## Why Is Winter Snow Extent Interesting? Posted on February 18, 2010 by Anthony Watts 

### Guest post by Steven Goddard Several people keep asking why am I focused on wint er snow extent. This seems fairly obvious, but I w ill review here: Snow falls in the winter, in places where it is col d. Snow does not generally fall in the summer, bec ause it is too warm. 1. Winter snow extent is a good proxy for winter snowf all. Snow has to fall before it can cover the grou nd. 2. So what about summer snow cover? Summer snow cover declined significantly (from the 1970s ice age scar e) during the 1980s, but minimums have not changed muc h since then. As you can see in the graph below, t he overall annual trend since 1989 has been slightly u pwards.

click to enlarge 

### Data from Rutgers University Global Snow Lab Note in the image above that there has been almost no change in the summer minimum snow extent since 1 989, and that the winter maximums have increased signifi cantly as seen below.

Summer snow cover is affected by many factors, but probably the most important one is soot, as Dr. Han sen has stated. Watts Up With That? 

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### The effects of soot in changing the climate are mor e than most scientists acknowledge, two US

researchers say. In the Proceedings of the National Academy of Scien ces, they say reducing atmospheric soot levels could help to slow global w arming relatively simply. They believe soot is twice as potent as carbon dioxide , a main greenhouse gas, in raising surface air tem peratures. ... The researchers are Dr James Hansen and Larissa N azarenko , both of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, part of the US space a gency Nasa, and Columbia University Earth Institute. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3333493.s tm
The global warming debate has until now focused alm ost entirely on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, but scientists at the Uni versity of California – Irvine, suggest that a less er -known problem – dirty snow – could explain the Arc tic warming attributed to greenhouse gases....The effect is more conspicuous in Arctic are as, where Zender believes that more than 90 percent of the warming could be attributed to di rty snow . http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20070506202633data _trunc_sys.shtml In summary, winter snowfall is increasing and curre ntly at record levels, and summer snow extent is no t changing much. Earlier changes in summer snow extent were l ikely due primarily to soot – not CO2.

This entry was posted in records, snowfall, weather . Bookmark the permalink.


### 254 Responses to Why Is Winter Snow Extent Interesting? news1.newsmax.com Ads by Google

Leif Svalgaard says: February 18, 2010 at 7:16 am As you can see in the graph below, the overall annu al trend since 1989 has been slightly upwards. And what is R^2 for that graph?

bushy says: February 18, 2010 at 7:22 am 

## Page 2 of 73 Why Is Winter Snow Extent Interesting? | Watts Up With That?

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- interesting/Quite possible, however temperatures seem to be fal ling on landmasses as well and so the soot problem might turn out to be a good thing.

Steve Goddard says: February 18, 2010 at 7:23 am Just to be clear and avoid getting off on irrelevan t tangents, snow cover did decrease from 1970 throu gh 1989. Winter snow cover has returned to the unusually high levels of the 1970s. Summer snow cover has not returned to 19 70 levels, but has not declined since 1989.

terry46 says: February 18, 2010 at 7:26 am It is interesting how Henson tries to do the global warming spin.If the first theory doesn’t work then change theory.Folks these people could care less about what is really h appening .The planet is cooling .But this goes agai nst thier theory and goverment control.

Eddie says: February 18, 2010 at 7:27 am Could we get a close up view of the summer snow ext ent, like we did for the winter to see what tend lo oks like over the same period?

Leo G says: February 18, 2010 at 7:29 am Soot – mostly man made. yet somewhat easy to cleanu p. does not stay around for hundred years, washes o ut with the melting. tackle this first, then see where we are.... IMHO

JJ says: February 18, 2010 at 7:31 am The X axis in the first graph is mislabeled. Are th ose weeks? Can you show data from 1970 -present?

Sonicfrog says: February 18, 2010 at 7:32 am Is the first graph the one you meant to accompany t his post? It doesn’t match the description. PS. I just woke up, so maybe my brain ain’t workin’ yet.

pauly says: February 18, 2010 at 7:33 am 

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- interesting/‘When you’re in a hole, stop digging’ is a sound pi ece of advice.

vukcevic says: February 18, 2010 at 7:36 am Keeps deep frost away from the ground surface. Any farmer will know benefits of the winter snow cover.

John Phillips says: February 18, 2010 at 7:37 am We may be reaching a tipping point for the next gla cial period. Humans are surely to blame. I just hav en’t quite figured out how yet.

Christian A. Wittke says: February 18, 2010 at 7:38 am So there is more humidity in the Northern atmospher e during winters – so what? That is doing what in relation to climate change? It feels like reading the coffee pot – after having had one coffee, only.

Tenuc says: February 18, 2010 at 7:42 am Zender had a little lamb, Its fleece was black as soot. And everywhere that Zender went, It’s sooty foot it put.

Jeff Alberts says: February 18, 2010 at 7:42 am Summer snow cover declined significantly (from the 1970s ice age scare) during the 1980s, The 1970s ice age scare caused snow cover to declin e??

Steve Goddard says: February 18, 2010 at 7:45 am Leif, Please feel free to do any statistical analysis you want, and share the results with us. If you want t o repeat for the last 10 years that would also be appreciated. 

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- interesting/Steve Goddard says: February 18, 2010 at 7:47 am The first graph X-axis shows weeks since 1966. It i s pretty easy to pick out winter maximums and summe r minimums.

Caleb says: February 18, 2010 at 7:47 am Expanded winter snow-cover must increase the albedo -effect. I’d like to see a discussion by people wis er than myself about what the difference might be. I have some questions regarding the effect the boun ced-back sunlight would have on the temperature of the atmosphere. I assume that when snow reflects sunlight the sunli ght doesn’t change into infrared waves, but remains the same long(?)- wave radiation it was on the way down. Therefore it would not “excite” CO2 on its way out. Is this ass umption correct? Does such long(?)-wave radiation warm the atmospher e at all, as it passes through? If it does, would not the albedo-effect increase th e warming of the atmosphere, because the light woul d warm on its way in, and also on its way out? If this was true then, even as expanded snow-cover reflected a lot of heat back into outer space, we m ight see some slight warming of the troposphere. This might lead to the false impression things were getting warmer, even a s we lost a lot of heat to outer space. Are Oxygen and Nitrogen warmed at all, when sunligh t passes through them? If my ideas are way off base, I don’t mind being ed ucated in the slightest. Thanks in advance.

Steve Goddard says: February 18, 2010 at 7:54 am jj, Here is the entire Rutgers weekly data set going ba ck to 1966. https://spreadsheets.google.com/oimg? key=0AnKz9p_7fMvBdHBkREJtSmNlbm9xNnlza0JEcXUwZ2c&oi d=2&v=1266508331457 Note the near record maximum on the right edge.

Leif Svalgaard says: February 18, 2010 at 7:55 am Steve Goddard (07:45:02) : Please feel free to do any statistical analysis you want, and share the results with us. If you want t o repeat for the last 10 years that would also be appreciated. Come on. You have that data handy. And have softwar e [Excel?] to put in the trend line. Just ask it fo r R^2 to gain some credibility. 

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- interesting/Richard Telford says: February 18, 2010 at 7:56 am The data start in 1966. So why does your analysis s tarts in 1989?

MinB says: February 18, 2010 at 7:56 am I notice that you only cite NH snow extent. What do es SH look like? Does measuring snow extent give any indication of t emperature trends in Arctic and Antarctic? Or is th is more of a measure of mid-latitude variation? What would slope for winter snow cover look like wi thout 2010, i.e., how much flatter might it be?

DirkH says: February 18, 2010 at 8:00 am “Christian A. Wittke (07:38:51) : So there is more humidity in the Northern atmospher e during winters – so what? That is doing what in relation to climate change?” The post doesn’t talk about “humidity in the Northe rn atmosphere”. How do you conclude that the humidi ty has risen? And while we’re at it, do you think that the mean humid ity has risen? The peak humidity? Both? In which la yers of the atmosphere? Any idea? Or have you been confused by The Time with their “I n the meantime, warmer air could be supercharged wi th moisture and...” at http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1962 294,00.html?xid=rss-fullhealthsci-yahoo (which was pretty hilarious, i mean, SUPERCHARGED W ITH MOISTURE. Like, more than 100% – which usually leads to precipitation, even when The Time doesn’t notice.)

Tom P says: February 18, 2010 at 8:01 am Leif Svalgaard (07:16:08) : I was going to write something about fish and barre ls, but the analogy rather breaks down when the fis h start shooting themselves.

Henry chance says: February 18, 2010 at 8:05 am 

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- interesting/Snow cover is God’s gift to winter wheat fields. It is so many times better than mere rain fall. As we read about the permanent dustbowl and reality shows us great ground cover for wheat. Wheat can grow in the subsoil zones when covered by insulating snow.

Ralph says: February 18, 2010 at 8:10 am Ah ! So the snow was not rotten, ıt was dırty !!

.

John Innes says: February 18, 2010 at 8:12 am For coal-fired power stations, and perhaps to a les ser extent for other soot-generators, it should be cheaper to reduce the soot emissions than to extract and sequester the CO2 gen erated and emitted. Electrostatic precipitation has a head start, but CO2 separation and sequestration is only just out of th e starting box in recent years. Hohlfield observed in 1824 that an electric discharge cleaned dust laden gases, and not too man y years later, Lodge, and later Cottrell made and i nstalled practical dust precipitators for smelter fumes. In 1935, Penney an nounced the development of the Precipitron, with a major reduction is size and voltage and an improvement in efficiency. This horse is already half way to the finish line. Surely we can work from this as a starting point, a nd get more bang for our warming reduction buck by reducing soot instead of CO2? For a start, simply slowing the exhaust gas velocity through larger precipitators would reduce soot emission. It should be a simple matter to calculate the improvem ent that can be achieved per dollar spent, even wit hout new developments. Considering the millions of dollars b eing thrown at CO2 studies, let alone action, we co uld not only be reducing AGW right now, if in fact it exists; we co uld reduce real pollution and breathe cleaner air. What were those numbers for coal-fired plants in construction or planned, a gain?

DirkH says: February 18, 2010 at 8:15 am “Caleb (07:47:41) : I assume that when snow reflects sunlight the sunli ght doesn’t change into infrared waves, but remains the same long(?)- wave radiation it was on the way down. Therefore it would not “excite” CO2 on its way out. Is this ass umption correct?” Yes. Only you got the “long” wrong – the longwave p art of the spectrum we usually talk about here is t he Longwave Infrared that is absorbed by CO2 and to a larger extent by w ater vapour, > 1 mikrometer. Visible light has shor ter wavelengths, around 350nm IIRC. “Does such long(?)-wave radiation warm the atmosphe re at all, as it passes through?” No, not in a significant way, as it is not absorbed
. “If it does, would not the albedo-effect increase t he warming of the atmosphere, because the light wou ld warm on its way in, and also on its way out? If this was true then, even as expanded snow-cover reflected a lot of heat back into outer space, we m ight see some slight warming of the troposphere. This might lead to the false impression things were getting warmer, even a s we lost a lot of heat to outer space. 

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- interesting/Are Oxygen and Nitrogen warmed at all, when sunligh t passes through them?” No interaction between visible light and O2 or N2, otherwise air wouldn’t be transparent for visible l ight. So visible light that is reflected e.g. by snow will go outwards. There m ight be refraction by water droplets, so clouds wil l diffuse visible light. In the absence of clouds, the light reflected by snow (or white roofs, or any part of the surface) will j ust radiate into space without warming anything significantly.

Matt says: February 18, 2010 at 8:17 am Leif, R^2 correlation wouldn’t make sense on a X vs T plo t. Its typically used to compare the degree of corr elation of two separate variables (i.e. on a scatter plot).

kwik says: February 18, 2010 at 8:18 am Norway has already given lots of money during many years to the Soviet’s to put filters on them large factories up in Nickel ....they never used it to filter the smoke anyway....th e whole area was black for kilometers after kilomet ers. Dont know how it is at the moment.... but back then y ou could see when you crossed the border to Soviet- land. Free country; Clean. Communist land; Dirty.

Steve Goddard says: February 18, 2010 at 8:18 am Richard, The analysis starts in 1989, because that is when t he current upwards trend started. The 1970s was col d and had an unusually large amount of snow. Snow cover declined during th e 1980s from the 1970s peak. Winter snow cover has now returned to the record hi gh values.

atmoaggie says: February 18, 2010 at 8:21 am Trends aside for the moment, this past winter is re aching for the snowfalls not seen since the winter of 1977-78 (as has been well covered). What do this year and the winter of 1977-78 have in common? An El Nino combined with a near-neutral to negative PDO index. That notable winter was the las t time this combination happened. Just as the causes of the PDO’s behavior is not wel l understood, I am of the opinion that it’s telecon nections are poorly understood, as well. (no surprise, it is a 60 year cycle and we have measured one half of one cycle vi a global coverage by satellite...and there is no guarantee that this parti cular cycle is representative of the norm as variab ility exists in the cycles themselves) 

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- interesting/PDO index by month: http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/PDO.latest PDO index history plot here (only through Sept 2009 ): http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/ another plot...a little experimental: http://www.esr.org/~gunn/pdo/pdo_fig1.png

kyle says: February 18, 2010 at 8:30 am Snowmageddon provides a “teachable moment” to expla in the reality of the effects of Global Warming pol lution. Listen to the Earthbeat Radio podcast: http://bit.ly/a7m4n1

Steve Goddard says: February 18, 2010 at 8:30 am Leif, While the trend is slightly upwards, there has been no statistically significant trend in weekly snow cover over the last 20 years. Winter maximums have increased significantly while summer minimums have stayed relatively const ant. http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/ snow_response1.png It has been claimed repeatedly in the press that sn ow cover is declining, but the evidence does not su pport that over the last two decades. A Google search of snow cover decline turns up over one million hits. What is your point? Do you think that winter snow c over has not been increasing and is not at or near a record maximum?

Leif Svalgaard says: February 18, 2010 at 8:34 am Matt (08:17:53) : R^2 correlation wouldn’t make sense on a X vs T plo t. Its typically used to compare the degree of corr elation of two separate variables (i.e. on a scatter plot). R^2 value does make sense in evaluating a trend. A trend is just that: a correlation of a variable wit h time. Remove the connecting lines [which are artificial anyway] and the graph is indeed just a scatter plot.

Leif Svalgaard says: February 18, 2010 at 8:40 am Steve Goddard (08:30:34) : While the trend is slightly upwards, there has been no statistically significant trend in weekly snow cover over the last 20 years. What is your point? Do you think that winter snow c over has not been increasing and is not at or near a record maximum? My point is that it is a bit silly to open a post w ith a graph that has no significant trend with the words: “As you can see in the graph below, the overall annual trend since 1989 ha s been slightly upwards” And we still do have any explanation why the first 20+ years were left out. If you leave out all the d ata except the last two 

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- interesting/years, you’ll get quite a correlation. So what was R^2? You are beginning to sound like Mann who would n’t reveal his R^2 either :-)

MattN says: February 18, 2010 at 8:41 am What the hell will R^2 tell you here?

Fredrick Lightfoot says: February 18, 2010 at 8:41 am Now Steve, I can see this is going to get interesti ng.

Steve Goddard says: February 18, 2010 at 8:42 am I am completely at a loss as to what some people ar e disputing. We have been told over and over again since Hansen spoke to Congress in 1989, that winter snow is decl ining and that winter storms are moving north. Clearly that is not happening, quite the opposite.

Richard Telford says: February 18, 2010 at 8:45 am Steve Goddard (08:18:41) There is nothing wrong with that. Provided you make it explicit what you have done, and acknowledge th at by selecting the start point, you inflate the risk of a type I error . The post, as it currently reads, is deceptive. I am not implying that this is your intent. Plotting the entire dataset would be a good idea to clarify matters.

UnfrozenCavemanMD says: February 18, 2010 at 9:02 am I’ve made my own Excel analysis of the data. The R^ 2 for the graph above is 0.3, and the slope is 87,0 00 km^2 increase in Winter snow cover per year. But, this is very sensi tive to the choice of starting year. 1989 is a cher ry-picked minimum, and the current year’s data is not completely in yet. I f you plot from the cherry-picked maximum of 1978-2 009 you get a decrease of 8,700 km^2 per year and an R^2 of 0.0035. Using the Rutger’s data from 1974 onward, the slope of the trend is 19,000 km^2 increase per year, on a standard deviation of 1,400,000 km^2 per year, with an R^2 of 0.02, wh ich is, for all practical purposes, flat.

Karl B. says: 

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- interesting/February 18, 2010 at 9:05 am @ Tom P (08:01:37) Tom P, that doesn’t add anything to the conversatio n, and is actually insulting. Reminds of the comments when I used to read RealCli mate.

Lonnie Schubert says: February 18, 2010 at 9:07 am John Phillips [above] suggests we may be at the beg inning of earth’s next glaciation of the northern h emisphere. I see that possibility too. It is overdue, geologically speaki ng. The short chart (last 20 years of winter snow e xtent) would fit a logarithmic increase, which is just what would be e xpected for the beginning of the creep of the ice s heets south. (Lookout Manhattan Island!) However, as I recall my geology lessons, the northe rn ice sheet should need to completely disappear so as to provide sufficient extra open water surface to provide suff icient moisture for the extensive increase in snow, to provide the extensive increase in snow cover, which keeps driving the tem perature down with increased albedo and all the wat er phase change, keeping the ice sheets growing south until the eart h cools too much to keep the precipitation cycle go ing. Of course, there were those making similar statemen ts in the 1970s. Hopefully it will take centuries (perhaps millennia ) to cool enough regardless. We still have engineers. I suppose I’m not worried.

Tom_R says: February 18, 2010 at 9:12 am >> DirkH (08:15:05) : No interaction between visible light and O2 or N2, otherwise air wouldn’t be transparent for visible l ight. So visible light that is reflected e.g. by snow will go outwards. There m ight be refraction by water droplets, so clouds wil l diffuse visible light. In the absence of clouds, the light reflected by snow (or white roofs, or any part of the surface) will j ust radiate into space without warming anything significantly. << Visible photons are not absorbed by N2 or O2, but t hey are scattered by collisions, moreso for shorter wavelengths (hence the blue sky). The scattering process has to add some m omentum, and thus kinetic energy, to the air molecu les. Hmm, as I write this I realize that the photon chan ges direction, but doesn't lose energy since the wa velength doesn't change. How is energy conserved when the air molecule gains kinetic energy but the photon energy remains the s ame?

nofreewind says: February 18, 2010 at 9:19 am Here is where you can find lots of Snow Cover data. http://www.climate4you.com/SnowCover.htm#NH%20seaso nal%20snow%20cover%20since%201966 Here, Rutger, is where much of that data comes from
. http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/ 

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- interesting/Robert says: February 18, 2010 at 9:24 am “Earlier changes in summer snow extent were likely due primarily to soot – not CO2.” If Zender is correct, yes. And what is the CAUSE of all that soot, accord to Zender? From the abstract : “Applying biomass burning BC emission inventories f or a strong (1998) and weak (2001) boreal fire year , we estimate global annual mean BC/snow surface radiative forcing from all sources (fossil fuel, biofuel, and biomass burn ing) of +0.054 (0.007 –0.13) and +0.049 (0.007–0.12) W m−2, respectively. Snow forcing from only fossil fuel + biofuel sourc es is +0.043 W m−2 (forcing from only fossil fuels is +0.033 W m−2), s uggesting that the anthropogenic contribution to to tal forcing is at least 80%.” At least 80% of the soot is caused by BURNING FOSSI L AND BIOFUELS. So his theory is very interesting, and I hope it holds up, since it suggests the Arctic ice could re bound much more quickly if we took corrective actio n. But that corrctive action continues to be drastically reducing burning carbon compounds for energy.

hotrod ( Larry L ) says: February 18, 2010 at 9:25 am In the 1970′s when worries of “the coming ice age” were all the rage, they were watching the snow exte nt closely as a leading indicator of possible cooling. The concept was base d on the albedo changes, and the snow’s effect on h eat storage on the land mass areas. A reasonably good analogy would be to think of the land mass as a thermal capacitor, charged with ther mal energy by an AC signal. A given parcel of land grows warmer through the sum mer, then cools during the winter, eventually reach ing some thermal equilibrium, where each year on average its tempera ture oscillates around a uniform temperature. In th e northern temperate region this temp is approximately the ground water temperature and in much of the U.S. is about 55 deg F. (12.8 deg C). The period of the global cooling concerns was also about the time the TAPPS study came out for Nuclear Winter, and one of the results of that were analysis of the effect of albedo changes on this stable thermal equilibrium t emperature. If you get early snows in the fall, and late snows in the spring, the increased albedo at times when t he sun’s elevation angle is high would have much more impact on the thermal ene rgy balance than the same snow extent occurring in the dead of winter. A deep long lasting snow late in the spring would d rastically slow the early spring heating (which wou ld slow the entire summers heat storage). If you also had deep long la sting snow early in the fall, that would cut off so lar heating of the ground early. The worst possible situation would be deep long las ting snowfalls early in the fall, and late in the s pring and very little snow (thin snow cover) in the depths of the winter. This would minimize heat insulation effects of the snow in the peak cold of the winter while still maintaining high albedo. In the late 1970′s early 1980′s we had a nearly sno w less winter here in Colorado and had major proble ms with deep freeze lines in the soil, causing all sorts of problems wi th frozen water lines etc. as the sharp cold temper atures in January and February froze the ground. Construction nearly grou nd to a halt over the winter as the ground was too hard to dig even with back hoes. A friend of mine spent that winter weldi ng new teeth on backhoe buckets for a local constru ction company. 

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- interesting/Any way back to the snow extent. One of the theorie s that came out of all this examination of albedo a nd timing/extent of snow was the theory of the “snow blitz” trigger for entering an ice age. Basically they suggested that a couple short summers due to heavy snows at the right time, could basical ly cut off summer time heating enough to trigger a plunge in seasonal average temperatures and that global temperatures w ould follow. This pattern would have to repeat for several years running and in both hemispheres to trigger a globa l ice age. The snow blitz theory was one attempt to explain what trigge ring event pushed the climate over the edge into th e actual ice age once the orbital cycles were in the proper phase to support long term glaciation. Some archelogical evidence sh owed that the changes in flora and fauna at the time of the shift into gl acial dominance might happen very quickly (perhaps decades or even a few years). This led to hypothesis’s like the snow blit z hypothesis to explain the sudden change in prevai ling weather, that lead to the change in the general climate. On the oceans th e same theory applies to ice cover, as its extent l ate in the fall and late into the spring would strongly effect solar heating of t he water beneath the sea ice do to absorption of so lar energy. In that case the sea ice switches from acting as an insulator to keep the polar seas warm in the dead of the winter into sun shades reflecting away heating in the early and late part of the local summer seasons. http://www.masterresource.org/2009/09/the-global-co oling-scare-revisited/ http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1346&dat=1975 0105&id=HI0sAAAAIBAJ&sjid=- _oDAAAAIBAJ&pg=7160,928089 Larry

John F. Hultquist says: February 18, 2010 at 9:27 am Caleb (07:47:41) DirkH (08:15:05) ‘sun rays and mol ecules’ Figure 2 in the following may be helpful: http://www.wag.caltech.edu/home/jang/genchem/infrar ed.htm

A C Osborn says: February 18, 2010 at 9:30 am I don’t think that a Trend is even necessary, the h uman eye can see that there is nothing realy going on with the Summer graph.

Robert says: February 18, 2010 at 9:31 am Steve, points #1 and 2# are great, but you need a p oint #3: 3. Because warmer air holds more moisture, it can b e too cold for snow. Antarctica, very example, is i n many places too cold for snow. Warmer conditions may increase snow, if t hey make it warmer but not too warm for snow.

ventana says: February 18, 2010 at 9:47 am Spring snow cover is still trending downwards. 

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- interesting/Zeke Hausfather says: February 18, 2010 at 9:55 am Steve, You got your data from Rutgers University Global Sn ow Lab. Have you taken the time to examine their snow cover anomaly chart? Its well done, and tells a bit of a different story: http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_anom.php ?ui_set=0&ui_region=nhland&ui_month=1 Similarly, just winter extent: http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_seasonal .php?ui_set=nhland&ui_season=1 As Anthony is fond of saying, another entry for the “weather is not climate” department.

Lon Hocker says: February 18, 2010 at 10:00 am Michael Beenstock’s paper ( http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/14/new-paper-on/ ) and my brilliant analysis ( http://www.2bc3.com/warming.html ) seem to show that there is a feedback mechanism t hat makes the temperature increase due to CO2 temporary. Why this should be s o is in question. Perhaps show cover has a role in this somewhere.

Christian A. Wittke says: February 18, 2010 at 10:01 am @DirkH Did we read the same post? Snow is atmospheric humidity and temperatures below 32°F – or am I wrong? We have more snow in winters since 1989 now – on th e Northern Hemisphere, that’s what the graph sugges ts and what it feels like – but only this winter in Scotland, not the last 10 or so years. Are you suggesting that we have more snow because w e have the same amount of humidity in the atmospher e but the temperatures dropped considerably so what was rain is now snow? Is there any data on that? If the temperatures have not dropped and the humidi ty has not increased then where does the snow come from? From supercharging?

phlogiston says: February 18, 2010 at 10:08 am Leif Svalgaard 

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- interesting/I grabbed the data rather crudely from the graph wi th an on-screen ruler, and looked at the curve in E xcel. If we accept an approximation as a two factor scatt er, then we get an R2 of 0.307. Taking the square root of this as r the correlation coefficient, we get 0.554. Applying an r of 0.554 to the correlation table, ta king (also a crude approximation) the number of yea rs minus 2 as the degrees of freedom, then the P value is between 0.0 1 (r=0.537) and 0.001 (r=0.652). If I’ve cocked this up, let the vultures descend!

Jerry from Boston says: February 18, 2010 at 10:15 am “John Innes (08:12:49) : For coal-fired power stations, and perhaps to a les ser extent for other soot-generators, it should be cheaper to reduce the soot emissions than to extract and sequester the CO2 gen erated and emitted. ... Surely we can work from this as a starting point, a nd get more bang for our warming reduction buck by reducing soot instead of CO2? ...” Well put. Let’s save people who are now inhaling en ough soot to kill a half million people per year in stead of worrying about what people 4 generations down the road will do to respond to gradual sea level rise of less than a fo ot per century.

Steve Goddard says: February 18, 2010 at 10:20 am R^2 on the winter graph since 1989 is 0.298514013 R^2 on the winter graph since 1999 is 0.312822303 S lope is 317,000 km2/year R^2 on the weekly graph since 1966 is 0.004697147 R^2 on the weekly graph since 1989 is 5.25176E-05

A C Osborn says: February 18, 2010 at 10:32 am Zeke Hausfather (09:55:07) : Notice they always use Anomalies, but anomalies fro m what, there is no “normal” in earth’s climate. Th ey always choose the “Base”. Try using the MWP as the base and everythin g changes. Try using the period when the vikings we re in Greenland instead and see what you get.

kwik says: February 18, 2010 at 10:35 am There are good men in The Netherlands too; 

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- interesting/http://www.probeinternational.org/files/UKVersieHen kTennekes.pdf

Matt says: February 18, 2010 at 10:36 am Leif, Couple points – 1. its very rare to use an R^2 valu e in a time series, unless you expect the relations hip to be linear or monotonic. 2. Applying an R^2 to a linear fit of an oscillating system also makes no sense whatsoever! Its exactly things like this that cause skeptics to not be taken seriously – you fail in basic statistics, but you expect to b e able to understand a complex climate system? Give me a break!

Lon Hocker says: February 18, 2010 at 10:38 am Christian A. Wittke (10:01:43) : The world is pretty big, and the climate is wonderf ully complex. Dirk H. knows his physics, and is gen tle with folks that don’t know it as well. I tend to be a bit more blunt. Be careful using sin gle point variables like atmospheric humidity and t emperature to try to describe a giga-variabled system.

Matt says: February 18, 2010 at 10:40 am A C Osborn, Setting a different period as the ‘base’ wouldn’t c hange the shape of the graph, only the zero-interce pt of the data. The result is still the same.

David Middleton says: February 18, 2010 at 10:40 am Steve, If you plot the average Dec-Feb snow extent against the PDO index, you get a very interesting correlat ion... Winter Snow Extent vs PDO As far as the r-squared goes... It’s a cyclical stoch astic process. Unless you have a long enough time s eries, no reasonable trend line will yield a decent r-squared.

Leif Svalgaard says: February 18, 2010 at 10:43 am 

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- interesting/phlogiston (10:08:42) : if we accept an approximation as a two factor scatt er, then we get an R2 of 0.307. A good way to think of R2 is that it is simply the fraction of the variation that is due to the trend [if the data points are independent - which they are not]. So, an R2 of 0.1 means that at least 90% of the variation is not du e to the trend, and R2 of 0.3 means that at least 70% of the variation is not due to the trend. The ‘at least’ comes from the fa ct hat the autocorrelation at log 1 is not zero.

David Middleton says: February 18, 2010 at 10:44 am The y-axis for the PDO is reversed (negative is up) in the chart attached to my last post.

Leif Svalgaard says: February 18, 2010 at 10:46 am Leif Svalgaard (10:43:31) : The ‘at least’ comes from the fact that the autocor relation at lag 1 is not zero.

Max Hugoson says: February 18, 2010 at 10:54 am Leif S. “As you can see in the graph below, the overall ann ual trend since 1989 has been slightly upwards. And what is R^2 for that graph?” Interesting. I don’t recall your EVER asking this f or testing out the significance of temperature data . As I have been doing, using Student’s T, Mann Whitney, etc. to decide if certain observed changes (comparing year to year, d ecade to decade and century to century) are truely “statistically signi ficant” considering the observed standard deviation . (Of course, these is the concept of normalacy and the validty of Student’s v ersus the non-parametric Mann Whitney test, my judg ement is out on that. Because if you treat temperatures by “seasons ” they are virtually “normal” in distribution. If y ou go over a chronological year, they appear as a bifurcated normal distributi on.)

Leif Svalgaard says: February 18, 2010 at 11:00 am Steve Goddard (10:20:59) : R^2 on the winter graph since 1989 is 0.298514013 R^2 on the winter graph since 1999 is 0.312822303 An interesting graph would be R^2 as a function of start year. And another one the same but without 20 09-2010.

JimAsh says: February 18, 2010 at 11:00 am 

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- interesting/Just so I cam see if I am following this, I’d appre ciate if anyone would tell me if I have misunderstood Steve’s post. Steve Goddard (10:20:59) : R^2 on the winter graph since 1989 is 0.298514013 ————Means snow cover has increased somewhat since 8 9. R^2 on the winter graph since 1999 is 0.312822303 S lope is 317,000 km2/year ———Means considerable increase sine 1999 R^2 on the weekly graph since 1966 is 0.004697147 ——–Means when averaged out since 1966, no big deal indicating (opinion) that maybe the climatologists have mistaken natural variability ( caused by xxxxx ?) for one way climate change. R^2 on the weekly graph since 1989 is 5.25176E-05 —–Showing that measured from 1989 there has been a significant increase in snow cover. Do I at least read this right ?

Sordnay says: February 18, 2010 at 11:05 am I don’t see the growth represented on second graph on the first one, it looks pretty much constant. Also, 2010 isn’t quite finished, it just started, s o how was calculated 2010 point on second figure? i t seems it will look pretty much the same as 2008. Any way is hard to look for differences on sinusoid al signals, I like better the anomalies graph as in http://moe.met.fsu.edu/snow/ though their record isn’t as long, it only goes do wn to year 2000

Paul Coppin says: February 18, 2010 at 11:17 am Hmm. Living in a “snow” country as I do, I’m less t han convinced that snow extent is anything more than a weak proxy for flow of cP and Arctic air masses. Its certainly not a priori a linear proxy for temperature nor for global cooli ng. While we’ve observed snowfall along a lower latitudinal limit t his year than in the previous few years, behind the snow line there are large areas with much lower than usual snowfall, and more moderate temps. At my place in S. Ont., for exampl e, we’ve way below normal snowfall and temps have stayed moderate all winter (but not warm, i.e. +/- average without the usual large variation swings). I’m a little less sanguine about “records” as well. I seem to recall the Washington record this winter was ~ 1/2 in. more snow than the previous record. 1/2 in? A 1/2in of snow m easure is meaningless in a pile several inches thic k, as anyone who lives with snow will tell you. This is an anecdotal recor d, not a scientific one.

Tim Clark says: February 18, 2010 at 11:21 am vukcevic (07:36:13) : Keeps deep frost away from the ground surface. Any farmer will know benefits of the winter snow cover. 

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- interesting/Henry chance (08:05:49) : Snow cover is God’s gift to winter wheat fields. It is so many times better than mere rain fall. The only advantage to snow versus rain is in cases where slow snowmelt occurs leading to increased per colation resulting in reduced runoff in spring (March, April, May). Frost actually mellows the ground due to frost heav e and aids in spring sowing. It also kills insect e ggs and larvae in the soil, and some weeds and weed seeds. A persistent, deep snow cover winterkills winter an nuals (wheat, rapeseed, winter peas, etc.). So no, we don’t want increased long lived snow cove r in the US at least.

Gary Hladik says: February 18, 2010 at 11:22 am Robert (09:24:32) : “At least 80% of the soot is ca used by BURNING FOSSIL AND BIOFUELS. So his theory is very interesting, and I hope it holds up, since it sugge sts the Arctic ice could rebound much more quickly if we took corrective action. But that corrctive action continues to be d rastically reducing burning carbon compounds for en ergy.” ...by inefficient soot-producing methods and instead burning them in modern efficient power plants, and switching from wood/grass/dung cooking fires to natural gas, and p roducing abundant energy from nuclear power, etc. Fixed that for you, Robert. No thanks necessary.

vukcevic says: February 18, 2010 at 11:29 am Only thing that makes any sense here is: delta area/delta time or to make more sense trend expressed as % pa, whic h is roughly 0.22% pa (no calculator or excel needed).

Zeke Hausfather says: February 18, 2010 at 11:30 am Perhaps a cherry-pick-proof graph would help clarif y this morass. Here is the trend to present for every week since 1 966 for each season. http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j237/hausfath/Pic ture41.png

Leif Svalgaard says: February 18, 2010 at 11:39 am Matt (10:36:58) : Applying an R^2 to a linear fit of an oscillating s ystem also makes no sense whatsoever! If you consider the system to be an oscillation rid ing on a linear trend, then it does make sense to c ompute R^2 as a measure 

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- interesting/of the significance of the trend. In interpreting R ^2 you must then take into account the non-zero aut ocorrelation due to the oscillation. There are standard techniques to do al l this. One way of looking at this is to average ov er each cycle and plot the cycle averages as a function of time. This makes pe rfect sense. R^2 will still show how much of the va riation is due to the trend. Here is a little experiment: http://www.leif.org/research/Cycles-with-Trends.png I generated 17 perfect sine waves [black curves] an d ran a linear regression. The result was y = 0.00 x + 0 with R^2 = 0 as expected. No trend. Then I added a linear trend of 0.01 per step in x [red curve], result of linear re gression: y = 0.01 x + 0 with R^2 = 0.1525. Perfectly reasonable as the tren d explains 15.25% of the variation. Then I added a trend of 0.02 [green curve], result y = 0.02 + 0 with R^2 = 0.4185, i.e. the trend [which is recovered perfectly from the a nalysis] explains 41.85% of the variation, etc. No problem here whatsoever. No failing of statistic s. For the green curve, t is 27.3 and p = 4*10^(-12 4). The significance is enormous for this case [I had 1037 points]. With fe wer data points the significance drops dramatically : with 23 points t=7.92 and p= 0.00063, but then there is no noise, etc. R^2 is a good measure of how much of the variation is due to a linear trend, no matter what the data l ooks like.

JonesII says: February 18, 2010 at 11:40 am The global warming debate has until now focused alm ost entirely on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions What “global warming debate”? There isn’t any. It h as been debunked. It’s over!

wayne says: February 18, 2010 at 11:40 am Steve Goddard (10:20:59) : A better R^2 on your second graph of winter snowfal l would be to add every point with preceding point and plot as two-year accumulated snowfall. That R^2 should show much bet ter correlation and is still proper statistics if y ou state the results properly. See stat book for proper title, seems wou ld be “The Two Year Accumulated Winter Snowfall”. C ould do it for threeyear of more. Might uncover a hidden high-freq comp onent.

vukcevic says: February 18, 2010 at 11:42 am JonesII (11:08:36) : “Not everything is bad news. Here, an image by NASA , of Andromeda in the infrarred: http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/427020main_pia12 832-c.jpg ” Or you can sun on your I-phone, real indulgence for a SS insomniac. http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/iph one-sun.html

frozenohio says: February 18, 2010 at 11:48 am I’m getting a bit tired of shoveling all this high humidity.... 

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- interesting/Brent Hargreaves says: February 18, 2010 at 12:04 pm Sorry folks, I’m normally an avid fan of this super b website. But this discussion strand is futile. We sneer at the crazy warming gang when they extrapolate a small dataset to the point of absurdity; please let’s not do the same. It has snowed a little, so what?. Two swallows do n ot a summer make.

Ric Werme says: February 18, 2010 at 12:12 pm Steve Goddard (10:20:59) : > R^2 on the winter graph since 1989 is 0.298514013 9 significant figures? Careful – Leif will start te aching you about significant digits and error bars.

UnfrozenCavemanMD says: February 18, 2010 at 12:12 pm Even intelligent, educated, and well-meaning people can convince themselves of all kinds of wrong thin gs when analyzing large volumes of data from multiple experiments. It takes extraordinary discipline to keep oneself fro m being led astray by phantoms. What has been demonstrated here is that the norther n Winter snow extent has very large year-to-year va riability, and can not be used to support a warming trend, or a cooling tr end, during all or part of the last 40 years. That is itself a useful finding. Some of the remarks made here regarding statistics have been mistaken. R-squared, in particular, is pe rfectly valid as a test of the assertion that time is responsible for some of the variation. But for year-on-year variations, it is necessary to annualize it first, either with seasonal averages, as above, or some other filter that removes the yearly cycle. Applying it to the raw weekly Rutgers snow cover data for the last 40 year s makes no sense, but to a Dec-Feb annual average, or a 52-week average, makes perfect sense.

buddy says: February 18, 2010 at 12:13 pm @ Sordnay (11:05:01) : I’m trying to figure out how that is representative of reality. On Feb 12 we had one of the largest wi nter storms in the southeast in a long time, and it barely registers o n that chart, if at all? I mean heck, you can look here: http://ge.ssec.wisc.edu/modis-today/index.php? satellite=t1&product=true_color&date=2010_02_13_044 &overlay_sector=false&overlay_state=true&overlay_co astline=true§or And see snow cover (howbeit shortlasting) all the way to north florida, but somehow that doesn’t even reg ister on the chart. I wonder how they calculate ‘added snow cover’ becaus e that chart does not seem indicative of what is on the ground right now in many parts of the South East. Does that cover ha s to remain on the ground for a week for it to regi ster? Doesn’t seem to jive with the reality to me, at least. 

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- interesting/buddy says: February 18, 2010 at 12:15 pm Sorry I just noticed green is ‘climatology from 95- 09′ so it does make a little more sense on the grap h, even if the blue/red chart doesn’t

buddy says: February 18, 2010 at 12:18 pm @ Brent Hargreaves (12:04:02) : It ‘snowed a bit?’ This is the second highest exten t in the northern hemisphere on record.

Fred H. Haynie says: February 18, 2010 at 12:19 pm Caleb, Snow is not a perfect reflector. In fact, because o f it’s structure, fresh snow acts as a black body. The high energy shortwave radiation from the sun rapidly melts the surface wh ich freezes to form an ice crust that is more of a reflector. But even ice is transparent like glass and the fraction of the ener gy reflected back to space depends on the angle of incidence. It does radiate low energy longwaves as a function of surface tempe rature. Much of the outbound longwave radiation fro m the top of the atmosphere measured by satalites is frozen cloud to ps.

Oliver K. Manuel says: February 18, 2010 at 12:21 pm Quote: Steve Goddard (08:42:01) : 1. “I am completely at a loss as to what some peopl e are disputing.” Reply: Someone – skilled in bamboozle propaganda te chniques – is purposely directing attention away fr om undisputed facts that would embarrass NASA and/or Hansen. 2. “We have been told over and over again since Han sen spoke to Congress in 1989, that winter snow is declining and that winter storms are moving north.” Reply: That is exactly what the propaganda artist s eeks to hide. 3. “Clearly that is not happening, quite the opposi te.” You are exactly right. Since that fact can’t be disputed, a talented propa ganda artist might direct attention to R^2, 4/3(pi) R^2, PV = nRT, or anything else to bamboozle the audience. Thanks, Steve Goddard, for this post. A least one of your critics is more talented in pro paganda than in science. 

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- interesting/With kind regards, Oliver K. Manuel

John A says: February 18, 2010 at 12:21 pm I’m sorry Steve Goddard, but I think that the concl usion is largely cherry-picked from the time series and the trend is likely to be spurious. Yes 2010 appears to be a large extensi on of winter snowfall, but its one season. As Leif points out, the low R2 of the points says t hat most of the apparent trend is scatter and not s ignificant. I think we have to wait a lot longer to see proof t hat the decline of NH snow cover since the 1960s ha s been broken.

JonesII says: February 18, 2010 at 12:24 pm vukcevic (11:42:13) :That Iphone-Sun it is undoubte ly an “electric sun”, even Prof.Leif will agree. ☺

John Galt says: February 18, 2010 at 12:26 pm 1) The data does not go back that far. Like much of the over-hyped climate and weather records, it’s j ust no enough data to get excited about. 2) There is no increase in snowcover (predicted by AGW proponents) . 3) There is no decrease in snowcover (also predicte d by AGW proponents).

JonesII says: February 18, 2010 at 12:28 pm ...not to mention that Birkeland current in the Andro meda Nasa picture.

King of Cool says: February 18, 2010 at 12:29 pm Question Why is the arctic ice extent so low for the time of year despite recent cool weather? Despite cool tem peratures over most of the Arctic Ocean in January, Arctic sea ice extent continued to track below normal. By the end of Janu ary, ice extent dropped below the extent observed in January 2007 etc, etc? http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=2010 0203092427AAzTQYz Looks like some-one needs to ask Yahoo UK a supplem entary question: 

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- interesting/If there is global warming why has Arctic Ice Exten t risen above that of 2005-6 and 2006-7? http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_ima ges/N_stddev_timeseries.png

Pascvaks says: February 18, 2010 at 12:34 pm Steve Goddard: Is the Arctic Sea Ice anomaly graph at the followin g link actually saying the same thing that you’re s aying about the snow? - http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/sea. ice.anomaly.timeseries.jpg If so, or not, could you help me understand how you r graph and the one at this link fit together. TIA

kadaka says: February 18, 2010 at 12:36 pm If I was to look at the top chart as plotting ampli tude, while a sinusoidal signal was controlling the gain, I would wonder what all the distortion at the top of the range is about . Is the amplifier maxed out? Otherwise, as charted , I don’t see either way what all the noise is about. (Pun originally unintended, but I saw it and left i t in. If people are willing to let the IPCC get awa y with it, well then...)

Ed says: February 18, 2010 at 12:41 pm Zeke Hausfather (11:30:43) : “Perhaps a cherry-pick-proof graph would help clari fy this morass. Here is the trend to present for every week since 1 966 for each season. http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j237/hausfath/Pic ture41 ” Great graph. If there is more snow in the Winter an d Fall, and less in the Spring and Summer, doesn’t that imply a shifting of the seasons, towards earlier Winters?

rbateman says: February 18, 2010 at 12:44 pm For an historical last snow remaining on a 7,000′ p eak 1902-1981: http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/SnowOnBally.GIF The Young family kept this record. It corresponds r oughly to the US snow extent minimums where they ov erlap in time. Are there other records of this type in the US? A proxy could be built. 

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- interesting/Bruce says: February 18, 2010 at 12:45 pm Brent Hargreaves: “It has snowed a little, so what? . ” The issue is that the Team is claiming it has snowe d a lot less. Thats a lie.

Kay says: February 18, 2010 at 12:46 pm Total amateur here. The last time I took statistics , we didn’t have Excel to do this for you...hell, we didn’t even have graphing calculators. So be gentle. :) I’m afraid to post this, but I did the entire thing , including the first 10 weeks of 2010, and I got a flat trend line with an r^2 of 1.0. That’s 43 years of data. I didn’t want to, but I averaged the yearly values– all I have is Excel and it won’t let you exceed 255 lines of data, and this has almost 2300. And I was in a hurry–I’ll double check it again later. If anyone knows how to increase th e number of points Excel will let you work with, please let me know. There are spikes in 1966 (partial year), 1969, and 1971. After that, it drops sharply to 1974, comes u p in 1976, and then stays relatively flat till this year, but it’s only Febru ary so we’ll just have to see how that plays out. T he minimum is in 1990.

Jaye says: February 18, 2010 at 12:47 pm Karl B. (09:05:32) Tom P is an RC mercenary. I’ve s een him at CA and this site taking pot shots.

RobfromWI says: February 18, 2010 at 12:49 pmBrentI agree. This is kind of a joke. Going back to 1989 ? Give me a graph that goes back 200 years or more and we’ll start to talk. I’m 100% anti AGW and man induced warming, but we n eed more then this. We will get another ice age guys, it will happen, j ust give it time. Anyone who thinks climate will ju st stay in one state is nuts...maybe for a human life time span it may seem t hat way, but unless you get to live through the “fl ip” its hard to grasp how big the changes can be. For my kid’s future, i hope we blowtoch like no tomorrow and all the ice m elts and the temps soar :) I was always under the assumption winter snowcover was good for crops, but i could be wrong. Without s nowcover, areas of Wisconsin have had frost depths of over 50 inches. With snowcover, my frost depth right now is 8 inche s or less and its been COLD, especially at night. I know a lot of snow suc ks in spring because it retards warming (albedo) an d also is the cause of flooding, but a lot of that is just stupid people b uilding in areas they shouldn’t. Ice ages? I thought the assumption was that if wint er was WARMER and summer was COLDER then you could/ would build an ice sheet. The warmer winter would allow more sn owfall and the colder summer would allow less melti ng, rinse and repeat. 

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- interesting/E.M.Smith says: February 18, 2010 at 12:51 pm I’d also point out that with an ever growing percen tage of thermometers at Airports (where snow is typ ically cleared away so that the airport can function) there is a bias in t he temperature record due to this. While there may not be many take off / landing events during snow season, especially at sm aller airports, the tarmac never leaves.... So “snow extent” tells you more about where snow ha s actually stuck to the ground (and implicitly how warm that ground is – the melt line of 32 F / 0 C) while the temperatur es may just reflect the temperatures of a black asp halt patch in the sun on a clear day... with 2 feet of snow in the woods a few m iles away... Put more bluntly: If a fine dusting of soot can mel t snow, just think what acres of tarmac in the sun can do to a thermometer...

Matt says: February 18, 2010 at 12:52 pm Leif, What equation are you using to calculate R^2 in you r example? I have a feeling something is wrong, sin ce the R^2 should be very similar in all three of those cases. A good il lustration of what R^2 shows can be found here http://mathworld.wolfram.com/CorrelationCoefficient .html As R^2 -> 1, the points being fit lie closer and c loser to the fit line. It sounds to me like you’re just applying statistic al measures with no understanding of their signific ance or purpose...

Leif Svalgaard says: February 18, 2010 at 12:57 pm JonesII (12:28:07) : ...not to mention that Birkeland current in the Andro meda Nasa picture. There is no Birkeland current visible in that pictu re. C.P.Snow was lamenting the schism between ‘the two cultures’. Other people have proposed that a ‘third culture’ exists http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ Your post and others of the same ilk show that ther e is a fourth culture out there of science illitera tes. This is a dangerous situation in an age where we depend more and more o n science and the scientific approach. This is a ne w Dark Age arising.

HankHenry says: February 18, 2010 at 1:04 pm With snow it seems like you have two things at war. Snow does increase albedo tending to perpetuate co ld conditions, but on the other hand it also insulates the ground prevent ing deep penetrating cold. I have to think these ki nds of “warring” things tend to make climate an inherently unstable weather like kind of thing. Being a farmer I really do think we could use a lit tle global warming to guarantee our crops against f luky one or two hundred year frosts. A frost that might come about if you h ad an early winter hard freeze with no snow cover f ollowed by a deep extensive snow. I can’t, for sure, say that this wo uld translate into a June frost but it certainly wo uld make it more difficult to get the crop planted in a timely fashion. By the wa y, there is still a good deal (maybe 5%) of corn st anding unharvested in 

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- interesting/Northern Illinois due to last years cool summer, di fficult fall harvest, and snowy winter conditions. That much corn unharvested is UNPRECEDENTED – not to coin a phrase
.

Duster says: February 18, 2010 at 1:18 pm John A (12:21:26) : “I’m sorry Steve Goddard, but I think that the conc lusion is largely cherry-picked from the time serie s and the trend is likely to be spurious. Yes 2010 appears to be a large exte nsion of winter snowfall, but its one season. As Leif points out, the low R2 of the points says t hat most of the apparent trend is scatter and not s ignificant. ...”

davidmhoffer says: February 18, 2010 at 1:19 pm I think I have an alternate explanation. Some time ago I offered to co-integrate my lifetime data set series with my WOC (woman of choice). The WOC lifetime data set series has now been co-integrated with my own for 30 year s. As a direct consequence of co-integration, several children (C) were formed. The C elements as stand alone were hi ghly unstable from the start, but over time began forming unstable rel ationships with Others (O) of opposite polarity. Th ese were also unstable for the most part with frequent discarding of one O in favour of another. Eventually however some of t he CO relationships stabilized, producing an additional O with close bo nds to both the C and the O. The unit as a whole is referred to as CO2. At time of writing, no CO3 has yet emerged. I graphed Ti (total income) against Te (total expen ses) to get Tr (total retained) and determined an i nverse correlation with Tr to amount of C supported. The trend tailed off a fter CO stabilization, but with a HUGE downward inf lection at WC (wedding ceremony). I conclude therefore, that Tr i s inversely proportional to frequency of C, but tha t increases in CO2 instigate a major negative short term fluctuation w ith no long term trends following. However, as to the current snowfall and cold weathe r, I must advise that my WOC recently requested an analysis regarding “dress” and “perception of fat”. My analysis was po orly presented, resulting in outright rejection and a pronounced cooling trend in the immediate vicinity. Until reading this post I had no idea the effects were so wide spread . I have ordered large quantities of S (sparklies) and F (flowers) and hav ing oberved the cyclical nature of this particular type of cooling trend in the past, am predicting a warming trend in the coming w eeks for the northern hemisphere at a minimum.

Leif Svalgaard says: February 18, 2010 at 1:22 pm Matt (12:52:57) : I have a feeling something is wrong, since the R^2 should be very similar in all three of those cases. Certainly not. Try to do as I did. Generate y = sin (x) + a*x and use your favorite formula to calculate R^2. The one you cite will do fine: A good illustration of what R^2 shows can be found here... It sounds to me like you’re just applying statistic al measures with no understanding of their signific ance or purpose... Revisit this statement after you have completed the above assignment. 

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- interesting/Mike Lorrey says: February 18, 2010 at 1:22 pm An important thing to note is that the US started i nstalling scrubbers in coal plant smokestacks in th e early 70′s, and 86 was around the time that China started expanding their energy infrastructure significantly, all coal plant s with zero scrubbers...

carrot eater says: February 18, 2010 at 1:23 pm Has anybody bothered to see what the published lite rature actually says about snowfall predictions? I haven’t had time to get into this topic, but the one paper I have on hand is observational, not mode ling. Changnon, Changnon and Karl, 2006. They observed maybe an *increase* in snowstorms vs time in the US, over the entire last century, but t he data is really really noisy. Broken down by region, it’s even noisier. This backs up what Leif is insisting on, when looki ng for the strength of the correlation. Snowfall da ta is very noisy, and you can fool yourself into seeing a trend where there’s just noise. In that context, I’m not sure if anything would sur prise me, out of a single winter. Snowfall is truly weather.

davidmhoffer says: February 18, 2010 at 1:24 pm Tom_R (09:12:23) : Hmm, as I write this I realize that the photon chan ges direction, but doesn’t lose energy since the wa velength doesn’t change. How is energy conserved when the air molecule gains kinetic energy but the photon energy remains the s ame?> My recollection is that a photon has no mass so can ’t transfer any kinetic energy?

David Middleton says: February 18, 2010 at 1:28 pm Leif Svalgaard (11:39:31) : [...] R^2 is a good measure of how much of the variation is due to a linear trend, no matter what the data l ooks like. Wouldn’t that R^2 only be meaningful if you had a l ong enough time series to cover several complete cy cles? The Rutgers snow extent data only goes back to 1966 . If the climate follows a ~60-yr cycle tied to the PDO and/or ENSO, 1966-2009 wouldn’t even cover one full cycle. Would n’t a linear or secular trend derived from such a s hort time series be spurious? 

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- interesting/If I draw a linear trend-line through less than one full cycle of a sin wave with no underlying secula r trend, I get an R^2 of 0.88... Sin Wave 1906-1913

belvedere says: February 18, 2010 at 3:22 pm U know what i am afraid of? That they will push full throtle on the weather mac hine HAARP and give us hellish high temps in the su mmer of 2010 on some big locations.. They use the olympics too for convincing us that gl obal warming is real.. If the olympics cant continu e then there must be global warming!! Or is mother Earth more powerfull? Which i hope..

1DandyTroll says: February 18, 2010 at 3:32 pm So the logic is that with a slight larger area cove red in the summer and more so in the winter is due to soot for the summer cover, but only for the summer cover and only back in the day when the summer cover wasn’t as wide as today. Come again?

belvedere says: February 18, 2010 at 3:35 pm There is a total media blackout on the snowfall in America in the Netherlands. They mentioned it 2 or 3 times in the news and then went on to the order of the new world.. War, theft, murder, lies and cheating.. Thats all w e ever get to see on the television.. Since i start ed to see through the lies of commercials and stuff, i seem to want to wake more people up.. Show them that the global warming scare is one big conspiracy and helps only 2 goals.. Estabecialing a NWO government and filling in the gap between trut h and fiction! Truth: CO2 is not dangerous and needed, fiction: CO2 is a polution and very bad for our planet.. But u know what the answer is of most people i spea k to? I cannot change anyting about it, it doesnt help me if i know, so i just sit here and do nothing.. :-( They wanna help the planet, but not by believing in “conspiracies”.. The movies told them so...

carrot eater says: February 18, 2010 at 3:36 pm Steve Goddard (08:42:01) : 

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- interesting/“We have been told over and over again since Hansen spoke to Congress in 1989, that winter snow is dec lining” Please provide a link to this statement or publicat ion from Hansen. I’m not familiar with it.

Bruce says: February 18, 2010 at 3:51 pm Leif: “This is a new Dark Age arising” Do you mean the one where most people no longer tru st scientists because “Climate Scientists” are no m ore trustworthy than MSM “Journalists”. Who caused that? Which profession kept their mouths shut? Who were too afraid to speak out because the y kept getting called deniers? Peer Review is now just another code word for eithe r: 1) Cronies slapping you on the back

or 2) Enemies delibererately shutting out anyone threa tening their flow of cash.

davidmhoffer says: February 18, 2010 at 4:01 pm HankHenry; Snow does increase albedo tending to perpetuate col d conditions, but on the other hand it also insulat es the ground preventing deep penetrating cold> Grew up on the farm Hank and your comment gave me a n aha! moment. I remember all those years that ther e wasn’t much snow and so it melted pretty quick and everyone got hopefull for an early planting season. But then it seemed that spring just couldn’t quite get started and winter would just ha ng on by its finger nails for the longest time. I’m thinking your post is why, but it would be interesting to see if memory is pla ying tricks on me and compare snow extent to full s eeding to see if the correlation is real.

E.M.Smith says: February 18, 2010 at 4:05 pm Robert (09:24:32) : But that corrctive action conti nues to be drastically reducing burning carbon comp ounds for energy. Ah, the smell of agenda driven conclusions.... How about we just put soot trap oxidizers on the bi llions of dollars of power plants and vehicles we u se? Fast, fairly easy, and much much cheaper... You know, like we’ve already done for Diesels in the USA and Europe ? So the more accurate conclusion would be: 

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- interesting/Have the 3rd worlders stop burning down the rain fo rests, and bring them to modernity so they can use natural gas to cook instead of trees (see the travesty in Madagascar an d the denuded landscape in Haiti as examples of doi ng it wrong. See “Gobar Gas” in India as an example of how to do it right.) Get the “newly developing economies” to put trap ox idizers and precipitators on factory smokestacks in stead of running wide open. Problem solved. Everyone living happier, healthier, and more PRODUCTIVE lives with wealth creation and modernity. The alternative path (energy starvation) ends in ec onomic collapse and subsistence living. That ( agai n, see Haiti and Madagascar – and Sudan and... ) leads to a denuded la ndscape as the forests are pillaged and burned to s urvive. The USA has MORE forest / woodlands cover now than a generation or two ago, not less. We don’t need to burn trees any more and we produce more food than we can eat (and sell) on the farm land we do have, so more has been allowed to revert to scrub and forest. The direct result of using fos sil fuels instead of biomass as done in traditional economies. So before you run off to cause a global economic co llapse, throw away a few $Trillion of total capital stock, condemn a few Billion people to death and starvation (NOT an over statement. Shut down the tractors and trucks and se e what happens...) and generally force everyone who survives to take a n axe to the nearest trees to stay warm and cook: T hink about the lowly ‘trap oxidizer’, the electrostatic precipitator, an d the natural gas stove... “KISS” principle, please.

jack morrow says: February 18, 2010 at 4:07 pm Steve Goddard You really stirred up a few folks. When I get back from Colorado in September, I’ll be sure to let you know if my 20 plus years of observ ation of the snow-pack Around Monarch Pass fits with your increasing snow in NH in the winter. I really hope you are right. What a great site. I’m sure everybody agrees except maybe Tom P.

Steve Goddard says: February 18, 2010 at 4:09 pm If I said that it has warmed up since 6 AM, some pe ople would complain that I am cherry picking. “Why didn’t I start my measurements at 3 PM yesterday?” Winter snow extent (like everything in the climate) is cyclical. Prior to 1989 it was going down, and since 1989 it has been going up. It makes no sense to apply linear statist ical techniques starting at a date on the other leg of the cycle. If snow extent was actually linear with time, we would either have no snow or complete snow cover of the entire plane t. Obviously neither of those is the case. The trend for the last twenty years is obvious. Don ’t get confused by charlatans. http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/ dec-feb_snow_ext.png

Ed Scott says: February 18, 2010 at 4:22 pm Dr. Tim Ball was interviewed on the Tom Sullivan Sh ow yesterday (16 Feb 2010) in regard to Tim’s views on global warming/climate change. 

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- interesting/Dr. Ball proposed the anology of the red noise of a n individual in a large stadium and the roar (white noise) heard outside the stadium with the IPCC’s conclusion that the individ ual (CO2) red noise is responsible for the white no ise (global warming/climate change).

————————————————————- Sunspots and Cosmic Radiation Governments Plan for Warming Based On Corrupt IPCC Science By Dr. Tim Ball Thursday, February 18, 2010 http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/20150 Do Nothing Than The Wrong Thing The IPCC was deliberately focused on establishing h uman causes of climate change so it failed to consi der major natural causes. Chief among these were changes in the Sun. It was also deliberately directed to proving CO2 an d especially human CO2 was the cause of warming and climate change. Th is became the basis of all government’s energy and environmental policies, which assume warming is the only possibil ity. A real scientific investigation would establis h natural climate variability and mechanisms first, which is further proof of the political exploitation of the issue. I t is better to do nothing than do the wrong thing for the wrong reason.

Steve Goddard says: February 18, 2010 at 4:27 pm Someone here suggested that they won’t trust a tren d that is less than 200 years. If snow extent increased at the current 10 year rat e of 200km2/year for 200 years, that would cover al l of the currently bare ares Asia, Europe and North America. i.e, an ice ag e. Climate is cyclical – over the last two hundred yea rs, snow cover has gone through many phases where i t has increased and many where it has shrunk. People who insist on doin g a a linear fit or linear analysis across differen t legs of a cycle, are just not thinking clearly.

davidmhoffer says: February 18, 2010 at 4:35 pm Steve Goddard; The trend for the last twenty years is obvious. Don ’t get confused by charlatans.> I’m a confirmed skeptic Steve, and I don’t dispute your data for a moment. That said, there is about 1 0 years of data on AMSU-A. Now 20 years is not enough data for a measu re of climate, so the last 10 is even worse.... But, that data still shows a slight upward temperature trend over the last 10 ye ars at sea surface, near surface, and lower atmosph ere while snow extent is also rising. How do you reconcile these?

Larry Kirk says: February 18, 2010 at 4:41 pm @ Fred H. Haynie (12:19:57) : ‘Snow is not a perfect reflector. In fact, because of it’s structure, fresh snow acts as a black body. The high energy shortwave radiation from the sun rapidly melts the surface wh ich freezes to form an ice crust that is more of a reflector. But even ice is transparent like glass and the fraction of the ener gy reflected back to space depends on the angle of incidence. It does radiate 

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- interesting/low energy longwaves as a function of surface tempe rature. Much of the outbound longwave radiation fro m the top of the atmosphere measured by satalites is frozen cloud to ps.’ So there should be two factors working against the equator-ward extension of snow cover: the increasin g effective radiation intensity (as the angle of incidence of the incomin g radiation becomes progressively normal to the gro und surface), and the increasing absorbtion of that radiation by the fall en snow/ice crust (as reflection decreases with inc reasing the angle of incidence). Though it will be more complex than thi s of course, due to atmospheric scattering of the i ncoming radiation.

wayne says: February 18, 2010 at 4:47 pm Steven Goddard: I think your article was great. Maybe a needed a ti dbit deeper analysis and style according to some. H ere’s a statistical curiosity. Using your weekly global data, just analyze the per iod from first week of 1989 forward. The linear tre nd is basically flat. Assuming y is in sq.km, the upward slope is a posit ive 39 sq.km per week over that 21 year period. It is then factual that no decrease has occurred since 1988 and all of the dec rease in snowfall occurred prior to 1989. During 19 67 to 1988 the decrease was a negative 620 sq.km per week over that period. Wow. That’s new news to me anyway, that the decrease in snowfall many tout and tie to AGW stopped long, lon g ago and has been a falsehood for two decades now. (If you want good R^2 for some, annualize the data first. You get the same trend line, but many magnit udes of better R^2. However, I won’t go there, R^2 is meaningless in th is context unless the data was supposed to be a dea d straight line and you want to guage how close the data is to being linear in fact, then it could have meaning.)

Robert says: February 18, 2010 at 5:00 pm “The 28 year trend in snow extent derived from visi ble and passive microwave satellite data indicates an annual decrease of approximately 1 to 3 percent per decade with greate r deceases of approximately 3 to 5 percent during s pring and summer. Precipitation in regions of seasonal snow cover app ears to be constant or increasing slightly in some locations over the same time period, which suggests that diminishing snow c over is the result of increasing temperatures. One region where the snow appears to be diminishing rapidly is the Western Un ited States, especially in spring when the duration of snow cover has been decreasing by 2-3 days per decade (see blue-co lored areas in the Spring Duration figure). This sa tellite-derived trend agrees with direct measurement of snow depth and ex tent on the ground.” Mote, P.W., A.F. Hamlet, M.P. Clark, and D.P. Lette nmaier. 2005. Declining Mountain Snowpack in Wester n North America. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 86: 39-49. Maybe the last four years have changed the trend, b ut it seems like summer snow continues to decline. “The alternative path (energy starvation) ends in e conomic collapse and subsistence living.” Wrong on two counts: reducing CO2 emissions and oth er methods to reduce AGW are not an either/or propo sition, and reducing emissions has never been shown to imply “e nergy starvation” or any of the other terrible cons equences antimitigation alarmists posit without offering evidenc e. 

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- interesting/Robert says: February 18, 2010 at 5:02 pm [img]http://s4.hubimg.com/u/2255951_f520.jpg[/img]

Robert says: February 18, 2010 at 5:03 pm Shoot, didn’t work. Summer snow extent through 2008 . Significant decline.

It's always Marcia, Marcia says: February 18, 2010 at 5:06 pm You are certain it is soot that is causing the chan ge in summer snow?

Robert says: February 18, 2010 at 5:11 pm When I go to Rutger’s Global Snow Lab (which is an awesome site, by the way) the graphs it generates f or me look very different than the ones Mr Goddard is using. Take a look for yourself: Winter: http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_seasonal .php?ui_set=nhland&ui_season=1 I don’t see a trend. If it’s there it’s subtle. Fall: http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_seasonal .php?ui_set=nhland&ui_season=4 A lot of variability. No trend I can see. Spring: http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_seasonal .php?ui_set=nhland&ui_season=2 Now there’s a trend. Snow extent is way down.
Summer: http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_seasonal .php?ui_set=nhland&ui_season=3 Again, dramatically lower. 2008 is a record low; 20 09 is the second-lowest. The overall trend seems to be the reverse of what M r Goddard is describing.

Steve Goddard says: February 18, 2010 at 5:12 pm davidmhoffer, My point is that winter snow cover has been extendi ng towards lower latitudes over the last twenty yea rs, which goes against the endless claims that snow cover is decreasing an d storms are moving north. I’m not definitely not trying to predict a long ter m climatological trend into the future. 

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- interesting/carrot eater says: February 18, 2010 at 5:14 pm Steve Goddard (16:09:58) : The point is that since we have a longer data set, we have some idea of what the variability in that d ata set is. Given that knowledge, your trend is not distinct from the vari ability of the data. If you’re OK with that, then f ine. By the way, from the IPCC report, [SCA = snow covered area] “From 1915 to 2004, North American SCA increased in November, December and January owing to increases in precipitation (Section 3.3.2; Groisman et al., 2004). Decreases i n snow cover are mainly confined to the latter half of the 20th century, and are most apparent in the spring period over western North America (Groisman et al., 2004). Shifts towa rds earlier melt by about eight days since the mid-1960s were also obse rved in northern Alaska (Stone et al., 2002).” So decreases in wintertime snow extent are maybe no t expected in North America, after all. You might h ave checked that first.

vigilantfish says: February 18, 2010 at 5:19 pm Leif: “This is a new Dark Age arising”: I am astonished you should come to this conclusion based on the supposed (or even real) ignorance of p articipants at WUWT. Unless people here were 100% science literate , apparently we count as a rising hoard of barbaria ns. Yet scientists themselves display gross ignorance across disciplin es – how’s your microbiology and understanding of P CR and the methods of genetic modification, for example? One does not expect specialists in one scientific feel to be abl e to address the esoteric and technical aspects of experts in another field. C.P. Snow lived too early – there’s a gulf between scientific disciplines let alone between the science community and non-scienti sts. And yet here we find a blog which is engaging non-s cientists in some of the most pressing questions cr eated by scientists – and with good reason. The AGW CO2 theory has needed a good dose of skepticism from everyone, because, as has been well documented since Climategate, and was evident even before this — with examples of scientists losing th eir positions over failing to toe the AGW line — the ‘science’ has bee n dangerously tainted by the political advocacy of some of its most influential leaders. They have been allowing their science to be used to justify one of the most egreg ious attempts at grabbing and redistributing wealth from citizens bamboozled by expertise. I’m not a scientist, I’m a historian of science, an d I felt concern when the ‘scientific barbarians’ l ike Mann decided that they could massage a well documented historical phenomen on – the MWP – out of existence by superimposing va rious scientific proxies on top of the written record. Barbarism ext ends in many different directions, and one manifest ation is to forget or deliberately obliterate the past for political or p ropagandistic purposes– and there is no denying tha t science was used in a propagandistic fashion by Mann. No matter how energ etically Gavin is currently trying to rewrite the h istory of AGW propaganda on the MWP (and his own past proclamatio ns), the fact remains that for nearly 10 years an i mportant historical era and the quiet and professional work of many his torians was being ignored and even ridiculed for ‘s cientific’ purposes. But historians are evidently among the barbarians whose rising you fear, since we do not share all of your professional understanding. Insulted? You bet! Incidentally, I am encouraged by seeing here at WUW T and elsewhere the greatest signs of amateur inter est in science probably science the end of the era of amateur scie nce at the turn of the last century. And bloggers h ere are generally justified 

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- interesting/in being sceptical in tone due to the arrogance and condescension with which their concerns have been treated by Mann, Jones, the IPCC et al in the past. Not a good idea to pour contempt on those you are perhaps trying to impress.

vigilantfish says: February 18, 2010 at 5:23 pm Sorry -several mistakes in last post: I meant to sa y: Incidentally, I am encouraged by seeing here at WUW T and elsewhere the greatest signs of amateur inter est in science probably SINCE the end of the era of amateur scienc e at the turn of the last century. “science” was on my mind!
REPLY: FYI, your last comment ended up in spam and was ac cidentally deleted with a bunch of viagra, I saw it sail by. You’ll have to try again, sorry,m Anthony

Bruce of Newcastle says: February 18, 2010 at 5:23 pm Leif Svalgaard (12:57:36) : “...This is a new Dark Age arising.” Leif – you may be more correct than you realise. Th e Dark Age at around about 450-700AD corresponds to “Bond Event 1′′, the last Bond event, when apparently climate relate d migrations helped cause the fall of the western R oman empire. Bond estimates 1470 +/- 500 years between these cycles, which means we’re about due. (ref: Science v278, p1 257) Re the maximum NH snow extent, one possibly interes ting correlation is land temperature vs snow extent (can’t be UAH series since data range needs to be over at least o ne PDO cycle). Everyone has been arguing about R^2, it might be interesting to see how correlated these variables a re. If R^2 is high then we have ourselves a nice li ttle feedback of humidity- >snow->albedo correcting for increased solar W/m2 e tc. On the other hand I don’t see how the increasing An tarctic sea ice extent fits with this since sea ice doesn’t equate to snow.

carrot eater says: February 18, 2010 at 5:24 pm Steve Goddard (16:27:25) : “People who insist on doing a a linear fit or linea r analysis across different legs of a cycle, are ju st not thinking clearly.” You don’t have to draw the line through the entire data set. But if you pick a subsection, then you ha ve to pass a higher statistical bar to reach significance. Otherwise, y ou cannot say your trend is different from the nois e. I could note that it warmed up a lot from 1996 to 1 998. It’d definitely be a true statement. But I wou ld not call it a trend. By the way, I’m still looking for any signs that Ha nsen or anybody else was proclaiming that winter sn ow extent was decreasing over the US. Still haven’t found it. Do you have anything? 

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- interesting/wayne says: February 18, 2010 at 5:25 pm Larry Kirk (16:41:29) : Could you clarify a bit on that thought of snow’s a bility to reflect. Does that have to do with the fa ct that the thinner a surface is (low optical path length) the less emissivity it has? Read somewhere that emissivity is always stat ed for a surface of infinite thickness. Is that the releated factor of snow crystals you sp eak of or something entirely different?

Eric (skeptic) says: February 18, 2010 at 5:32 pm Fred H. Haynie (12:19:57) said “Much of the outboun d longwave radiation from the top of the atmosphere measured by satalites is frozen cloud tops.” I agree with everything else you said, but not this . Muchof the longwave measured by the satellites is radiated from low (unfrozen) cloud tops and clear sky. The higher and colder the cloud tops, the less longwave that they radiate. That’s why the IR satellite picture is in false color (e.g. http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/data/east/latest_eastir.jp g) showing bright white for cold cloud tops and darker colors for low clouds and no clouds. If they used real color, the high clouds of (e.g. thunderstorms and hurricanes) would not show up and the warm ground w ould, and the picture would be useless. This is another reason why global warming is so hea vily dependent on clouds, not snow on the ground, o r CO2 in the air (esp in cloudy skies). The low clouds from GCR are hypot hesized to radiate more IR to space and cause globa l cooling. Conversely high clouds radiate less and cause global warming.

Dermot O'Logical says: February 18, 2010 at 5:34 pm Please find below an interesting (to me, if no-one else) breakdown of the growth in snow extent for ea ch week of the year, using the full raw data set from the Rutgers snow l ab. This is hugely amateur effort, hacking around with Excel and probably statistically worthless, but it says to me that the eye is drawn to peaks in graphs, and not slopes. I basically pivotted the data to plot the extent as a function of year for each week, giving me 53 ser ies of data. I then used Excel’s linear trendline function to give me a grad ient for each series (ie each week), and an R^2. Th e results are below. What is telling is that there is a positive gradien t only for weeks 1, 3, 4, 47, 48, 50, 51 and 52. Ne gative gradients (suggesting a reduction in extent over time) are found for every other week, and significantly steeper than positive gradients. Plot the “Increase per year” / “Week” data below to see what I mean. My “analysis” (worth what you paid for it) is that the snow extent is falling for most weeks of the ye ar. I have zero idea what implications that has, but I think it contradicts S teve’s interpretation that extent is increasing. Anyway, source data, methods and results freely dis closed for peer review – I’d be interested in your comments. Regards,
Dermot 

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- interesting/Week,Increase per year,R^2 1,10840,0.00570 2,-15046,0.00790 3,5791.1,0.00140 4,5937.1,0.00140 5,-6092.6,0.00220 6,-37411,0.04000 7,-24899,0.01590 8,-24303,0.02450 9,-35498,0.04950 10,-72719,0.16240 11,-84099,0.19790 12,-66987,0.15870 13,-50607,0.06910 14,-56710,0.09580 15,-53113,0.10290 16,-79549,0.19180 17,-60042,0.11990 18,-75881,0.24170 19,-75959,0.21560 20,-48842,0.09170 21,-87189,0.24530 22,-77784,0.16670 23,-119080,0.33880 24,-106579,0.34560 25,-94858,0.30870 26,-86636,0.32810 27,-100677,0.51870 28,-75222,0.47350 29,-68542,0.48230 30,-61234,0.47860 31,-52238,0.39010 32,-35916,0.38450 33,-33119,0.27900 34,-27393,0.19950 35,-24235,0.14650 36,-9935.9,0.03700 37,-4007.6,0.00240 38,-1610,0.00010 39,-18059,0.00830 40,-35353,0.02590 41,-48776,0.03750 42,-51209,0.02940 43,-28394,0.00950 44,-24769,0.00900 45,-16896,0.00530 46,-16282,0.00600 47,25341,0.01990 48,951.56,0.00002 49,-2583.7,0.00020 50,24562,0.01700 51,39445,0.04160 52,31345,0.03380 53? hmmm... 

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- interesting/Robert says: February 18, 2010 at 5:49 pm From the Rutgers website . . . “Annual snow cover extent (SCE) over Northern Hemis phere lands averaged 24.4 million square kilometers in 2008. This is 1.1 million sq. km less than the 39-year average an d ranks 2008 as having the 4th least extensive cove r on record...”

Stu says: February 18, 2010 at 5:56 pm “over the last two hundred years, snow cover has go ne through many phases where it has increased and m any where it has shrunk. People who insist on doing a a linear fit o r linear analysis across different legs of a cycle, are just not thinking clearly.” Does the analysis of this data give us insight into any possible causes for these cycles? That seems t o be the truly important thing here- I’m sorry if someone has already offere d a possible explanation, I must have missed it. So yeah, why the big dip between 1967 to 1988, as W ayne describes above for instance? Or from another perspective, by looking at the whole data, I can kind of make out a cycle of about a decade in length, a rise for 5 ye ars, then a dip for 5 years. I’ve no idea if this is significant of anything or not. Given the limited data, we obviously can’t say much about any larger cycles that may be occuring. As you say, we need to get a handle on these cycles . That would presumably come first- before we start beating each other over the head over whether what we are seeing is si gnificant in terms of (A)GW, or not.

Richard says: February 18, 2010 at 6:19 pm Lief I really do not see what your point is. And I do not think you understand the meaning of R^2 for the trendline in this case. Basically it would mean how well does your tr endline fit the data and you can see visually the t rendline is flat. Thats why you graph because the eye can tell you what is probably correct. I let you off when you made a blunder re black bodi es, also about CO2 freezing out of the atmosphere. But you are getting insufferable. If you do not have a point keep quiet , just let it go.

Leif Svalgaard says: February 18, 2010 at 6:29 pm davidmhoffer (13:24:07) : My recollection is that a photon has no mass so can ’t transfer any kinetic energy? A photon has momentum so can give you a kick = incr ease your kinetic energy. David Middleton (13:28:38) : If I draw a linear trend-line through less than one full cycle of a sin wave with no underlying secula r trend, I get an R^2 of 0.88... Indeed, and you also get a spurious linear trend. H owever, if people start out by claiming there is a trend, then they have forfeited the wave. 

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- interesting/Bruce (15:51:16) : Leif: “This is a new Dark Age arising” Do you mean the one where most people no longer tru st scientists No, I do not mean that. I mean that people believe in pseudo-science, which can well be peddled by som e scientists [iron suns, plasma universes, intelligent design, astrolo gy, young earth, etc] vigilantfish (17:19:22) : Not a good idea to pour contempt on those you are p erhaps trying to impress. This is not about ‘impressing’ anybody. The Dark Ag e crowd are not trying to learn anything or skeptic al, they are pushing [hard] an anti-scientific view of the world and are learning-resistant.

Smokey says: February 18, 2010 at 6:30 pm When the planet warms, the atmosphere can hold more water vapor. But both specific and relative humidi ty have been steadily declining: click1 , click2

R. Gates says: February 18, 2010 at 6:44 pm While we’ve seen some record snow this winter, we’v e also seen record tropospheric temperatures. Febru rary continues on the same track following in the footsteps of a reco rd January. See: http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/ For the latest. Note especially sea surface (which is NOT ocean temps) up to 25,000 feet or so. Some o f us have pointed out that warm temps and more snow go hand in hand in th e winter, just as the very cold Antarctic region is also one of the driest regions in terms of precip. I maintain that yes...thi s has been a snowy winter, and the warmer troposphe ric and ocean temps are to thank.

Steve Goddard says: February 18, 2010 at 6:46 pm carrot, I’m writing up a piece about this study from Columb ia University, which predicted major declines in wi nter snow cover, starting in about 1990. http://www.eee.columbia.edu/research-projects/water _resources/climate-change-snow-cover/index.html

Dude says: February 18, 2010 at 6:46 pm I’m arguing with Tamino about these same issues at his blog (and he’s being a little rude to be perfec tly honest). It is not cherry picking to say that since 1989, sn ow extent has been increasing. From the graphs at T amino’s blog, it appears snow extent decreased from 1970 to the mid-90′s and then began increasing until the present. Fitting a single line to all the 

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- interesting/data does not help anyone understand the variation of snow extent. In fact, centered around the mid-90 ′s, 15 of 16 snow extents were below the forty year trendline. A seco nd-order polynomial fit would likely result in a hi gher R^2 value.

davidmhoffer says: February 18, 2010 at 7:25 pm Leif Svalgaard (18:29:51) : davidmhoffer (13:24:07) : My recollection is that a photon has no mass so can ’t transfer any kinetic energy? A photon has momentum so can give you a kick = incr ease your kinetic energy> no Leif... you have photons confused withy photon TOR PEDOES. They haven’t been invented yet. Steve Goddard (17:12:30) : I’m not definitely not trying to predict a long ter m climatological trend into the future> Didn’t mean to imply that you were. Was just wonder ing what you (or anyone else) thought as to cause/e ffect re warmer temps and snow extent increasing and sliding toward equator.

Richard C says: February 18, 2010 at 7:34 pm Fellow thinkers, We must be careful not to fall into the trap of usi ng inadequate statistics derived from incomplete da ta, ignoring other inadequate statistics derived from incomplete data that may (or may not) have a bearing on the subject , because of preconceived ideas. I quote an apocryphal story, told to me by my fathe r, told to him by his father who got it from his br other who was in the B.E.F. 1914/15. When the British army first started issuing tin hat s (all right chromium/molybdenum steel helmets) in 1915 there was resistance by the higher authorities on the grounds that “Real soldiers have never worn helmets, in th eir experience”. This ignored the historical evidence and even that some cavalry units (from which many of the senior office rs were drawn) wore helmets. Shortly afterwards hospital returns showed a large increase in head wounds being treated. Thi s was cited as evidence that helmets were not only not needed but were dangerous. It was proposed that steel helmets be withdrawn! Further investigation showed that the number of dea ths from head wounds had decreased more than the in crease in number of treated head wounds, and of those treated the he ad wounds were in general less severe than before t he introduction of the helmets. Fortunately for many concerned the steel helmets co ntinued to be issued and saved many lives. The obtaining off complete evidence, and not partia l evidence in isolation, negated possible catastrop hic effects. Now where have I heard something similar? Perhaps the proposa l to destroy the worlds economy for a religious and preconceived idea. p.s. It was indeed fortunate for me, as my grandfat her was invalided home in 1917 with a head wound, f inally released from hospital in 1919, although much of the time was due to re-constructive and plastic surgery.

Jay says: February 18, 2010 at 7:34 pm 

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- interesting/Hi Steve, Perhaps I missed something, but you never did get a round to explaining why you concentrate on winter s now? I’m at a loss. Is increased precipitation telling us something exc iting about climate? Thanks for the Northern Hemisphere annual snow plot . Wow! That’s quite the upward trend you’ve got roc keting away there. Woosh. Although to be fair, the sideways trend is r ather more evident. Prey tell though: what is the m argin of error on that thing? And remind me, why did you pick 1989 is a start poi nt? What was wrong with all the other years? What h ave you got against 1992 for example? Or 1985?

Leif Svalgaard says: February 18, 2010 at 7:39 pm Richard (18:19:39) : I let you off when you made a blunder re black bodi es, also about CO2 freezing out of the atmosphere. It is nice that you let me off all my blunders. The one about black bodies I don’t recall. Refresh my memory [use email if needed]. But you are getting insufferable. If you do not hav e a point keep quiet, just let it go. Well, I think I do have a point, namely that one do es not start out a topic by claiming there is a cle ar trend. when there isn’t. R^2 is a perfectly valid method to gauge this as I have tried to demonstrate. Now, I’m willing to ‘let it go’ as it is clear to everybody [without my insistence] that there is no significant trend in the first Figure and that by j udicious cherry picking one can claim a [barely] significant increase.

dick chambers says: February 18, 2010 at 7:42 pm [snip - nice try "thefordprefect" - you are no long er welcome here when you do shape shifting, pick a name preferably your real one, and stick with it, otherwise bugger off]

Ian says: February 18, 2010 at 7:43 pm Steve – Zender did NOT claim that 80% of the soot w as due to burning of fossil and biofuels. Read it m ore carefully “Applying biomass burning BC emission inventories f or a strong (1998) and weak (2001) boreal fire year , we estimate global annual mean BC/snow surface radiative forcing from all sources (fossil fuel, biofuel, and biomass burn ing) of +0.054 (0.007 –0.13) and +0.049 (0.007–0.12) W m−2, respectively. Snow forcing from only fossil fuel + biofuel sourc es is +0.043 W m−2 (forcing from only fossil fuels is +0.033 W m−2), s uggesting that the anthropogenic contribution to to tal forcing is at least 80%.” If I read this right this is saying that if you cou ld somehow eliminate the soot due to biomass burnin g (forest fires and the like), then the remaining carbon generated by fuel burning would cause 80% of the warming. But that is n’t the same as saying that 80% of the soot is due to these sources as the warming effect is non-linear. In other word s snow only has to be slightly dirty to cause significant warning and mak ing it twice as dirty probably wont double the effe ct. The non-linearity makes the way in which the result s are stated deceptive. I suspect that if you analy sed the warming contribution of soot from biomass burning in the sa me way you would find that it too could be said to be `responsible for 

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- interesting/80% of the warming’ – maybe more! If so then that w ould mean cutting all the soot contribution from fu els would only diminish the warming by 20%. He has presented his results in a rather strange wa y which I don’t think is very informative. What you would want to know is the marginal impact of mans contribution to the und erlying situation, and that isn’t the number he’s c hosen to give us.

Leif Svalgaard says: February 18, 2010 at 7:46 pm Dude (18:46:18) : It is not cherry picking to say that since 1989, sn ow extent has been increasing. It is clear that for a climate trend, one or even t wo years more or less shouldn’t matter. So what is missing is a sensitivity analysis. What difference in R^2 [which is a conven ient and valid measure] does it make to start in 19 88, 1989, or 1990 and to end in 2009, 2008, or 2006. For a robust signal these small changes shouldn’t matter much. Yet no s uch analysis was made. The resistance one feels about this may be te lling. Of course, I could make that analysis myself , but it really behooves Steve to make it.

carrot eater says: February 18, 2010 at 7:49 pm Steve Goddard (18:46:03) : Ah, you found something. So they say the models do a lousy job with snow cov er, they don’t show any (model) trend over the 20th C, but a decreasing trend over the 21st C. You should also discuss this one (Brown, 2009), whi ch looks to be a newer and more detailed study. http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0442/22/8/pd f/i1520-0442-22-8-2124.pdf As well as the observations, as discussed in Changn on et al, and whatever all the IPCC AR4 had to say about the topic (both observations and projections). You wouldn’t want to be accused of cherry-picking b y not giving the whole context of the literature, a fter all.

carrot eater says: February 18, 2010 at 7:52 pm Dude (18:46:18) : “A second-order polynomial fit would likely result in a higher R^2 value.” The game is not to increase your R^2 by increasing the order of the polynomial. That’s generally a hor rible idea.

rbateman says: February 18, 2010 at 7:52 pm Steve Goddard (18:46:03) : 

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- interesting/Why are all these models unable to show any increas e in snow, decrease in temps, increase in rainfall, etc? I am wanting to call the computer banks they use De ep Gloom.

Leif Svalgaard says: February 18, 2010 at 8:02 pm davidmhoffer (19:25:41) : “A photon has momentum so can give you a kick = inc rease your kinetic energy” no Leif... you have photons confused withy photon TOR PEDOES. They haven’t been invented yet. The energy and momentum of a photon are related by E = pc, where p is the magnitude of the momentum ve ctor p. The momentum p points in the direction of the photon’s propagation and has a magnitude of p = h/L, where h is Planck’s constant and L is the wave length. So, photons do h ave momentum and can give you a kick and increase y our kinetic energy.

Leif Svalgaard says: February 18, 2010 at 8:24 pm Richard (18:19:39) : And I do not think you understand the meaning of R^ 2 for the trendline in this case. Basically it woul d mean how well does your trendline fit the data No, that is not what R^2 tells you. It tells you ho w much of the variation of the data can be explaine d by a [linear] trend. So, if R^2 is 0.03, it means that 97% of the variation of the data is not due to the trend. By smoothing the data, you increase R^2, but you also decrease the significance as you have fewer independent data points. In the extreme you c an form the average of the first half of the data and of the last half. R^ 2 for those two average points is 1, but the signif icance is 0.

Don Shaw says: February 18, 2010 at 8:27 pm Carot Eater and Stephen Goddard, Please note that this June 2009 report indicates th at the North East will experience Less Snow due to global warming. It seems to me that we can find any position we wan t in these junk government reports except Science: “June 2009 Members of Congress: On behalf of the National Science and Technology Co uncil, the U.S. Global Change Research Program is p leased to transmit to the President and the Congress this sta te of knowledge report: “Global Climate Change Impa cts in the United States.” This report summarizes the science of clim ate change and the impacts of climate change on the United States, now and in the future.” Global Climate Change IMpacts page 107 “Since 1970, the annual average temperature in the Northeast has increased by 2°F, with winter temperatures rising t wice this much.150 Warming has resulted in many other climate-related changes, including: More frequent days with t • emperatures above 90°F • A longer growing season • Increased heavy precipitation • Less winter precipitation falling as snow and mor e as rain 

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- interesting/• Reduced snowpack • Earlier breakup of winter ice on lakes and rivers • Earlier spring snowmelt resulting in earlier peak river flows • Rising sea surface temperatures and sea level” Also this seems to contradict recent claims by the NYT and others who claimed that scientists predicte d the increased snow in the North East we recently experienced. Help!!!

Steve Goddard says: February 18, 2010 at 8:40 pm Jay, It is fairly obvious from your comments that you di dn’t bother to read the article.

Casey says: February 18, 2010 at 8:43 pm I fitted the equation to the data provided. snow=25,320 + 22,303*SIN[-5.29*2*PHI/(week of year) } then looked at residuals. If anyone can see a pattern in these residuals, the n he or she has been smoking too much pot!

Steve Goddard says: February 18, 2010 at 8:47 pm It is quite clear that climate is neither linear no r a second order polynomial, given that the oceans are neither evaporated nor frozen after billions of years – which would be the necessary consequence. People can argue endlessly about lies, damn lies an d statistics, but sometimes they just need to trust their own eyes. http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/ dec-feb_snow_ext.png Starting in 2001, 8 out of 10 years are above 45 mi llion km2. Prior to that, 8 out of 11 years were be low 45 million km2. The current year is the second highest on record. Enoug h with the statistics games, please.

ET says: February 18, 2010 at 9:01 pm I think the point of the topic was the lack of the CLAIMED negative trend no? I see no negative trend. I think I got the point. I think we could use more common sense in our scienti sts, maybe there should be a new collegiate prerequ isites for BAs or at least PHDs as a minimum. CommonSense Logic101, shor tly to be followed by contortionist logic1A, and fo r the undergraduate requirement...the forest through the tr ees1B!.

carrot eater says: February 18, 2010 at 9:02 pm 

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- interesting/Steve Goddard (20:47:37) : “just need to trust their own eyes.” For them to do that, you need to show the entire da ta set. You can start your trend at 1989 if you rea lly want to, but show the entire data set so people can judge the thing in co ntext – are these trends, or just noise? Just like with temperature: you could draw a trendl ine in global temperature up from 1996 to 1998, and then another one down from 1998 to 2000. They’d be pretty impressive ly steep lines, but would it mean anything?

Luke Skywarmer says: February 18, 2010 at 9:07 pm Ric Werme (12:12:08) : Steve Goddard (10:20:59) : > R^2 on the winter graph since 1989 is 0.298514013 9 significant figures? Careful – Leif will start te aching you about significant digits and error bars.
NO THAT IS MY JOB!

Steve Goddard says: February 18, 2010 at 9:07 pm carrot, We have been bombarded with disappearing winter sno w stories for years, and if you have been paying at tention you should know that. A CU professor predicted the demise of Colorado ski ing in the middle of a record snow year two years a go. The Met Office predicted the demise of snow in England 10 years ag o. RFK predicted the demise of snow in Washington D C two years ago. I just pointed you to an article which showed all IPC C GCMs predicting the demise of winter snow.

Steve Goddard says: February 18, 2010 at 9:13 pm carrot, The upwards trend started in 1989. Prior to that th ere was a downwards trend. If I am showing a graph of the most recent upwards trend, why would I include years that aren’ t part of that trend? If I said “it warmed up 15 degrees between 6AM and 3PM” is that something you would dispute because I didn’t mention the downwards trend prior to 6AM? Obviously every upwards trend is preceded by a down wards trend. That is a fundamental principle of nat ure. 

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- interesting/Casey says: February 18, 2010 at 9:14 pm Typo. Apologies to all. Should be: snow=25320 + 22303*SIN[-5.29 + 2*PHI*(week of year) /52] This is just a curve that symmetrically mimics the earth about the sun. You can get a better fit with extra frequencies, but that just makes it hard to understand and nothing meanin gful changes. I don’t know how to paste the chart of residuals in to these comments, but it is easy enough to generat e in excel. If you look at the entire period from 1966 there is just no visual pattern of structual change. Sometimes the residua ls are bigger sometimes smaller. On the winter side they are smallest aroun d 1989, and largest around 1977-78 and the last cou ple of years. Some years there is more so, some less. The year to year variation is entirely within statistical (and visual) norms.

Steve Goddard says: February 18, 2010 at 9:14 pm ET, Bingo! The climate models and forecasts were wrong.

carrot eater says: February 18, 2010 at 9:15 pm Don Shaw (20:27:13) : Good find. Keep digging, people. Context is importa nt here: was everybody saying the same thing? Or ar e the predictions a contradictory and confused mixture? One complicatio n: “• Increased heavy precipitation • Less winter precipitation falling as snow and mor e as rain” If you combine these two, you could still on net ge t more snow... I honestly had no idea what the predictions/stateme nts were on this matter, but I can easily imagine i ts something the climate models would have trouble with. It’s known that regional precipitation projections need some i mprovement. “Also this seems to contradict recent claims by the NYT and others who claimed that scientists predict ed the increased snow in the North East we recently experienced.” First, it’s simply incorrect for anybody to say the y used understanding of climate to predict one frea k winter. Weather is weather, climate is climate. If they said, “x is co nsistent with expectations”, that’s fine. Did the a rticles you read cite any papers? That could add to the pile. I think the Cha ngnon paper shows some sort of increased snowfall t rend for the US northeast, though I don’t know if it was significan t. That’s the other problem here – One freak snow seas on doesn’t prove or disprove any climate projection . And given the high variability in snow data, Goddard’s trend will cont inue to be questioned.

Willis Eschenbach says: February 18, 2010 at 9:22 pm 

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- interesting/Well, because I love numbers, I took a look at the snow area figures. I subtracted the weekly average from weekly data to give anomalies. I expressed them as a percentage of NH a verage snow cover. Here is that graph:

A few comments, in no particular order: 1. As someone mentioned above, the PDO is important in this graph. The PDO went from cool to warm in a bout 1976, as can be seen in the snow area anomaly. 2. From about 1976 to about 1990, snow area was dec reasing slightly. 3. Since 1990, it has increased slightly. 4. Changes over the entire period are about ±5%. By eyeball, none of them look statistically significa nt. 5. We’re about where we were in 1982. 6. There has been basically no change since 1995. Now, perhaps there is a signal of a dangerously war ming earth in there, but I don’t see it. And perhap s there is a signal of increasing soot melting the snow in there, but I do n’t see it. The change in albedo due to decreased snow coverage is supposed to be a strong positive feedback in th e global thermal balance ... I don’t see that either. My conclusion? Either: a) The land temperature records are badly corrupted , by some unknown combination of UHI, bad station s iting, landuse/landcover changes, and nefarious meddling, or b) Slight changes in temperature don’t change the s now area much. Increasing warmth theoretically incr eases both snow melt and precipitation, so they may basically offse t each other, or c) Both.

w.

vigilantfish says: 

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- interesting/February 18, 2010 at 9:31 pm Yeah Willis! Cutting to the chase as always. Now we have some clarity on the question of the shrinking or swelling winter snow extent, no so-called ‘cherry picking’ of dates involved.

Robert says: February 18, 2010 at 9:32 pm “People can argue endlessly about lies, damn lies a nd statistics, but sometimes they just need to trus t their own eyes. http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/ dec-feb_snow_ext.png Starting in 2001, 8 out of 10 years are above 45 mi llion km2. Prior to that, 8 out of 11 years were be low 45 million km2. The current year is the second highest on record. Enoug h with the statistics games, please.” Steve, the site that is your source for this inform ation directly contradicts some of the things you a re taking from their data. There is a strong negative trend in both summer and spring snow extent. In 2008, they report, the snow extent was: “1.1 million sq. km less than the 39-year average and ra nks 2008 as having the 4th least extensive cover on record...”” It seems as though you are having trouble taking yo ur own advice, and looking at what it right in fron t of your eyes.

hotrod ( Larry L ) says: February 18, 2010 at 9:42 pm One thing that no one has mentioned would be to com pute the area under the curves from minimum to mini mum for each year. The time x area should give an interesting lo ok at how much the albedo changes. Any trend in pea k levels or minimum levels strike me as being less valuable than the pr oduct of the time and the total snow surface availa ble to reflect light. A cycle with a tall but relatively sharp peak might have less actual effective change in albedo than a shorter but fatter cycle, as the latter would have snow present for a longer per iod of time. If you really wanted to get fancy you could compute the days of sunlight for each day of the cycle and also compensate for the changing length of days. A given square area of sno w during late December would reflect significantly less energy than the same area during March or April due to the longer d ay. Larry

Steve Goddard says: February 18, 2010 at 9:43 pm Robert, Do snow extent maximums occur in the summer, or in the winter? The graph is clearly marked as “Winter Snow Extent. ” Did you bother to read the article before posting?

Steve Goddard says: February 18, 2010 at 9:46 pm 

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- interesting/carrot, Maybe this graphic will make it more clear for you. https://spreadsheets.google.com/oimg? key=0AnKz9p_7fMvBdHY1dGdwZXdCRVBfekVzQ0FZVENPQVE&oi d=1&v=1266558324736

Ronaldo says: February 18, 2010 at 9:52 pm davidmhoffer (13:24:07) : “Tom_R (09:12:23) : Hmm, as I write this I realize that the photon chan ges direction, but doesn’t lose energy since the wa velength doesn’t change. How is energy conserved when the air molecule gains kinetic energy but the photon energy remains the s ame?> My recollection is that a photon has no mass so can ’t transfer any kinetic energy?” “Leif Svalgaard (18:29:51)A photon has momentum so can give you a kick = increase your kinetic energy. ” My understanding is that the CO2 molecule absorbs t he photon, thus increasing the molecule’s internal (vibrational?) energy and then re-emits a photon of the same energy and t hus wavelength but in a random direction. Otherwise we have a perpetual motion machine. Have I got this wrong?

aMINO aCIDS iN mETEORITES says: February 18, 2010 at 10:08 pm carrot eater (13:23:10) : It’s pretty clear the problems with relying only on published works. Raw data is better. But you want to distract from that. And true to tha t form, you used the word maybe. Maybe, could, if, the infamous words of a troll. “you can fool yourself” I think yes, you could fool yourself more easily th an most other people carrot. And I see you attacked Steven Goddard. You people n ever quit.

aMINO aCIDS iN mETEORITES says: February 18, 2010 at 10:11 pm carrot eater (15:36:52) : Steve Goddard (08:42:01) : “We have been told over and over again since Hansen spoke to Congress in 1989, that winter snow is dec lining” Please provide a link to this statement or publicat ion from Hansen. I’m not familiar with it. 

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- interesting/Some schools offer courses in reading comprehension
.

aMINO aCIDS iN mETEORITES says: February 18, 2010 at 10:14 pm Steve Goddard (16:09:58) : A lucid defense. Good on ya!

Steve Goddard says: February 18, 2010 at 10:22 pm Willis, Thanks for the analysis. Soot would only affect lat e spring/summer extent, because it is covered by fr esh snow the rest of the year. It requires an extended period of time with n o snowfall to accumulate. And forest fires occur in the summer.

aMINO aCIDS iN mETEORITES says: February 18, 2010 at 10:23 pm carrot eater (17:24:07) : By the way, I’m still looking for any signs that Ha nsen or anybody else was proclaiming that winter sn ow extent was decreasing over the US. Still haven’t found it Keep looking for that Hansen quote, keep looking. K nock yourself out carrot. Maybe you could link your search to global warming somehow and get some funding for it: you know, join that party! Or are you already in it?

carrot eater says: February 18, 2010 at 10:32 pm Steve Goddard (21:46:26) : Not really. Still just looks like noise to me. I li ke Willis’s smooth better. Steve Goddard (21:43:56) : Summer is interesting in that it’s more simple. The re’s a more obvious trend, and it’s more obvious wh y there should be a trend, with warming. It isn’t obvious to me which w ay the winter trend should even go with warming. It ’d be complicated, with air circulation patterns affecting what you ge t. At least, that’s how I see it. Seriously, I hope you gather several sources for a write-up on what is known/predicted about snowfall/ snowcover. A couple modeling papers, a couple observation papers, the r eport for the government above, the relevant sectio ns of the IPCC – I 

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- interesting/don’t think anybody’s written something comprehensi ve along these lines recently, so it’d be a helpful contribution if you got a nice overview.

Steve Goddard says: February 18, 2010 at 10:38 pm carrot eater, There is nothing simple about summer snow melt. Peo ple who have studied the problem (like Hansen) than k that soot is a primary factor. Zander says up to 90%. I flew over Greenland during late summer 2007 (the big melt year) and the snow/ice along the western s ide was absolutely filthy. perhaps from forest fires in Canada.

carrot eater says: February 18, 2010 at 10:40 pm Wait a minute.... Is there even warming in the winter months, in this region? Monthly trends can be weir d. Looking at GISS trend maps, for Goddard’s period of 1989-2010, January is getting colder in the easter n half of the US, but warmer in the Arctic to the North. The Dec-Feb winter trend, 1989-2009, is similar, bu t not as pronounced. The Atlantic ocean offshore is about trendless, with some spots either way. I have no idea what that means for winter snow, but it adds a complication.

aMINO aCIDS iN mETEORITES says: February 18, 2010 at 10:41 pm carrot eater (22:32:56) : A couple modeling papers

============================================ Why?

wayne says: February 18, 2010 at 10:43 pm Stu (17:56:03) : Steven: Leif: Careful, if the science is correct, the GW factor n eed not come in to play. Proper science will handle the GW factor itself. Do the proper science anyway; what you learn may apply to something a month from now that would directly apply to GW factor. 

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- interesting/Time series can be problematic when re-grouped in t ime periods. Here’s an example. Just as Steven’s to p chart’s data, I have another set of snowfall data. I graph it. It jumps up and down, down and up in big jumps all over the place. I get the R^2, its terrible, 0.03. Now if I allow myself to change the division between the years in fifteen different pl aces no more than one week, I now have a perfectly straight line for a gr aph with an R^2 of one! The only thing that happened is I allowed the big s nowstorm near year end to fall in this year instead of that year. The big storm on Dec 31 was moved to Jan 1 of the following year, not actually; actually the division was move d one week. Another year I moved the storm from Jan 2, to Dec 30. That tiny 7/365 (2%) shift in the time dimension took a graph from no correlation to perfect correlation. Does that make sense? By a 2% flex in time division placement, dat a is either laughed as meaningless or accepted as if written in granite. Even Feynman would shout, are you crazy, use you lo gic, reason, common sense for heavens sake. Statist ics never takes the front seat. Statistics is a tool for ease and speed and to simplify complex questions but never overri des correct reason. PC’s came out, and in some respects, logic went out the window! Leif, maybe you are enough of a specialist in stati stics to help me here. I hit this type of problem y ears ago but still have no answer of the proper way to handle this. This somet imes applies to temperature series of course. The bottom line, this type of time series can be ve ry sensitive in the time dimension. See my point? H ow do you handle that proper in science and statistics? (My stat book see ms to say nothing on it)

aMINO aCIDS iN mETEORITES says: February 18, 2010 at 10:43 pm carrot eater (22:32:56) : the relevant sections of the IPCC

================================================ Have you heard about the problems with the IPCC rep ort? Surely you must have.

carrot eater says: February 18, 2010 at 10:50 pm aMINO aCIDS iN mETEORITES (22:41:12) : It appears that Goddard is writing an article to th e effect of “what was/is the conventional wisdom ab out winter snow trends, past/present/future”. To that end, one would have t o see what the different models say, whether the mo dels agree with each other and with past observation, and also whether t he authors or IPCC authors express any confidence i n those model projections.

carrot eater says: February 18, 2010 at 10:56 pm Steve Goddard (22:38:19) : 

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- interesting/Whether it’s more soot or more warmth, one would ex pect less snow either way. At least until soot decr eases. To me, that makes it easier to figure out than winter, where I can’t reason which way the trend would be. That the re isn’t uniform warming spatially in the winter just adds to that m ess.

aMINO aCIDS iN mETEORITES says: February 18, 2010 at 11:02 pm why would it matter what the IPCC thinks? Have you been reading about the IPCC over the past few months?

aMINO aCIDS iN mETEORITES says: February 18, 2010 at 11:13 pm carrot, why don’t you try to write you own paper. Y our line of what is expected is your own. You don’t seem to be following what Steve Goddard is saying. I don’t know if it is intentional, unintentional, or what. There may be other places for you to find people wh o you don’t have to try to steer toward what you wa nt them to be like.

Robert says: February 18, 2010 at 11:55 pm “Maybe, could, if, the infamous words of a troll.” I don’t think you understand what a “troll” is. Som ebody who despises words like “maybe” and “if” is a lot closer to trolldom then one who has mastered the use of those words.

Robert says: February 19, 2010 at 12:09 am ” Steve Goddard (21:43:56) : Robert, Do snow extent maximums occur in the summer, or in the winter? The graph is clearly marked as “Winter Snow Extent. ” Did you bother to read the article before posting?” Steve, did you forget that you claimed: “Summer sno w cover declined significantly (from the 1970s ice age scare) during the 1980s, but minimums have not changed much since the n. As you can see in the graph below, the overall a nnual trend since 1989 has been slightly upwards.” Maybe you should read the article you wrote. 

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- interesting/Robert says: February 19, 2010 at 12:11 am ” aMINO aCIDS iN mETEORITES (23:13:29) : carrot, why don’t you try to write you own paper.” Skeptics who question assertions are just so frustr ating, aren’t they?

carrot eater says: February 19, 2010 at 1:04 am aMINO aCIDS iN mETEORITES (23:13:29) : Of course, Goddard will write whatever he wants. I’ m only suggesting a wide scope, as I think it’d be filling a need. He can ignore my opinion. But you might note that he said he was starting with a modeling paper, so I don’t t hink we differ that much on the idea of whether to look at a modeling p aper.... “why would it matter what the IPCC thinks?” When a lot of people have been saying “it’s snowing a lot this winter, so therefore the IPCC and all t he warmists must be wrong”, you don’t think it worthwhile to actually s ee what the report or the literature says on the ma tter? Myself, I don’t think a single winter is meaningful either which wa y; weather is weather, and one year is not a trend, but Goddard sees a trend since 1989. So let’s see what comes of it.

Jay says: February 19, 2010 at 2:51 am Steve, Thanks for the response. I read the article, but it only consists of a few sentences and a couple of p lots. Perhaps it’s because I’m new here, but I’m not sure what you’re trying t o tell readers. Simple (pertinent, I think) questions. What do you think snow cover tells us about climate ? What’s the margin of error on the Northern Hemisphe re Snow Cover Plot? How confident are you that you’ ve got an upwards trend? Why do you think starting a plot from a minimum in the data is a good way to tell us something useful about trends?

Dude says: February 19, 2010 at 4:03 am Carrot Eater said: “A second-order polynomial fit would likely result in a higher R^2 value.” The game is not to increase your R^2 by increasing the order of the polynomial. That’s generally a hor rible idea.

— Here’s what I’m trying to say...you fit linear regess ions to data you think is linear. Looking at winter snow extent, it’s pretty clear to me, it’s not linear...it’s got a cuve to it. Therefore, fitting a single line to all the data d oesn’t make a lot of sense. 

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- interesting/Jody says: February 19, 2010 at 4:04 am Does anyone think there might be a problem with cho osing your starting point because that’s where the trend started?

phlogiston says: February 19, 2010 at 4:29 am Steve Your last sentence: “Earlier changes in summer snow extent were likely due primarily to soot – not CO2.” Is this Hansen’s statement or yours? It goes unques tioned. We dont need to be hypnotised by AGW bluste r from Hansen or anyone else – ascribing snow trends or anything els e in as complex a system as climate, to a single fa ctor, e.g. soot, is certain to be false. Soot in particular is an irrelevant re d herring, AGWers are grasping at straws.

Paul Coppin says: February 19, 2010 at 5:04 am This conversation seems to have wandered all over t he place, pretty aimlessly. I’m sitting here looking at a map of air mass movem ent from a 1983 textbook on maritime weather, and I see an intersection point over about Asheville NC, of the maritime pola r(mP) air mass, the continental polar (cP) air mass , and the maritime tropical (mT) airmass, with a potential contributio n from an arctic (A) air mass from the north. The i ntersection point is right where the Washington weather bomb got up a head of steam and charged forward, and the relevant air mas ses have all the necessary ingredients. The historic path of both the mT and cP air masses is right out over Delawar e (don’t have a chart for eurasia, but would be surprised if there aren’t sim ilar confluences). Now, it seems likely that the confluential interact ion of these air masses was just so this season, producing the weather experienced this winter. Since there are previous records for similar events (of equal magnitude – I’ll re-iterate what I said earlier – a 1/2′′ difference does not a “new” record make), it is reasonable, an d probably even likely, that the snow extent is cha otically cyclic (chaotic, only because we haven’t yet ascertained what the re spective periodicities are), and we are seeing a normal event that occurs whenever certain planetary drivers coincide (ie, el ninos, pdos, enso, solar etc.). Forget soot, CO2 a nd the IPCC and look to the macro events before you blow your minds on the micro political drivers.

Phil M. says: February 19, 2010 at 5:44 am Another masterful analysis by Steve “Pixel Counter” Goddard. Using Excel and 21 years worth of data to contradict 100 years of science – and in 500 words or less....impressive! The “skeptic” community has made many valid observa tions and critiques of climate science, but allowin g folks like Steve Goddard to speak for the community at large illegit imizes potentially useful insights contributed by o thers. 

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- interesting/My advice to everyone here: do not visit this websi te for science. Peer-reviewed literature is where t his debate should be happening, not the blogosphere.

Tom_R says: February 19, 2010 at 6:19 am >> Leif Svalgaard (20:02:12) : The energy and momentum of a photon are related by E = pc, where p is the magnitude of the momentum ve ctor p. The momentum p points in the direction of the photon’s propagation and has a magnitude of p = h/L, where h is Planck’s constant and L is the wave length. So, photons do h ave momentum and can give you a kick and increase y our kinetic energy. << This is as I remember it from my basic physics. Wha t I don't remember is what happens to the photon. I f an air molecule gains kinetic energy from a collision, the photon m ust lose energy in the collision. Does the photon c ome off of the collision with a longer wavelength? Starting with a molecule at rest, and a photon scat tered directly backwards, the transfer of momentum (dp) would be: dp = 2 * E/c [E = photon energy, c = speed of light ] the final velocity of the molecule would be: v = 2 * E / mc [m = mass of air molecule] and the kinetic energy (dE) would be: dE = 2 * E * E / (mc2) [c2 = speed of light squared ] A quick run through the physics tables gives a ball park value for E/mc2 of about 10 to the -10, so the change in photon energy would be barely noticible.

Pascvaks says: February 19, 2010 at 6:51 am “Why Is Winter Snow Extent Interesting?” Guest post by Steven Goddard Well it seems we have several answers to the questi on and many questions about the answers and many qu estions that never got answers. I never knew that there was so much in terest in winter snow extent graphs. I’m just a little confused though. It sure seemed t hat more are more interested in the math of the gra phs and not the extent of the snow. Perhaps those who know about snow and ice and R2 (w hatever it is) will put together another article so meday that addresses the connection between annual snow and ice extents so the minutia mob stay in the closet. Somehow I doubt that Plato put up with “R2′′ minutia and bickering. Wonder how he kept the conversation from such diversions and actually came up with a meaningful d iscussion and reasonable answer(s) to the question( s).

Paul Coppin says: 

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- interesting/February 19, 2010 at 7:02 am Phil M. (05:44:51) : [..] My advice to everyone here: do not visit this websi te for science. Peer-reviewed literature is where t his debate should be happening, not the blogosphere. Apparently you missed the “memo(s)”. There is no de bate in “peer-reviewed” literature...

Steve Goddard says: February 19, 2010 at 7:02 am Phil M, If you have a specific objection to anything in the article, please state it. Otherwise, don’t waste other people’s time with you r pointless diatribe.

Steve Goddard says: February 19, 2010 at 7:04 am Jay, You asked what I think winter snow cover tells us a bout climate. Simple, the climate models and foreca sts don’t seem to be working. Winter snow cover is supposed to be decrea sing, not increasing. http://www.eee.columbia.edu/research-projects/water _resources/climate-change-snow-cover/index.html

davidmhoffer says: February 19, 2010 at 7:07 am Ronaldo (21:52:24) : My understanding is that the CO2 molecule absorbs t he photon, thus increasing the molecule’s internal (vibrational?) energy and then re-emits a photon of the same energy and t hus wavelength but in a random direction. Otherwise we have a perpetual motion machine. Have I got this wrong?> I bow to Leif and others on this issue who have pos ted various explanations. I can only advise that th e explanations may not be complete as they do not support a practical meth od to build a photon torpedo. I’ve been told that p hoton torpedos are science fiction, to which I respond that there is j ust as much evidence for them as there is for perpe tual motion. And AGW.

Steve Goddard says: February 19, 2010 at 7:08 am BTW Phil M, NSIDC teaches pixel counting to their students at C U as a technique to measure Arctic ice. If you find that offensive to your sensitive disposition, please contact them with you r complaint. 

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- interesting/Oliver K. Manuel says: February 19, 2010 at 7:10 am Quote : Phil M. (05:44:51) : “My advice to everyone here: do not visit this webs ite for science. Peer-reviewed literature is where this debate should be happening, not the blogosphere.” Like the IPCC?

Steve Goddard says: February 19, 2010 at 7:12 am phlogiston , The soot remark is my statement, not Hansen’s. I’m just back from driving on snow being melted by inte ntionally placed dark material. It is a very effective way to melt snow – orders of magnitude faster than it would have othe rwise.

vigilantfish says: February 19, 2010 at 7:17 am A late response to Leif – posted last night but it went missing due to my own error: Leif: I went back over previous e-mails and realized bela tedly that you were responding to a strain of ’stra nge’ science in some of the comments that I had not followed closely enough
. However, if you care to look at various episodes in the history of science, such as the belief in phre nology, or the electricity of the body, or the inventor Tesla’s belief in the fut ure of transmitting electrical power through the ai r or his determination to invent a perpetual motion machine, you will realize that this is nothing new. William Harvey, so famou s for determining experimentally the circulation of the blood in the 17th century, also determined experimentally that f emales of the human and ovine species could become pregnant by gazing l ustfully at the males of the species (or in the cas e of women, portraits of handsome men): no contact required. Harvey in fact was ignoring millenia of scientific wisdom. Aristot le and the Greeks realized that a “mingling of the fluids” was needed for conception to occur. There is no dark age of science or civilization ari sing from the eccentrics amongst us: a dark age may arise, however, from the willful distortion of the scientific process for mo netary and political ends. This happened under the Nazi regime. Unfortunately the lessons of history are being forg otten, as evidently the IPCC and other bodies belie ve the ends justifies the means – and the ends cannot be achieved without pac kaging propaganda as science.

Leif Svalgaard says: February 19, 2010 at 7:59 am vigilantfish (07:17:49) : a dark age may arise, however, from the willful dis tortion of the scientific process for monetary and political ends. Such distortion would not be successful if the citi zenry were scientific literate. Now, some of the il literati are willfully illiterate, i.e. not willing to learn for various r easons, e.g. religious. There is another underlying problem, namely that mo dern science may be intellectually overwhelming and some people are drawn to simpler pictures that they can ‘understand ’ [it is easier to 'understand' that angels push th e planets around than 

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- interesting/some mathematical equations; or that 'thunderbolts' from the heavens are powering the Sun rather than complicated nuclear processes]. As has been said so often, half of Amer icans believe the Earth is 6000 years old. Right th ere, one loses that segment of the population. Regarding the IPCC and ‘other bodies’ there are peo ple that oppose these on economic grounds rather on scientific grounds. I guess than there actually are more economic/politic al resistance than purely scientific. Getting the s cience right is a longterm project that may take centuries.

Phil. says: February 19, 2010 at 8:48 am Tom_R (06:19:36) : >> Leif Svalgaard (20:02:12) : The energy and momentum of a photon are related by E = pc, where p is the magnitude of the momentum ve ctor p. The momentum p points in the direction of the photon’s propagation and has a magnitude of p = h/L, where h is Planck’s constant and L is the wave length. So, photons do h ave momentum and can give you a kick and increase y our kinetic energy. << This is as I remember it from my basic physics. Wha t I don't remember is what happens to the photon. I f an air molecule gains kinetic energy from a collision, the photon m ust lose energy in the collision. Does the photon c ome off of the collision with a longer wavelength? No the photon is absorbed it does not emerge from t he collision at all.

James Chamberlain says: February 19, 2010 at 9:10 am Let there be NO elitists or kings, whether on our s ide or another!

phlogiston says: February 19, 2010 at 9:17 am Phil M. (05:44:51) “My advice to everyone here: do not visit this webs ite for science. Peer-reviewed literature is where this debate should be happening, not the blogosphere.” This thread by Steve Goddard has attracted a lot of criticism from (apparently) AGWers for stating a r ather simple fact: snow extent is increasing, in direct contradiction of ge neral circulation models which predict global warmi ng. The very simplicity of the statement appears to be offensive to some wh o perhaps need their science to be more complex and opaque. It has exposed a raw nerve for a clear reason: the global climate is cooling. There are a number of st ark and inescapable implications of this: 1) The AGW body of theory is a total failure; 2) Every “scientist”, however many peers they may b e able to lay claim to, who has embraced AGW, is a failed scientist: their instincts and methodology have proved wrong. 3) Every scientist who, having looked at the eviden ce, has instinctively decided that global warming i s false and un-grounded, for whatever combination of reasons, has been vindi cated as a true scientist. This includes a fair pro portion of regular posters on this site, several of whom are climate scientist s who have been removed from research positions unf airly by the AGW inquisition exposed in the CRU emails. 

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- interesting/It is one thing to be a technician; it is another t o be a scientist. If you are a technician, you can have a powerful grasp of the workings of a scientific methodology and body of th eory in a particular discipline. You might be a cap able mathematician or programmer, but your world is essentially one of me thodology. A scientist by contrast goes a little fu rther than methodology, and thinks beyond one particular corner of a discip line or subject. Shocking as it might sound, a scie ntist requires an accurate intuition, an ability to “sense” the likely relativ e significance of a range of factors in a complex s ystem for example. (Sound methodology is necessary for good science but not s ufficient for good science.) As the climate continues to cool, the peer-reviewed literature on AGW will be shown for what it is – t he self-interested output of professional politicians dressed up as scientist s, weaving technical language to construct inductiv e arguments supporting a pre-decided outcome – indefinite global warming. Su ch theories have their own internal logic and sense of rightness, but being inductive, are held up by a series of assumpt ions that represent a fragile and flimsy foundation . Holding such views shows ignorance and contempt for the totatity of cl imate record extending all the way back to the Camb rian era, with narrative confined to only climate history in the l ast 1 or 2 centuries or decades. Peer reviewed literature is where the politics is h appening. Climate science that reflects reality is more likely to be found here.

Tom_R says: February 19, 2010 at 9:38 am >> Phil. (08:48:21) : No the photon is absorbed it does not emerge from t he collision at all. << Then why is the sky blue?

Pascvaks says: February 19, 2010 at 9:45 am Ref – vigilantfish (07:17:49) : “...a dark age may arise, however, from the willful d istortion of the scientific process for monetary an d political ends.”

_________________________ Yes we all have to pinch ourselves every so often a nd remember we’re dealing with “people”. Ref – Leif Svalgaard (07:59:30) : “There is another underlying problem, namely that m odern science may be intellectually overwhelming an d some people are drawn to simpler pictures that they can ‘understand ’ [it is easier to 'understand' that angels push th e planets around than some mathematical equations; or that 'thunderbolts' from the heavens are powering the Sun rather than complicated nuclear processes]. As has been said so often, half of Amer icans believe the Earth is 6000 years old. Right th ere, one loses that segment of the population.”

________________________ One of the first laws of Human Nature has the acron ym KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid!). Einstein was bril liant at it; what a guy, who else could have said more with less? (E=mc ^2) I fear that many “intellectuals” underestimate the intelligence of Joe & Jo the Plumbers. If nothing else, they & their ki ds are survivors. They can take anything the gods t hrow at them and in their magnanimity they support and pander to the st unted, crippled, sick among them who only know how to think well about one thing at a time. Life’s a beach, Leif! Do n’t assume IQ tests have anything to do with wisdom or intelligence.

kadaka says: February 19, 2010 at 9:58 am Leif Svalgaard (07:59:30) : 

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- interesting/(...) As has been said so often, half of Americans be lieve the Earth is 6000 years old. Right there, one loses that segment of the population.(...) And the MSM also says there is an overwhelming scie ntific consensus that global warming is occurring, man is responsible, there is no debate, the science is settled, yada ya da. Half of Americans (or more) believing in God and th at God created the world? Credible. Half of America ns believing the Earth is 6000 years old? Not credible, as seen here “in the field.” The “elite” as found in the MSM and academia wantin g to paint average Americans as ignorant unscientif ic hicks who obviously need to be led by “smarter” people, such as themselves, thus believing God created the world is labeled Creationism thus proof that half of Americans believe the Earth is 6000 years old? Credible. Why do “smart” people continue to imply, when they don’t outright state, that belief in God precludes one from understanding nuclear fusion in the Sun, and means they think angels push the planets around? When sci entists violate scientific principles and insist there is no God wi thout supplying proof, then these “scientists” find that people must obviously be unscientific because they continue to believe in God. Last I checked, even the most devou tly religious people in America believe lights come on when you turn on a l ight switch because of electrons moving in wires, n ot because moving the switch signals the angels in the bulbs to start glo wing. Nor do they petition their electric company t o stop charging them for power since the angels are doing the work. So why a re “smart” people insisting that half of Americans are a permanently scientific-illiterate “lost cause”?

Leif Svalgaard says: February 19, 2010 at 10:06 am Pascvaks (09:45:54) : One of the first laws of Human Nature has the acron ym KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid!). Einstein was bril liant at it; Einstein once said: “keep it as simple as possible, but no simpler “. Don’t assume IQ tests have anything to do with wisd om or intelligence. Science has nothing to do with IQ-test, nor with wi sdom, nor with intelligence.

Leif Svalgaard says: February 19, 2010 at 10:31 am kadaka (09:58:37) : Half of Americans believing the Earth is 6000 years old? Not credible http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/articl e/2005/09/24/AR2005092401262.html

UnfrozenCavemanMD says: February 19, 2010 at 10:35 am > Steve Goddard (21:13:04) : > The upwards trend started in 1989. Prior to that > there was a downwards trend. If I am showing a gr aph > of the most recent upwards trend, why would I inc lude > years that aren’t part of that trend? If you want to assert that there was some kind of c limatological regime change in 1989, there are stat istical tests for distinguishing that from random noise, and it would help to have an explanation that comes from outsid e the snow data as to 

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- interesting/why 1989 should be a transition point. Monckton has rightly made great public sport of those who displ ay selected subsets of noisy data in order to assert the existence of a tr end. If you are showing a graph of the most recent upwar ds trend, you would include years that aren’t part of that trend in order to communicate honesty with the data. I have sliced and diced the snow cover data in all of the ways described by our colleagues above, incl uding seasonally averaged variations from weekly-normalized means, w ith various appropriate smoothings. What emerges, a s others including you have stated, is that maximum Winter s now cover has not changed much, while Spring and Su mmer has clearly decreased.

UnfrozenCavemanMD says: February 19, 2010 at 10:36 am Here are some pretty figures: http://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B6szLeIoC6RBZjI0Yjh hMTctMTk2NC00MGMwLWJiMTktODkzYjM0OTg5YTdm&hl=en http://docs.google.com/leaf? id=0B6szLeIoC6RBOGU1ZjBlNDUtYzgzMi00MDE0LTg2NGQtN2U 3ODJmNDU0YWFj&hl=en

Leif Svalgaard says: February 19, 2010 at 10:43 am kadaka (09:58:37) : Last I checked, even the most devoutly religious pe ople in America believe lights come on when you tur n on a light switch because of electrons moving in wires, not because m oving the switch signals the angels in the bulbs to start glowing. How many did you interview? How were they selected? [how do you measure devoutn ess?] What was the exact question? Sometimes the wording can have an influence on the answer What is the error bar? i.e. how many agreed vs. not agreed? Do you plan to submit your finding to a peer-review ed journal?

Jay says: February 19, 2010 at 10:53 am Hi Steve, Thanks for getting back to me. It wasn’t clear in y our article that was what you were trying to show. (I hadn’t read read your previous article I’m afraid and you didn’t point to it here.) I had a few other questions too, which I think are still relevant. I wondered if the trend in the Northern Hemisphere Annual Snow Cover Plot was sufficient to give you c onfidence that there was a trend – only it looks very slight, to tell th e truth, and you don’t say what the error margin is
. And I also wondered why you thought it might be use ful to begin your plot from a minimum in the data. By picking unusual data don’t you think you might get unusual results?

Pascvaks says: 

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- interesting/February 19, 2010 at 12:23 pm Ref – Leif Svalgaard (10:06:20) : Pascvaks (09:45:54) : P. – “One of the first laws of Human Nature has the acronym KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid!). Einstein wa s brilliant at it;..” L.S. – Einstein once said: “keep it as simple as po ssible, but no simpler“.

_________________________ My guess he was talking to a PhD; warning him not t o underestimate “people”. P – “Don’t assume IQ tests have anything to do with wisdom or intelligence.” L.S. – “Science has nothing to do with IQ-test, nor with wisdom, nor with intelligence.”

___________________ I’m sorry, what planet did you say you were from? PS: Ref your ref to WP article to Kadaka – :-) PPS: Exchanges like this are a waste of brain cells . I don’t have any I can afford to spare and you wo uld be better occupied discovering something new for the rest of the tribe . God bless!:-)

kadaka says: February 19, 2010 at 1:21 pm Leif Svalgaard (10:31:11) : kadaka (09:58:37) : Half of Americans believing the Earth is 6000 years old? Not credible http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/articl e/2005/09/24/AR2005092401262.html Wow. I question the MSM presentation, and you rebut with an MSM article. Is this like when we “climate skeptics” question what the IPCC does with the research, and we get re butted by references to the IPCC? Beginning analysis of spin... In the early 20th century, many creationist thinker s viewed Genesis as metaphorical, accepting that Ea rth formed over hundreds of thousands, even millions of years. But as society became more secular, and sci ence offered an implicit challenge to fundamentalist bel iefs, creationist leaders took a more literal line. Science was co-opted to promote atheism with the in sistence that accepting science meant rejecting a b elief in God, and believers pushed back against said “science.” Is th at supposed to be surprising? Polls taken last year showed that 45 percent of Ame ricans believe that God created humans in their pre sent form 10,000 years ago (or less) and that man shares no common ancestor with the ape. As polls go, it helps in understanding the results to know who asked the questions, what groups were p olled, and it is especially important to know the exact wording of t he questions. As it stands, 10 thousand years is about the length of “recorded human history” thus is solid evidence of humans existing “in their present form.” If you take Genesis as metapho r, accept evolution and the actual science, with th e caveat that God “tweaked” an existing pre-human primate to bring ab out humans, then yes, you could very well agree on a poll that “God created humans in their present form 10,000 years a go (or less)” and still not be a Young Earth Creati onist. To recap, you are trying to affirm “...half of Americ ans believe the Earth is 6000 years old.” What have you provided? 10,000 years ago, not 6000, humans were created in their p resent form, not that the Earth is only that old. 

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- interesting/Plus, evolution as presented has changed over the y ears. My mother well remembers in school being expl icity taught that man descended from the apes. A common ancestor for the seperate lines of humans and other large primat es was a change in theory that came later. Thus, as originally taught, one may say that “man shares no common ancestor wi th the ape,” not be a Creationist, and only be faulted for considering a straight line yielded “no common ancestor.” One of the first things that science teaches us, is that the “reality” we experience with our senses i sn’t even half of what really exists. Factor in current theory involving dark mat ter and energy, we don’t even realize a tenth of wh at is out there. Science needs to acknowledge its own limitations. At best i t can state “we have found no evidence that a ‘high er power’ was involved at this time” and leave it at that. Instead we have “scientists” insisting science says there is no God, and that science and religion can not coexist. We have this article, which takes poll results showing one thing , juxtaposes it with Young Earth Creationism, that ends up being cited as affirming that half of Americans believe the Earth is only 6000 years old, thus half of Americans are permanently scientifically illiterate. Let’s pull another fact from the article. Only 26 percent believe in the central tenet of evo lution, that all life descended from a single ances tor. How is that unscientific? We haven’t even identifie d all the life on this planet, we are still discove ring new life forms in extreme environments, and even ones overlooked wher e we had searched before. To say that all life must have evolved from the same microrganism ages ago is actually the unsc ientific position, as the same conditions that the one came from could have yielded others, and all life has yet to be ide ntified thus we cannot draw such a conclusion about all life. And another... Another poll showed that 65 percent of Americans wa nt creationism taught alongside evolution. So what is wrong with that? Open debate, presenting alternate theories, letting the research stand on its own... Isn’t that what we “climate skeptics” argue for in the presenting o f climate science? If the scientific robustness is so obvious, then let it be obvious, toss it all out there and let people make up their own minds. Instead we get loud insistence that the science say s this and only this, dissent is squashed as unscie ntific, demands that even the most basic of claims be backed with research, t hat should very well be peer-reviewed to count... Which brings us to Leif Svalgaard (10:43:13)
...

Tom_R says: February 19, 2010 at 1:41 pm >> Leif Svalgaard (10:31:11) : kadaka (09:58:37) : Half of Americans believing the Earth is 6000 years old? Not credible http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/articl e/2005/09/24/AR2005092401262.html << Are you referring to this statement? "Polls taken last year showed that 45 percent of Am ericans believe that God created humans in their pr esent form 10,000 years ago (or less) and that man shares no common a ncestor with the ape." Besides being 45% and not 50%, the question referre d to how long humans have been around, and not the Earth itself. I have met people who stated they believed the Earth was o nly ~6000 years old (including a particle physicist , amazingly enough), 

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- interesting/but nowhere near 45%. My sample includes numerous c o-workers at a can factory (summer job) who were ha ppy to talk about the big bang when they found out I was an ast ronomy major, so I don't think it's just a selectio n effect.

charles the moderator says: February 19, 2010 at 1:55 pm Ok, this has devolved into a science vs. religion d iscussion with Evolution and Creationism mixed in. This includes you Leif. Other moderators–why are you letting this through? This stops now. I mean it. Don’t make me go back and go through dozens of comm ents with with a scythe.

David Reese says: February 19, 2010 at 2:21 pm Frequency Components of Rutgers University Global S now Lab I removed an annual signal by working with the wint er months of weeks 49 through 9, averageing the sno w cover data. I subtracted the average value to work with the diffe rence. The difference function initially declined a nd then inclined. A fit of a line through the data gave an R^2 of .000428 (ver y noisy data). Matching the difference function wit h a cosine curve with a period of 60 years and a 7.2 year shift gaive an R^ 2 of .0809, about 326 times higher than a straight line. I believe the NAO time period is on the order of 60 years.

kadaka says: February 19, 2010 at 2:42 pm Re: charles the moderator (13:55:00) Charles, I am no fan of Creationism, especially Young Earth Creationism. I am not arguing science vs religion, from my perspective. I am complaining about science being used for an ag enda, as we do with climate science specifically. I am upset by what I saw as half of my countrymen being declared as unable t o understand science solely because of their religi ous views. That is all.

HB says: February 19, 2010 at 3:58 pm Thank you ctm!

Roger Knights says: 

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- interesting/February 19, 2010 at 4:55 pm Leif Svalgaard (07:59:30) : vigilantfish (07:17:49) : a dark age may arise, however, from the willful dis tortion of the scientific process for monetary and political ends. Such distortion would not be successful if the citi zenry were scientific literate. Like in Germany?

Steve Goddard says: February 19, 2010 at 5:02 pm Jay, If you were measuring the height of a mountain, wou ld you start the measurement at the bottom and end it at the top? Hopefully. You started the measurement at the botto m because that is the sensible place to do it. What if someone told you that you should have start ed your measurement on a neighboring peak of identi cal height, and that statistically speaking the topography is flat? Woul d you take them seriously?

F. Ross says: February 19, 2010 at 7:13 pm Phil M. (05:44:51) :

... My advice to everyone here: do not visit this websi te for science.

... Disregarding your obviously keen perception and acu men, I will continue to visit here; additionally, I may even see some valid science discussed. Perhaps, though, few would mind if you follow your own advice.

Jay says: February 19, 2010 at 9:36 pm Hi Steve, That’s an interesting response. If I wanted to meas ure the height of a mountain, then yes, I suppose I would start at the bottom and end at the top. What I wouldn’t do thoug h, is suppose that I had discovered a meaningful tr end and expect the mountain to keep on getting higher beyond the top. If you see what I mean.

Leif Svalgaard says: February 19, 2010 at 10:12 pm 

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- interesting/Roger Knights (16:55:55) : “willful distortion of the scientific process for m onetary and political ends. Such distortion would not be successful if the citi zenry were scientific literate.” Like in Germany? I didn’t know that Germans were distorting the scie ntific process any more than the US immigration rul es against the feebleminded...

steven mosher says: February 20, 2010 at 1:08 am Phil M. (05:44:51) : actually i think the internet has done a pretty goo d job exposing the limitations and assumptions of t he post. In short order. Now if the article had been in a journal, it would hang around as long as mann’s bogus de centering

phlogiston says: February 20, 2010 at 2:14 am Charles the moderator Of course anti-religious intolerance and on the oth er hand religious bigotry should be excluded. Howev er the creationism issue has been pushed into the political mainstream actively by a part of the Church. So it is fair ga me, surely? And using “religion” as a metaphor for (for instanc e) a political agenda and a new morality behind AGW , with historic parallels, need not be censored I would have though t. Reply: I didn’t want to go into specifics. This is not a s ite to debate religion vs. science. It is also not appropriate to lump religion as anti-science as I would concur this is bigotry. I personally know very religious medical r esearchers. ~ ctm.

phlogiston says: February 20, 2010 at 2:25 am Phil M. An alternative to cherry-picking your start date, e .g. 1989 start for snow data, is the much more ambi tious approach taken by the AGW movement – to change the historic record St alin-air-brush style, to edit flat with a virtual i ron the temperature record before the 1970s – much reduced 1930-40s war mth, no more MWP etc. Do you think this is preferab le? Is it permissable to look at the evolution of any p arameter with time? If so, then it is arguable that any start point after the beginning of the universe 13 odd billion years ago is “cherry-picking”. The accusation becomes meaning less. Since 1989 snow extent has increased. (Contrary to climate model predictions.) In its own terms a simp le and valid statement. Live with it.

Caleb says: February 20, 2010 at 2:50 am 

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- interesting/DirkH (08:15:05) : Thank you very much for answering my questions. Of course I immediately have ten more questions. When I wondered: “Are Oxygen and Nitrogen warmed at all, when sunlig ht passes through them?” You responded: “No interaction between visible light and O2 or N2, otherwise air wouldn’t be transparent for visible light. So visible light that is reflected e.g. by snow will go outwards. There m ight be refraction by water droplets, so clouds wil l diffuse visible light. In the absence of clouds, the light reflected by snow (or white roofs, or any part of the surface) will j ust radiate into space without warming anything significantly.” However then I read, at the start of Roy Spencer’s UAH site: “Since 1979, NOAA satellites have been carrying ins truments which measure the natural microwave therma l emissions from oxygen in the atmosphere.” I assume the oxygen must be able to hold heat, for them to be able to measure the heat it emits. This suggests that, while oxygen may not absorb heat directly from visible li ght, it does absorb heat through an indirect proces s, involving several steps. My question remains, is the atmosphere heated at al l by visible light passing through it, and does the albedo-effect heat it twice, by bouncing descending long wave radiation b ack through it a second time? The place to test this would be just north of the A rctic Circle during the winter solstice. Although t he sunlight never strikes the ground, just north of the Arctic Circle during the winter solstice, it passes very close to earth. In fact, (in theory,) if you stepped one step north of the Arctic Circle, an ant by your feet might be in shadow all day, but your face, an altitude of six feet, would briefly be bathed in sunshine at noon. Such sunshine passes through the atmosphere without ever touching the ground. It therefore would not b e turned into infrared radiation by striking a physical surface. Would that air show any warming, during the period of time the sunshine passed through it? If it did, then the albedo-effect could be expected to doubly-warm the troposphere, for as long as the expanded snow-cover lasted. It then would create a sort of false-warmin g, for the atmosphere would appear to warm even as a great deal of heat was lost to outer space. To me, this is one answer to this post’s title, “Wh y Is Winter Snow Extent Interesting?” I don’t care so much about trend lines, as I care about the immediate effect of the snow cover. Another interesting thing to contemplate is how muc h heat will be sucked up (becoming latent heat) jus t melting all the snow.

Roger Knights says: February 20, 2010 at 5:30 am Leif Svalgaard (22:12:10) : “willful distortion of the scientific process for m onetary and political ends. Such distortion would not be successful if the citi zenry were scientific literate.” Roger Knights (16:55:55) :Like in Germany? 

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- interesting/I didn’t know that Germans were distorting the scie ntific process any more than the US immigration rul es against the feeble-minded... In the 1st half of the 20th century Germany was the most scientifically literate country around, but i t distorted the scientific process in, for instance, rejecting relativity, sta cking scientific positions in universities with sto oges, and indulging itself in some fairly crackpot anthropology, archaeology, etc
. I think that “scientific literacy” has had the effe ct, in the modern Western world, of making its educ ated and informed elites more gullible than the scientifically benighted abo ut the pronunciomentos of consensus science on thin gs like catastrophic global warming (and certain other eviro-alarms like all in-place asbestos being a threat). “Man is so necessarily mad that not to be mad is bu t another form or madness.” (Pascal) “Man is a reasoning, not a reasonable, animal.” (Al exander Hamilton) What’s needed to avoid catastrophe (such as enviro- alarmism and hyper-precautionism would entail) is r easonableness, not mere reasoning (science). What’s needed also is an awareness of the basic madness of individuals and g roups, including scientific consensuses. What’s dangerous is the scientistic insinuation of people like Bill Nye the Science Guy that the moder n world has discovered, in the scientific method, a reliable (self-correcti ng-in-the-long-run) truth detector. The global warm ing episode shows that it takes outsiders to perform that correction — ironic ally including flat-earthers and creationists. Such persons, who aren’t intimidated by the parvenu authority of science, fi nd it easier to razz the emperor. This is why the b enighted, backward US (personified in Senator Inhofe), and not enlightene d Europe, has resisted warmist doctrine and legisla tion, and thereby saved the world from a catastrophe greater than any infli cted to date by unscientific forces. Science is the institution that has risen to the to p of the heap as social arbiter of reality and trus tworthiness. That has provided “Satan” with a wonderful disguise to pull another fast one on humanity. “It’s always the one you least suspect” that is Satan’s Slave. Science has become too full of it self, too prideful, too powerful, too inbred, too n arrow and unreflective. This has provided its practitioners and acolytes, perver se and base as they are — being human and wanting t o make a name for themselves and throw their weight around — with a t emptation to do “Satan’s work”: inflicting madness and suffering on humanity. But that attempt was a minor stain on science in co mparison with the explicit endorsement of Hansenism by official science. Therefore, sweeping changes are needed in science’s funding, institutional set-up, procedures, and inc entives — including second-thinking about the commonplace that scientif ically absurd ideas can have only a malign social e ffect. That’s too superficially plausible to actually be true. We see m to need such absurdities as a safety valve for ou r basic nuttiness; lacking them, we’re in danger of becoming stark staring san e and going on a “scientific” rampage.

Leif Svalgaard says: February 20, 2010 at 6:23 am Leif Svalgaard (07:59:30) : (...) As has been said so often, half of Americans be lieve the Earth is 6000 years old. Right there, one loses that segment of the population.(...) Reply: I didn’t want to go into specifics. This is not a site to debate religion vs. science. – ctm Nowhere did I mention religion. I simply referred t o the fact (and WP seems credible enough on this po int – surely the builders of the museum referred to would not contes t that number or would rather see it increase) that half of all Americans believe the Earth is only 6000 years old. In this c onnection it is irrelevant if the actual percentage is 45% or 50% or 44.6783% or if the 6000 is 10,000 or whatever. On the other side of the coin, there are more people in India th an the above number of Americans who believe the Universe is 311 trillion years old. Both numbers are indications of science illiteracy, and that is my point and has nothing to do with religion as such. 

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- interesting/Steve Goddard says: February 20, 2010 at 6:28 am Jay, Nowhere in the article did I make any predictions o f future trends. All I did was locate the mountain and measure it’s average slope. Tamino tried to use creative statistics to m ake the mountain disappear. Which one of us is bein g more honest?

Leif Svalgaard says: February 20, 2010 at 6:59 am Roger Knights (05:30:37) : In the 1st half of the 20th century Germany was the most scientifically literate country around, but i t distorted the scientific process in, for instance, rejecting relativity, sta cking scientific positions in universities with sto oges, and indulging itself in some fairly crackpot anthropology, archaeology, etc
. Relativity was not universally accepted back then. Einstein didn’t get his Nobel Prize for relativity. And, BTW most Americans reject the consequences of GR even now. What’s needed also is an awareness of the basic mad ness of individuals and groups, including scientifi c consensuses. I think it is politicians that claim there is a sci entific consensus. It is only in a situation where a people is illiterate that their leaders can lead them down the garden path. Your no tion that it is the absurd crackpots that are now s aving the world is in itself absurd.

Robin Edwards says: February 20, 2010 at 7:56 am In this thread climate (as described by time series ) is awash with quotes of RSquared (R^2, R2) comput ed in virtually every case by performing a simple (linear) regression of supposedly homogeneous observations on date or time . It also seems to me that some posters may not be familiar with the back ground to RSquared and its relationship to “the rea l world”. It’s worth remembering that although RSquared is a genuine and useful statistical measure of “goodness of fit” of a model (any model) to the data, it is not at all informative about the value of the model, simply because in order to con vert it to /useful/ inferential statistics you must also provide furthe r information, to wit the quantity of information o n which it is based. Statistical tables exist for this purpose, but ther e are various methods in the maths of regression an alysis to do the same thing. If there’s not very much – say a few tens of observations – there’s a further complication beca use the data are a time series, with almost inevitably considerable serial correlation, so there has to be an adjustment to th e quantity that describes the amount of information by methods that have been extensively discussed in Climate Audit. For large data sets, these adjustments, which affect the probability statement s that can be made about the data, are I think unli kely to affect the outcome seriously. However, this does not, in my op inion, throw much further light on the scene. What would be more informative for most readers, I venture, is a simple statement of the estimated coe fficient of interest (typically the increase/decrease of some parameter over a given time interval) together with its confi dence intervals at a specified probability level, say 90% or 95%. This i nformation provides an instant, simple and unmistak able message about the analysis. If the confidence interval includes z ero, the estimated slope cannot be significant at l evels greater than the one on which the interval is based. Something else that I always hope to see is a graph ic that shows the the fitted (usually least squares ) line together with the two hyperbolae that describe the confidence interva l for the line, and the other hyperbolae that descr ibe the interval within which a future observation from the same population can be expected to fall at the chosen confidence l evel. The software I use does this, and I remain surprised that nobody e lse presents such information. I don’t know how to post graphics to this 

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- interesting/thread, so can’t illustrate what I mean. For those of you who like to think of fitting higher order mo del to data, such plots can be most enlightening. The confidence intervals for extrapolations of a cubic fit can really be quite a larming. Now you can legitimately choose whatever confidence level you fancy. There’s absolutely nothing sacros anct about 95% or 90%. These merely express the betting odds at which you are prepared to make a quantitative statement about the outcome of the analysis. You might well decide that 30% was adequate, because it provides narrow confidence ba nds and would apparently support your hypothesis despite rather n onedescript data. In the days when I was an industr ial scientist involved with trying to persuade engineers, chemists and phy sicists to adopt statistical design of experiments to improve their productivity, I reached the conclusion that in thei r scouting experiments they instinctively tended to use an approximate 70% level on which to base their further actions. Who c an blame them, if these actions were not potentiall y very expensive if they finally proved to be misguided. However, the roughl y 2:1 chance of being right was sufficient to persu ade them that they were “doing the right thing”. In earth-shaking climate science the choice of conf idence levels in assessing the import of noisy data is something that I feel should be carefully and pro-actively contemplated b y all those involved, included those influential no n-scientist and nonstatistician outsiders who take world-affecting dec isions based on data that are not always what they seem. I hope that this makes sense to everyone!

Steve Goddard says: February 20, 2010 at 9:20 am Robin Edwards, I used a stock market program which backfitted stoc k data with extremely precise fits using multiple o rder polynomials. Unfortunately, the equations were completely worthl ess at predicting future behaviour of the stocks. “with four parameters I can fit an elephant and wit h five I can make him wiggle his trunk” Johnny Von Neumann

Robin Edwards says: February 20, 2010 at 9:56 am Steve Goddard. Of course, Steve! Did the software also produce the confidence interval plot? This is almost always a nasty surprise to aficionados of polynomials. I’d guess that with five parameters even Von Neuman n would have had some problems with elephants, but it’s certainly a quote worth remembering. Robin

Phil. says: February 20, 2010 at 11:06 am Tom_R (09:38:24) : >> Phil. (08:48:21) : No the photon is absorbed it does not emerge from t he collision at all. << 

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- interesting/Watts Up With That? Then why is the sky blue? Rayleigh scattering.

kadaka says: February 20, 2010 at 12:48 pm Moderators, In kadaka (12:43:24) : (awaiting moderation), “...sta te that, that it does say that...” should be “state t hat, that is does not say that...” Can you please correct that? Thanks!

kadaka says: February 22, 2010 at 6:45 am Been two days now. So are no further comments being accepted for this thread? Perhaps that should be noted. Oh, and if kadaka (12:43:24) (Feb 20) has been lost , can you delete kadaka (12:48:02)? It looks silly just hanging there. Thanks!

Ronnie says: March 11, 2010 at 3:49 am Great stuff. wattsupwiththat.com deserves an oscar.

Hollie says: March 11, 2010 at 4:53 am wattsupwiththat.com, how do you do it?

Blog at Wordpress.com. 

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