Britain's Weather and Global Warming

This is primarily a response to "Global Warming Hysteria: 2000–English Children Will Not Know Snow–2010: Oops, Nevermind!" by Wesley J. Smith.

As part of his ongoing critique of Anthropogenic Global Warming* (AGW), Mr. Smith unearthed a claim by Dr. David Viner that snow in England is soon to be a thing of the past--in 2000. If you've been following the weather in the UK recently, you'd know that this is a bit off.

The Prediction

What was Dr. Viner's prediction, exactly? First he's quoted as saying that snow will become "a very rare and exciting event," to the point children don't know what snow is. This claim would seem to be a bit of an overreach, given the recent weather.

His other prediction is that snow will become catastrophic when it does happen by around 2020, ostensibly because the UK will have lost the ability to deal with snow and because snow will become more extreme when it finally does arrive.

Paging Dr. Viner

I decided to look into Dr. Viner's research. Aside from a snippet in a 1999 report on climate change's effects on tourism across the world ( PDF), little of his peer-reviewed research relates to his prediction for declining snowfall in the UK. The report speaks rather generally, saying that warming could negatively impact snow cover in Scotland, hurting the skiing industry. Then it has this on page 26:

" ...The early years of global warming might lead to an increase in snow days, provided that the warming in winter is small enough to maintain sub-zero temperatures (Palutikof, 1999)."

This leads me to think his statements predicting a quick decline might have been him misspeaking, or the journalist misunderstanding. Of course, he may have changed his mind about a short-term increase in snow days, but it seems odd it wasn't mentioned in the article.

Interesting was this article on last winter, which was similarly cold. Dr. Viner stuck to his prediction, saying that snow will soon be on the decline. Basically, he admits he was wrong about the timescale, but not the overall trend.

The main explanation for the cold weathers seems to be Arctic Oscillation (AO), explained in this New York Times article and halfway through this NOAA essay. So there are reasons the overall warming trend would be overcome and we'd see harsh winters, even as the planet as a whole continues to warm. These may have already been consider by Dr. Viner, given the quote above, even if that possibility didn't make it into the 2000 article.

The Larger Picture

2010 was the warmest on record, according to NOAA and the Independent. The past decade as a whole was also increasingly warm--see this graph by NASA. Even if the cause isn't agreed upon, the earth's warming seems to be well-supported by the available data.

Mr. Smith was correct in pointing out that ten years on, Dr. Viner's prediction has not come true. However, because the AO is a temporary phenomenon, Dr. Viner's prediction taken broadly remains plausible, even if he was wrong about how soon it would happen. Therefore this incident could be taken to indicate "hysteria," but it really says little about AGW as a theory since Dr. Viner over-extended himself when making the initial claim. That and the possibility Dr. Viner's predictions were misrepresented means this is hardly the smoking gun Mr. Wesley wants readers to think it is.