High on the Hog interim snow depth report

As of 1 PM or so, our weather station in Ranson WV reports 15 inches, the Greenbelt station 11 7/8 inches, and the Southern Md station 12 inches.

More reports later. All stations report snow continuing to fall heavily.

No Sunspots for 13 days

Twice this year the Sun has made a feeble attempt to resume the solar cycle. Both times the sunspots fizzled. We now have had no sunspots for 13 days.

I predict we are going to have a cold, cold winter. This past October was said to have been one of the coldest on record. The recent snowfall in Louisiana is said to have been the season's earliest on record.

Buy some long underwear. Stock up on wood as a backup for your regular heat. Buy a generator in case an ice storm knocks out the power. Propane generators are best because of the storeability of the fuel. I have the generator, but haven't done the electrical hookup.

Climate change

Anyone who thinks there is a consensus on global warming should read this BBC article. Also interesting is that spaceweather.com says that on 78% of the days this year the sun has been free of sunspots. That is not exactly a resounding endorsement of a resumption of the standard solar cycle. As I've been saying all along: I don't know what is going to happen.

Arctic ice cover

A graph of ice cover in the arctic during the month of May for a range of years is available. The data and graph are from the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Whether the recent upward trend will continue is unknown. By fall we should have a better idea.

Our Somewhat inactive Sun

Sunspots have finally returned to the Sun after a long absence. There had been concern that the recent prolonged absence might mean the start of centuries long inactivity such as the Maunder minimum of the past that was associated with severely cold weather.

Even with the return of spots, the now commenced Sunspot Cycle 24 is predicted to be weak with relatively fewer spots. That might mean some cooling influence, or, maybe not. If there is any cooling influence it is unclear at the present time whether that will offset the warming influence of increased CO2.

Climate predictions are difficult due to the complexity of the many effects from physical, astrophysical, geomagnetic, solar, biological aerosols, clouds, particulates, biological and soil surface reflections, and anthropogenic pollutant influences. Climate modelers try their best to take it all into account, but the biological influences on the climate are near impossible to model, in part, because the climate influences the biology ! As someone who has done his share of computer modeling, I don't have a lot of confidence in it. As one British scientist put it, it is time to abandon a consensus prediction on the climate. We don't know.

If you would like to keep track of space weather, including sunspots see this link to space weather.

Y2K bug strikes 9 years later

It seems that some of the alleged global warming can be attributed to a Y2K bug in software of sensors that gathered data circa 2000. Here is a link to this bizarre basis for a multi-trillion dollar policy decision based on a computer programming bug.

This is not to say there might not be other data that support global warming. It might exist.

Climate data from Accokeek

For 30 years or so, Lona and I have kept a diary in which I usually record leaf budding in Spring, and leaf fall in the Fall. If anyone would like to transcribe this onto a spreadsheet and graph it, let me know. I'll bet it shows some climate change.

I'm not convinced about the icecover in the Arctic though. A NASA contractor who obviously wanted to keep his contract said that ice-cover 2008-2009 was the fifth thinnest in the last six years. Talk about "spin". Another way to put it is that this year was the second thickest in six years. In other words, the ice is getting thicker recently. But that would go against Hanson's biases in the propaganda department. Objectivity in science is best.