15 years after Dr Viner embarrassed the British Climate Research Unit, Griffith University in Australia has just joined the slowly growing list of academic institutions which have predicted the “end of snow”.
According to ABC Australia;
Research conducted by Griffith University’s Environmental Futures Research Institute has warned that snow regions in Australia must adapt to warmer conditions caused by climate change, that is increasingly turning the alpine landscape from white to green.
Study co-author Professor Catherine Pickering said the current trends did not look promising and good years like the recent snow dump had become less frequent.
“The snow cover in the Australian alps is declining and it has declined a lot since 1954 when there was the longest snow course on record,” she said.
“We have found that it was originally a 30 per cent decline and now the latest data indicates we have got to a 40 per cent decline over that period.
“We used to have a couple of really big years when we had a lot of snow but that is no longer the case. Now, what used to be a not so great year, that is what we think of as a good year.”
However, the ABC article also quotes the president of the Canberra Alpine Club, who has a different opinion.
… Canberra Alpine Club president Lloyd Meehan said snow lovers were content with the current weather conditions and snow levels.
Mr Meehan said he believes while weather patterns changed over time, the decline was not consistent.
“The scientists will tell us that perhaps when you are looking at pure statistical data, there has been a gradual decline,” he said.
“But like many sports, from one year to the next it is a bit hard to actually guess what sort of snow depth we are going to get.
“One year you will get a poor one, the next year – like two years ago – you get quite good ones.”
For the record, the Australian snow season this year had a poor start, but the last week especially has seen massive snowfalls across Australia’s Eastern ranges, stretching up to the subtropical southern edge of the Australian state of Queensland.
If there is one thing above all else, which flags just how ridiculously wrong climate models are, and how desperate academics are for observations to agree with their broken models, its the academically embarrassing “end of snow” prediction.
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I’m not exactly sure why you’ve posted a central Sierra snow chart in an article about Australian snow.
Just one thing though, why are you posting Sierra Nevada snow for an Australia story?
Dr Helen Popova responds cautiously, while speaking about the human influence on climate.
“There is no strong evidence, that global warming is caused by human activity. The study of deuterium in the Antarctic showed that there were five global warmings and four Ice Ages for the past 400 thousand years. People first appeared on the Earth about 60 thousand years ago. However, even if human activities influence the climate, we can say, that the Sun with the new minimum gives humanity more time or a second chance to reduce their industrial emissions and to prepare, when the Sun will return to normal activity”, Dr Helen Popova summarised.
I maintain extra heat stored now(by release of fossil CO2) will be a beneficial buffer whether the coming cooling is merely another fairly little ice age, or the big one.
The higher the sensitivity, the colder we’d now already be without man’s input. You’d better hope that the recovery from the coldest depths of the Holocene has been primarily natural, for if man has done the heavy lifting of warming, we can’t keep it up for long.
================
I see little evidence that the number of flakes is decreasing.
Max Photon
Absolutely correct — but is because old flakes never die, they just fade away.
Eugene WR Gallun
Perhaps they have a melt-down and are sequestered, Eugene.
Tomis
Ma’ Gaia has dandruff?
Maybe it’d be good if there was “an end of snow”! 😎
Is Al Gore in Australia?
I was amazed the first time I heard if sking in Ausralia. I am no more shicked to learn that they have a regular measurable snowpact. I tgought they jyst relied in snow guns and the ocassional mud winter dump at high altitudes. I havs also recently heard if good skiing in Lebanon and Turkey.
Omg sorry about the typos
I have to say, that recent stories are the first time I ever became aware that there are ski resorts in Australia, and that it evah snows there.
Does not jibe with the mental picture formed by years of watching movies such as Road Warrior and Crocodile Dundee.
I wish I could say I’ve only rope-towed; that was the most fun. I wish I could believe all the fun Ernst had in Austria, tramping up first. Maybe I’m just envious.
===================
Back in the 60’s one of the glossy mags, Time or Newsweek or maybe Nat Geograph , ran tourist ads on the back cover stating that the winter snow cover in the Snowy Mtns (there is your clue) was greater than in the european Alps .
Of course that was pre- AGW. (I am of course assuming the ads were honest and valid ).
Just wait until the AMO 30-yr cool cycle kicks in around 2022, at the same time the weakest solar cycle since 1715 starts around 2022 AND the PDO 30-yr cool cycle hits it coldest point around 2025….
There will be more snow and cold than the warmunists will know how to explain away….
They’ll have to pull out ye old, “CO2 induced warming is causing colder global temps and more snowfall as we predicted…”
“… Just wait until the AMO 30-yr cool cycle kicks in around 2022 …”
Yes, but the Paris commie-fest on climate is this year, not 2022.
Mark– In the long run, the hyperventilating media blitz the Statists will run after the Paris commie-fest will simply increase their embarrassment and lost credibility once this CAGW scam crashes and burns around 2020’s.
The bigger the financial commitments made in Paris, the more intense the blowback will be against the Statists as they own this scam 100% and have known for quite sometime it wasn’t real.
@SAMURAI
I am a bit more pessimistic that you are on this, but I sure do hope you are right. I sure do.
It won’t be just about the cold, I think global weather patterns are going to change and we are seeing the start of it now with the shifting of the artic jet stream over the past few years (it used to blow down into Alaska, now it blows down into Canada leading to warmer winters in Alaska and BC but colder winters in central and eastern Canada/US). They keep coming up with new terms like polar vortex, Siberian express and now Antarctic vortex to explain the shifts we are seeing. If the Jetstream reaches the Gulf of Mexico consistently in the winters it could cool it enough to shut down the gulf stream at which point this probably becomes self reinforcing and we begin not a mini ice age but a full blown glacial period. Areas that are now rain forest may become deserts and vise versa (the pyramids of Giza was quite a rainy area before the end of the last glacial period for example). I think there is a tipping point after which we rapidly descend into a glacial… Silly me while everyone else was researching/debating warming I read every scientific theory I could find on the causes of glacial periods because that is obviously the real threat.
I live in NE Ohio, and it has been colder the last couple winters, as well as this summer. But, I think this is just returning to the weather of the 60’s and 70’s. We, in fact few of my neighbors had central air, and most cars did not have air in the 60’s and 70’s, I think the difference is just whether the Jet Stream is north or south of us, which is about a 15-20F swing, the difference between Canadian Air, and Gulf Air. This summer we’ve had a lot of rain, and mostly Canadian temps, 70’s to low 80’s, as opposed to High 80’s to mid 90’s.
I think this relates to Ocean surface temps, pushing the Jet Stream around, and we’re currently transitioning between states, back to the one of my childhood, after it was in the high (Jet Stream) Midwest mode in the 80’s and 90’s, it’s going back into the low Jet Stream mode.
micro6500 I live just outside Toronto, not far from you. I agree that the last few years have been cold, this has been the coolest summer that I can remember since back in the 80s. So far there have only been 5 days or so that people turn their air conditioning on. No one knows weather like us great lakes dwellers, this spring we went from 10f nights one week to 110f days the next week. My theories are based on the work of a number of physicists (John L Casey, Valentina Zharkova, etc.) that have predicted a fewer sunspots in the coming years, which will lead to at least a mini ice age and the theory of what causes ice ages from some scientists back in the 50s (I believe this is the generally accepted theory, if you have seen “the day after tomorrow” then you know the theory http://harpers.org/archive/1958/09/the-coming-ice-age/ ) however I disagree with their theory that the melting of the Arctic ice is what shuts down the gulf stream (for the simple reason that water can already flow under the glaciers). Suspicous0bserver on youtube has some videos which basically sum up my line of thinking.
Every 230 years or so the sun enters a “cool” period (google Dalton and Maunder minimums) causing a mini ice age so we are due for that. Earth has been in an actual ice age for 1-2 million years, during this ice age Earth spends around 100k years in a glacial period (ice 3 miles thick on top of your home) and around 10k years in an interglacial period. We have been in an interglacial period for around 12k years, so we are due for that (have a look at the Vostok and Greenland ice core data to confirm that). Every time Earth reaches temperatures and CO2 levels near current levels it rapidly enters a glacial period (keep in mind ice core data is not exact and says we are at the highest CO2 level ever but stomata CO2 proxies seem more accurate http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/26/co2-ice-cores-vs-plant-stomata/ ). In addition to that the sun is going through a magnetic pole reversal (not uncommon, happens every 11 years or so http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/the-suns-magnetic-field-is-about-to-flip/ ) BUT it seems Earth is going through a magnetic pole reversal too since the pole is moving faster then any time in recorded history and that is rare http://www.heartcom.org/MagneticPoleMovement.htm Also Earth’s magnetic field is weakening very quickly http://www.livescience.com/46694-magnetic-field-weakens.html In short a whole bunch of things that we don’t yet know the affects of are all happening at the same time right when we are due for a glacial period… You don’t have to go too far out on a limb to suggest that the culmination of all these events is what causes glacial periods
I’m not sure what the Sun is doing, or why, I have a couple ideas, but none that I’m aware of can do this over a few days
Other than the air mass overhead.
Here’s a handful of days from my weather station
And living where we do, it would just be a matter of which side the Jet Stream runs today (just movedSouth of us)
The “declining snow cover” meme is pure Appeal to Emotion nonsense. Koolade drinkers love it, though.
Despite the El Niño drought in California. That is, when does not take into account the low solar activity. Simply Jetstream blocks the wind from the equator.
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/250hPa/orthographic=-100.70,13.92,319
With some of the best snowfalls for years this past week, and it’s only mid July (the southern H. Winter), even the climate warming media are reporting these events for a change instead of the usual hottest day, week, month, year ever.
Besides the already given comments about California/Australia, I’m not sure why the graph that was included was for just one location in CA, and for winter totals. It’s the spring figures that matter for water supplies and for providing moisture for forests and wildlife. The previous record low snowpack in CA for early April was 25% of normal, this year it was at 5%: http://www.weather.com/climate-weather/drought/news/california-sierra-snowpack-record-low-april-2015
Meanwhile, the ski season of ’14-’15 in New England chalked up another banner year. It started off slow, but ended with a bang, and a late start to Spring meant that skiers could ski well into April. Great maple syrup season as well.
If the planet is about to abruptly cool due to the abrupt change in the sun, then never ending media announcements of future warming, the end of snowfall in winter, rising oceans, and so on is silly, pointless propaganda.
Talk does not change reality, it just goes on and on, until there is a significant observational change that cannot be ignored that breaks the paradigm.
P.S. It is a fact that there has been an abrupt slowdown change (fastest rate of change of solar parameters in ‘recorded’ history) to the solar cycle. The media and the scientific community appear to be waiting until there is unexplained abrupt cooling of the planet which cannot be ignored and that will require an explanation, at which time they will be forced to discuss the abrupt change to the sun.
We have all assumed that the cult of CAGW’s greenhouse gas theory/mechanism is correct and that their GCMs (general circulation models) are incorrect as they amplify (positive feedback) the CO2 forcing and the planet in fact resists (negative feedback) the forcing (Sensitivity issue).
Observations and analyses supports the assertion (Highest Antarctic sea ice for every month of year in recorded history starting in 2012, 18 years without warming, the latitudinal warming paradox, and the no tropical troposphere hot spot for example) that there are multiple fundamental errors in the basic greenhouse gas theory/climate modeling assumptions, in addition to the fact that the planet resists rather than amplifies forcing changes.
It is a fact that greenhouse gases increase the efficiency of convection cooling in the troposphere. That does not mean there is no greenhouse effect, it means the greenhouse effect saturates/is limited by the greenhouse gases’ effect on the lapse rate in the troposphere.
If the lapse rate in the troposphere increases due to additional CO2 or any other greenhouse gas (as opposed to the IPCC’s assumption that greenhouse gases have no effect on the lapse rate which is physically impossible) then the temperature rise due to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 is roughly 0.1C to 0.2C, not 3C to 7C as ‘estimated’ by the IPCC.
I would highly recommend a read through of Kimoto’s AGW calculation issue summary and Kimoto’s peer reviewed paper of the errors in the Plank constant.
William: Hat’s off to Hockey Stick. This is mainstream science, clear discussion of the central AGW scientific issues.
Kimoto provides a detail explanation of what were the assumptions in the most ‘influential’ AGW paper of all time which is the basis of the entire cult of CAGW. If the assumptions in the most influential AGW paper of all time are incorrect, there is no AGW problem to solve.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.ca/2015/07/collapse-of-agw-theory-of-ipcc-most.html
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B74u5vgGLaWoOEJhcUZBNzFBd3M/view?pli=1
Peer Reviewed paper same author.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B74u5vgGLaWoM3FwR3VQR21uU2M/view?pli=1
“We have all assumed that the cult of CAGW’s greenhouse gas theory/mechanism is correct and that their GCMs (general circulation models) are incorrect as they amplify (positive feedback) the CO2 forcing and the planet in fact resists (negative feedback) the forcing (Sensitivity issue).”
I for one never assumed anything.
I didn’t know that Australia had “alps”. Learn something new every day; even more when I read this website!
Don’t get too excited. Their highest peak is a shade over 2000 mtr.
I thought Ayer’s Rock was about the only topography of note on the entire continent!
Except for that little hill Mad Max used to spy on the Oil Well People.
Ayer’s Rock is more like a very big stone stuck in sandy mud.
The biggest difference between the warmist and skeptic blogs is the amount of learning from others that can be achieved when all are allowed to civilly comment. My perspective widens constantly on most everything from exposure to all these fine minds. I’ve even begun to see changes in the perspectives of some of those who come to belittle us for our “politically incorrect” science.
Actually, there are alps all over. Japan has ’em, so does California (Trinity Alps), and the word has an interesting etymology and toponymy, for those who like $5 words.
CLIMATIC THRESHOLDS -needs to be brought out and is not being addressed. The question is will any climatic thresholds be reached? Answer is unknown at present.
CLIMATIC THRESHOLDS – which AGW apparently does not embrace, because the forecast they have put forth through their useless models have not only predicted a warming trend from now to 2100 but they have predicted it to be gradual, and steady. This is not how the climate changes. Rather when the climate changes, Ice Core data CLEARLY shows it is in a step fashion not gradual. In other words the climate does not transition into another climate regime in a gradual fashion but in a step fashion.
The upshot of all of this is what I say below which is the essence of how the climate changes which does not seem to be comprehended by mainstream climatologist which is par for the course.
My statement below is most important.
Climatic Thresholds are always present in the climate system and slight differences in the degree of magnitude change /duration of time in the item or items causing the climate forcing could make the difference between a climatic threshold in the climate system being brought about or not ,which in turn will make all the difference in the world of the x climate out come.
This is why AGW enthusiast, the climate changes in a STEP fashion not gradually.
As I have said we have a convergence of climatic items which are phasing together which eventually are going to bring the climate into a cooler regime in a step like down turn (when /if thresholds are reached ) superimposed likely upon a jig/saw up and down temperature trend in the meantime (with or with out thresholds being met) with a down bias.
These climatic items which are showing a convergence to bring the climate to a colder trend are as follows:
Solar Variability- weakening.
Geo Magnetic Field – weakening.
Milankovitch Cycles – on balance more favorable for cooling in contrast to 8000 years ago.
Land/Ocean Arrangements remaining highly favorable for cooling.
Ice Dynamic- S.H. could become favorable for cooling.
The above is the big picture in the climate dynamic.
For the refined picture of the climate dynamic one has to look at earth intrinsic climatic items, which on balance should favor cooling with the ones listed below having ample evidence of being moderated by prolonged solar activity . If the following are indeed moderated by solar activity this will make the case for cooling due to prolonged minimum solar conditions much stronger and much more likely.
Clouds increasing.
Volcanic Activity increasing.
Meridional Atmospheric Circulation trend increasing.
CLIMATIC THRESHOLDS -needs to be brought out and is not being addressed. The question is will any climatic thresholds be reached? Answer is unknown at present.
CLIMATIC THRESHOLDS – which AGW apparently does not embrace, because the forecast they have put forth through their useless models have not only predicted a warming trend from now to 2100 but they have predicted it to be gradual, and steady. This is not how the climate changes. Rather when the climate changes, Ice Core data CLEARLY shows it is in a step fashion not gradual. In other words the climate does not transition into another climate regime in a gradual fashion but in a step fashion.
The upshot of all of this is what I say below which is the essence of how the climate changes which does not seem to be comprehended by mainstream climatologist which is par for the course.
My statement below is most important.
Climatic Thresholds are always present in the climate system and slight differences in the degree of magnitude change /duration of time in the item or items causing the climate forcing could make the difference between a climatic threshold in the climate system being brought about or not ,which in turn will make all the difference in the world of the x climate out come.
This is why AGW enthusiast, the climate changes in a STEP fashion not gradually.
As I have said we have a convergence of climatic items which are phasing together which eventually are going to bring the climate into a cooler regime in a step like down turn (when /if thresholds are reached ) superimposed likely upon a jig/saw up and down temperature trend in the meantime (with or with out thresholds being met) with a slightly down bias.
These climatic items which are showing a convergence to bring the climate to a colder trend are as follows:
Solar Variability- weakening.
Geo Magnetic Field – weakening.
Milankovitch Cycles – on balance more favorable for cooling in contrast to 8000 years ago.
Land/Ocean Arrangements remaining highly favorable for cooling.
Ice Dynamic- S.H. could become favorable for cooling.
The above is the big picture in the climate dynamic.
For the refined picture of the climate dynamic one has to look at earth intrinsic climatic items.
Which on balance should favor cooling some being moderated by prolonged solar activity . If the following are indeed moderated by solar activity this will make the case for cooling due to prolonged minimum solar conditions much stronger and much more likely.
Clouds increasing.
Volcanic Activity increasing.
Meridional Atmospheric Circulation trend increasing.
From Warwick Hughes website, 3 years ago.
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=1907
Very nice photos of snow in Australia from a couple days ago:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3164576/Let-SNOW-Australia-wakes-wintery-blanket-white-stuff-vaguely-cold-Sunshine-State-gets-dusting.html
I shall have to remember that the end of snow is upon us this winter while I shovel and snowblow more of the stuff out of the driveway.
Empirical evidence trumps computer models every time.
The author should be more skeptical of media news reports. There is no new study predicting snow levels in the Australian Alps, Dr. Pickering coauthored a 2011 study on adaptation for the National Climate Change
Adaptation Research Facility (NCCARF). Source predictions were from a 2008 study in Climate Research
David Sanger
Oh, so the Australian media is serving up freezer burned leftovers, because their “global warming cooker” is broken.
I think I’ll go with high carb Chinese take out
thanks michael
Always better to seek out the original sources rather than go with exaggerated newspaper (or blog ) headlines…
Ah but Dave the blog post by Eric Worrall was focused on the news story, not the staleness of the studies.
Besides Eric may have been a little out of sorts when he wrote it. Did you see ” my pet spider dropped dead from the cold…” Myself I’m lighting a candle for the poor thing..
Have a good nite
michael
Yeah. Boston was told it would be snow free also.
In the context of CAGW, “Man-made Climate Change” or “end of snow”, if I may paraphrase Freud, “Sometimes a drought is just a drought.”
Just one important precipitation question that I have not yet personally researched.
Can anybody help me with this?
Here in the UK we can look at rainfall averages over the last century and a half, all very methodically and reliably recorded and represented by Met Office graphs. And in most places and for the total for the UK overall, you will see little notable change in rainfall averages as the decades advance.
However, the Met Office seem to have run the rainfall data through a food processor and come up with the idea that the rain is now falling in a more extreme manner. i.e. whilst there is not significantly more rain in total, it is claimed that it is somehow managing to all arrive in sudden bursts.
Has anyone looked into how they contrived to discover this remarkable phenomenon?
Is it an artifact of the analysis or changes in the methodology of rainfall recording?
For example, could it be a phenomenon that results from an increase in the sampling frequency?
Any suggestions?
I have heard the same thing in Canada but how would we know? Our frequency/intensity graphs don’t go back far enough to say and statistical methods are used to guess at what to use for storm flow design. A reasonable approach. Now, I have been out of the business of looking at those graphs for a long time. I wonder if radar can give us better indications of local storm intensity? One thing we can verify though is the results of precipitation events through stream flow gauges. Somewhere, in some environmental department, there must be a correlation study of some sort. Tons of variables of course.
Thanks. I considered a similar thing. As an ad hoc approach to the question, along the lines that you have suggested, here we have the flood levels in a channel in Worcester. Pretty evenly distributed by dates and levels. A scatterplot of sorts. So no support for the extreme rainfall thesis here:
http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/803162
Google met office weather blog and you will go to a blog where there are various articles and the provision to ask questions.they are pretty good at responding although other bloggers may also chip in
Tonyb
Thanks. I’ll do some digging!!
Only casually, but my hypothesis is that the UKMO is now using Doppler radar measurements because rain gauges don’t cope with small scale precipitation events because there is simply not enough coverage. I also hypothesise that the Doppler radar exaggerates precipitation rates at the surface in some instances partly because the it takes no account of evaporation whilst the rain is falling. Eg rain may be falling from a cloud but not reach the ground (virga). I’m not sure whether rainfall rates from Doppler radar measurements have been validated.
They just cannot help themselves. Remind me again what the definition of insanity is again?
Tommy Boy
Sorry about the second “again”. Doh!!
[But the definition of insanity is doing something again again, right? .mod]
No problem. Sometimes people don’t hear the first time.
Maybe you expected a different result.