Heavy snowfall in a warming world
A major new winter storm is headed east over the U.S. today, and threatens to dump a foot or more of snow on Philadelphia, New York City, and surrounding regions Tuesday and Wednesday. Philadelphia is still digging out from its second top-ten snowstorm of recorded history to hit the city this winter, and the streets are going to begin looking like canyons if this week's snowstorm adds a significant amount of snow to the incredible 28.5" that fell during "Snowmageddon" last Friday and Saturday. Philadelphia has had two snowstorms exceeding 23" this winter. According to the National Climatic Data Center, the return period for a 22+ inch snow storm is once every 100 years--and we've had two 100-year snow storms in Philadelphia this winter. It is true that if the winter pattern of jet stream location, sea surface temperatures, etc, are suitable for a 100-year storm to form, that will increase the chances for a second such storm to occur that same year, and thus the odds have having two 100-year storms the same year are not 1 in 10,000. Still, the two huge snowstorms this winter in the Mid-Atlantic are definitely a very rare event one should see only once every few hundred years, and is something that has not occurred since modern records began in 1870. The situation is similar for Baltimore and Washington D.C. According to the National Climatic Data Center, the expected return period in the Washington D.C./Baltimore region for snowstorms with more than 16 inches of snow is about once every 25 years. This one-two punch of two major Nor'easters in one winter with 16+ inches of snow is unprecedented in the historical record for the region, which goes back to the late 1800s.
Figure 1. Car buried in Virginia by "Snowmageddon" on February 8, 2010. Image credit: wunderphotographer Brabus Cave.
Top 9 snowstorms on record for Philadelphia:
1. 30.7", Jan 7-8, 1996
2. 28.5", Feb 5-6, 2010 (Snowmageddon)
3. 23.2", Dec 19-20, 2009 (Snowpocalypse)
4. 21.3", Feb 11-12, 1983
5. 21.0", Dec 25-26, 1909
6. 19.4", Apr 3-4, 1915
7. 18.9", Feb 12-14, 1899
8. 16.7", Jan 22-24, 1935
9. 15.1", Feb 28-Mar 1, 1941
The top 10 snowstorms on record for Baltimore:
1. 28.2", Feb 15-18, 2003
2. 26.5", Jan 27-29, 1922
3. 24.8", Feb 5-6, 2010 (Snowmageddon)
4. 22.8", Feb 11-12, 1983
5. 22.5", Jan 7-8, 1996
6. 22.0", Mar 29-30, 1942
7. 21.4", Feb 11-14, 1899
8. 21.0", Dec 19-20, 2009 (Snowpocalypse)
9. 20.0", Feb 18-19, 1979
10. 16.0", Mar 15-18, 1892
The top 10 snowstorms on record for Washington, D.C.:
1. 28.0", Jan 27-28, 1922
2. 20.5", Feb 11-13, 1899
3. 18.7", Feb 18-19, 1979
4. 17.8" Feb 5-6, 2010 (Snowmageddon)
5. 17.1", Jan 6-8, 1996
6. 16.7", Feb 15-18, 2003
7. 16.6", Feb 11-12, 1983
8. 16.4", Dec 19-20, 2009 (Snowpocalypse)
9. 14.4", Feb 15-16, 1958
10. 14.4", Feb 7, 1936
Heavy snow events--a contradiction to global warming theory?
Global warming skeptics regularly have a field day whenever a record snow storm pounds the U.S., claiming that such events are inconsistent with a globe that is warming. If the globe is warming, there should, on average, be fewer days when it snows, and thus fewer snow storms. However, it is possible that if climate change is simultaneously causing an increase in ratio of snowstorms with very heavy snow to storms with ordinary amounts of snow, we could actually see an increase in very heavy snowstorms in some portions of the world. There is evidence that this is happening for winter storms in the Northeast U.S.--the mighty Nor'easters like the "Snowmageddon" storm of February 5-6 and "Snowpocalypse" of December 19, 2009. Let's take a look at the evidence. There are two requirements for a record snow storm:
1) A near-record amount of moisture in the air (or a very slow moving storm).
2) Temperatures cold enough for snow.
It's not hard at all to get temperatures cold enough for snow in a world experiencing global warming. According to the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, the globe warmed 0.74°C (1.3°F) over the past 100 years. There will still be colder than average winters in a world that is experiencing warming, with plenty of opportunities for snow. The more difficult ingredient for producing a record snowstorm is the requirement of near-record levels of moisture. Global warming theory predicts that global precipitation will increase, and that heavy precipitation events--the ones most likely to cause flash flooding--will also increase. This occurs because as the climate warms, evaporation of moisture from the oceans increases, resulting in more water vapor in the air. According to the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, water vapor in the global atmosphere has increased by about 5% over the 20th century, and 4% since 1970. This extra moisture in the air will tend to produce heavier snowstorms, assuming it is cold enough to snow. Groisman et al. (2004) found a 14% increase in heavy (top 5%) and 20% increase in very heavy (top 1%) precipitation events in the U.S. over the past 100 years, though mainly in spring and summer. However, the authors did find a significant increase in winter heavy precipitation events have occurred in the Northeast U.S. This was echoed by Changnon et al. (2006), who found, "The temporal distribution of snowstorms exhibited wide fluctuations during 1901-2000, with downward 100-yr trends in the lower Midwest, South, and West Coast. Upward trends occurred in the upper Midwest, East, and Northeast, and the national trend for 1901-2000 was upward, corresponding to trends in strong cyclonic activity."
The strongest cold-season storms are likely to become stronger and more frequent for the U.S.
The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) began as a presidential initiative in 1989 and was mandated by Congress in the Global Change Research Act of 1990 (P.L. 101-606), which called for "a comprehensive and integrated United States research program which will assist the Nation and the world to understand, assess, predict, and respond to human-induced and natural processes of global change." This program has put out some excellent peer-reviewed science on climate change that, in my view, is as authoritative as the U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports. In 2009, the USGCRP put out its excellent U.S. Climate Impacts Report, summarizing the observed and forecast impacts of climate change on the U.S. The report's main conclusion about cold season storms was " Cold-season storm tracks are shifting northward and the strongest storms are likely to become stronger and more frequent".
The report's more detailed analysis: "Large-scale storm systems are the dominant weather phenomenon during the cold season in the United States. Although the analysis of these storms is complicated by a relatively short length of most observational records and by the highly variable nature of strong storms, some clear patterns have emerged (Kunkel et al., 2008).
Storm tracks have shifted northward over the last 50 years as evidenced by a decrease in the frequency of storms in mid-latitude areas of the Northern Hemisphere, while high-latitude activity has increased. There is also evidence of an increase in the intensity of storms in both the mid- and high-latitude areas of the Northern Hemisphere, with greater confidence in the increases occurring in high latitudes (Kunkel et al., 2008). The northward shift is projected to continue, and strong cold season storms are likely to become stronger and more frequent, with greater wind speeds and more extreme wave heights". The study also noted that we should expect an increase in lake-effect snowstorms over the next few decades. Lake-effect snow is produced by the strong flow of cold air across large areas of relatively warmer ice-free water. The report says, "As the climate has warmed, ice coverage on the Great Lakes has fallen. The maximum seasonal coverage of Great Lakes ice decreased at a rate of 8.4 percent per decade from 1973 through 2008, amounting to a roughly 30 percent decrease in ice coverage. This has created conditions conducive to greater evaporation of moisture and thus heavier snowstorms. Among recent extreme lake-effect snow events was a February 2007 10-day storm total of over 10 feet of snow in western New York state. Climate models suggest that lake-effect snowfalls are likely to increase over the next few decades. In the longer term, lake-effect snows are likely to decrease as temperatures continue to rise, with the precipitation then falling as rain".
Figure 2. The annual average number of snowstorms with a 6 inch (15.2 cm) or greater accumulation, from the years 1901 - 2001. A value of 0.1 means an average of one 6+ inch snowstorm every ten years. Image credit: Changnon, S.A., D. Changnon, and T.R. Karl, 2006, Temporal and Spatial Characteristics of Snowstorms in the Contiguous United States, J. Applied Meteorology and Climatology, 45, 8, pp. 1141-1155, DOI: 10.1175/JAM2395.1.
More heavy snowstorms occur in warmer-than-average years
Another interesting result from the Changnon et al. (2006) paper (Figure 2) is the relationship between heavy snowstorms and the average winter temperature. For the contiguous U.S. between 1900 - 2001, the authors found that 61% - 80% of all heavy snowstorms of 6+ inches occurred during winters with above normal temperatures. In other words, the old adage, "it's too cold to snow", has some truth to it. The authors also found that 61% - 85% of all heavy snowstorms of 6+ inches occurred during winters that were wetter than average. The authors conclude, "a future with wetter and warmer winters, which is one outcome expected (National Assessment Synthesis Team 2001), will bring more heavy snowstorms of 6+ inches than in 1901 - 2000. The authors found that over the U.S. as a whole, there had been a slight but significant increase in heavy snowstorms of 6+ inches between 1901 - 2000. However, a separate paper by Houston and Changnon (2009), "Characteristics of the top ten snowstorms at First-Order Stations in the U.S.", found that there was no upward or downward trend in the very heaviest snowstorms for the contiguous U.S. between 1948 - 2001, as evaluated by looking at the top ten snowstorms for 121 major cities.
Commentary
One can "load the dice" in favor of events that used to be rare--or unheard of--if the climate is changing to a new state. It is quite possible that nature's weather dice have been loaded in favor of more intense Nor'easters for the U.S. Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, thanks to the higher levels of moisture present in the air due to warmer global temperatures. It's worth mentioning that heavy snow storms should be getting increasingly rare for the extreme southern portion of the U.S. in coming decades. There's almost always high amounts of moisture available for a potential heavy snow in the South--just not enough cold air. With freezing temperatures expected to decrease and the jet stream and associated storm track expected to move northward, the extreme southern portion of the U.S. should see a reduction in both heavy and ordinary snow storms in the coming decades.
The CapitalClimate blog has a nice perspective on "Snowmageddon", and Joe Romm of climateprogress.org has some interesting things to say about snowstorms in a warming climate.
References
Changnon, S.A., D. Changnon, and T.R. Karl, 2006, , "Temporal and Spatial Characteristics of Snowstorms in the Contiguous United States", J. Appl. Meteor. Climatol., 45, 1141.1155.
Groisman, P.Y., R.W. Knight, T.R. Karl, D.R. Easterling, B. Sun, and J.H. Lawrimore, 2004, "Contemporary Changes of the Hydrological Cycle over the Contiguous United States: Trends Derived from In Situ Observations," J. Hydrometeor., 5, 64-85.
Kunkel, K.E., P.D. Bromirski, H.E. Brooks, T. Cavazos, A.V. Douglas, D.R. Easterling, K.A. Emanuel, P.Ya. Groisman, G.J. Holland, T.R. Knutson, J.P. Kossin, P.D. Komar, D.H. Levinson, and R.L. Smith, 2008: Observed changes in weather and climate extremes. In: Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate: Regions of Focus: North America, Hawaii, Caribbean, and U.S. Pacific Islands [Karl, T.R., G.A. Meehl, C.D. Miller, S.J. Hassol, A.M. Waple, and W.L. Murray (eds.)]. Synthesis and Assessment Product 3.3. U.S. Climate Change Science Program, Washington, DC, pp. 35-80.
Congratulations, New Orleans!
Congratulations to everyone in New Orleans, for the Saints' Super Bowl victory! It's great to the see the city celebrating after enduring so many years of hardship in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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Do you by chance have a reference for this? I thought it wasn't traversed until the beginning of the 20th century.
So since someone left out 2008 & 2009 did that cause any less ocean acidification? A graph was posted earlier that shows us at all time minimum ice right now. Check out how near surface temps are doing from satellite data( they haven't run this high this long yet)..La Nina is done, that little cool spell is over. El Nino is past peak & the heat is hitting the atmosphere. So why is it hotter than '98?..that was a much stronger el nino & we were further in the sun cycle... What you posted is nit picking & missing the big picture..we don't have to nail the data for mother nature to reduce us.
have a good one EVERYONE (including those of you who dont like me) ;)
btw, SSIG you have mail, and I would really appreciate a response, thanks!
doesn't this page look a little one sided to you?
http://www.econ.ohio-state.edu/jhm/AGW
i mean, each of the page's links poke holes in science that is sourced by the AGW proponents. i'm not explicitly bashing the science done with the reconstruction graphs you referenced, but the author of the work does seem persuaded by an outcome prior to the input. i am skeptical of that sourcing of data. i want to reverberate some of the arguments you've made for better data sets.
i'm not saying the other bloggers charts are right, but through different means i already agree with them whether they use good data or dirt. that's why i would ask about your data, to gain a better perspective for my understanding. after all (cw), we're not dealing with facts, we're trying to establish them.
For Th 2-11-10, they are talking about several inches of snow. If that happens that will be the biggest snow event since 1989. I am soooo ready for spring.
My heart goes out for the folks in the Mid Atlantic region, which may see 10-20"+ tomorrow into Wednesday, which is simply amazing! That Nor'Easter is supposed to "bomb", rapidly intensify off the DE/VA coast and move slowly NE towards Cape Cod. I have the feeling that some of those areas are truly going to get hammered with blizzard conditions, especially along the DE/VA and LI areas.
I know it is late, but found it interesting so didn't want to wait.
In looking at the entire satellite temperature record, there is a very interesting pattern. Not surprising, given climate cycles.
I'd like opinions on this observation.
There was clearly a shift of 0.26c in 1998.
Temps have been rather steady from 1979-1997 and from 1998-2009. Seems pretty clear.
And, as a completely objective topic, it should be able to be discussed civilly.
So, what happened in 1998?
Have never seen such a graph, so we all just might be the first to ask the question.
Let's at least attempt to discover it.
I will be doing a blog entry on this after some more research, but would love to hear initial thoughts.
Solid straight lines are the average for the two periods.
Source: UAH
Where exactly is this missing aggie?
And as aggie seems to have no intrest in posting the link to the PDO image, here it is.
The "Pacific Decadal Oscillation" (PDO) is a long-lived El Nino-like pattern of Pacific climate variability.
Source
http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/
Here is the latest graph of UAH
http://climateprogress.org/2010/02/05/hottest-january-in-uah-satellite-record-roy-spencer-global-wa rming/
Plus Dr. Jeff Masters on "Heavy snowfall in a warming world"
Another massive mid-Atlantic precipitation event, another piece of nonsense from the anti-science crowd. Kevin Mooney of the American Spectator actually wrote an article titled, “Snowmageddon” Versus “Overwhelming Scientific Evidence,” which asserts:
This is the first time since record keeping started that two storms of such magnitude have hit the region during one winter. Already some localities are reporting the largest snowfall ever recorded.
To be sure, these events do not prove or disprove human caused global warming. But the momentum is now very much on the side of skeptical scientists who question these theories and President Obama should at least pull back from his awkward juxtapositions.
Yes, for the anti-science crowd, the kind of extreme precipitation event the mid-Atlantic states just experienced somehow weighs against the overwhelming scientific evidence for human-caused climate change — even though it is entirely consistent with the predictions of climate science (see Was the “Blizzard of 2009″ a “global warming type” of record snowfall — or an opportunity for the media to blow the extreme weather story (again)? and analysis by uber-meteorologist, Dr. Jeff Masters below).
Memo to anti-science crowd: Precipitation isn’t temperature!
What’s particularly laughable about Mooney’s article is that according to the UAH satellite data so beloved of the anti-science crowd, the storm occurred on the warmest February 6 — and indeed, during the warmest winter — in the temperature record (data here — the orange line ending in the white box in the figure above tracks temperatures in 2010).
Capital Climate has an excellent analysis on Super Storm 2010, which finds:
http://climateprogress.org/2010/02/08/climate-science-extreme-weather-moisture-precipitation-warmes t-winter-satellite-record-deniers-jeff-masters/
it's missing in the website he mentions. the PDO itself is not one of the climate variability indicators to work with. so he showed us. thanks for adding the PDO link too.
Honestly, after the ****-tossing that went on the first 300-400 posts of this thread, I'm staying out of it. You may not need a PhD to put forth an opinion (that much is very apparent judging by half these posts... on BOTH sides), but you do need a PhD in patience in order to not blow up at someone. Unfortunately, I got my PhD in Procrastination (well, I will, once I get those classes done), so I'm not adding my 2 cents.
No opinion here. That's the beauty. That is the record. Data analysis, not articles.
Just trying to save some time as there are many here that are way more knowledgeable than I in the climate cycles arena.
What might explain it, from a climatology standpoint?
I'll put my math, physics, prob and stats, and coding knowledge up against anyone, though. ;)
Temperatures measured on land and at sea for more than a century show that Earth’s globally averaged surface temperature is experiencing a long-term warming trend.
The concept of an average temperature for the entire globe may seem odd. After all, at this very moment, the highest and lowest temperatures on Earth are likely more than 55°C (100°F) apart. Temperatures vary from night to day and between seasonal extremes in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. This means that some parts of Earth are quite cold while other parts are downright hot. To speak of the “average” temperature then may seem like nonsense. However, the concept of a global average temperature is convenient for detecting and tracking changes in Earth’s condition over time.
http://www.climatewatch.noaa.gov/2009/articles/climate-change-global-temperature
During the Industrial Revolution, humans began burning coal, natural gas, and oil to power machines for manufacturing and transportation. Since then, we have burned more fossil fuels each decade, releasing vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Over the last 150 years, humans drove up carbon dioxide concentration in the air from 280 parts per million (ppm) to more than 385 ppm a value that is 38 percent higher than the highest value measured for over the previous 800,000 years. And our emission rate is still rising!
http://www.climatewatch.noaa.gov/2009/articles/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide
just on my way to bed, but perhaps you are queuing in on the 97-98 strong el nino. still talking about your temp graph i believe...
lotta C02 up there; got warm, stayed warm? many many factors.. bedtime :)
Love is a good thing.
Even though I will never see his posts again, I even love drg.
Hey minnie, hope you stayed around.
Look at the graph, though. Everyone keeps thinking same, but all are different to analyze different things.
It was a shift, not just a one year event.
That shows a shift. But thanks for the input.
It has to be something else as there were el ninos before and after 1998.
Global sea level is on the rise. The total amount of water on Earth isn’t increasing, but the volume of liquid that fills the ocean basins is growing, raising the elevation of the sea’s surface and spilling ocean water onto low-lying land. The extra volume of seawater comes from two places. Clearly, melting of ice sheets and glaciers on land adds water to the sea. Less obviously, water expands as it warms, so the more heat energy the ocean absorbs, the more space its water requires. On our warming planet, scientists expect both of these processes to continue and possibly accelerate
Tide gauges along the coasts and altimeters on satellites are used to monitor sea level. Measurements gathered by tide gauges through the 20th century show that global sea level rose at an average rate of 1.7 mm per year – this translates to about two-thirds of an inch per decade. Satellite altimeter data gathered from 1993 to 2003 indicate that the rate of global average sea level rise increased to 3.1 mm per year, or about one and a quarter inches per decade. Though the current rate is well documented, the altimeter record is still too short to be certain whether we are observing a long-term acceleration of global average sea level rise, or a case of climate variability.
http://www.climatewatch.noaa.gov/2009/articles/climate-change-sea-level
hot hot hot
Just as ponds and lakes in northern states develop a layer of ice on their surfaces during cold winters, the surface of the Arctic Ocean also freezes, forming sea ice.
Seawater has a lower freezing point than fresh water, but once it is chilled to around -2°C (about 28°F), the salty liquid begins to solidify. Ice crystals appear on the sea’s surface, and if the air is cold enough, the crystals expand to form a slushy mix, then a solid covering of ice that can thicken over time. In the Arctic Ocean, the area covered by sea ice, which scientists call the sea ice extent, grows and shrinks over the course of the year. Each fall, as less sunlight reaches the Arctic and air temperatures begin to drop, additional sea ice forms. The total area covered by ice increases through the winter, usually reaching its maximum extent in early March. Once spring arrives with more sunlight and higher temperatures, the ice begins to melt back, shrinking to its minimum extent each September.
Early observations of sea ice coverage in the Arctic come to us both from the oral histories of native populations and from the records of early European mariners who were seeking a “Northwest Passage” to the lucrative markets in Asia. For as long as humans have been keeping track, large areas of the Arctic Ocean have remained covered by sea ice throughout the year. However, over the past 30 years, the area covered by ice has shown a dramatic decrease. Since satellite-based measurements began in the late 1970s, data show a trend of more ice melting away during summers and less new ice forming during winters. The average maximum extent of sea ice has decreased by 2.8 percent per decade. Measurements of minimum sea ice extent each year show that summer melting has been even more dramatic, decreasing by an average of 11.1 percent per decade.
http://www.climatewatch.noaa.gov/2009/articles/climate-change-minimum-arctic-sea-ice-extent
prompt response, caught me for one more..
my suggestion, albeit oversimplified and brief, is that the 97-98 el nino may be comparable to a catalyst. once so much heat became situated by the 'singular' event, it's dissipation may have been impeded by greenhouse gases collecting in greater concentrations in the years leading up to, and following the el nino event. but again, oversimplified, though less briefly stated. 'night
ExxonMobil cash supported concerted campaign to undermine case for man-made warming
7 Feb. 2010
Stephen McIntyre, who runs climateaudit.org, part of a network of climate change sceptics
An orchestrated campaign is being waged against climate change science to undermine public acceptance of man-made global warming, environment experts claimed last night.
The attack against scientists supportive of the idea of man-made climate change has grown in ferocity since the leak of thousands of documents on the subject from the University of East Anglia (UEA) on the eve of the Copenhagen climate summit last December.
Free-market, anti-climate change think-tanks such as the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in the US and the International Policy Network in the UK have received grants totalling hundreds of thousands of pounds from the multinational energy company ExxonMobil. Both organisations have funded international seminars pulling together climate change deniers from across the globe.
Many of these critics have broadcast material from the leaked UEA emails to undermine climate change predictions and to highlight errors in claims that the Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035. Professor Phil Jones, who has temporarily stood down as director of UEA's climactic research unit, is reported in today's Sunday Times to have "several times" considered suicide. He also drew parallels between his case and that of Dr David Kelly, found dead in the wake of the row over the alleged "sexing up" of intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Professor Jones said he was taking sleeping pills and beta-blockers and had received two death threats in the past week alone.
Climate sceptic bloggers broadcast stories last week casting doubts on scientific data predicting dramatic loss of the Amazon rainforest. All three stories, picked up by mainstream media, questioned the credibility of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the way it does its work. A new attack on climate science, already dubbed "Seagate" by sceptics, relating to claims that more than half the Netherlands is in danger of being submerged under rising sea levels, is likely to be at the centre of the newest skirmish in coming weeks.
The controversies have shaken the IPCC, whose chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, was subjected to a series of personal attacks on his reputation and lifestyle last week. A poll this weekend confirmed that public confidence in the climate change consensus has been shaken: one in four Britons – 25 per cent – now say they do not believe in global warming; previously this figure stood at 15 per cent.
Professor Bob Watson, the chief scientific adviser to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and former chairman of the IPCC, said yesterday that the backlash is the result of a campaign: "It does appear that there's a concerted effort by a number of sceptics to undermine the credibility of the evidence behind human-induced climate change." He added: "I am sure there are some sceptics who may well be funded by the private sector to try to cast uncertainty."
A complicated web of relationships revolves around a number of right-wing think-tanks around the world that dispute the threats of climate change. ExxonMobil is a key player behind the scenes, having donated hundreds of thousands of dollars in the past few years to climate change sceptics. The Atlas Foundation, created by the late Sir Anthony Fisher (founder of the Institute of Economic Affairs), received more than $100,000 in 2008 from ExxonMobil, according to the oil company's reports.
Atlas has supported more than 30 other foreign think-tanks that espouse climate change scepticism, and co-sponsored a meeting of the world's leading climate sceptics in New York last March. Called "Global Warming: Was It Ever Really a Crisis?", it was organised by the Heartland Institute – a group that described the event as "the world's largest-ever gathering of global warming sceptics". The organisation is another right-wing think-tank to have benefited from funding given by ExxonMobil in recent years.
A large British contingent was present at the event, with speakers including Dr Benny Peiser, from Lord Lawson's climate sceptic think-tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF); the botanist David Bellamy; Julian Morris and Kendra Okonski from the London-based International Policy Network; the weather forecaster Piers Corbyn; Christopher Monckton, a former policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher; and Professor David Henderson, a member of GWPF's advisory council. Speakers at the event also included two prominent climate bloggers who associate with Paul Dennis, a 54-year-old climate researcher at the University of East Anglia who has been questioned by police investigating the theft of climate data.
In a posting on the blog of the climate sceptic Andrew Montford on Friday, Mr Dennis insisted: "I did not leak any files, data, emails or any other material. I have no idea how the files were released or who was behind it."
But he confirmed that he had been in email contact with Stephen McIntyre, who runs climateaudit.org – a site that was one of the first to receive an anonymous link to the original leaked data from UEA.
Mr Dennis said he emailed Mr McIntyre to alert him to a "departmental email saying that emails and files were hacked" and that "police had copies of my email correspondence with Steve McIntyre and Jeff Id [a pseudonym for the climate sceptic Patrick Condon]. They said it was because I had sent the emails that they were interviewing me."
The UEA researcher also has connections with another prominent sceptic, Anthony Watts, with whom he has posted and who spoke beside Mr McIntyre. Mr Dennis was not available for comment.
Bob Ward, the policy director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics, said: "A lot of the climate sceptic arguments are being made by people with demonstrable right-wing ideology which is based on opposition to any environmental regulation of the market, and they are clearly being given money that allows them to disseminate their views more widely than would be the case if they didn't have oil company funding."
But Dr Richard North, a climate change sceptic and blogger, rejected claims of a conspiracy as "laughable" and denied having any links to vested interests. "Anybody who knows me knows I'm a loner. Nobody tells me what to do or dictates my agenda."
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/thinktanks-take-oil-money-and-use-it-to-fun d-climate-deniers-1891747.html
Boy...I dont think I've ever seen so many red herrings and strawmen in one comment. Ever.
The short answer is... NOTHING.
Just because you can fit a step function to a random dataset does NOT mean that there actually IS a sharp discontinuity in whatever underlying physical process the dataset purports to measure.
Furthermore, your choice to place the discontinuity at 1998 is completely arbitrary. You could just as well have chosen 1997 or 1999. Or anywhere in between. It MAY be that one or another of these arbitrary placements for the discontinuity is better than all the others. And it MAY be that 1998 is the best choice. However, without doing some serious number crunching on the dataset to determine goodness of fit for ALL of the possible arbitrary choices, there is no way to be sure.
Until you do that, there's absolutely NO reason to attribute ANY significance to 1998.
And without calculating an objective measure of goodness of fit, you cannot convince me that your step function fits the dataset any better than the linear trend indicated by the green line. Eyeballing the two, I'd say it's likely to be a pretty close call that could go either way. So it appears that the dataset may not have sufficient statistical power to help us decide which of these two models is the better one.
Consequently, there is absolutely NO reason to conclude that your step function is a better model for the dataset than a simple linear increase. Therefore, there's really nothing to "explain".
Basically, the problem is that there are a HUGE number of possible mathematical functions that could fit any given random dataset. Without having some theoretical basis on which to decide among them, there is NO purely mathematical or statistical procedure that can determine which one is "correct" in any sense of the word. All we can do is say that one model is a better fit to the given dataset than some other model, NOT which one is the CORRECT model of the underlying physical system. And the noisier the data, the weaker even that modest claim will be.
If you really have the training you claim in a later post (#870), then you should know that.
http://www.wjla.com/livestream.html
Up to 20 inch possible ...
"WEDNESDAY THROUGH THURSDAY NIGHT...A DRY AND COOL DAY ON WEDNESDAY
AFTER A MORNING START WITH TEMPERATURES AT OR JUST BELOW FREEZING. A
SURFACE HIGH OVER THE SOUTHERN PLAINS WILL BE SQUEEZED OFF TO THE
NORTH AS A MID LEVEL TROUGH DEVELOPS SOUTH INTO TEXAS AND DEVELOPS
THE NEXT GULF LOW. THE MODELS HAVE THIS LOW MOVING EAST ACROSS THE
NORTH CENTRAL GULF OF MEXICO WITH THE HEAVIER RAIN STAYING WELL
SOUTH OF THE COAST. THE SOUTHERN TRACK WILL ALLOW MORE COLD AIR TO
BE PULLED INTO THE REGION WHICH WILL MAKE FOR AN INTERESTING
FORECAST FOR LATE WEEK. WILL BE A MIX OF RAIN...SLEET AND SNOW
ACROSS THE AREA THURSDAY NIGHT INTO FRIDAY MORNING. MOST OF THE
BETTER MOISTURE WILL BE OVER THE WARMER GULF OF MEXICO AND ANY
ACCUMULATION SHOULD BE LIGHT AND OVER THE NORTHERN AREAS WHERE
TEMPERATURES WILL BE COLDER. STILL...THICKNESS VALUES ARE CRITICAL
FOR PRECIPITATION TYPE AND A JUST FEW DEGREES AND A MORE OR LESS
MOISTURE IN THE CRYSTAL GROWTH ZONE CAN MAKE OR BREAK A FORECAST.
WILL START OUT THURSDAY AFTERNOON WITH A CHANCE OF LIGHT RAIN ALL
ZONES EXCEPT A SLEET/RAIN MIX OVER THE NORTHWEST WHERE DRY AIR MAY
ALLOW ENOUGH COOLING FOR SLEET...REST OF AREA MORE THAN LIKELY JUST
SEEING SPRINKLES. BY LATE AFTERNOON THE NORTHERN ZONES MAY HAVE
COOLED ENOUGH FOR A LIGHT RAIN/SLEET OR RAIN/SNOW MIX WITH
TEMPERATURES DROPPING INTO TO NEAR 40. THURSDAY NIGHT THE MIX WILL
SPREAD SOUTH TO THE COAST WITH THE POSSIBILITY BEING ALL SNOW TO THE
NORTH. TOO EARLY FOR ANY ACCUMULATION STATEMENT IN THE ZONES BUT
WOULD NOT BE SURPRISED TO SEE SOME LIGHT ACCUMULATIONS OVER THE
NORTHERN AREAS. THURSDAY HIGH TEMPERATURES WILL LIKELY OCCUR BY LATE
MORNING."
Thursday Night: A chance of rain and snow. Cloudy, with a low around 30. Chance of precipitation is 40%.
Friday: A chance of rain and snow before 9am, then a chance of rain. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 46. Chance of precipitation is 50%.
Accuweather forecast for Defuniak Springs,FL...for Thursday night....
Low: 30 °F RealFeel®: 22 °F
Cold; an evening flurry followed by periods of snow late, accumulating a coating to an inch.
A little chilly here. Looking for rain today.
I gotta see it to believe it. Looks like the models have trended further south with the GOM low for late week. Hopefully not too far south or I won't get anything.
If I see it I'll get some pictures and post on here.
I would say I'm due.
I've seen flurries in the last 14 years here and that's it. Last accumulating snow was....super storm in early March of 1993.
From Wikipedia....
"The Storm of the Century, also known as the %u201993 Superstorm, No-Name Hurricane[citation needed] , the White Hurricane, or the (Great) Blizzard of 1993, was a large cyclonic storm that occurred on March 12%u2013March 13, 1993, on the East Coast of North America. It is unique for its intensity, massive size and wide-reaching effect. At its height the storm stretched from Canada to Central America, but its main impact was on the Eastern United States and Cuba. Areas as far south as central Alabama and Georgia received 6 to 8 inches (20 cm) of snow and areas such as Birmingham, Alabama, received up to 12 inches (30 cm) with isolated reports of 16 inches (41 cm). Even the Florida Panhandle reported up to 4 inches (10 cm)[2], with hurricane-force wind gusts and record low barometric pressures. Between Louisiana and Cuba, hurricane-force winds produced high storm surges in the Gulf of Mexico, which along with scattered tornadoes killed dozens of people."
It's about SST's, Storms and snowfall ... but i don't know exactly and have not much time rightnow to look this up. This article here is a must read in those regards.
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/02/05/tech-climate-arctic-ice.html?ref=rss
Maybe this has some infos, let's wait what Astro has to say.
http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/seaice/Analyses.html#akmap
You've got it in your forecast too....
Friday
Cloudy. Rain and snow likely in the morning becoming rain through the afternoon. Highs in the upper 40s. Chance of precipitation 60 percent.
Here's Crestview's forecast....
Thursday Night
Mostly cloudy. Chance of rain...snow and sleet through the night. Lows around 30. Chance of precipitation 50 percent.
Friday
Cloudy. Snow likely in the morning. Rain likely through the day. Highs in the mid 40s. Chance of precipitation 60 percent.
P451.. bro.. I respect you, and read with interest your posts, but this is just wrong. The discussion was about SEA ice..and had nothing to do with Greenland's ice cap. Skye simply posted up someone's report for discussion, there was no need to get all insulting and personal;
"Do you guys even LISTEN to yourselves when you cite this theory of yours"
It was unecessary to insult Skye by making this "her" theory.. or anyone elses other than the authors. All you did was fan the flames with your demeaning comments and truncate any reasonable discussion.
What some of us DO do is read and consider all these things. Just because it is posted does not mean we all subscribe to it. I "sift" everything I read trying to discerne what "alterior" motives might be involved, I'm thinking some others might do the same. It may be the hardest part of all.. discerning agenda from truth.
Now, I too am sceptical of the "winter" ice free date of 2013, but I'm not so sceptical of 2030. At the rate the "old" ice is disappearing, it seems to me that it is entirely possible for us to lose the winter sea ice cap. Possible.. maybe even probable, but not certain.
I saw your post about the northwest passage being open in the 1400's and think you are the victim of bad info. I would very much like to read "your" link that gave you this information. Here is Doctor Masters comment on this subject;
The Northeast Passage opens
my bold
Dr. Jeff masters; Mariners have been attempting to sail the Northeast Passage since 1553, and it wasn't until the record-breaking Arctic sea-ice melt year of 2005 that the Northeast Passage opened for ice-free navigation for the first time in recorded history
Calling folks fools because they believe what Dr. Masters says on his blog is a little crass, and more than a little demeaning to those who participate here and the good Doctor who provides the forum. Please feel free to post some facts to counter his statements, I will read them with interst and an open mind. As I said, I respect you a lot but find myself disappointed at what seems to be more passion than fact.
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