The photo below I took this weekend on my way back from a station survey in the remote northestern corner of California. It shows Mount Shasta getting it’s first significant snow of this precipitation season here in California.
Our local progressive weekly recently did a story on Mount Shasta’s glaciers, which have been growing. This isn’t news, but what is news, is the conclusion that was drawn from the growth. Apparently the growth is now being viewed as a sign of “global warming” or “climate change” if you prefer. So now we have glaciers that shrink, glaciers that grow, and these both signal climate change. Thank goodness that has been cleared up.
Unfortunately, the writer and the USGS person both seem to be oblivious to the fact that glaciers are a much better proxy for precipitation than temperature, and that sublimation, not melting, is the primary agent in glacier shrinkage.
North State ice age
Global warming melts glaciers elsewhere, but not at Mount Shasta
By Christy Lochrie
This article was published on 10.09.08. Chico News and Review, here is an excerpt:
First, the good news: Mount Shasta’s seven glaciers are on the grow. The largest, Whitney Glacier, has averaged a 60-foot-a-year growth spree for the past 50 years, according to Dr. Slawek Tulaczyk, a professor of earth sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz.Now, the bad news: The 14,000-foot volcano’s glacier growth isn’t a reliable canary in a mineshaft when it comes to global warming woes.
“Mount Shasta is just a local system and does not really tell us much about global warming,” Tulaczyk said in an e-mail. “Everybody should know from their own experience that weather and climate are highly variable in space and time. It is absolutely incorrect to use Mount Shasta as some kind of proof that there is no global warming.”
So what’s up with this volcanic mountain—home to lenticular clouds and, lore says, outer-space lumarians—some 130 miles north of Chico?
Why, while other glaciers are melting like sun-struck snowmen, are North State glaciers plumping?
And what does it mean in the scheme of global warming issues, even as vice presidential hopeful Sarah Palin denies that emissions or other man-created factors are to blame for temperature upticks?
Ed Josberger, a researcher for the U.S. Geological Survey in Tacoma, Wash., says North State glacier growth is proof of global warming, even if, on the surface, it strikes a counterintuitive chord. Shifts in weather patterns are likely to heat some places while chilling others.
“In terms of climate change,” he said, “there’s going to be winners and losers.”
Mount Shasta glaciers have grown, in part, because they’re high enough to escape some (about 2 degrees) of the Earth’s warming trends, and the shifting weather patterns have dumped more Pacific Ocean-generated precipitation onto the mountain, explains Andrew Fountain, a geology professor at Portland State University.
Fountain likens a glacier to a bank account: It grows when there are more deposits (winter precipitation) than withdrawals (summer melt). In most of the world, sped by temperature upticks, glaciers are drawing down as melt exceeds wintertime snow and ice.
“If air temperatures continue to increase in this century, the warming will overtake the glaciers,” Fountain said.
When asked if glacier melt is cause for alarm, both Tulaczyk and Fountain say no, but add that the melt is cause for concern.
Read the entire story on the News and Review here
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The Blues and Wallowas held onto their snow and ice this summer till it started to snow again this September. That means the glaciers we have will likely start growing again. So far the weather systems we have been getting have been filled with moisture and cold air, dumping snow everywhere in the higher mountains (and now on the lower slopes). By the way, if anyone is interested, take a look at the canyons in the Wallowas facing the Wallowa Valley. The moraine around Wallowa Lake is not the only moraine that is visible. There is another terminal moraine, meaning the glacier melted in place after forming the moraine. Can you spot it?
http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?map.x=295&map.y=198&minlon=-122.11&maxlon=-116.45&minlat=43.57&maxlat=47.67&mapwidth=354&site=pdt
All I have to say is , I came across that N. Calif. border from Oregon this summerfor the first time. Shasta was spectacular to see. (Mind you my girls only talked about meeting Sleeping Beauty). Scenery is so lost on 6/4/2 year olds.
cheers
The global warming kooks are phonier than a three dollar bill. Selective science, junk science,propaganda… thier goofiness never ends.
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic
Looks Like the ROOS guys in Bergen got a good talking to. The November first graph that showed Arctic sea ice area within a whisker of average has been changed. The “Daily” graphs had not been updated since November 1st, and now this.
REPLY: They are updated now, and I don’t think they have been changed to reflect anything untward. – Anthony
John D.
since most warming occurs from solar energy absorbed by the ground being radiated back up into the air
I’ll assume you didn’t set out to mislead by using ‘warming’ in a different way to the context of the discussion where ‘warming’ means ‘global warming’, ie the increase in temperature over time.
Otherwise nothing you say contradicts my point that Mt Shasta cannot be warming (in the global warming sense) significantly less than lower elevations because the physical mechanism you describe would preclude it.
GHG warming is an atmospheric effect. Warming at the Earth’s surface by sunlight has nothing to do with AGW. Which was my point about a local effect causing any observed difference. Afterwards, I thought ‘a local near ground level effect’ would have been clearer.
By way of explanation. Local near ground level warming would be mixed into a much larger volume of air as it rose up Mt Shasta and hence would have little to no efect at the summit. This of course would not be the case with global warming which is throughout the troposphere and mixing would have no effect on the amount of warming between Mt Shasta and surrounding areas.
Pamela Gray (20:55:58) :
By the way, if anyone is interested, take a look at the canyons in the Wallowas facing the Wallowa Valley. The moraine around Wallowa Lake is not the only moraine that is visible. There is another terminal moraine, meaning the glacier melted in place after forming the moraine. Can you spot it?
The hills south and south east of Wallowa look to my untrained eyes as though they might be piles of till.
Bear Creek Road up to Garden Gulch looks like a nice bicycle ride.
Yes Philip..again though it’s the density of air, that diminishes with altitude, that determines heat capacity, and the ability of air to be warmed by radiative warming from the earth surface. And it is this diminished density, and rapid cooling as air is “forced upslope” that results in diminished water holding capacity and localized precipitation (orographic affect).
My point is that altitude is such a strong factor in determining how much heat a given volume of air can hold (along with composition, e.g., water, co2 content, etc.), that if an area where most of the surface is below 8, 000 feet elevation has warmed generally say 1-2 degrees, and that area has a volcanic knob sticking up to 14,000 feet, then a general regional increase of 1-2 degrees will not diminish snowfall above say…8,000 feet on that volcanic cone because the local elevation on the 8,000 to 14,000 foot surfaces will still be below freezing in the winter. So if there is regional warming…it will be more pronounced at lower surfaces than at higher elevations, relative to the freezing point.
Again, I’m not saying that Shasta isn’t warming too (afterall there is nothing magical about that peak!), I’m just saying that the further one goes up a 14,000 foot peak, the less likely a 1-2 degree regional rise in temperature will put you over 32 degrees in the winter. So if there is a general increase in the content of water vapor, and a 14,000-foot peak that remains below 32 degrees in the winter, than you’ll get more snow, even in context of a regional increase of 1-2 degrees.
Again, I think this is quite sound reasoning, no?
Best regards.
Hint: If you fill the shape with water, it will look exactly like Wallowa Lake. Zoom and you will find the moraine.
Sublimation may well be the primary cause of shrinkage in high arctic glaciers, but only because they are in the deep freeze all the time and so there is no melting. That’s definitely not the case with Mount Shasta though, which is exposed to the scorching summertime sun at a temperate latitude — in that case, ice loss from melting would massively outweigh the loss from sublimation — it’s just common sense, really.
John D.
Less dense air has a lower heat capacity and so condensation can heat the air easier. I was not sure if this was your assessment or not.
Your logic for a potential mechanism of Shasta’s advancing glaciers seems sound. However, if so it should extend to similar terrains. I suppose we could check it by looking at all the mountains around the world with similar topographies, elevations and local terrain. Andes, Cascades, SW Alps. I know nothing about this but I would suspect that we would find all kinds of inconsistent trends.
Glacier Peak, WA is another Cascades volcano with, what appears to me, growing glaciers. About five years ago while hiking near the volcano it looked as though the glaciers had shrunk significantly based on old photos showing a heavily-glaciated peak. I didn’t see Glacier Peak again until a few weeks ago, and what a difference. The mountain is completely covered again, and the glaciers looked like they’ve grown significantly. I don’t have any data other than my direct observations.
Just returned from a weather symposium at Bishop. I and maybe one other did not believe in the “climate change” purpose of this meeting. I asked a Glacier Expert re; Shasta. He had no idea why it’s glaciers were advancing but said that glaciers in the Sierras and Cascades were definitely receding. Interestingly, one gal gave a lecture on Rock Glaciers in the Sierras (ice glaciers covered with rock debris) and she thinks they could last maybe a hundred more years due to the insulation of the debris.
A couple months ago, the Anchorage Daily News reported that ice packs throughout Alaska and the Yukon were 20 feet deeper in Aug 2008 than in Aug 2007.
Which seems to make the Mt. Shasta thing a little less local.
“Cooler heads”–there’s a good title for a skeptical website, or the chapter in a book on the topic of AGW.
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