Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The recent Mothers Day Freeze which smashed cold records across the Midwest, East and South has not deterred Northern Illinois University from making an end of snow prediction.
Climate change could dramatically reduce U.S. snowstorms
by Northern Illinois University
MAY 26, 2020A new study led by Northern Illinois University scientists suggests American winters late this century could experience significant decreases in the frequency, intensity and size of snowstorms.
Under an unabated greenhouse gas emissions scenario, the study projects 28% fewer snowstorms on average per year over central and eastern portions of North America by the century’s last decade, with one-third the amount of snow or frozen precipitation and a 38% loss in average snowstorm size.
“If we do little to mitigate climate change, the winter season will lose much of its punch in the future,” said Walker Ashley, an NIU professor of meteorology and lead author of the study, published today (May 25) in Nature Climate Change.
“The snow season will start later and end earlier,” Ashley said. “Generally, what we consider an abnormally mild winter now, in terms of the number and intensity of snowstorms, will be the harshest of winters late this century. There will be fewer snowstorms, less overall precipitation that falls as snow and almost a complete removal of snow events in the southern tier of the United States.“
…
The study is believed to be the first to objectively identify and track individual snowstorm projections of the distant future—from minor snow accumulations, to average winter storms, to crippling blizzards.
…
Read more: https://phys.org/news/2020-05-climate-snowstorms.html
The abstract of the study;
Reduced frequency and size of late-twenty-first-century snowstorms over North America
Walker S. Ashley, Alex M. Haberlie & Vittorio A. Gensini
Nature Climate Change (2020) Cite this article
Understanding how snowstorms may change in the future is critical for estimating impacts on water resources and the Earth and socioeconomic systems that depend on them. Here we use snowstorms as a marker to assess the mesoscale fingerprint of climate change, providing a description of potential changes in winter weather event occurrence, character and variability in central and eastern North America under a high anthropogenic emissions pathway. Snowstorms are segmented and tracked using high-resolution, snow water equivalent output from dynamically downscaled simulations which, unlike global climate models, can resolve important mesoscale features such as banded snow. Significant decreases are found in the frequency and size of snowstorms in a pseudo-global warming simulation, including those events that produce the most extreme snowfall accumulations. Early and late boreal winter months show particularly robust proportional decreases in snowstorms and snow water equivalent accumulations.
Read more (paywalled): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-0774-4
Climate alarmists just can’t seem to help themselves. Their most extreme models might hindcast absurdity, but climate alarmists choose to believe in their models anyway, so they follow where their models lead.
Great news.
New student housing can be built to Tennessee building codes. No need for expensive insulation and heating.
Or don’t you trust your own models?
and people wonder why I ask for the data
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/may/28/questions-raised-over-hydroxychloroquine-study-which-caused-who-to-halt-trials-for-covid-19
As a graduate of NIU more than 50 years ago and still living in the area, all can say is this is just another indication of how far NIU has gone down the sewer. On campus enrollment has dropped from 25,000 in 2008 to 17000 in 2019, and with good reason. It is becoming increasing dangerous to be on campus at night and the quality of professors has plummeted. They recently got rid of a president who was involved in scandalous activities. Another reason I no longer donate a dime. My prediction is that NIU may not exist in 10 years.
I got my MS at NIU in ’76. My things have changed. It is a different quality from then it seems.
I predict the end of dire CAGW projections….
We’re about to go through at least 30-years of global cooling when CO2 emissions will be at record levels showing once and for all CO2 is NOT the climate control knob:
1) Strong La Niña cycle developing (2 years of global cooling)
2) Atlantic entering its 30-year cool cycle (30 years global cooling)
3) Southern Ocean cooling (indeterminate global cooling)
4) Pacific will soon enter its 30-year cool cycle (30-years global cooling)
5) 50-year Grand Solar Minimum just started (perhaps 50-years of global cooling):
BTW, the total lack of studies on the expanding North Atlantic Cold Blob (my name for it) is indicative of why CAGW is still a thing…
“ Under an unabated greenhouse gas emissions scenario, . . .”
Interestingly, today I read “The U. S. consumed more renewable energy than coal last year for the first time since 1885, . . . ”
Steven, @ur momisugly 4:14 says “it is a scenario” { in CAPS}
So:
Theory “snow be gone at some time in the future after I’m no longer around to be held accountable for my prediction”
Data
Northern Hemisphere snow is at the same level it was from 1967 to 2007 following an 11 year period where it was elevated….
“Interestingly, today I read “The U. S. consumed more renewable energy than coal last year for the first time since 1885, . . . ””
As the rules don’t consider Hydro as renewables that would be bollocks….
https://www.statista.com/statistics/203325/us–energy-consumption-by-source/
“The snow season will start later and end earlier,” Ashley said. “Generally, what we consider an abnormally mild winter now, in terms of the number and intensity of snowstorms, will be the harshest of winters late this century. There will be fewer snowstorms, less overall precipitation that falls as snow and almost a complete removal of snow events in the southern tier of the United States.“ – article
Do these idiots ever go outside at all? Perhaps he can explain why it snowed on Hallowe’en last year (I have photos with dated files, as always) and why it snowed at the end of April this year (photos!) and why it’s been so cold that the trees didn’t start to leaf out until mid-May, and even then, it was a mingy process. Maybe they can explain why there was still thick snow on the ground 30 miles north of me in Wisconsin, and why the lake at the IL-WI state line 8 miles north of me still had a major ice sheet sitting on it in late March. It confuses the geese and ducks, too, never mind whatever fish there are.
Frankly, I wouldn’t take their word for anything. They are completely out of touch with reality. Maybe about 20 pounds of reality sitting on each of their vehicles would do the trick?
“Do these idiots ever go outside at all? Perhaps he can explain why it snowed on Hallowe’en last year (I have photos with dated files, as always) and why it snowed at the end of April this year (photos!) and why it’s been so cold that the trees didn’t start to leaf out until mid-May, and even then, it was a mingy process.”
What has this comment pertaining to your recent local weather to do with a projection of …..
” …… what we consider an abnormally mild winter now, in terms of the number and intensity of snowstorms, will be the harshest of winters late this century.” ?
Answer, well actually nothing.
Well actually everything, your graphs are 10 years out of date, try the unbiased upto date data.
I repeat.
Actually no.
Your graph is of snow mass (related to warmth of atmosphere carrying more WV, hence snowfall in winter).
The Globe is warming.
Sorry it just is … even Spencer’s outlier warm atmospheric temp series shows it.
And the graph is for the whole winter.
As the article says ….
“The snow season will start later and end earlier,”
As in Autumn and Spring seeing decreases.
And this is an up to date graph of snow extent in NH Spring……
https://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_seasonal.php?ui_set=nhland&ui_season=2
Why did you not reproduce this from the same sourcehttps://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_seasonal.php?ui_set=namgnld&ui_season=4
So a year on year increase of snow ,if you care to look at the autumn data the same again snow increase,this completely contradicts your ridiculous claim , Spencer’s sat data shows a warming over 40 years of 0.38c that is not what you global warmests predicted, nor is it any sign of global warming it’s natural variation, if it was not for the two el Nino events ,1998,2016 there would be no warming at all, there is no linear rise in temperature in Spencer’s data, it shows the cyclical nature of temperature, of course you warmests scaremonger people by saying there is a linear rise when no such thing is happening,
Perhaps you dont understand how significant this graph is
The 30 mean average has been significantly overtaken with NH snow
Of course you dont like it, your prayer book says you cant like it, how many people have you not convinced today.
It is true that autumn snow extent is increasing. You will probably laugh but that too is due to warming …. the more open Arctic waters at the start of the freezing season are injecting more moisture into the atmosphere in high latitudes. There is a particularly noted increase over Eurasia, which cools rapidly at that time inducing a more rapid westward spread of snow cover.
At the moment the two trends at opposite ends of the winter are balancing out BUT as I said in my first post, the paper here is projecting to the end of the century and to attack it due to …..
“Do these idiots ever go outside at all?” (Sara).
Is typical of ignorant dismissive comments to be seen on here every thread.
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-spring-snow-cover
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0034425717300342
“Highlights
•
A long-term snow cover extent (SCE) is produced using satellite optical sensors.
•
The SCE in northern hemisphere (NH) exhibits decreasing trends in all seasons.
•
The negative long-term trends of SCE reveal recent shrinkage of snow cover in NH.
•
Snow cover duration (SCD) exhibits geographically asymmetric trends in NH.
•
SCD in western Eurasia has shortened up to two months over the past three decades.”
UAH (V6.?) is by far the coolest outlier of all the global temperatures series.
Missing as it does nocturnal warming at the surface under low level inversions…..
The globe is warming.
Spring snow extent is decreasing – to be followed by autumn extent later this century.
As this paper is saying.
Oh, and “belief” lies with those that deny science, as science works via repeated observation…. IE facts (or as close we will ever get to an agreement of them).
Have your own beliefs, by all means.
But not your own facts.
Do you not understand the bizarreness of accusing science of being a belief system (prayer book) when the whole MO of WUWT lies with climate (no ALL Earth) scientists of being corrupt and/or incompetent.
No, the logic lies with them knowing more than you and all those that get their “science” from ideologically motivated Blogs.
Oh, and finally …
If you say so.
As it matters not a jot to the science to what you or I think, and certainly not what is written on this Blog.
Your really not that bright are you ,first you try to mislead fourm readers that snow is decreasing ,then we see autumn and winter snow is increasing ,you admit to autumn yet you fail to acknowledge winter snow increase,from the same source ,so you paint a biased untruthful representation of NH snow cover.
The next thing you did to deceive was not reply to my post directly just post to the thread, unfortunately for you every post is forwarded to participants.
Do you know why it snows during a ice age ,because even if the land is frozen the oceans still evaporate hence more snow and packed snow turning to ice ,which realy nullifys your statement of global warming causing more snow, the lower atmosphere temp has dropped since 2016 did you manage to work that one out from UAHv6 , so bring it on global warmest the opportunity to spell out simple atmospherics to clueless brainwashed people like you is why were all here, how many is that you have not convinced today.
Heres the winter snow fall graph from your source the one you failed to acknowledge
https://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_seasonal.php?ui_set=namgnld&ui_season=1
Actually, Anthony, is has A LOT to do with it. The length of the snow season from the first snowfall in late October has changed drastically. First snowfall used to come at the end of November, and the last snowfall on May 1st, which used to be April 1st, at a distance of 35 miles south of where I live now, and before that, early to mid-March, has changed drastically. And this is in addition to cold air sitting over my area like a grumpy old man. The biggest local river, the Des Plaines has had spring floods every year since 2004 but before that, it hadn’t flooded in living memory. It is so bad now that the areas I used to hike require waterproof boots and a walking staff for balance. The wetlands are wetter than ever, and the free food fishing people have to move back from the fishing lake’s edge now or wear hip boot waders.
These aren’t signs of warming climate. These ARE signs of changes in the jet stream, humidity levels (we’re getting a lot from the Great Lake, the Great Frozen North, and the Gulf of Mexico) , and if you want to label it with climate, yes it is a sign of climate change but this argument that we’re going to have climate change dropped on us like a ton of bricks is ludicrous. Real climate change from desert to grasslands to woodlands and swamps takes far longer than you will ever live. You’ll need a time machine to see it. You could dial up Dr. Who for that kind of trip.
Seriously, the Middle East is getting flooding spring rains routinely now that it used to have about once every 10 years, and those monsoonal winds are going west into Africa instead of up northeast into India. Snow in the Sahara is not unusual, but it is unusual for it to stick around for several days. Ditto the Atacama Desert in Chile – driest and hottest place on the planet and now it has hip deep winter snows and flowers blooming in the Chilean spring where they haven’t bloomed in centuries.
Now, if you can explain why things are “warming” when the Sun is dormant and has been since July 2006 – few or not sunspots all that time, per NASA’s photo files – and why I’m still running my furnace to keep my house warm in the month of June, I’ll be happy to discuss that with you. But if you think we’re warming up and somehow going to shrivel up like dried up autumn leaves, I believe that you are sadly mistaken.
If anything, we are heading toward a prolonged cold period. 4 1/2 inches of snow on my front steps on Hallowe’en last year do not bode well for a warmer climate. It it were warming, the snow would be rain.;
snow flurries here mid-maine on 5-12-2020.
had to run furnace at night well into late May.
not too worried about losing snow.
I had to run the furnace today, still have it turned on as of 12:30PM CDT, and I do not live anywhere near the state of Maine or the polar regions. … or Siberia, for that matter.
Not worried about losing snow, either. My only concern is whether or not it’ll be too chilly to enjoy a bowl of ice cream. 🙂
When the NWS forecast for PM temperatures is in the 40s at night in my area, either Spring took a holiday and Summer may be slow in showing up, or someone needs to try to wake up the Sun.
know MI area is supposed to be high of low 60’s f for a few days so would expect nights around 40. heading this way from what it looks like.
I’m still running my furnace and it is June 1. I expect to run it all week, except for Wednesday. It’s the overnight temps that drop like a stone when the dewpoint hits. That’s what we should all be looking at. Once that effect – reaching the dewpoint – takes place, heat can bubble up from the planet surface faster than you can shake a stick at it and the colder air drops on us. I’m keeping the blankets on the bed, too.
Even though I don’t put a lot of stock in the Old Farmer’s Almanac’s predictions, they seem to be fairly close to what IS happening in my area this year. That’s scary.
“The study is believed to be the first to objectively identify and track individual snowstorm projections of the distant future”
The word salad of climate change chatter. It’s both idiotic and sounds smart all in one. A perfect salad. Pass the dressing, please.
“If we do little to mitigate climate change, the winter season will lose much of its punch in the future,” said Walker Ashley. I live in Manitoba Canada and we are usually colder than Siberia. All I can say is I HOPE SO!!! I don’t think so but I hope so. Oh and today is the first day with no forecast of frost in the foreseeable future so today, finally, I am planting my tomatoes plants outside. (Global warming, bah!, my Aunt Martha’s hind toshki.)
So AGW is NOT responsible for colder than normal winters now? Wasn’t that the excuse during the Polar Vortex years? That the Earth was producing colder winters because of the generalized warming? I mean that didn’t make sense so now it’s “due to warming we’re no longer going to have snow”……um…..NSS.
As for going outside….no, they don’t. Nor do they remember things like frost on Halloween or the Tax Day Blizzard which dumped 2′ of snow in 24 hrs across much of the snow belt just north of where these idiots go to school. They have also forgotten that last winter Chicago and much of N. Ill was coated in ice most of the time. ON the other hand: Maybe the DO REMEMBER and don’t want to experience it again…so they put in their wishful thinking and BAM! out pops a computer model that tells them if they live to be 100, they will never have to experience the sheer terror of solid black ice roadways.
Am I the only one that truly feels for the electrons that were sacrificed to produce this utter nonsense of a paper? And wish those that are trapped within it’s electronic folds are freed from their prison? LOL probably…
Thank you, Jenn! I lived in Chicago for 30 years and have every confounded blizzard-laden winter burned into my memory. Then I move 35 miles north, and get hit with it again, every confounded winter! Yes, last winter was nasty and slippery, and the icicles hanging off my roof were ridiculously long, but they melted within a day because the direct Sun was everywhere.
“Climate change could dramatically reduce U.S. snowstorms”
Enough already of these “could happen”-type of articles. A “planet-killer” comet COULD hit Earth in the next 10 years. I COULD win the Powerball lottery next week. Michael Mann COULD break a leg tomorrow.
What is one to do with such speculative information . . . that is, outside of just laughing about it?
I must have missed it! When”.
Having attended NIU best known for its Business School, though in recent years has improved its Engineering School, the term Northern Illinois University scientists is an oxymoron unless you broadly define scientist as engineers.
Anthony
Heres a few cold temps and snow in both hemispheres enjoy
https://electroverse.net/south-africa-14-all-time-monthly-low-temperature-records-fell-yesterday-may-28/
https://electroverse.net/norway-just-suffered-its-snowiest-winter-since-1958/
https://electroverse.net/the-state-of-queensland-just-averaged-its-coldest-may-day-on-record/
https://electroverse.net/australia-to-suffer-yet-another-continent-wide-icy-blast/
https://electroverse.net/north-america-has-set-233-new-all-time-monthly-low-temperature-records-in-may/
https://electroverse.net/may-snow-hits-the-uk/
If you would like more examples just let me know , the may snow in UK was somewhat understated.
I looked at the UK link. Looks like the mini-ice age people have been predicting will only show up after I”m dead. Durn it! I was SO looking forward to that, too!