“The anomaly was the largest of any of the 520 months on record.”
Where did all the snow go?
I mean, it was here just a minute ago, uber-fodder for the anti-science crowd (see Was the “Blizzard of 2009″³ a “global warming type” of record snowfall “” or an opportunity for the media to blow the extreme weather story (again)? and Massive moisture-driven extreme precipitation during warmest winter in the satellite record “” and the deniers say it disproves (!) climate science).
Sure the global cooling myth died a while ago, and we saw the Hottest March and hottest Jan-Feb-March on record. And sure the Weather Channel asked, “July in April?” because “in the seven-day period from March 29 through April 4, over 1100 daily record highs were either tied or broken in the nation!” But that’s all just a big coincidence, no?
Anyway, even though the record snow storms made headlines around the country for weeks, the amazing factoids headlined above were buried in the monthly “State of the Climate” report from NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, under the category “Other Items of Note”:
According to the Rutgers Snow Lab, North American snow cover for April 2010 was the smallest on record (since 1966). Moreover, the anomaly was the largest of any of the 520 months on record.
So I thought I would note it.
UPDATE: As I note in the comments, the most important things are the long-term trends. But the blow-out, record-busters are important, too, especially ones that occur over large areas. For an analysis of the trends, see Tamino here.
Related Posts:
- An amazing, though clearly little-known, scientific fact: We get more snow storms in warm years!
- MSNBC’s Ratigan: “These ‘snowpocalypses’ that have been going through DC and other extreme weather events are precisely what climate scientists have been predicting, fearing and anticipating because of global warming.”
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
Other discussion of this year’s snow extent prompted by unsubstantial claims by Goddard earlier this year at WUWT:
http://treesfortheforest.wordpress.com/2010/03/04/north-american-snow-cover/
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/02/18/cherry-snow/
[JR: Those are good posts. Yes, the most important things are the long-term trends. Next most important are the blow-out, record-busters, especially ones that occur over large areas.]
One of the horsemen of the climate apocalypse set to ride in Montana:
http://helenair.com/news/state-and-regional/govt-and-politics/article_ef941482-5a68-11df-aa1b-001cc4c03286.html
Thanks for that, Mark.
I’d like to see a CP post on beetle killed and drought stricken forests. It’s a complex subject, but obviously warmer temperatures are at the center of it. I can recommend a few forestry professors, Joe, if you are interested.
[JR: I've done a few. Always happy to get a guest post.]
Mike Roddy, towns in Massachusetts are preparing to sue the local utility. They think leaks of natural gas are killing trees. That cannot be what is killing trees in rural areas, however. THe point is, the financial losses are piling up and municipalities are starting to look at who should foot the bill.
http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2010/05/ka-ching.html
Would be always nice to compare the global state. The prospective from thawing glaciers and other northern regions and the fact of antarctica ice lose, which impacts ocean currents already.
I’ve been thinking rapid and sustained reforestation is a way to restore carbon sinks, but this article suggests drought fire and pine beetles may negate any reforestation efforts in Montana. Are there other deforested areas where the climate will be amenable to reforestation?
One problem with reforestation efforts, Wonhyo, #6, is that existing forest have evolved to be the most appropriate for existing locals, soil & water conditions and climatic conditions. Mess with one or two of those variables and we do not know what trees to plant in the new environment. It is obvious that we cannot replant the millions of lost pine forests with pine, so what? Douglas Fir is also showing signs of stress here in the Pacific North West. What species do we plant in their place should they continue to deteriorate? How do we respond to a continually moving and changing target?
This has not been receiving enough attention to date. It is an unprecedented melt off of the snow cover extent. We went from the third most extensive in February to least extensive by April. Since the melt off of snow cover is more temperature sensitive than the winter snow cover extent this does speak volumes. Compare the snow cover melt off through March and then the result of continued melt in April.
“Where did all the snow go?”
It forms on new grounds, such as in Nashlantis.
will Anthony cover this on WuWt?
i have the strange feeling he wont…
Wonhyu – let me once more post the link about the guy who managed to plant just under one billion (yes, ‘b’) trees in one day. Not only get them planted, but work out a system to keep them growing.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8257563.stm
As for what to plant to replace those trees which are dying due to local climate changes, take a clue from nature and look to those areas which have been historically hotter and dryer.
Plants are migrating toward the poles and up the mountains on their own. Look to see what is now starting to appear in the area of concern, the plants that wouldn’t grow there before.
Imitate Ma Nature….
Leif – Doug firs are suffering from Swiss needlecast and rhabdocline in areas with significant summer fog. These fungus-caused diseases are not showing up in Doug fir areas that are dryer during the summer.
That might mean that some areas where the diseases are a problem may be free of the fungi as those areas dry.
You can follow the snow cover in the Northern Henisphere here:
“National Ice Center”
http://www.natice.noaa.gov/ims/
By the way, arctic sea ice melt is speeding up. The curve is approaching the 2007 one:
“Data of Sea Ice Extent – IJIS Web Site”
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
[JR: I'll post on it within 48 hours or so. Busy time!]
Bob Wallace, #12: It may be that we are low on the effect curve with respect to Doug Fir. As you well know the pine beetle problem has been with us for a long time and has only become rampant in the last decade or so. The needle cast problem has always been around as well but we do not know the trigger as yet for the intensification. Personally I have grown accustom to expecting the worse.
Avoiding monoculture is a good and natural way to maintain a forest. Plenty of other PNW species to plant beside the Douglas fir.
DBB beat me to it — my understanding is that a fairly big (and underappreciated) component of the pine beetle problem (at least in British Columbia) has been the planting of large stands of similarly aged pine over the past decades.
NONONONONO.
The underlying reason that trees are dying ALL OVER THE WORLD is that inexorably rising levels of global tropospheric ozone are weakening every species of vegetation that needs to photosynthesize and produce chlorophyll.
They cannot fend off bacteria, fungi, and insects because they are weakened in the same way AIDS victims have no immune system to ward off ordinary infections.
Planting more trees is terrific – but only if we drastically curb emissions of toxic greenhouse gases that form ozone, from burning fossil AND biofuels.
Otherwise, it’s a waste of time, effort and money.
Better to build spaceships and hope for another planet, haha.
Where did all the snow go..?
Perhaps into December ;)
ZOMG near record anomaly December…near highest in 520 months!!1
http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/png/monthlyanom/nhland12.png
…just playing along. don’t be hating. ;)
By the way…what is the link to the “minus-Greenland” anomalies? I’m only finding the North American totals from that link.
[JR: Near-records of this sort don't terribly excite me. Then again, we're expecting both more winter precipitation and earlier springs. Go figure!]
Maybe it was God just trying to bury Glenn Beck this winter. (Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.)
Super interesting information, though. It would be very cool to see a map of where snow fell in NA this past winter.
Interpretaction of these data is not obvious. There is certainly not a direct relationship between snow area and volume/depth/water equivalent. So a smaller areal coverage doesn’t preclude massive dumps in DC. Maybe the same amount of snow is falling on a smaller area.
I have not looked into the definition of the parameter that’s being graphed; how is time incorporated?
I know people are enamored of the idea that timber companies have planted large monoculture forests and contributed to the downfall of us all.
However, if you will take some time and visit forest you will find that trees have largely “monocultured” themselves. I’m sitting here, right now, looking out my windows at a forest full of self-planted Doug firs. My land was selectively harvested 25 years or so ago. It is almost all Doug fir, with only some oaks and madrones growing in a few places that won’t support Dougs.
In fact, if Dougs didn’t grow close to each other they would vanish. They are pollinated by the wind. They grow with their branches interlocked, making it easy for pollen to spread from tree to tree, fertilizing the seeds.
If I head out to the highway, dropping about 400′ from where my house sits I enter a mono-forest of tanoak. Natural, self-planted tanoak. As I continue further down the mountain I hit the coastal redwood zone. And redwood is pretty much the only tree growing in those foggy valleys.
Now, there might be some areas where loggers removed one type of tree and replanted with something inappropriate. But I’ve seen no examples of that around here. What I see is densely forested areas which, to the greatest extent contain only a single species. And that’s the natural way they grow.
Mike Roddy at #3
I’d second your request for further info on forest die-back due to pine beetle and the other ailments.
Not least because a friend in BC told me this morning that the state now has over a billion tonnes of dead standing forest, waiting for dry weather and lightning.
I’d heard a while back that there were over a million acres dead, but this has to be far more, and the state seems utterly lethergic regarding any remediation strategy. But for the neo-con running the Canadian government, this would at the least be a prime national concern.
If roughly 250 million tonnes of carbon held in half the trees were to go up in a single year (doing so as both CO2 and some CH4) it would add about 3% to global carbon output for that year. And that, coming from just one of the feedbacks in one country, would be around one tenth of the way to swamping the carbon sinks.
There are peicemeal innovative efforts at felling and processing the dead wood for fuels and biochar, but as yet there isn’t the mobile kit available for a task of anywhere near that scale. Its rapid mass-manufacture is looking like a very urgent necessity.
In the interim, felling and stacking the trunks would presumably minimize the risk of wildfire, but the fact that there’d be no profit in it until the wood was processed is likely the reason why it’s not yet happening on a significant scale.
It would appear that the pace of change is becoming exponential.
Regards,
Lewis
Wit’s End #17: I am thinking rapid and sustained reforestation is needed *in addition to* zeroing out human CO2 emissions. If we stop at zero emissions, the CO2 concentration will still be at 390 ppm. I guesstimate it will decline at about 1 ppm/year, which will not stabilize the climate. I’m trying to figure out if rapid reforestation is a feasible way to achieve a significant net-negative change in CO2 concentration. It worries me that existing forests are already dying off at an alarming rate. That makes me wonder if reforestation is viable. It certainly adds risk to reforestation. Maybe the Amazon is a viable reforestation site. Are trees dying there the way they are dying in the northern hemisphere?
Joe, this article on the MPB in the Yellowstone region would make for a great post. The authors mince no words about the global warming connection and the larger ecological implications:
from the EPA:
“Ozone: Crop damage, damage to trees and decreased resistance to disease for both crops and other plants. (Ground-level ozone interferes with the ability of plants to produce and store food so that growth, reproduction and overall plant health are compromised. By weakening trees and other plants, ozone can make plants more susceptible to disease, insect attacks, and harsh weather. Ground level ozone can also kill or damage leaves so that they fall off the plants too soon or become spotted and brown …).”
Wonyo, I do not know about the Amazon, but according to several studies, background tropospheric levels are inexorably rising globally and travel far distances from point of origin:
“According to Manning, emission controls on cars have been successful in reducing short periods of high ozone levels called peaks, but average concentrations of ozone in the atmosphere throughout the year, called the background level, is increasing as polluted air masses from Asia travel to the U. S. and then on to Europe. Background levels are now between 20 and 45 parts per billion in Europe and the United States, and are expected to increase to between 42 and 84 parts per billion by 2100.”
from here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080603183309.htm
#19 We have daily data on snowcover extent than can be viewed as individual images or animations for North America or for the United States
Wonyo, I should add that IF we stopped emitting carbon we would also stop creating ozone, especially because it is short-lived in the atmosphere compared to CO2. Much damage has been done – the soils are badly depleted by acid rain and recuperate very slowly, for instance – but we ought to be able to grow healthy trees – and crops – in the future if we stop burning fossil and biofuels.
That is why I think it is so critical people understand that our entire ecosystem and food supply is at risk if we don’t switch rapidly to clean, renewable energy.
Posting this here too, for future considerations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pliocene_megabiome.png
Ozone is also a greenhouse gas. Reducing it could slow global warming.
I’m reaching an understanding that how we treat our forests is even more critical than I thought before. If we treat them right, they could be a carbon sink that contributes to net negative CO2 emissions (an absolute necessity, in my analysis).
What I hadn’t considered before is that all the trees killed by bark beetles are potential sources of atmospheric CO2, just waiting for a fire. I know in some areas the trees killed by bark beetles are being cut down to reduce fire risk, but are they being disposed in a manner that avoids (or minimizes) adding to atmospheric CO2?
The biochar concept is relatively new to me. If we can truly make that work on a large scale and bury it as terra preta, as some ancient societies did, that may turn a potential carbon source into a carbon sink.
If we do rapid and sustained reforestation together with creating terra preta with dead trees, could that mitigate the effect of bark beetles?
Of course, getting our emissions down to zero is a higher priority, but I think we can’t stop there. We have to aim for net negative emissions.
To stay on topic, the record low April snow cover is not surprising to me. I’ve discussed climate change with a Sierra mountain guide, and a worker in the Mt. Whitney area.
The mountain guide tells me January used to be consistently cold enough for ice climbing. 25 years ago, he would never have to cancel a January ice climb because the temps were too warm. In more recent years, however, he says he has had to cancel January ice climbs.
The Mt. Whitney area worker says the trailhead typically got 12 foot snowpacks until 1988. The road to the trailhead would be closed by snow throughout the month of January. There was a drought from 1988-1995. Since then, the trailhead area rarely gets a snowpack deeper than 4 feet, and the road is often passable in January.
Interesting indeed. WUWT will no doubt have an article on this. Or maybe not. The semi denialist sites like Blackboard are celebrating the fact that April wasn’t record setting in the satellite data, predicting a big freeze with a weakening Nino. The data for May so far does not look very promising for the naysayers, though. The temp graph on Dr. Roy’s site goes Straight Up, smashing the 20 year records every single day since late April, so May will most likely be a scorcher in the global data.
This is totally profound. Where did the snow go to? Is there any answer to this yet?
33#, the snow which melts, changes it’s state – ice to water. This could mean affecting ocean currents, affecting localy ie. forming new water ways. And ultimatly it contributes to precipitation levels – weather, release contaminants, affects wildlife, plant growth and opens the way for soil decomposing processes – start of positive amplifying feedback loops.
– Rapidly melting Arctic sea ice is changing the world’s weather, releasing contaminants into the food chain and threatening the survival of whales and polar bears, a massive international study on climate change has found.
The expedition discovered there is more open water than ever before in the Arctic, he said. That is creating more cyclones — Arctic storms, characterized by snow and high winds.
The storms further erode the sea ice crucial to the region’s ecosystem.
“Those storms are having a very dramatic impact on the sea ice — they are melting the ice from underneath,” Barber said. “The other thing the cyclones do is they bring winds with them. Those winds remove snow from the surface but they also break up the ice as well.”
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/761433–arctic-ice-melt-affecting-weather-wildlife-study-finds
– Another massive iceberg is calved in Antarctica, with implications for local ocean circulation and wildlife
http://climateprogress.org/2010/03/01/another-massive-iceberg-is-calved-in-antarctica-with-implications-for-local-ocean-circulation-and-wildlife/
– An oceanic ‘fast-lane’ for climate change
Work in Japan and Australia has revealed that a deep-ocean current is carrying frigid water rapidly northward from Antarctica along the edge of a giant underwater plateau.
… can be seen from the fact that the deep waters near the Kerguelen Plateau already show “clear signs” of reduced salinity relating to changes in the rate of melting of Antarctic ice sheets.
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100425/full/news.2010.201.html
– Previous climate change research shows that Arctic zones have a lot more carbon locked away than other regions. Using the complete set of data collected from the studies, the team estimated that the carbon released in northern — also called boreal — and Arctic regions rose by about 7 percent; in temperate regions by about 2 percent; and in tropical regions by about 3 percent, showing a trend consistent with other work.
“There are a few plausible explanations for this trend, but the most tempting, and perhaps most likely explanation is that increasing temperatures have increased rates of decomposition of soil organic matter, which has increased the flow of CO2
http://climateprogress.org/2010/03/25/nature-soils-carbon-dioxided-feedback-global-warming/
– Methane is a greenhouse gas more than 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide. It is released from previously frozen soils in two ways. When the organic material (which contains carbon) stored in permafrost thaws, it begins to decompose and, under anaerobic conditions, gradually releases methane. Methane can also be stored in the seabed as methane gas or methane hydrates and then released as subsea permafrost thaws. These releases can be larger and more abrupt than those that result from decomposition.
The East Siberian Arctic Shelf is a methane-rich area that encompasses more than 2 million square kilometers of seafloor in the Arctic Ocean. It is more than three times as large as the nearby Siberian wetlands, which have been considered the primary Northern Hemisphere source of atmospheric methane. Shakhova’s research results show that the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is already a significant methane source, releasing 7 teragrams of methane yearly, which is as much as is emitted from the rest of the ocean. A teragram is equal to about 1.1 million tons.
“Our concern is that the subsea permafrost has been showing signs of destabilization already,” she said. “If it further destabilizes, the methane emissions may not be teragrams, it would be significantly larger.”
http://climateprogress.org/2010/03/04/science-nsf-tundra-permafrost-methane-east-siberian-arctic-shelf-venting/