Snow and Ice – September 2020

CSS-5 – How Has The Snow And Ice On The Planet Been Holding Up?

This Climate Short Story (CSS) looks at this question. We are experiencing the “HOTTEST YEARS EVER” according to every Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) alarmist out there. In fact, based on the CAGW predictions over the last couple of decades, our children do not know what snow is, the summer Arctic Sea Ice has disappeared and the polar bears are on the verge of extinction. I am not addressing the polar bears in this CSS. But their numbers have increased from 5,000 in the 1950’s to the current levels around 25,000 to 30,000. None of the climate doomsday predictions has come true, but that doesn’t stop the doomsayers from reiterating those predictions every ten years or so.

CSS-5 will soon be posted (as both images and pdfs) on my website.

climatechangeandmusic.com.

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The quick summary is included below.

Northern Hemisphere Snow Cover has been significantly above normal for the last three full years, with the 2019/20 NH winter being the most dramatic. Above normal snow extent was maintained throughout the NH summer. Rutgers Snow Lab has monitored NH Snow Extent) since 1967. Snow covers have been increasing since 1967 in both the fall and winter (dramatically since the late 1980’s). Spring snow extent has decreased over the same period (but has essentially been flat since 2007.

Arctic sea ice is below normal but still more extensive than the low recorded back in 2012 (by 0.34 million km²). The other way to quantify Arctic sea ice is by volume (which is back in the low normal range). As an aside, the melt season ended early this year. The Antarctic sea ice tells a different story. The Sea Ice Extent is currently at the high end of normal (0.95 million km² above the 2007 low ice year). When the Global Sea Ice Extent is reviewed, there is little long-term change in the sea ice extent from 1978 – 2014. After 2014, the sea ice extent dropped quickly for a couple of years (courtesy the strong 2015/16 el Nino, not CO2) and has remained flat. Not surprisingly, sea ice extent over the 1978 – 2020 period moves in concert with global temperatures. Provided you use the more accurate satellite lower tropospheric temperature data (UAH) rather than the over-homogenized NASA-GISS (or even HadCRUT4) surface temperatures.

Greenland Surface Mass Balance was essentially normal over the last year (adding 350 Gigatons), well above the 2011/12 low of only 40 Gt added. However, like the sea ice scenario, the melt season ended unusually early this year with an unusually large SMB add in mid-August. Greenland is not melting away anytime soon!

Glacier volumes around the world have been declining for the last few hundred years (long before CO2 was a potential warming contributor). And not surprisingly since the global temperatures have been rising as the planet came out of the Little Ice Age. But when you look at those Glacier Volume declines in perspective, the ice loss over the last few hundred years is like the MTR temperature rise, neither unusual nor unprecedented. A more appropriate descriptor meet be insignificant.

As we drop further into the Grand Solar Minimum (GSM) we just entered, global temperatures will drop, sea ice will increase, glacier volumes will increase, snow volumes will increase and Greenland SMB will increase. That process will occur with ups and downs over the next couple of decades. All these parameters react to temperature and that temperature will be responding much more to the negative changes in solar activity than rising CO2 concentrations.