Wondering what the weather might be like this winter? Why not ask Warmist Jeff Masters of Weather Underground for a no-nonsense prognosis based on the science of man-made global warming?
As Masters cautioned us in 2006, we should expect more “brown winters” characterised by a lack of snow. As he mournfully told his young nephew, snow is now pretty much a thing of the past, thanks to global warming:
Will it stay warm?
When my nephew Cody eagerly unwrapped his new snow board this Christmas and asked me when he might get a chance to use it, I told him, “What are you thinking? This is Michigan in the 21st century! There’s not going to be any more snow.” I exaggerate slightly, but I don’t recommend that anyone invest in the winter sports equipment industry this year. The latest 2-week forecast from the GFS model shows no end in sight for the warm conditions in North America. I’m guessing that our next outbreak of cold Arctic air in the U.S. won’t come until mid-January. According to theInternational Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University (IRI), January through March should be warmer than average across virtually the entire globe.
This lack of snow, Masters lectured us, could be attributed to the melting of the Arctic ice, which was leading to warmer winters and preventing snow from falling:
All this exposed water provides a huge source of heat and moisture in the Arctic that retards the formation of the usual cold air masses over the adjacent regions of Canada and Siberia. It’s impossible to know how much of an effect this has without doing some detailed model studies, but I think the record low sea ice in the Arctic is probably a significant contributor to this winter’s record warmth.
All quite clear, and explained with copious references to various graphs, data, and citations. Global warming means melting Arctic ice, means warmer winters and less snow. The science is settled.
Fast forward to 2011, and the series of record-breaking freezing winters and snowfalls across much of the world. Reporting on what he termed “snowmaggedon” Masters breathlessly detailed some of the freezing winter conditions the world had been experiencing:
A series of remarkable snow storms pounded the Eastern U.S., with the “Snowmageddon” blizzard dumping more than two feet of snow on Baltimore and Philadelphia. Western Europe also experienced unusually cold and snowy conditions, with the UK recording its 8th coldest January. A highly extreme negative phase of the NAO and AO returned again during November 2010, and lasted into January 2011. Exceptionally cold and snowy conditions hit much of Western Europe and the Eastern U.S. again in the winter of 2010 – 2011. During these two extreme winters, New York City recorded three of its top-ten snowstorms since 1869, and Philadelphia recorded four of its top-ten snowstorms since 1884. During December 2010, the extreme Arctic circulation over Greenland created the strongest ridge of high pressure ever recorded at middle levels of the atmosphere, anywhere on the globe (since accurate records began in 1948.)
What possible explanation could there be for these freezing conditions and record snowfall? Why, global warming of course. Master’s tentative explanation for all of this was that melting Arctic ice was affecting atmospheric circulation:
New research suggests that major losses of Arctic sea ice could cause the Arctic circulation to behave so strangely, but this work is still speculative.
Of course it is. Makes perfect sense when you subscribe to the notion of man-made global warming. It’s only skeptics that can’t see the logic in this. Global warming means no more snow, and lots more snow. As Orwell put it:
- “Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.”
hauntingthelibrary 
Jeff Masters is a mess!
I gave up his Weather Underground site a while ago because is a shill for pseudoscience.
Maybe he is a Roman and his god is Janus.
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=G5hjAAAAIBAJ&sjid=QVIDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6171,4364649&dq=baltimore+blizzard+1979&hl=en
Here’s a paper published by the Union of Concerned Scientists in 2007:
Click to access confronting-climate-change-in-the-u-s-northeast.pdf
“Since 1970 the Northeast has been warming at a rate of nearly 0.5 degrees Fahrenheit (°F) per decade. Winter temperatures have risen even faster, at a rate of 1.3°F per decade from 1970 to 2000. This warming has been correlated with many other climate-related changes across the region, including… Less winter precipitation falling as snow and more as rain… All of these observed changes are consistent with those expected to be caused by global warming.”
See Chapter 6 (“Impacts on Winter Recreation”) for information about the projected decline of snowmobiling and skiing in the US Northeast, with suggestions as to how communities dependent on winter sports can adapt to the coming lack of snow cover:
“Global warming is projected to profoundly affect winter recreation and tourism in the northeast as winter temperatures continue to rise and snow cover declines, especially under the higher emissions scenario.”
“These projections may be conservative, as the climate models used in this analysis have consistently underestimated the rapid winter warming and snowpack decline observed in recent decades.”
Now here’s Brenda Ekwurzel of the Union of Concerned Scientists, talking on TV in 2011:
“What’s going on is that we’re burning a lot of coal and oil, and that is leading to extra carbon in our atmosphere, trapping extra heat. And that’s turbocharging our weather patterns. What this means is that during summer and springtime, where it rains, it’s falling much heavier than it did decades ago. And during the winter, we’re recording even heavier snowstorms. What this means is that climate change is creating a new normal, and officials need to prepare their communities to create safer communities for this future condition.”
News anchor: “… it’s really hard to see how the warming is bringing all this snow, I mean, can you put that together – a logical explanation?”
Brenda Ekwurzel: “Sure. Well, what we know is that we’ve had record ocean temperatures, they’re warming up. This creates a lot of moisture sources. We also have, with climate change, we have shifting jetstream, and we’ve sort of blown open the planet’s freezer door, and Arctic blasts are coming down, combining with this moist, Gulf of Mexico moisture, and you create this terrible combination, er, which dumps a lot of snow. And ironically, this past summer we had record third-lowest sea ice extent which led to a cascading set of conditions, and shifting of the jet stream, and more moist [sic] from the warmer oceans, that lead to this terrible combination of very treacherous snowstorms…”
News anchor: “… can you make the leap [?] between an extreme winter like this to expectations of an extreme summer, in terms of heat?”
Brenda Ekwurzel: “What, ironically, with climate change, we see that the warmers [sic] are rising much faster than the summer, so our temperatures are increasing faster during the winter season than during the summer season. So that creates a situation when you have more moist conditions – it’s still below freezing – you can create very heavy snowfall. If you have very extreme cold, cold, cold conditions, you tend to have a little bit less precipitation in the form of snow. So ironically, we get a little more snow as we’re warming up the planet.”
Thanks Alex, That was very informative. I can’t quite believe the apparent mendacity and lack of shame of these people. If they just said “looks like we were wrong” and explained why, you could at least respect their position.
Brenda Ekwurzel is from New York, did i get that right? So i would see her in the great tradition of New York stand up comedians, poets and peprformance artists. “New Normal”, “Turbocharged weather patterns”… maybe even in the tradition of reality-reshaping artists like Andy Warhol.
Thanks for sharing.
You can see why the Union of Concerned Scientists are full of it.They fail to recognize how dumb it is to try passing claims that cover all bases.
Whatever the white stuff is these people are snorting, it ain’t snow.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
Maybe those ignorant fools can learn something from this:
NOME, Alaska, May 17. — Lincoln Ellsworth of the Amundsen-Ellsworth transpolar expedition told The Associated Press here today that he saw much open water at the North Pole when he and his sixteen companions passed over it last Tuesday night in the dirigible Norge.
BTW, that May 17 is in 1926!
Hat tip to:
I see – warmer temperatures put more moisture in the air, so that means more winter precipitation, which is why NCDC shows a zero winter precipitation trend since1895, which explains the increased snowfall. Right.
Winter temperatures in the US are getting warmer, which explains the -0.61 degF / Decade winter trend since 1990. So warmer means colder. Right.
I think I get it now. As I mournfully told my young nephew, global warming is now pretty much a thing of the past, thanks to an outbreak of common sense.
How Global Warming causes blizzards in the East Coast
With the blizzards in the East Coast we are hearing from global warming fanatics that this simply is another manifestation of global warming. As counterintuitive as this may seem, I wrote this up to explain it.
This is the way science works for the supporters of AGW
Increased warming means higher temperatures and therefore less snow. But increased warming means more water vapor in the atmosphere leading to more precipitation. Therefore AGW can cause big blizzards. So too little snow or too much snow is an indication of global warming.
More warming can mean glaciers will shrink. But more precipitation means glaciers can grow. Therefore if glaciers are growing or shrinking it means global warming is happening.
More warming means more energy for hurricanes and therefore more and stronger hurricanes are in the future. But more warming also means more wind sheer which cuts off hurricanes and can mean fewer hurricanes. So more or fewer hurricanes is caused by global warming.
More water vapor means more clouds and more precipitation. More clouds and precipitation causes cooling which could lead to global cooling. So if it is warming or cooling, it is proof of global warming.
No wonder Al Gore says the science is settled. It predicts everything that has and can happen.
Although this looks like a parody, it isn’t. I’ve seen these arguments by warmists on various sites to explain things that don’t seem to compute with global warming.