Weather is not climate

by CRAIG JAMES

Everybody please repeat after me: weather is not climate, weather is not climate. It seems all the rage now days to blame every extreme weather event on what is called climate change (if it is a cold event) or global warming (if it is a warm event). But you simply cannot blame any one weather event, or even a short series of events, on climate change.

Meteorologist Craig James, new Squire columnist

The big news this summer was the heat wave in Moscow and the flooding in Pakistan. What actually caused these events to happen? Very simply, the weather systems got stuck, or blocked from their normal west to east movement for a while. Here is the meteorological explanation:

“The immediate cause of the problem is the behavior of the jet stream, a band of high-level wind that travels east around the world and influences much of the weather below it. Part of the jet stream’s meandering is tied to regular shifts of air towards and away from the pole, called Rossby waves. The Rossby waves set up wiggles in the jet stream, wiggles, which left to themselves, would move westward. Since the jet stream is flowing eastward, though, the net effect of the Rossby waves varies. When the waves are short, they go with the jet’s flow and the resultant wiggling heads downstream to the east. When they are long they go against the flow, and the jet’s wiggling is transmitted upstream to the west. In between, there is a regime in which the waves move neither west nor east, and the weather stays put.”

When weather patterns get stuck, extremes of temperature and precipitation always occur. It is not, as an article in last Sunday’s Grand Rapids Press stated “a sign of troubling climate change already under way.”

Even NOAA, one of the world’s biggest promoters of global warming said on August 13: “…greenhouse gas forcing fails to explain the 2010 heat wave over western Russia. The natural process of atmospheric blocking, and the climate impacts induced by such blocking, are the principal cause for this heat wave.”

Also, “The extreme surface warmth over western Russia during July and early August is mostly a product of the strong and persistent blocking high. The indications are that the current blocking event is intrinsic to the natural variability of summer climate in this region.” It was a NATURAL occurrence, not a result of increasing carbon dioxide.

The rush to blame every weather pattern on climate change is ridiculous. Many people have no sense of the history of severe weather events. They proclaim that everything happening now is the worst ever.

I urge you to look up some of the web sites I’ve listed below in order to understand we have had many greater disasters in the past than what we see happening recently.

• The world’s worst natural disasters going back 900 years

http://across.co.nz/WorldsWorstDisasters.html

• Top ten world’s worst natural disasters http://www.dailycognition.com/index.php/2009/01/29/top-ten-worst-natural disasters.html

• The world’s the deadliest natural disasters recorded http://www.armageddononline.org/the-worst-disasters.html

• Famines since 440 BChttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki List_of_famines

• Epic disasters http://www.epicdisasters.com/

• Ten worst floods in history http://library.thinkquest.org/C003603/english/flooding/tenworst.shtml

• Ten worst hurricanes in history http://library.thinkquest.org/C003603/english/hurricanes/tenworst.shtml

I love the comment made by the late Michael Crichton: “Is this the end of the world? No, this is the world. And I think it’s time we knew it.”

Craig James has been retired since July 1, 2008, after 40 years of broadcasting television weather. He was chief meteorologist at WZZM-TV for 12 years and chief meteorologist at WOOD-TV for 24 years. He is a graduate of Penn State University, where he received a Centennial Fellowship Award. He was also honored as a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society.

by CRAIG JAMES

Meteorologist Craig James, new Squire columnist

According to the National Weather Service, in our part of the country a heat wave is defined as a period of at least three consecutive days of temperatures at 90F or warmer. The period July 4 through July 7 had high temperatures each day of 92 degrees both in Grand Rapids and Lansing. The last heat wave was only three years ago, in 2007, when we had five days in a row of 90-degree weather with highs of 93, 97, 96, 94 and 91 between July 30 and August 3.

What is amazing to me is not that we had four days in a row of temperatures in the 90s during the first week of July, but that all four days had exactly the same high temperature. Now that is a very rare event. In fact, it has only happened once before in Grand Rapids since records began back in 1892. I doubt it has ever happened in both Grand Rapids and Lansing at the same time with exactly the same temperatures.

It still looks to me as if the entire summer is going to end up a little warmer than average, but it won’t produce many, if any, records for heat. The greatest number of consecutive 90-degree days on record is 11, set way back in 1901 when it was supposed to be cooler than now. How about the heat wave of 1936 when, between July 7 and July 14, high temperatures in Grand Rapids were 98, 101, 101, 102, 99, 106, 108 and 102. Several of those nights had lows around 80 and there was no air conditioning. What do you think the media would do if another heat wave like that occurred again today?

The hottest weather of this heat wave was from Boston through New York City to Washington, D.C., where temperatures did hit 100 degrees or higher, but fortunately without the high humidity so common in heat waves in that part of the country.

On Tuesday, July 6, the official high temperature in Baltimore, recorded at the Baltimore-Washington International airport, was 105 degrees, a new record for the date and just one degree shy of the all-time record high set in 1930. However, could the location of the thermometer now be producing an inflated temperature reading?

This picture is of the temperature sensor, called Automated Surface Observing System (ASOS), and shows the temperature is now taken between concrete runways, near asphalt and also an exhaust vent from an air conditioner unit. It is interesting to note that the temperature in downtown Baltimore was two degrees cooler than the official reading at the airport. Traditionally, it has been warmer at city locations, but that is frequently only the case now at night.

An experiment was done at the Albany, New York airport on the same day as the Baltimore record high. The Albany air temperature never got higher than 96 degrees, but the temperature on the tarmac there climbed to 192 degrees, just 20 degrees shy of the boiling point of water.

Do you think the Baltimore temperature sensor located between two hot runways, near asphalt and an air conditioner vent may give an artificially high temperature? How can this temperature be used to compare with a temperature taken 80 years ago? How can it be used to produce a climate record? Airport temperature readings were designed specifically for aviation interests, not for climate trends. Most official temperature readings across the United States, and increasingly across the world, are now taken near airport runways, which has produced an artificial warming trend in recent years. It is man-made, but it has nothing to do with carbon dioxide.

Craig James has been retired since July 1, 2008, after 40 years of broadcasting television weather. He was chief meteorologist at WZZM-TV for 12 years and chief meteorologist at WOOD-TV for 24 years. He is a graduate of Penn State University, where he received a Centennial Fellowship Award. He was also honored as a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society.

by CRAIG JAMES 

Meteorologist Craig James, new Squire columnist

Technology has developed some wonderful tools that truly boggle the mind. One of them is a new satellite system called GRACE, which stands for Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment. It is composed of two satellites flying in formation. Measuring the distance between the two satellites to the nearest micron (a hundredth of the width of a hair) allows scientists to calculate the weight of things on the earth very accurately. To get an idea of how this works, you can find an article about it at www.grist.org/article/2010-05-13-weighing-greenland/.

One of the things being calculated is the ice loss from the Greenland Ice Cap. The article states:  “the island has been losing weight, an average of 183 gigatons (or 200 cubic kilometers)—in ice—annually during the past six years. That’s one-third the volume of water in Lake Erie every year. Greenland’s shrinking ice sheet offers some of the most powerful evidence of global warming.”

Sounds pretty scary doesn’t it? But to get a proper perspective of just how much ice is melting and how significant the ice loss is, a scientist by the name of Willis Eschenbach has written an article, which can be found at wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/23/on-being-the-wrong-size/.

He first determined the total mass of the ice on Greenland from a fascinating book called “The Physics Handbook” and found there are approximately three million cubic kilometers of ice covering Greenland. So the annual loss of 200 cubic kilometers represents just 0.007% of the total mass each year. That is just seven thousandths of one percent each year. Which means, of course, if that terrifying rate of loss continues unabated it will all be gone in a mere 15,000 years—by the year 17,010!

What is occurring is actually a trivial change in a huge block of ice made to sound like an imminent catastrophe. If this is “some of the most powerful evidence of global warming,” I think we can sit back and relax a bit.

There is another item of perspective I want to mention. You’ve probably seen a graphic like the one here of how much carbon dioxide has been increasing in the atmosphere.

However, let’s change the graphic just a little. Since carbon dioxide represents about 0.0039% of the atmosphere, let’s change the “y,” or vertical, axis on the graphic from parts per million to percentage of the atmosphere and see how big the change looks since 1958.

Now that’s not so scary looking, is it? The carbon dioxide percentage of the atmosphere since 1958 has changed from 0.0030% to 0.0039%. That’s an increase of a whopping 0.0009%. Little wonder you never hear it expressed this way by the alarmists, is there?

For additional perspective, don’t forget, carbon dioxide is plant food. It is necessary for life to exist on Earth. Yet, the EPA has declared it a pollutant. Carbon dioxide is responsible for just 3.6% of the greenhouse effect, while water vapor is responsible for 95% of the greenhouse effect. Logically, then, will the EPA soon declare humidity to be a pollutant, too?

Craig James has been retired since July 1, 2008, after 40 years of broadcasting television weather. He was chief meteorologist at WZZM-TV for 12 years and chief meteorologist at WOOD-TV for 24 years. He is a graduate of Penn State University, where he received a Centennial Fellowship Award. He was also honored as a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society.

by CRAIG JAMES

Most of the forecasts I have seen for this hurricane season are indicating a very active season may be on tap. In fact, if the final numbers reach the upper end of many forecasts, this will be one of the most active seasons on record.

Meteorologist Craig James, new Squire columnist

The Atlantic hurricane season officially begins June 1 and ends November 30. There have certainly been named storms before and after those dates, but this is when the majority occur, with the greatest concentration August through October. All of the forecasts I have seen except one are calling for an above-normal season this year.

The National Hurricane Center has just recently released its outlook, which calls for “an 85% chance of an above-normal season. The outlook indicates only a 10% chance of a near-normal season and a 5% chance of a below-normal season.” With the majority of the forecasts indicating an active year, I’d be little nervous if I lived in Florida.

There are three main reasons for this year’s forecast:

1. an expected la niña condition, which favors little wind shear in the Tropical Atlantic;

2. the current warm phase of the Tropical Atlantic, which has contributed to the high-activity era in the Atlantic basin since 1995;

3. exceptionally warm sea surface temperatures in the tropical Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea.

You can see on the map here all the warm colors indicating above average sea surface temperatures around Central America, the Gulf of Mexico and the Tropical Atlantic. You can also see the cooler-than-average sea surface temperatures in the Eastern Pacific and the Central Atlantic. The band of cool water along the Equator in the Pacific is the developing la niña.

This season’s setup is quite the opposite of last year’s season and I am very glad to see that the Hurricane Center did not mention global warming once in their forecast discussion, which can be found at www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/outlooks/hurricane.shtml.

The Hurricane Center home page at www.nhc.noaa.gov/ contains a great “frequent questions” section. One of the more interesting answers deals with how tropical storms, or tropical cyclones, are named. Here is a sample:

The first use of a proper name for a tropical cyclone was by an Australian forecaster early in the 20th century. He gave tropical cyclone names “after political figures whom he disliked. By properly naming a hurricane, the weatherman could publicly describe a politician (who perhaps was not too generous with weather-bureau appropriations) as ‘causing great distress’ or ‘wandering aimlessly about the Pacific’.”

During World War II, tropical cyclones were informally given women’s names by U.S. Army Air Corps and Navy meteorologists (after their girlfriends or wives) who were monitoring and forecasting tropical cyclones over the Pacific. From 1950 to 1952, tropical cyclones of the North Atlantic Ocean were identified by the phonetic alphabet (Able, Baker, Charlie, etc.), but in 1953 the U.S. Weather Bureau switched to women’s names. In 1979, the WMO and the U.S. National Weather Service (NWS) switched to a list of names that also included men’s names.

Tropical storms in most ocean basins are now given men’s and women’s names. However, since the year 2000, storms in the Northwest Pacific Basin (near Indonesia and Asia) have been given names of flowers, animals, birds, trees, or even foods, etc., while some are descriptive adjectives. And just to confuse things, the names are not allotted in alphabetical order, but are arranged by contributing nation with the countries being alphabetized.

And finally, tropical storms or tropical cyclones are called hurricanes in the Atlantic and Eastern Pacific east of the International Dateline. Storms west of the dateline are called typhoons. Occasionally a storm will cross the dateline west of Hawaii. When that happens, the hurricane is given a new name and called a typhoon, even though it is the same storm. Whatever they are called, I’m glad they don’t occur in Michigan.

Craig James has been retired since July 1, 2008, after 40 years of broadcasting television weather. He was chief meteorologist at WZZM-TV for 12 years and chief meteorologist at WOOD-TV for 24 years. He is a graduate of Penn State University, where he received a Centennial Fellowship Award. He was also honored as a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society.

Most of the forecasts I have seen for this hurricane season are indicating a very active season may be on tap. In fact, if the final numbers reach the upper end of many forecasts, this will be one of the most active seasons on record.

Meteorologist Craig James, new Squire columnist

The Atlantic hurricane season officially begins June 1st and ends November 30th. There have certainly been named storms before and after those dates but this is when the majority occur, with the greatest concentration August thru October. All of the forecasts I have seen except one are calling for an above normal season this year.

The National Hurricane Center has just recently released its outlook, which calls for “an 85% chance of an above normal season. The outlook indicates only a 10% chance of a near-normal season and a 5% chance of a below-normal season.”  With the majority of the forecasts indicating an active year, I’d be little nervous if I lived in Florida.

There are three main reasons for this year’s forecast: 1) An expected La Nina condition, which favors little wind shear in the Tropical Atlantic; 2) The current warm phase of the Tropical Atlantic, which has contributed to the high-activity era in the Atlantic basin since 1995; 3) Exceptionally warm sea surface temperatures in the tropical Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea. You can see on the map below all the warm colors indicating above average sea surface temperatures around Central America, the Gulf of Mexico and the Tropical Atlantic.

You can also see the cooler than average sea surface temperatures in the Eastern Pacific and the Central Atlantic. The band of cool water along the Equator in the Pacific is the developing La Nina.

This season’s setup is quite the opposite of last year’s season and I am very glad to see that the Hurricane Center did not mention global warming once in their forecast discussion, which can be found here: http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/outlooks/hurricane.shtml

The Hurricane Center home page: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/ contains a great “frequent questions” section. One of the more interesting answers deals with how tropical storms (or tropical cyclones) are named. Here is a sample:

The first use of a proper name for a tropical cyclone was by an Australian forecaster early in the 20th century. He gave tropical cyclone names “after political figures whom he disliked. By properly naming a hurricane, the weatherman could publicly describe a politician (who perhaps was not too generous with weather-bureau appropriations) as ‘causing great distress’ or ‘wandering aimlessly about the Pacific.”

During World War II, tropical cyclones were informally given women’s names by US Army Air Corp and Navy meteorologists (after their girlfriends or wives) who were monitoring and forecasting tropical cyclones over the Pacific. From 1950 to 1952, tropical cyclones of the North Atlantic Ocean were identified by the phonetic alphabet (Able-Baker-Charlie-etc.), but in 1953 the US Weather Bureau switched to women’s names. In 1979, the WMO and the US National Weather Service (NWS) switched to a list of names that also included men’s names.

Tropical storms in most ocean basins are now given men’s and women’s names. However, since the year 2000, storms in the Northwest Pacific Basin (near Indonesia and Asia, have been given names of flowers, animals, birds, trees, or even foods, etc, while some are descriptive adjectives. And just to confuse things, the names are not allotted in alphabetical order, but are arranged by contributing nation with the countries being alphabetized.

And finally, tropical storms or tropical cyclones are called hurricanes in the Atlantic and Eastern Pacific east of the International Dateline. Storms west of the dateline are called typhoons. Occasionally a storm will cross the dateline west of Hawaii. When that happens, the hurricane is given a new name and called a typhoon, even though it is the same storm. Whatever they are called, I’m glad they don’t occur in Michigan.

Craig James has been retired since July 1, 2008, after 40 years of broadcasting television weather. He was chief meteorologist at WZZM-TV for 12 years and chief meteorologist at WOOD-TV for 24 years. He is a graduate of Penn State University, where he received a Centennial Fellowship Award. He was also honored as a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society.

Every time I go into a bookstore or library, I can’t get past the first display without noticing all the new books about the so-called catastrophe of global warming. Is there anything available that supports what I consider to be the more correct point of view? Yes, there are quite a few, you just have to look a little harder to find them. A new book, called The Great Global Warming Blunder, has just been released by Dr. Roy Spencer.

Meteorologist Craig James, new Squire columnist

Dr. Spencer co-developed the original satellite method for precise monitoring of global temperatures from Earth-orbiting satellites and publishes one of only two global satellite temperature records at his web site: http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/. He has provided congressional testimony several times on the subject of global warming.

His latest book is a non-technical description of new peer reviewed and soon-to-be-published research which supports the opinion that a majority of Americans already hold: that warming in recent decades is mostly due to a natural cycle in the climate system — not to an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning. Here is how he describes it:

“Believe it or not, this potential natural explanation for recent warming has never been seriously researched by climate scientists. The main reason they have ignored this possibility is that they cannot think of what might have caused it.

You see, climate researchers are rather myopic. They think that the only way for global-average temperatures to change is for the climate system to be forced ‘externally’…by a change in the output of the sun, or by a large volcanic eruption. These are events which occur external to the normal, internal operation of the climate system.

But what they have ignored is the potential for the climate system to cause its own climate change. Climate change is simply what the system does, owing to its complex, dynamic, chaotic internal behavior.

As I travel around the country, I find that the public instinctively understands the possibility that there are natural climate cycles. Unfortunately, it is the climate “experts” who have difficulty grasping the concept. This is why I am taking my case to the public in this book. The climate research community long ago took the wrong fork in the road, and I am afraid that it might be too late for them to turn back.

The most obvious way for warming to be caused naturally is for small, natural fluctuations in the circulation patterns of the atmosphere and ocean to result in a 1% or 2% decrease in global cloud cover. Clouds are the Earth’s sunshade, and if cloud cover changes for any reason, you have global warming—or

global cooling.

How could the experts have missed such a simple explanation? Because they have convinced themselves that only a temperature change can cause a cloud cover change, and not the other way around. The issue is one of causation. They have not accounted for cloud changes causing temperature changes.

The experts have simply mixed up cause and effect when observing how clouds and temperature vary. The book reveals a simple way to determine the direction of causation from satellite observations of global average temperature and cloud variations. And that new tool should fundamentally change how we view the

climate system.

Blunder also addresses a second major mistake that results from ignoring the effect of natural cloud variations on temperature: it results in the illusion that the climate system is very sensitive. The experts claim that, since our climate system is very sensitive, then our carbon dioxide emissions are all that is needed to explain global warming. There is no need to look for alternative explanations.

But I show that the experts have merely reasoned themselves in a circle on this subject. When properly interpreted, our satellite observations actually reveal that the system is quite IN-sensitive. And an insensitive climate system means that nature does not really care whether you travel by jet, or how many hamburgers or steaks you eat.”

Several other books available on the subject are:

Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians and Misguided Policies That Hurt the Poor also by Dr. Roy Spencer.

Climatism!: Science, Common Sense and the 21st Century’s Hottest Topic by Steve Goreham.

Climategate: The CRUtape letters by Steven Mosher (who grew up in Grand Rapids) and Thomas Fuller.

What Warming?: Satellite View of Global Temperature by Arno Arrak.

The Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the Corruption of Science by A.W. Montford.

A Skeptical Layman’s Guide to Anthropogenic Global Warming v1.0 which you can download for free at:http://www.coyoteblog.com/Skeptics_Guide_to_Anthropogenic_Global_Warming_v1.0.pdf.

I may not agree with everything written in these items but they will certainly give you many hours of reading about this fascinating subject from the skeptics’ point of view.

Craig James has been retired since July 1, 2008, after 40 years of broadcasting television weather. He was chief meteorologist at WZZM-TV for 12 years and chief meteorologist at WOOD-TV for 24 years. He is a graduate of Penn State University, where he received a Centennial Fellowship Award. He was also honored as a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society.

by CRAIG JAMES

Meteorologist Craig James, new Squire columnist

It was a very cold start to the month of May in much of the western part of the country. Subzero low temperatures were recorded as late as the morning of May 7, making this the latest date for such cold temperatures in at least a decade. In fact, a place called Peter Sink, Utah, dropped to 15 below zero on May 7, which tied the record for the coldest temperature ever recorded in May in the United States.

Peter Sink is not a town. It is just a place located east of Logan, Utah. According to Wikipedia, “Peter Sink is located 8,100 feet (2,500 m) above sea level, in the Bear River Mountains east of Logan. Due to temperature inversions that trap cold nocturnal air, it routinely produces the coldest temperatures in the state. Even in the summer, the bottom of the sinkhole rarely goes four consecutive days without freezing. It is so cold near the bottom of the hole that trees are unable to grow.”

Once the sun sets on clear calm nights, the dry air quickly radiates energy to space and cold air pools in the basin. Back in February of this year, the temperature fell 32 degrees in just 15 minutes and a total of 78 degrees, from 32 above zero to 46 below zero, in four-and-a-half hours.

On February 1, 1985, a temperature of -69.3°F (-56°C) was recorded there, the lowest recorded temperature in Utah, and the second coldest temperature ever recorded in the 48 contiguous states. The coldest was -70°F at Rogers Pass in Montana. The coldest in the entire U.S. was -80°F at Prospect Creek Camp, Alaska in 1971.

There are other spots similar to, although not as extreme as, Peter Sink. There is a place near Penn State University, where I went to school, called the Barrens. The Barrens is just four miles west of the main campus located in State College, Pa. The daytime temperature is usually the same as in State College, but the nighttime temperature can often be 30 degrees colder.

In the 1800s, the mining of iron ore plus widespread fires deforested the area. Many remaining trees in the Barrens were cut a second and third time to add to the problem. Low temperatures now fall well below freezing every month of the year, so all that remains are a few pine and scrub oak trees. I guess this is real climate change caused by humans, but it of course has nothing to do with carbon dioxide.

I don’t know of any places such as these two in Michigan, but the weather observation site near Vanderbilt, which is located near I-75 north of Gaylord, comes close. The average growing season is only 78 days, with the shortest on record of just 30 days. You could hardly grow potatoes there.

I imagine there are even colder places in the Upper Peninsula, but thermometers haven’t been placed there to record them. On January 19, 1994, the town of Amasa, southwest of Marquette, may have recorded the state’s lowest temperature of -52°F. There is still some debate as to whether this low is official or if the -51°F at Vanderbilt in 1934 is still the state’s lowest temperature. I guess the government is in no rush to make a decision.

Craig James has been retired since July 1, 2008, after 40 years of broadcasting television weather. He was chief meteorologist at WZZM-TV for 12 years and chief meteorologist at WOOD-TV for 24 years. He is a graduate of Penn State University, where he received a Centennial Fellowship Award. He was also honored as a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society.

by CRAIG JAMES

I didn’t see any snowflakes in our area this past Saturday, May 8, but they weren’t far away. There was a light dusting on the ground Saturday morning as far south as Cadillac. Farther north, up to four inches fell east of Atlanta in Montmorency County with considerable damage to tree branches reported. In the Upper Peninsula, almost seven inches fell in Baraga County east of L’Anse, but I’ve seen it snow there in June. Temperatures Sunday and Monday morning, May 9-10 , dropped into the teens in parts of the Upper Peninsula.

Meteorologist Craig James, new Squire columnist

We don’t usually see snow in southern Michigan in May, but it has certainly happened. On May 8, 1923, an Arctic cold front moved across the area that dropped temperatures from the low 60s at 1 p.m. to the mid 30s by 6 p.m. On the following day, May 9, 5.5 inches of snow were officially recorded in Grand Rapids. However, up to a foot of snow fell in a band from Muskegon to Greenville to Lansing.

I’ve seen pictures of that snowfall and I imagine it was enough to get some people to consider moving to a warmer climate. It probably wasn’t very well forecast either. But the snow didn’t last long. By the afternoon of May 10, it had all melted and apparently didn’t cause a lot of damage to vegetation.

We ended up this current season with 72.5 inches of snowfall in Grand Rapids, which is exactly average and about 32 inches less than last season. If I may say so, it is also very much in line with the forecast made in my first article for The Rockford Squire of “snowfall totals much closer to average, perhaps around 70 inches in Grand Rapids, so you won’t be shoveling as much.” We only had two inches of snow this past March and just a few flakes in April for another fairly snow-free spring.

I’ve written in earlier articles about the very snowy season in places like Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia. In Washington, D.C., 56.1 inches of snow fell, which is more than 370% above the average of 15 inches. The 78.7 inches in Philadelphia was 407% above the average of 19 inches. To give you an idea how amazing that is, for us to receive that much more snowfall than average, we’d have to get over 290 inches.

Many areas of the western states had another year of above-average snowfall, too. Several locations in Montana had record snow amounts and it was also a great year in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. According to figures released at the beginning of May, the northern Sierra finished the season at 188% of normal snowfall, the central Sierra at 121%, and the southern Sierra at 139%.

Here is an interesting graph from Mammoth Pass, Calif., showing the water equivalent of the snowfall by month compared to normal, and compared to previous years. including last year, the driest year and the snowiest year.

It is amazing how much natural variation there is in the amount of water equivalent. The driest year was 1976-1977 with a maximum of just 10 inches of water content in the snow pack. Only six years later in 1982-1983, there was a maximum of 90 inches of water in the snow pack. This year’s maximum was at 46.6 inches.

Many farmers and businesses in California are allocated a certain amount of water based upon, among other things, the amount of water in the snow pack and reservoirs at this time of year. Even though more water is available this year, the state of California is only planning on granting 40 percent of what has been requested. The pumping restrictions are due to the fact that a few lakes are still running a little below average depth and also to protect endangered fish. The endangered farmers who have suffered several years of drought aren’t very happy.

Craig James has been retired since July 1, 2008, after 40 years of broadcasting television weather. He was chief meteorologist at WZZM-TV for 12 years and chief meteorologist at WOOD-TV for 24 years. He is a graduate of Penn State University, where he received a Centennial Fellowship Award. He was also honored as a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society.

by CRAIG JAMES

In North America’s Glacier National Park there were about 150 glaciers when the park was established in 1910. By the beginning of this year, the number was down to 37. Here are comparison pictures of the Boulder Glacier in 1932 and in 2005.

You can see in this picture of the Easton Glacier in the Cascade Mountains in the state of Washington the difference between the leading edge of the glacier in 1985 and 2008.

Indeed, a recent survey has shown that at least 83% of the world’s glaciers are losing mass, or shrinking. But that means 17% of the world’s glaciers were not melting; they were stable or increasing. You can see a list of these glaciers online at www.iceagenow.com/List_of_Expanding_Glaciers.htm. You probably weren’t aware that in 2008 all of the glaciers in Alaska gained mass for the first time in 250 years. Still, the majority of the world’s glaciers are melting, but is this melting natural as we come out of the Little Ice Age or is it caused by increasing amounts of carbon dioxide?

Meteorologist Craig James, new Squire columnist

The poster child for glacier-melt has been Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa. In Al Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” Gore expressly attributed the loss of ice on the mountain to human-induced global warming. He even forecast that “within the decade, there will be no more snows of Kilimanjaro.” That was in 2005. A British Court has since ruled Gore’s point about Kilimanjaro is not true.

Deforestation seems to be causing Mount Kilimanjaro’s shrinking glacier. Researchers think deforestation of the mountain’s foothills is the most likely culprit. Without the forests expelling humidity into the air, previously moisture-laden winds blowing across those forests now blow drier. The summit, no longer replenished with water from those winds, started shrinking. Studies show the ice is not melting; it is evaporating through a process called sublimation. You can witness this effect at home—have you ever noticed that ice cubes left in your freezer tend to shrink with time?

As a confirmation of this research, satellite measurements have shown temperatures near the summit of the 19,340-foot mountain have not been above freezing since measurements began in 1979.

But what about all the other glaciers that are melting? It appears this has been happening in many parts of the world since the end of the Little Ice Age, around 1850. The glaciers have been melting as the world has warmed from this very cold period. A very thorough research project on glaciers has determined that “glaciers show a response to changing climate, but cannot give any answer to the question about whether the forcing is natural or not.”

Glacial retreat, after all, is not something new. In the Swiss Alps, for example, glaciers were much larger during the Little Ice Age than they are now. However, they have been both smaller in volume and shorter in length than they are currently at a number of times throughout the past 320 to 2,500 years. Additionally, there is now evidence that during the last interglacial period 125,000 years ago, some Alpine glaciers were smaller than they are now or even non-existent.

The absence of Alpine glaciers 125,000 years ago was not the result of humans burning fossil fuels. This plus the fact that some glaciers are currently increasing in size means there is much more we have to learn about glaciers. We still do not know how much of the change is part of a natural cycle and how much is not.

My thinking about both sea ice, which I wrote about a few weeks ago, and land-based glaciers is this: Yes, many land-based glaciers are melting, which is part of a trend begun hundreds if not thousands of years ago. Arctic sea ice as of the beginning of May is now at its average extent since satellite monitoring began in 1979. It was a low point in the fall of 2007 but has recovered (arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic). The sea ice extent in the Antarctic was at a record high in 2008 and is still above average (arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png).

The concern, of course, is that if land-based glaciers continue to melt, sea levels will continue to rise, as they have been for thousands of years. Floating ice that melts will have no significant effect on sea levels. I’ll have another article soon on the latest information about sea levels.

Craig James has been retired since July 1, 2008, after 40 years of broadcasting television weather. He was chief meteorologist at WZZM-TV for 12 years and chief meteorologist at WOOD-TV for 24 years. He is a graduate of Penn State University, where he received a Centennial Fellowship Award. He was also honored as a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society.

by CRAIG JAMES

I imagine the people from Iceland have been driven to fits of hysterical laughter when they hear broadcasters trying to pronounce the name the volcano that has been erupting in their country. It is spelled “Eyjafjallajoekull.” You can hear someone from Iceland pronounce it on a video from YouTube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jq-sMZtSww. It certainly made me laugh. The English pronunciation is “Aye-ya fyah-dla jow-kudl.” Let’s just call it “that Icelandic volcano.”

You can see absolutely stunning photos online at www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/04/more_from_eyjafjallajokull.html. If you don’t own a computer, go to the library or visit a friend who has one and look at the pictures. It is worth your while.

I’m sure all of the stranded passengers and the airline companies didn’t find the volcano a laughing matter, but it came as no surprise to me to find out there are people blaming the volcano on global warming. Scientific American recently ran an article claiming that climate change caused the volcano to erupt. (Can you hear me laughing hysterically in the background?)

I am certainly not a geologist or volcanologist, but there is enough evidence to show that volcanoes don’t erupt due to climate change, but they can change the climate. The eruption of Mt. Tambora in 1815 caused the year without a summer in 1816. It has been hypothesized by a volcanologist at Los Alamos that the Dark Ages were triggered by agricultural collapse following the 535AD eruption of Krakatoa. The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa lowered global temperatures about two degrees. The eruptions of El Chicon in 1983 and Mt. Pinotubo in 1991 also lowered global temperatures. I could go on and on.

A geologist writing in a blog called WattsUpWithThat, explained why melting ice had no effect on the Icelandic volcano: “Iceland is an above sea level manifestation of the Mid Atlantic Ridge. The ridge is of course an active constructive margin (It is actually the principle prime-mover of continental drift at this point in time). Upwelling of hotter (i.e. less dense) magma along the ridge is pushing the Eurasian plate and North American plate in opposite directions at about the speed that human nails grow. The Eurasian plate heads east, the North American plate heads west.

“So Iceland has about 200 meters of ice lying in a glacier across this active margin. Assuming plastic deformation, then this ice behaves like a fluid and exerts a hydrostatic head of pressure on the rock beneath. In other parts of the world, in the past, glacial ice has exerted sufficient pressure to warp the crust. The ice mass required for crustal warping is in kilometers rather than meters of depth.

“However, in this case, the insignificant weight and pressure of the ice is nowhere near enough to reduce, mitigate or hold back the massive pressure of the upwelling magma—which is sufficient to drive two massive continental plates in opposite directions.

“A simple test: If the Atlantic ridge can operate and create new crust at depths of 3,000 meters of water, how can 200 meters of ice stop magma at the surface of the planet?

“This is just so silly it is barking mad and frankly it is a good example of the magical thinking prevalent in post-modern science and education.

“The person suggesting this could either be a Fool (magical thinking) or a Knave (hunting for more research grants).

“But what really amazes is that a supposedly educated scientist fails to grasp that a globally significant eruptive continental margin cannot be stopped by any known human agent or started by human agency in the form of melting ice.

“If the ice is melting, I should imagine that the very high geothermal gradient and proximity to magma at 1,300 deg C might, just might, have something to do with it.”

The number of things now blamed on global warming doesn’t just include the eruption of volcanoes. You can find a list of over 700 things supposedly brought about by global warming at this site: whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/globalwarming2.html.

Here are my top 20 from that list:

1. beer shortage (oh dear)

2. birds confused (they’re not the only ones)

3. brains shrink (due to a lack of beer?)

4. brothels struggle (no comment)

5. cannibalism (yikes!)

6. circumcision in decline (no comment)

7. cold spells (from warming?)

8. crocodile sex (I don’t want to know)

9. early marriages (where are those brothels?)

10. Earth to explode (now that’s change you can count on)

11. fish get lost (where is Nemo?)

12. football team migration (will the Lions go to Sault St. Marie?)

13. great tits cope well (they ARE talking about birds)

14. lawyers’ income increased (now there’s a surprise)

15. mammoth dung melt (yuck)

16. Masters golf tournament wrecked (Tiger didn’t play that poorly)

17. NFL threatened (maybe the Lions should go to Canada. please)

18. rooftop bars (because of the beer shortage?)

19. teenage drinking (now I’ve heard every excuse)

20. sexual promiscuity (it’s all because of those struggling brothels)

The world has no shortage of both fools and knaves. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Craig James has been retired since July 1, 2008, after 40 years of broadcasting television weather. He was chief meteorologist at WZZM-TV for 12 years and chief meteorologist at WOOD-TV for 24 years. He is a graduate of Penn State University, where he received a Centennial Fellowship Award. He was also honored as a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society.