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
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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
If commenters here at WUWT over a long period of time consistently base all their comments on some kind of clear certainty of the fundamental claim that there is a danger from AGW by CO2, whether it is the moderate danger held by a lukewarmer protagonist or an extreme danger held by an alarming protagonist, then they have seen that manifold physical observations significantly contradict their certainty. There is an increasing rate of appearance in publications for observations contradicting the supporters of danger from AGW by CO2.
Let me try, as a devil’s advocate, to take their argument position and predict their defensive and offensive tactics here at WUWT. Here are some possible tactics I think supporters of danger from AGW by CO2 would be taking:
If commenters here at WUWT over a long period of time consistently base all their comments on some kind of clear certainty of the fundamental claim that there is a danger from AGW by CO2 and they do not exhibit behaviors like 1 thru 4 above in the face of contradictory climate observations, then they can be called lay skeptics. N’est ce pas?
John
I get the points of the post, but I did have a question or two: sometimes more moisture laden moist warm air, slides over cold air at the surface. Would this give you greater snow fall, or would it “condense out” as sleet or ice? If it could give you snowfall, were these the conditions that obtained during the blizzard of 2013? Or any blizzard of note? Thanks in advance for any response.
Phil. says:
February 19, 2013 at 10:19 am
1. Colder winters have more snow and more big snow storms, in contradiction to the warming hypothesis.
Actually the simple plots show no such thing about ‘big snow storms’, they just show the averages….
….Since the OP is a Meteorologist Emeritus he knows better than this so I can only assume he’s trying to mislead! …..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Or he has a lot more data that he is not showing. It is tough to be brief AND include all the data without writing a book instead of an article.
Steven Mosher says:
February 19, 2013 at 8:17 am
“The last IPCC report claimed snowfall would decrease, and made no mention of larger storms. ”
really?
Some excerpts
Regionally, the changes are a response to both increased temperature and increased precipitation (changes in circulation patterns) and are complicated by the etc etc etc ………………………I suppose it would be too much trouble to actually read the science.”
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Science ?
This is just a dog’s breakfast of modelling masturbation coupled with tongue in cheek estimates wallowing in a sauce of uncertainty. (Yes mixed metaphors can only describe it). No mention of storms that I could see. Bit like our Mr Flannery pronouncing that our dams will never fill again to their previous levels. In 2012 they overflowed.
Richard Keen says:
February 19, 2013 at 11:54 am
trafamadore says:
February 19, 2013 at 9:16 am
If air over the ocean comes landward, the amt of water it contains is limited by its temp, warmer air, more H2O. … AGW could change that by allowing more moisture in.
>>>The amount of H20 available to make snow is limited to the maximum amount available at the maximum temperature at which SNOW can form. Snow and Ice crystals cannot form above zero C, at which point the 3.8 grams/kg saturation mixing ratio is the maximum available H20. Supersaturation can push that up a few percent, but there’s still a limit that won’t change (unless global warming changes the freezing point of water).
Beyond that limit, it’s all rain.
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Thanks for clarifying this Richard & Trafamadore, I was puzzled while reading this earlier along the same lines as Trafamadore.
John Whitman says:
February 19, 2013 at 12:11 pm
If commenters here at WUWT over a long period of time consistently base all their comments on some kind of clear certainty of the fundamental claim that there is a danger from AGW by CO2, whether it is the moderate danger held by a lukewarmer protagonist or an extreme danger held by an alarming protagonist, then they have seen that manifold physical observations significantly contradict their certainty….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I can not make heads or tails out of what you are trying to say.
My point of view is we do not even have the list of factors that effect the climate yet much less a clear understanding of whether they are 1st, 2nd, or 3rd order ‘forcings’
There was an ABC World News with Dianne Sawyer last night which copied this story. ABC did zero fact checking as far as I could tell. Instead they had several climate talking heads on to repeat the mantra.
Phil. says:
> Actually the simple plots show no such thing about ‘big snow storms’, they just show the averages.
>>> I get the same story by counting big storms, but there’s a lot more statistical leeway going this route. Do you take the number of 20-inch storms, or 10, or 6, or 4, or some other criterion? Or the NESIS counts, or the NESIS values? Or…? So the seasonal totals are a simple and ready data set. And, if you look at high snow years – more than 30 or 40 inches, say, you’ll find that most of the total is due to 1, 2, or 3 big storms. So the correlation with snow totals also correlates with storm counts.
> Since the OP is a Meteorologist Emeritus he knows better than this so I can only assume he’s trying to mislead!
>>> Thank you.
> Whether it falls as snow depends on the temperature of the colder air.
>>> Precisely; that’s my point. Rain doesn’t count in this discussion. And there’s a physical limit to how much water is available to make snow.
Global warming can always explain anything that happens, only the reasoning changes. That’s why it’s a religion.
That strikes me as a cherry that is hanging pretty close to the ground, Steve Mosher. Everywhere I’ve lived I would be amazed if natural variations couldn’t achieve that long before 2040.
…And then someone would doubtless claim that it has happened sooner than they “predicted” (aka “It’s worse than we thought.”)
From Bruce Cobb on February 19, 2013 at 9:07 am:
WR2 Watt 4 ex?
Richard Keen says: “>>The amount of H20 available to make snow is limited to the maximum amount available at the maximum temperature at which SNOW can form. Snow and Ice crystals cannot form above zero C, at which point the 3.8 grams/kg saturation mixing ratio is the maximum available H20.”
First, a cloud is not “dissolved water”, it is a fine floating mist. So your physical laws only loosely apply to clouds, which is where rain and snow come from these days.
Second, the tendency to make clouds has to do with the amt of water that is dissolved in the arriving air. Hence, the AGW connection.
Third, so the real question is how quickly does the cloud cool, and if cools quickly enuf, how much snow do we end up with. I am guessing the more moisture past Portland, Oregon, the more snow on Mt Hood.
Fourth, guess we are forgetting about changes in pressure in this conversation…
Fifth, “Ice crystals cannot form above freezing” but water after condensing out can be frozen into sleet.
@trafamadore I thought of perhaps snipping your comment to protect you from your own stupidity, but then I thought better of it. Just curious, are you faculty or student at Western Michigan University?
Gail Combs says (Re John Whitman’s long string of words): “I can not make heads or tails out of what you are trying to say.”
I second that. But that first sentence/paragraph was sort of amazing.
Nevertheless, I think that I am to be more insulted than you, although I am not really sure. I just made “cryptic remarks, snarky one liners”, so, yeah, he’s talking about me.
Of course Mosher forget to mention that THERE has not been any significant increase in global average temperatures now admitted by all his “adjusting” pals at the IPCC, UEA so his diatribe is c###p sorry. I think this guy is now in the pay of the AGW system after his BEST attempt. Stick to Gleick type investigations please!
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/ipcc-ar5draft-fig-1-4.gif
Richard Keen says:
February 19, 2013 at 12:08 pm
Matthew W says:
I don’t even bother reading “articles” from Seth anymore.
>>> Me neither, but I saw it on Drudge and thought it might be OK. Then I couldn’t go back to sleep, and stayed up all night writing my thesis.
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You sir are a far stronger man than I am then !!
Top notch post !
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Gail Combs,
Thank you for your comment.
Sorry you could not make ‘heads or tails’ of my long comment.
Short form of my previous long comment is like this => Observations of climate behavior increasingly contradict the views held by the supporters of dangerous AGW by CO2. If they are not open to a skeptical scientific method / process then how they handle those climate behavior observations in comments can be predicted. If they do not act in that predicted way in commenting about climate observations which contradict their views then they do show a defacto skeptical thinking which could be considered as lay skepticism.
I hope that short form comment helps.
Regarding your view of the climate science situation I think there is a cause for the state of climate science which you describe. The cause in my view is that for the past 25++ years (the period of IPCC formation then their assessments) there has not been generally an actual open minded research funding process on climate. It will take creation of a complete open minded research funding process to make any reasonable objective progress on the science of our climate. I think that the shift to an open minded funding process is occurring.
John
Speaking of snow- I would like the current snowstorm I am experiencing to stop at less then 6″. It becomes near to impossible to stay on the road in my neck of the woods (2400 ft elevation in the Sierra Foothills) once this snow depth is hit (our temperature is currently about 34F on porch).
Why is the smart money begging to differ from the consensus?
http://www.newswire.ca/en/story/1115711/blue-mountain-gets-even-larger-resort-invests-10-million-in-major-terrain-expansion-for-winter-2013-14
– – – – – – – – – – –
trafamadore,
I do not recall ever getting a comment from you. That may be the first. I enjoyed getting your comment. Thanks.
I usually skip your comments, only looking at your comments here at WUWT when they are cited by many other commenters who I have developed a certain level of respect for over the years at several blogs.
However, since you seemingly self-identified as a user of “cryptic remarks, snarky one liners”, I will take your word for it. No problema.
John
John Whitman says: @ur momisugly February 19, 2013 at 1:52 pm
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Thank you for the clarification.
IMHO, the IPCC short circuited the advancement in research because their mandate was specifically to hang CAGW on the human race and not to study the factors effecting the climate.
In short if the research did not have the CAGW get out of peer review free card attached it got sunk.
This is a classic example from NASA
Couldn’t, for example, a saturated air mass at 50F mix with a cold air mass at 10F to produce a large amount of snow at 30F?
“Arctic Ice has … .” Whac a mole! Climate is global not regional.
“Upper tropospheric temperatures reached … .” Ditto.
“The UHI effect is biasing … . “ Whac a mole! Earth’s climate depends on ocean temperatures over land temperatures by three orders of magnitude.
“Tropical rainfall is no unprecedented since … .” Whac a mole!
“His CO2 footprint is … .” Whac a mole! atmospheric CO2 is a by-product of global warming, not the reverse by about two orders of magnitude.
“For the sake of our grandchildren, Climate Change must … .” Whac a mole! To control climate, we must command either the Sun or Earth’s albedo.
AGW? Global Climate/Circulation/Catastrophe Model? Whac a mole. Whac a mole. Whac a mole.
John Whitman says:
February 19, 2013 at 2:20 pm
– – – – – – – – – – –
trafamadore,
I do not recall ever getting a comment from you. That may be the first. I enjoyed getting your comment. Thanks.
I usually skip your comments, only looking at your comments here at WUWT when they are cited by many other commenters who I have developed a certain level of respect for over the years at several blogs.
However, since you seemingly self-identified as a user of “cryptic remarks, snarky one liners”, I will take your word for it. No problema.
John
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Not trying to kick trafamadore here, but still I must say that response was a work of art John.
(golf clap)
snaparooni says:
February 19, 2013 at 2:36 pm
“Couldn’t, for example, a saturated air mass at 50F mix with a cold air mass at 10F to produce a large amount of snow at 30F?”
Air masses with very different internal characteristics are unlikely to “mix” in that manner. The warmer saturated one will be more buoyant and will be forced up as it meets the cold (dense) air. Then by rising and expanding the warm air’s temperature will drop, and being saturated, the vapor will condense. Having grown to sufficient size as liquid, it will drop through the freezing air and become sleet. These varied processes will change the characteristics of both air masses and the result(s) could change.
BTW, what’s up with that Seth Borenstein pic? Is he so secretly jealous of Anthony he’s trying to look just like Anthony Watts (albeit slightly younger)?
Where’s the side-by-side comparison photos when you need them?