N. Hemisphere Fall/Winter Snow Cover Still Trending Up
Data from the University of Rutgers show that the northern hemisphere snow cover in the fall and winter have trended upwards since data recording began in 1967.
The following chart shows northern hemisphere snow cover for fall, where we see a formidable upward trend:
Next, we see the chart for wintertime northern hemisphere snow cover. Though the trend is not as pronounced as it is in the fall, the trend has been modestly upward.
Finally, we look at the latest Arctic ice volume data from PIOMAS:
As we can observe, Arctic ice mass has in fact stabilized over the recent decade after having shrunk during the previous 2001-2010 decade.
It should be noted that data going back to 1900 show that Arctic sea ice AREA had been low as well during the 1930 to 1960 period before reaching a peak in the 1970s and 1980s.
In summary, nothing to worry about up in the Arctic.
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Andy Rowlands
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This increase in northern hemisphere snow cover is probably another indication our current interglacial is drawing towards its end.
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Robert Beatty
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Andy,
I agree, but am concerned that the warming sea as shown in the Arctic Sea Ice Extent graph, and by the increasing level of atmospheric CO2 is masking the rate of land temperature decline. The big question then is, how prepared is the human world for a serious land temperature decline?
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Robert and Andy,
Need i remind you humans have lived centuries at the high northern latitudes inside igloos. Humans are very adaptable.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Robert Beatty
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Jerry,
I obviously need to remind you:
“Extreme Weather during the Maunder Minimum (1645-1715 A.D.)
The region around the eastern Mediterranean (the Ottoman Empire) was severely affected by adverse climate during the Maunder Minimum.
Most areas suffered drought and plague in the 1640’s, the 1650’s and again in the 1670’s, while the winter of 1684 was the wettest recorded in the eastern Mediterranean during the past five centuries, and the winters of the later 1680’s were at least 3° C cooler than today.
In 1687 a chronicler in Istanbul, Turkey reported ‘This winter was severe to a degree that had not been seen in a very long time. For fifty days the roads were closed and people could not go outside. In cities and villages, the snow buried many houses. In the Golden Horn [major urban waterway and the primary inlet of the Bosphorus in Istanbul], the snow ‘came up higher than one’s face.’
The following year, floods destroyed crops around Edirne [close to Turkey’s borders with Greece and Bulgaria], ruining the estates that normally supplied the imperial capital with food. In the 1640’s and 1650’s, a civil war gripped the British Empire.
This war combined with the effects of a series of failed harvest that led to famines, and plague epidemics killed approximately a quarter of a million people in England, Scotland and Wales or 7% of the population.
The population in Ireland alone fell by 20%.”
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Robert,
And I need to report to you that I have lived for 20+ years in eastern South Dakota USA at about 45oN and 30 years in northern Minnesota at about 47oN which at about 300 miles distant from each other. In eastern SD I have experienced blizzards where we could not see the red house next door (maybe 40ft away in a town) for the entire daylight period. And as a result of this blizzard a state highway to my farm home could not be clearly for 5 days because the snow in places was packed so hard and deep that it took a D-8 bulldozer to move the snow.
In Hibbing I never experienced what I would term a blizzard because it was a generally forested area. But I drove to church a couple mornings when the temperature was -40oF or C. And one morning the fan belt came apart.
But in both places we and other people survived. And we experience how different winters could be from one year to the next. And while the yearly weather is quite different from one year to the next it was not hard to recognize that a both locations there also seemed to be a cyclic pattern.
And in 2016 John Bluemle, a field geologist in North Dakota for 40 years, or more, wrote a book—North Dakota’s Geologic Legacy (Our Land and How It Formed)–which I only recently purchased. In it he, a geologist, explained the atmospheric circulation which commonly produce such terrible blizzards in North and South Dakota and eastern Minnesota during most winters. Which explanation (only a couple of sentences) I have never read being hinted about in any of the meteorology books I have read. And this explanation was so far from what I had learned about jet streams that I doubted it. But when I studied the data of the atmospheric soundings that were begun after WWII, the data confirmed he was right on.
But I write this because the weather you reviewed because of what I had written. As ‘terrible’ as the conditions you described were, the observed fact is that people survived plaques and droughts and freezing winter temperatures. Conditions that were not ‘normal’. My parents (farmers) survived the drought of ‘dirty 30’s’ which occurred in the midsection of the USA at the same time there was a great economic depression.
It seems some humans always make do and survive. My point before and still my point.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Herb Rose
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Hi Jerry,
The question is not whether the human species will survive but is civilization will. The Mayan people survived the collapse of their civilization but their lives changed dramatically.
How many people in a city would survive if they had to grow their own food, produce their own clothes, or depend on themselves for all their needs? A lot of people could not survive the primitive life where there weren’t others with special knowledge and abilities to provide the basics that allow them to have their current lives. Look at Zimbabwe when the farm land was distributed to people who had no ability to use it. It went from being the breadbasket of Africa to a basket case with widespread starvation.
Have a good day,
Herb
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Herb,
You wrote: “How many people in a city would survive if they had to grow their own food, produce their own clothes, or depend on themselves for all their needs?”
This is a very good question which I believe you and I both know the same answer.
For I live in a state, Oregon, where the populations of two cities and their suburbs control what state government does. I grew up on a farm but after I was 21 I have lived in ‘cities’ of modest populations. But I have avoided living in a city (or its suburbs) of near a million people. But I am aware that even third world countries likely have a city with a population of more than a million people who depend upon the people well outside their city for nearly all their basic needs of food, clothing, and shelter.
And I ask: Do these people of the cities really appreciate what these few people outside the city are doing for them in the city? I do not observe much evidence that these city people appreciate the actual physical labor required to produce the natural products needed for these city people to survive from one year to the next.
I have read at one time and for many centuries of the past that a majority (more than 50%) of the world’s people were farmers. Now, I read that in developed countries that only a few percent of the population are farmers. Which obviously do not have much representation in the politics which control their very critical occupation.
So if the people of the cities begin to starve for one reason or another, who is the blame? The Egyptian’s learned to store up food during times of plenty to be able to eat during times of drought over which they and we have little control. Except, there are a couple of countries of our world that have the great majority of the world’s population. And this is a much greater problem if there is a decade of the ‘dirty 30’s’ which has occurred and could maybe occur again.
For humans cannot control the weather and it is the weather, and not the climate, which is the critical factor.
Have a good day, Jerry
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