A sudden blast of cold polar air accompanied by heavy precipitation led to heavy snowfall in the Alps at levels below 1600 meters. Read here (in German).
Snow falls in August under 1600 meters elevation in southern Germany.
Up to 35 cm of snow fell at some locations. Wetter.24 reports:
Low pressure system “Christine” delivered heavy rains in southern Germany and even the first snow in the Alps. Some passes in the Alps had to be closed. After steady snowfall, several Swiss Alp passes had to be closed for traffic on Friday evening. Streets around the Gotthard range were hit especially hard by the snowfall.”
Imagine the surprise of German vacationers returning from Italy over the Alps and being told to turn back because of snow in the summertime! Wetter.24 continues:
The snow line dropped from the northwest and then a cold polar air mass was fed down to the Alps region (see Figure 3).
Snow line at times at 1600 meters. On Friday it was already snowing at 2000 meters and during the past night the snow line dropped to 1600 meters, and even less at some localities, thus many peaks are now covered with a blanket of snow.
A total of 21 cm of snow fell on Säntis from Friday morning to Saturday morning. On the Zugspitze 45 cm was reported, of which 35 cm fell during the last 24 hours. The rest fell during the night of Thursday to Friday (see Fig. 4). In the figure it can be seen that especially the north side is hit by the first snowfall. It is however not unusual that winter shows up for the first time in the Alps at the end of August.”
Oh, now I get it: snowfalls and skiing are “rare and a thing of the past” only in the dead of winter. But snows in August, on the other hand, are completely normal?
Gee, climate science is making more and more sense with every passing day.
Finally, I was just sent the following chart depicting Germany’s summertime temperatures for the last 16 years.
Runaway warming? Looks like it ran away for good 10 years ago – and it’s not coming back. (Chart from Josef Kowatsch).
The snows were early last year as well. It may not be unusual but I hadnt noted it before last year going back just 10 years. So nothing in 8 yrs then 2 come along at once.
[…] “Thing Of The Past” Now A Thing Of August! Snow Blankets Alps Down To Less Than 1600 Meters!. Like this:LikeBe the first to like this. […]
http://www.planetski.eu/news/4139
“Most of it will melt pretty quickly, but it will have topped up the glaciers for those few people out for some later summer and autumn skiing.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=agGT9OppfW8#!
No, really, snowfalls are now just a….
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
4 day forecast of automated weather station on the Zugspitze, meteomedia, at 2960 m height.
http://wetterstationen.meteomedia.de/?station=109610&wahl=vorhersage
Snow cover world wide is decreasing. It is especially noticeable in the spring. This decreases albedo and increases absorbtion of the sunlight. So does a heavy snowfall during summer prove AGW is not valid?
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/images/indicators/snow-cover-extent.gif
We don’t have to prove CO2AGW is wrong. The CO2AGW proponents have to show that the null hypothesis is wrong. The last decade saw stable temperatures and rising CO2. This doesn’t fit the CO2AGW hypothesis and wasn’t predicted by any of the GCMs. Mathematical analysis finds that CO2 concentrations cannot Granger-cause the observed temperature variations. The statistical properties rule it out.
http://economics.huji.ac.il/facultye/beenstock/Nature_Paper091209.pdf
I am quite confident that you will ignor the science anyway. The IPCC is good enough for me.
The overwhelming majority of scientists in the world have agreed that the evidence is overwhelming humans are the cause of the warming.
This snowstorm is just cherry picking.
“The IPCC is good enough for me.”
It’s sure not good enough for me. I have higher standards than you. The IPCC wasn’t good enough for Dr. Landsea.
I get it that you don’t believe in AGW, probably a hoax in your mind. Yet there are over 6000 peer reviewed science papers showing AGW is real and actively effecting the earth now in 2005. It literally takes conspiracy thinking to create reasons not to believe them to be true.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report
IPCC Fourth Assessment Report
Climate Change 2007, the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is the fourth in a series of reports intended to assess scientific, technical and socio-economic information concerning climate change, its potential effects, and options for adaptation and mitigation. The report is the largest and most detailed summary of the climate change situation ever undertaken, produced by thousands of authors, editors, and reviewers from dozens of countries, citing over 6,000 peer-reviewed scientific studies.
The debate is about to what extent man impacts climate, and not whether it’s yes or no. Counting the number of peer review papers is a very uncscientific way of judging. The data on the other hand shows that natural factors have a major impact and that temperature is decoupled from CO2. Moreover, the IPCC 4AR claimed that the Himalyan glaciers would disappear by 2030 – so it is clearly a confused body of work. These arguments have been presented numerous times and I’m not willing to keep repeating them to people with major learning disabilities. It’s a waste of time.
The Himalayan glacier 2030 was a mistake that was corrected. The co2 link stands firmly in evidence. It does not matter what you believe. The earth’s surface is 70% water. Water vapor is avery powerful condensing GHG sustained by the noncondensable GHG’s mainly co2.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_feedback#Water_vapor_feedback
If the atmospheres are warmed, the saturation vapor pressure increases, and the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere will tend to increase. Since water vapor is a greenhouse gas, the increase in water vapor content makes the atmosphere warm further; this warming causes the atmosphere to hold still more water vapor (a positive feedback), and so on until other processes stop the feedback loop. The result is a much larger greenhouse effect than that due to CO2 alone. Although this feedback process causes an increase in the absolute moisture content of the air, the relative humidity stays nearly constant or even decreases slightly because the air is warmer.[38] Climate models incorporate this feedback. Water vapor feedback is strongly positive, with most evidence supporting a magnitude of 1.5 to 2.0 W/m2/K, sufficient to roughly double the warming that would otherwise occur.[52] Considered a faster feedback mechanism.[42]
“It literally takes conspiracy thinking to create reasons not to believe them to be true.”
For decades after Wegener proposed it, continental drift was looked at as a crazy theory.
You obviously have no understanding of physics if you think it adheres to majority opinion.
Please demonstrate the existence of positive water vapor feedback, Hint: It is a cornerstone of the CO2AGW religion.
I will let you demonstrate your scientific skill.