CNN Cries Doom After TWO Percent Snowfall Decline Over 50 Years
CNN published an article this weekend raising alarm about “disappearing” snowfall during the past 50 years, all the while burying the negligible amount of snow decline
According to CNN’s own data, snowfall has declined merely two percent during the past half-century, which is statistically insignificant and barely measurable.
Moreover, 1973 was an above-average snowfall year, so choosing 1973 as the starting point is dishonest.
Finally, CNN failed to mention that snow-cover trends have been flat for decades and have actually risen during the past 30 years.
All these facts show that CNN – as climate activists do regarding so many climate issues – is crying ‘the sky is falling’ over essentially nothing.
CNN’s article, “New maps show where snowfall is disappearing,” was published on November 25 and quickly rose to the top of Google News searches for ‘climate change’.
“Snowfall is declining globally as temperatures warm because of human-caused climate change, a new analysis and maps from a NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) climate scientist show,” reads the article’s opening paragraph.
The article then asserts that less snow somehow “threatens to disrupt food and water for billions of people.”
However, there is no decline at all in precipitation. In fact, NOAA reports there has been an increase in precipitation in recent decades.
Instead, precipitation is merely shifting – on the very edge of wintry late fall and early spring – from snow to rain.
How do more precipitation and longer growing seasons threaten to disrupt food and water for billions of people?
Worse, only after five paragraphs of alarm does CNN quietly note that snowfall has declined just two percent during the past half-century.
That is an almost indistinguishable small amount that can barely be measured. At that pace, it would take 250 years for a mere 10 percent of current snowfall to [fall as rain].
Still further, the snowfall data show an increase in snowfall in many American ski destinations like Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and Utah.
The lion’s share of the modest snow decline is in the U.S. Southeast, which does not receive much snowfall, anyway.
The choice of 1973 as a starting point is also suspect.
Rutgers University Global Snow Lab tracks global snow cover going back to November 1966, when satellites first began to track global snow cover.
The year 1973 had unusually high snow extent, even for the early years of snow measurement.
If [we compared current snowfall since 1967], which was the first full year of the satellite record, CNN would be reporting an increase rather than a decrease in snowfall, and would likely be blaming that increase on global warming, also.
The same holds for an analysis beginning in 1990 or 2000, with snow cover modestly increasing since then.
In short, there is no declining snowfall crisis.
There is only a crisis of media dishonesty regarding all things climate.
See more here climatechangedispatch
Header image: New York Times
Please Donate Below To Support Our Ongoing Work To Defend The Scientific Method
PRINCIPIA SCIENTIFIC INTERNATIONAL, legally registered in the UK as a company incorporated for charitable purposes. Head Office: 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX.
Trackback from your site.
Tom
| #
I do recall more major storms both in summer and winter growing up in the 60’s and 70’s. Hoping that global warming melts CNN into a big pile of brown gooey stuff.
Reply
Bob - Enough
| #
Hahaha, good find; trouble is that the dumb, ignorant masses believe in all this nonsense.
Nothing to do with the build up of urban cities and the expansion of towns then ?
or
Very similar to their temperature measuring recordings (increasing of course); where they have moved their monitors into cities which are naturally “warmer” as they are protected from the wind and … sit down … many in airports … YES SERIOUSLY.
Reply
Andy Rowlands
| #
Here in England, weather stations in the countryside have been gradually removed, and more added in towns. Every airport in the UK now has to have a weather station. So they can claim temps are increasing, while deliberately ignoring the urban heat island effect. The UHIE is known to add two, three or even four degrees to the air temperature. The Met Office acknowledges this and subtracts an amount to compensate for the UHIE. The amount they deduct? 0.2C.
Reply