Study: Northeast winters warming fast

Interesting article re: climate in the Northeast:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080112...r_winters_1;_ylt=AtBv2bcFM5LGIzI4sEEOtEUE1vAI

We've been discussing this a bit over on a ski forum. Here's what a meteorologist had to say about it:

Before anybody panics, realize the following:

1. Burlington,VT in 2007 had its snowiest year ever.
2. Glens Falls, NY had its snowiest year ever in 02-03.
3. According to many ski areas (up until our recent thaw), they had "never seen so much snow, or conditions so good this early"
4. I did a snowfall study for the Blue Hill Observatory, MA in 2000. The 99-00 season had the highest 5 year average for snowfall ever.
5. These studies often pick and choose data to make their points.
6. Variability in New England is EXTREME. Check out this graph of snowfall at Blue Hill:

http://www.bluehill.org/annsnow.gif

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Well put Rocket, good comments. One thing about winter in New England, never the same, always changing, always different.

Last year the ski areas were all crying, this year thankfully, I don't have to hear them lamenting on every TV news show. Seems like they'll make up for last year.

These studies have become so politicized its hard to see who is telling the truth and who isn't.

I bet each winter will get so warm, that spring will come, then summer. It's amazing, your absolutely right. hehehehe

rocket21 said:

We've been discussing this a bit over on a ski forum. Here's what a meteorologist had to say about it:

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Looks like your meteorologist, if anything, is being misleading by picking and choosing, or data-mining as it's called. We're not talking about localized effects but long term trends. (intemperate language deleted by moderator)


Note - Having strongly held opinions is fine. Express them in a way that is not insulting to the people on the board.

Peakbagr

im still waiting for california to sink into the ocean..grins

Keep the discussion civil or take it some place else.

dr_wu002 said:

Looks like your meteorologist, if anything, is being misleading by picking and choosing, or data-mining as it's called. We're not talking about localized effects but long term trends.

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What was part of his point - it's hard to find studies that don't have some sort of bias. He was not saying those points prove that there hasn't been climate change per se, rather, he was illustrating that there certainly have been happenings in recent times that make some studies hard to believe with high confidence.

Realistically, we don't have records we can really rely upon beyond maybe the last 100 years. Considering the age of mankind, and for that the Earth, it's hard to really draw accurate trends.

Yes, I'm a bit grouchy these days.

Even talking about Global Warming as a localized effect such as New England is somewhat misleading. As the world wide warming trend continues not all areas will experience a warm-up and some areas will even experience a cooling effect. These localized events, taken individually, don't deny (or even validate) the warming trend, but taking it as part of a world wide phenomena the data points towards an overall large-scale warming event.

New England could get 1000' of snow this winter or it could get 1" and neither would disprove/prove global warming. But take all the "New Englands" across the world and you'll find that more of them are experiencing warmer, less snowier winters than are experiencing cooler, snowier winters on a consistent basis.

rocket21 said:

Realistically, we don't have records we can really rely upon beyond maybe the last 100 years. Considering the age of mankind, and for that the Earth, it's hard to really draw accurate trends.

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With all due respect, there are a lot of other ways to discern historical temperatures without having to rely on what was accurately measured and written down by people.

My hope is that people begin to get away from learning about global warming (or any science for that matter) through the News Media which, in my opinion, is a horrible source of anything scientific.

-Dr. Wu

rocket21 said:

Realistically, we don't have records we can really rely upon beyond maybe the last 100 years. Considering the age of mankind, and for that the Earth, it's hard to really draw accurate trends.

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This may be correct, and we can have endless discussions as to whether the world-wide meltdown of glaciers, the movement north of the permafrost zone and the attendent loss of homes, roads and buildings into now spongey earth, the opening of the Arctic to year-round ocean navigation - the list goes on - we can debate whether these are evidence of global warming (now sometimes referred to as "climate destabilization") or minor fluctuations climate.

Maybe a better approach is to view it from a risk management point of view. There's a fascinating video on YouTube called "How it all ends" which just might change your mind.

Kevin Rooney said:

Maybe a better approach is to view it from a risk management point of view. There's a fascinating video on YouTube called "How it all ends" which just might change your mind.

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I found that video wholly unconvincing, but, then again, I thought similarly of Pascal's Wager. I think we could probably all imagine scenarios where acting preemptively based on risk management backfired. I also think he's creating a false dichotomy.

I'm a big trumpeter of culture change, mind you, but more akin to Wendell Berry's ideas than this guy's notion of "saving our bacon" from global warming.

Kevin Rooney said:

Maybe a better approach is to view it from a risk management point of view. There's a fascinating video on YouTube called "How it all ends" which just might change your mind.

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I didn't get much out of that...it's very easy to promote change, but it's a bigger step to take away freedoms of United States citizens - simply increasing fuel economy to 35 MPG does next to nothing. In reality, it would take manditory fossil-fuel-free energy and vegetarianism to revert our CO2 emissions back to, say, 1700s standards.

Even if that were to happen, the biggest challenge would be yet to come - our government could regulate us to the hilt, but it doesn't put a dent into the impact developing China and India will have.

This is probably getting too political for this particular forum, so I'm probably not going to discuss this much more. I don't think there are that many 'non-believers' in the global warming debate who believe that we should continue with our consumption and pollution patterns (yes, there are a few vocal fools).

Before anybody panics, realize the following:

1. Burlington,VT in 2007 had its snowiest year ever.
2. Glens Falls, NY had its snowiest year ever in 02-03.
3. According to many ski areas (up until our recent thaw), they had "never seen so much snow, or conditions so good this early"
4. I did a snowfall study for the Blue Hill Observatory, MA in 2000. The 99-00 season had the highest 5 year average for snowfall ever.
5. These studies often pick and choose data to make their points.
6. Variability in New England is EXTREME. Check out this graph of snowfall at Blue Hill:

http://www.bluehill.org/annsnow.gif

Click to expand...

Since when did "snowiest winter on record" become a temperature?

A good source of scientific analysis for New England

The link below is an excellent paper posted by climatologist from UNH that sheds much light on climate change and analysis of historical data for New England. One conclusion I get from it is that there must be better places on the planet to take data that is not so filled with variation and hard to analyze.

http://www.neci.sr.unh.edu/neccwaq.html

cushetunk said:

Since when did "snowiest winter on record" become a temperature?

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Again, this is from a different forum. Nonetheless, we have had some periods in which snowfall was hard to come by, especially due to temperatures. I forget which year it was, I think 2000, we had 20+ days with rain where I lived in Western Massachusetts. In January.

Jazzbo said:

The link below is an excellent paper posted by climatologist from UNH that sheds much light on climate change and analysis of historical data for New England. One conclusion I get from it is that there must be better places on the planet to take data that is not so filled with variation and hard to analyze.

http://www.neci.sr.unh.edu/neccwaq.html

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I've seen that paper before, its a good one. Some good places to study the changing climate would be the poles, where, overall, the sea ice is decreasing at a rapid rate.

http://nsidc.org/sotc/sea_ice.html

Animation of sea ice from 1979-2007
http://nsidc.org/sotc/sea_ice_animation.html

ANd as many have probably heard, this melting sea ice has many negative effects, like the decreasing polar bear population.
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/swcbd/species/polarbear/index.html

Of course, people might be confused and hear that the Antarctic ice sheet actually INCREASED this year.
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/11/7/192721/175

I read on a weather forum that the Antarctic had record cold during their winter, so that added to the sea ice. As you can see its not always going to be warm every year. But the overall trend is for decreasing ice.

So the poles are definitely the place to look when you are looking for the major signs of change. The most extreme areas are affected first.

But that yahoo article talked about how lake effect areas are averaging more snow now, and that makes sense. It probably means that the lakes stay open for business longer, meaning they don't freeze as early in the year. As long as the lakes aren't frozen, lake effect snows can set up. So that can spell a longer lake effect snow season, and higher totals.
http://web.syr.edu/~wrt405/normal/Lake_Effect.html

I'll be very curious to see how New England's climate evolves over time. This winter has certainly been a snowy one....its not always going to be warm and rainy folks.


BTW, "How it all Ends"...An easy to understand video, should be shown everywhere....

I could go on forever, but I prob just opened up a whole can of stinky anchovies.

grouseking

A couple more articles to ponder....

I forgot to consider these, and this is another very real threat.

Greenland's ice sheet...lots of fresh water locked up there!

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/08/060810-greenland.html

http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/011408/news_20080114036.shtml

The reality of Global Warming (aka climate change to some) of the past few decades has been well documented by about 3000 pages of the most recent IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) reports, co-written by over 2600 climate scientists, which won a Nobel Peace Prize (it was not just Al Gore and his book/film "An Convenient Truth," which does a good job summarizing the mainstream views of climate scientists, albeit with a couple of unfortunate embellishments).

The link below is for a public-domain pdf, which is a useful document that answers many questions, such as those being asked here and on earlier threads. Beware reports from meteorologists, who work with shorter time scales and are therefore typically more skeptical about GW than climate scientists. One way to think about climatology is that it is weather integrated over longer time scales. An excellent site for researching GW, as well as climate change on longer time scales, is RealClimate.Org, which is maintained by paleoclimatologists and climate modelers.

http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_FAQs.pdf

Dr. D. (who teaches both college-level meteorology and climatology courses, which are different)

Dr. Dasypodidae said:

The reality of Global Warming (aka climate change to some))

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I agree with the use of the word "reality". I didn't think there was a debate anymore on whether the climate was changing. I thought the only debate left was if the climate change was caused by man?

bob

I'm old enough to remember in the mid '70's both Time and Newsweek magazines ran front cover feature articles on "Global Cooling". The environmentally conscious of that day where predicting the coming of the next Ice Age. It was a major theme of the early Earth Day events.

Today I can't believe with any degree of certainty the 72 hour local weather forecast. How am I to believe on a global scale what the weather will be 100 years from now?

I'm just glad that past global warming(s) melted that pesky mile thick sheet of ice that once covered the NE451.