[Vision2020] Despite La Nina, Moscow's Meteorological Winter (Dec./Jan./Feb.) Saw Below Ave. Precipitation

[Ted Moffett]

Good grief!

You take the time and trouble to graph out precipitation data from
another website, yet you don't simply search the weather.com website
to find the info you ask for that is easy to find?

More head games, I guess...

WTF!

But I'll play along with your game...

Read at weather.com website the historical average precipitation for
each month of the year for Moscow, Idaho, showing Dec. at 3.14 inches,
Jan. at 2.99 inches and Feb. at 2.52 inches, for a total of 8.65
inches for the meteorological winter:
http://www.weather.com/outlook/driving/interstate/wxclimatology/monthly/graph/83843?s_oid=http://www.weather.com/outlook/driving/interstate/wxclimatology/monthly/graph/83843&s_oidt=0
---------------
As to differences between the weather data you offered and
weather.com, I have no clue.

Call NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.  Maybe climate
scientists Gavin Schmidt (
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/authors/gschmidt.html ) or James Hansen (
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/authors/jhansen.html ) can resolve the
discrepancy!

Just joking...

By the way, you might want to study this important research on climate
noted below from Goddard, from those climate science government funded
politically biased incompetents or frauds... (scathing sarcasm
scarcely disguised):

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20101014/

How Carbon Dioxide Controls Earth's Temperature
October 14, 2010

Water vapor and clouds are the major contributors to Earth's
greenhouse effect, but a new atmosphere-ocean climate modeling study
shows that the planet's temperature ultimately depends on the
atmospheric level of carbon dioxide.

The study, conducted by Andrew Lacis and colleagues at NASA's Goddard
Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York, examined the nature of
Earth's greenhouse effect and clarified the role that greenhouse gases
and clouds play in absorbing outgoing infrared radiation. Notably, the
team identified non-condensing greenhouse gases — such as carbon
dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone, and chlorofluorocarbons — as
providing the core support for the terrestrial greenhouse effect.

Without non-condensing greenhouse gases, water vapor and clouds would
be unable to provide the feedback mechanisms that amplify the
greenhouse effect. The study's results will be published Friday, Oct.
15, in Science.

A companion study led by GISS co-author Gavin Schmidt that has been
accepted for publication in the Journal of Geophysical Research shows
that carbon dioxide accounts for about 20 percent of the greenhouse
effect, water vapor and clouds together account for 75 percent, and
minor gases and aerosols make up the remaining five percent. However,
it is the 25 percent non-condensing greenhouse gas component, which
includes carbon dioxide, that is the key factor in sustaining Earth's
greenhouse effect. By this accounting, carbon dioxide is responsible
for 80 percent of the radiative forcing that sustains the Earth's
greenhouse effect.

The climate forcing experiment described in Science was simple in
design and concept — all of the non-condensing greenhouse gases and
aerosols were zeroed out, and the global climate model was run forward
in time to see what would happen to the greenhouse effect

Without the sustaining support by the non-condensing greenhouse gases,
Earth's greenhouse effect collapsed as water vapor quickly
precipitated from the atmosphere, plunging the model Earth into an
icebound state — a clear demonstration that water vapor, although
contributing 50 percent of the total greenhouse warming, acts as a
feedback process, and as such, cannot by itself uphold the Earth's
greenhouse effect.

"Our climate modeling simulation should be viewed as an experiment in
atmospheric physics, illustrating a cause and effect problem which
allowed us to gain a better understanding of the working mechanics of
Earth's greenhouse effect, and enabled us to demonstrate the direct
relationship that exists between rising atmospheric carbon dioxide and
rising global temperature," Lacis said.

The study ties in to the geologic record in which carbon dioxide
levels have oscillated between approximately 180 parts per million
during ice ages, and about 280 parts per million during warmer
interglacial periods. To provide perspective to the nearly 1°C (1.8°F)
increase in global temperature over the past century, it is estimated
that the global mean temperature difference between the extremes of
the ice age and interglacial periods is only about 5°C (9°F).

"When carbon dioxide increases, more water vapor returns to the
atmosphere. This is what helped to melt the glaciers that once covered
New York City," said co-author David Rind, of NASA's Goddard Institute
for Space Studies. "Today we are in uncharted territory as carbon
dioxide approaches 390 parts per million in what has been referred to
as the 'superinterglacial.'"

"The bottom line is that atmospheric carbon dioxide acts as a
thermostat in regulating the temperature of Earth," Lacis said. "The
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has fully documented the
fact that industrial activity is responsible for the rapidly
increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse
gases. It is not surprising then that global warming can be linked
directly to the observed increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide and to
human industrial activity in general."

References
Lacis, A.A., G.A. Schmidt, D. Rind, and R.A. Ruedy, 2010: Atmospheric
CO2: Principal control knob governing Earth's temperature Science,
330, 356-359, doi:10.1126/science.1190653.

Schmidt, G.A., R. Ruedy, R.L. Miller, and A.A. Lacis, 2010: The
attribution of the present-day total greenhouse effect. J. Geophys.
Res., 115, D20106, doi:10.1029/2010JD014287.

Related Links
Science Brief: The Thermostat that Controls Earth's Temperature

Science Brief: Taking the Measure of the Greenhouse Effect

Media Contact
Leslie McCarthy, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York,
N.Y., 212-678-5507, leslie.m.mccarthy at nasa.gov

This article was originally prepared by Kathryn Hansen as a NASA
Portal Looking at Earth news feature.
------------------------------------------
Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett

On 3/8/11, Paul Rumelhart <godshatter at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I went to the Weather Underground (www.wunderground.com), and grabbed
> data for the last ten years for precipitation for Moscow.  I've attached
> a graph of the total precipitation for Dec/Jan/Feb for those years.
>
> The WU site gives a total precipitation value of 6.97 inches for this
> year (Dec - Feb), which is somewhat lower than the 7.61 inches value you
> reported.  The average precipitation for the last ten years has been
> 5.02 inches according to the WU site data.  I don't know where
> weather.com is getting the 8.65 inches value from.  Are they using a
> different data set?  In fact, the maximum value in the last ten years
> (the only value higher than this year) occurred during the winter of
> 2003/04 and had a total of 8.24 inches.
>
> Can you give us the URL for the data you're looking at?  I'd like to
> find out why the data is so different between the two sites.
>
> Paul
>
> On 03/07/2011 11:42 AM, Ted Moffett wrote:
>> Total precipitation for Moscow, Idaho, according to weather.com, over
>> Dec./Jan./Feb. meteorological winter 2010-11, was 7.61 inches,
>> compared to a historical average of 8.65 inches.
>>
>> Feb. 2011 did barely exceed the historical average for Feb. monthly
>> precipitation, by .03 inch, with actual precipitation at 2.55 inch,
>> average at 2.52 inch.
>>
>> As is well known, La Nina in the Pacific in theory causes an increase
>> in precipitation for Northwest US winters.
>> ------------------------------------------
>> Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
>>
>>