Guest post by Steven Goddard
Weather is not climate, but 49 out of 50 states agree – spring is getting off to a cold start.
How will these blue states vote on “cap and trade?” Someone needs to take responsibility for this runaway global warming, which is purported by a top scientist from the University of Colorado to be killing off the ski industry .
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
DENVER – A study of two Rocky Mountain ski resorts says climate change will mean shorter seasons and less snow
Winter 2007-2008 was the snowiest ski season on record in Colorado.
Eight Colorado ski resorts see record snow
Silverton Mountain, which stopped running lifts Sunday, reported the greatest record-breaking snowfall, with 550 inches. Steamboat came in second, with 489 inches.
January, 2008 was the snowiest month on record in the Northern Hemisphere, with nine out of the last eleven January’s above normal.
Source: http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/png/monthlyanom/nhland01.png
So how is the current ski season looking? Wolf Creek ski area in southwestern Colorado has received a paltry 10 metres of snow so far this winter.
Summit Base Depth : 110 inches
Last 24 Hours : 1 inch
Last 48 Hours : 2 inches
Last 72 Hours : 2 inches
Midway Base Depth : 105 inches
Last 7 Days : 20 inches
Latest Storm : 2 inches
Year to Date : 398 inches
with lots more snow on the way.
Accuweather snow forecast for this weekend
But remember – weather is not climate. and computer models should always supersede observation.
“is this a forecast?”
Yes. We expect lows in the 20s here in NC next week….
The warmers are right…
One year anomaly means little to an environmental pattern. You must look at temperature and environmental changes on a decadel basis to understand the warming trend.
Problem is.. We have seen a different trend now for 10 years.
Sun is still silent, means more cloud cover. Means cooler planet. CO2 means plants grow faster.
California continues to face snow shortage:
“The Department of Water Resources’ (DWR) fourth snow survey of the winter season indicates snowpack water content is 81 percent of normal for the date, statewide.“A below-average snowpack at this time of year, especially following two consecutive dry years is a cause for concern,” said DWR Director Lester Snow. “Our most critical storage reservoirs remain low, and we face severe water supply problems in many parts of our state. Californians must continue to save water at home and in their businesses.” ” — this from 02 April 2009
http://www.water.ca.gov/news/newsreleases/2009/040209fourthresults.doc
Again those “anamolies”!
Don, it’s anomalies. Think about the word ‘abnormal’.
Our Beartooth Mountains here in Southern Montana are as white as I have seen them in many years. The runoff will probably be spectacular. It is still snowing every few days down here in the foothills, too. I hope it quits by Memorial Day.
Keep up the good work! It’s a shame the politicians wont see sense, or would that stop the ‘green’ taxes?
Anthony –
You’ve had a number of articles on some of the basic science behind the climate change issue, but one that i either missed or maybe you haven’t had is on the chemistry and/or physics of carbon dioxide and how it, impacts or doesn’t impact long-wave radiation – for example – i understand that C02 absorbs heat energy across three limited ranges of long-wave, radient energy and that within one of energy ranges, water vapor overlaps with C02
It seems to me that skeptics should be hammering on this one issue as often as possible
Snow is predicted for Baseball opening day in Chicago on Monday 4/6. Local elections are on Tuesday.
What all of you stick your head in the sand (desertification caused by global warming) people fail to understand is that all of the record cold, record snowfall, and cooling going on does not invalidate AGW. In fact it proves AGW. Remember the rules. If it is hot -> global warming. Cold -> global warming. Dry -> global warming. Wet -> global warming. If something, anything, happens, it was caused by global warming. If it doesn’t happen -> global warming prevented it from happening.
Now that we’ve got that cleared up. To save the planet from yourselves, please stop all activities at once, up to and including breathing. (You are killing the planet by living after all) Oh yes, before you do the moral thing by holding your breath for eternity, please send all of your worldly goods (check, money order, cash, credit card, we’ll take it all) to AsuckerIsBornEveryMinute@BuyMyFakeCarbonOffsets.com. Have a nice day.
/rant
/sarc
Nashville, TN forecast is calling for possible snow flurries on Monday and Tuesday of next week. Snow in Tennessee in April? Huh? Where’s that Globull Warming? We need some!!!
“California continues to face snow shortage:”
We have an interesting situation here. Two years of 85% snowpack basically results in a “critical drought”. Every year there is a ballot initiative for more money for water projects that never get built. Who knows where the money goes but we haven’t built a major reservoir in a long time. We are pretty much in a situation where we need 100% of “normal” precipitation every year or else the politicians start “regulating” our water … which out here means development, industrial production, agricultural production, etc. We keep voting in more water projects and they keep not building them.
Lord help us if we actually had adequate water and there was no need for state regulation of who does what. Why, that would probably cost legislators millions in campaign donations that would no longer be needed to get your project approved.
Looking at the map I have one question – cooler spring mean later planting of crops, right? Lots of dark blue in the corn and wheat belts. Nobody in the media equates colder weather with smaller harvests. Watch that space.
I would also recommend that you (and everyone else) take a peek at the article over on the Jennifer Marohasy Site. It talks about water vapor and CO2 and specifically the positive/negative feedback effect. I particularly like this writing because he points out a very fundamental and testable case by which to test the theory that CO2 leads to a strong positive feedback with water vapor. Its really simple. If you take any two places on the planet, with one being very dry (desert) and the other very moist (tropical), both being at same or similar latitude and both being same or similar altitude, which one is going to be consistently hotter than the other? The desert (dry climate) will always be hotter (during the mid-day sun). Granted, this an over simplification of this test, as other factors need to be made similar so you are left with a strong comparison between just the level of water vapor in the air, but, the idea is that you can very simply demonstrate how water vapor is NOT a strong POSITIVE feedback mechanism, but in fact it is a NEGATIVE feedback mechanism that causes not heating, but cooling. Further, if water vapor were a strong positive feedback, then would not all of our tropical zones experience runaway warming on a daily basis?
Anyway, I encourage a glance at the article as he illustrates this point rather well (I think) and sends a pretty clear message how runaway global warming induced by CO2 (or any other gas for that matter) is absolutely impossible (as I believe it is as well).
Cheers..
I live in Austin which is pretty far south. I have not run my AC since we bought the house in October, and it looks like at least another week of AC-free living.
Oh, and the thing is you very rarely have a “normal” year. “Normal” is just an average over some period of time. You are pretty much as likely to get below “normal” as you are to get above “normal” precipitation and it tends to run in cycles with several years of “below normal” followed by periods of “above normal”. So expecting “average” precipitation and doing any kind of planning around that is just nuts. California can and has had droughts that last for several YEARS at a time and we also have periods when we have flooding for several years in a row.
To get an idea of Sierra snow pack, check the Tioga Pass Road (Yosemite Park) opening dates. You can tell the years when we had massive amounts of snow because the road didn’t open until late June. “Normal” would probably be a May opening and a dry year, an April opening. The opening date has more to do with the disappearance of the avalanche hazard than actually plowing the road surface and that depends on the snow pack in the areas above the road.
1988 is the earliest opening since 1980 on April 29. That was during a multiyear drought period. We had several consecutive years where it opened before the end of May. 1998 was a very wet year and it didn’t open until July. We also had a lot of flooding that winter.
What they should really do is plan for median rainfall, not “average”.
We had a frost this morning north of Seattle. Normally everything has been in bloom for a couple weeks. And our Photinia, which is an evergreen in this climate, dropped all its leaves this winter. It’s recovering, but this is the first winter since I’ve been here (2002) that it’s ever dropped more than just a few leaves. And our Camelias still haven’t bloomed, they’re usually done by now.
When it’s a warm year, it’s global warming and when it’s cold, it’s part of a normal seasonal variation or incertainty. For them warmer is certainly global warming and cold is squat.
Are you sure they don’t use the Absolute Function in their models? A negative anomaly will always show as a positive anomaly.
Jean Meeus (08:10:21) :
Again those “anamolies”!
Don, it’s anomalies. Think about the word ‘abnormal’.
————
Could it be “analies”? Think of ‘anal’. A good definition could be:
analies: which referers to the pain induced by reading bad climate change science.
I recently commented on a similar claim for Canada that winter sports were going to have a meltdown in Canada due to global warming. Here is a summary of what I said. Similar argument may apply in parts of US.
This report clearly illustrates the classic mistake of predicting long term climate trends based on picking the current highest short term temperature trend and the worst case scenario of future carbon dioxide trends to predict the entire future climate and ignoring all the past valleys or natural climate temperature lows.[Cool periods]
Predicting that the average cross-country ski season in Quebec will be cut in half in only 10 years and a complete wipe out by 2050 is very unlikely. So are most of the findings of this report. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20090330.BCGREEN30/TPStory/Environment
Even European skiers in the Alps find this projection hard to swallow http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4905666.stm
While it is true that Canadian winters have been warmer than normal for 11 years, what is being totally missed is that the factors that contributed to the warmer Canadian winter climate in the past have changed during the last 3 winters. http://www.msc-smc.ec.gc.ca/ccrm/bulletin/figchartt_e.html?season=Winter&date=2009
Canadian winters during the recent past global warming period [1976-2007].were warmer than normal [25 years out of 33] when both PDO and AMO were both positive and warm. However there were cooler temperatures in 2008 and 2009 when PDO went negative late 2007 and AMO went negative in JAN/2009. Now in 2009 we have the climate situation like that which existed in the past, namely 1964-1976
. Between 1964 and 1976, 8 out of 12 winters were below normal. This type of cooler winters are projected for the next 20-30 years http://www.heartland.org/bin/media/newyork09/PowerPoint/Don_Easterbrook.ppt
So there is likely going to be more snow and ice during the next 2-3 decades if PDO and AMO cycles repeat and hopefully lots of snow for skiing.
I think you could take a little stock in that model because it only predicts a week ahead and not 10 to 100 years like the IPCC’s, and the model’s not basing on possibly flawed data either.
It looks like a cold one, but remember it’s just temperature departure, so areas usually in the 80’s may just be at a still warm temp. in the 70’s, but even then it should make a dent in the monthly global temp. anomaly if it’s enough below average.
“It seems to me that skeptics should be hammering on this one issue as often as possible”
Skeptics are overwhelmed with target opportunities, AGW is wrong at every turn. Skeptics should eschew appeasment of warmeners which only incites internecine quarrels and just go for the political kill.
dkemp:
It does not matter how much you heat CO2 or whatever gas in the atmosphere, it can not hold it enough time, it goes up and gives its heat off to the space.
May I remember that the earth it is not “closed” not covered with a ceiling?
Here on mid-Vancouver Island we had snow on the mornings of April 1 (my wife thought I was playing an April Fool joke when I reported what I saw out the window) and April 2. Nearby Mount Washington Resort (named after Admiral Washington, not George) has 59 of 60 ski runs open, and snow: New 24 Hrs – 2 cm, New 48 Hrs – 19 cm and Mid Mountain Base – 228 cm. I don’t think the ski industry is in trouble on this Pacific island. The ski is falling, the ski is falling, I mean sky…
Well Loveland ski area (just west of Denver near the continental divide) is currently posting an expected closing date of May 4, it will be fun to watch when it actually closes.
http://www.skitown.com/resortguide/stats.cfm/co23/Loveland
I remember a decade or so ago they were still doing some unofficial skiing near Loveland basin in June and July. The resort was officially closed but you could hike into snow fields and get in a short run in the height of the summer. I also have a friend that got caught in a blizzard on Loveland pass on July 4 weekend years ago, so it can snow any day of the year above about 8000 ft altitude here.
Latest historical snow fall here in Denver metro is the first week of June, and earliest is the first week of September so the snow free window here in the city is only about 8-9 weeks a year. The way these little snow storms have been rolling through every few days lately we might have a good chance of moving those dates a few days.
Snow from the last storm is still melting, and we expect the next to arrive this evening or tomorrow.
Lack of snow here and in Utah has more to do with drought than heat. If the wind patterns do not carry moisture into the intercontinental mountains we can have very dry winters. Sometimes they are very dry and very cold, and other times they can be very dry and warm.
This news piece is attaching global warming to an issue that has been well known since the 1970’s. The ski areas already are doing artificial snow making on the lower slopes (and have been for decades) and have been talking about local water storage and recycling that snow melt with impoundment ponds for years. I see that “study” as a fishing expedition for funding for more studies or to justify plans already in place to store water, and just make it easier to get it past the local governments and water law folks.
Larry
Just like last year I’ll be using my season ski pass at Ht. Hood’s Timberline Lodge well into May.
Of course we have the Palmer lift on the upper glacier open all summer.
About this time last year the most measured depth was 246 inches on the ground.
212 now.
http://www.timberlinelodge.com/conditions/
April 3rd, 2009 Updated 10:00 AM
18 degrees Snow Showers
NEW SNOWFALL (in past 24 hours): 12 in.
SNOWFALL (in past 72 hours): 26 in.
BASE DEPTH: 212 in.
ANNUAL SNOWFALL: 600 in.