Cold and Snowy Winters & Global Warming?

A generic snow patch for an Atlantic Coast Snow storm like the Blizzard of 1996 (from Knappenberger, 1990). The darker the color the deeper the snow. This vector-representation of snow deposition from coastal storms is a dead ringer for the snowfall pattern of the recent Blizzard. Knappenberger (1990) also addressed the question of the history of such snow fall patterns.

The blame game has no limits and the blamers no shame. The great Atlantic Coast snow storm of 1996 was blamed on global warming (GISS modeler Jim Hansen). Jim said that with global warming the Atlantic Ocean is warmer and the air wetter. That, he said, makes for big time snows like the Blizzard of 1996! Well, we took a look. The Western North Atlantic has been cooling not warming in recent years and the trend in atmospheric moisture as measured by the dew point temperature is also in decline not on the rise. The finger of blame is in error.

To get a big time snow along the Atlantic Coast you need cold air. A nice, very cold continental polar air mass is ideal. A global warming condition calls for the erosion of just that kind of air mass. It is a good thing the global warming extremists were not around in Jefferson's day. He recorded two two-feet plus snow storms at his modest home on Monticello. One was on his wedding night and he took the time to detail the meteorological attributes the storm. Must have been global warming if we believe Hansen. A second January 1996 Atlantic Coast snowstorm of a foot keep the presses rolling and a snowy global warming alive.

Next, the big chill set in. The early days of February 1996 were very cold. We have had 4 colder ones in the last two decades but no matter Michael Oppenheimer went on TV and said that such cold Arctic blasts are just what global warming is all about. Hey, I don't make this stuff up! He said that global warming means higher variability and so what you see is proof of global warming. Back when the ice age was coming (1970s) that also was said to cause increased variability. The evidence on increased variability for either global warming or global cooling is scant to nil. In this case the global warming models show a very modest increased variability in the early years of a ramp-up to a warmed world. Models are like theory. You use data to test them. The case for increased variability in the literature and climate change is less than scant.

All this blaming got off to a great start with the turn of the new year. The UK Met Office released the pre-news that 1995 was the warmest year on record. It was so important to get the word out in time with the IPCC report that they left December out of their calculations of the global yearly average. Well December came in colder than normal and the satellite data indicated the December was so cold that it was the greatest month to month drop in the 17 year history of satellite based atmospheric temperature measurements. It should also be noted that the UK Met Office in its "early" reports depends on the weather stations that report by telegraph (bigger places) rather than paper copy of weather reports by snail-mail. It takes months and months to get all the data in much less add it all up and divide by 365. The Satellite says that 1996 was the 8th warmest in the last 17 years.

Between global warming and El Nino our weather seems to have no cause of its own!

Knappenberger, P. C. (1990). Cyclone Tracks & Wintertime Climate. MS Thesis. University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va. 22903