Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
The abstract of a new study from Science Magazine entitled “The Unusual Nature of Recent Snowpack Declines in the North American Cordillera”, Gregory Pederson et al., 9 June 2011 (paywalled, all data available here, figures here, overview here) opens by saying:
In western North America snowpack has declined in recent decades, and further losses are projected through the 21st century.
The abstract goes on to describe their findings:
Over the past millennium, late-20th century snowpack reductions are almost unprecedented in magnitude across the northern Rocky Mountains, and in their north-south synchrony across the cordillera.
Figure 1. The future of skiing in the North American Rocky Mountains? Eric Lon, rock skiing
And the culprit, the Grinch stealing the white Christmas? Why, us fools who ate the fossil-fuel-fertilized apple and got ourselves thrown out of climate Eden, of course. Or in their words,
Both the snowpack declines and their synchrony result from unparalleled springtime warming due to positive reinforcement of the anthropogenic warming by decadal variability.
First, kudos to the authors for archiving their data and meta-data at the time of the publication of their work. This is an excellent example of providing the necessary information so that others can investigate their results.
Now, about those results …
I’ve mentioned that the first thing that I want to look at is the actual data. While they didn’t exactly provide that, they did provide the standardized data for the two regions that they studied, the “Northern Cordillera” and the “Southern Cordillera”. (To “standardize” data, it is adjusted so that the average is zero and the standard deviation is 1. This allows the comparison of dissimilar datasets.)
In this case, the data that they used was the April snow water equivalent, or SWE. The SWE is how many inches of water you get when you melt a column of snow. Use of the SWE avoids the problem that different kinds of snow have different thicknesses, as some are fluffy and light and others are wet and heavy. Figures 2 and 3 show their standardized SWE results.
Figure 2. Pederson 2011 individual and average April snow water equivalent (SWE) for the northern part of the Rocky Mountains. Data Source (Excel, worksheet “HUC6 Observed SWE”)
Figure 3. Pederson 2011 individual and average April snow water equivalent (SWE) for the southern part of the Rocky Mountains. Data Source (Excel, worksheet “HUC6 Observed SWE”)
Well … I looked at that and I thought “western North American snowpack has declined in recent decades”? Really? I thought “unprecedented reductions”?!?
I thought, well, maybe we’re not talking about the same thing. Maybe the actual snowpack records show something different, something unprecedented, some big decline in recent decades. So I went to the NRCS SNOTEL records and got the data for Colorado. I averaged it by year and month, and calculated the average April Colorado SWE data to compare with the Pederson 2011 Southern Cordillera data (where Colorado is located.) Figure 4 shows how well they match the Pederson data.
Figure 4. Comparison of the SWE records for Colorado (SNOTEL figures) and the Southern Cordillera (Pedersen 2011 figures).
So we are definitely talking about the same thing …
OK, I thought, that’s it. I’m blowing the whistle. According to both their figures and the SNOTEL figures, there’s no “late twentieth century decline” in snowfall in either the Northern or the Southern Cordillera. That’s hype, and their own data says so. This is particularly true when the more recent data is included (blue line). For unspecified reasons their data ends in 2006. Since then, the snowfalls have generally increased.
Once again, the AGW proponents haven’t even begun to show that anything out of the usual is occurring. Instead they’ve jumped directly to explaining the cause of something that they haven’t yet shown to exist.
In other words, another day, another alarmist exaggeration. Don’t you love how well peer review is working at Science Magazine for climate articles? Oh, well, I suppose the good news is that it results in a target-rich environment, makes my job easy … but the bad news is that we all lose when this kind of alarmism is published as though it were science.
w.
PS – There’s other issues in this. They say that they can reconstruct historical snowpack from tree rings … hmmmm, where have I heard something like that before? And if they can do such reconstructions, their results don’t show an unprecedented decline in the late 20th century. Instead, they show a decline starting about 1880 or so, and only in the more northern regions.
But that’s all raw meat for someone else to chew on … I’ve seen enough of this study.
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Never ceases to amaze me how rot like this gets published. And these rags like Science and Nature get away with being called ” high impact ” journals.
The Innuit have, I think, 350 words for snow. This prompts me to think that SWE for one type of snow will be different from another. So, is SWE an adequate scientific measure regardless of how or when it is used. Also without some idea as to which type of snow is in a particular place it will be impossible to ascribe an accurate SWE.
This spring has seen near record flooding in the Mississippi basin, surely an indicator of snow pack increase. I also know that this May has seen the Rockey Mountain NP failing to open due to snow. Well I can tell you that three years ago I tried to drive that NP in May and it was closed due to snow. The locals all said that a May opening was more wishful thinking rather than fact. Late May/ June was opening time.
Observation would seem to show that reduced snow is not true.
How odd of them to satisfy every reader. Those predisposed to accept AGW need read only the abstract, find it agreeable, and generate fresh journalistic references to a recent study confirming warming trends. The amateur skeptic, by definition, looks a bit beyond and, finding no real support, is happily incensed at the probable fraud. Those prepared to dig in – ones with the chops to break out and mine the data sets – enjoy the satisfaction of demolishing ‘what is claimed’. Pleasure all around. 😉
I think they had a story on NPR yesterday (June 10 2011) about this. They said something like it would seem odd that in a year with record snowfall and rivers are flooding due to the melt that this paper would show the opposite trend. But they emphasized that its not what happens in a given year but over decades. In other words: don’t believe your lying eyes!
Good job, but of course we knew this was just one of the many alarmist fiction stories.
“further losses are projected through the 21st century”
Won’t these clapped out chiselers ever learn?
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/11/2000-forecast-snowfall-to-disappear-from-the-uk/
This is the equivalent to releasing a story that snowfall will become a distant memory in the middle of a snowstorm. It will mostly damage the credibility of the organization who wrote the article. Does Willis really want folks like these with such incredibly bad timing to stop?
I just drove from Kansas to Seattle and back. Every stream, creek and river I crossed is out of its banks. Some of the communities along the way are sand bagging in anticipation of snowmelt further increasing flood levels. As a displaced Louisiana Boy, I sent warnings to my friends back home: The Father of Waters is gona be high for a while yet.
This is an unscientific observation I have made. And. It is no longer the “Late 20th century”.
They have hidden the decline well … du-duh…
The SWE really is quite impressive this year and I reckon there will still be significant accumulations persisting at the end of the summer: http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2011/06/10/where-snows-dont-melt/
Yes it is just one year, and this is just weather, but it will be very interesting to see the figures for 2011 compare with the data above at the end of the season. If you take Figure 4, the April data for 2011 the Lake Powell catchment is not all that impressive – 66% of normal, but as of 5th June was up to 278% of normal.
warmist papers and blogs are wrong, misleading or dishonest. that’s the “null hypothesis” post-Trenberth.
Is there no tipping point where the weight of this, (how shall i describe it?)
Ah yes, excellent first class scientific whats-a-name stuff …..
Is there no tipping point when all and sundry, even the MSN and the politicians call “enough’s enuff”?
Surely we have had as much garbage as it is necessary or decent to be published in the 21st century?
I wonder what the public makes of drivel like that? You have these outlandish predictions in print and you look outside to see massive amounts of snow slathered over the peaks.
Well, there has been some warming in West North Central region, in the spring. NOAA shows 1.7 deg F per century. But the long term spring precipitation is up, barely, at 0.2 inches per century. (going from 1895 to 2011 for both temp and precip)
Annual temps and precip are similar. Winter temps and precip are up slightly for the former, and down slightly for the latter (at 0.02 inches per decade)
As for why they only used data to 2006? If I was cynical, I would say that its because the precip in 4 of the last 5 years was above average (ending in 2011), while ending in 2006 gives 10 out 11 previous years below average.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/wn.html
Breaking news:
TORRENTIAL rains combined with melting snow have caused devastating floods across central Norway, washing away several houses and roads and causing landslides.
It took them 4 years to write the paper?! Of course they can say there’s a decline. They just cherry pick the right start year. Some time in the seventies looks about right. Then ignore the last 4……
This might be a better resource for regional temps and precip.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/regional.html
two words describe this paper…..
alarmist poppycock !
it’s really sad that these folk are actually getting paid for this ‘research’ which clearly, any idiot can do it in a relatively short timescale!
(No, I am not suggesting Willis is an idiot – but it looks like he debunked it in a couple of hours of work! – well done Willis.)
Looking at Figure 4: If by “late 20th Century”, they mean 1980 – 2000, there is some merit in their claim, if you take “late 20th Century” to mean 1960 -2000, there is no merit in their claim. It is also apparent that the 21st Century to date shows an “almost unprecedented increase”.
Lies, damn lies and statistics!
burnside says:
June 11, 2011 at 3:52 am
Sad to say, but you might have found the actual formula. The article is (nothing but) cleverly concealed pleasure for everyone and, for that reason, everyone wants to read it. Science magazines (glossies) are just struggling for more readers in a turbulent environment. Maybe Lindzen could benefit from your insights. “It was the worst of environments; it was the best of environments.”
This is the disconnect. The people near those areas know deep down that it’s alarmism or at worse straight out deception and lies. This year has seen massive dumpings of snow.
Here’s my answer to the wild-eyed environmentalists……As we know, the use of ground source heat pumps and all kinds of other methods for pulling heat out of the earth are increasing in use. This no doubt is due to all those wonderful programs that promote their use by paying a significant portion of the costs (since otherwise they wouldn’t be justified). If thermal energy trapped below the crust of the Earth is released into our atmosphere at an ever increasing rate, won’t that hit a tipping point that will cause global temperatures to rise wildly? Why not? By comparison to coal and gas, if CO2 is released during combustion, plant life will absorb it and grow bigger, more and healthier plants that benefit the planet….and ultimately is fully sustainable since it creates a new source of fuel. What does a general increase in thermal releases of heat do to our atmosphere other than raise the temperatures? And how sustainable is it to deplete the core of its earth of all that thermal energy? Who has a handle on the heat balance equations for this one? Who has done the global environmental assessment? Is this really an environmentally sound ‘solution’ if practised on a massive scale? And once temperatures have risen from all this heat transferred to the surface of the Earth, how does one propose to cool it back down again? [Anthony…. how does one put a ‘sarcasm alert’ on their posts?]
Can someone explain how tree rings can be a proxy for snow depth when trees arn’t growing in winter?
I thought global warming meant an increase in snow or is that a decrease? These alarmists have their knickers (panties for US readers) in a twist. R. Gates, I need you here.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2011/06/06/3236548.htm
and here in OZ where it is cold and wet and wintery. then again I must admit the extra warmth has caused the cooling. ( yuk, puke)
regards