Guest post by Steven Goddard
“April comes in like a lion, and stays that way.”
The University Of Colorado in Boulder and nearby Colorado State University are hotbeds of climate science activity. Famous climate names from both sides of the AGW aisle like NCAR, NSIDC, the Pielkes, Bill Gray and Chris Landsea are associated with these universities. Earlier this extended winter WUWT reported on one forecast by a CU geography professor :
University of Colorado-Boulder geography professor Mark Williams said Monday that the resorts should be in fairly good shape the next 25 years, but after that there will be less snowpack – or no snow at all – at the base areas
No doubt that a geography professor would have the correct skill set to be making ski forecasts 25 years in the future, and that 25 years from now the climate will make a radical switch. It appears that Dr. Williams forecast is correct so far, as Colorado is getting lots of snow.
Wolf Creek Ski Area has received more than 11 metres of snow this winter, and has 118 inches of snow on the ground. (That would be 2.9972 metres deep, using the Catlin tape measure.) Unfortunately, people may be unable to get to most of the ski areas because Interstate 70 is shut down – due to too much snow.
Ahead of the current storm, all of the snowtel sites in Colorado were reporting normal snowpack.
| RIVER BASIN | PERCENT OF AVERAGE | ||
| Snow Water | Accum | ||
| GUNNISON RIVER BASIN | 109 | 108 | |
| UPPER COLORADO RIVER BASIN | 112 | 109 | |
| SOUTH PLATTE RIVER BASIN | 98 | 97 | |
| LARAMIE AND NORTH PLATTE RIVER BASINS | 103 | 105 | |
| YAMPA AND WHITE RIVER BASINS | 113 | 109 | |
| ARKANSAS RIVER BASIN | 107 | 99 | |
| UPPER RIO GRANDE BASIN | 104 | 107 | |
| SAN MIGUEL, DOLORES, ANIMAS & SAN JUAN | 95 | 10 | |
One popular AGW theory of convenience is that warming temperatures bring more snow. As can be seen below, this might not be an adequate explanation.
http://www.hprcc.unl.edu/products/maps/acis/hprcc/MonthTDeptHPRCC.png
Of course, weather is not climate and the earth has a 50/50 chance of “tipping” in the future – due to reaching some mythical CO2 threshold.
On a more urgent note, a US Navy researcher from told the Beeb that projections of an ice free Arctic by 2013 may be “too conservative.”
“Our projection of 2013 for the removal of ice in summer is not accounting for the last two minima, in 2005 and 2007,” the researcher from the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, explained to the BBC. “So given that fact, you can argue that may be our projection of 2013 is already too conservative.”
(This California based researcher did not accompany the Catlin expedition on their -40C Arctic camping trip this spring.)
Polar Bear pondering how cap-and-trade may brighten it’s future?
If you want to save the ski industry and the polar bears, you might want to consider sending Al Gore some money – and please quit producing so much of that dangerous pollutant CO2. However, absolutely do not try to apologize to the bears in person. Skiing is much more fun and generally safer than swimming with polar bears, as this woman visiting the Berlin Zoo found out.
PHOTO: WWW.TELEGRAPH.CO.UK
I just don’t know how to get to any ski areas without making lots of CO2.
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Very witty Wilde! Looks like the dreaded weather will be the undoing of the AGW myth. I am saddened that all the real environmental work that we should be doing has been supplanted by this global warming malarkey.
From there came “professor” Brian Brady, well known phony scientist who predicted back in 1976, that Lima City, Peru, SA, was going to disappear due to cataclismic earthquakes. It did not happend of course (otherwise I would not be typing these words).
I can confidently predict that twenty-five years hence, AGW will be remembered only as the greatest hoax in history, I will be 82 and not one single person will remember or care about twenty-five year old predictions.
Mike Bryant
“No doubt that a geography professor would have the correct skill set to be making ski forecasts 25 years in the future,”
Oh, come on, Anthony, didn’t you know that a PhD. in any area of science magically confers knowledge of all science on the holder?
Ah – carbon sequestration using polar bear technology, though it might be more humane to feed them bovines raised on grass and Gas-X. I’m too lazy to calculate the carbon costs of delivering bovines to polar bears.
On a more serious note, any additional word on the snowpack that feeds us water starved taxpayers here in Southern California: my grass is almost dead.
If it gets any warmer, we’ll all freeze to death….
Some places in the foothills have got over 50″ of snow since the storm started.
See link:
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/product.php?site=BOU&product=LSR&issuedby=BOU
I am a spotter for the NWS. My station is at the base of the foothills at 6100 ft & we got 12.8″ of snow – but 3.2″ of liquid equivalent – basically a “Slurpee” storm – heavy snow & 33 deg for most of the storm. I have friend just a few miles away up at 7700 ft & he has over 40″ of snow so far (still some light ppt around).
Many of the ski areas have already closed or tomorrow will be their last day. Not for lack of snow, but for lack of skiers – people moving on to their summer sports. As is typical, the ski areas will close with their largest base depths of the season:
http://www.coloradoski.com/
Historically, the Colorado mtn snowpack doesn’t peak until the 3rd week in April – after most ski areas are closed – the worry shouldn’t be about global warming but local drying (ie a strongly anchored ridge over the Rockies keeping them dry – which would be related a strongly anchored trof over the East …. which was prominent in the late 70’s…. when everyone was worried about the coming ice age. Sooo …. global warming would be good for Colorado skiing ???? Just saying …. ; 0)
Snow pack link:
http://www.cpachecojr.com/cgi-bin/work/get_basin.cgi
Choose “state-wide” for basin, then “average” for year one & then hit the “generate product” button – you will see the late April peak.
I-70 is back open – I’m heading to the slopes tomorrow!
But Steve, don’t you know that all the GCM’s had already predicted that!
A warmer world is a wetter and snowier world is a sound theoretical prediction. So I went to check the global precipitation trend and data.
Surprise, surprise they (NASA) are adjusting the precipitation data to fit the models.
Unfortunately, inferring precipitation over large areas from such point measurements is notoriously difficult. Most precipitation occurs in short bursts over small areas. This is typical of thunderstorms, which can produce torrential rains for a few minutes in one location while no rain at all falls just a few miles away. Since rain gauges are not placed in every spot, it is difficult to objectively estimate how much rain has fallen over a large area. To make matters worse, rain gauges and the way rainfall is recorded have changed over the years, and some station locations have been moved. These changes are not always well documented, making it difficult to separate real climate changes from spurious ones in the historical record.
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/delgenio_02/
Perhaps someone would like to graph the adjusted data here.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/precip_dai/
“One popular AGW theory of convenience is that warming temperatures bring more snow. As can be seen below, this might not be an adequate explanation.”
No! No! You’re several iterations behind! “Man-made Global Warming CAUSES global cooling!” But that cooling just coils the warming spring that much tighter. It’s sort of like squatting down for leverage just before you leap off into the abyss. We covered all this during the “debate over” meeting. As the Enron boys often repeated to those who insisted on understanding the deal before signing up for the deal, “You just don’t get it!”
My Sister-in-law in Estes Park, CO said they had 30″ at her place. The 2nd heaviest event for them since that huge storm on the front range back in March 2003 (when she had 4 feet). Here is a picture from earlier today at her house:
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=2rf9010&s=5
Of course weather is not climate unless happens to be a hot spell in which case it is climate change and global warming. A decade of cooling is a “pause” in which global warming is catching its hot, CO2-laden breath.
Can you spell “cherry picking?”
For a change of pace a little poetry:
I wanna feed the hungry, I wanna heal the sick
I wanna stifle the causes of suffering and hate
I wanna know my enemy by the look in its eyes
I wanna stop on this madness before it’s too late
I don’t care if you think I’ve gone crazy
Messianic delusion is a back breaking crime
-Rodney Crowell
Sex & Gasoline
Unless this is a very unusual size for the storm this wouldn’t be unprecedented or anything as I’ve heard of May snowstorms in Denver at least once in the last few years. Now it’ll be something if some mountain areas get snow in July like what happened when we were on a trip there when I was little during the Pinatubo cooling.
We’re supposed to get to 80 degrees here at least once the next week which seems odd at first because its been taking a bit longer to get to 80 this month than in March if I remember right, plus an 80 degree day in April is far from unheard of in Wichita.
The beauty of April snowstorms in Colorado…it’ll all be gone tomorrow.
Daryl Ritchison (19:17:41) :
Is that an igloo on the front lawn?
Eric Cheiflion:
I just returned from SoCal. During my stay read in the LA times that the central valley was cut off (from water) by environmentalist lawsuit because a certain species of fish might be disturbed by the flow of water to that area… perhaps this affected you also. Oh well, humans don’t matter anyway… try to endure.
The AGW Polar Melting Oceans Rising Phony Arctic Surveys reminds me of an historical hoax: The Piltdown Man.
Do they even remember who claimed Ice Age 30 years ago?
The IPCC has given up to report on the current climate trends.
Why? Because there is no significant change in temperatures from 1995 until 2001 and cooling from 2001 up to now. And all this despite increased levels of CO2.
If you don’t believe me, read the entire post here:
http://climateprogress.org/2009/04/15/ipcc-2014-fifth-assessment-irrelevant/#comment-39812
And — 25 years hence when Prof Williams is an old gentleman, he will no longer care whether this prediction is right or wrong, because it will have no effect on his career at that point.
i.e. I too would be comfortable making making virtually any prediction that has almost 3 decades to come to fruition.
Adam,
Just wanted you to know I appreciate your comments… very thoughtful.
Mike
2013 too conservative???
Does this mean that the Arctic will be the new Riviera in 2-3 years?
Putin will be building his pipelines to Canada real soon.
The Russian-Canadian trade will boom. Japan will soon export straight across to Europe. The Suez and Panama canals will languish and fall into disrepair.
Drat and double drat. No AR5. I still can’t get to the beach and measure the phenomenal rise of the ocean with my Stanley Tape Measure. I’ll just have to settle for spacing out on the waves.
Ron de Haan (20:03:26),
I’m glad you and other folks are keeping an eye on whackjob sites like climateprogress, because I don’t bother.
But I checked out your link. In fact, I read all the comments, and the central message I got was “What if…”.
They’re saying ‘you just wait until next year when the climate catastrophe hits,’ and similar ravings.
No wonder climateprogress didn’t even make the final cut. They sound like a UFO contingent.
“But that cooling just coils the warming spring that much tighter. It’s sort of like squatting down for leverage just before you leap off into the abyss.”
That is one great thought. It’s like the calm before the storm, that terrible waiting before the snip hits the fan, like the eye of the hurricane, like 4 pm in the emergency room on a Saturday night, like that sweet sweet interlude the Catlin Gang of Three had before WUWT chewed up the failed script…
Don’t catlin me dude…