By P Gosselin
Higher likelihood of extreme snowfall in the French Alps in coming decades. And, greening Africa
Hat-tip: Klimanachrichten
Global warming is often cited as having a negative impact on snow and ice melt in cold regions, yet new research published in The Cryosphere has suggested that extreme snowfall events may be a feature of some locations at higher latitudes and elevations in the decades to come.
Greening Africa
A study by the Chinese Academy of Sciences published in Regional Environmental Change on June 28 looked at the Climatic and non-climatic factors found to affect vegetation greenness in Sudano-Sahelian region of Africa.
A research team from the Aerospace Information Research Institute (AIR) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) analyzed trends in vegetation greenness in the Sudano-Sahelian region during 2001–2020 and quantified the relative contributions of climatic factors and non-climatic factors in specific sub-regions. The study used MODIS Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) as a proxy for vegetation greenness.
Result: the researchers found that greening was widespread across the Sudano-Sahelian region, while browning was clustered in central West Africa.
They applied a correlation-based conceptual attribution model to study rainfall-driven changes. Results showed that only nearly half of the areas with vegetation greening could be explained by long-term rainfall variability, while most of the areas with browning trends were not related to rainfall variability. Greening/browning vegetation trends not caused by rainfall variability could be explained by the non-climatic factors, e.g., land use/land cover (LULC) change and fire impact.
The research team found that gains (i.e., increases in the fractional abundance of LULC classes) in cropland and natural vegetation associated with positive land management were likely the dominant drivers of greening in Senegal and Ethiopia. The combined impacts of rainfall variability and LULC changes contributed to greening trends in Mali and Sudan.
In contrast, vegetation browning in central West Africa appeared to be driven by cropland gain and natural vegetation loss (i.e., decrease in the fractional abundance of a LULC class) associated with extensive agricultural production activities.
Paper: Yelong Zeng et al, Changes in vegetation greenness related to climatic and non-climatic factors in the Sudano-Sahelian region, Regional Environmental Change (2023). DOI: 10.1007/s10113-023-02084-5
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So, the models, as usually, were wrong.
Do I wonder ?
No, why should I ?
From the IPCC’s AR4 Chapter 10 Page 750 (pdf4)
Mean Precipitation
For a future warmer climate…Globally averaged mean water vapour, evaporation and precipitation are projected to increase.
That includes snow. And as it’s been pointed out many times here on WUWT increased CO2 results in increased plant growth and drought resistance.
That’s why we always “learn”, that deserts grow and snow will be unknown to our children.
“…warmer climate…” ‘That includes snow’. I get the increased precipitation but the increase in snow suggests cooler temperatures not warmer.
It doesn’t snow as much when it is colder – less moisture in the air. Large snowfall usually occurs when it is slightly below 0 C. If there is a cooling trend throughout winter (which seems not to be the case) we can expect snowfall to be earlier and later but not more in the middle of winter.
As the sun is relatively quiet these years the meridional excursions can be expected to be larger and the snowfalls heavier as warmer wet air meets cold air along the “fingers” poking down from the Arctic.
I expect that when the sun is active the opposite will occur, but I am an observer, not a modeller.
The problem with the fake claim about warmer wetter air creating more rain (heavier rain) is that physics doesn’t support the narrative. If the whole world is warmer (global warming) then the cold side of the equation is also warmer by whatever the average rise is. The Delta T is what sets the quantity of condensation, not the high side temperature.
It is true that warmer air can hold more moisture at the same relative humidity. Is the relative humidity the same? If so, what is the temperature to which that warm moist air cools? The same as before (more rain) or is it also warmer due to global warming? If the globe is warmer, then everything is warming, according to the script. So the rainfall will remain about the same. The simplistic notion that warmer air can hold more water doesn’t mean the cold side temperature will stay the same while the hot side rises.
Because the ability of air to hold moisture increases non-linearly it is in fact true that there is a very slight increase in the potential rain between, say, 25 and 19 C v.s. 24 and 18 C. But the difference is very small. The alarmist argument implies that the warmer source site is hotter and air holds more moisture and the cold raining site is not, so it will “rain more”. Well then, it is not global warming, is it!
The Sun has just entered a Grand Solar Minimum.
NOAA forecasts that the Sunspot Number, which reflects solar output and magnetic field, will start dropping in 2025 until it reaches zero in 2040 when their forecast ends. https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/predicted-sunspot-number-and-radio-flux
Prof. Zharakova who how a double dynamo inside the Sun would give the 11-year cycle and a 350-400 GSM cycle says that a possible little ice age is likely to start in a few years.
‘Modern Grand Solar Minimum will lead to terrestrial cooling’
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23328940.2020.1796243
Slightly warmer means more moisture in the atmosphere that is still plenty cold enough to turn it into snow
Please tell me, why rel. and spec. humidity at 300mb is decreasing over all since 1948 ?
The 2001 IPCC report stated that there would be LESS snow and more rain and freezing rain in the future according to the awesome modeling scenarios.
LOL
Isn’t higher precipitation a drying of the atmosphere, which in turn increases transparency to long wave IR, which is a negative feedback? How strong is this negative feedback? How widespread is it?
Perhaps someone could point out any negative feedback admitted to by climate activists (scientists I’m looking at you) in case I missed it.
Heavier precipitation with warmer temperatures implies a higher humidity and, thus, more water carried in the air. Colder and less precipitation implies the opposite, however it’s all relative – if 40-50% of the water in the air above a region falls as precipitation it won’t ‘dry out’ the atmosphere in either case. I don’t think that increasing the humidity and precipitation will dry the atmosphere unless you are suggesting temperatures fall to glaciation levels?
Possible results
More Snow
Same amount of Snow
Less Snow
Probability of making
correct predictions is 33%
This is not science
There are no data for the future weather or climate
Just theories and wild guesses.
Without data there is no science.
“”Possible results…””
A bit of everything – no change there.
Correct prediction 66%
Oh much closer to 100% Steve.
If we get a quarter of a snowflake less per square mile per decade, that counts as a catastrophic reduction in snowfall caused by Climate Change ™
But a quarter of a snowflake more per square mile per decade, obviously counts as a catastrophic increase in snowfall caused by Climate Change ™
The 66% is right but for a different reason’
Same amount of snow will be adjusted to show more snow.
A little infilling
Homogenization
Pasteurization
Smoothing
Time of day adjustment
Seasonal adjustment
Fudge factor to get the answer the boss wanted to see in the first place
The usual Goobermint con job
And 10% for Jumpin’ Joe Bribe’em
I predict there will be more snow in the French Alps, unless there is less snow in the French Alps.
I also predict French warmunists will form a team to paint the leading edge of the French Sea of Ice glacier brown every year, photograph it from the air, and claim it is melting rapidly due to
C L I M A T E C H A N G E
Does France have glaciers?
Mer de Glace | France, Chamonix, & Map | Britannica
Mer de Glace, (French: “Sea of Ice”) one of the longest glaciers in the Alps, extending for 3.5 miles (5.6 km) on the northern side of Mont Blanc near Chamonix, France
In total there are 8 glaciers in the French Alps.
8 glaciers in the French Alps? You must be joking. Probably more than 80. And yes, from (glacial) year to year most of them are loosing mass.
WGMS might help as reference.
This photo shows the retreat of the glaciers (Mer de Glace in this case).
Cambio_climatico_mer_de_glace-768×576-1.jpg
There are around 200,000 glaciers in the world covering about 10% of the land. Permafrost covers about an additional 10% of the land.
Er no actually. There are over 5,000 glaciers in the Alps, France having an inventory of 593 of those glaciers. There are far more than people realise.
Well the ski industry in the Alps “faces existential crisis as the world heats up” says the Grauniad 26th Dec 2023 🙂
As an illustration a gondola was built in the 1980s to link the Montenvers train station and the Mer de Glace glacier, due to the retreat of the glacier they had to add extra steps from the end of the gondola, by ’21 they’d added over 550 steps. This november they finally closed the gondola and are replacing it with a cable car to a spot 600m higher up.
and this is research??????
“”They applied a correlation-based conceptual attribution model to study rainfall-driven changes.
Greenery in the Sahel is real enough – it is Mesquite overtaking abandoned farms.
The farmers realised that rubbish-dumps and landfill sites around large cities were vastly more productive than keeping a few goats eating cardboard.
(A prostrate Cedar plant is doing similar is US deserts right now and nobody likes it. ‘cept the tortoises.)
Oddly enough, trees of ‘most any sort create rain – and its not even real rain.
They absorb humidity at night, release it during the day where-upon it makes clouds and rain. That rain works to set up a chain-gang or bucket brigade of thunderstorms that then import more water from the nearest sea/ocean.
On the graphic we see, where the ‘blue bits’ are, over 90% of that 1000mm+ precipitation indicated is caused by water that fell out the sky yesterday 10 or 20 miles away. It was then ‘evapotranspirated’ by trees & plants, moved across a bit and then fell down again. and again. and again. and again and is precisely what’s happening there.
Also the working principle of The Monsoon, wherever they occur
Sadly they are using the MODIS Sputnik and it could not get any worse for them.
That Sputnik could not and can not tell the difference between a verdant field of lettuce and a fully ripened, dessicated and Rounded-Up whea- field a week after the combine harvester went through it
Because, (I linked to it ages ago) a young man from exactly Sudan and doing his Ph.D. went there to check what the Sputnik saw. He went there, talked to the farmers/growers and saw mile upon mile of dead vegetation where MODIS asserted fluorescent green was present.
NASA lied. Big Time.
Even worse: In his inimitable bumbling & muttering style, our very own Will Happer also told us exactly as much but, such is his ‘delivery’, nobody noticed.
This is terrible, just terrible! We need to put a stop this madness of Africa greening! And we need to make sure that they don’t have access to cheap energy! It’s time to implement anti-colonialism and make sure that they’re progressing on their own in a purely natural manner!
The southern limit of the Sahara Desert has moved about 500 km north since 1983.
A paper on this would be amusing…
“” Sadiq Khan’s Ulez charge made me go bald””
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12903475/mechanic-goes-bald-sadiq-khan-ulez-charge-stress-london.html
The warm AMO phase since 1995 made the Sahel wetter, so expect Sahel droughts like in the mid 1970’s and mid 1980’s to return during the next cold AMO phase.
Australia has experienced widespread flooding across the east coast States again this year. It is the third year of such events.
Back in 2007, Australia’s Climate Commissioner, Tim Flannery, stated that the rain that does fall will not wet the ground and the dams will never fill again if we did not build wind, solar and geothermal generators to replace coal. So Australia started a major transition of the electrical grid that has seen a reduction in CO2 levels that is below 2020 levels.
A few weeks back, Australia’s Prime Minister, Tony Albanese, stated his government will stop the flooding by building more wind and solar generators (geothermal is dead in Australia).
So who to believe – Albanese or Flannery? Or has Australia already built too many wind and solar generators?
So now the climate clowns realise they have snow wrong:
Lets assume the Northern Hemisphere oceans continue to warm (I am confident they will because the peak sun has only started its northern transition) – won’t that mean more snow? So the question becomes – at what point does the snowfall overtake the snow melt and more of the northern hemisphere starts to look like Greenland?
My answer to that is around 175 years. That is my projection for the permafrost advancing south again.
There are a few climate factors I can confidently predict;
On this conclusion:
It appears that there was no consideration given to the increasing abundance of CO2; the fundamental building block of life.
I’ve always had an issue with these “extreme snowfall event” predictions. We already have places in the mid latitudes that are on the rain-snow boundary. Any warming would just push the line poleward and skyward. But the warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, one might argue. All that could do is expand the extent of humid climates and potentially reduce the area of deserts and the semiarid regions, but in order for that to happen, temperatures would have to become too warm for snow, and we’d see more rain. I guess the simplest way to boil this down is that there’s a theoretical limit at which a portion of the atmosphere can hold a certain amount of precipitating moisture and still be cold enough for it to precipitate as snow. We’ll never have an Amazon-level amount of water coming down over northern Alaska or Canada and still be cold. Not possible.
I think that you’re not considering the importance of meridional flow. When moist air flows more northward than eastward and bitter cold dry air flows south to replace it, then we see heavy snowfall where the two mix. If cold dry air and warm moist air both flow zonally west to east, there’s less snow and more rain, dry in the north, wet in the south.
I’m well aware of that, and we already see it- basically every year. It usually results in devastating severe weather in the Deep South and other parts of the country (USA of course). The heaviest snowfalls on the planet occur in areas where very cold air flows over relatively warm, open water (Sea of Japan, Great Lakes etc.), or moist maritime air hits a cold airmass or is forced in an upslope pattern into high elevations (if I’m I’m not mistaken, Mt. Rainier is the snowiest spot that’s ever been measured). Global warming isn’t going to increase what we’re already seeing.
Rainfall in the Sahel- the buffer zone between the desert Sahara and savanna Sudan zones has waxed & waned over the past century or so, and correlated poorly with global average temps http://research.jisao.washington.edu/data/sahel/022208/sahelrainjjaso18982004.big.gif
A growing population has required more & more ag production, accomplished with the help of expanded irrigation and more extensive use of modern ag techniques. Crops will show up as “greener” than dry, natural savanna. https://www.euractiv.com/section/development-policy/interview/sahel-region-faces-task-of-increasing-crop-yields-to-meet-population-boom/
But this obvious explanation wouldn’t qualify for more research funding.
Of course, global warming causes every type of conceptual weather.
Bogus!
This so explains alarmist desire for findings contrary to previous alarmist predictions.
At least they mention increasing CO2 as a potential factor that they DIDN’T consider, giving the citation to the important 2016 paper:
Lu X, Wang L, McCabe MF (2016) Elevated CO2 as a driver of global dryland greening. Sci Rep 6:20716. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep20716
Greening of the Sahara really is from the direct effect of CO2 on plant photosynthesis. Not really surprising.
https://ptolemy2.wordpress.com/2020/10/04/co2-fertilisation-and-the-greening-of-the-sahara/