Meteorologist Mark Torregrossa writes on Michigan Live about the lingering effect of historic ice extent last winter in the Great Lakes and late ice melt this summer due to that extent:
Lakes Superior and Lake Michigan are currently six degrees colder than last year. If the water continues to remain colder than normal, it could have an impact on Michigan’s winter in several ways.
Currently Lake Superior has an average surface water temperature of 47.6 degrees. Last year on this date Lake Superior was at 53.7 degrees. The long-term average water temperature on Lake Superior for October 11 is 51.1 degrees.
So Lake Superior is 6.1 degrees colder than this time last year, and 3.5 degrees colder than normal.
Lake Michigan has an average surface water temperature of 56.0 degrees, while last year at this time it was 62.1 degrees. The long-term average water temperature on Lake Michigan for October 11 is 58.4 degrees.
Lake Michigan is also 6.1 degrees colder than this time last year, and 2.4 degrees colder than average.
Lake Huron is 5 degrees colder than last year, and only 1.5 degrees colder than normal.
This map above shows current surface water temperatures on the Great Lakes. Lake Superior has a large area of water with temperatures in the 40s. (Source: Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory)
He goes on to talk about the effects this might have on winter:
A warmer Lake Superior and Lake Michigan can really have a modifying effect on bitter cold temperatures. For example, in an early season cold outbreak, Green Bay, WI may have a temperature of 20 degrees. Traverse City, on our side of Lake Michigan, may hold in the mid 30s for temperatures. I usually figure there is a 10 to 20 degree warming effect from Lake Michigan, and also Lake Superior.
But if the lake temperatures continue at this colder pace, cold air will have an easier time moving into Michigan.
So the first impact of cold water could be earlier cold temperatures in November and December.
If the lakes continue through winter colder than normal, freezing over of the lakes would happen earlier.
How does this cold fact square up in the face of claims of “hottest ever”? Is the region in for a record cold winter? It sure looks like it may be more likely due to the influence of this massive heat sink.
[headline updated for accuracy – mod]
A lot of lake and [seawater] at the NH is far under average at this moment. See link.
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.gif
So what’s with the crazy color scheme for this SST map ?? Seems like each color has multiple temperatures.
Melting all of that lake ice of last winter, would suck a heck of a lot of latent heat out of the lake water.
It’s almost as if the next ice age, is starting right under our noses, in the great lakes. I believe the last one was called the Wisconsin Glaciation; or perhaps just the local part of it was.
“the last one was called the Wisconsin Glaciation”
Oh, that was just “weather”, wasn’t it?
That is a horrible color scheme.
Named for the furthest extent of glaciation in that pulse I believe. Those names are not preferred. I think Marine Isotope Stage (#), or MIS#, are the technical names.
Doesn’t water give off BTU’s as it freezes, thereby warming the surrounding air?
George, after a hit of acid, the colors are like, “cool”.
RE: Crazy Color Scheme.
The image is clearly titled “Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly”
That color code legend IS the anomaly.
See “bananapilot” below. It takes heat from the water to freeze it. That is without loss of sensible heat (or loss of temperature) so, in a way, there is heat around. But it is already being sucked into something else to provide the freeze for the water. It may stop the air from being a little colder but it’s more likely heat loss to space by radiation. That’s why cloudy nights stay warmer while the desert freezes at night after a blistering hot day. Try studying engineering sometime. You can learn something.
Re: Bonanzapilot: My comment should read “above” as I didn’t realize my comment would appear below his.
Clearly the map seems meant to confuse rather than enlighten.
Big John: I’m basically a lurker here, I’m not a scientist. What I do know is that if the temperature drops to 28F in my lemon orchard, the crop will be damaged. There are various lines of defense as temperatures drop, but the first is irrigation. As long as you have water changing state on the ground, the temperature inside a lemon tree will stay constant at about 31 to 32F.
Thanks for the further explanation.
I just cannot make heads or tails of these unless they are flaming reds and neon oranges.
/sarc
Bonanza Pilot … I believe what happens is once the water turns into ice, the ice acts as insulation for your fruit and fruit trees as the ice will stay around 32 degrees even though the air temperature is lower. It’s the same principle as an igloo or with a snow cave. Also, the water itself with which you are irrigating has heat in it that helps keep the temperature around it slightly warmer … kind of like when you pass your hand near a hot surface, you can feel the heated air without actually touching the surface.
The first map reminds me of the 60’s, up in Palo Alto, when the CIA was providing high quality product through project MKULTRA.
Bonanzapilot…
Not exactly, the water will give off energy that will prevent the temperature getting lower untill the phase change is complete. The energy can’t increase the air temperature above the temperature of the ice/water (slush) which is at 0 degrees C but it can prevent it from falling below zero.
Think of it this way, if the energy given off was to get the temp over zero, then some of the ice would start to melt back to water, absorbing energy until it’s now zero again. So freezing ice stays at the same temperature until it is fully a solid. That’s why watering plants can prevent frost damage, it takes quite a lot of energy loss to get from the liquid to solid state, and until that happens the plant actually doesn’t get to subzero regardless of the air temperature.
Interestingly, most plants have some oils mixed with the water in their cells, which means the water in the cells don’t freeze until about -1 or -2 deg C, snow on the plants is around zero, and prevents the direct contact with the air that might be colder than that. So in fact the snow can actually prevent freeze damage of plants. Isn’t life amazing!
so it colder than normal. SO it proves global warming
BobL. Thanks for the additional info. A lemon won’t suffer damage until about 28F because of all the oil and stuff in it, so as long as you can keep the phase change going with irrigation water, you’re ok. It used to be easier, but newly mandated low flow systems freeze up more quickly than the old ones did. Next you turn on the wind machines, which draw warmer air from an inversion layer which generally forms about 10 meters over the orchard. If that fails you bring on heaters. If it gets really bad, you bring in helicopters to force the heat down. All of that failing, you write off the year and go back to bed.
Please forward this info to SecDef Hagel, who just proclaimed global warming the DoD’s biggest issue.
@Scott:
I thing Mr. Hagel has better things to do with his time; such as analyzing this surveillance feed:
Al Gore and the democrats will still push their global warming BS no matter what the science says,they just want that cap and trade tax for the rest of us to pay.
Global warming means that the whole Earth is warming. This article is about a regional event. Hardly “proof” against global warming.
Just another piece of progressive proof that global warming is their ticket to domination. Pity this didn’t occur 40 years ago when the same prevaricators were trying to push “Global Cooling”!
Yeah, because the science is settled… right?
Gorebal Cooling.
About twenty years ago I fell off a jet ski into Lake Huron. It was damn cold.
So in the spirit of the day all I can say is – “Repent – the end is near!”.
You guys finally noticed. America’s Messiah has solved Global Warming.
I believe “Gore-bull cooling” is the more correct version.
Tommy Boy….the Earth’s temp hasn’t risen since 1994….hardly “proof” of global warming.
Just an example of heat transfer. Al Gore and his fellow parishioners of the Church of Global Gloom & Doom are spouting so much mindless heated rhetoric it has had this effect on the Great Lakes. Send in your contributions and all will be well.
There is a reason they stopped calling it global warming and started calling it climate change. The science does not match what they claimed was happening. Settled science indeed. AS IF THERE IS SUCH A THING!
Here is graphic from NOAA with an easier to interpret color scheme. However it shows the Great Lakes except Lake Superior as warm.
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2014/anomnight.10.13.2014.gif
Source …
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/Products/ocean/sst/anomaly/index.html
That’s the “adjusted” data.
Sea Surface Temperatures are only thing that matters? How about the multiple thermal levels below surface? Anyone measured those or are we just going off what benefits the climatologists?
The story is about the great lakes. The two temperature graphics are in conflict. The NOAA map shows Lake Michigan in red indicating it is warm while the article and psychedelic graphic says Lake Michigan is cool.
[img]http://weather.gc.ca/data/saisons/images/2014101500_054_G6_global_I_SEASON_tm@lg@sd_000.png[/img]
The best source by far is EC for SST.
Source:
http://weather.gc.ca/saisons/sea-snow_e.html
?? That image blacks out all the continents. So it gives zero info about the Great Lakes.
The florescent map must be a mind map of a bad Al Core LSD trip.
The color scheme reminds a little the early days personal computers before VGA… only 16 colors.
http://www.microsoft.com/msj/archive/wicked5.gif
http://www.microsoft.com/msj/archive/S3F1.aspx
This is the proof of climate change we needed to….um….er……hey AlGore, a little help?
So now that the global warming trolls have changed the name of their voodoo science, don’t you thing it is about time they realized we are heading toward the next ice age? All blamed on CO2, of course… The Goracle and his band of witch doctors are working overtime to change their tune, eh?
I wish people would read a little more before making such comments. We are still technically “in” the last ice age. That is why there is ice cover on the poles and glaciers.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/earth/cause-ice-age.html
Luckily for the climate disruption folks all this is moot. The correct base line is what did their computer models predict the lake temps to be this time of the year in 2014? I am sure the Gore models had Superior at about 47.4ish and Michigan at about 55.875ish. So there. Actual observation are irrelevant…
You thought last year was a bitch!
In addition to the odd color scheme, the map is a Mercator projection, which means that it greatly distorts area. Specifically, areas nearer the poles appear much larger than areas near the equator. You can see that in the way the lines of latitude, which are 10 degrees apart in this map, become further apart at the north and south regions of the map. That’s also why the north and south poles are never shown in Mercator projections: they would be infinitely far up or down. That’s also why Greenland appears so big (as do, to a lesser extent, Alaska and northern Canada, not to mention the Vikings’ homelands).
I point this out because area is exactly what you want to be able to compare in a map like this, and you can’t.
In case it wasn’t clear–my comment about the Mercator projection is referring to the world map that Seppie posted, not to the map of the Great Lakes. That’s probably a Mercator projection too, but it doesn’t matter as much because the distance from the north to the south on that map is not a large fraction of the circumference of the globe. I believe the world map Speed posted, which does not have the latitude lines getting further apart near the poles, but shares some of the same problems of the Mercator projection, is a equirectangular projection.
Well, you know that Global Warming makes all the waters colder, Because the Heat is hiding down in the depths, because it does stuff like that, you know.
You read my mind.
Stealth Heat???
The missing heat is the liberals’ ‘monster under the bed’.
Yes, I read that a couple of weeks ago. Global warming is being stored at the bottom of the world’s oceans. It will one day rise from the depths and viola…We will have instant and catastrophic global warming. Only a liberal mind can think this way. If you do not understand how this is possible be very happy. That would mean you are probably not a liberal.
“Gorezilla” rises from the depths of the ocean to destroy the planet.
The problem is not that liberals don’t understand, or even that they can’t understand, it’s that they don’t CARE to understand. They’re happy to go along with whatever one of their self-appointed elite tells them, especially if it “coincidentally” dovetails with something they want to do anyway, like kneecap the industrialized word.
Rise to the surface, just like Godzilla or that big flying turtle Gammera…?
Just like Jehovah’s Witnesses claim Jesus returned to earth in 1914, but that we “just can’t see him yet”, the gnostic global warming religionists also claim secret knowledge about hidden truths and realities (i.e., hidden heat deep in the oceans) that only they understand. The Global Warming religion has all the hallmarks of a mystery religion or even cult. Protestant fundamentalists predict Armageddon and Global Warming fundamentalists predict climate apocalypse. Inside every global warming alarmists’ chest beats the heart of a narrow-minded, anti-science fundamentalist.
Thank God and Greyhound for global warming. I can’t take much more of this colder global warming! Imagine if the earth’s temp had gone up? Ice cubicicles everywhere. Seems like all the environmentalists socialists are going to have to look for some other endeavor to get their grant money. Hey, what about global cooling? Oh, I forgot, they have already tried that one. Too bad they let that one go to soon. Ice hockey anyone?
It’s true! My friends and I were diving off Catalina and we spotted something on the bottom. It was a Die Hard battery. Later on we discovered an A.C. Delco battery. When we posted these results online, hundreds of divers reported seeing batteries in rivers, lakes and in oceans. What better place to store that missing heat than a battery?
Can we expect less lake effect snow this winter?
Last year, I had folks from Erie complain to me that they never get any snow anymore. I wondered if that was true. I ran the numbers. I can’t find them but off the top of my head, seems like we found a 30% INCREASE in snow from the 1970s to now. We were shocked at how statistically significant it seemed. I told the Erie people but they simply did not believe me.
Why the increase? Erie is a shallow lake that warms and cools quickly. I think the warming trend from 1970s to 2000 made warmer waters. Since we still get cold arctic outbreaks, the fall/early winter lapse rates over the lake are enhanced and lake effect snow is enhanced.
This is a case where global warming can lead to more snowfall. This would make a great master’s thesis for s snow junky….
Yeah right…global warming….its been happening since the end of the ice age. But you really want the government to tax the air we breath. Got to hand it to the liberals anything to hate for!
Children won’t know what snow is. An effect of Global Warming. Children will see more snow than evah!
Also an effect of Global Warming…. This is just getting stoopid.
GLOBAL WARMING MEANS THE TEMPERATURES ON TH GLOBE GET WARMER.
HERE IS COUNTER EVIDENCE FOR WARMING.
GLOBAL WARMING I A CROCK. ITS AN ARTIFICIAL FABRICATION THAT WAS CREATED TO INCREASE TAXES AND MAKE SOME PEOPLE RICH.
CHECK THE PREDICTIONS MADE BY THE FORMER LOOSER VP. HAVE CITIES SUNK? GLACIERS DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY? ARTIC AND ANTARCTIC ICE DISAPPEARING? If they are, the stranded glbal warming scientists that headed for the antarctic believing their crap thaat the ice was decreasing, have to explain why they got caught in an ever expanding ice in the ANTARCTIC.
Test the truth. If crap comes out, crap was the source too!
You can’t argue religion with these people and that’s what it is.
Last winter Erie, Pa had the highest snow fall of any city in the United States.
Lake Erie is the major snow generator for the US south shore ( and southern Ontario when the wind is right), until it freezes, thereafter the temps drop and the snowfall usually is much lighter due to lack of available moisture for lake effect. The historic pattern, which was perturbed from the late 60’s to now was for Lake Erie to remain open till about the last week of December, when it would begin to freeze over. By the end of January, it was pretty much frozen, as was the western end of Lake Ontario, and we would start to see longer stretches of clear skies, below zero days and nights through February. Last winter we had cold weather and the lakes got cold early, but what was different, was the “polar vortex” which brought a lot of strong NW winds across the region, and we wound up with lake effect snow streamers from the upper lakes, more so than we typically do. Last winter was nasty -really hope we don’t get another run of it..
cut the crap about “Polar Vortex” its called WINTER, normal traditional North American North East WINTER. its just boneheads aren’t accustomed to saying it.
Progressive liberal double speak to sneak in bunk so that you can double down on aggressive intervention taxation and over regulation programs.
Of course you can expect less lake effect snow. I’d be surprised if anybody sees any snow ever. Geeze, doesn’t anybody listen to Al gore anymore?
Haven’t heard from him Word here is that he’s off hunting manbearpig. Half man, half bear, half pig.
Man-Bear-Pig gets no respect…
No, Chicago politics will still blow like they always have.
I’ve been scrolling down to see if I was the only one to wonder that. I would think it may be not as bad as when the water is warmer. So less snowfall in Michigan would be good for the people there who endured quite a bit more than we had in Chicago last year. But would less snow cover have it’s own effects?
Would I be right in thinking that this will reduce lake-effect snow?
it would mitigate it some
@fhhaynie Doh!
I just read an article that is B/S because they claim more ice means it is warm!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I know that when I am having a party I leave my freezer door open because it makes more Ice too! No one wants a room temp drink. Ain’t Global Warming a hoot!
Bet that isn’t working for you. You should try leaving the oven open, it is much better than using the freezer to cool things down.
Stop thinking like a taxpayer. Just drink the Kool-Aid. Your life will seem a lot less complicated.
Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.
I saw that article too. So I poured a bag of ice into a broiling pan and poured an equal amount of water on top. I then baked the whole thing at 400f for 30 minutes. When I opened the oven door a huge load of steam came out and the ice was gone! The water in the pan was boiling and continued to boil for a while after I opened the oven door. My wife said the experiment was absurd. She claimed that all it did was make the kitchen hot and humid. I told her it was science.
Donde esta el niño? Se fue!
Ya viene, falta diciembre.
This was a good catch. I think it would be interesting to see what the lake temps around the country reflect with this same time frame. If it can be shown that the mean lake temps on these other lakes is also in a range of below 3.5 to 6.5 degrees cooler then we would expect to see a much colder winter. IMHO. And for Global Warming…. Let me go start my car in the driveway and let it warm up for a few hours before I head off to work. AGWHOAX
Thanks for the link. However, I question the introductory text attributing the cold water temperatures to historic ice extent (i.e. “the lingering effect of historic ice extent last winter”).
Although there are lots of factors, increased ice cover would tend to cause warmer water temperatures by reducing heat loss – a feedback mechanism. I suspect it was the below average air temperatures in the great lakes basin through most of the summer that have lead to the low water temperatures, not the amount and duration of winter ice.
I would say both.
More ice leads to less heat loss? No. More ice cover leads to summer heat going into the phase change of melting the ice rather than warming the water. This feedback overwhelms the insulating effect during the winter. By time an insulating effect from thick ice takes place the water at the surface has already lost most of its heat and the water at depth doesn’t have much heat to begin with.
@ Robert W Turner: To clarify your position – Are you suggesting that open water does not lose more heat to a sub-zero atmosphere than water capped with ice/snow? Or just that the effect is overwhelmed by the heat loss required for phase change? Thanks.
‘More ice leads to less heat loss? No.’
A somewhat misleading statement. Although I’m sure not deliberate.
The Great Lakes will lose heat until ice forms. If the water is colder, the lakes have less heat to lose before ice forms. Therefore the statement ‘More ice leads to less heat loss?’ is only true to the extent there was less heat to lose in the first place.
More climatically important is the albedo (cooling) effect of more ice for longer.
I’ll be interested in seeing what happens next year.
To clarify: I am saying that a thicker ice cover has an overall cooling effect in the long run, not an overall warming effect. Before ice forms at all, the overall body of water cools to 4 degrees, like you say. This is when turnover occurs I believe, when the bottom waters become warmer than the surface waters as the surface continues to cool. The vertical column of water at the surface that is less than 4 degrees grows and the thermocline sinks. Ice first grows rapidly and then it slows, but the important factor is that the lake continues to lose energy if the air above is below freezing.
The cold air takes heat from the lake and creates a heat sink, just as warm air lends heat to the lake and creates a heat source. In a winter like last year a very large heat sink is formed. When summer heat returns it goes into the heat sink before it can go into warming the water to create a heat source which would stall the cooling and ice formation the next autumn. The thick ice that was created last winter stalled the warming of the lakes this summer and is the reason for the below average temperature lake temperature. Not only does this slow the rate at which the lake warms but it also cools the atmosphere around the lake, creating another feedback besides albedo.
I agree it will be interesting to see these feedback’s effects on ice formation this year, especially if we have another cold winter.
Fine. You made the claim, now make the calculation.
(No! NOT the “summertime solar insolation” claim you just mentioned. That heat is long gone by the time ice does or does not cover any given sq meter of lake surface in October, November, Dec January or February. )
Show us the greater heat loss after ice covers a square meter of lake surface.
Air temperature = -15 C,
wind = 2 m/sec
water = 4 deg C
Tsky = -40 deg C (LW radiation loss also increases)
humidity = 50 %
Pressure = 1000 mbar
Show me the heat losses from an open lake surface by conduction, convection, evaporation, and LW radiation.
Then show the same losses for an ice-covered surface.
Hint: ALL heat losses are less.
Re: RACookPE1978 October 15, 2014 at 10:20 am
It is sad that I need to explain further; it’s like explaining the difference between warm and warming to a Warmist.
Look at the original post I replied to. That post by MJB refutes that thicker ice cover leads to cooler water in the summer on the basis that ice has an insolating effect. They were clearly confused in saying this, “increased ice cover would tend to cause warmer water temperatures by reducing heat loss – a feedback mechanism.” This statement is a paradox. Thick ice cover over a lake does not lead to warmer water, it simply slows the rate at which the lake can lose heat but the lake itself has less heat energy than a lake with thin ice cover and in both cases the water in both lakes is between 0-4 degrees. And this effect only takes place in the winter!
Now fast forward to spring and consider a lake with thick ice versus a lake with thin ice cover. The lake with thick ice cover obviously has less heat energy and is going to take much longer to heat over the summer! When you have ice lingering on the lake until July then the thick ice cover clearly has reduced the temperature of the lake. Furthermore, the cooler summer temperatures could have had something to do with the cooler lake temperatures.
@ RobertWTurner. I think you have misread my original post. My original point was related to ice cover (i.e. extent and duration) not ice thickness. I tried to make that clear in my Oct14, 1pm post. I believe that is why RACook was asking about conduction, convection, evaporation, and LW radiation. Further, I never mentioned insolation, but rather insulation.
I concede that the melting of thicker ice will cool the water more than the melting of thin ice but that was not my point. My contention was the influence of melting ice in spring is dwarfed by the influence of the insulating effect of increased ice extent/duration through winter which lasts several months so adds up. Like the old saying, “money saved is money earned”, so it goes with heat. Further, I posited an alternative explanation for the low water temperatures, the low summer air temperatures that occurred across the GL basin most of this summer.
I will ask again, do you agree/disagree that open water loses more heat to a sub-zero atmosphere (i.e. sub 273 K) than water covered with ice/snow? If you agree, then it is only the relative size of each that is left to discuss. If you disagree, then I am not sure this is worth further discussion.
Are we forgetting less evaporation?
The ice does not lower the heat loss from the water. It is basically ice-cold all the way to the bottom.
My understanding is it is 4 deg C at the bottom, the temperature at which water reaches it’s maximum density. This is what causes spring and fall “turnover” in mid-high latitude fresh water lakes. Are you suggesting that surface water at 0.5 deg C does not transfer heat to an air mass that is -20 deg C? Is ice/snow cover not applying the same prinicple as putting one of those bubble wrap-style “pool blankets” on at night to retain heat absorbed during the day?
My apologies for the confusion, the “abc1379” post should read MJB. This is an old test account that the computer phantoms still occasionally associate with my e–mail.
abc1379: While it’s true that fresh water is most dense at 4 deg C (about 39 deg F), I doubt that it has much effect in the winter. In the Summer, most lakes in temperate climes have a thermocline, at which depth the temp drops abruptly. In some lakes, the thermocline is only a few inches thick, and divers (I used to be a diver) can literally see the layer. In other lakes, the thermocline is considerably thicker. In my experience, the thermocline is generally thicker in larger lakes, due to the greater mixing effect of wind, particularly at “turnover” in Spring and Fall. In Lake Michigan, the effect of the wind is such that even in the summer, the warm water can all wind up on one side (usually the east), and the cold water wells up at the opposite side. I’ve felt 40-something degree water at the surface in August. You can see that effect in the map at the top of this article.
In the Fall, as the surface water in a lake cools down to near 4C, the wind starts to cause circulation of the water at all depths. Obviously this effect is indirect–the wind has no direct effect on water a hundred feet down, but eventually it all circulates (else you’d get a permanently stagnant body of water at the bottom, which doesn’t happen in most lakes, or even in quarries where the wind effect is minimal). The difference in density between 0C and 4C is not that great, and in most lakes–certainly in the Great Lakes–circulation continues until the lake freezes over. In sum, the temp under the ice is likely to be about the same–near 0C–from top to bottom.
Once that happens, and wind-driven circulation stops, I suppose there is some heat input from the surrounding ground. As cavers know (I used to do that, too), a cave tends to be at the same temp as the average temp for the region, and the ground is at that temp too. Presumably a lake therefore gains some heat from the surrounding ground over the winter as well. There’s also of course heat coming up from the hot rock deep within the Earth. How much effect the heat from the surrounding ground plus the heat from the Earth’s interior has over the course of the winter, I don’t know.
RE Mike Maxwell…
Nice real world discussion of lake dynamics, quirks and behaviors. Thanks.
MikeMaxwell. I agree with most of what you wrote but find you are incorrect to say “the temp under the ice is likely to be about the same–near 0C–from top to bottom”. Yes, the density between 0 and 4 deg is not great, so not enough to resist mixing from wind in the fall, but once the ice forms, and assuming no significant currents, the temperature profile settles back in with the bottom being 4 deg, and progressively colder as you go up.
Lake superior for example shows average february temperatures around 4deg at 200m and averaging 2deg over the first 200m of water column. (www.glerl.noaa.gov/pubs/fulltext/1986/19860005.pdf – page 253)
But going back to my original post, my contention was that even cold water has heat to lose so a greater ice extent, for a longer period of time, would preserve more heat (i.e. insulate) than less ice extent for shorter periods.
Now how would this affect the Lake Effect snows? Colder= more snow earlier, but an early freeze over shutting off the moisture or just more snow?
Colder water means less lake effect snow. It’s the large, (relatively) warm moisture source that clashes with the cold air over land and gives rise to the lake effect.
See they were right global warming means less snow!
Correct. This is why lake effect snows are heavier earlier in the season(all things equal regarding other favorable measures).
If the lake completely freezes over, the moisture added is no longer a factor and this greatly reduces lake effect snow. However, there are a couple of other ways the frozen lake can still enhance “lake effect” snow.
There is less friction across a lake(frozen or otherwise) for boundary layers winds. When this air encounters the higher friction of land, it aids in getting the air to rise. Add that to the fact that the land areas downwind have a higher elevation, (often hilly) and you get an additional boost upwards(upslope) to the air after it has crossed the relatively smooth and lower elevation lake, even if the lake is frozen. This will still enhance precipitation/snow.
Last Winter, Detroit Michigan had its snowiest Winter since records have been kept. Detroit is a couple hundred miles down wind(prevailing wind) from Lake Michigan, which normally only adds very minor amounts of moisture and snow to totals.
http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2014/04/detroit_sees_snowiest_winter_o.html
I grew up in northern Pennsylvania, and our ‘local’ TV news was out of Upstate New York. In the weather reports, they’d regularly talk about lake effect snow affecting the extreme western portion of their broadcast area. They’d also talk about ‘lake enhanced’ storms, where instability over the area would get the little push of moisture it needed to cause precipitation. I learned at a very young age that true lake effect is a phenomenon confined to maybe 25 km downwind from the lakes. Now it seems like any lake enhanced system gets branded ‘lake effect’ by ignorami, with the result being that people in Pittsburgh think they get lake effect snow. I brought it up with some locals in Buffalo a few years ago, and we shared a good laugh.
/rant
re: LeeHarvey
” I learned at a very young age that true lake effect is a phenomenon confined to maybe 25 km downwind from the lakes. Now it seems like any lake enhanced system gets branded ‘lake effect’ by ignorami, with the result being that people in Pittsburgh think they get lake effect snow.”
Lake Effect snowfall happens all the time in the mountains of West Virginia and North Carolina. You might be a little more careful using the term “ignorami”.
@ Mary –
Next time the weatherman in West Virginia or North Carolina is saying that ‘lake effect’ snow is fallling, check the radar map upwind of the Great Lakes and notice that there will be spotty precipitation on the other side of the lakes. That’s the very definition of ‘lake enhanced’ snow.
Six degrees colder than last year – not 6 degress colder than normal. Did the headline writer read the article?
Using the chart, the number of degrees cooler than normal for 3 of the lakes is:
3.5 + 2.4 + 1.5 = 7.4 degrees! So the headline should read 7 degrees cooler, not 6. 🙂
That’s the way to do climate science.
you are one of the founding memebers of the IPCC right?
Mike … unfortunately you are only too right 🙂
Yes, and I’m a Nobel Laureate to boot. Oh wait, maybe that’s an Ig Nobel Laureate.
You are right, the headline should be corrected. This first quotation of the article states:
“So Lake Superior is 6.1 degrees colder than this time last year, and 3.5 degrees colder than normal.”
I agree w/Andrew – 6-ish degrees colder than last year, but 1.5 – 3.5 degrees colder than normal/average. Let’s not over-egg the pudding here, folks.
Why don’t people understand that colder temperatures, anywhere and at any time, is really just the negative warming side of global warming?
Leave poor global warming alone! Can’t you see he’s tired and needs a break!
This is the best statement I have ever read.
If Romney would have just stated this in a matter of fact way during a debate …
There would have been Laughter and Tears … It sounds ludicrous …. But it is what liberals believe.
The Great Lakes being colder than average is just a regional variation in the “weather.” Now, if they were warmer than average, it would be due to a changing “climate” and a problem of global concern. Isn’t the difference obvious? /sarc
Year to year it’s always going to be colder or warmer. Things seldom stay the same. That’s called weather. It means nothing in the long term (climate) unless you have predicted that the climate has irreversibly gone into a catastrophic warming spiral, and ice into a corresponding death spiral. Then weather like this makes you looks stupid. Which seems about right.
Superior looks a bit cooler than normal, but the others are right at “normal”.
Superior: http://coastwatch.glerl.noaa.gov/statistic/gif/avgtemps-s_1992-2013.gif
Michigan: http://coastwatch.glerl.noaa.gov/statistic/gif/avgtemps-m_1992-2013.gif
Huron: http://coastwatch.glerl.noaa.gov/statistic/gif/avgtemps-h_1992-2013.gif
Ontario: http://coastwatch.glerl.noaa.gov/statistic/gif/avgtemps-o_1992-2013.gif
Erie: http://coastwatch.glerl.noaa.gov/statistic/gif/avgtemps-e_1992-2013.gif
Thanks, MattN!
By those graphs, all the lakes have been cooler than normal for most of the year.
Also, North American snow extent recently set a record high for the date and current Northern Hemisphere snow cover is well above average for date. The 1997/2014 satellite pics on the Snow and ice data page show a very interesting comparison.
two years ago nasa produced a video with warm cool averages in color for the previous year from temps showing my area much above average for march april may and june sorry to had cover garden into june reality below average spring temps so far this year had three frost and no warnings from noaa can we be that naïve
Colder but Drier Winter for us:
We live at the western end of the UP. Our local “weather watcher” (a gal who lives on the Lake Superior shoreline about 10 miles west of us) documented 367 inches of snowfall last year. Given the colder water temperature, I expect this winter to be colder than last year, which should mean the big lake ices over (nearly completely) again, and cuts back on snowfall… I hope. The Old Farmer’s Almanac, equivalent in accuracy with the best climate models, concurs. 😉
I’ll tell my neighbors on the other corner of Michigan to stop bitching about how bad last winter was… considering we set the all time snowfall record, but still only got about a quarter of what you did. Yikes.
367 inches is over thirty feet. Is that right?
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/images/mi/MICALsnowstick_holmes.jpg
Here is a link to a snow gauge on the Keweenaw Peninsula of the UP of Michigan. The total accumulation there was 390 inches in ’78/’79 if I remember correctly.
Yes, 367 inches, nearly 30 1/2 feet… but remember, it don’t all come at once! 😉
I have a pic of my Jeep Grand Cherokee last winter in early February dwarfed by the snow, taken on a road that runs along our beach… the snow literally reached the lamps of the street lights. And our winter did not start off snowy at all… we could still see patches of grass at Christmas, but about the second week in January it started… at one point we had 42 straight days where there was some snowfall.
http://www.xdtalk.com/gallery/data/616/medium/2014-01-31_001_2014-01-31_014.JPG
I was wrong about the date, the above pic was actually taken Jan 31st. We had another three+ months of snow ahead of us.
painter
Yes. In the 1970s there were several winters with over 300 inches on the Keewanaw peninsula in the UP. In the towns of Houghton and Hancock they have houses with 2nd floor entrance doors. But the “Yoopers” consider it paradise and return for their retirement years if they left for their careers. I know many who have done so.
The oak trees in my yard are producing more than normal amounts of acorns. I expect we are in for a colder than normal winter.
I have noticed this for my white oak but I’ve never correlated this to harsh winters. You have a source for this idea or is this merely anecdotal?
I always thought that big berry and fruit crops meant that the weather at fruit setting time in the spring was just right for those particular plants.
large fruiting is I believe a reaction to stress rather than in anticipation of it. So the reason for the large crop of acorns would have been last years hard winter.
Normals without standard deviations have no value.
Um…no true
I agree with the article mostly because Lake Superior surface temperatures have stayed within the 2009 (very cold year) and 2013 surface temperature curves all year long, but its really hard to draw “degree Fahrenheit” conclusions from Great lakes surface water temperatures because they vary so much. The warm surface temperature layer isn’t very deep, and this time of year the surface temperatures plunge when it is windy and mixes everything up. Then when it gets calm the surface may heat up a few degrees and stay that way for a week or two. Then it plunges again with the next windy storm. So yes the lakes are colder but by how much, it is hard to say. It all depends on how deep the warm surface temperatures are, and we dont have that information. I THINK there is far less surface heat in the lakes than last year, this is just based on anecdotal information from downrigger temperature probes while fishing.
“So the first impact of cold water could be earlier cold temperatures in November and December.
If the lakes continue through winter colder than normal, freezing over of the lakes would happen earlier.”
Why is it one talks about about colder temperatures? In Holland water can be cold, but temperatures are high or low never cold.
Because English is not Dutch?
Visit http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/indicators for proof that EPA knows no warming last 100 years
“Potential global warming impacts include reduced water levels (due in particular to decreased winter ice cover allowing more evaporation), increased frequency of intense storm events (altering the timing of inflows), and warmer water temperatures.
Already, Lake Superior has increased water temperatures and an earlier onset of summer stratification by about two weeks in just the past 30 years. Within another 30 years Lake Superior may be mostly ice-free in a typical winter.”
http://www.nwf.org/Wildlife/Threats-to-Wildlife/Global-Warming/Effects-on-Wildlife-and-Habitat/Great-Lakes.aspx
https://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=mcafee&type=B211US0D20120819&p=youtube+queen+another+one+bites+the+dust
I guess the lakes freezing or nearly freezing over last year, with ice still in superior well into may if not June (I was up there in mid-late May and was still there) I guess we are going to worm up an awful lot soon. Maybe Al Gore has an explanation of why the arctic ice hasn’t melted yet or why there are actually record levels of ice.
I was so looking forward to the balmy weather in the Great Lakes area.
The last Lake Superior ice I personally saw was on June 6th. Between Silver City and Ontonagon, off of M-64.
I guess that’s more heat that’s missing.
But the search must go on. Maybe it;s in the Great Bear Lake. The mounties will find it.
Anthony, the headline needs correction. The lakes may be 6 degrees cooler than last year, but that does not mean they are 6 degrees cooler than “normal”.
True they are about 2-3 degrees below normal.
Anthony Watts’ question “How does this cold fact square up in the face of claims of “hottest ever”?” is easy to answer. Just look at how Gavin at NASA managed to create “heat” in Antarctica out of “cold”. http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/10/13/visualizing-how-corrupt-giss-has-become/
Surely, if he can do it there, he can do it anywhere.
The simple fact of the matter is that Gavin and crowd are not being honest. They are giving their masters the answers the masters want and not whatever reality says. Simple as that.
If the surface temperature is still cooler, I would guess that the temperature at depth is also cooler, thus there would be less latent heat to hold off the freezing over for any length of time. It would be reasonable to expect that the lakes will freeze over earlier if it is as cold this year as last, and earlier still if the cold comes earlier.
Not so! In fact, the probability is that water at depths below 10 feet has accumulated all the excess heat, rather than leaving it at the surface, and is now approaching 100 degrees F. This makes it feasible to consider tapping that heat to provide municipal heat for all the cities around both Lake Superior and Lake Michigan.
The color graphic should have been in anomaly colors, showing BLUE for divergence from average. If it were warmer than normal, you’d see the anomaly in BRIGHT RED. Gotta get with the program!
It will be a fast cooling lakes.
http://earth.nullschool.net/#2014/10/17/1800Z/wind/isobaric/850hPa/overlay=mean_sea_level_pressure/orthographic=-71.66,53.52,1106
….If it were not for the self-sacrificing efforts of algore the great lakes wld have boiled away by now
I am so glad I wasn’t drinking something right there. Nicely done.
Lake levels in the Great Lakes are all above the long term average (after the AGW scare of low lake levels last year). This is with colder water. If the water temperature had been average, I wonder how much higher the levels would be due to thermal expansion?
http://www.lre.usace.army.mil/Missions/GreatLakesInformation/GreatLakesWaterLevels/WaterLevelForecast/WeeklyGreatLakesWaterLevels.aspx
Obviously, the missing heat from the great lakes is hiding in the deep ocean /sarc
Not mentioned is that below the “massive heat sink” is an ever larger “…gigantic cold tub…”, which is responsible for pushing whatever warm temperatures there are to those levels intermediate between the top and bottom of what scientists refer to as the “interfernal glacisphere”. And that is what is responsible for the Great Lakes being colder than normal with, of course, more ice than normal. Warmth cools and cold warms. Science is the great educator – never forget that.
Is it just weather or climate?
Temperatures are below average. That makes it weather.
I live in the Great Lakes region and fish lakes in the Western Lake Superior area all spring, summer and fall. I can say this news comes as absolutely no shock considering all lakes I frequent in Central and Northen MN were 5-6 degrees cool all year long at surface and depth. so the brutal winter, extreme lenght of ice cover, late wet spring and cool summer somehow kept the water from heating up to thier normal temps. This is amazing considering in the last 4-5 years forecasters have said they are going to heat up, dry up, be filled with more precipitation and never freeze again.
How can that be? The enviro-wackos tell us everything is warming. Dare I say it? Could they be wrong?
article needs to be rewritten, “models predict ice cold winter, with a fifty percent chance the lake will never unfreeze again, we are confident the Great Lakes will freeze solid within five years. The economic consequences of climate change deniers is coming home to roost.”
Now they can get a real grant.
Keep an eye out for any interesting trends in Hudson Bay, the epicenter if the Laurentide ice sheet.
Oh, it’s absolutely the hottest year on record. And since the data doesn’t reflect that, then it’s biased and can be corrected to properly conform to model predictions.
Maybe all that heat is being created by computers running climate models?
I hate to inform you all, because I’ve always been a climate realist, but part of that is accepting the reality that global warming is indeed MAN MADE. Just ask Jones, Hansen and the others who’ve been ‘adjusting’ the records and causing it! Oh, they won’t admit it, but we all know it’s true!
These are just surface temps. Surely the warmer water has sunk to the bottom, and the colder water has risen to the top……because that is just how things work……………………..or at least how the True Believers think they work.
Of course, especially since cold water is denser than warm water…
Must be free all of that globull warming. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
Geesh, globull warming is negatively impacting my Engrish.
Must be “from” all of that globull warming…
Somebody tell Chuck Hagel.
Sadly you climate deniers can not grasp the significance of the cooler water temperatures in the Great Lakes. Just as was mentioned in a prior post with respect to leaving a freezer door open, the cooler temperatures that flow into the Great Lakes’ region create a vacuum effect for warmer temperatures to fill the void in the cool weather origination areas. The weather patterns across North America shift and create giant vortices that deposit warm dry air in the southwestern portion of the US. Thus we have record setting drouts. The southwestern air that would normally result in rainfall will now be swept to the southeastern portion of the US and cause intense rainfall and flooding. The central portion of the US is subjected to the swirling effect of the combined vortices which result in localized weather dysfunction. The northeastern and northwestern contiguous portions of the US are sheltered from the extreme climate change due to their cold water currents providing climate stability. The State of Alaska will endure ravaging weather variations due to the planet Venus being in alignment with Uranus. AGW….what a hoax!
Yeah, and with someone leaving the Great Lakes open and letting all that heat escape, you know somewhere there must be a giant compressor working overtime to cool them back down. Thus causing more warming?
And Jupiter aligns with Mars ….
The lakes help moderate temps downwind in the surrounding areas. Expect those areas to be below avg even if weather is otherwise avg. Hopefully the cold region won’t act as an “attractor” to the polar vortex to the north.
1° … 3° … 7° colder than normal.
Who cares … when winter hits, when it’s cold, it’s cold … and a degree or three difference won’t be noticeable. The only thing that matters is the amount of lake effect snow. The U P of Michigan gets a fair amount of that snow. So too does New York, to the lee of Lake Erie & Lake Ontario.
Buffalo (to the lee of Erie) gets close to 200″ (5 meters) of snowfall, a considerable amount for a major urban area. But that’s nothing to what hits the Tug Hill region of New York (to the lee of Ontario). As just one example, Hooker received an extraordinary accumulation of snow in the winter of 1976-1977, with a total accumulation of 466.9 inches – approximately 39 feet (almost 12 meters).
So the quicker the lakes free over, the quicker the lake effect machine shuts down.
That’s freeze over !!
Last Winter, the watersheds of the Great Lakes had a lot of snow, eventually raising all Great Lakes water levels from inches to a foot and-a-half for Michigan and Huron. When the snow and ice melted, all that water was very cold and contributed to the Great Lakes remaining colder through the late Spring and early Summer. Then there was the ice cube effect with ice remaining, recorded in Lake Superior, into July. We also had a cool summer, winds at times from the near Arctic, and much cloud cover and its albedo effect.
Taken together, there was a lot of heat lost from the Great Lakes waters that allowed ice formation; the spigot for added cold water was from watershed melting snow and ice; the ice cube effect, Arctic winds, and summer cloud cover. Now, Great Lakes colder that normal. No brainer.
What will be interesting, to predict what this winter will be like in the Great Lakes region and their watersheds. So far this fall, magnificent weather: clear and dry. Although not like the Spring & Summer sun, the sunshine from this Fall may warm the Great Lakes sufficiently that we will have a mild winter, considerable lake-effect snow, and limited freeze over. I expect that the Great Lakes water levels would then begin a decline as happened after the 1986 record maximum water levels.
As I have followed the Great Lakes’ water temperatures and levels (prior data not as uniform as it is today) for the last 50 years, still I cannot predict one year nor even a season ahead. The very lowest water levels recorded in Lake’s Michigan and Huron were in 1964 and the very highest water levels were in 1986. 22 year separated the two extremes. Nobody, and I mean nobody predicted such lows or highs and there were a lot of smart people looking at this as there is/was a lot of money (shipping tonnage, dredging, recreational, city water supply, etc.) at stake.
For those in the gambling spirit, there is money to be made by someone in the water level/temperature guesstimate, just not me.
The largest fresh-water lake in the western hemisphere has changed its temperature over 6 degrees in a single YEAR. Apparently great annual temperature changes are not impossible in nature. You have to wonder why the planet has not showed the same wild temeprature excursions – as the IPCC predicted it should.
Maybe – just MAYBE – they were all wrong.
those ice breakers they use, just didn’t get out quick enough.
oh the ice sheets in the arctic and great lakes are not forming, everything is getting Warm! “GLOBAL WARMING! GLOBAL WARMING!”. psssst, uh, the ice sheets are forming… ICEBREAKERS!!!
It’s very sad that every little event in the weather has to be reported and politicized. We live in an era of political madness and a strong delusion. “If something is repeated often enough, people will start to believe it.” Adolf Hitler.
Despite the facts that is not quite the actual quote (but a good paraphrase, I’m not trying to be critical) that people have repeated as being an original quote from Hitler so often that many are programmed to believe it actually was, Goebbels is credited with the accurate form of this particular quote. Not saying Hitler never did use some form of it, mind you, or that his earlier words weren’t somehow at least in part inspiration for it.
For Hitler is credited with ‘the big lie’:
…in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.
Mein Kampf, 1925
Also:
Democratic strategy handbook, current.
“If the lakes continue through winter colder than normal, freezing over of the lakes would happen earlier.”
Which shuts down the Lake Effect Snow on Buffalo and Upstate NY, NE Ohio, Pennsylvania. The bare ground can then freeze to greater depth in a severe cold snap that is more likely to happen this winter.
As we have watched the alarmists over the years, we know darn good and well that they would be hollering we are all going to die, and die soon, if the water temps were 6 degrees above normal for the great lakes. With it 6 degrees below normal they will not even mention it if they can get away with that.
The problem is that the climate “scientists” have staked their reputations and funding to a failed hypothesis. There is no evidence that I know of (not models!) that shows CO2 is the control knob of earth’s climate. Since we have a 20 year period showing that in spades, they must do whatever they can to make their failed hypothesis salable to the public. It is all politics now.
(some say that CAGW was never even worthy of the name “hypothesis” but I am not sure if that — maybe is was only a wild assed guess)
Hmmm. I thought the global temps haven’t been rising because the heat was sequestered deep in the bodies of water. Up is down, black is white, back is forth…..we live in the bizaarro world of global warming
scientists and their “consensus”
Any moron knows its global warming causing the lakes to cool………….. like I said……. any moron knows this.
Everyone else might come to the conclusion its getting colder.
How does it square with hottest ever? Easily. Do you know what the “mean” means in global mean temperature?
It will not be the warmist ever, even using their “adjusted” data.
See!! I told you global warming is real!!!!!!
(. . . Oh, wait. Did they say “colder” than normal?)
Do the fish care if it’s colder?
We Michigangers should get Federal funding to help with our “shrinkage” problems that have resulted from this calamity.
jimmy,
Cold weather generally makes guys shrink… ☺
Has anyone called AlGore about this? Maybe he can fix it with his greatest invention, “global warming”.
Shouldn’t they be boiling by now?
I just returned from a drive through Michigan. I was surprised that many of the apple trees were still being harvested in the Traverse City area. The locals mentioned the late start to the growing season. It will be interesting to see what the long term effects of several cold winters on the fruit industry along Lake Michigan.
The UP was already chilly, with highs in the mid 40s. Superior was cold as I walked along the beaches. And the pub in Calumet reported 340.5″ of snow last year. http://www.pasty.com/snow/index.html
The local brews were cold and wonderful while the perch and whitefish were nice and hot, pan-fried to perfection.
Yikes – I just checked the NOAA Superior temp pages and the average surface level temp is 45.81 degrees.
http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/res/glcfs/glcfs.php?lake=s&ext=swt&type=N&hr=00
One buoy is reporting 42degrees and the average bottom temperature is 40 degrees.
The links on the GL Ice page need to be repaired.
[Degree F or degree C? .mod]
It looks like Fahrenheit.
45.81F = 7.67C
Oops, my bad – it is degrees F. I’ll try to remember to add the indicator the next time. If Superior was 45.81C, it would be one giant bathtub – about 114F.
Hey, Liz! Maybe that’s what all this global warming “science” is about: They’re reporting Fahrenheit temps as Celsius ones! Certainly explains Al Gore’s coming claim of Lake Superior as a terrestrial bathtub caused by charcoal broiling and SUVs.
I’m a far left socialist green party bohemian hippie from San Francisco on acid and it all looks like very confusing to me. Does this mean the right wing loses the mid terms?
As of 10/19/14 – the average Superior surface water temp is 44.8 F. One buoy reports 40.1F and a second one reports 41.5F.
Shall we start a first report of ice on Superior contest?
Lefty LOONatic Weather Forcast…
Sunny… SQUAAAAWK… Global Warming!
Rain… SQUAAAAWK… Global Warming!
Cool… SQUAAAAWK… Global Warming!
Blizzard… SQUAAAAWK… Global Warming!
Drought… SQUAAAAWK… Global Warming!
Windy… SQUAAAAWK… Global Warming!
Snow… SQUAAAAWK… Global Warming!
Weather… SQUAAAAWK… Global Warming!
Ebola… SQUAAAAWK… Global Warming!
“Climate Change” is the term used after fake scientists are caught lying about “Global Warming!” Most folks call it “weather!”
What surprises prepares the polar vortex?
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_a_f/gif_files/gfs_t05_nh_f00.gif
The inhibition of polar vortex over the Bering Strait.
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/10hPa/orthographic=-4.03,116.97,553
It’s not only temperature down but lake levels are up! Just last year there was gnashing of teeth over low lake levels and warmer temperatures and all that.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/01/18/1469271/how-climate-change-is-damaging-the-great-lakes-with-implications-for-the-environment-and-the-economy/
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/indicators/ecosystems/great-lakes.html
This is why we keep saying the best thing is to do nothing. It’s just natural climate change and we must NOT act now. Remember Australia and the debacle of the desal plants being mothballed?
Ahh here it is on WUWT. Just over 1 month ago we had this.
Caused by global warming of course.
Gavin will soon need to start “adjusting” lake temperature data, too.
It’s global warm, er… cold…. er, now I’m so confused. Just give Al Gore more money and he can tell us what it all means. He’s a scientist, right? Tell me what to think.
More Global Warming
Snow in Sydney in October?
Snow, gales and floods: Storm hits New South Wales”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11342649
If it is colder, it is just weather. If it is hotter it is always climate change and it would have to be our fault. Another little example of the idiocy of the left.
Come on people please let’s stop over analyzing everything. Don’t know bout you but last winter was f’en cold and for a long time, wtf warmers?? If the air is cold, water is cold. Stop the heat transfer, snow insulating, Bernollies bullsh..t. If was f’en cold. However, that’s least of our worries, ISIS I think is attacking Nabraska next Tuesday. Ahh, F it, any one for a round of golf.
What is the coldest year on record for the water temperature of Lake Michigan? These cold temperatures are nothing new. It wasn’t that long ago when I would walk to school and look out at Whirlpools Thermometer indicating the temperature outside was -20 degree F. and the snow was 2 feet deep. I remember in the Tri-State Region (Mich., Ill. and Ind.) snow drifts as deep as 8 and 10 feet (lake effect snow) and playing on the ice bergs most of the winter. These cold temperatures are nothing new and will be repeated many times more during the Centuries to come. Enjoy the Cold Weather around the Great Lakes, it beats what they are having in northern Manitoba.
Holy Anthropogenic Global Warming, Batman!
Boom! Bam! Zonk! Just trying to put the top on the convertible Batmobile before it starts snowing.
[Zonk? Does not the Batcover go “Ziiiiiiiiippppp” ? .mod]
Are these florescent maps bad Al Core LSD trips?
because global warming…hollywood says so, it is true.
And NASA recently found that there is no heat accumulation in the ocean bottoms. Give me your money anyway, dmit! Love, Al and Barry
The colder temps of the lakes and everything else is what we should expect as the warming continues. Per John Kerry and every other warmist moron out there.
Use *F or *C when you are writing about climate or weather for […] sake. It is kind of a big deal.
If he says it is 43.5 degrees, anyone that doesn’t know what he means wouldn’t understand the difference anyway.
Climate Change Facts
FACT 1: ALL of the solar system planets & other bodies are/were warming. Are you responsible and guilty for the entire solar system getting warmer? SOURCE: “Hoagland Interplanetary Day After Tomorrow”. Parts 1-2-3. Dated 2004.
FACT 2: Since 1989, Pluto has been moving AWAY from the Sun. You logically expect Pluto to get colder. NO! Pluto’s temperature and atmospheric pressure is increasing, by a huge amount. SOURCE: ((Halber, Deborah. ‘Pluto is undergoing global warming, researchers find’. MIT News, Oct. 9. 2002) via Hoagland part 3)).
FACT 3: Solar system wide climate change is likely due to running through a very large hydrogen/helium interstellar cloud with varied density. High speed solar systems passing through any cloud density causes some friction. Friction creates heat. SOURCE: “NASA, Voyager Makes an Interstellar Discovery December 23, 2009”. ‘The solar system is passing through an interstellar cloud that physics says should not exist’.
FACT 4: The Sun travels around the Milky Way galaxy once every 250 million years, at approximately 568,000 mph (2012 estimate). During that travel our solar system path encounters rouge clouds and debris from exploded stars, of varying chemical composition and density for periods of time, that can result in greenhouse effects or ice ages. Data says our heliosphere actually moves through the local interstellar cloud at about 52,000 mph. Going through varying densities of the cloud at that speed may cause changing heating/cooling periods. SOURCE: “NASA, A Breeze from the Stars, Dec 17, 2004”. ‘The sun’s magnetic field holds much of the cloud at bay, but some of the cloud’s gas does penetrate’.
FACT 5: Climate Change is politically linked to the Carbon Credit Tax Scam. Scams work when you are denied the whole truth and/or complete information. 1-Suckers are repeatedly told to feel guilty, for breathing out CO2 and other reasons they are told destroy the Earth (“A lie told often enough becomes the truth” – Lenin). 2-Then the Suckers are repeatedly told to relieve their guilt by giving $ to the scam, and are happy to comply. How does any tax scam stop solar system warming/cooling? Remember, much of this data is many years old. At 568,000 mph the Earth has moved nearly 55 Trillion miles from old data points. Time & position changes everything in this universe. SOURCE: Common Sense.
As a pilot flying out of Toledo, I get to notice that weather patterns around the area are affected by the lake. In the summer, weather coming from the west splits due to the heat given off by Lake Erie going north and or south. Usually wood county, 20 miles to the south of the lake boundary gets the heavier weather. Toledo gets spared for most of the nastier weather in the spring and fall. But with lower temperatures, Toledo sees more sever weather as well once the lake freezes, Toledo gets hit with the snow storms. Last year was a pretty snowy winter here. Given predictions based on sun spots as well seeing this, expecting a very snow bound winter here this year.
Uh oh. Must be “global cooling” time again. The summer sure went by fast this year. Seems like the climate is changing every three or four months now. It’s summer and before you know it, it’s cooling down and it’s Autumn. THEN, almost out of nowhere, it’s suddenly FREEZING cold. But just when you can’t take the cold weather any more, the flowers bloom and it’s spring.
Yes . . . . it’s “global weather changing”. That’s what I call it anyway. For 61 years I can personally attest to it happening. Global weather changing. Amazing. Every year.
Must be climate change.
http://consumerlive.me/2014/07/29/product-review-steripen-ultra/
Professor Don Easterbrook’s realistic assessment of the climate data points to a current cooling period.
There is no doubt the chances of a very cold North American winter are high. The great lakes temperature may be an indicator of what to expect this coming winter.
Good stuff here—http://www.surfgrandhaven.com/cms/
http://www.surfgrandhaven.com/cms/grand-haven-news-stories-opinions/1497847-Water-Temperature-Prediction.html
“Starting in June 2014, there were huge inflows of water through the St. Mary’s River into Lake Huron/Michigan. Given the average temperature of 38 degrees, this release was comparable to putting a large ice cube in our drink called Lake Michigan. Overall, this had the effect of lowering our average lake temperature by ten to fifteen degrees”.
aha… so no worry… the ice cube came from St. Mary’s River. So, who opened the spigot? You mean it was always flowing in to Lake Huron/Michagan… hmm. So, exactly what are you trying to tell me. Or was it just an open-ended answer with no point to it.
[MODS] Oops, The title — >
Water temperature of the Great Lakes is over 6 degrees colder than
normallast year.Read first line in the quote.
The Lakes will likely freeze over completely this year, as it nearly did last year. The lakes have never frozen as much in recorded history. Also the Antarctic Ice sheet have NEVER been bigger… EVER in recorded history.
You see, it is 6 degrees cooler because of global warming. According to the Global warming Nazis.
It needs more carbon. Throw in a few thousand burning tires with some oil.
damn it — it’s a global warming I tell you
Does in America will be a hard winter?
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_a_f/gif_files/gfs_z70_nh_f00.gif
Must be global WARMING!
Global Warming is so evil and insatiable now it’s sucking heat out of the Great Lakes??!!
GLOBAL WARMING AKA CLIMATE CHANGE IS DEAD
I get the impression that everything we throw into the air has a cooling effect, especially pollutants. CO2 and methane are NOT pollutants and don’t appear to have the ability to counter whatever else causes cooling. Volcanic gasses and water vapor definitely cause cooling. They prevent a significant degree of sunlight from reaching and warming the ground.
The reason the left is panicking about “climate change” is that more of us are realizing what used to be called “global warming” is a hoax. The tax-happy leftists know damn well we’re in for an unusually cold winter and that it will deep-six their well-orchestrated plans for a carbon tax.
In other words, Mother Nature is sticking it to the money-grubbing leftists a couple years sooner than they expected. I can’t believe any leftist with an elementary education in the sciences related to climate change doesn’t see this emerging cooling pattern. We science buffs certainly see strong evidence of a cooling trend.
Damn that Global Warming…
I’m an Arborist, and for those with questions about acorn or fruit crops, we really don’t know why crops vary. Some varieties of Oak take 2 years for acorns to mature. There’s also something called a “mast” (fruit) year where you’ll see a super abundance of fruit. So far, there’s no certain cause and effect. Many of the theories posted here are reasonable, but there’s no definite answer.
Isn’t nature amazing. 🙂
Can they read WUWT?
http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/us-2014-2015-winter-forecast/35422753
As one who lives in Michigan, all I can say is F#$$^!!!
D:
I guess all that anthroprogenic warmth must really be absorbed into the oceans… It sure isn’t in the great lakes!
Very disappointing comments this time. Thanks to those who contributed some information and science. Unfortunately, most comments were cynical and sarcastic and a waste of time. Some of that is fine…even necessary considering the absurd and brazen contentions of climate hawks (warmists), but this thread reads almost like the inverse of a Huffington Post comment thread. We need to be better than that here.
If an outsider comes here for the first time to see what it’s all about, I suspect it’s better to look like informed scientists mixed with curious truth seekers, not a bunch of jaded, political cynics with closed minds.
I have been following this website since 2007. I am no scientist… Just like to be informed. Today was my first attempt at a comment. It may have come across as sarcastic. If so… Apoligies… I thought it raised an implied scientific point… from a non scientific point of view… Again … apoligies… Now I will go crawl back under my rock.
As a relief from the Great Lakes you might be interested in what is , I suppose, the Eastern world’s closest equivalent : Lake Baikal.
The following link is to an interesting description of the alternation of stratification and homothermy (levelling of temperature) in the Lake waters during the course of the average year , given that some of the comments above refer to these effects ..
http://www.bww.irk.ru/baikalwater/temperature.html
The paragraphs are refreshingly free of any suggestion of AGW effects and the field work is attributed to scientists of both the Soviet and post-Soviet era.
It is not a science site , but for tourists , and intended perhaps to entice ( or deter ) visitors tempted to dip in the waters – ice fee from the end of May – irresistible no doubt to some of the hardier bloggers here.
Sorry – “ice free from the end of May ” though no doubt there is a substantial charge for visiting the area in modern capitalist Russia.
I demand you take this article down. You musn’t go against the “Brotherhood’s” orthodoxy!!!
A good storm can lower the surface temps of Lake Superior 10 or 20 degrees…so it really depends on when the temps are taken, or if they are taken over a longer time period.
The big lake froze over last year and we still had over 300 inches of snow in the Keweenaw. People up here are preparing for the worst. There seems to be a lot more people with firewood in their yards this fall.
Lots of apples and acorns this year.
If the lake levels don’t go down there is going to be some trouble with erosion. Mclain State Park on the north side of the Keweenaw has taken a big hit this summer.
Ok, wasn’t this the first winter in a long time that all of the lakes completely froze over? Yes. It was. So why is this a surprise. We also had a very mild summer.
This is the exact OPPOSITE of what the Global Warming Gurus told us would happen. How much more contradictory information do we need to call them WRONG!
I can’t take much more of this global warming. LOL.
Due to the ice covering the Great Lakes last winter and abundant rain this summer, the lakes are 21 inches higher than last year. That is a bunch of water that the summer sun had to try to warm up, which just didn’t happen. I’ve been telling my family/friends that this winter will more than likely be a cold and snowy winter because the lakes are up and the lakes are cooler.
On the bright side, colder lakes could lead to less lake effect snow.
HUH? COLD LAKES CAUSE lake affect snow…..Obama voter, huh?
TEMPERATURES RISING ALL OVER THE ENTIRE WORLD (global warming) causes record cold temperatures….. Obama says so, and we all know what an accomplished scientist he is.
Climate and Weather are synonyms…..you can google climate definition if you are an ignorant democrat liar spewing socialist idiocy…….How stupid are Democrats for just now figuring out that the weather changes?
Oh I tell ya it was a cold one down here in Scranton, Pa this passed winter. My cousin up in Grand Rapids told me to check this page out. Looks like another cold one for us again this year.
Hey, it’s all good. Whether temps go up or down, whether arctic ice increases or decreases, whether there are more or less storms during storm season, whether it’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter, “global warming”/”climate change” is to blame for ALL of it. And, of course, only communism can “fix” everything.
Global warming is the faith based religion of the left. No warming since 1996, ice caps thicker than they have been in my lifetime, record record low temps, and the zealots keep preaching and the faithful still believe.
Reblogged this on This Got My Attention and commented:
Brrrrr, imagine swimming in Lake Superior right now, 47.6 degrees, at the end of Summer! Let’s get Algore right on it!
[snip racism discussion – waaaaaaaaayyyyy ff topic -mod]
Perhaps all those weather modification and spraying tests are WAY over-calculated and are about to cause a crisis, rather than solve a phony one.
Perhaps all the weather modification testing is causing a greater catastrophe than the one they think it’s solving?
This only proves that I am right and I am entitled to keep my 100’s of Millions because. F. U..
Dems get money from people any way they can, they don’t care. Global Warming is just another scam to get money so they can keep their corrupt colleagues in office.
Yeah, because the science is settled