The snowstorm expected to begin in earnest on Friday is still looking like one for the record books, especially in the DC area up through Philadelphia and New York City.

The heavily-populated I-95 corridor from the Mid-Atlantic to New England will see the heaviest snowfalls, starting Friday and spreading northeastward on Saturday.

By Sunday morning, nearly one-quarter of the U.S. population (about 75 million people) could get 6 inches or more of snow. Consistent with the weather model forecasts for the last several of days, the latest GFS model forecast continues to indicate the area around Washington D.C. would be hardest hit, with about 2 feet of snow expected (graphic courtesy of Weatherbell.com, click image for full-size):

New York City could see 16 to 20 inches, and nor’easter type conditions are expected for coastal areas from the Delmarva peninsula northward, with winds gusting over 50 mph.

It’s been over a year since I first found “frost flowers” growing in our backyard one chilly morning. This past summer I let the plants grow (I usually whack the weeds in the woods), and they grew over 6 feet tall, with Queen Anne’s lace-type white flowers at the top that bloom in the fall.

Due to El Nino, our warm winter has delayed the frost flower formation by about a month. The first ones showed up two nights ago, when it reached about 26 deg. F. Then last night I set up my camera for time lapse photos, even though the stems were partially shredded and it looked like the temperature might not dip below 30 deg. F, which is barely cold enough for the frost flowers to form.

But this morning there was a rather nice display. The following video compresses 12 hours into 30 seconds, from about 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. Be sure to click on the full-screen icon, since this is high-def video, and you can watch the ribbons of ice grow.

So, what does this have to do with global warming, you ask? Well, if not for global warming, the temperature would have been 2 deg. F colder and the flowers would have been 15% bigger, of course.

Another casualty of human-caused climate change.

You can read more about the mechanism of frost flower formation here.

NOTE: This is the ninth monthly update with our new Version 6.0 dataset. Differences versus the old Version 5.6 dataset are discussed here. Note we are now at “beta4” for Version 6, due to our accidental omission of lower stratospheric data from NOAA-9 post-Feb. 1987.

The Version 6.0 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for December, 2015 is +0.44 deg. C, up from the November, 2015 value of +0.33 deg. C (click for full size version):

This makes 2015 the third warmest year globally (+0.27 deg C) in the satellite record (since 1979), behind 1998 (+0.48 deg C) and 2010 (+0.34 deg. C). Since 2016 should be warmer than 2015 with the current El Nino, there is a good chance 2016 will end up as a record warm year…it all depends upon how quickly El Nino wanes later in the year.

The global, hemispheric, and tropical LT anomalies from the 30-year (1981-2010) average for the last 12 months are:

YR MO GLOBE NH SH TROPICS
2015 01 +0.28 +0.40 +0.16 +0.13
2015 02 +0.17 +0.30 +0.05 -0.06
2015 03 +0.16 +0.26 +0.07 +0.05
2015 04 +0.08 +0.18 -0.01 +0.09
2015 05 +0.28 +0.36 +0.21 +0.27
2015 06 +0.33 +0.41 +0.25 +0.46
2015 07 +0.18 +0.33 +0.03 +0.47
2015 08 +0.27 +0.25 +0.30 +0.51
2015 09 +0.25 +0.34 +0.17 +0.55
2015 10 +0.43 +0.64 +0.21 +0.53
2015 11 +0.33 +0.43 +0.23 +0.53
2015 12 +0.44 +0.51 +0.37 +0.61

The tropics continue warm due to El Nino conditions, with December unsurprisingly the warmest month yet during the El Nino event.

The global image for December, 2015 should be available in the next several days here.

The new Version 6 files (use the ones labeled “beta4”) should be updated soon, and are located here:

Lower Troposphere: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0beta/tlt
Mid-Troposphere: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0beta/tmt
Tropopause: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0beta/ttp
Lower Stratosphere: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0beta/tls

With the Sierra Nevada snowpack above normal in this El Nino-fueled winter, we now enter what is usually the peak stormy season for the West Coast when El Nino gets in full swing.

As suggested in the above satellite image, a series of Pacific storms will bring more rain and abundant mountain snows, with totals ranging up to 10 feet over the next 10 days, and widespread amounts over 4 feet (GFS model graphic courtesy of Weatherbell.com):

While the California drought is far from over, the coming storms are a good sign that the snowpack might be headed for a more comfortable 150% of normal come April 1, which is what will be required to bring reservoirs close to a normal level after the snow melts.

The snows will not be restricted to California, as almost all mountain ranges in the West will also be receiving substantial new accumulations over the same period.

Dick Lindzen suggested to me recently that this might be a good time to address the general question, “what causes the global-average warmth during El Nino?”

Some of you might say, “the sun, of course”. Yes, the sun’s energy is the ultimate source of energy for the climate system, but it really doesn’t explain why El Nino years are unusually warm…or why La Nina years are unusually cool.

The answer lies in the circulation of the Pacific Ocean, more specifically the vertical circulation of that ocean basin.

The short answer is that, during El Nino, there is an average decrease in the vertical overturning and mixing of cold, deep ocean waters with solar-heated warm surface waters. The result is that the surface waters become warmer than average, and deeper waters become colder than average. The opposite situation occurs during La Nina.

Importantly, the change shows up in global average ocean computations, based upon ocean temperature data (see our Fig. 3, here); this means that the changes centered in the Pacific are not offset by changes of the opposite sign occurring in other ocean basins.

The Details

Most of the depth of the world’s oceans is very cold, even in the tropics. Only the near-surface layers are warm, with the rest of the ocean depths being filled up over thousands of years by surface water chilled to low temperatures at high latitudes. (This leads to the interesting observation that the mass-weighted average temperature of the climate system is actually very cold).

This average state of warm surface (due to solar heating) and cold depths is continually being offset by vertical mixing processes (wind-driven wave-induced mixing, tidal flows over bottom topography, and other processes). When these processes slow down during El Nino, surface water (mainly the upper 100 meters) become warmer than normal. At the same time, the layers below 100 meters become colder than normal (100 m is the global-average depth of this demarcation).

In a sense, the deep ocean provides an air conditioner for the climate system, and during El Nino the air conditioner isn’t working as hard to cool the atmosphere. During La Nina, it’s working harder than normal, leading to global-average coolness.

Since the atmosphere responds to surface heating, anomalous warmth in the upper ocean layers gradually heats the atmosphere, mainly through increased precipitation heating in response to large rates of evaporation from the warm surface waters. This initially occurs in the tropics where the ocean circulation change is the strongest, but then spreads to higher latitudes as well. The warming is not uniform, of course, and a few regions can even experience below normal temperatures…but in the global average, there is warming.

The plot of 2015 temperature anomalies shown above reveals there are indeed other things happening (graphic courtesy of Weatherbell.com, annotated by me). It should be mentioned that the map projection greatly exaggerates the actual size of the polar areas compared to the tropics.

Note that I have not mentioned Pacific westerly wind bursts, or propagating Kelvin waves, or reduced ocean upwelling, since these are just regional manifestations of the whole process…

In the “big picture”, the cause of El Nino warmth is still a reduction in the overall vertical mixing of warm surface waters with cold deep waters. (Reduced upwelling of cold deep water must, by mass continuity, be accompanied by decreased downwelling of warm surface water, which just means an overall reduction in vertical mixing in the ocean.)

Does El Nino Warm the Entire Climate System?

This is an interesting question that we addressed in our 2014 APJAS paper. The consensus opinion of El Nino and La Nina is that it is just a quasi-periodic oscillation of the climate system that has no long-term impact on global temperature trends.

But we demonstrated that as El Nino develops there is an increase in radiative energy input into the global-average climate system which precedes peak El Nino warmth by about 9 months. This is mostly likely due to a small decrease in low cloud cover associated with the changing atmospheric circulation patterns during El Nino (La Nina would have increased cloud cover).

Thus, if the climate system goes through a multi-decadal period of increased El Nino activity (and decreased La Nina activity), like what happened after the 1970s, there can be a multi-decadal natural warming trend that is entirely natural in origin as more solar energy is absorbed by the system. This complicates identification and quantification of the human greenhouse gas-forced portion of climate change, leading (in my opinion) to overestimates of the anthropogenic warming effect.

Now, everyone who studies the El Nino/La Nina (ENSO) phenomenon comes to a somewhat different conceptual understanding, and I might be missing some important component that others are welcome to point out. But the above represents my view as a result of our analysis of global average ocean temperature fluctuations as a function of depth since the 1950s which was part of our 2014 APJAS paper, as well as our analysis in that paper of CERES satellite radiative budget changes associated with ENSO.

Again, my emphasis is on the global-average manifestation of ENSO, which then leads to an explanation of global average warmth associated with El Nino. Regional changes involving Kelvin waves, westerly wind bursts, etc., are not sufficient to explain the net warming effects of El Nino. That instead requires (in my view) a global-average decrease in the mixing of warm surface waters and cold deep waters, as I have outlined above.

As reported yesterday, an enterprising fellow actually got college students to sign a petition to stop “White Christmas” from being played on the radio because — since it ignores Christmases of other colors — it is obviously racially insensitive.

Frank Zappa was way ahead of his time on this. Zappa recognized that snow comes in different colors, and wrote the quirky song “Dont Eat the Yellow Snow“, which I used to listen to in college. Having eaten my share of snow while snowmobiling (before bottled water was invented), I am familiar with such snow color discrimination, as I practiced it regularly.

But this also begs a more general question: arent there other weather elements that have not checked their white privilege at the door?

Clouds, for example. As seen from space they are always white. Wassup wit dat? From the ground, clouds are usually white. At least the happy, cheerful ones are. Only the angry and foreboding clouds are dark-colored.

So, it seems that weather — and probably climate as well — has racial overtones that should be avoided in our weather forecasts and global warming discussions.

(And this is why I stopped writing satire years ago…because truth really has become stranger than fiction.)

El Nino is really doing a number on December winter weather this year, and as a result most of the eastern 2/3 of the U.S. will not have a white Christmas. But for those in the western U.S., a series of Pacific storms fueled by El Nino and continuing intrusions of Canadian air will result in widespread snowcover, as seen in the latest forecast snow depth on noon of Christmas day (graphics courtesy of Weatherbell.com):

The corresponding forecast of temperature departures from normal at the same time reflect the expected warmth in the East, and cold in the West on Christmas day:

In the latter plot, note that temperatures will be running as much as 30 deg. F below normal in the West, but as much as 30 deg F above normal in the East.

I my opinion, most of the climate research that gets published has little impact on the global warming debate. The field has become so specialized that seldom is there a finding that changes our understanding.

I think that the recent AGU poster by Anthony Watts et al. breaks this mold.

Anthony has spent years shedding light on the very real problem the thermometer network has for monitoring of temperature for climate change…most notably, local changes around the thermometer site associated with economic growth lead to spurious warming.

Back in 2010 I posted an analysis of global thermometer data which showed the very clear urban heat island (UHI) effect that exists. It averages at least 0.5 deg. C in going from completely rural to only 10 persons per km2 population density. Others have found the same thing over the years, and anyone who drives or cycles between rural and urban areas can easily notice it.

Without correcting for this, how can anyone believe long-term land-based warming trends? I’ll admit, it is not easy to correct for. UHI warming “looks like” global warming since it is more gradual than sudden, so break-point homogenization algorithms cannot correct for it.

Now, population density admittedly isn’t the best proxy for UHI…it was just an easily available one in my analysis. Even with no change in population, increasing prosperity inevitably leads to an increase in heat sources, both active and passive, around thermometer sites.

Anthony did a painstaking analysis of the USHCN thermometer network to find those thermometers which had good siting and which did not suffer from station moves and instrument changes. The result was that the NOAA analysis exaggerated the warming trend in recent decades by about 50%, compared to the trends computed from the best thermometer sites.

This is the kind of work NOAA should have done…but didn’t.

Instead, NOAA uses all of the thermometer data and employs statistical adjustments that many of us suspect forces the minority of good thermometer sites to match the majority of bad thermometer sites. In other words, it forces the rural data to match the urban data, rather than the other way around.

Watts et al. used only the best data….which I think is the best strategy. If one wants to use ALL of the thermometer data, then the bad data needs to be constrained so that it matches the good data.

As far as I know, this is not done by NOAA. And it’s a travesty that it hasn’t.

Al Gore is the gift that just keeps on giving.

According to his prediction, Arctic sea ice was supposed to be gone two years ago.

Since Gore isn’t a scientist, he might be forgiven for making such bad long-range predictions.

But his statement at the AGU meeting in San Francisco last week — which I have not been able to completely verify — takes the cake: “We need to go to DEFCON 5. The will to act is itself a renewable resource.”

Now, as Vice President, for 8 years Mr. Gore was required to travel with the nuclear “football” in case he had to initiate nuclear war in the event the President was incapacitated.

So, how is it that Mr. Gore doesn’t know that DEFCON 1 (not DEFCON 5) is the highest level of readiness?

(H/T small dead animals)

If global warming was a concern in the 1800s, Hollywood might have portrayed the COP21 Paris global warming pow wow like this…

Of course, Hollywood seldom uses such racial stereotypes anymore…unless they are of White Southerners.

Vice-Chief Kerry of the Developed Tribes: “All chiefs must dance to the rain gods, or no rain will fall on our lands. Or too many rains. After rain dance, we smoke peace pipe.”

Chief Boingo of the Undeveloped Tribes: “Our people will not dance. Unless much wampum is given to our people. For we have suffered greatly. The clouds do not give their tears. Or give too much…whatever. Only after much wampum will we then smoke peace pipe.”

Vice-Chief Kerry of the Developed Tribes: “How much wampum does Chief Boingo speak of?”

Chief Boingo of the Undeveloped Tribes: “As much wampum as stars in sky and as many moons have passed since our ancestors fell asleep”.

Vice-Chief Kerry of the Developed Tribes: “Hmmm. That’s much wampum. My people will not be happy. What say we smoke-um peace pipe and tell our peoples rain dance was good, anyway? We send a few wampum as we can. And we throw in some fire water?”

Chief Boingo of the Undeveloped Tribes: “Ugg. Just like other pow-wows, eh? OK.”

Chief Obama of the Developed Tribes addresses all tribes of Earth: “After many moons of rain dance and pow wow talk, the Developed Tribes chiefs have made peace with the Undeveloped Tribes, and with Earth. Now the clouds will cry tears of joy, and the great waters will be kept from our villages.”

NOTE: For the humorless few who don’t get it, the Paris COP21 meeting is little different from ancient people who thought they could control nature through meaningless gestures. The gestures made them feel good about themselves, that they have done something useful, and maybe even had some fire-water-fueled fun in the process. But the leaders are simply posturing, knowing full well that their successful pow wow and rain dance will have little effect, but will nevertheless calm the tribes. To call the above “racist” neglects the real racism: that Paris-supported energy policies pushed by mostly white-skinned rich westerners would kill millions of mostly dark-skinned poor people by making the energy they desperately need to be inaccessible.