Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Climate scientists struggling to reconcile model predictions of the end of snow with the observed abundance of white stuff have come up with a way to predict more and less snow at the same time.
With climate change, Washington may have entered era of more blockbuster snowstorms but less snow overall
By Andrew Freedman
November 26A largely deserted Connecticut Avenue around Dupont Circle during the beginning of the Snowzilla storm on Jan. 22, 2016, in Washington. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post/For The Washington Post)By Andrew FreedmanNovember 26
As Washington’s winter climate has warmed several degrees over the past 120 years, average snowfall has declined by about half a foot, from roughly 21 inches to 15 inches. Yet recent decades have also featured several of the biggest snowstorms the city has ever recorded.
Snowfall trends in Washington, as well as other East Coast cities, are leading scientists to this conclusion: Global warming, while eating away at some snow events, may paradoxically be contributing to an uptick in big East Coast snowstorms.
…
Judah Cohen, a meteorologist at AER, a Verisk Analytics company, has published multiple studies that link changing snowfall trends in the eastern United States to change in the Arctic. His research shows that the loss of Arctic sea ice is contributing to an increase in fall snowfall in parts of Siberia. This is, in turn, having an influence on weather across the Arctic, extending high into the atmosphere above the vast region, favoring weather patterns that tend to direct Arctic air into the Lower 48 states.
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“Arctic change favors more disruptions of the polar vortex,” Cohen said, noting that he is somewhat lonely in that view. He sees polar vortex splits as a prerequisite to blockbuster East Coast snowstorms.
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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/11/26/with-climate-change-washington-may-have-entered-era-more-blockbuster-snowstorms-less-snow-overall/
Let’s hope global warming is halted in time to prevent the East Coast from being buried under a permanent snowpack.
Current northern hemisphere snow mass (excluding mountains) is above 30-year average.
You have to keep in mind that this not the snow we are familiar with, oh no. This is man-made CO2 enhanced snow, therefore not constrained to the laws of physics.
Snow acidification?
Is that why it melts?
There is the matter that around or shortly after 1998 there was a change in how snowfall measurement at most airports was done for weather records. Before the change, snowfall measurements at airports was done by government employees according to two methods. One method was more appropriate for weather records, the other was more appropriate for aviation needs. When the two methods give different results, the “aviation method” usually indicates more snow than the “climatological record”.
The change of around 1998 involved the trend of contracting out government jobs that started when Reagan was President. The job of snowfall measurements at airports was shifted to private contractors, and their snow measurement points are allowed to be up to 2 miles from the airport’s weather station. And the contractors are only paid to measure snowfall according to the “aviation method”. This led to a notable snowfall record at Baltimore Washington International Airport set by the February 5-6 2010 “Snowmageddon” storm being adjusted downward by the National Climate Data Center, and post-1998 snow records being called into question.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/28/bwi-snow-record-rescinded-another-reason-why-airports-arent-the-best-place-to-measure-climate-data/
http://web.archive.org/web/20140818115230/http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2010-02-20/news/bal-md.measurement20feb20_1_bwi-thurgood-marshall-airport-climatological-data-national-climatic-data-center
Well, it was inevitable that the publication mill in climate science would start to run out of combinations of “nonsense with a model prediction” for fun and tenure. Next up is more snow on Tuesdays but not Wednesdays.
Mean meanwhile, whatever it’s called, I’m sending my Thanksgiving guests home a day early.
As they say, “Fish and relatives stink after 3 days.” In the latter case, sometimes sooner.
There’s also the Theory of Relativity: Time slows down the more relatives there are in your house. If you get enough relatives, time actually stops.
This gem from the Australian re qld floods
“At a policy level, it was a perfect storm. The Queensland government-owned dam’s operators, or engineers, were at its epicentre. There was growing hysteria before January 2011 because bureaucrats and politicians had heeded the alarmist predictions of climate warriors that floods were unlikely to trouble Australia in future. Tim Flannery’s dire warning that “even the rain that falls isn’t going to fill our dams and river systems” was followed by a drought that blighted Queensland.
Alarmism and dropping dam and reservoir levels must have influenced the way dam engineers were managing releases. Politicians wanted engineers to store water, not “fritter it away” with releases that might be called wasteful. But throughout 2010, the weather changed as a La Nina effect with heavy rainfall overwhelmed the drought-causing El Nino. While the weather had changed fundamentally and Queensland’s catchments were saturated, the politicians, bureaucrats and dam operators were stuck in the past. They still wanted the state’s dams to be storing, not flood-mitigating.”
Where is Tim Flannery??
Here’s the thread on this topic on JoNova’s (Australian) site:
http://joannenova.com.au/2019/11/class-action-win-2011-floods-were-man-made-seemingly-managed-as-if-the-dams-would-never-fill/
Remember this one:
The Polar Vortex Explained in 2 Minutes
The odds are that what we can expect as a result of global warming is to see more
of this pattern of extreme cold. – – – Dr. John Holdren, The White House – 1/8/2014
I think it was Hansen that said not long ago that a drop in temperatures for a decade or so would not nullfy the CAGW (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming) conjecture. He’s covering his bets so he can be right no matter which way the temperatures go.
Skeptic of the future: “It’s been cooling for over a decade now, James”. James: “I know. I predicted it.”
Putting on my snowboard now in Winter Park CO, we are supposed to get a lot of global warming today, Hopefully a foot or so!!!
I suspect this may be a UHI effect (if it is even real): smaller/less extreme storms don’t get through the Urban Heat Island temperature elevation; snow melts before it hits the ground or clears off sooner, leaving less accumulation, but the big bruiser storms get through and dump.
I suspect cherries being picked. Washington, DC is known for cherry blossoms.
reading the entrails of chickens has more predictive power than these “scientists” studies …
And rolling dice would have more predictive power than reading chicken entrails. So really, these “scientists” are like the anus of science that can only produce crap.
I love that line, as in “Good news, you’re getting a several percentage (1.2%) pay raise!”
Or, do they mean that in the sense that it warmed several degrees since sunrise…each day for the past 120 years?
Here’s Judah’s blog from the 25th:
https://www.aer.com/science-research/climate-weather/arctic-oscillation/
He says he’s going to post an update on the 29th, today.
I’m a Klimate sientist and I predict more BS and less truth from the MSM and the so called climate science community.
There has been a big decline in Northern Hemisphere snow cover extent in spring and summer, centered on the month of June.
https://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_anom.php?ui_set=1&ui_region=nhland&ui_month=6
That’s when days are longest and the sun is most direct – meaning snow is able to reflect more light then than compared to other months. Conversely, the lack of snow allows more energy to be absorbed. The exposed earth warms faster, forests and brush dry out sooner.
Interesting chart. As you progress through the months you will discover a big shift in the amount of snow that falls in the winter compared to the amount of snow that remains in the summer. This shift appears to begin in August.
A restatement of my post is in order: Since this chart demonstrated snow cover anomalies it should read “As you progress through the months you will discover a big shift in the amount of snow cover anomalies during the winter months as compared to the snow cover anomalies during the summer months. This shift appears to begin in August.”
@Marv
Tbe restatement was important. Snow depth, snow/water equivalent, snow cover extent and total snowfall are all independent variables, often tracking in different directions.
“may paradoxically be contributing to an uptick in big East Coast snowstorms.”
It’s either a paradox or a lie. I’m going with lie.
The winter polar vortex develops in the stratosphere, its pattern depends only on the direction of ozone inflow on the polar circle. This gives a temperature difference that creates a stream current.
Does anyone really think the ‘heads you lose , tails I win ‘ is an scientific approach?
rain is dry air that’s just really happy to meet you and breaks into tears.
I certainly enjoy the weather in New England. Nothing like being at ground zero for every major weather pattern which traverses the CONUS and then meets up with it’s Northern counterpart.
Snow forecast (ECMWF) for Southern VT – 13.8 inches by 12/3
https://www.windy.com/-New-snow-snowAccu?snowAccu,44.092,-74.416,7,m:eQKad7N
Detailed CrankyWx Forecast:
http://www.stormhamster.com/entry2/e112319.htm
“May”; the magical word that allows fools like Freedman and Cohen to proclaim fallacies and falsehoods while pretending they “may” have relevance.
All these falsehoods coming out at the same time…
Smells like another major propaganda push to support the nonsense in Spain.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology plays this game also. Faced with an obvious down trend in frequency and severity of tropical cyclones http://www.bom.gov.au/cyclone/climatology/trends.shtml the BOM narrative is now that cyclones will now be less frequent but more intense. A safe bet I guess as the another big one sooner or later is pretty inevitable and then they are able to to say we told you so.
No matter what happens the cause is AGW and reality and logic will be contorted until a “proof” is arrived at.
Missed it by just …that much.
@ATheoK
You proclaim it is a fallacy and falsehood that global warming “may paradoxically be contributing to an uptick in big East Coast snowstorms”
Is this something you have studied? Please show the evidence that supports your proclamation.
Dear Professor Snape-san:
I suggest you discuss your concerns with Wizard Dumbledore during Hogwarts’ next staff meeting…
Good advice, Samurai. My guess is Theo knows almost nothing about the subject he commented on.
Snape November 30, 2019 at 12:52 am
[ Your ] GUESS [ Theo knows almost nothing about the subject he commented on]
is as valuable as infos about bicycles collapsing in China.
The article claims that over the last 120 years, “average snowfall (in Washington) has declined by about half a foot, from roughly 21 inches to 15 inches. ” Is there anything in that? Are there any figures to show that in Washington, at least, that is not the case?
This sounds like a winter version of “more hurricanes and if there are not, then bigger ones”