Has the 07/08 Northern winter really cancelled the effects of GW?

Question

The has been much talk here about it snowing a lot, here or there and this being an end to GW is there any actual evidence of this other than the usual blog and Newsmaxx rubbush.

Answer 1

There hasn't been any rise since 1998. This year is just a continuation.

Answer 2

Not at all.

Just one below average winter, which doesn't mean a thing.  It happened in 1982, 1991-1992, 1999-2000.  EVERY TIME global warming came back stronger than ever.  Proof.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2007/

discussed in detail, with confirmation, at:

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/01/24/g...

As long as we keep making greenhouse gases in enormous amounts, global warming will dominate in the long run.  It's simple physics.

http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/earthguide/di...

Answer 3

Antarcticice's link appears compelling, but its not. The white you see is NOT sea ice coverage, and so comparisons to years past becomes difficult--the link is essentially useless.

Next, Bob would have you believe that AGW is simple physics: "CO2 rises. CO2 is a GHG. Our CO2 emissions must be the cause of the warming." This simplistic view of climate and erroneous view of "simple physics" with regards to the current warming and its cause leads me to believe that he is someone of sufficient incompetence in the field of climate science and all related fields.

Answer 4

A picture is worth a thousand words:

The link shows images of the arctic from space April 17 2008 and April 17 2007  (the summer of 07 being the largest Arctic melt since records started) as of yesterday this years melt is about the same, i.e. no sign of any iceage to be seen!

Bob326 the pink in both images is sea ice (I thought that was obvious), the pink  is approximatly the same in both images, the white is snow on landmass.

Answer 5

Nah.  It the usual blog and newmaxx rubbish.

There are two factors contributing to any cooling effect now.

One:  The eleven year solar cycle is near or at it's lowest point since 1997.

Two  This is an La Ninja year. La Ninja years are typically colder than normal.

This is the opposite of the better known El Nino phenomena, when warm waters in the south pacific change currents and weather patterns all over the world, with typically warmer temps.

What the science says:

"The usual drivers of natural climate change have shown little to no warming trend since the 70's.

It's a well established fact that climate changes naturally and sometimes dramatically. The pertinent question isn't "has climate changed in the past?" (of course it has) but "what is causing global warming now?" To begin to answer that, it's helpful to look at the major causes of natural climate change in the past."

Solar activity

"Solar variations have been the major driver of climate change over the past 10,000 years. When sunspot activity was low during the Maunder Minimum in the 1600's or the Dalton Minimum in the 1800's, the earth went through 'Little Ice Ages'. Similarly, solar activity was higher during the Medieval Warm Period."

"However, the correlation between solar activity and global temperatures ended around 1975. At that point, temperatures started rising while solar activity stayed level. This led a team of scientists from Finland and Germany to conclude "during these last 30 years the solar total irradiance, solar UV irradiance and cosmic ray flux has not shown any significant secular trend, so that at least this most recent warming episode must have another source."

Milankovitch cycles

"Earth's climate undergoes 120,000 year cycles of ice ages broken by short warm periods called interglacials. The cycle is driven by Milankovitch cycles. Long term changes in the Earth's orbit trigger an initial warming which warms the oceans and melts ice sheets - this releases CO2. The extra CO2 in the atmosphere causes further warming leading to interglacials ending the ice ages.

For the past 12,000 years, we've been in an interglacial. The current trend of the Milankovitch cycle is a gradual cooling down towards an ice age."

That ice age is predicted to be 20,000 years away.

Volcanoes

"Volcanic eruptions spew sulfate aerosols into the atmosphere which has a cooling effect on global temperatures. These aerosols reflect incoming sunlight, causing a 'global dimming' effect. Usually, the cooling effect lasts several years until the aerosols are washed out of the atmosphere. In the case of large eruptions or a succession of eruptions such as in the early 1800's, the cooling effect can last several decades. Strong volcanic activity exacerbated the Little Ice Age in the 1800's."

"The usual suspects in natural climate change - solar variations, volcanoes, Milankovitch cycles - are all conspicuous in their absence over the past 3 decades of warming. This doesn't mean by itself that CO2 is the main cause of current global warming - you don't prove anthropogenic warming by eliminating all other options. But the causes of the commonly cited climate changes in the past are understood and have played little to no part in the current warming trend."  

Skeptical Science

"The chaotic nature of weather means that no conclusion about climate can ever be drawn from a single data point, hot or cold. The temperature of one place at one time is just weather, and says nothing about climate, much less climate change, much less global climate change."

http://gristmill.grist.org/skeptics

Answer 6

There's still the extra hundreds of billions of tons of carbon dioxide we have pumped into the air in the last century floating around.   Just because gas prices fell last week a few cents doesn't mean anyone should go out and buy an SUV because the prices are just going to go up again.

Answer 7

Depends on what you mean by canceled the effects of Global warming.

If we look at the data from the 4 well respected indicators, HadCRUT, RSS, UAH, and GISS global temperature sets all show sharp drops in the last year. Also the last 10 years shows that 3 of the 4 show a flat trend line.

I have noticed that most people, bob does this a lot, point to GISS as there reference to climate change. This is the only indicator out of the four which does not show a flat line on temperature increase, but please keep in mind that GISS takes 1950-1980 as their reference period and not 1960-1990 as the others do. If you readjust GISS to use the same time period you would see a similar flat line for the last 10 years.

GISS

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.c...

UAH

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.c...

RSS

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.c...

HadCRUT

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.c...

When you look further there just seems to be so many contradictions. The Ice is melting but the ice sheets between Canada and Greenland are the thickest they have been in 30 years.

The worrying factor is that a lot of surface temperature is mesured at weather stations of CRN rating 4 (around 55%) 14% are at CRN5 and 18% at CRN3. Only 4% are at a weather station with a CRN rating of 1.

CRN rating 1 weather staion

http://gallery.surfacestations.org/main....

CRN rating 5 weather staion

http://gallery.surfacestations.org/main....

Answer 8

I don't think that gw is over just look at how the glacier are melting in the Arctic. I believe its going to take more than just a year or two to fix, the damage is has been done now we have to work even harder to repair it.