Category Archives: It snowed!

Arctic cold blast, freezing rain/snow expected for New Years Day

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“Arctic cold blast, freezing rain/snow expected for New Years Day” (2014-12-29). Astoundingly, “weather expert” Anthony Watts has forgotten all about “the least Christmas snow-cover since 2004” just a week ago. Wait a minute, Anthony was profoundly silent about that little weather tidbit.

Still it never hurts to just turn the page and talk about cold weather, somewhere, if you’re beating the climate denialist drum. Snow, somewhere, has always meant global warming is impossible, right?

Christmas 2014 Temp Anomaly

Christmas Day 2014 temp. anomaly. Find the snow!

Let’s say it together (you try too Anthony!) – “weather is not climate.”

A Cool White Christmas – almost two thirds of the continental USA has snow cover

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“A Cool White Christmas – almost two thirds of the continental USA has snow cover” (2012-12-26). Snow! In Winter! Global Warming is over, Anthony Watts assures us. Wait, didn’t it never start? Or was it that Global Warming ended 16 years ago?

Still, snow this Christmas in North America puts the lie to British climate scientist Dr David Viner’s speculation that snowfall in Britain will be rare at some unspecified time in the future, doesn’t it?

It does if you’re Anthony Watts battling a straw man. Once again anything that supports Anthony’s assertions is climate while anything that contradicts him is weather.

Wait, it’s January 6th and the snow is already receding. Winter must be over, Global Warming’s back! (You can play too at National Snow Analyses.)

Getting ready for more global warming: Heathrow airport triples snow clearance fleet

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“Getting ready for more global warming: Heathrow airport triples snow clearance fleet“ (2011-09-29). Anthony Watts drags out the hoary old “Snow! Somewhere!” post, this time trying to suggest that “snowier” weather in Britain means “colder” weather everywhere. Thus disproving Global Warming. Again. After-all the BBC tells us so!

Don’t believe the lyin’ BBC when they also report that “the average [UK] first flowering date has been earlier in the last 25 years than in any other period” or that “UK plants are flowering for a second time this year because of the unseasonably warm weather.”

I’m commenting this time because these kinds of posts are like an idiot’s meaningless drool and Anthony is just… so… dribbly.

Forget that regional weather is not an indicator of global climate. Forget that even the regional trend is actually a warming one. Forget that global warming is leading to higher atmospheric moisture levels and that warmer winter air is what produces snow. Forget that Heathrow airport might be investing in snow-removal equipment for business reasons unrelated to climate. Hell, forget that weather is not climate! (That’s kind of mandatory in Anthony’s bizzaro world.)

Just bob your head along to Anthony’s tuneless melody.

In the comments we see that the presence of winter boots in UK shops is proof that Global Warming isn’t happening, as well as wide agreement that the UK Met Office, like all government agencies, is corrupt and incompetent. I also love the always-pompous Smokey’s confusion over the failure of the UK December trend to match the global December trend. Clearly someone hasn’t faked the data carefully enough.

Western snow pack is well above normal, Squaw Valley sets new all time snow record

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“Western snow pack is well above normal, Squaw Valley sets new all time snow record” (May 18, 2011). Anthony Watts returns to his habit of noting “Snow! Somewhere!“, in this case in the Western US where it turns out there is a lot of snow this spring:

All of the western states have snowpacks that are currently 110 to over 180 percent above normal with the exception of southern Colorado!!!!!!! [OK, the exclamation marks are my addition]

Thus disproving global warming forever and showing that those climate scientists were damn liars when they said that snowpack would decline because of global warming and cause terrible water shortages. (Which raises the question: can we really trust anything the government says? Maybe this snowpack data is a trick too!)

These posts are Anthony’s way of deceiving dim-wits who fail to realise that:

  • Climate change is not a uniform and linear global transition.
  • This is a very small cherry-picked region of the Earth that happens to match Anthony’s agenda.
  • Anthony’s trying to refute long-term predictions by drawing attention to short-term variation. (Hence his preëmptive admission that his post is from the “weather is not climate” department.)
  • Increased evaporation over oceans due to the warmer temperatures results in increased precipitation over land.
  • In a warmer world it’s less frequently too cold to snow (look up relative humidity).
  • Anthony is quoting newspaper articles of “alarmist” warnings about declining snowpack, not the published science.
  • Bet you can add a few more yourself.

Funny how taking a step back is always so fatal to Anthony's arguments.

It’s probably nothing*

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“It’s probably nothing*“. Anthony Watts tries to slide another stupid “Snow! Somewhere!” post by as just a little “humor“. Apparently busy denialist copy-and-paster Tom Nelson noted that there was lots (41 inches) of ice in Nenana, Alaska (which is in the Arctic you know) on April 21st this year. But the ice was all gone by that date in 1940! Therefore global cooling.

Nenana has held an annual draw to guess the date of spring breakup on the Tanana River for a century now, and this is Anthony’s new gold standard for global climate data.

Like most northern rivers, the Tanana’s spring ice breakup is almost entirely dependent on flow volume during the spring run-off. The ice broke up, at a thickness of 39″, just four days after this astonishing climate evidence was presented. Also at 64°N Nenana is below the Arctic Circle.

Willis Eschenbach accidentally undermines Anthony's "humor".

Anthony’s teammate Willis Eschenbach creates the real punchline by inserting a chart (above) that shows that ice break up on the Tanana River is clearly trending to earlier dates. Or maybe he just can’t understand his own work.

I guess Anthony’s readers aren’t subtle enough to follow Anthony’s attempt at humor; they’re reacting with stolid earnestness.

Are huge northeast snow storms due to global warming?

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“Are huge northeast snow storms due to global warming?“ Dr. Richard Keen, a buddy of denialist economist Roger Pielke, Jr., guest posts on Anthony Watts’ blog. Did you know that Philadelphia’s weather patterns are proof that lots of snow really does mean colder weather? Take that, Jay Lawrimore of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center! And of course one useful city is always a refutation of what’s happening over the entire planet.

Now Richard knows you nasty warmists are going to accuse him, again, of cherry-picking a convenient example. So he reminds readers that he chose Philadelphia because he grew up there. That totally lets him off the hook.

The Northeast snowstorm of 2010 by satellite view

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“The Northeast snowstorm of 2010 by satellite view“. Gosh, a December 28th satellite photo of the snowstorm in the Northeastern US, the “Image of the Day” at the NASA Earth Observatory website, must mean that Global Warming is a fraud! Just ask Anthony Watts.

Jeff Masters includes it with his top US weather events of 2010 and makes this insightful comment (italics mine):

The Northeast has seen an inordinate number of top-ten snowstorms in the past ten years, raising the question of whether this is due to random chance or a change in the climate. A study by Houston and Changnon (2009) on the top ten heaviest snows on record for each of 121 major U.S. cities showed no upward or downward trend in these very heaviest snowstorms during the period 1948 – 2001. It would be interesting to see if they repeated their study using data from the past decade if the answer would change. As I stated in my blog post, The United States of Snow in February, bigger snowstorms are not an indication that global warming is not occurring. The old adage, “it’s too cold to snow”, has some truth to it, and there is research supporting the idea that the average climate in the U.S. is colder than optimal to support the heaviest snowstorms. For example, Changnon et al. (2006) found that for the contiguous U.S. between 1900 – 2001, 61% – 80% of all heavy snowstorms of 6+ inches occurred during winters with above normal temperatures. 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 than in 1901 – 2000. 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 winter temperatures are at the optimum for heavy snow events.

December cold – unprecedented?

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“December cold – unprecedented?“ It’s cold! Somewhere (Ireland)! Thus proving Global Cooling! Water mains are freezing in Northern Ireland!

Thanks for the weather report, Verity Jones, but I have to ask; is the temperature record from just one weather station, on an island affected by the Gulf Stream, a useful proxy for Europe? That’s cherry-picking, isn’t it?

Also won’t any single location have more variability than the average of a larger set of locations? Isn’t that the whole point of global data gathering?

I have to wonder if the theory that a warmer Arctic can lead to a colder western Europe has again turned denialists into converts of the “it’s just extreme weather” argument. From the article:

As for this being caused by global warming – bull – it was just an extreme weather event. They happen. Go back >100 years and they happened then too.