Watt's Up With That: "Over 650 snow records set in USA this week – another wonky surface station located"
Posted on WUWT February 23, 2013
He starts out reporting on all the snow and the fact that it's reaching very far south and may even hit Florida. Lobs a few insults at climatologists and goes onto his Temperature Station Survey business, leaving his impression that climatologists don't have a clue.
Besides his gratuitous, but crowd pleasing insults toward climatologists, the real example of Anthony's brand of "crazy-making" is that he makes no attempt to educate his audience about the known drivers of those snow storms into the south, a thing called the Jet Stream.
And why is the Jet Stream acting increasingly odd these past years? That has to do with the melting of the Arctic Ice Cap and replacing it with a solar energy absorption plate, the Arctic Ocean... and how that has impacted convection and atmospheric moisture patterns, which in turn have impacted the Jet Stream's flow.
To support my claims I offer a number of other sources then I'll finish it up with some excellent information filled videos regarding our Global Heat Distribution Engine's Jet Stream.
Climate contradiction: Less snow, more blizzards
By Seth Borenstein, AP Science Writer
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Global Warming Brings More Potent Blizzards, But Less Total Annual Snowfall
By Jeff Spross on Feb 19, 2013
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Global warming means more snowstorms: scientists say
March 1, 2011
"Heavy snowstorms are not inconsistent with a warming planet," said scientist Jeff Masters, as part of a conference call with reporters and colleagues convened by the Union of Concern Scientists. "
In fact, as the Earth gets warmer and more moisture gets absorbed into the atmosphere, we are steadily loading the dice in favor of more extreme storms in all seasons, capable of causing greater impacts on society."
Masters said that the northeastern United States has been coated in heavy snowfall from major Category Three storms or larger three times in each of the past two winters, storms that are unparalleled since the winter of 1960-61.
"If the climate continues to warm, we should expect an increase in heavy snow events for a few decades, until the climate grows so warm that we pass the point where it's too warm for it to snow heavily."
Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, said less sea ice in the Artic translates to more moisture in the atmosphere, and could also cause an atmospheric circulation pattern in polar regions known as Arctic Oscillation. . .
also see:
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
radio story: Get This: Warming Planet Can Mean More Snow
by Christopher Joyce ~ February 15, 2010 ~ NPR
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Evidence for intensification of the global water cycle: Review and synthesis
TG Huntington - Journal of Hydrology, 2006 - Elsevier
... evidence demonstrating the link between the global warming and the intensification of the global hydrological cycle'. ... latitudes and some subtropical regions as a result of differential responses to climate warming in different ... Human alterations to the water cycle can be extreme. ...
~ ~ ~
POLAR SNOW COVER CHANGES AND GLOBAL WARMING
HENGCHUN YE, JOHN R. MATHER
Article first published online: 4 DEC 1998
Keywords: global climate change;snow cover;general circulation models
Abstract: Many general circulation models suggest that current precipitation amounts in polar latitudes will increase under double CO2 scenarios. Even though temperatures in such high-latitude regions should also increase under a doubling of CO2, as long as those temperatures remain below freezing, the increased precipitation should accumulate as snow.
A study of both current and double CO2 temperature and precipitation data for all land areas poleward of 60° latitude using three different general circulation models suggests possible changes in snow accumulation due to increasing CO2. Increased snow accumulation will occur in the Antarctic whereas a small decrease in snow depth is to be expected in the Northern Hemisphere.
Total snow accumulation for all land areas poleward of latitude 60° is found to increase under a double CO2 scenario.
© 1997 by the Royal Meteorological Society.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
More WUWT misrepresentations
regarding temperatures:
regarding temperatures:
"NEWS FLASH: WUWT publishing suspended - major announcement coming: . . .
Posted on July 29, 2012 by Anthony Watts
PRESS RELEASE – U.S. Temperature trends show a spurious doubling due to NOAA station siting problems and post measurement adjustments.
Chico, CA July 29th, 2012 – 12 PM PDT –
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Let me share what a professional in the field has to say.
Dr. Victor Venema had dedicated his life to studying these matters and because of that, I believe, his words carry some weight and are worth considering.
Victor's interesting blog "Variable Variability" took a serious look at Anthony's claim on July 30, 2012:
Dr. Victor Venema had dedicated his life to studying these matters and because of that, I believe, his words carry some weight and are worth considering.
Victor's interesting blog "Variable Variability" took a serious look at Anthony's claim on July 30, 2012:
Variable Variability: "Blog review of the Watts et al. (2012) manuscript on surface temperature trends"
Blog review of the Watts et al. (2012) manuscript on surface temperature trends
Anthony Watts put his blog on hold for two days because he had to work on an urgent project.
What has happened? Anthony Watts, President of IntelliWeather has co-written a manuscript and a press release! As Mr. Watts is a fan of review by bloggers, here is my first reaction after looking through the figures and the abstract.
Press release from WUWT:
The new improved assessment, for the years 1979 to 2008, yields a trend of +0.155C per decade from the high quality sites, a +0.248 C per decade trend for poorly sited locationsIn his press release, Anthony Watts does not explicitly state that these trends are for raw data. The manuscript does state this important "detail". The poorly sited locations are likely in cities where it is more difficult to find good locations. Thus what he found is that the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect exists. I did not know that this was controversial.
{...}
Good news is that the study finds that after homogenization, the station quality is no longer a problem for the mean temperature. As you can see in Figure 17 of the paper below, after homogenization (adjustment) the trends for all stations show about the same trend, whether they are in urban, semi-urban or a rural environment.
{...}
If I were reviewer of this manuscript my main question would be to clarify the statement in the abstract that "[u]sing the new Leroy (2010) classification system on the older siting metadata used by Fall et al. (2011), Menne et al. (2010), and Muller et al. (2012), yields dramatically different results." If this relates to the climatologically important homogenized temperature trends, this statement does not seem to fit with the results. If this statement only relates to the raw data, this is an important disclaimer that should not be missing in an abstract.
UPDATE: Skeptical Science has written an extensive review of the Watts et al. manuscript: "As it currently stands, the issues we discuss above appear to entirely compromise the conclusions of the paper." They mention all the important issues, except maybe for the selection bias mentioned above. Thus my fast preliminary review above can now be considered outdated. Have fun. V.V.{there much more explaining done at Dr. Venema's blog. Give it a visit.}
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Explaining what global warming has done to our Jet Stream:
Global Warming changes the Jet Stream,
cause of more Extreme Weather
Jeff Masters ~ Weather Underground
====================================================================
Climate Change and Extreme Weather:
Prof. Jennifer Francis (2013)
At the Glen Gerberg Breckenridge Weather and Climate Summit
Description of Dr, Francis's video: Published on Feb 17, 2013
Superb educational video summarizing climate change evidence through 2012. Click on blue time codes to advance to these topics:Note: The original 112-minute conference video of Jennifer Francis's presentation is the official product of StormCenter Communications Inc. It is posted on their StormCenterInc youtube channel at http://youtu.be/xugAC7XGosMProf. Francis' talk was filmed at the 24th annual Glen Gerberg Weather and Climate Summit, held in Breckenridge (Colorado) January 2013. You can view all videos from that conference and download the ppt presentations at http://www.stormcenter.com/wxcsummit/Timeline:00:35 - Scientists and the public now link extreme weather events to CO2 rise.07:19- Overwhelming evidence that climate change is human-caused.14:33 - "We have changed Mother Nature's deck of cards."15:32 - Effects of increased CO2 levels on the Arctic: "Arctic Amplification."23:49 - Understanding the jetstream.24:44 - A warmer Arctic causes the jetstream to weaken and meander.29:21 - The jetstream now "blocks" over Greenland in summer.30:03 - Greenland ice melt is increasing.30:55 - Examples of extreme weather events correlated with a weak, meandering jetstream.34:53 - Superstorm Sandy's connection to a warming, melting Arctic.37:18 - Summary and conclusions: "The public is listening now."Note: This video is a composite of six excerpts drawn from the original, "Weather and Climate Summit - Day 3, Dr. Jennifer Francis" (published on Youtube 25 January 2013). Freelance youtuber Connie Barlow (aka "ghostsofevolution") produced this richly educational and illustrated video as a public service that is unaffiliated with the host organization (StormCenter Communications, Inc).Feel free to use or download this version for increasing public awareness of the fact and scale of ongoing climate change. Please credit "StormCenter Communications, Inc" as the original source of the full-length video, and reference their conference website: http://www.stormcenter.com/wxcsummit/Two still photos were added into this new video version that did not also appear in the original video:0:55 - image of 2012 Colorado wildfire, credit: ABCNews.com
1:03 - image of 2012 Phoenix dust storm credit: Associated PressSUPPLEMENTAL VIDEO: Educators note that you can find an even more instructional video by Prof. Francis of the same material (and with even more charts, and of high resolution). She presented this 42-minute program as a webinar-skype on 30 Oct 2012 for an Arctic climate seminar at the University of Alaska (Fairbanks). Here is the webinar archive link:
No comments:
Post a Comment