From the Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past department and the Finnish Meteorological Institute comes this press release today.
Exceptionally large amount of winter snow in Northern Hemisphere this year
The new Arctic Now product developed by the Finnish Meteorological Institute shows with one picture the extent of the area in the Northern Hemisphere currently covered by ice and snow. This kind of information, which shows the accurate state of the Arctic, becomes increasingly important due to climate change. The Arctic region will be discussed at the Arctic Meteorological Week which begins in Levi next week.
In the Northern Hemisphere the maximum seasonal snow cover occurs in March. “This year has been a year with an exceptionally large amount of snow, when examining the entire Northern Hemisphere. The variation from one year to another has been somewhat great, and especially in the most recent years the differences between winters have been very great”, says Kari Luojus, Senior Research Scientist at the Finnish Meteorological Institute.
The information has been gleaned from the Arctic Now service of the Finnish Meteorological Institute, which is unique even on a global scale. The greatest difference compared with other comparable services is that traditionally they only tell about the extent of the ice or snow situation.
“Here at the Finnish Meteorological Institute we have managed to combine data to form a single image. In this way we can get a better situational picture of the cryosphere – that is, the cold areas of the Northern Hemisphere”, Research Professor Jouni Pulliainen observes.
In addition to the coverage, the picture includes the water value of the snow, which determines the water contained in the snow. This is important information for drafting hydrological forecasts on the flood situation and in monitoring the state of climate and environment in general.
Total amount of snow declines and snow starts to melt earlier
Information on the amount of snow is also sent to the Global Cryosphere Watch service of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMP) where the information is combined with trends and statistics of past years. Lengthy series of observation times show that the total amount of snow in the Northern Hemisphere has declined in the spring period and that the melting of the snow has started earlier in the same period. Examination over a longer period (1980-2017) shows that the total amount of snow in all winter periods has decreased on average.
Also, the ice cover on the Arctic Ocean has grown thinner and the amount and expanse of perennial ice has decreased. Before 2000 the smallest expanse of sea ice varied between 6.2 and 7.9 million square kilometres. In the past ten years the expanse of ice has varied from 5.4 to 3.6 million square kilometres. Extreme weather phenomena – winters in which snowfall is sometimes quite heavy, and others with little snow, will increase in the future.
When it was freezing cold in Finland, it was exceptionally warm at the North Pole
The Arctic area is warming at twice the speed as the rest of the world, and the impact of climate change can already be seen at the moment in the Arctic regions. On the other hand, the changes are affecting the rest of the earth.
“What happens in the Arctic regions does not stay in the Arctic regions. It also affects a wider area. The exceptional strengthening of a high-pressure area in Siberia, which brought freezing temperatures to Finland in late February and early March, may be partly the result of atmospheric warming over the Arctic Ocean. When it is exceptionally cold somewhere in the world, it is often exceptionally warm somewhere else. This is what happened in the end of February-early March when temperatures in the North Pole were around zero degrees Celsius and it was exceptionally cold in Europe”, explains Ari Laaksonen, Scientific Director at the Finnish Meteorological Institute.
The weather fluctuates from one year to another and individual cold snaps in the Arctic area are not, as such, proof of the progression of climate change. “However, they are a reminder of how climate uncertainty has increased and that we’ll have to get use to variations in the weather as the climate change proceeds”, Laaksonen observes.
Looking at US data from NOAA’s MASIE product says the same thing:
Ditto for Rutgers Snow Lab data:
This winter is not over yet. The windy.com forecast for North Africa over the next nine days has snowfall for the Moroccan Atlas starting on Friday 16th, followed by rain for Algeria. A low pressure system develops over the Sahara by 21st March, with the Algerian district of Ghardaia and the southern Tunisian city of Gabes both receiving rain on Friday 23rd March.
The reporting seems to be contradictory. More snow but less snow? Often a deep freeze in North America means a mild session in Europe or elsewhere in the NH. In this past winter it was cold in NA, EU and across Asia, and it reached southern US and southern Morocco. Sharks froze to death offshore Boston, Gulf turtles had to be rescued when they slipped into hypothermia induced hibernation. Antarctica is recovering strongly from a big El Nino 2016/17 (We even had another Ship of Fools incident and this on an island at the northern end of the West Antarctica Peninsula – a fact that corrupted journalists were too embarrassed to report). The Arctic, too, seems to be rebounding from the Super Enso induced warming of a year ago.
Gary Pearse March 14, 2018 at 5:28 pm
Antarctica is recovering strongly from a big El Nino 2016/17 (We even had another Ship of Fools incident and this on an island at the northern end of the West Antarctica Peninsula – a fact that corrupted journalists were too embarrassed to report).
This seems to have been widely reported in the press. ABCNews, The Guardian, NBCNews, The Independent, BBC etc.
I repeat, that is not snow.
Snow is a thing of the past.
Wiped away by C.A.G.W.
By order of UN Team IPCC.
Those multiple feet of white frozen water droplets are symptoms of Global Warming.
All across the Northern Hemisphere we unite to measure this rare item.
Global Warming measured in feet not inches.
After a few days of 50F here at 48N (I can almost see my driveway!) it’s forecast to snow again tonight and tomorrow.
Very tired of shoveling CAGW…
“An “Exceptionally large amount of winter snow in Northern Hemisphere this year”
Yea, this truck driver knows. Drove through Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, NY and Erie, PA the last two days. Woke up at 03:00 Wed. morning to the sound of a snow plow working the lot I was parked in at Rochester, then later that morning driving home got caught in a back up due to a big truck that had lost it about 10 miles east of Erie on I-90. Did not look like it turned out well for the driver since the tractor was torn completely in half between the cab and the sleeper. Used two gallons of washer fluid in two days but I’ve used more at different times in the past.
Can we use your gallons of washer fluid as proxy for feet of snow, RAH?
No, because it depends to a large extent on traffic and on the amount and type of treatment being used on the roads. The worst was a 947 mi trip to Ayre, MA a couple years ago. I used 4 gallons one way on that trip. Yesterday I busted an inch of frozen slush off my license plate (on the front down low) that accumulated in just the 72 miles between my first pick up in Rochester and my second in Tonawanda (Near north side of Buffalo). Defroster fan and heat on 100% with window cracked to keep from burning up and mirror heat on. Had to stop once to clean my side windows and mirrors. My recently washed shiny red truck is now a salt streaked mess.
Pretty sure the truck that crashed had a fairly new driver. NY pretreats the I-90 toll road. PA apparently didn’t pretreat and the Erie, PA area is almost always the worst along I-90 up there during the winter. PENDOT does a consistently bad job up there IMO and that is based on a heck of a lot of runs back and forth along that piece of road over the years. My guess is the driver failed to slow down for the deteriorating road conditions once he crossed from NY to PA. I never topped 50 mph along there until I got to the I-79 interchange where conditions improved considerably and continued to do so until by the time I got to the Ohio line the road was clear and dry.
There is one pixel of snow free area in Manitoba, Canada. I would like to know where, cause it’s damn cold and snowy in Winnipeg!!
The FMI is partially corrupted by Warmists. But, as I have mentioned before, it’s pages in Finnish are different than those in English. The reason is apparently that they can not lie (too much…)to the Finnish people, it would be highly illegal. So, if someone wants to see that the Arctic has not warmed twice the rest of the globe, try Google “Ilmatieteen Laitos” (FMI), there “ilmasto” (climate), then “vuositilastot” (yearly data) ,and there “vuosikeskilämpötilat Helsingissä ja Sodankylässä” (yearly average temperatures in Helsinki and Sodankylä) graph.Sodankylä is as “Arctic” as can be. Most of the Arctic is the same story…
Timo
Thank you for the advice. One of the superb features of Google Translate is that it will translate URLs.
Following your instructions here is the page for vuosikeskilämpötilat Helsingissä ja Sodankylässä
As you say this page is different to the English translation for the vuositilastot page provided by the website.
However, they are a reminder of how climate uncertainty has increased, and interesting confession given the amount of computing power they now have and right in-line with the reality that still cannot give a weather forecast worth a dam for more than 72 hours ahead .
And this is ‘settled science ‘
“Also, the ice cover on the Arctic Ocean has grown thinner”
This is “models all the way down”. There is only a single series of ice thickness data based on actual measurements, and it shows no discernable trend:
http://www.cpom.ucl.ac.uk/csopr/sidata/thk_ts_0.large.png?version=1
This from NASA:-
A Dusting of White in the Sahara 8 Jan 2018
Yep winter’s still happening, so obviously man made climate change must be a myth.
I wonder if Morocco’s agriculture is heading for a good harvest this year?
Worldview daily animation of Morocco for 1 – 18 March 2000
compared with –
Worldview daily animation of Morocco for 1 – 18 March 2018
It’s an ill wind that blows no one any good.