Guest essay by Eric Worrall
As Russian Arctic towns struggle with an unexpected early hard freeze, and Northern Europe struggles with harsh temperatures, climate scientists have announced that rain will dominate Arctic snow events by 2060.
Rain to replace snow in the Arctic as climate heats, study finds
Climate models show switch will happen decades faster than previously thought, with ‘profound’ implications
Damian Carrington
Environment editor@dpcarrington Wed 1 Dec 2021 03.00 AEDTRain will replace snow as the Arctic’s most common precipitation as the climate crisis heats up the planet’s northern ice cap, according to research.
Today, more snow falls in the Arctic than rain. But this will reverse, the study suggests, with all the region’s land and almost all its seas receiving more rain than snow before the end of the century if the world warms by 3C. Pledges made by nations at the recent Cop26 summit could keep the temperature rise to a still disastrous 2.4C, but only if these promises are met.
Even if the global temperature rise is kept to 1.5C or 2C, the Greenland and Norwegian Sea areas will still become rain dominated. Scientists were shocked in August when rain fell on the summit of Greenland’s huge ice capfor the first time on record.
The research used the latest climate models, which showed the switch from snow to rain will happen decades faster than previously estimated, with autumn showing the most dramatic seasonal changes. For example, it found the central Arctic will become rain dominated in autumn by 2060 or 2070 if carbon emissions are not cut, instead of by 2090 as predicted by earlier models.
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“What happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay there,” said Michelle McCrystall at the University of Manitoba in Canada, who led the new research. “You might think the Arctic is far removed from your day-to-day life, but in fact temperatures there have warmed up so much that [it] will have an impact further south.
“In the central Arctic, where you would imagine there should be snowfall in the whole of the autumn period, we’re actually seeing an earlier transition to rainfall. That will have huge implications. The Arctic having very strong snowfall is really important for everything in that region and also for the global climate, because it reflects a lot of sunlight.”
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/30/rain-replace-snow-arctic-climate-heats-study
The abstract of the study;
New climate models reveal faster and larger increases in Arctic precipitation than previously projected
Michelle R. McCrystall, Julienne Stroeve, Mark Serreze, Bruce C. Forbes & James A. Screen
Nature Communications volume 12, Article number: 6765 (2021) Cite this article
Abstract
As the Arctic continues to warm faster than the rest of the planet, evidence mounts that the region is experiencing unprecedented environmental change. The hydrological cycle is projected to intensify throughout the twenty-first century, with increased evaporation from expanding open water areas and more precipitation. The latest projections from the sixth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) point to more rapid Arctic warming and sea-ice loss by the year 2100 than in previous projections, and consequently, larger and faster changes in the hydrological cycle. Arctic precipitation (rainfall) increases more rapidly in CMIP6 than in CMIP5 due to greater global warming and poleward moisture transport, greater Arctic amplification and sea-ice loss and increased sensitivity of precipitation to Arctic warming. The transition from a snow- to rain-dominated Arctic in the summer and autumn is projected to occur decades earlier and at a lower level of global warming, potentially under 1.5 °C, with profound climatic, ecosystem and socio-economic impacts.
Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-27031-y
You might think climate modellers are pretty courageous making such a radical prediction, given the long term decline in Holocene temperatures, the history of failed “end of snow” predictions, the long term and statistically significant drop in Antarctic temperatures, and some very snowy recent Northern winters, but there seems to be a prevalent view amongst climate modellers that models are more significant than data.
As John Mitchell, Chief Research Scientist British MET once explained, “People underestimate the power of models. Observational evidence is not very useful”.
“As John Mitchell, Chief Research Scientist British MET once explained, “People underestimate the power of models. Observational evidence is not very useful”.”
Yeah, that’s how we do science new. No evidence for the Big Bang, but they pour money into it. No evidence for climate change by man, but they are wedded to it. Now, we have a non-existent virus and destroying the world to fight it. All boogey men and fear-mongering.
The key to this bastardization of science is that the math and models are assumed to know more than the real world. All of the factors of climate are integrated every day by THE WORLD. The result is what we see every day.
The idea that real world observations are not useful tells me that this clown scientists should never be called a scientist in any way and his degrees, down to high school, should be revoked.
I get the feeling that nobody has programmed into their models that we are over one year in to a Solar Grand Minimum. Has nobody told them?
Climate modeling is in no way a Science. Falsifiability is impossible.
“decades faster than previously thought”
I remember when “they” thought is would have happened by now.
Today, you still get grant money for the exaggerations on warming. Your target has to be decades down the road so it cannot be verified before you retire.
Charlatan…caused by global warming of course
“Settled science” strikes again
Exactly HOW does CO2 (equally distributed everywhere) focus almost all the warming above the Arctic Ocean?
I don’t see any trans-equatorial ocean currents sucking all that heat from the Southern Continents and Antarctica and dumping it into the Arctic.
I might suspect some other cause before assuming such magic. Check back in after both the PDO and the NAO run negative for a couple decades.
Don’t expect any research funding for studying this big Arctic – Antarctic difference in the light of (antropogenic) CO2, as a true result might not be convenient for the CEO2 Ideology.
You do understand why the temperatures are different at the north and South Pole right?
As a Manitoba resident, I noticed something that looked a lot like snow on Nov. 11 & 12; in fact, I think it totaled 11 inches and created some tricky driving and walking conditions. So 2060 is still a long way off. Besides weren’t the experts making these predictions about a decade ago, except they were claiming the end of snow by around 2020.
Wash, rinse and repeat.
If I lived in a modeled world I would be scared.
As I use to tell the young Pokemon engineers that came to our avionics lab, you are here to write code to model new upgrades made to the aircraft for the lab, but also to fix bugs in the twenty plus year old models. These models were all developed from same requirements the black boxes were built to, with all the inputs and outputs “shall do this”. And yes we would find errors. You could see the little cogs turning in their brains when I would throw in the and don’t believe the nebulous climate model crap you hear.
I’m very surprised at the ignorance in the comments posted. Maybe some simple atmospheric physics books would be good for you all to read to better understand how a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture and how the loss of sea ice leads to more evaporation. One, it’s not surprising that there will be more precipitation and two, as the atmosphere continues to warm, there will be a transition to rainfall. Now if you want to say the models warming response to GHGs is all wrong, but that’s a different story
So glad we don’t live in the world of climate models. The only climate models relevant to the real world can be found in Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.