Internal Strife At NOAA?

NOAA announced last year that the snow had no human fingerprint, but two weeks ago James Overland at NOAA said just the opposite.

Is severe winter weather related to global warming?
Monday, February 7, 2011; 2:56 PM

Over the past two years, the polar vortex has been strikingly unstable, according to meteorological data. James Overland of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration cites a couple of measures in particular: One, called the Arctic oscillation, tracks air pressure and related atmospheric variables over the North Pole. The other, the North Atlantic oscillation, takes into account similar variables in the neighborhood of Iceland. Both indexes are reliable indicators of the strength of the polar vortex.

Last winter, both indexes reflected higher air pressures and therefore less vortex stability than scientists have ever recorded. This year, both were again seriously off-kilter.

Any number of meteorological factors contributed to those anomalies. Some were undoubtedly random, Overland says. But he and other experts suspect climate change is contributing to the unusual pattern, and if they’re right, things could get a whole lot worse in the years ahead.

The root of the problem, Overland says, is melting sea ice. Sea ice forms in the Arctic Ocean during the cold, dark days of fall and winter and hangs around, melting slowly but not completely vanishing, throughout the summer. In recent years, more sea ice has melted during the warm months than can be replenished during the chillier ones.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/

In 2004, Overland blamed the lack of snow on global warming:

When scientists trained their analytical tools on the North Pole and its environs, they quantified the local knowledge: The polar ice cap is 40 percent thinner and millions of acres smaller than it was in the 1970s.

What happens at the North Pole can affect the rest of the planet, potentially altering the course of the Gulf Stream, which moderates climate from the East Coast of the United States to the British Isles. Closer to home, the jet stream that dictates much of Seattle’s weather can be diverted when the polar vortex speeds up.

“It’s probably contributing to the fact that it’s warmer and we’ve been getting less snow,” Overland said.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001910590_northpole23m.html

About Tony Heller

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10 Responses to Internal Strife At NOAA?

  1. MikeTheDenier says:

    WOW. Who woulda thunk!!!!!!

    SEC Charges Seven in Global Warming Pump-and-Dump Scheme

    Washington, D.C., Feb. 18, 2011 — The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged a group of seven individuals who perpetrated a fraudulent pump-and-dump scheme in the stock of a sham company that purported to provide products and services to fight global warming.

    http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2011/2011-46.htm

  2. suyts says:

    This is probably a case of someone being on vacation for a week or so and didn’t read all of their e-mails regarding marching orders and meme of the week.

    I’m sure the snow is a very dry snow of the wet nature.

  3. Baa Humbug says:

    So James Overland believes black can be white, up can be down and cold can be warm.

    Two can play at that game….

    James Overland is truthful or is a liar
    James overland is honest or is a fraudster
    James Overland earns his paypacket or is a carpetbagger
    James Overland knows all or is full of $hit

    as soon as i adjust my computer modelling, I’ll narrow down the answers for you all.

  4. JoeFromEveryWhere says:

    Dear Professor Overland, as a scientist, please qualify “worse” and quantify “years ahead “.

  5. Mervyn Sullivan says:

    Do you notice how these sorts of studies keep revealing “a human fingerprint”… yet they never provide any empirical evidence proving that carbon dioxide emissions from human activity is the cause of their claims?

    The IPCC blames human CO2 emissions for causing catastrophic global warming. It IPCC tells us that 3% of the CO2 that enters the atmosphere each year is from human activity and the remaining 97% is from natural sources (e.g. oceans; volcanic activity; animals and bacteria; etc).

    So how do the James Overlands of this world explain why it is only the 3% of CO2 emissions from human activity that is so very dangerous to planet earth, but yet they do not consider the 97% of CO2 that is from natural sources to be dangerous at all?

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