Complain — I did.

Glaciers are important because they distribute water across seasons, storing water during cold and wet months and shedding to lower lands when it´s warm and dry. For stable glaciers winter precipitation and summer runnoff balance out, while still providing irrigation for dry plains at the time when it´s most needed. In a warmer climate, runnoff will dominate.

Gee, this seems to fit the theme of the global warming lecture I had in one of my (admittedly, lower division) classes today - uncertainty, uncertainty, uncertainty! What was worse was the audible grumble that would rise whenever humans were mentioned as a cause…

Let me start here

China, record snows, more snow recorded than the last fifty years
Vit Nam, a sub tropical, tropical climate, record snow in the north, killed 1600 oxen
North America, Casacdes, 158% snow pack this winter and still snowing as late as 4/18/2008, Everett, Sequim, and PA had to call out snow removal equipment for roads. These cities are just above sea level, 539 inches of snow at Snoqualmie pass. thats 44.9 feet, still snowing
Last of March snow storm dumped 1-1/2 to 7 inches around Puget Sound area

Spokane, the most snow this year than in 25 years. Record levels.
Washington river resoviors dry, snow pack hasn’t started to melt yet to fill them

midwest, record snow fall, 10 to 20 foot drifts in Northern parts all the way to Maine very bad floods in the South when it did start to melt

Europe, millions of swallows dying, no bugs to eat which is their diet. To cld yet to hatch them.

I would really like these questions answered, if any of you have a answer. This is what I see with my own eyes. In fact last weekend, Sat. on Vashon Island, there is a Farmers Market that I go to. Earth Day and Global Warming both had booths there. A few people were at Earth day. The poor Lady in the Global Warming booth, had a sweatshirt on, a parka on over that, ski pants and boots, and she was still shivering. 18 april 2008.

In the middle of April, is when I plant a pretty good size garden. Couldn’t do that last year or this year, to cold.

How come this is happening if we are into global warming? Not being sarcastic, but I would really like you to make your point. There are a whole lot of scientists who do not agree with you, and me, well I always look at both sides before I make my mind up. How about some answers.

Handley Centre predicts that as global warming continues, the world will experience more of these extreme events in the weather.

And no, there are only a crack-pot ’scientists’ who don’t agree. They are largely of an age to be put out to pasture.

If you want to learn the science from a historian, read

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.html

>>>>
# Chester Says:
April 22nd, 2008 at 1:46 pm

The Dateline reporter’s email is victoria.corderi@nbc.com. The producer’s is rayner.ramirez@nbc.com.

Complain — I did.

The planet is in its warmest decade, at least in a century. In this scenario, having some months reaching hot records is not something unsurprising.

But in a scenario of global warming, having some months reaching hot records should not only NOT be strange, but it should be the norm, it should be happening like twice or three times per year, and they should be absolute records. But we are not seeing that. And we definitely shouldn’t be having months which are breaking decades-long COLD records, or southern pole sea ice reaching ever-before records, or northern hemisphere showing snow-cover records, or cold-related catastrophes in Asia. No, those are things that you can expect in generaly stabilised climate conditions, but not in a warming scenario.

This cold we have now has been brought by La Niña, no doubt. However the question is why that should be thought as dismisable, why we should expect things to go back to previous warming levels. The strange thing is not this year’s La Niña, but the lacking of La Niña episodes for 8 years, with three El Niño episodes in the middle and 41 consecutive months with positive anomalies in the southern pacific. AGW alarmists are claiming that this La Niña is very strong, but you only have to look at the numbers of the anomalies of temperature in the southern pacific to see that this La Niña is quite an average La Niña, and so far it has been short, we will see when it ends. We have had much stronger La Niñas in the past, and more importantly, the El Niño episode of 2002 was of a similar but positive magnitude, and 1998’s El Niño was way stronger.

So if your point is that warming will take place except when La Niña distorts the conditions, I’m sorry but between 2001 and the end of 2007 not only we didn’t have La Niñas but we had 3 El Niños and still the planet didn’t warm any more than it was in 1998. An increase of La Niña’s episodes should be expected, and not presented as accidents. And if we did not warm in the middle of El Niño’s episodes and with lots of increasing CO2 in our atmosphere, then I would bet that we have already reached our peak temperatures for a long, long time to come.

Don’t forget: any year that passes without a world’s new absolute average temperature record is a year that diminishes the 0,7ºC/century rate of warming of the planet. I believe that, because of this decade of no warming, we have already dropped down to about 0,63ºC/century. You alarmists really need another 1998 asap, and stop shielding yourselves under La Niña events which are, if anything, more scarce than usual.

Maybe you were expecting the world not to ever have a La Niña episode again?

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/ story/ 0,25197,23583375-7583,00.html

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/ story/ 0,25197,23584524-30417,00.html

Despite these, the record of decadal (10 year) variations in the Holocene doesn’t llok that impressive. It is the record of 50 or 60 year variations which does.

So compare the average temperatures in the 2000s with the temperatures in the 1950s or 1940s:

http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/10yave.jpg

The recent warm cycle from about 1980 was due to a positive phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, which modulates the intensity of the the El Nino and La Nina episodes or events.

Currently, the PDO is shifting into a cool phase. and it is likely the earth is going to cool down and stay cool for awhile, perhaps for 20 or so years.

So I say. “Take a break and Chill out!” The NHL and NDA playoffs are underway, and I don’t want to be annoyed by all this global warming gobblygook and climate change claptrap!

1. As individuals, we are geographically biased. Global warming is global. So cold weather in, say, North America, may seem like evidence against a warming trend. The only way to judge whether there actaully is global warming is by looking at global data, ie data based on widely distributed measurements, including the oceans and uninhabited land.

2. As a culture we view the world through a very narrow window in time. We note the here and now, and relate it to the recent past. Global warming is the gradual long term trend towards a warmer global climate. There may appear outliers: months or years which, even if they are based on global data, are actually colder than preceding years. But the only way to judge whether there is a trend is to look at long time series. By a trend we do not mean that each year will be warmer than than the previous year; only that it is likely that the next decade will be warmer than the previous.

Yes, some spots on the globe will experience cold spells, and yes, some months will be cold globally. But so far there is nothing in the data to suggest that global warming is not a fact.

http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/10yave.jpg

Using the GISP2 data for just the Holocene, the transition from the 1880s to the 1940s is a 38% event; the transition from the 1940s to the 2000s is only an 8% event.

More about the PDO and the current strong La Nina:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/ releases/ 2008/ 04/ 080421195005.htm

entitled “Larger Pacific Climate Event Helps Current La Nina Linger”

http://jisao/washington.edu/pdo

The homepage has two really cool sat images of the cool and warm phases of the PDO.

http://www.esr.org/pdo_index.html

Lots of data on PDO indices.

BTW: I have data from Quatsino (BC) WS that show the shift in the PDO about 60 years, and have recent data (i.e., last 5 years) that show a shift back to a cool phase. I am writing a short report for Roger Sr and will request that he post it on his blog.

The results are quite amazing. For example, a constant mean max temp for the September Equinox Interval (SEI, Sept 16-26) of 290.4 +/- 1.5 K for 66 years (1940 to 2005). The “+/- 1.5 K” is the classical AD per decade, and it has remained constant for mean max and min temp since 1895 to present. I’m not quite sure of the significance of this vlaue, but I have seen mention of it on a blog that I forgot to bookmark.

The reasons I chose the SEI are that (1) effects of ENSO are minimal at this time of the year and (2) a short sample of 11 days ensures little change in sunlight energy (ca, 30 min or +/- 15 min before and after the Equinox) during the interval.

If the usual one month interval is used, the change in sunlight energy is about 80 min, i.e., Sept 1 has 80 more min of sunlight than Sept 31. I have also found that the ENSO just messes up temp data from late fall to late spring at this WS, and it is harder to discern long-time trends from the MEI, JSI and DSI data.

From your link I read: “Boosted by the influence of a larger climate event in the Pacific, one of the strongest La Niñas in many years is slowly weakening but continues to blanket the Pacific Ocean near the equator, as shown by new sea-level height data collected by the U.S.-French Jason oceanographic satellite”.

Here you have a link with the southern pacific temperature anomalies. You can clearly see we are in a “La Niña” episode with an anomaly topping -1,5ºC for the trimester Dec-Jan-Feb. You can also see that we hadn’t had La Niña episodes since 1999 and 2000, and in both cases the top anomalies were EQUAL OR BIGGER. So I beg you to explain how they can say that this is “one of the strongest La Niñas in many years”, if not to lie in the face of the ignorants with scientific-like statements to try to make excuses about the obviously colder weather we are experiencing compared with the forecasts of the alarmists. This La Niña is not strong. It’s a normal La Niña episode.

The link:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/ products/ analysis_monitoring/ ensostuff/ ensoyears.shtml

By the way, the La Niña before 1999, in 1995, was weaker, yes. And the one before in 1988 was way stronger. And the one before (1985), weaker, and the one before (1976), stronger. And so on. You can just check yourself. This is a pretty normal La Niña episode, not a strong one. The anomaly is not this La Niña but the lacking of them for 7 years, with 3 El Niños in the middle. Find that in the historical records. And yet we didn’t warm.

As to the temperature comparison between 1950 and 2000, I recommend you to compare the graphs to the Global Annual Precipitation Anomalies that you will find in the IPCC AR4. You can see the graph in this link:
http://www.junkscience.com/ draft_AR4/ Ch03_SOD_Figs_TSU_FINAL_P1.pdf

It is in Figure 3.3.1.

What does this comparison show? It shows that we had warming at the same time that we had decreasing rain. Decreasing rain is mostly associated with decreasing low cloud formation, as low clouds are the ones bringing the rain. But as soon as cloud formation and annual precipitation anomalies have started to rise again, the warming has stopped.

Now, in which way does CO2 concentration affect cloud formation? There’s no available theory relating the 2 things. But there are theories that do relate cloud formation with solar activity and cosmic rays, and there are studies demonstrating the vastly better correlation between cosmic rays and temperature.

Last page, figure 3b). There you have your “not change” of cosmic ray flux as shown by ion chambers and by Climax (Colorado Neutron Monitor). You can also find interesting the correlation with temperatures, between 1935 and 1995.