Comments on Yesterday’s paean to Global Warming
Guest post by Dr. Richard Keen,
Meteorologist Emeritus, University of Colorado, Boulder
It’s like playing whac-a-mole. After every major storm or unusual (or even slightly interesting) weather event, some non-investigative reporter gets hold of the usual suspects to write an article about how it’s all due to global warming. Then it’s up to knowledgeable folk like Joe D’Aleo, Anthony Watts, Bill Gray, James Taylor, Steve Goddard, and many, many others to write a data-based rebuttal to “whac” the nonsense back down into its hole. But then, as in the game, it always pops up again. Today I’ll draw the short straw and try to whac the mole back down once more.
The article in question is a piece by Seth Borenstein (again) of AP (again) titled “Climate contradiction: Less snow, more blizzards” (again). Borenstein talked to Michael Oppenheimer, Mark Serreze, and other “leading federal and university climate scientists” (again). If you really want to read it, it’s at
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SCI_SNOW_GLOBAL_WARMING?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-02-18-11-33-15
But you might find the annotated version more rewarding:
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/no_surprise_psuedo_scientists_now_blame_blizzards_on_warming/
Borenstein’s story starts off with a valid point:
“With scant snowfall and barren ski slopes in parts of the Midwest and Northeast the past couple of years, some scientists have pointed to global warming as the culprit.
“Then when a whopper of a blizzard smacked the Northeast with more than 2 feet of snow in some places earlier this month, some of the same people again blamed global warming.
“How can that be? It’s been a joke among skeptics, pointing to what seems to be a brazen contradiction.”
So far, so good. It IS a brazen contradiction. So what do the global warming apologists say?
Borenstein continues,
“But the answer lies in atmospheric physics. A warmer atmosphere can hold, and dump, more moisture, snow experts say.”
So they’re saying that since a warmer atmosphere can “hold” more moisture (technically quite incorrect in itself), there’s more moisture to produce more snow. How much moisture is there?
At -10C, aka 14F, each kilogram of air can “hold” (as they say) a maximum of 1.8 grams of water vapor. If all that condenses out as snow, you’ll get 1.8 grams of snow from that kilogram of air rising in a Low or along a front. That would likely be a cold, fluffy snow. Warm the air up to 0C (32F), and the water content of the air doubles to 3.8 grams. Then the same storm will produce twice as much snow, or at least twice as heavy a snow (since the warmer snow won’t be as fluffy). Most big snow storms occur with temperatures close to the freezing point.
Source: http://web.gccaz.edu/~lnewman/gph111/topic_units/Labs_all/Water%20Vapor%20Capacity%20of%20Air.pdf
Now let’s kick in some global warming and raise the temperature to +10C (50F). The water content doubles again to 7.6 grams, so the snow storms will again produce twice as much snow.
What? You say it can’t snow at 50 degrees F???? Well, then you know more physics than these “snow experts”!
The biggest snow storms occur at temperatures near freezing, and warming CANNOT make them any bigger because of two corollaries of a well-known physical law:
1. The freezing point of water is 0C (32F), and ice or snow cannot form above this temperature.
2. Short of a presidential executive order, the freezing point cannot be raised to allow for more moisture to be available.
Like the speed of light, it’s not just a good idea, it’s the law, and it clearly states that warmer cannot equal more extreme snow.
Now, the AGW apologists will gin and jerry their models to violate these physical laws, but one can also make pigs fly on a computer. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49wJAkz8X1M
Onwards….
“The United States has been walloped by twice as many of the most extreme snowstorms in the past 50 years than in the previous 60 years, according to an upcoming study…”
Well, you can look at the same data and draw different conclusions. May I refer you to a piece I wrote for the Science & Public Policy Institute, “ARE HUGE NORTHEAST SNOW STORMS DUE TO GLOBAL WARMING?”, at http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/reprint/ne_storms.pdf
Simple plots of winter temperature and snowfall data for Philadelphia show two obvious things:
1. Colder winters have more snow and more big snow storms, in contradiction to the warming hypothesis. This would be obvious to most folk, but the warmers have a way for denying the obvious with clever theories.
2. Over the past 125 years there has been little or no trend in either winter temperatures or snowfall.
Less obvious, but apparent in closer scrutiny of the charts, is a small 60-year cycle in snow and temperature. These correspond well with the “Atlantic Multi-Decadal Oscillation” (AMO), a huge oceanic cycle enveloping the entire Atlantic Ocean from the equator to Iceland. Joe D’Aleo has written extensively on this; just go to ICECAP.us, Wattsupwiththat.com, or other honest climate websites and do a search for combinations of “snow”, “AMO”, and the AMO’s Pacific cousin, “PDO”.
You can check this article, “Reliving the 1950s (and 1890s): the 60 year cycle” at
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/reliving_the_1950s_and_1890s_the_60_year_cycle/
Although I was raised in Philadelphia, and was present for the regional climate shift from hurricanes in the 1950s to the cold snowy winters of the 60s (due to the AMO, of course), I realize not everybody considers the city the center of the universe. Expanding to the entire Northeast, NOAA’s “Northeast Snowfall Impact Scale (NESIS)” also shows no overall change in the snow climate of the northeastern U.S. Read all about it at “Big Snows: Northeast U.S. and Colorado”
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/big_snows_northeast_us_and_colorado/
The Colorado part of that article has the same end point: giant storms in Colorado are not increasing or decreasing; out in the Rockies it’s all el Niño. More at:
“Thirty years in the Bull’s-eye: a climatology of meter-class snow storms in the Front Range foothills”
http://hydrosciences.colorado.edu/symposium/abstract_details_archive.php?abstract_id=155
Now movin’ on up to the South Side, Borenstein asks us to “take Chicago” (please!), which, along with the Northeast, has “been hit with historic storms in recent years”. The 2011 Blizzard was certainly impressive, with 21.2 inches of snow containing 1.57 inches of water equivalent. Not bad, but officially, it was a bit shy of 1967’s “Big Snow” (they didn’t use excessive superlatives like “superstorm”, “megastorm”, or “storm of the century” back then; “Big” was sufficient) which dumped 23.0 inches. More importantly, the water content of the storm was 2.40 inches, 53 percent greater than the recent blizzard. It would take 6C, or 11F, of global warming to produce that much more moisture, according to the warmers. Indeed, the Big Snow was warmer than the 2011 version, with temperatures close to freezing during the snow. Two days earlier Chicago enjoyed a record maximum of 65 degrees and the Midwest suffered its largest January tornado outbreak on record. One of the 32 tornadoes was a F3 monster in Wisconsin, the northernmost wintertime tornado in US history. I had moved to Chicago by then (follow the snow, I say), and although the ’67 storm fit perfectly the warming scenario now espoused by Serreze, Oppenheimer, and the like, I don’t recall anyone linking it to Global Warming 46 years ago. Not even Mayor Daley. Extreme weather is not new. Read more about these wild storms at:
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/lot/?n=2011blizzard
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/lot/?n=67blizzard
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/dvn/?n=01241967_tornadooutbreak
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/lsx/?n=jan241967tornado
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_St._Louis_Tornado_Outbreak
There’s more nonsense in Borenstein’s article, but frankly, neither the taxpayer, the canola oil companies, or the Rockefellers pay me enough to spend all night refuting it all. Actually, they pay me nothing.
[Added/] And one more thing, about that “ragged edge”….
“Strong snowstorms thrive on the ragged edge of temperature – warm enough for the air to hold lots of moisture, meaning lots of precipitation, but just cold enough for it to fall as snow,” said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center. “Increasingly, it seems that we’re on that ragged edge.”
Let’s look at some data to see if that’s the case. Here’s climatological means, 1971-2000, for three substantial cities supposedly on the “ragged edge”:
Taking the usual 10:1 snow to precipitation ratio, 31% of the precipitation falls as snow. That means most of the precipitation already falls as rain, and always has (at least since weather records began). That would place Boston, New York, and Philadelphia on the
warm side of Serreze’s “ragged edge”, a fact supported by the above freezing mean temperatures for these places. Any warming – should it occur – would push that “ragged edge” even farther north and away from the cities. That would mean more rain, less snow, and fewer big snow storms.
Since the winters aren’t getting warmer, it’s all a moot point. [/end addition]
The AGW gang summarize their apologetics by claiming they knew it all along.
“when Serreze, Oppenheimer and others look at the last few years of less snow overall, punctuated by big storms, they say this is what they are expecting in the future.
“It fits the pattern that we expect to unfold,” Oppenheimer said.
“Ten [unnamed] climate scientists say the idea of less snow and more blizzards makes sense: A warmer world is likely to decrease the overall amount of snow falling each year and shrink snow season.”
They’d have a point if they had said this five or ten years ago, before the recent round of big eastern storms. But they said no such thing. The last IPCC report claimed snowfall would decrease, and made no mention of larger snow storms in the northeastern US. In 2000, Oppenheimer himself lamented his daughter’s unused sled and that “the pleasures of sledding and snowball fights are as out-of-date as hoop-rolling”.
New York Times 2000: “sledding and snowball fights are as out-of-date as hoop-rolling”
Now Oppenheimer & Co. are trying to explain their way out of their dead wrong assessment without admitting the sad truth – that Global Warming, like Barney, is a dinosaur from their imaginations. And we – you – the taxpayer – are paying the AGW gang to cover their errors.
As for the changing climate,
“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun” — Ecclesiastes 1:9 NIV
And the climatologists,
“It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.” –Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia, 1782
=============================================================
UPDATE 1PM PST: I’ve contacted AP by both email and telephone per this page here:
http://www.ap.org/company/contact-us
So far the email has been ignored. Perhaps others will have better luck at getting a correction. An upcoming story on WUWT will further illustrate why Seth Borenstein has made a grievous error.
I spoke with a person named Corelaee, and her response was to simply ask me to talk to Seth directly, which we know will be a waste of time. So I’ve asked to speak to someone who can intervene. Keeps your fingers crossed.
UPDATE2: 4PM PST I’ve added some new content per Dr. Keen’s request between the [Added/] [/end addition] tags. See also the related story below. – Anthony
Related articles
- Round Up: Meteorologists Slaps Down latest warmist claim of ‘Less snow = more blizzards’ — AP’s Seth Borenstein rebutted (climatedepot.com)
- New paper from NOAA demonstrates that El Niño has more impacts than climate on winter weather in the USA
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Here’s another one in a similar vein from last October: Increase in Antarctic Ice Due to Global Warming
Thank you, Dr. Keen, for this article. I really wish there was a good way to get the msm to notice the sheer volume of scientific comment on WUWT, like this piece. Anyway, as one WUWT’s UK readers, I’m very grateful for the time you and all your colleagues here take to write up these articles for the rest of us to read.
Dozens of cool pictures of Omyakon in Siberia, the world’s coldest town.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2280650/Oymyakon-coldest-village-earth-Weather-takes-turn-worse-71C-Russian-hamlet.html
“but one can also make pigs fly on a computer.”
With sufficient thrust one can make pigs fly in real life. Please note that I am not suggesting that flying pigs would be a good idea. 🙂
Mosher says; Artic increases in precipitation Most people spell it with a “c”, as in arctic. Spelling is fundamental.
The CRU emails demonstrated Seth to be a willing propagandist for the cause, seeking advise on how to frame the narrative rather than seeking to understand the science.
A real journalist might have investigated how and why he was so easily used and confused by the ‘Team”. A righteous individual might have been upset by the condescension and misinformation exposed in those emails. An honest man could claim he was abused by his trust in those experts.
Seth Borenstein has done none of these things.
I ignore both Borenstein and AP now,other than for checking current team talking points,as both have chosen advocacy over reporting.
Knowing them for what they are, frees me to admire their art and invert their message.
So either this is absolute nonsense or I am too stupid to understand the subtleties of AGW. I think I will go with my first choice.
“Now let’s kick in some global warming and raise the temperature to +10C (50F). The water content doubles again to 7.6 grams, so the snow storms will again produce twice as much snow.
What? You say it can’t snow at 50 degrees F???? Well, then you know more physics that these “snow experts”! …Like the speed of light, it’s not just a good idea, it’s the law, and it clearly states that warmer cannot equal more extreme snow.”
It is you who are not thinking things through. If air over the ocean comes landward, the amt of water it contains is limited by its temp, warmer air, more H2O. You either can drive that air up a mountain (the West Coast) or smash it into a cold front (the East Coast) and you precipitate out the moisture, as either rain or snow, depending on temp. The point is, that the loading of the water happened under different circumstances than the unloading, and that AGW could change that by allowing more moisture in.
And, as for that “law” that says air can not carry more water that it can should hold, you should have mentioned that to the early pilots when their iced up planes were falling out of the air. It turns out that supersaturated is a pretty common condition up there.
The article talks about how specific humidity varies with temperature, but what about supersaturation and its interaction with super cooling? Two phenomena often at work in snow clouds?
Haven’t thought if it that way, but that makes perfect sense. The physics of “how much moisture can air hold at “x” degrees has not changed since the earth formed….
Of course there is more snow in colder winters. It is Global Warming that is making the winters colder. It is also Global Warming that is making it the wrong kind of snow too.
I’m missing something here. You’ve effectively knocked down the idea that more warm weather = less snow, but that’s the same argument made in the article. There’s no mention to the second half of the articles’ argument of more warm weather = extreme weather. And less snow does not necessarily lead to less big snow storms (or more really; its an assumption). As far as refuting whether they predicted it or not has no bearing on the core of the article.
Dr. Richard Keen,
Thank you for your whac-a-mole post.
Another game to play is a game like ‘Name That Tune’. A player is asked to name the conclusions of a Borenstein climate article when given just one sentence from it. But before that player answers another player says he can name the conclusions of any Borenstein climate article without needing any words from it.
: )
John
Dr. Keen, Thanks for this post (I’ve already received an e-mail about this one from a friend).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Within tests of intellect there are often paragraphs the test taker must read and then answer questions about or, perhaps, summarize. I’ve just read a paragraph submitted by (not written by) Steven Mosher @ur momisugly 8:17. It is the one that starts
Artic (sic) increases in precipitation
The spatial pattern of the projected change . . . ”
Writing such as in that paragraph is a joke . . .
Here’s a summary: By the end of the 21st century there will be more and less snow and rain some places and less and more rain and snow in others with a confidence of something like 5% or 95% or maybe summer might be different than winter.
Mosher,
There’s no need to attack you personally, although you whining about getting attacked is calling the kettle black, and your posts over time have evolved into AGW drone speeches.
A long list of model failures are here, including hydrological:
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2012/10/09/quotes-from-peer-reviewed-paper-that-document-that-skillful-multi-decadal-regional-climate-predictions-do-not-yet-exist/
Its pretty clear no matter what argument is presented, a climate model can be found somewhere that both supports and refutes it. This is why in my view AGW is pseudoscience.
While generally agree with your sentiment, I think you have opened yourself up to some criticism in the form of over-simplfying the physics of snowfall. I think a more powerful argument is that for every 1C “average temperature rise” (whatever that is) the absolute temperature has gone up about 1/300 of a percent. Even accounting for the non-linear nature of humidty with temperature, the idea that this quantity can be measured in the form of increased/decreased, more intense/less intense precipitation is absurd.
Chart 1 is wrong.
The 1990’s and 2000s are clearly warmer than the 1930s.
Need to edit the data to reflect that…
Rick, I am proud of you. Harry
“It clearly shows a trend for more snow during colder winters, and less snow during mild winters.”
But, but, but… global warming causes colder winters, too. Extreme weather means it will alternate between colder winters and warmer winters, more snow and less snow. The weather will act like it always does, except even more so. Now try to falsify that! /sarc
Steven Mosher says:
February 19, 2013 at 8:17 am
Interestingly, the AR4 synthesis report does not even contain the work snowfall but for a single reference to increased snowfall in Antarctica. It makes numerous references to decreased snow cover and decreased snow pack The synthesis report does not mention snow storms.
The original NYT article quoting Dr. Oppenheimer’s comment about the sled did not attribute this quote to Dr. Oppenheimer
It is a construct of the author. http://www.nytimes.com/2000/01/15/nyregion/winter-new-york-something-s-missing-absence-snow-upsets-rhythms-urban-life.html?src=pm
It takes careful reading to sort out the Openheimer quote from the article in this reference: http://hauntingthelibrary.wordpress.com.
My take is that people might be forgiven for thinking AR4 discussed decreased snowfall given the numerous references to decreased snow cover and decreased snow pack – but that is not what the summary says. Indeed, it talks about increased Winter/early Spring runoff due to warming.
In my part of the world our worst snow happens when the pineapple express glides up and over the polar express and rain falls down through arctic air in great gobs. Limbs snap, Doug Firs fall down, power goes out, the pineapple express fades and the polar express settles in to create a frozen cityscape that keeps kids home from school and electric cars on their battery tenders. People die.
I think you are painting with too broad a brush as are the story tellers on the other side. It isn’t warm everywhere and it isn’t cold everywhere with or without global climate change, but anywhere it is both you are going to get some nasty snow that could lead you to consume your fellow traveler’s liver. There is a monument to that very act at a wide spot in the road to Nevada. What the green nutters say is certainly possible, but it doesn’t require global warming or cooling – just weather. And it is definitely not unusual.
jorgekafkazar says:
February 19, 2013 at 7:49 am
Looking at it another way, a mass of warm air could adsorb a million pounds of water vapor at Point A. That takes an input of (roughly) 970 million BTUs. Sunshine. The tradewinds, etc., move the vapor to Point B, where it cools and dumps out as rain. That requires getting rid of 970 million BTUs, no small task, but happens all the time. The system is in balance, overall; in = out. But wait, it’s not snowing yet. To form snow, the vapor has to lose another 144 million BTUs to go from liquid water to solid. The system is out of balance by that extra 144 million BTUs lost. Losing heat more heat than was put in is characteristic of a cooling world, not a warming one. “Heat makes snow” is about as big a lie as was ever told by scientists. It’s clear they’re making this up as they go.
Yes, but it does warm!
CO2 absorbs all that energy that was released. Then it re-radiates and warms the surface!
If the weather hit the long-term averages every day for a year, it would be blamed on CO2.
Mark Bofill says:
February 19, 2013 at 8:36 am
(Breaking my New Year’s Resolution again)
Mark, please don’t try to understand a condescending and immature SM post…just say no. Your brain and intellect will thank you later.
(Now back to my ignoring SM posts…)
Steven Mosher says:
February 19, 2013 at 8:17 am
Steve the problem is that the Models are just not that good.
From Validation of the GISS GCM: A Study of Ocean and Climate Modeling
And then this paper
Evaluation of the GISS GCM ModelE
Basically any future prediction of precipitation patterns, regional temps, or cloud cover by GCM’s are suspect. The only reason they can make a close guess at global temps, is that the regional values get averaged out, smearing the high and low values out.