Image Credit: Remote Sensing Systems (RSS)
By WUWT regular “Just The Facts”
I recommend that everyone watch this brief Weather Channel segment titled “Blame Climate Change for Long Winter“, the video description states that, “In much of the country this winter has stretched well into spring. The Weather Channel meteorologist Julie Martin asks the experts if climate change is to blame.” The Weather Channel segment puts forth the case that the “Long Winter” was caused by “Global Climate Change”, whatever that means. This argument is supported by this Huffington Post article “Climate Change ‘Causing Colder British Winters’ Says Met Office Chief Scientist“.
“Dr Julia Slingo told ITV News global warming may be responsible for the extreme weather.” “It definitely seems like the warming of the arctic is ‘loading the dice’ over cold dry winters.”
“As Britain experienced freezing cold weather and snow, with thousands of homes across the UK without power, the government’s outgoing chief advisor warned last month that climate change will bring greater extremes.
After the coldest March for 50 years, Professor Sir John Beddington said Britain was already experiencing climate change.”
Accuweather also adds support in their piece, “Historic Snowstorm Records; Climate Change to Blame?”
“While the debate as to whether climate change is responsible for the rare May snow across the Plains and Upper Midwest continues, there is no question that the snowstorm is historical with numerous records broken.”
“Before this snowstorm, “no station has reported an inch or more of snowfall in Iowa in May since 1967,” stated General Forecaster Jim Lee in a report issued by National Weather Service’s Des Moines Office.
Not only did the 3.1 inches of snow in Omaha break the previous May record of 2.0 inches from 1945, but also marked the city’s first measurable snow in 46 years.
Thursday was only the second time in recorded history that Kansas City, Mo., received measurable snow in May. A total of 0.5 of an inch fell Thursday, while the only other such occurrence was May 3, 1907.”
“For some, the historical aspect of this snowstorm raises the question as to whether climate change is fully or partially responsible.”
However, there are apparently some dissenting opinions who don’t think that Anthropogenic Global Warming/Climate Change are the cause of Long Cold winters and late winter storms, e.g. in the same AccuWeather article:
AccuWeather.com Expert Senior Meteorologist Bernie Rayno weighed in by saying, “I do not believe this [snowstorm] has anything to do with climate change. It is ridiculous that ‘climate change’ is being blamed for seemingly everything recently.”
As such, let us explore an alternate explanation for this year’s Long Cold Winter and late season snowstorms. RSS Northern Polar Temperature Lower Troposphere (TLT) – Brightness Temperature Anomaly – 1979 to Present;
was -0.27° K/C in March, 2013. Note that RSS uses a base period of 1979-1998 (20 years) versus the WMO standard of 1981-2010.
Also in this 3-Year snapshot of RSS Northern Polar Temperature Lower Troposphere (TLT) – Brightness Temperature Anomaly – 1979 to Present;
Northern Polar Troposphere Temperature is currently at its lowest point in the last three years.
I will leave it to WUWT’s readers to sort this one out…
This 2002 paper is a wealth of info on the guy, the Michael Mann.. It shows he believed the solar influence on climate is real and also shows he did believe in the Little Ice Age and Medieval warm period. Does he believe these now? His hockey stick has forgotten them, in any case.
http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holocene/public_html/Mann/articles/articles/littleiceage.pdf
Global warming melted the polar ice in 2012, which caused a colder winter/spring in 2013, which is restoring all the polar ice that melted in 2012. Does that mean global warming is its own cure?
“Weather Action TV 26/4/2013 The Mini Ice Age Is Upon Us & Arctic Ice Claims Disproved”
The interest in climate change in the UK will perk up if we start to experience the cold phase of a Dansgaard-Oeschger cycle. During the cold phase of a D-O cycle the UK will get 10 to 15 feet of snow in the winter. They will also have a cool, wet summer. This will continue for 70 years.
Arctic surface sea ice will of course also recover. If so, we will have an opportunity to decide which is preferred global warming or global cooling.
Greenland ice temperature, last 11,000 years determined from ice core analysis, Richard Alley’s paper.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/GISP2%20TemperatureSince10700%20BP%20with%20CO2%20from%20EPICA%20DomeC.gif
http://www.climate4you.com/
The ‘skeptics’ have been trying to tell the ‘warmists’ that the sun (based on analysis of cosmgenic isotope changes not Lief’s sunspot counts) was at its highest magnetic cycle activity in 8000 years during the latter half of the 20th century (i.e In the warm phase of a D-O cycle). This is important as it appears see below for details that the solar magnetic cycle modulates the amount of planetary cloud cover in higher latitude regions over the ocean and it appears changes to planetary cloud cover caused a significant portion of the late 20th century warming.
Nir Shaviv estimated (see paper link below) that 0.5 C or roughly 75% of the 20th century warming has caused by the solar magnetic cycle changes.
As it appears the solar magnetic cycle has been interrupted, the 75% portion of the warming will be removed and the planet will return to temperatures of the Little ice age.
The mechanism that changes planetary cloud cover, cloud lifetime, and cloud albedo is driven by changes to ion production in the atmosphere and changes to the global electric current (movement of electric charge from the poles and from the top of clouds), both of which are modulate by the solar magnetic cycle.
Based on the paleoclimatic record there is a 10 to 12 year delay in the cooling when the solar magnetic cycle starts to slow down. The delay is not due to thermal lag of the oceans. The cloud cover increase is delayed by 10 to 12 years. The reason for this delay is fundamental to explaining why there are observed cyclic geomagnetic field changes that correlate with the cyclic solar magnetic cycle interruptions.
http://www.essc.psu.edu/essc_web/seminars/spring2006/Mar1/Bond%20et%20al%202001.pdf
Persistent Solar Influence on North Atlantic Climate During the Holocene (William: Holocene is the name for this interglacial period)
Surface winds and surface ocean hydrography in the subpolar North Atlantic appear to have been influence by variations in the solar output (William: The correct mechanism as to how the sun affects North Atlantic climate is not changes in total solar irradiation, the sun does not get significantly hot or colder. The mechanism is changes to low level cloud cover, cirrus cloud cover, and changes to the jet stream. See Tinsley and Yu’s review paper.). The evidence comes from a close correlation between inferred changes in production of the cosmogenic nuclides carbon-14 and beryllium – 10 and centennial to millennial time scale changes in proxies of drift ice measured in deep-sea sediment cores. (Changes to cosmogenic isotopes occurs when there is a change to solar magnetic cycle and/or a sudden change to the geomagnetic field). A solar forcing mechanism thereby may underlie at least the Holocence segment of the North Atlantic “1500-year” cycle.
http://cc.oulu.fi/~usoskin/personal/nature02995.pdf
Unusual activity of the Sun during recent decades compared to the previous 11,000 years
Direct observations of sunspot numbers are available for the past four centuries1,2, but longer time series are required, for example, for the identification of a possible solar influence on climate and for testing models of the solar dynamo. Here we report a reconstruction of the sunspot number covering the past 11,400 years, based on dendrochronologically dated radiocarbon concentrations. We combine physics-based models for each of the processes connecting the radiocarbon concentration with sunspot number. According to our reconstruction, the level of solar activity during the past 70 years is exceptional, and the previous period of equally high activity occurred more than 8,000 years ago. We find that during the past 11,400 years the Sun spent only of the order of 10% of the time at a similarly high level of magnetic activity and almost all of the earlier high-activity periods were shorter than the present episode. Although the rarity of the current episode of high average sunspot numbers may indicate that the Sun has contributed to the unusual climate change during the twentieth century, we point out that solar variability is unlikely to have been the dominant cause of the strong warming during the past three decades3. (William: The authors note that total solar irradiation (TSI) changes did not cause the late 20th century warming. That statement is correct. However, the solar magnetic cycle changes modulate planetary cloud cover. The change in planetary cloud cover caused roughly 75% of the late 20th century warming. Solar cycle 24 is an interruption to the solar magnetic cycle. The planet will now significantly cool.)
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/278/5341/1257
A Pervasive Millennial-Scale Cycle in North Atlantic Holocene and Glacial Climates by Gerard Bond, William Showers, Maziet Cheseby, Rusty Lotti, Peter Almasi, Peter deMenocal, Paul Priore, Heidi Cullen, Irka Hajdas, Georges Bonani
Evidence from North Atlantic deep sea cores reveals that abrupt shifts punctuated what is conventionally thought to have been a relatively stable Holocene climate. During each of these episodes, cool, ice-bearing waters from north of Iceland were advected as far south as the latitude of Britain. At about the same times, the atmospheric circulation above Greenland changed abruptly. Pacings of the Holocene events and of abrupt climate shifts during the last glaciation are statistically the same; together, they make up a series of climate shifts with a cyclicity close to 1470 plus/minus 500 years (William: Plus/minus in the case of the Bond cycle is 950 years, 1470 years, and 1950 year cycles). The Holocene events, therefore, appear to be the most recent manifestation of a pervasive millennial-scale climate cycle operating independently of the glacial-interglacial climate state. Amplification of the cycle during the last glaciation may have been linked to the North Atlantic’s thermohaline circulation.
http://rivernet.ncsu.edu/courselocker/PaleoClimate/Bond%20et%20al%201999%20%20N.%20Atlantic%201-2.PDF
The North Atlantic’s 1-2 kyr Climate Rhythm: Relation to Heinrich Events, Dansgaard-Oeschger Cycles and the Little Ice Age Gerald Bond et al.
“New evidence from deep-sea sediment cores in the subpolar North Atlantic demonstrates that a significant component of sub-Milankovitch climate variability occurs in distinct 1-2 kyr cycles (William: This cycles are called Bond cycles which includes the Dansgaard-Oeschger Cycle and the more sever Heinrich event. The solar magnetic cycle changes cause the D-O cycle and the more sever Heinrich event.)
http://www.eike-klima-energie.eu/uploads/media/Shaviv.pdf
On climate response to changes in the cosmic ray flux and radiative budget
“…Moreover, l was mostly obtained through comparison of climate states notably different from each other, and thus only describes an average sensitivity. Subject to the above caveats and those described in the text, the CRF/climate link therefore implies that the increased solar luminosity and reduced CRF over the previous century should have contributed a warming of 0.47 ± 0.19 Celsius, while the rest should be mainly attributed to anthropogenic causes. Without any effect of cosmic rays, the increase in solar luminosity would correspond to an increased temperature of 0.16 ± 0.04 Celsius. …”
This review paper explains the mechanisms.
http://www.utdallas.edu/physics/pdf/Atmos_060302.pdf
Atmospheric Ionization and Clouds as Links Between Solar Activity and Climate
Observations of changes in cloud properties that correlate with the 11-year cycles in space particle fluxes are reviewed. The correlations can be understood in terms of one or both of two microphysical processes; ion mediated nucleation (IMN) and electroscavenging. IMN relies on the presence of ions to provide the condensation sites for sulfuric acid and water vapors to produce new aerosol particles, which, under certain conditions, might grow into sizes that can be activated as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN). Electroscavenging depends on the buildup of space charge at the tops and bottoms of clouds as the vertical current density (Jz) in the global electric circuit encounters the increased electrical resistivity of the clouds. Space charge is electrostatic charge density due to a difference between the concentrations of positive and negative ions. Calculations indicate that this electrostatic charge on aerosol particles can enhance the rate at which they are scavenged by cloud droplets. The aerosol particles for which scavenging is important are those that act as insitu ice forming nuclei (IFN) and CCN. Both IMN and electroscavenging depend on the presence of atmospheric ions that are generated, in regions of the atmosphere relevant for effects on clouds, by galactic cosmic rays (GCR). The space charge depends, in addition, on the magnitude of Jz. The magnitude of Jz depends not only on the GCR flux, but also on the fluxes of MeV electrons from the radiation belts, and the ionospheric potentials generated by the solar wind, that can vary independently of the GCR flux. The roles of GCR and Jz in cloud processes are the speculative links in a series connecting solar activity, the solar wind, GCR, clouds and climate. This article reviews the correlated cloud variations and the two mechanisms proposed as possible explanations for these links.
Prof. Beddington has made a habit of the alarmist soundbite based on heresay not knowledge. His expertise is not climatology but something in Biology.
They long ago left behind the idea that weather is not climate , now people like Slingo will willing jump on anything has ‘proof ‘ of climate doom. And yet oddly they claim their science is nothing but stronger and the issue even more ‘settled’ has they reach desperately for anything to keep the AGW train moving.
Didn’t they the MET Office once say, only a few years ago, that with the warming of the arctic, the trend to mild winters will continue, and that snow would be a thing on the past, only to be seen on the internet?
anthropogenic
RE: Goode ’nuff says:
May 5, 2013 at 12:57 am
Good points. If you want to hit Alarmists where it hurts, hit them with history.
Over and over you will hear claims along the lines of, “Worst since 1964” or “Worst in thirty years.” My automatic response is to ask, “What happened in 1964?” or “What happened thirty-one years ago?”
Again and again they land themselves in a quagmire of having to explain why the same sort of extreme happened ten of thirty or a hundred or a thousand years ago, and why it wasn’t Global Warming that time, but is Global Warming this time.
All they can do is attempt to erase the past, (which makes them look bad when they get caught,) or come up with rather cross-eyed explanations, (for example, Mann’s attempt to erase the Medieval Warm Period, by creating a model that “balances out” the warmth in Greenland with extreme cold in Central Asia…a model which then must go down in flames when actual physical data, gathered by scientists in China, shows it was actually warmer in Central Asia at that time.)
History makes them squirm. If they say the past winter’s snow was caused by “unprecedented melt in the arctic,” history then asks them to explain why as similar weather pattern sixty years in the past was NOT caused by “unprecedented melt in the Arctic.” They can’t do it. All they can go is smile a brown smile.
Excuse me. Correction to concluding sentence: “All they can do is smile a brown smile.” (Not even spell-check can catch that blunder.)
I have a copy of Mann’s model’s silly map, which erases the Medevial Warm Period, (plus good links to CO2 Science and No Tricks Zone,) at http://sunriseswansong.wordpress.com/2013/04/23/be-concerned-about-cooling-not-global-warming/
Eschew television, for its narrative fallacy (suspension of disbelief) is the witch doctor’s mind-killer.
Eschew forecasters without doxastic commitment.
From Brad on May 5, 2013 at 12:14 am:
Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful.
– Box, G. E. P., and Draper, N. R., (1987), Empirical Model Building and Response Surfaces, John Wiley & Sons, New York, NY, pg 424. (Ref)
They used to be very sure that global warming was causing the jet streams to move closer to the poles (which would make the winters milder). They even calculated they were moving toward the poles at 12.5 miles per year and the move toward the poles was widely quoted.
http://www.ceoe.udel.edu/cms/carcher/my_papers/Archer_Caldeira_GRL_2008.pdf
And now using the exact same dataset, they find that Arctic warming has made the jet streams more wavy with more blocking systems leading to colder mid-latitude winters.
http://www.seas.harvard.edu/climate/seminars/pdfs/FrancisVavrus2012.pdf
Maybe one is right. Maybe both are wrong.
I live in West Norway and here it has been a cold May so far with freak snowfalls. The lake outside my window is still full of ice. Last Friday they had heavy snow in Bergen.
A few days ago I happen to saw on TV a show of what happened in Norway during the Napoleon Wars. Which was during the Dalton Minimum. Norway which then belonged to Denmark was dragged into a Gunboat War with Brittan which made a sea blockade against Danish ports. Kristansand in southern Norway then became a heaven for state sponsored pirates.
Those same years saw sever cold winters and late spring. This causeed malnutrition and famine. History repeat itself at least when it comes to the weather.
Snow re-enforces colder temperatures. It reflects more of the sun’s radiation and is a better radiator at night than bare ground. So if the climate so-called scientists want to claim more snow and longer springs are a result of global warming, they should also admit that it results in negative feedback, reducing the sensitivity of global average temperature to CO2 concentrations. They can’t have it both ways. Well, I guess they can, but not without ridicule.
All of this can be fixed if the Tribe will just throw all of their gold into the Volcano, Then the Earth Gods will be appeased.
The High Priests will have to get their cut, of course. But the Holy Men who talk to the Gods for us deserve no less, right?
So how were the ocean occilations and jet streams impacted by the massive Arctic storm in August 2012 that redistributed so much ice to melt at lower latitudes?
Something had to give, no?
https://www2.ucar.edu/atmosnews/opinion/7732/ice-vs-storm-2012-s-great-arctic-cyclone
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/24/nasa-on-arctic-sea-ice-record-low-storm-wreaked-havoc-on-the-arctic-sea-ice-cover/
http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/abrupt-climate-change-during-the-last-ice-24288097
Stan, I agree. The death toll from the greenies, including the banning of DDT, has now surpassed Stalin’s death toll. Nobody seems to care. 2,000 UK citizens died in the first two weeks of March, from cold. The UK government doesn’t care. I am sure significant numbers die in Europe but I have not seen a total. None of this makes the news. People who cannot afford heat any longer please call your local news station. Let’s start making some noise.
“Not only did the 3.1 inches of snow in Omaha break the previous May record of 2.0 inches from 1945, but also marked the city’s first measurable snow in 46 years.”
Accuweather should have added the caveat on that date.
Not only that. For that snow event, Omaha may have gotten 3+ inches of snow, but just a few miles south, where I live, the snow didn’t even cover the grass and was gone within hours.
And I can recall a major snow event for the entire eastern Nebraska area in 1987. That occurred in late April and quaified as a major winter snowstorm with high winds and snow accumulatons in excess of 6 inches. It lasted over 24 hours before moving out of the area. Being a Spring snowstorm it melted quickly.
Oh really. Let;’s look at the Central England Temperature. Look at the graph, can you see a trend to colder winters? This past winter was 187th coldest in 354 years.
The only dice that’s loaded and rattling is in Julia Slingbat’s head.
For anyone interested here are some past predictions of warmer, less snowy winters and milder springs.in quotes from scientists over the years. Now they move the goalposts. If we return to a run of milder winters during low Arctic sea ice extent in summers will they still be right? What a bloody joke.
Just The Facts,
Please note also that the Met Office this April said that the Arctic was not to blame for the harsh winter. They need to get their act together. Julia Slingbat needs to shut up, investigate things first they make pronouncements.
H/t
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/met-office-now-admits-arctic-sea-ice.html
Eve Stevens says:
May 5, 2013 at 8:01 am
“People who cannot afford heat any longer please call your local news station. Let’s start making some noise.”
Guess what Trittin, leader of the German Greens, inventor of the German FIT tariff back in 1999 when he was in a government coaition has to say about exploding energy prices in Germany? Well, he blames the current “conservative” coalition for it.
Unfortunately for him people DO remember who invented the subsidy scam.