Warming Not Cooling <8-O

[Amskeptic]

(for your consideration to add to your personal database of information as you attempt to form an opinion . . . .

Bundle Up, It’s Global Warming
By Judah Cohen
December 25, 2010

Lexington, Mass.

The earth continues to get warmer, yet it’s feeling a lot colder outside. Over the past few weeks, subzero temperatures in Poland claimed 66 lives; snow arrived in Seattle well before the winter solstice, and fell heavily enough in Minneapolis to make the roof of the Metrodome collapse; and last week blizzards closed Europe’s busiest airports in London and Frankfurt for days, stranding holiday travelers. The snow and record cold have invaded the Eastern United States, with more bad weather predicted.

All of this cold was met with perfect comic timing by the release of a World Meteorological Organization report showing that 2010 will probably be among the three warmest years on record, and 2001 through 2010 the warmest decade on record.

How can we reconcile this? The not-so-obvious short answer is that the overall warming of the atmosphere is actually creating cold-weather extremes. Last winter, too, was exceptionally snowy and cold across the Eastern United States and Eurasia, as were seven of the previous nine winters.

For a more detailed explanation, we must turn our attention to the snow in Siberia.

Annual cycles like El Niño/Southern Oscillation, solar variability and global ocean currents cannot account for recent winter cooling. And though it is well documented that the earth’s frozen areas are in retreat, evidence of thinning Arctic sea ice does not explain why the world’s major cities are having colder winters.

But one phenomenon that may be significant is the way in which seasonal snow cover has continued to increase even as other frozen areas are shrinking. In the past two decades, snow cover has expanded across the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, especially in Siberia, just north of a series of exceptionally high mountain ranges, including the Himalayas, the Tien Shan and the Altai.

The high topography of Asia influences the atmosphere in profound ways. The jet stream, a river of fast-flowing air five to seven miles above sea level, bends around Asia’s mountains in a wavelike pattern, much as water in a stream flows around a rock or boulder. The energy from these atmospheric waves, like the energy from a sound wave, propagates both horizontally and vertically.

As global temperatures have warmed and as Arctic sea ice has melted over the past two and a half decades, more moisture has become available to fall as snow over the continents. So the snow cover across Siberia in the fall has steadily increased.

The sun’s energy reflects off the bright white snow and escapes back out to space. As a result, the temperature cools. When snow cover is more abundant in Siberia, it creates an unusually large dome of cold air next to the mountains, and this amplifies the standing waves in the atmosphere, just as a bigger rock in a stream increases the size of the waves of water flowing by.

The increased wave energy in the air spreads both horizontally, around the Northern Hemisphere, and vertically, up into the stratosphere and down toward the earth’s surface. In response, the jet stream, instead of flowing predominantly west to east as usual, meanders more north and south. In winter, this change in flow sends warm air north from the subtropical oceans into Alaska and Greenland, but it also pushes cold air south from the Arctic on the east side of the Rockies. Meanwhile, across Eurasia, cold air from Siberia spills south into East Asia and even southwestward into Europe.

That is why the Eastern United States, Northern Europe and East Asia have experienced extraordinarily snowy and cold winters since the turn of this century. Most forecasts have failed to predict these colder winters, however, because the primary drivers in their models are the oceans, which have been warming even as winters have grown chillier. They have ignored the snow in Siberia.

Last week, the British government asked its chief science adviser for an explanation. My advice to him is to look to the east.

It’s all a snow job by nature. The reality is, we’re freezing not in spite of climate change but because of it.

Dr. Judah Cohen, Director of Seasonal Forecasting,
Atmospheric and Environmental Research, Inc

[turk]

If Siberia is the answer to three straight years of somewhat heavy winter snow in the northern hemisphere, what is the answer to Australia's summer snowfall last week, and antarctic ice expansion in recent decades? More moisture from arctic melt helped cause recent expansion of snow cover in Siberia, and cooling, releasing the sun's energy back to space; yet "increased wave energy in the air spreads both horizontally, around the Northern Hemisphere, and vertically, up into the stratosphere and down toward the earth’s surface." So, what is it, "increased wave energy" of cold air in both directions, or "increased wave energy" of warmer air coming from the tropics? Seems the hypothesis here is arctic melt-water frees up more moisture (which takes more energy to heat by the way) to fall as snow elsewhere. So, the end of the article says it's Climate Change. So?

[Velokid1]

Damn both of you guys.

[Amskeptic]

Damn both of you guys.

Thanks a lot.

You think I have some axe to grind?

Frankly, I was fascinated, nothing more nothing less, with this model of increasing Arctic Ocean adding to the reflective snow pack changing jet stream routes.

Have I fucked up this place so far beyond repair that people can no longer distinguish between intellectual vitality and boorish arguing?
Colin

[ruckman101]

A cow don't make ham.


neal

[Bleyseng]

Damn both of you guys.

Thanks a lot.

You think I have some axe to grind?

Frankly, I was fascinated, nothing more nothing less, with this model of increasing Arctic Ocean adding to the reflective snow pack changing jet stream routes.

Have I fucked up this place so far beyond repair that people can no longer distinguish between intellectual vitality and boorish arguing?
Colin

Dunno about that but.....it's the small rainy season here and its raining more than the big rainy season. Go figure....
Never heard of 6" of snow in Seattle at Thanksgiving either....

[Velokid1]

Damn both of you guys.

Thanks a lot.

You think I have some axe to grind?

I didn't mean it seriously. I wouldn't damn either of you guys. I should have used a



And I apologize.

Frankly, I was fascinated, nothing more nothing less, with this model of increasing Arctic Ocean adding to the reflective snow pack changing jet stream routes.

Have I fucked up this place so far beyond repair that people can no longer distinguish between intellectual vitality and boorish arguing?
Colin

It's not your fault. I admit to having zero tolerance now for the entire global warming conversation. I know I shouldn't let one set of axe-grinders remove the entire issue from the list of conversations I'm willing to have, but I am guilty of it.

Now every mention of global warming looks like nothing more than encouragement for turk. Because that's precisely how he takes it. He cannot see beyond his own crusade at this point.

[vdubyah73]

it's not just his crusade, There is a high number of people that are cynical of the whole debate. question, if so much of the ice pack has melted, how come there is no news of rising sea levels affecting low lying coastal areas? I live on a sand bar, you know, If sea levels were rising due to ice melt we here would know about it. Our sand bar peninsula has many low lying areas that aren't flooding.

[turk]

You think I have some axe to grind?

Frankly, I was fascinated, nothing more nothing less, with this model of increasing Arctic Ocean adding to the reflective snow pack changing jet stream routes.

Have I fucked up this place so far beyond repair that people can no longer distinguish between intellectual vitality and boorish arguing?
Colin

It seems that way to me. Forgive my obtuseness but what does the topic header "Warming not Cooling <8-0" mean? I don't understand. Could you explain. Thanks.
Oh, I think I get it. That's supposed to be an expression of befuddlement, and the title refers to the other thread, this time attempting to prove the opposite. Keep trying Colin. That's what makes this debate fun. Or go do something else if it bothers you so much.

[Bleyseng]

it's not just his crusade, There is a high number of people that are cynical of the whole debate. question, if so much of the ice pack has melted, how come there is no news of rising sea levels affecting low lying coastal areas? I live on a sand bar, you know, If sea levels were rising due to ice melt we here would know about it. Our sand bar peninsula has many low lying areas that aren't flooding.

The ocean levels haven't changed as the Bottled Water companies are using up the excess water filling their products. Thank God for plastic bottles or the oceans would have flooded the low lands already.

[Velokid1]

it's not just his crusade, There is a high number of people that are cynical of the whole debate.

There are people who aren't buying the global warming thang; very true. But very not-the-point here. It IS a crusade for turk when he talks ENDLESSLY about global warming here at IAC. It ain't about global warming. It's about attention. If his real life away from the keyboard were an accurate and proportional reflection of his activities here at IAC, he would be an expert, quoted in articles everywhere and likely up to his ears in academic research. I guarantee you he is not. Outside of IAC, I bet he gives global warming nary a thought. This is his personal crusade: to make everyone at IAC.com see The Truth As He Sees It. If you don't see that he feeds delightfully off of the attention, maybe it's by choice, Bill. Blinded by the fact that he happens to stand on the same side of the fence as you, perhaps.

Whereas with me, even if someone does stand in the same proximity to the fence as myself, if they harped and harped and harped on the issue every chance they got... and especially if they did it from within the microcosm of an online ACVW forum, which is just weird... I would rip on that person, too... whether I agreed with their ideas or not.

Let
It
Go

[ruckman101]

I see it as ego. There is "discussion" and then there is "winning". Myself, an insistence on "winning" seems a US social trait that helps keep us divided into camps of "us and them", and weakens us, empowering them. That ol' class warfare drumbeat.

turk attributes the phenomena as a natural cycle, with the activity of man not entering into the equation, despite evidence to the contrary.

I disagree with that perspective. And to blindly continue "as usual" seems folly.



neal

[hambone]

It will take more time for the results to show. But they will. Why deny the brutal hand of man?
On this forum, however, No Good Can Come From This Subject. It has become cartoon. A shame really, because the rational mind has it's place, as does the study of cause/effect.
The emotional mind is a lost ship.

[Sylvester]

The emotional mind is a lost ship.

It's a fool that looks for logic in the chambers of the human heart.

[ruckman101]

it's not just his crusade, There is a high number of people that are cynical of the whole debate. question, if so much of the ice pack has melted, how come there is no news of rising sea levels affecting low lying coastal areas? I live on a sand bar, you know, If sea levels were rising due to ice melt we here would know about it. Our sand bar peninsula has many low lying areas that aren't flooding.

The ocean levels haven't changed as the Bottled Water companies are using up the excess water filling their products. Thank God for plastic bottles or the oceans would have flooded the low lands already.

Dang, I missed that.


neal