Northern hemisphere snow increasing...

Discussion in 'West Mall' started by mop, Feb 17, 2010.

  1. mop

    mop 2,500+ Posts

    while i don't believe that lots of snow in DC means much of anything, a 45 year pattern of greater snow extent in the northern hemisphere has a bit of teeth to it in terms of being "climate" and not just "weather." the pattern is up for the past 45 years and this year's coverage is #1 (seasonally) and #2 (in terms of one time coverage) since records have been kept. could this be one way that the earth "responds" to a warming climate? more snow and therefore more sunlight reflected back up into the atmosphere?

    it is also interesting that the Arctic Oscillation has been quite low this year.....meaning that the ice has not been moved out into the warmer waters to melt. While this year's extent is still average to below average, it will be interesting to see if it melts slower due to being thicker than recent years.

    watts reports on northern hemisphere snow extent.
     
  2. alden

    alden 1,000+ Posts

    Seems like this is more an indicator of a change in precipitation, not temperature. Your implication that it may be a negative feedback system is pretty weak. If anything, this falls in line with "climate change".
     
  3. mop

    mop 2,500+ Posts

    alden..it is a bit of both. certainly it is a change in precipitation, but the amount of snow and the snow lines are going south....so that's an interesting thing that also implies colder climates.
     
  4. mop

    mop 2,500+ Posts


     
  5. hooklahoma

    hooklahoma 1,000+ Posts


     
  6. Horn6721

    Horn6721 10,000+ Posts

    "so if it rains too much, we caused it, if it snows too much, we caused it, if it's too hot, we caused it, if it's too cold, we caused it."
    Don't forget it if doesn't rain enough we caused it, if it doesn't snow enough we caused it.

    MOP
    I'd like your opinion on this study.
    "The science behind the AGW hypothesis is that increased amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere (that humans produce by burning fossil fuels) will block more outgoing long-wave IR radiation (OLR) from exiting the atmosphere and thereby warm the surface"
    and
    So what type of experiment could be performed to test this AGW hypothesis? If there were satellites in orbit monitoring the emission of OLR over time at the same location, then OLR could be measured in a very controlled manner. If, over time, the emission of OLR in the wavelengths that CO2 absorbs decreases over time, then that would prove the AGW hypothesis (i.e., that OLR is being absorbed by CO2 and heating the planet instead of being emitted from the atmosphere). But what if, over time (say, over thirty years), the emissions of OLR wavelengths that CO2 absorb remained constant? That would disprove the hypothesis and put the AGW argument to bed. "
    end of quotes

    The Link


    at the very least it is a piece of information that other scientists can study and either pronounce it legit or expose it as a fraud. Unlike the crooks at East Anglia tc.
     
  7. mop

    mop 2,500+ Posts

    sounds reasonable to me horn6721....i guess at this point i accept that CO2 adds a certain amount of heat (not sure how much) but i want to know how the earth responds to that....i suspect there are corrective responses that naturally act as a thermostat and therefore regulate warming and cooling within certain bounds.
     
  8. pasotex

    pasotex 2,500+ Posts

    I wonder why nobody thought to do that sort of study ... well they have, repeatedly.

     
  9. hornpharmd

    hornpharmd 5,000+ Posts

    Well unfortunatley ice extent has not been on the rise in the arctic over the last 30 years:

    nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20100203_Figure3.png

    3.2% decline per decade. And the prediction is this will escalate as a bit of the older ice melts more and more each year.
     
  10. mop

    mop 2,500+ Posts

    hornpharmd, that is not surprising considering the cycle of El Nino's we have been in. What will be very interesting is if the ice continues to decline after we leave the El Nino pattern and enter a La Nina pattern. indications are that we might have done that a few years ago, so we will see. all that being said, we are in a significant El Nino right now.
     
  11. THEU

    THEU 2,500+ Posts

    ok...radical concept here, but I will be the contrarian here. Snow is weather, NOT climate.... likewise Ice is really weather NOT climate.

    Let me say that if it always gets above freezing at point X in northern Canada in summer for 3 weeks, yet is below freezing the rest of the year..even getting COLDER THAN EVER, the ice pack will still be reduced. Why? because more ice is NOT produced in the 49 weeks below freezing... but it is lost during the 3 weeks above freezing.
    When you come out of an ice age.. you lose ice. Does anyone want to go back to there being ice packs midway down North America? Is that the goal?

    People need to get a grip on how much stock they put into this stuff one way or another. We have the EPA on the verge of causing states to want to leave the US.... this ruse has gone too far in the political realm.
     
  12. CTGA_Horn

    CTGA_Horn 250+ Posts

    At least snow cover is almost entirely a product of atmospheric conditions. The last few years, there has been so much talk about sea ice, which is much more related to ocean temperatures and arctic storms than air temperatures.
     
  13. pasotex

    pasotex 2,500+ Posts

    mop

    ENSO events have been increasing. What triggers an ENSO event?

    ENSO events run in cycles and there have been several La Nina events over the last decade including one in 2008. We are currently in the middle of an El Nino event. We are not going to suddenly switch back to years upon years of La Nina. This is particularly difficult given the amount of heat the ocean is absorbing.


    The Link

    Ocean temperatures and air temperatures are very much interrelated. The ocean is a much larger repository of heat than the atmosphere.

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
     
  14. alden

    alden 1,000+ Posts


     
  15. accuratehorn

    accuratehorn 10,000+ Posts

    While Nero, er, mop, fiddles, 46 of 48 glaciers in Chile's Torres del Paine National Park Southern Ice Field are "shrinking at record rates." (National Geographic Magazine, February, 2010, page 94.
     
  16. mop

    mop 2,500+ Posts


     
  17. pasotex

    pasotex 2,500+ Posts

    The rate of warming is far in excess of what you would see "coming out of an ice age." We also are not "coming out of an ice age," but rather are nearing the crest of interglacial warming. The last ice age ended about 20,000 years ago. The problem is that our CO2 levels are way in excess of anything seen in at least hundreds of thousands of years which will lead to increased warming beyond anything natural and also at a rate far faster than anything natural.

    [​IMG]

    I have trouble keeping up with all the skeptic claims and would like you guys to stick with certain ones. If given enough time, I can provide a list. [​IMG]

    btw I personally think increased snow fall has a reasonable chance of being a slight negative feedback although I doubt it is a significant one
     
  18. mcbrett

    mcbrett 2,500+ Posts

  19. notreally

    notreally 1,000+ Posts


     
  20. DigglerontheHoof

    DigglerontheHoof 1,000+ Posts

    The rate at which Greenland's glaciers and the antarctic ice sheets are melting is really quite alarming. I don't know (not sure the scientists do either) what the consequences will ultimately be but I think it's clear that the earth is going through a major climate change.
     
  21. pasotex

    pasotex 2,500+ Posts

    I say this because it is contained on the chart that I posted.

    The highest CO2 has been over the last 400,000 years is around 290 ppm.

    We are at 380 ppm right now and increasing by 2 ppm each year.

    Do you want to examine the science behind these numbers? I cannot remember off the top of my head, but I think 380 ppm is higher than anything in either 4 or 40 million years (I am pretty sure it is 40 million years). The ice core data is pretty solid. The proxy data going back beyond the ice cores is not as solid with large degrees of uncertainty.
     
  22. mcbrett

    mcbrett 2,500+ Posts


     
  23. HornBud

    HornBud 2,500+ Posts

  24. accuratehorn

    accuratehorn 10,000+ Posts

    Gee, I wonder what happened right before the year 1800?
     
  25. Ag with kids

    Ag with kids 2,500+ Posts


     
  26. pasotex

    pasotex 2,500+ Posts

    Do you understand thermodynamics? How long does it take to reach equilibrium on increased CO2 levels?
     
  27. Ag with kids

    Ag with kids 2,500+ Posts


     
  28. pasotex

    pasotex 2,500+ Posts

    I will try to get the answers to these questions tonight. I believe it takes decades, but I am having trouble finding the research on this issue and cannot take the time right now.
     
  29. mop

    mop 2,500+ Posts

    this is getting very interesting....these are questions that will help us out in determining if something unique is happening now.

    sorry i haven't been on today......thursdays are a busy day and now i am going out until about 1 in the morning. so no one contact my bosses and try to get me in trouble!
     
  30. pasotex

    pasotex 2,500+ Posts

    Here is a paper discussing how much additional warming will occur from current CO2 levels (ie how much warming is in the pipeline even without any additional CO2).

    The Link

    I know that I read a very good article on this issue about six months ago, but I have been unable to locate it. I will keep looking. One of the real dangers of CO2 is that it takes at least 100 years to cycle out of the atmosphere and it retains additional heat for all that time.
     

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