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Over Half a Century of Length-of-Snow-Season Data for Northern Eurasia
Reference
Ye, H. and Ellison, M.  2003.  Changes in transitional snowfall season length in northern Eurasia.  Geophysical Research Letters 30: 10.1029/2003GL016873.

What was done
For the period 1936/37-1994/95, the authors used data from "the Historical Soviet Daily Snow Depth CD version II, compiled and quality-controlled by the National Snow and Ice Data Center" to determine the first and last dates of continuous snow cover over northern Eurasia from approximately 43 to 73°N, as well as the lengths of the spring and fall transitional snowfall seasons, when the ground is less than fully covered by snow.

What was learned
In the words of the authors, they first determined that "the length of continuous snow cover has increased about 4 days/decade over northern European Russia and over small areas of western and central Siberia, but decreased about 2 days/decade over some areas of southern and southeastern Siberia."  Second, they learned that "the transitional snowfall season has increased in both spring and fall with the most significant increases occurring in spring over southeastern Siberia."  Hence, the overall result for the entire study area was an increase in the lengths of all three snow-cover seasons: the continuous snow-cover season and the fall and spring transitional snow-cover seasons.

What it means
Contrary to climate-alarmist predictions of decreases in Northern Hemispheric snow-cover in response to global warming, just the opposite has been observed across northern Eurasia from the mid-1930s to the mid-1990s.


Reviewed 25 June 2003