La Niña is expected to continue through the Northern Hemisphere spring 2008.

NOAA Climate Prediction Center ^ | 7 February 2008 | Climate Prediction Center Internet Team

[presently no screen name]

If 2008 ends up the coldest year in 200 years, they will say it was amongst the top warmest. They have to claim this or the party is over for thousands of climate change scientists and they would soon be flipping burgers at Wendys.

Now that is a prediction one can take to the bank! Add the fact they will need 'funds' - they will come up w/something brilliant, one gets a nobel peace prize and that brilliance will lead to taxes for our sins in creating the mess. Because they know flipping burgers is indeed in their future. In the meantime, I'll just flip them the bird. Who knows, with PC and all that jazz, flipping too many birds may be a hidden factor in global warming.

[justa-hairyape]

Accuweather blog report on continuing Pacific Cyclonic Blizzards. The Island of Sakhalin is located north of Japan and off the coast of Eastern Russia.

Blizzard Racks Northern Sakhalin
2/14/2008 3:02 PM

A powerful winter storm churned the Sea of Okhotsk Wednesday and Thursday. Bearing the brunt of this mighty storm, much of Sakhalin Island withstood a blizzard. On the hard-hit northern reaches of this big island, sustained winds were reported to have been clocked at 60 mph at Pogibi in the northwest. The high winds whipped up fresh snowfall of more than 15 inches into blinding whiteouts. Snowfall was heavier in the northeast. At Nogliki, snowfall was more than two feet, which boosted snow depth to nearly four feet. Winds were strong enough to blow and drift the snow a great deal. Elsewhere, the far-reaching storm, which was much like a nor'easter along the eastern North American coast, was felt for its wind and snow on Hokkaido, the northern Island of Japan. Also hit were the Kuril Islands stretching between Hokkaido and the Kamchatka.

Story by AccuWeather.com Senior Forecaster Jim Andrews

[dangus]

>> And when the next year with a substantial El Nino ranks first in the assessments of all three groups, what will that do to your assertion? <<

That would be the greatest year-over-year warming to date. Obviously, I’m not predicting that, and certainly not going to concede it will happen. Of course, the next year, when space aliens arrive and zap us with a freeze ray, and turn the entire Earth into an iceball, your theory is going to look pretty shot to hell, too.

What I’m now arguing with you is that current events are incompatible with an accelerating warming trend as the alarmists are asserting. Could a warming trend resume? yes. But the next few years would require a warming as we have not ever seen to get us back to the 1975-2005 trend line.

[cogitator]

What I’m now arguing with you is that current events are incompatible with an accelerating warming trend as the alarmists are asserting.

I think that most climate scientists expect the approximately ~0.2 C per decade warming trend to continue for a couple more decades. Remember, this decade might be just 0.1 C of warming, and the next decade could be 0.3, and that averages out to 0.2. So I don't rush to judgment based on month-to-month changes.

However, I have virtually no doubt that the next year featuring a substantial El Nino will rank as the warmest year in the assessments of all three groups, because that underlying warming trend is still happening, despite the current cool conditions we are observing.

[SoCal Pubbie]

I consider Los Angeles to be Los Angeles. San Pedro is not Los Angeles, nor is Norco, nor La Cresenta. There’s snow in the Greater Los Angeles area every year. The San Bernardino Mountains are covered right now and there was snow plainly visible from my home in Mission Viejo, up on Saddleback yesterday, as there is at some time every winter. And my in laws also saw flakes falling in Upland.

The fact that there has only been snow in LA in sixteen times in ten different years since records were kept in 1922, and of those only trace amounts all but three times, makes the events rare. BTW 1962 was the last time it snowed in the flow lands of Orange County, as well. I was 4 and I can barely remember it. As above, the Santa Ana Mountains get dusted regularly.

[colorado tanker]

The map you posted pretty well describes this winter for us. The northern and central parts of the state have a normal snowpack while the sourthern mountains have been clobbered with snow. That’s good because the south had been in drought.

[dangus]

>> I think that most climate scientists expect the approximately ~0.2 C per decade warming trend to continue for a couple more decades. Remember, this decade might be just 0.1 C of warming, and the next decade could be 0.3, and that averages out to 0.2. So I don’t rush to judgment based on month-to-month changes. <<

Well, the seven-year trend is now downward, and, if there isn’t a resurgence of temperature that is very unprecedented, the downward trend will soon be able to be extended back ten years or more (since we’re balancing cool weather in 1999-2000 with cool weather in 2008).

>> Remember, this decade might be just 0.1 C of warming, <<

It’s looking negative to me... that’s my point.

>> However, I have virtually no doubt that the next year featuring a substantial El Nino will rank as the warmest year in the assessments of all three groups, because that underlying warming trend is still happening, despite the current cool conditions we are observing. <<

You’re begging your own conclusion.

>> and the next decade could be 0.3, and that averages out to 0.2. <<

And here, you go so far as to assert that something you think will happen but which has never happened serves to demonstrate that something which has already happened doesn’t really mean anything.

And .3 degrees has never happened.

I guess in 2020, I’ll be convinced that the weather will warm another 2 degrees in the 21st century.

>> And to add to the analogy, the escalator has a rheostat that is very slowly increasing the speed that it is going up. <<

So you still are adhering to the notion that global warming isn’t only happening, but it’s accelerating? So I guess next decade, we’ll have to have .4 degrees of warming. Or actually, .5 make up for the fact that so far this decade is at best steady, not, as you relate it, warming slightly slower.

So now you are asking me to believe that something is happening offering me as proof that something the likes of which there is absolutely no precedent for will happen.

[cogitator]

It’s looking negative to me... that’s my point.

The decade isn't over. Let's go back and see what GISS said about 2007 again, shall we?

"The year 2007 tied for second warmest in the period of instrumental data, behind the record warmth of 2005, in the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) analysis. 2007 tied 1998, which had leapt a remarkable 0.2°C above the prior record with the help of the "El Niño of the century".

I.e., based on the 0.2 C/decade trend, we should now be about as warm as 1998.

Let's quote the Hadley Centre UK now:

"These cyclical influences [El Nino, La Nina] can mask underlying warming trends with Prof. Phil Jones, Director of the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, saying: "The fact that 2008 is forecast to be cooler than any of the last seven years (and that 2007 did not break the record warmth set on 1998) does not mean that global warming has gone away. What matters is the underlying rate of warming - the period 2001-2007 with an average of 0.44 °C above the 1961-90 average was 0.21 °C warmer than corresponding values for the period 1991-2000."

You’re begging your own conclusion.

I beg to differ -- read what I just quoted again. It's not my conclusion. I just read the press releases.

And here, you go so far as to assert that something you think will happen but which has never happened serves to demonstrate that something which has already happened doesn’t really mean anything.

I guess you misunderstood. Unfortunately, even decadal variability doesn't change the physics of the situation. That was MY point. Long-term trends are just that.

So you still are adhering to the notion that global warming isn’t only happening, but it’s accelerating? So I guess next decade, we’ll have to have .4 degrees of warming. Or actually, .5 make up for the fact that so far this decade is at best steady, not, as you relate it, warming slightly slower.

You exaggerate. Let's say that the total global temperature rise over the 21st century ends up being 3 degrees. (That'd be wonderful, actually, given the current status.) Let's say it only warms up 0.1 C this decade. For fun:

2000-2010: 0.1 C
2010-2020: 0.25 C
2020-2030: 0.25 C
2030-2040: 0.3 C
2040-2050: 0.3 C
2050-2060: 0.35 C
2060-2070: 0.35 C
2070-2080: 0.4 C
2080-2090: 0.4 C
2090-2100: 0.45 C

Adds up to 3.15 C over the entire century. With acceleration.

So you can keep doing all the analyses you want, and think about them what you want to think. But hold off on telling me I'm wrong if the next year in which a full-scale El Nino occurs doesn't set a new all-time global temperature record.

[cogitator]

I was just looking over the Hadley Centre UK press releases and I discovered this:

"our first ever forecast for the next ten years – in 2014 the world will be 0.3 °C warmer than 2004, with at least half of the years after 2009 predicted to exceed the warmest year currently on record."

We'll see, won't we?

[dangus]

>> You exaggerate. Let’s say that the total global temperature rise over the 21st century ends up being 3 degrees. (That’d be wonderful, actually, given the current status.) Let’s say it only warms up 0.1 C this decade. For fun:

>>2000-2010: 0.1 C
>>2010-2020: 0.25 C
>>2020-2030: 0.25 C
>>2030-2040: 0.3 C
>>2040-2050: 0.3 C
>>2050-2060: 0.35 C
>>2060-2070: 0.35 C
>>2070-2080: 0.4 C
>>2080-2090: 0.4 C
>>2090-2100: 0.45 C

>>Adds up to 3.15 C over the entire century. With acceleration. <<

Well, now we’re waiting an entire century to see us make up for the lost warmth? And begging a completely arbitrary prediction of *acceleration*?

>> I guess you misunderstood. Unfortunately, even decadal variability doesn’t change the physics of the situation. That was MY point. Long-term trends are just that. <<

But the “long term trend” existed only for 25 years? How is that any different than the “long term trend” from 1908-1941? How can you be so certain that your “long term trend” isn’t simply resuming the course of a 100 year trend which was interrupted by the fleeting effects of global dimming, which I actually think is the case? And if a ten-year interruption, unexplained by the greenhouse-gas model, doesn’t break the model, then how can we possibly say models of other explanations are broken?

Here’s a model: Solar activity, with considerable lag, plus the effects of global dimming. Plus maybe a tenth of a degree of CO2 warming since 1970. Or maybe the sun is actually getting brighter in spite of the sunspot cycle; NASA also noticed planetary warming on the other solid-surface planets they could test: Mercury, Mars, Pluto, the moon, and three moons of Jupiter.

You accept a priori that accelerating global warming is happening, so when you don’t see it happen, you regard it as an anomaly.

[VOA]

bump

[dangus]

>> I was just looking over the Hadley Centre UK press releases and I discovered this:

“our first ever forecast for the next ten years – in 2014 the world will be 0.3 °C warmer than 2004, with at least half of the years after 2009 predicted to exceed the warmest year currently on record.” <<

Frankly, that devastates their credibility as a source. This is called “moving all in before the river.”

[justa-hairyape]

Okay. Los Angeles city limits then. More and more areas are trying to split off from Los Angeles every year. The San Fernando Valley has been trying. We got snow at around 1,000 feet above sea level for one day this year and one day last year here in the Inland Empire (did not last on the ground). Perhaps it is best to just acknowledge the elevation of the snow level. To fall on Los Angeles proper (excluding the Mountains) would probably mean snow at below the 500 foot level.