.
“Looking more closely at the Chinese study, mentioned above, by Zhang, Lu and Guan, their abstract states:- Extreme cold winter weather events over Eurasia have occurred more frequently in recent years in spite of a warming global climate. http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/7/4/044044/article”
In the comments we are talking about the “cold” winters?:(bold mine)
vukcevic says: BBC’s John Hammond associated the recent cold spell with the SSW (sudden stratospheric warming) without any reference to the climate change, AGW or CO2. http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SSW2012-13.htm
herkimer says: Go to UK, MEAN TEMPERATURES and WINTER. options- You will get a plot of UK wineter temperatures since 1910. You will note that the winter temperature trend oscillates and has recently levelled off and is actually dropping after 2006 below the long term trend for three years
Village Idiot says: Colder winters with more snow is just evidence of the dropping global temperatures we’ve seen over the last 18 years (known as ‘the plateau’ by Warmisters)
What “cold” weather? Dr Spenser (no disrespect) and the MET and NASA and NOAA and GISS et al report that December and January are the “hottest” ever. No matter that cold records are being broken around the NH–people are dying by the thousands because of the record freezing weather–so what are you talking about? /sarc
All the measures of temperature (except possibly sea surface) report that this is the “hottest” or near hottest winter ever. Anecdotal evidence cannot be summarily ignored. (see iceagenow.info) I cannot reconcile the deep discrepancies between people freezing to death in record numbers from record cold and this being the “hottest” December and January on record. Something is amiss.
pokerguy says: Ah but wait for actual global cooling. That is the one thing they can’t blame on global warming. It’s the one thing which will at long last stick a fork in the greatest scientific hoax in history. Can’t come soon enough, but rest assured it will come.
You think? According to all scientific measurements (no disrespect to science) it isn’t here even when it is.
Bob says: I predict this winter and next will be colder, about the same or warmer.
Bol, it already is not cold this winter–don’t you read the global temp records?
Sorry, I guess I turned of the /sarc too soon.
TO Eric Barnes who says: Jimbo says: I want to hear something from a Warmist right here on this thread once and for all. Is Europe and the Northern United states expected to get colder winters or warmer winters?
Yes.
Funniest line of the week!!!!!!!!
Day By Day says:
February 9, 2013 at 10:00 am
I cannot reconcile the deep discrepancies between people freezing to death in record numbers from record cold and this being the “hottest” December and January on record.
The latest on six different data sets.
Since it is February, I will do things a bit differently than the rest of the year. I will give the latest anomaly I have and indicate its relative ranking if that anomaly were to stay that way for all of 2013. (Of course it won’t.)
The UAH anomaly for January was 0.506. (It jumped from 0.206 in December.) This would rank 1st. (1998 was the warmest at 0.42. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in April of 1998 when it reached 0.66.
The GISS anomaly for December was 0.44. This would rank 15th.
The Hadcrut3 anomaly for December was 0.233, This would rank 19th.
The sea surface anomaly for December was 0.342. This would rank 8th.
The RSS anomaly for January was 0.442. (It jumped from 0.101 in December.) This would rank 3rd.
The Hadcrut4 anomaly for December was 0.269. This would rank 19th.
The new UAH is not on WFT yet, but with the January value for RSS, the slope is 0 for 16 years and 1 month from January 1, 1997 to January 31, 2013.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1997/plot/rss/from:1997/trend
For the complete statistics on these 6 data sets for 2012, see:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/02/04/the-yearly-lukewarm-report/#comment-1216324
Thank you Werner Brozek , that does help some. I went to Dr. Spencer’s site again after reviewing your links (I had read yours before and appreciated the info)–and I suppose they don’t get the “Global” temp by averaging NH SH and Tropics?
I am assuming the three areas have different weights in figuring the final average…I get .462 with a simple average of Spencer’s data–more like your RSS feed (well not yours) than the ..506 reported by him.
Your help much appreciated in contrast to media hype.
The greatest beneficiaries of human population growth are cows. Where once there were no cows, they are now in great abundance. By good fortune they don’t taste like chicken.
Reblogged this on This Got My Attention and commented:
Snow or no snow, either way, blame it on global warming.
Jimbo, thanks for quoting the Schmidt paper, namely, “Here we use several different climate-model versions to demonstrate that the observed sea-level-pressure trends, including their magnitude, can be simulated by realistic increases in greenhouse-gas concentrations.” Those pressure trends being “gradual reduction in high-latitude sea-level pressure”.
It is interesting that the same scientists writing those papers can write more papers a decade or more later showing that the current scary phenomenon, the increased high latitude pressure causing a weaker polar jet and higher meridional flow is also caused by global warming.
They get paid for this work. And as many people point out in the thread, the work is not all that difficult, basically just write a paper stating that recently observed bad things are caused by increased GHG concentrations. If the claim contradicts a previous claim, simply ignore the previous claim.
I live in the Western Great Lakes. Two weeks ago, the highs were around 38 deg F. A rather brisk outbreak of polar air invaded the Lakes a week or so ago. This took highs down to 18 deg F, and lows around 5 deg F. Several minor snow events occurred anywhere from 3 to 15 inches. Driving sucked, as the small snow events only caused roads to glaze over, and the heavier ones made driving even more treacherous. Thirty seven years ago, a deep, very frigid outbreak of polar air invaded the Great Lakes just after Thanksgiving. The high temperature in South Bend on 6 Dec was -5 deg F. Several snow events (both system and lake affect snow) dumped several foot of snow from Des Moines to Erie Penn. I remember winters as a teenager hiding the ground with snow from Thanksgiving to Easter. In 1976 we were below 0 for almost 30 days (late Dec to late Jan).
What is ironic is that the NH saw its two very cold winters right when the PDO went positive. In 1978, a prolonged artic outbreak coupled with a very active Pacific cyclone season produced one of the worst blizzards in recent memory. Three foot of snow fell in early Feb 1978 from Iowa to Maine. Temps plunged below zero for three weeks for most of the Eastern Third of the US (this was during the early stages of the positive PDO, which lasted until 2007).
Stick around, most humans younger than 40 have no idea how cold winters can get. They soon will.
Day By Day says:
February 9, 2013 at 1:46 pm
I suppose they don’t get the “Global” temp by averaging NH SH and Tropics?
Half of the tropics is in the NH and half is in the SH, so you cannot average the three. Simply average the NH and SH to get the global.
If AGW is going to bring wetter weather, they had better mothball all those wind turbines.. A paper from scientists at Nottingham University have found that Rain + Wind Turbines results with a ‘significant’ decrease in output power..
Paper: http://www.icrepq.com/icrepq%2711/618-al.pdf
Part of abstract:
“Results are presented that demonstrate that rain will have a significant effect on the output of a vertical axis wind turbine. The experiments were carried out in the climatic wind tunnel at the
University of Nottingham where water was sprayed into the wind tunnel to simulate several rainfall rates. The rain had the effect of increasing the drag, slowing the rotational speed of the wind
turbine and decreasing the Power for the equivalent wind speed”
Oh dear. Another catch 22
The difference between this blog and the work of real scientists is that whereas you on this site are dedicated to debunking and discrediting (eg. scientists “wheeled out”), a real scientist wants to determine what is true and what ideas turn out to be false.
A good scientist owes no allegiance to a particular point of view, and if s/he fakes data, s/he will be toast(ed) by her/his community. As a result, you cling to any contradictions. And because weather is complex you will find them. And, so you set out a bewildering barrage of claims.
But, we do know sea temperatures have increased, hence water vapor has increased, hence precipitation increased, hence snowfalls increased (when temps are below freezing).
We also know that Arctic sea ice has rapidly decreased which plays havoc with the jet stream and invites Arctic air to places and times that were not visited before.
Extremes are what were predicted and what have been found. For example, the number of hot records broken have been in this decade twice the number of cold records broken. When that trend turns around, I will make a full public apology.
Posting -on this site- a silly picture of a Global Warming sign in the snow shows you confuse weather with climate. Not very intelligent. But, of course, you know that. You are out to hustle, not inform.
It is the statistics that reveal climate, e.g. the number of more recent extreme events over time compared with earlier decades.
If Barry Bonds strikes out one time, it doesn’t mean that steroids were unrelated to his home run records.
ANY weather event is now down to ‘Global warming/climate change/this week’s definition’…..