muikabochi 208 Posted February 7, 2008 Share Posted February 7, 2008 I'm pretty sure that until recently during winter we used to get lots of snowfall overnight. I remember so many times clearing 40cm, 50cm of snow off the top of my car in a morning. This season, I haven't had to do that once. I think the most I have moved in a morning is 20cm and that was probably only once. (A sign that we don't have as much as usual I suppose). But apart from that, this season the snow seems to start falling early morning (7am, 8am) rather than overnight. The number of times that we have had anything like decent snow overnight is few and the times we have had the semi-decent snowfall I recall it being during the daytime. I'm sure this is different from how things used to be in the good old days of massive snowfalls. Is there any explanation for that? Link to post Share on other sites
snowdude 44 Posted February 7, 2008 Share Posted February 7, 2008 Yes! Link to post Share on other sites
muikabochi 208 Posted February 7, 2008 Author Share Posted February 7, 2008 Oh right, great, cheers for that. Link to post Share on other sites
Yuki's Passion 1 Posted February 7, 2008 Share Posted February 7, 2008 >Is there any explanation for that? thats an interesting assessment muika. I wouldnt know because I dont live in the mountains like you do. When I was in Hiroshima, out in Geihoku, my friends out there used to say "we used to only be able to travel by snowmobile when the snow came" or "it used to pile up the side of the house." Now, they dont get much snow at all out there compared with a decade or 2,3, ago... my climatology minor right now is failing me Link to post Share on other sites
snowdude 44 Posted February 7, 2008 Share Posted February 7, 2008 LOL, sorry couldn't help myself there. Actually I believe it is to do with the air currents, sucking in less moisture over the Japan sea side and instead sucking more up over the east side from the continent, hence east side is getting a lot more snow than usual. Last autumn I mentioned that this winter would be a cold one and snowy, which it has been, much colder over this side compared to usual and a lot more snowy too. I think in general everywhere has been colder this year, compared to other years, so far. Also as you know we have this so called global warming, which is surely contributing to this problem, but that is not the main course of the unusual weather around the world. There is another thing that I believe is the main coarse of the change in weather, but not going to say anything about that yet. Link to post Share on other sites
Yuki's Passion 1 Posted February 7, 2008 Share Posted February 7, 2008 yeah, but more falling during the day recently than at night? Rather than vice versa? I dont see the difference, but am curious as to why that is... Link to post Share on other sites
HelperElfMissy 42 Posted February 7, 2008 Share Posted February 7, 2008 Originally Posted By: snowdude Also as you know we have this so called global warming, which is surely contributing to this problem, but that is not the main course of the unusual weather around the world. There is another thing that I believe is the main coarse of the change in weather, but not going to say anything about that yet. Now I am REALLY interested. Global warming and it's causes are often in hot debate - interesting to hear all the different thoughts on the issue...but something else entirely...I am very curious! Personally I would love it if it dumped all night and then cleared up through the day ... imagine all the great pics you could get without battling low light, and snow in the camera! Shame it seems to be trending in the opposite direction for you. Link to post Share on other sites
Go Native 70 Posted February 7, 2008 Share Posted February 7, 2008 Check out the Japan Meteorological Agency website. They have climate data going back decades for many cities and towns throughout Japan. There are cycles in weather, for instance in Australia there was a peak in snowfalls from the mid '50's to mid 60's. If you look at a graph of average snowfalls there from the '50's to now there has been a dramatic decrease in average snowfall. But if you were to look at a graph of snowfall from the very early 1900's there is barely any discernable long term trend. I majored in meteorology at uni and still take a very active interest in all things weather related. The one thing I have learned over the years is that in general people have very short or selective memories when it comes to weather and you can't really trust what people say the weather used to be like. I say this because of the amount of times I've found the data doesn't match up with verbal accounts. Link to post Share on other sites
mofofunc 0 Posted February 7, 2008 Share Posted February 7, 2008 I have an explanation. Ever since i was young, not matter where i was going for a holiday, the weather is the opposite to what it is meant to be where i am going. E.G: Camping at the beach - Raining and miserable. Season in canada - Worst snowfalls in a long time. Going to Japan for the first time - Not as big dumps as usuall. It's just not fair. Link to post Share on other sites
muikabochi 208 Posted February 7, 2008 Author Share Posted February 7, 2008 All I know is that in seasons past, I have often had to get up early to spend 30 minutes or so moving a ton of snow off the top of my car and around my car. I remember this because getting up early in a morning to move snow before going to work is not much fun. This season I have not had to do it once. (Or perhaps that was all just in my imagination). I also know that we have much less snow because I have taken photos each year and I can compare them through each season. That's all. Link to post Share on other sites
samurai 0 Posted February 7, 2008 Share Posted February 7, 2008 I didn't have to shovel once last winter. I have only had to shovel a few days this winter, and just light falls at that. There is still snow at upper elevations, however. All winters are different. Minnesota finally has a snowy and brutally cold winter like decades ago. Prior this winter, that last 7-9 years or so were incredibly mild, raising deer populations and destroying the snow-mobile market in that state. They went years without so much as a flake. Link to post Share on other sites
HelperElfMissy 42 Posted February 7, 2008 Share Posted February 7, 2008 GN - what an interesting subject to major in! I must admit at Uni days I didn't take much more interest in the weather than peeking out the window to see if it was t-shirt or pullover weather... but as I have gotten older I have really become interested in weather and climate. I have the Aussie BOM site as one of my favourites and check it daily at minimum - and I reckon if I lived in tornado territory I could be tempted to be a chaser - it fascinates me. I do hear you about long term patterns though - and I would be very interested to be looking not only over decades, but centuries as well. And perhaps we will find that the 'hottest January on record' and other such phenomena are actually normal when looked at over a longer period....?.. Mofofunk ... same principle applys that the day your car breaks down is the day you forget the mobile phone, or as happened to me in October - the very day you change handbags, and therefore have 2 expensive bags downstairs FULL of important and irreplaceable stuff you get broken into so that the burgler can get your hubby's car keys to steal his car...oh dear - Both handbags gone, BOTH sets of keys GONE - my car keys, his car keys, the house keys and more. Groan - also a cashed up wallet because I had just visited the atm, and of course missing brand new car. Now if he has just come calling the day before - one bag, empty wallet, one set of keys...ahhh welll...cest la vie! Link to post Share on other sites
soubriquet 0 Posted February 7, 2008 Share Posted February 7, 2008 Mamabear. A lot of very good science has been done in the field of palaeo-climatology. We have excellent proxy records of climate from some areas going back over 400,000 years. "In January 1998, the collaborative ice-drilling project between Russia, the United States, and France at the Russian Vostok station in East Antarctica yielded the deepest ice core ever recovered, reaching a depth of 3,623 m (Petit et al. 1997, 1999). Preliminary data indicate the Vostok ice-core record extends through four climate cycles, with ice slightly older than 400 kyr (Petit et al. 1997, 1999)." You can get the data here and model it for yourself if you like. http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/antarctica/vostok/vostok.html Claims of "hottest ever" can only be sustained when comparing over the past 1,000 years. Beyond that, they are demonstrably false. Link to post Share on other sites
HelperElfMissy 42 Posted February 7, 2008 Share Posted February 7, 2008 Thanks Soubs! I will check it out. Lucky I don't have to go back to work for another week - lots of great stuff to distract me from doing laundry! Link to post Share on other sites
soubriquet 0 Posted February 7, 2008 Share Posted February 7, 2008 You can generate something like this quite easily in Excel. What it shows is that extreme climate change is normal. If you plot it for yourself, it's interesting to expand the X-axis. This is from the IPCC report: http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/fig2-22.htm Link to post Share on other sites
snowdude 44 Posted February 7, 2008 Share Posted February 7, 2008 Oh great stuff, this backs up what I want to say, I looked at some stuff earlier too. Actually I have contacted a few weeks ago and will be contacting some other climatoligists, etc to discuss my theory, to see if there is any interest. Not sure if I will get any replys but I will try. Then I may talk about it on here, because this is a really interesting topic for me and something that I want to help with. If what I think is right the earth will be getting colder, not warmer and we are nearing the peak for high temps on earth. Link to post Share on other sites
Go Native 70 Posted February 8, 2008 Share Posted February 8, 2008 muikabochi I wasn't trying to infer that your observations are incorrect. Within the space of 10 years or so (not sure how long you have lived there) you will always get variations in the weather from year to year. Whether it is indicative of a longer term trend, for instance towards less snowfall, you would need to look at many decades worth of data to get any sort of indication. As I pointed out with Aussie snowfall data if you asked those who skied in the '50's and 60's then they would tell you that snowfall had decreased dramatically but if you talked to those who skied in the 10's, 20's and 30's (if any are left alive) you would get a different story. Some variation over a few years doesn't tell us anything about any climatic trend. There's a lot of debate these days about just how much of a role humans play in affecting the climate. Soubs graph above shows fairly convincingly that high CO2 concentrations leads to a warmer climate. So it's feasible to entertain the idea that we are artificially keeping the atmosphere warmer than it may currently otherwise be. But there are also other forces at play that have nothing to do with humans, hence the dramatic variations in climate in ages past. It does appear from the graph that we are overdue for another cooling period. Here's hoping! Link to post Share on other sites
NoFakie 45 Posted February 8, 2008 Share Posted February 8, 2008 I've not noticed much about when it snows. On the climate change issue though, I think it doesn't matter so much how hot or cold it was way back when, because the Earth didn't have to support the human population it does today. Mass migration in response to regional changes is no longer a realistic option either. Link to post Share on other sites
HelperElfMissy 42 Posted February 8, 2008 Share Posted February 8, 2008 Yes, all very important pieces of the puzzle, huh! One of the articles that I read from the link Soubs posted suggested that while a warming cycle is normal, about 50% of the current warming cycle seems to be due to human activity, rather than just regular climactic varience - and that it translates to about a 3 degree higher global temperature overall currently than if there was no human related global warming. This translates to higher snowlines for snow area's amongst other things. I, too, am cheering for a cooling cycle - it is certainly due. I wonder if the cooling cycle will come but just not be so dramatic due to human effects... or if we have really stuffed it and the cooling cycle has been interrupted entirely... Muikabochi, do you use a diary? If you are really keen to acurately keep track of snow behaviour in your area you could start tracking it in a diary. A simple thing can give a lot of info when done for a long time. My eldest boy is part of the Raine Study - a longitudinal study that has been tracking him since I was 12 weeks pregnant. They have already found out a lot just by studying these kids for 16 years. Link to post Share on other sites
soubriquet 0 Posted February 8, 2008 Share Posted February 8, 2008 My No1 job is to clear the property before start of business. I've been out early clearing overnight snow enough times this winter to enjoy the mornings when I can return to bed and lie in. On climate change it is very important to distinguish between the science on one hand and the politics and economics on the other. The science shows quite clearly that we live in an ice age (The Quaternary (4-2 million years ago to now)). During The Quaternary radical climate change between glacial and interglacial events is entirely normal. Changes in atmospheric CO2 and CH4 concentrations strongly corellate with the calculated temperature changes. De-glaciations happened very rapidly possibly in less than 1000 years. Sea levels fluctuated by between 120 and 180 metres over similar time scales. All this is normal Earth behaviour. The fauna and flora which couldn`t deal with change became extinct. Those familiar with summer holidays at the North Sea may be amused to know that during The Cromerian the beach at Cromer was once a forest populated with elephant hippo and crocodiles. We know this as fact because we can dig their bones out of the base of the cliff. Now try to convince me that last summer was North Norfolk`s "EVER". Humans have only been around in significant numbers during the Holocene. How we migrate and adapt to climate change is entirely political and economic. It`s going to be painful. What the science says is that change will happen like it or not. Link to post Share on other sites
muikabochi 208 Posted February 8, 2008 Author Share Posted February 8, 2008 Interesting stuff, thanks. mamabear - no I don't keep a diary. (To be frank, I suppose I'm not interested enough to go that far). Yesterday though I took a look back over my emails to my parents from 2 seasons ago - as far as those records show (and they are not complete of course), there were at least 15 mornings when there was over 30cm of new snow outside and I had to go out shovelling and moving snow before work. That's compared to 0 so far this season. I suppose my main point of the thread was lost a bit. That point being not "there's less snow than there used to be", but "it doesn't seem to snow loads overnight like it used to". That's the point that I found most curious. Link to post Share on other sites
soubriquet 0 Posted February 8, 2008 Share Posted February 8, 2008 Mea culpa! I understand your point, but I think your observation may be more to do with the amount than the timing. I haven't had to go out in the morning and search for my car for the past two seasons, but I'm probably out clearing overnight snow 2 mornings in 3. It's just that I'm clearing 20cm instead of 50. Link to post Share on other sites
muikabochi 208 Posted February 8, 2008 Author Share Posted February 8, 2008 Well, I can only think of 3 mornings when we have had ANYTHING overnight, let alone 20cm..... and when it has snowed it has been in the daytime. Anyway, it is obviously a very boring topic so I'll leave it alone now! You just must be getting much more overnight snow than me. Link to post Share on other sites
muikabochi 208 Posted February 8, 2008 Author Share Posted February 8, 2008 Originally Posted By: snowdude Last autumn I mentioned that this winter would be a cold one and snowy, which it has been, much colder over this side compared to usual and a lot more snowy too. But before I go. Where I live? Not a cold one, generally very mild and much less snowy too. (Unless I'm imagining it of course) Link to post Share on other sites
Tubby Beaver 209 Posted February 8, 2008 Share Posted February 8, 2008 Definitely much colder where I am, there has been visible snow accumulation on 3 different days, which is loads for the Shonan beach area of Kanagawa Link to post Share on other sites
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