Colbert Challenges Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, Considers CRU Crack

Stephen Colbert interviews Prof. Dan Esty of Yale on the upcoming Copenhagen Climate Conference, and discusses the email hack at the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Something Is Melting in Denmark - Dan Esty
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor U.S. Speedskating

More Winter Weather Outlooks

See here for other seasonal forecasts, including the current winter energy forecast.

Bob Ryan and his colleagues Veronica Johnson, Tom Kierein, and Chuck Bell at WRC-TV, Channel 4, give their 2009-2010 winter outlooks for Washington, DC. Bob's forecast: colder and snowier than average.




Howard Bernstein, Kim Martucci, and Topper Shutt at WUSA-9 are predicting near-average temperatures and above-average snowfall.

Toronto Sets November Snow Record

Toronto finished November 2009 without as much as a trace of snow. That's the first time in 70 years of official records that there has not been any snow in November. Unofficial records indicate that this may have broken a 162-year record. Average snowfall in Toronto for the month is 8 cm. (3.2").

Light snow was observed this morning from 3 to 5 am at Toronto's Pearson Airport.

Image (click to enlarge): Ski slope at Dagmar Ski Resort east of Toronto on November 30, from CTV

Syracuse Shatters Snowless Streak

Dec. 3 Update: The total December snowfall through 5 pm today is a trace. The forecast calls for a 40% or lower chance of snow showers through Tuesday (the 8th).

PM Update: Today's precipitation through 5 pm is 0.01" with a trace of snow. The next chance of snow showers is Thursday night into Friday, with increasing chances on Saturday.

Original post:
Here's a record that will be hard to break: Monday was the 279th consecutive day without an inch or more of snow in Syracuse, NY. The last time 1" fell was February 24. The old record was 276 days from February 28th through November 30, 1946. The third place record is 273 days from March 23 through December 21, 1998.

Average snowfall in Syracuse is 11.1" in November; the lowest amount was a trace in 1966 and 1998. This year's total of 0.6" is the fifth lowest since 1950. Records in Syracuse go back to 1902.

The latest forecast calls for snow showers with accumulations around an inch on Tuesday.

AMS Responds to Service-of-Denial Climate Hack

The American Meteorological Society (AMS) has issued a statement in response to the recent deniosphere blog storm over the theft and distribution of emails and documents from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia. The AMS reaffirms its commitment to its Statement on Climate Change, originally drafted in late 2006:

It was developed following a rigorous procedure that included drafting and review by experts in the field, comments by the membership, and careful review by the AMS Council prior to approval as a statement of the Society. The statement is based on a robust body of research reported in the peer-reviewed literature.

The AMS also points out that the artificial controversy generated by the out-of-context quoting of selected emails carries virtually no weight in light of the existing body of climate science:

For climate change research, the body of research in the literature is very large and the dependence on any one set of research results to the comprehensive understanding of the climate system is very, very small. Even if some of the charges of improper behavior in this particular case turn out to be true — which is not yet clearly the case — the impact on the science of climate change would be very limited.

The University of East Anglia updated its statement on the issue on Saturday.

The Economist has an analysis of the hack in its Nov. 26 edition: Mail-strom

Dr. Jeff Masters of Weather Underground relates the hack to the mud-slinging industry in his blog: The Manufactured Doubt industry and the hacked email controversy

Image: From The Economist

Chicago Climate Course

With the overwhelming quantity of global warming material on the Web, it's a lot of work to separate the Drudge Sludge from the Real Deal. CapitalClimate has a set of links to various climate tutorials and references in the left column of this page. A post today at RealClimate points out that David Archer of the University of Chicago has now uploaded video of his entire course called Global Warming. The course description:

This 10-week course for non-science majors focuses on a single problem: assessing the risk of human-caused climate change. The story ranges from physics to chemistry, biology, geology, fluid mechanics, and quantum mechanics, to economics and social sciences. The class will consider evidence from the distant past and projections into the distant future, keeping the human time scale of the next several centuries as the bottom line. The lectures follow a textbook, "Global Warming, Understanding the Forecast," written for the course.

The files are in Quicktime format (m4v), which should be iPod compatible.

New Satellite Data Contradict Antarctic Ice Loss Assumptions

Update: SkepticalScience puts some additional context on the new results:
East Antarctica is now losing ice

Original post:
A paper published online this week in the journal Nature Geoscience, "Accelerated Antarctic ice loss from satellite gravity measurements", shows increased rates of ice reduction in Antarctica. The data from the GRACE satellite confirmed earlier indications of ice loss in West Antarctica at the rate of 132 gigatonnes of ice per year. More surprising, however, was the result that East Antarctica, which had been considered stable, is also losing ice mass. The rate of decline in East Antarctica is estimated at 57 gigatonnes a year. The estimates, based on satellite data from 2002 to 2009, show the maximum loss rates in coastal areas.

Lead author Jianli Chen of the University of Texas Center for Space Research said:

While we are seeing a trend of accelerating ice loss in Antarctica, we had considered East Antarctica to be inviolate. But if it is losing mass, as our data indicate, it may be an indication the state of East Antarctica has changed. Since it's the biggest ice sheet on Earth, ice loss there can have a large impact on global sea level rise in the future.

Image (click to enlarge): GRACE estimate of Antarctic ice loss, from University of Texas at Austin Center for Space Research