Man made global warming gets blamed for a lot of things, but often when you look beyond the rhetoric that surrounds such blame, you find simpler answers, such as changes in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.
Mount Shuksan, in the Cascades photo by: Matt Leber
A new study from the University of Washington indicates that climate change may not be the reason snowpack is shrinking in the Cascade Mountains. The finding is in contrast with science and policy that have dominated the discussion of snowpack, flood, and water resources. KUOW’s Phyllis Fletcher has more.
THE NEW STUDY IS AUTHORED BY SEVERAL ATMOSPHERIC SCIENTISTS, INCLUDING KUOW REGULAR CLIFF MASS. MASS SAYS THE AMOUNT OF SNOWPACK HAS NOT CHANGED APPRECIABLY IN THE LAST 30 YEARS. HE AND HIS COLLEAGUES ARGUE THAT MUCH OF THE CHANGE IN THE LAST CENTURY COULD BE ATTRIBUTED TO A WEATHER PATTERN THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH GLOBAL WARMING CAUSED BY HUMAN ACTIVITY.
Read complete interview here on the radio station website.
You may also find this report from Nichols College, complete with graphs and tables, interesting.
Bill Marsh
I’ve been searching for a simple explination for that effect…as in: simple enough for a biologist to explain….
The window pane example is lovely!
Thank You!
cdl
Some anecdotal evidence on Cascade snowpack and climate change:
As we all know, the climate was warm in the 30’s, cool in the 70’s, with a noticeable effect on the snowpack. In the 1930’s, the US Forest Service dynamited the top of the south peak of Three Fingers (6850 feet, 2088 m, Cascades, roughly east of Everett, WA) so there would be a flat spot to build a fire lookout. They also built a mule trail to carry supplies all the way to the lookout. (photos of Three Fingers)
When I climbed there in the mid 1970’s, the last mile of the trail was always covered by snow and you needed an ice axe for safety.
Also in the 70’s while doing the Ptarmigan Traverse (North Cascades), I saw an interesting feature left from the Little Ice Age. Across a valley, in front of the terminus of a glacier (South Cascade glacier?, LeConte Glacier? – I just don’t remember any more), I saw a very large boulder with a ridge of debris trailing behind it, all on a field of unvegetated (i.e., relatively fresh) glacial rubble. The glacier had obviously receded since the Little Ice Age. The boulder and ridge of debris? The glacier had not been able to move the boulder and had flowed around it. And the debris had filled the gap the glacier had made. Somewhere, I have a slide I took of this…
The claims that ‘melting’ glaciers will reduce water availability and/or river flows are nonsense. They stem from a piece of silliness in the IPCC report which characterizes glaciers as water resources, which of course they are not. Glaciers only become water resources when they melt. Melting glaciers can only increase water availability.
Kevin B (12:58:46) wrote: “…Not quite a carefully constructed scientific expermint, but it does illustrate that water, (even cold water), is much better a melting ice than air, (even warm air).”
Not necessarily. In your little experiment, the air was passive while the water was under pressure. Additionally, the water was focused on a specific area while the air just kind of laid there over the entine surface. If you were to apply a jet of room temperature air against the ice, it would probably dissappear just as fast (if not faster) from conduction, convection, and sublimation.
Jack Koenig, Editor
The Mysterious Climate Project
http://www.climateclinic.com
oops…. and from evaporation.
Jack Koenig, Editor
The Mysterious Climate Project
http://www.climateclinic.com
Lee From WA: My mistake. My excuse: Too early in the AM. No coffee yet.
Thanks
However, it’s an egregious error to imply that CO2 has little to no effect. counters, please point out where anyone here has ever implied that.
Otherwise, once again, you are just blowing smoke.
counters,
CO2’s direct effect on temperature IS relatively small. Without feedbacks the direct effect of additional CO2 can be calculated (and is by the IPCC and Dr Hansen). the direct effect of a doubling of CO2 is about 1F (for ANY doubling). The IPCC and Dr Hansen rely on what I consider to be over estimated feedbacks for the 2-4C increase from doubling of CO2. However, I wouldn’t classify that as ‘little or no’ effect.
Jeff Alberts,
Well, at those concentrations of CO2 human life would be impossible (CO2 becomes toxic to humans at 6600 ppmv). I suppose plants might like it tho…
Craig,
You’re welcome. Not an exceedingly accurate analogy, but it does get the point across
Phil_B:
The warmers include melting glaciers under “water resources” issues because if they completely melt, then there will be no more melting, and thus no more water resource.
The melting of glaciers actually occurs every summer and then every winter they grow. When melting exceeds growth in any particular time interval a glacier shrinks. When winter growth exceeds summer melting, the glacier grows.
Really, its that simple. And its been going back and forth for millions of years.
Nothing new. Nothing to fear. Just natural processes marching through time.
if it is just a natural process, then why is the melting of the glaciers and global warming so attached and so much in news nowadays? has the winter season reduced in length, leading to more melting but not enough building up and maintenance of ice..?
@gisselle
melting and growing glaciers have everything to do with summer percipitation.
it will grow when its snows in the summer months the snow protects the ice from melting. and gives the old (wintersnow) a change to be turned over into ice (with is a slow process)
also it has a lot to do with wind and humidity and the form of surrounding mountains wich creates specifiek micoclimates. (kilimanjaro)
some glaciers grow because it has become somewhat warmer, causing an increase in precipitation (mont blanc glacier, and some glaciers in new zealand)
i aslo think most of the >100.000 glaciers in antarctica are not melting
Giselle
Hindustan Times on February 11, 2007
”
VK Raina, India’s leading Glaciologist, questioned the assertion that global warming was melting glaciers in India. “Claims of global warming causing glacial melt in the Himalayas are based on wrong assumptions,” The paper continued, “Raina told the Hindustan Times that out of 9,575 glaciers in India, till date, research has been conducted only on about 50. Nearly 200 years data has shown that nothing abnormal has occurred in any of these glaciers. It is simple. The issue of glacial retreat is being sensationalized by a few individuals, the septuagenarian Raina claimed. Throwing a gauntlet to the alarmist, he said the issue should be debated threadbare before drawing a conclusion.”
“
wow! I never realized that warmth could actually lead to growth in the size of a glacier!!!
Giselle,
“if it is just a natural process, then why is the melting of the glaciers and global warming so attached and so much in news nowadays? has the winter season reduced in length, leading to more melting but not enough building up and maintenance of ice..?”
One might ask the same question about the ‘Global Cooling’ hysteria in the 70’s. During one summer in the States not long ago it was called ‘The Summer of the Shark’ because there were so many shark attack news stories. Coverage was everywhere, lots of speculation of the cause (global warming was included as I recall), stories day after day about how many, how unusual, etc., etc. At the end of the day there were no more shark attacks that summer than in any other, it just seemed like it because of the sensationalist coverage. I suspect this is similar.
Giselle (22:46:29) :
In general, the news media, especially television, likes simple stories. Increasing CO2, melting glaciers, and global warming are easy to describe and show. Unfortunately, scratching a little deeper exposes all the complexity that makes the story not so simple.
How do you define “winter season?” There are a couple that deal with non-meteorological events and their definition makes it impossible to change. If you define winter as the period of time between first and last frosts, then warming will shorten that. In addition to temperature, precipitation is important. Last year here in central New Hampshire we had a fairly unremarkable winter temperature-wise, but the storm track was either just south of me or on top of me and the region got the most snow ever recorded, at least in the last 100 years. This winter the track may be further south, and that would mean few storms and colder weather. That could mean less snowpack in March due to less snowfall, but more snowpack in April due to less melting (and maybe more snow and less rain).
Not the sort of thing that’s easy to explain to someone who isn’t paying much attention to the television, though several of us folks in New England consider our weather one of our natural treasures. Though it would be nice if we had more spring-like days.
Yes, just a natural process marching through time except in the last 10000 years humans have evolved a language and writing and built cities and fly planes and travel to other planets…
And with all of our accumulated knowledge we built cities where the first settlers landed and then grew enormous systems of water delivery BEFORE we understood the process.
Now that we are studying the process we have discovered that systems change for many reasons and that maybe some places where people thrive today may become uninhabitable in the future.
I tell my kids that in the long run, expect a human migration to water resources and away from disease and drought prone regions.
Property values will plummet right along with the waterline in Lake Meade.
I’d hate to own a home that gets no water.
Humans are just opening their eyes for the first time and we are trying to absorb it all as fast as we can.
There is so much we have yet to discover, but what we are finding out today is that climate change may be non-linear. The fossil record demonstrates abrupt changes that caused mass extinction again and again.
The earth’s weather and climate could care less what lifeforms exist on it, and the earth will share no blame for its extinction.
Humans for the first time are smart enough to think about tomorrow, next year, and next century.
It doesn’t mean they get it right, but if they miss something and miscalculate, well, that was humanity’s chance, and we either make it or we don’t.
Are you prepared to move to Las Vegas? How about New Orleans? Did anyone expect Mt. St. Helens to erupt in their lifetime?
Will you get on a cruise ship and make the northwest passage as many people want to do? A ship sank there last week and all the paying passengers must have felt like idiots, “We went to the arctic and hit and iceburg and sank.” I thought the Titanic was a good movie, I just didn’t expect it to happen to us.
And I think that sums up the story line of every civilization that has perished from the face of earth throughout history because of some natural change in the earth.
We didn’t think it could happen to us…
Earl,
“climate change may be non-linear”?
May? Dude, climate change is not only non-linear, but it qualifies mathematically as chaotic (there is a consensus on this from the IPCC to Lord Monkton), which is a whole different ball of wax from just being non-linear. We have some hope of being able to come within the side of a barn with predictions about the future state of a non-linear system, but, unless we know the precise current state of every variable and the exact process behind every aspect of climate, we have no hope of coming within a country mile of predicting the future state of the climate. Since I don’t think anyone is going to stand up and say we know everything there is to know about the climate and climate processes, I’m willing to say we cannot credibly predict its future state, don’t care how many ‘model runs’ you make.
Bill Marsh (13:10:27) :
True, but a decent model will disclose the limits of the system, and averages, and a lot of other statisical data that describes the system.
Predicting the climate does not mean knowing what the temperature will be at your home in 20 years, but what range the temperature is likely to fall in.
Change is in the air!
And what a nice picture!!
Greetz Angela
Nice blog, i think more causes make the problem and not only one. but it could be, im not a scientist though. Keep it coming.
Regards,