Remember when the UK Independent pushed their hyperventilating article Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past? (The website is down, you can see a screengrab here). Well, the NY Times tries their hand at this
Officials canceled two Olympic test events last February in Sochi after several days of temperatures above 60 degrees Fahrenheit and a lack of snowfall had left ski trails bare and brown in spots. That situation led the climatologist Daniel Scott, a professor of global change and tourism at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, to analyze potential venues for future Winter Games. His thought was that with a rise in the average global temperature of more than 7 degrees Fahrenheit possible by 2100, there might not be that many snowy regions left in which to hold the Games. He concluded that of the 19 cities that have hosted the Winter Olympics, as few as 10 might be cold enough by midcentury to host them again. By 2100, that number shrinks to 6.
The planet has warmed 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1800s, and as a result, snow is melting. In the last 47 years, a million square miles of spring snow cover has disappeared from the Northern Hemisphere. Europe has lost half of its Alpine glacial ice since the 1850s, and if climate change is not reined in, two-thirds of European ski resorts will be likely to close by 2100.
The facts are straightforward: The planet is getting hotter. Snow melts above 32 degrees Fahrenheit. The Alps are warming two to three times faster than the worldwide average, possibly because of global circulation patterns. Since 1970, the rate of winter warming per decade in the United States has been triple the rate of the previous 75 years, with the strongest trends in the Northern regions of the country. Nine of the 10 hottest years on record have occurred since 2000, and this winter is already looking to be one of the driest on record — with California at just 12 percent of its average snowpack in January, and the Pacific Northwest at around 50 percent.
1.4F in 170 years isn’t exactly scary stuff. And we’ve seen a 17 year pause. And a good chunk of the glaciers melted before 1940, well before CO2 hit 350ppm. But, hey, something might happen 86 years from now. When no one will remember the prognostications of crazy Warmists.
Unshockingly, no comments are allowed on the article. Warmists do not like to be challenged. Because people might mention things like 4 out of the past 5 winters being brutal in much of the world, particularly Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. This year looks to shape up as average in those areas, while America and Canada have seen brutal snow. There was snow in many parts of the Middle East which almost never see it, such as Cairo. Over two-thirds of the US has snow cover.
Sunshine Hours puts February snow in perspective, and notes that snow is doing just fine in the Northern hemisphere.
Wait, wait, I forgot, snow is also caused by rising temperatures. My Bad!
Winter here, means… It’s Summer somewhere… Quit spreading lies…
For years, climate contrarians have pointed to snowfall and cold weather to question the scientific reality of human-induced climate change.
Their annual barrage of misinformation obscures the interesting work scientists are doing to figure out just how climate change is affecting weather patterns year-round.
Understanding what scientists know about these effects can help us adapt. And, if we reduce the emissions that are driving climate change, we can avert its worst consequences in the future.
What is the relationship between weather and climate?
Weather is what’s happening outside the door right now; today a snowstorm or a thunderstorm is approaching. Climate, on the other hand, is the pattern of weather measured over decades.
NASA and NOAA, plus research centers around the world, track the global average temperature, and all conclude that Earth is warming. In fact, the past decade has been found to be the hottest since scientists started recording reliable data in the 1880s. These rising temperatures are caused primarily by an increase of heat-trapping emissions in the atmosphere created when we burn coal, oil, and gas to generate electricity, drive our cars, and fuel our businesses. Hotter air around the globe causes more water evaporation, which fuels heavier precipitation in the form of more intense rain and snowstorms.
At the same time, because less of a region’s precipitation is falling in light storms and more of it in heavy storms, the risks of drought and wildfire are also greater. Ironically, higher air temperatures tend to produce intense drought periods punctuated by heavy floods, often in the same region.
These kinds of disasters may become a normal pattern in our everyday weather as levels of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere continue to rise.
The United States is already experiencing more intense rain and snowstorms. The amount of rain or snow falling in the heaviest one percent of storms has risen nearly 20 percent averaged nationally — almost three times the rate of increase in total precipitation between 1958 and 2007.
Some regions of the country have seen as much as a 67 percent increase in the amount of rain or snow falling in the heaviest storms.
Overall, it’s warming, but we still have cold winter weather.
The seasons we experience are a result of the Earth’s tilted axis as it revolves around the sun. During the North American winter, our hemisphere is tilted away from the sun and its light hits us at a different angle, making temperatures lower.
While climate change won’t have any impact on Earth’s tilt, it is significantly shifting temperatures and causing spring weather to arrive earlier than it used to. Overall, spring weather arrives 10 days earlier than it used to, on average. “Spring creep” is something scientists projected would happen as the globe continues to warm.
The Arctic connection.
Winters have generally been warming faster than other seasons in the United States. However, recent research indicates that climate change is disrupting the Arctic and ice around the North Pole in a particularly interesting way. In the Arctic, frigid air is typically trapped in a tight loop known as the polar vortex. This super-chilled air is not only cold, it also tends to have low barometric pressure compared to the air outside the vortex. The surrounding high-pressure zones push in on the vortex from all sides so the cold air is essentially “fenced in” above the Arctic, where it belongs.
As the Arctic region warms faster than most other places, however, the Arctic sea ice melts more rapidly and for longer periods each year, and is unable to replenish itself in the briefer, warmer winter season. This can destabilize the polar vortex and raises the barometric pressure within it.
In two recent winter seasons (2009/2010 and 2010/2011), the polar vortex has been notably unstable. In addition, another measurement of barometric pressure — the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) — has been in negative mode, weakening part of the barometric pressure “fence” around the polar vortex. This instability allows the cold Arctic air to break free and flow southward, where it collides with warmer, moisture-laden air. This collision can produce severe winter weather.
The winter of 2009/2010 recorded the second-lowest negative phase of the NAO since the 1970s, which helps to explain the record snowfalls across the northeastern United States.
It’s not clear how much impact this trend will have in the future, especially as the Arctic ice continues to lose mass.
Adapted from © Union of Concerned Scientists


Any time there’s a big snowstorm, someone scoffs, “Global warming?! Yeah, right!†There are a few problems with that. First: It confuses a short-term, local event with the long-term trend that the planet is getting warmer. But here’s another fact that might surprise you. Even though the total amount of snow has declined in parts of the world over recent decades, there have been an increasing number of very heavy storms. That’s because a warmer climate increases evaporation, drawing moisture both from the oceans and the land. When that increased atmospheric moisture feeds into a storm, it can make the storm really, really big. The result: less snow overall as temperatures increase, but more extreme snowstorms.
“The hottest since the 18880’s.” Oh, my-Looking at a 130 year time span considering the earth’s 4 billion years is like catching a crab to study the ocean. Seeing as there have been about 40,000,000 of 130 year time spans in the earth’s history, that’s not saying anything. Especially because you have nothing to compare it to. (temp records only go back to 1880). Doesn’t take a math major to figure out that it was no doubt warmer, and colder before. If have proof that it wasn’t warmer before, by all means show us-but you can’t. The rest of your tired extreme weather drivel proves nothing. Correlation doesn’t equal causation. Anyway, as before you have nothing to compare it to.
J,
You once again ignore that human civilization is just several thousand years old not 4 billion years. Your look into the past is interesting but not particularly instructive.
Based on overwhelming evidence, the Earth is warming (despite the denials) because of CO2 dependent greenhouse phenomenon. The CO2 has come from our burning of fossil fuels.
The Pirate typed: “1.4F in 170 years isn’t exactly scary stuff. And we’ve seen a 17 year pause.”
A 1.4F increase in global mean surface temperature over such a short period of time IS scary stuff. It is almost certainly the warmest in the Holocene (despite the lies of the deniers) and is destined to at least double (if our descendants are lucky). We’re leaving our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren with a debt more dangerous than any fiscal deficit.
There is no pause. No 17 year pause. The rate of increase in the surface temperature is not as great as before, yet the oceans continue to warm.
Pirate,
You can prove for youself that there is no 17 yr pause.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/trend.php
You can analyze several different databases.
Big Bird, I agree, a weather event does not climate make. Also, there is no climatic optimum. Maybe an optimum for humans but nobody is proposing that and Humans have successfully survived in all climatic zones on the earth. To propose a human climate optimum borders on Intelligent Design. To suggest that humans (anthropogenic warming) are doing something un-natural and therefore wrong is to pose a moral situation not a scientific one. If humans are part of the natural evolution of animals then all that humans do is natural and therefore cannot be wrong (morals). “natural” is not wrong or right, natural just is. it is existence.
Fossil Fuels are only stored up sunshine as they were part of the plants (that use sunshine to grow) and animals of eons ago. Nothing un-natural about fossil fuels. The human use of fossil fuels in not un-natural as environmental manipulation is what humans do naturally.
Volcanoes produce more CO2 annually than humans have in all of human history. Nothing un-natural about volcanoes.
As I am sure you know, Storms are created by the exchange of heat calories as water changes state — water to vapor or water to ice and back again. The third of law of thermodynamics means no heat is gained or lost in the conversion of water vapor to snow or rain. the Heat remains in the atmosphere. We get winter storms because the polar regions do not get enough solar heat to keep the air warm. Cold air is heavy and flows towards the tropical regions to replace the warm air (heated by an excess of solar radiation) that is
rising. This circulation of air masses balances the earth’s heat budget. A storm intensity is based upon the relative difference of heat in the collision of cold and warm air masses.
There is nothing un-natural about storms, their intensity or frequency. Humans effort has little or not effect on storms. Sure there maybe some local effect (heat islands) (over grazing adding to desertification) but it is ethnocentric to fault (morals) humans for weather or climate change. Blick
Jeff,
Answer my question about the concentration of acid in the oceans. Without that knowledge, you have nothing to stand on.
blick,
The increase in atmospheric CO2 that we see from the past century or so is from burning fossil fuels.
“Volcanoes produce more CO2 annually than humans have in all of human history.”
The above statement is false. The burning of fossil fuels contributes 100 times more CO2 to the atmosphere each year than do volcanoes. In addition, the sulfate aerosols from large volcanic eruptions actually contributes to cooling! For example, the decrease seen in the global surface temperatures in the early nineties has been attributed to the 1991 eruption of Mt. Pinatubo. Further, atmospheric CO2 levels appear to be unaffected even by the eruption of large volcanoes.
A Google search finds many articles such as the ones linked below.
http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/volcanowatch/archive/2007/07_02_15.html
“Because while 200 million tons of CO2 is large (from volcanoes), the global fossil fuel CO2 emissions for 2003 tipped the scales at 26.8 billion tons. Thus, not only does volcanic CO2 not dwarf that of human activity, it actually comprises less than 1 percent of that value.”
http://news.discovery.com/earth/weather-extreme-events/volcanoes-co2-people-emissions-climate-110627.htm
http://www.agu.org/pubs/pdf/2011EO240001.pdf
Burning fossil fuels (releasing the heat, energy and CO2 stored there as hydrocarbons) is not immoral. Unfortunately, burning fossil fuels adds CO2 to the atmosphere causing the Earth to warm rapidly, which in and of itself is also not immoral. But it probably is bad. If the Earth continues to warm as predicted it will be catastrophic for our kids, grandkids and great-grandkids.
OK, so fossil fuels are bad: have you given up all use of them, Jeff? No autos, no planes, no buses? No coal or natural gas provided power?
dave,
The ocean pH is 8, therefore the concentration of free hydrogen ion (H+) is 0.01 micromoles/L of seawater.
If you take a beaker of absolutely pure water it theoretically has a pH of 7, or 0.1 micromoles/L free H+. Therefore, pure water is 10 times more acidic than seawater because it has 10 times more free H+! If you expose this pure water to air and allow it to equilibrate with the atmosphere, the pH will go down because CO2 dissolves in the water and forms carbonic acid which contributes free H+ to the solution.
“Without that knowledge, you have nothing to stand on.” This, and the obnoxious and ignorant demand that spawned it, is your opinion, not an argument. I’ve explained the CO2, H2CO3, HCO3-, H+, CO3– system to you repeatedly, ad nauseum. That you choose to pretend not to understand freshman chemistry, even as you claim to be a medical doctor, is your own personal problem and I cannot help you.
Answer my question about CO2 in plasma. If dissolved CO2 in human body water forms carbonic acid (which is not measured), which rapidly dissociates to H+ and bicarbonate, and causes the pH of human body water to drop, why doesn’t this happen in seawater, where the pCO2 (partial pressure of CO2, or its concentration) is 10 times higher?!? I would say that until you answer this question you have nothing, but regardless, you have nothing.
A 33% increase in plasma CO2 (from 40 to 60 mm Hg) causes the pH to drop 0.1 unit. Why would you deny that a 33% increase in seawater CO2 (from 280 to 380 mm Hg) cannot possibly do the same???
Here’s a trick question. We know that most of the CO2 in seawater comes from the atmosphere, but where does the CO2 in blood come from?
From what medical school do you claim to have graduated?
Pirate,
As I explained, fossil fuels are not bad. No, I have not and will not give up all use of them. Why do you ask?
Jeff,
You still have not answered the question. There is no such thing as “free hydrogen”. As you are good at pulling things from Wiki, go to Wiki and look at the term acid. Now, what is the quantitative analysis of acid in the ocean. By the way, 8 is alkaline. So you have indicated that the CO2 models don’t work.
Oh, Jeff,
The concentration of CO2 that you tout is in the upper atmosphere. So where do you come up with an increase in CO2 at ground level to account for your biologic description, which is as strange as I have ever heard.
dave,
Not sure what you’re asking but I did mislabel the units atmospheric CO2 as partial pressure rather than ppm.
Plasma CO2 partial pressure is in the 40-60 mm Hg range.
So, Jeff, what is the acid that is producing acidification of the oceans and what is it quantitative analysis. Just answer that one question.