Guest Post By Just The Facts
After Micheal Mann and Kevin Trenberth helpfully attributed the recent record snowfall in Boston to global warming, we now have another undeniable indication of alarming extreme runaway global warming. After last year’s 2nd highest maximum in Great Lakes Ice Coverage;
Great Lakes Ice Coverage stands at 82.8%, within striking distance of the record high of 94.7%:
As was seen in the groundbreaking 1991 paper, “IMPLICATIONS OF CO, GLOBAL WARMING ON GREAT LAKES ICE COVER“, by Assel;
“Statistical ice cover models were used to project daily mean basin ice cover and annual ice cover duration for Lakes Superior and Erie. Models were
applied to a 1951-80 base period and to three 30-year steady double carbon dioxide (2 X CO,) scenarios produced by the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL), the Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS), and the OregonState University (OSU) general circulation models.”
“Under the three projected 2 X CO, greenhouse warming scenarios ice cover duration is shorter, ice covers are less extensive, and the frequency of winters without ice cover is greater for Lake Erie than for Lake Superior. Under an average 2 X CO, scenario, ice cover is likely to be limited to the shore area and shallows of both lakes.
“The results of our study indicate that the navigation season could be extended to 10 or even 12 months under a 2 x CO, climatic warming. Thus a considerable cost
saving may be associated with reduced Coast Guard and hydropower authority activity and economic benefits may result from increased shipping activity in the winter months. However, the greatly reduced extent and duration of ice cover would likely result in higher evaporation from the Great Lakes and lower lake levels (United States Environmental Protection Agency, 1989). Crowe (1985) indicates that above-freezing air temperature in southern Ontario, Canada will produce less snow cover and a shorter snow cover season. There is a considerable amount of winter recreational activity on ice-covered bays and harbors of the Great Lakes – ice boating, ice fishing, snowmobile racing. Much if not all of this activity would be curtailed or discontinued completely with reduced ice and snow cover. “
Currently, Lake Superior is at 93.42% Ice Cover;
and Lake Erie at 95.72%;
hopefully these ice cover conditions haven’t “curtailed or discontinued completely” activities like “ice boating, ice fishing, snowmobile racing” due to “reduced ice and snow cover”… Lake Huron is also close to its maximum at over 95.52% Ice Cover;
thus a run on the record will necessitate significant ice growth on Lake Ontario and Lake Michigan. Lake Ontario Ice Cover reached 82.60% last week;
which was its third highest maximum on record;
and interesting as “Lake Ontario generally have the least ice cover of all the Great Lakes”, “Lake Ontario’s extreme depth (86 m average; 244 m maximum) translates to tremendous heat storage capacity. It also has a smaller surface area for heat loss. In addition, cold air outbreaks from the northwest and west are moderated by the waters of Lakes Superior, Michigan, and Huron. These factors combine to keep ice cover on Lake Ontario at a relatively low level most years.” GLERL
Lake Ontario Ice Concentration dropped to 55.8% in the last few days;
apparently primarily due to wind moving ice South and East:
However, the 10 day forecast for Ontario is quite chilly;
so there will likely be additional Lake Ontario Ice growth in the coming days. Lastly, and most importantly, Lake Michigan Ice Cover is currently 53.68%;
compared to a maximum of 93.29% last year;
so there will need to be be significant growth in Lake Michigan Ice Cover for there to be a record in Great Lakes Ice Cover. So what do the next two weeks hold for Lake Michigan? Here’s the 10 day forecast for Chicago:
Whether maximum Great Lakes Ice Coverage sets a record or not, expect some desperate warmists to dust off, or more appropriately brush off, the thoroughly discredited drunken jet stream hypothesis, whereby global warming makes it colder. Last year, Kevin Trenberth, was one of 5 climate scientists who wrote about the drunken jet stream hypothesis in a letter published in Science Magazine stating that “It’s an interesting idea, but alternative observational analyses and simulations with climate models have not confirmed the hypothesis, and we do not view the theoretical arguments underlying it as compelling”. Given another freezing and snowy winter we look forward to seeing more inane hypotheses about how global warming makes it colder and results in massive snowfalls, and whether Kevin Ternberth supports them or refutes them…
If you would like to keep an eye on Great Lakes Ice you can do so on the WUWT Great Lakes Ice Reference Page.
I wonder if satellite data can be used in a legal case at the local level to hinder the lumbering CAGW machine? We are starting to hear rumblings about private woodlots and wetland use. This has been our bread and butter for generations. And what really gets me, is that they truly believe they are saving us less intelligent country folk from destroying ourselves.
Starting? My sister had to sell out her Appaloosa horse ranch two hours drive east of Seattle, and buy a ranch up near Tonasket. Gave a perfectly servicable 100 acre pasture to Nature Conservancy on the east side of the Snosqualmie Pass in Washington State for the tax deduction, just because beavers intruded on the little stream running through that pasture and turned it into a federally ‘protected wetland’ that could no longer be grazed by the horses. 15 years ago.
Isn’t the Nature Conservancy a government department of Putin’s Russia? At least the money trail would suggest so.
Should have written a reply letter like the guy in Michigan did. Part of the letter –
I am the legal owner and a couple of beavers are in the (State unauthorized) process of constructing and maintaining two wood “debris” dams across the outlet stream of my Spring Pond.
While I did not pay for, nor authorize their dam project, I think they would be highly offended you call their skillful use of natural building materials “debris.” I would like to challenge you to attempt to emulate their dam project any dam time and/or any dam place you choose.
I believe I can safely state there is no dam way you could ever match their dam skills, their dam resourcefulness, their dam ingenuity, their dam persistence, their dam determination and/or their dam work ethic.
As to your dam request the beavers first must fill out a dam permit prior to the start of this type of dam activity, my first dam question to you is, “Are you trying to discriminate against my Spring Pond Beavers or do you require all dam beavers throughout this State to conform to said dam request?” If you are not discriminating against these particular beavers, please send me completed copies of all those other applicable beaver dam permits.
The whole story can be seen at – http://downeastwildliferehabilitationcenter.com/thedam.htm
“… because beavers intruded on …”
I have no knowledge of your sister’s case but I do live about 2 hours east of Seattle. In the time frame you mention, or a bit before, when a landowner reported a problem with beavers they were told to call a trapper. The live-trapped beaver would be relocated to a “suitable habitat” without many or any beavers. Sometimes, when the trapper did not want to make a long drive, the animal would be released at a tributary to the Yakima River just south of Ellensburg, thou many beavers were already in that stream.
I think mental pollution does more damage
Once you adjust the ice cover for the colder conditions, the models are valid.
Anyone make the connection that the previous ice coverage high in the top chart was back in 1979? That was when the current media scare was about global cooling, see http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/winston-smith-loves-big-brother-even-more-now-that-he-has-returned-to-the-fold-and-discovered-global-warming/
Yes, but back then, they were honest enough to not monkey with the temperature numbers. Yes, I agree with you, the globe is seeing 70’s temperatures, but the ground station data is so tampered with, that we are probably seeing temps 0.6 degC too high, and the satellite data, though better, has also been monkeyed with, most notably in 1998, when scientists wondered why they weren’t showing warming, so the scientists raised the temperatures, on the assumption that the orbits were too elliptical.
Arctic sea ice was close to its 20th century high in 1979, after three decades of cooling despite rising CO2. Before that the Arctic had enjoyed three decades of warming. It´s possible that in the 1900s & teens Arctic sea ice extent was greater than in the late 1970s, since the Little Ice Age had only ended in the past half century. But 1979 was definitely an unusually high ice year from which to start the record of satellite observation.
Typo alert. In Last year, Kevin Ternberth, was one of 5 climate scientists who wrote about the drunken jet stream hypothesis in a letter published in Science Magazine stating that “It’s an interesting idea, but alternative observational analyses and simulations with climate models have not confirmed the hypothesis, and we do not view the theoretical arguments underlying it as compelling”. Given another freezing and snowy winter we look forward to seeing more inane hypotheses about how global warming makes it colder and results in massive snowfalls, and whether Kevin Ternberth supports them or refutes them…
The emboldened should be “Trenberth.”
Corrected, thank you!
I get a chuckle listening to the inventive explanations Alarmists come up with, to excuse their botched forecasts of warming. The ice in the Great Lakes is only one example.
The AMO currently swinging so abruptly into its “cold” phase should further confuse the “Global Warming” playing field. It wasn’t expected for around five more years, so it only may be a brief “spike”. However, (for reasons I don’t understand), in the past even brief spikes have brought a surprisingly swift increase in sea-ice in the western reaches of the Northeast Passage, especially in Barents Sea. If history repeats itself, the “death spiral” crowd is going “‘t’have some ‘splainin’ t’do.”
Stock up on popcorn.
Hey, maybe the “New Ice Age” alarmists in the mid 1970’s were right.
An unincorporated location near Pinkney, MI has frozen over again: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell,_Michigan
What will the 97% “scientists” say when 97% of the great lakes are frozen over?
—-silence—-
That the unfrozen 3% is evidence of global warming.
In the graph, to my eye, 2014 is (so far) a single-year spike in a gently declining trend. I would think that it has as yet zero statistical significance. IOW, it’s amusing but not meaningful.
Question : Why does the graph start in 1973? I would have expected the data to go back way further than that, and it’s always desirable to see the full picture.
These past 2 Winters have been similar to the WInters of 1976/77 and 1977/78. This is confirmed also on the “annual maximum ice cover” graph that shows how very high values in the late 1970’s.
California also had a severe drought in 76/77 and by no coincidence. An upper ridge along the West Coast of North America teleconnects well to an upper level trough, downstream in the Midwest/Great Lakes to the East Coast.
Here are some Northern hemisphere teleconnection patterns:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/teledoc/telecontents.shtml
It also appears to be no coincidence that we are having this current pattern, similar to the late 1970’s.
There is a natural cycle, also seen with the PDO index that changes around every 30 years.
http://margaret.atmos.washington.edu/pdo/
When the PDO is negative, as it was most of the time in the 1950’s-70’s, we have more La Nina’s, see a tendency to have more ridges along the West Coast, sometimes into the Plains. This increases chances for droughts in those locations.
It also increases chances for down stream troughs and depending on how far north the upper level ridge extends, can result in very cold air from high latitudes being displaced southward into the Midwest and East.
When the PDO is positive, like it was in the 1980’s/90’s, the tendencies go in the opposite direction. More El Nino’s and Winter storms hitting the West Coast. More mild oceanic air transported across the rest of the US, with the Arctic air supply cut off.
In the last decade, the PDO has flipped back to negative again, so our weather tendencies have also been in the direction that we last saw back in the 1970’s, when the PDO regime was a negative one.
Another strong factor in common with the sign of the PDO is that we clearly have natural global warming with a +PDO and natural global cooling with a -PDO.
During the 1950’s-70’s, the -PDO coincided with slight global cooling, so the natural cooling climate cycle was a bit greater than greenhouse gas warming of the atmosphere for around 30 years(and a global cooling scare).
That was followed(1980’s/90’s) by natural global warming associated with a +PDO that when added to additional greenhouse gas warming, gave the appearance of an accelerating warming trend that many attributed entirely to increasing CO2, when in fact, probably only half of it was from that.
With us well into the -PDO regime now, my educated guess is that the natural global cooling over the past decade+ has been almost the same but opposite as the greenhouse gas warming from increasing CO2. This has resulted in the “hiatus” or a stalling in the global temperature increase.
In the last year, the PDO has spiked higher, well into the positive zone. Based on the previous periodicity of the cycle, this would be much too early for the -PDO to end(for us to start the next +PDO regime).
There is much speculation on what this means right now. However, during the last -PDO, in the middle of it(late 1950’s, especially 1957/58) we saw this exact same thing happen. This was followed quickly by a return to the -PDO that lasted thru the 1960’s, well into the 1970’s. This finished off the approximately 30 years of that regime.
http://margaret.atmos.washington.edu/pdo/PDO.latest
For the last 2 months, the PDO index has been close to the highest readings ever. Much higher than it ever got to in the last 1950’s temporary spike higher.
There could be powerful future implications but we may not know for a couple of years.
If the -PDO cycle has ended, and we have entered the next +PDO regime, then odds are high that natural global warming will resume……..similar to the contributions of the natural part of the global warming in the 1980’s/90’s.
Maybe the cycle has become shorter. The previous +PDO regime appears to have been quite a bit shorter than the 30 years of some prior ones.
That +PDO started in the late 1970’s and one can make a strong case with it flipping to a -PDO as the great El Nino of 1998 was ending. This was only ~20 years.
From 1998 to the start of last year(when the PDO went positive and has stayed there) was less than 16 years. If we had accurate data on the PDO going back 1,000 years, then we would know if this is unusual or not.
Maybe the ~30 year periodicity of the last -PDO was unusually long or maybe the PDO regimes periodicity varies a great deal naturally.
Good observations about the PDO pattern. The record high PDO readings of 2.51 and 2.45 in December and January are probably the after effect of the borderline El Nino that never fully developed but there were some near El NINO effects . This was similar to the 2.1 and 2.09 PDO levels in December OF 2002 and January 2003 . I think the PDO level will start to drop and return to negative levels this year . AMO has also been dropping since 2003 . When both are negative again like the 1960’s and 1970’s , the cooling will be at its low( also like 1910 and 1920’s)
In the Antarctic ice will also be a record. Evidenced by the a temperature sea.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/antarctic.sea.ice.interactive.html
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.gif
If the ice will continue to accrete in the south, it appear new lands.
Here’s an alternative hypothesis – Normal jetstream, drunken Climate “scientists”
Nah, this all the ice that Gore said would be gone from the Arctic by 2015.
Climate change? :”The chairman of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri, accused of sexual harassment”
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3ebfd87e-b9e2-11e4-933f-00144feab7de.html#axzz3SYeBnlwr
Forecast temperature on March 1, 2015.
http://www.wetterzentrale.de/pics/Rnamavn1505.png
Let blockade stratospheric polar vortex.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_a_f/gif_files/gfs_t100_nh_f00.gif
And solar activity.
http://www.spaceweatherlive.com/images/SDO/SDO_HMIIF_512.jpg
http://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en
Well this is exactly in line with IPCCs brilliant use of science that concluded when it gets colder in some regions it gets colder and when it gets warmer in some regions it gets warmer and humanity is at the heart of these colder/warmer scenarios of doom.
Unfortunately Pachauri, the chairman of the IPCC cannot attend an upcoming meeting in Nairobi to help lead the effort against these catastrophic colder/warmer scenarios. Apparently there is a misunderstanding by female staffers where they are confusing Pachauri’s fatherly affections with sexual harassment. Also allegations of his being a crook are also a misunderstanding; his great growth in personal wealth occurring while chairman of the IPCC is strictly coincidence.
Current temperature (C) in the Great Lakes region.
http://oi61.tinypic.com/263zlmt.jpg
There is a big difference to what is happening in North America and what is happening for the globe generally . 2014 was the 4th warmest with respect to global and Northern Hemisphere land areas . US was the 33 warmest and Canada was the 25 th warmest. The Great Lakes and St . Lawrence Valley was 7 th coldest taken annually . Winters have had a cooling trend for North America since 1998. The previous 2013/2014 winter was the 6th coldest in 7decades( 67 years ) for the Great Lakes and ST Lawrence valley as measured by the Canadian data . This winter will likely beat even this record .
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/COOLING_OF_NORTHERN_HEMISPHERE.pdf
and so it begins
You forgot to mention the snow in the Middle East , and in Sicily and……on and on.
Okay it’s time to start the “WUWT 100% Ice Cover” pool. What year will 100% of all the great lakes become the great skating rink?
Given that we are in the negative phase of the PDO and the AMO has peaked and is on the way down plus the sun being in a lull not seen in centuries it will probably happen.
I’ll go with 2023.
In cold lakes a great diatoms thrive.
http://www.seagrant.umn.edu/newsletter/2013/01/images/diatoms_activity.jpg
Lake Superior (or gichigami in Ojibwe) retains the defining characteristics of a lake, but behaves like an inland sea. It has a small tide, busy international ports and 3-quadrillion gallons of water. That’s:
3,000,000,000,000,000 gallons (11.4-quadrillion liters)
Enough to submerge North and South America under 1 foot of fresh water
10% of the world’s fresh surface water
Over half of the water contained in the Great Lakes
Lake Superior is the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area and the third largest by volume. Scoured into its present form by the retreating glacial ice sheet covering the region during the last Ice Age (about 10,000 years ago).
http://www.seagrant.umn.edu/superior/overview
“With the gates of the Arctic wide open much of this week, temperatures will plunge to painful and dangerous levels around New York City most days.
Low temperatures set in the late 1800s to early 1900s will be challenged with lows on the coldest nights dipping down into the single digits F. Lows most nights will be in the teens F.”
By Alex Sosnowski.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/blocking/real_time_nh/500gz_anomalies_nh.gif
The lake ice is due to climate change.
My knee hurts from the cold weather.
That is due to climate change.
My car was cold when I got in it this morning.
Due to climate change.
Everything that has ever happened on Earth for 4.5 billion years …
has been accompanied by climate change.
— Since everything and climate change happened at the same time,
that is proof that climate change causes EVERYTHING
I wonder if I can get a big goobermint grant to study my hypothesis?
More ranting and raving at my climate blog — the only climate blog in the universe with a centerfold:
http://www.ELonionBloggle.blogspot.com
Canadian Ice Services has just published the weekly Historical Date Ice Coverage chart for this week, which shows that the record has been exceeded as predicted by justTheFactsWuwt.
Here is the chart:
http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/prods/CVCSWCTGL/20150223180000_CVCSWCTGL_0008135875.pdf
Here are excellent visible satellite image of of Lake Erie.
http://coastwatch.glerl.noaa.gov/modis/modis.php?region=e&page=1&template=sub&image=a1.15056.1855.LakeErie.143.250m.jpg
Here can see, that there are some small cracks, covering tiny part of lake area. At deeper look , can see that see that most of these cracks are frozen.
From reports ice coverage < 96%.
Lake Erie area is 25667 km2.
4% of 25667 = 1027 km2
Area of near Lake Saint Clair = 1114 km2 or 4.4% very close to open water area in lake Erie (according reports.)
And now see the sat. image (link above) , where both lakes: Erie and St.Clair are visible.
The area of cracks definitely is smaller than area of lake St Clair.
Therefore assuming that all darker cracks are open water (which is not true) we could not get 4% of open water for Lake Erie.
Are open water under white areas ?
.