New paper shows significant natural climate change from ocean oscillations

A paper published online today in the journal Geophysical Research Letters finds a strong influence of shifts in the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) on changes in snow cover of the distant Tibetan Plateau over the past 200 years. Major shifts occurred in the 1840s, 1880s, 1920s, and 1960s with CO2 levels well below Hansen's fictitious "safe limit" of 350 ppm. Ocean oscillations such as the AMO are not incorporated in climate models, but nonetheless have large effects upon climate change as demonstrated by this paper and others. Meanwhile, the IPCC claims they can't explain climate change based on natural forces, allows no competing hypotheses, and thus proclaims man-made CO2 as the default climate control knob, while conveniently ignoring ocean oscillations and other natural influences. Although ocean oscillations are poorly understood and scant research is being done to understand this large natural climate forcing, the IPCC and fellow alarmists cannot rightfully claim that only man-made CO2 explains climate change over the past century.

The paper also finds not surprisingly that cold phases are associated with more snow and warm phases with less snow, making a mockery of the claims of Jeff Masters, Mark "death spiral" Serreze, Al Gore and others that warming causes more snowfall.

The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) follows a quasi-60-year cycle

GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 38, L10703, 4 PP., 2011

Decadal variability in snow cover over the Tibetan Plateau during the last two centuries

Key Points

• Coherent variability in ice cores can be considered as a proxy for snow cover  
• This proxy for snow cover over the TP exhibits significant decadal variations  
• Its variations are highly associated with AMO

Caiming Shen
Atmospheric Sciences Research Center, State University of New York, Albany, New York, USA

Wei-Chyung Wang
Atmospheric Sciences Research Center, State University of New York, Albany, New York, USA

Gang Zeng
Atmospheric Sciences Research Center, State University of New York, Albany, New York, USA

Based on the coherency in decadal variability between the ice core data and the observed snow cover over the Tibetan Plateau during recent decades, we used three available ice core data to characterize the snow cover variability of the last 200 years. The analysis suggests that the snow cover exhibits significant decadal variability with major shifts around 1840s, 1880s, 1920s, and 1960s. Its variations are found to be closely correlated with the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation: Cool/warm phases coincide with large/small snow cover. A plausible mechanism linking the North Atlantic climate to Asian monsoon is presented.