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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It is not that papers like this, or papers claiming proof alien abductions, or papers showing big foot spoor and tracks get written. It is that papers like those mentioned are generally not considered science and don’t get the legitimacy of peer review.
Typically real evidence connected to the real world are used to write papers accepted in science journals. As we see more and more, this is not always the case.
Stories like this belong in the “Literature Page” of Sunday’s newspaper, along with Garfield, Wizard of Id, and Peanuts (Classic). They actually invoke more laughter from me than any of these regular comics
Is it my imagination that I skied at A-Basin 2 weeks ago, still with a huge snow base, and if I wanted to I could do so today? It must be the exception that proves the rule.
Also No Snow in Norway.
In eastern Norway flooding because of rain, in the mountains the reservoirs are spilling over because of a combination of melting snow and rain, while in northern Norway it’s only snow melt causing problems
http://www.newsinenglish.no/2011/06/10/rain-closes-roads-forces-evacuations/
Heavy rain, melting snow cause devastating floods across Norway, washing away houses, roads
http://www.brandonsun.com/world/breaking-news/123681179.html?thx=y
Snow data
http://www.senorge.no/mapPage.aspx
Well, since he authors’ spoke of “unprecedented”…
Colorado: June 1 snowpack at record levels nearly statewide
Posted on June 3, 2011 by Bob Berwyn
Snowpack across much of Colorado was at record levels as of June 1.
Runoff in some northwestern river basins expected to be two to three times of average
By Summit Voice
Colorado’s latest snowpack data, compiled by the Natural Resources Conservation Service, shows the profound impact that a cool and wet May can have on water supplies, in terms of both timing and quantity.
—
Three cheers for VALUABLE GLOBAL WARMING RESEARCH published by $cience Magazine!
Here in Britain it snowed yesterday on the summit of Snowdon, the highest mountain in England and Wales. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-north-west-wales-13731216
Willis, Willis, Willis…will you never learn? You don’t find “truth” by looking at the data. Even Climate Scientists are way over their heads on this.
“Truth” lies with the Weather Channel.
http://www.9news.com/news/article/202852/188/Melting-snowpack-a-problem-across-the-West-
When you have predetermined conclusions to prove, “nothing out of the normal” starts to look “unprecedented”
Sort of like when you are out at the bar and after a half dozen beer, that “nothing out of the ordinary” girl across the room starts to look like the hotty you really want to score with and brag about.
“snowpack reductions are almost unprecedented”
“Almost unprecedented”, isn’t that a bit like being almost a virgin? I mean, either it’s unprecedented or it isn’t. “Almost unprecedented” is surely synonymous with “not unprecedented”. Or “precedented”, I suppose.
Is “almost unprecedented” anything like “kind of pregnant”? If something is “unprecedented”, it has never happened before. If it’s “almost unprecedented”, that means that there is at least ONE occurrence of whatever particular circumstance being discussed happening in the past. As Willis’ years-long study shows (Side bar: How many millions did he receive from “Eeeevil Oil & Big Carbon Inc.” grants to produce his results?), nothing in the past record, even being as cherry-picked as it is, indicates that the “late-20th century decrease” was nowhere near “almost unprecedented”, much less “unprecedented”.
Excellent work, Willis. You, Anthony, Steve and the many others doing the REAL science are like the proverbial canaries in the scientific sewer, crying out “Bullsh*t!” to let alert the world each time another of load of CAWG fecal matter has been flushed down from Big Green (Money), Inc. for their friends, the complicit media rats, to gobble up and disseminate to their blind followers. (I know that’s an “almost unprecedented” analogy and apologize in advance for it.)
I’m expecting (hoping?) that some warmistas will leave a note here explaining how, despite what the data say, the snow pack is really much less now than in the past.
I would also like an explanation as to how one can estimate snow depth from tree rings. Last winter, my trees did not grow when there was snow on the ground. I’m sure there is a robust correlation between depth of snow and tree growth rates, I just need a little nudge to find it. Nudge nudge.
What is disconcerting is that what looks like garbage can get published, most likely because of the headline. Did no one actually look at the body of the paper? At the least, a note that “Snow pack since 1935 has been stable” should be included.
Good work Willis. Thanks.
EVERYBODY HERE NEEDS TO WRITE A LETTER TO THE EDITORS OF SCIENCE OTHERWISE WE ARE WASTING TIME
Who needs real data when you can use tree rings instead?
The first thing I looked for in the data (and before reading Willis’s write up) was where the data starts and ends. Living here in the PNW I have become familiar with how the alarmists adjust their data end points to spice their story. I am also familiar with the actual snow pack 20 miles east of my front door.
No surprises. They cut off the last five years during which the snow pack, particularly the spring snow pack, has rebounded back to 1950’s levels and thus removing the spurious negative trend they had built their alarm upon.
Looks like they are now inventing snow pack from before records so that they can keep the alarm alive. Tree rings are good for alarm.
rbateman says:
June 11, 2011 at 5:09 am
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.
Never underestimate the power of cognitive dissonance.
Less snow=manmade warming.
More snow=either “just weather” or “climate change/disruption”.
Any floods resulting from the aforementioned are cause for alarm, and “proof positive” that climate catasrophe is upon us, and will only be getting worse.
You gotta Believe.
Or else.
AGW predictions=SNAFU. I finally surrendered to time and planted my now two months old ‘seedlings’ in the ground. It had fallen to 39°F the night previous, but hit 37°F this AM. I’m in west central Colorado and we are all joking about when will winter end, hopefully before the solstice.
Charlie Foxtrot says: June 11, 2011 at 6:54 am
I’m expecting (hoping?) that some warmistas will leave a note here explaining how, despite what the data say, the snow pack is really much less now than in the past.
It would probably go something like this… We know we are in an expanding universe, so 12″ of fluffy stuff today is really less than 12″ last year…. Never mind that the ruler expanded too.
I take issue with this post, this is NOT an exaggeration. It is a blatant LIE!
Sciencexpress has a bit more information available on-line from the author here-
http://news.opb.org/media/uploads/pdf/2011/snowpackpaper%5B1%5D.pdf
A small snippet from page 3-
“Hence, a decadal sift to cooling in the tropical and Northeast Pacific could mask the trend in springtime warming and declining snowpack temporarily.”
Funding for the this study was provided by-
“Funding Support from:
National Science Foundation (NSF) | Geography and Regional Science – Grant# 0620793
National Science Foundation (NSF) | Ecology – Grant# 0734277
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) | Western Mountain Initiative”
It is possible this sort of papers get a positive feedback from the hockey stick of number of academics. Well, I am guessing at a hockey stick for climate science. The feedback goes as follows, a junior climate academic has to have graduate students with completed phds to gain tenure. He fights for a grant that allows him/her to get a student on a five year thesis project. Alarmism gets more grants. More thesis come out and are published and more academics are generated. und so weiter.
I see now there are going to be cuts on the number crunching of academics.
Graduates warned of record 70 applicants for every job
This may increase the number of phd thesis on climate science, unless nature takes pity and we get more cold winters.
Steave Keohane, have you thought about planting “snow peas”? 😉
Jimbo says:
June 11, 2011 at 6:00 am
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.”
On the radio, they explained that trees at lower elevations showed increased ring width due to increased water due to heavy snow, but trees at higher elevarions showed decreased ring width with heavy snowpacks because the heavy snow choked the growth. Sounds like a nice theory, but i thought Mann claims ring width correlation with temperature. How does that factor in with snow depth? Sounds like big interactions at play which they are not considering.
Willis, I am surprised. You expect them to use inconvenient data?
I doubt anyone really pays much attention to a group of naked men, dancing around a fire, casting bones, muttering “booga booga”. The more they practice these rites… the more thinking people, will recognize them, for what they are!
If climate science fails… How will, any of these people, find any kind of employment?? I just don’t think there is much demand for naked bone casters. We must start re-tasking money, for climate research, into welfare for penniless climate researchers. GK
Then we have the other side of the spectrum, http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/story/2009/06/15/edmonton-forest-fires-alberta-fire-bans.html
Alberta dry and one third of Slave Lake was destroyed.