Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A new study has emerged predicting the end of snow, along with melting glaciers and water shortages – though this study is cautious enough to predict more snow, less snow, or no change, for at least the next few decades.
The potential for snow to supply human water demand in the present and future
Justin S Mankin, Daniel Viviroli, Deepti Singh, Arjen Y Hoekstra and Noah S Diffenbaugh
Abstract
Runoff from snowmelt is regarded as a vital water source for people and ecosystems throughout the Northern Hemisphere (NH). Numerous studies point to the threat global warming poses to the timing and magnitude of snow accumulation and melt. But analyses focused on snow supply do not show where changes to snowmelt runoff are likely to present the most pressing adaptation challenges, given sub-annual patterns of human water consumption and water availability from rainfall. We identify the NH basins where present spring and summer snowmelt has the greatest potential to supply the human water demand that would otherwise be unmet by instantaneous rainfall runoff. Using a multi-model ensemble of climate change projections, we find that these basins—which together have a present population of ~2 billion people—are exposed to a 67% risk of decreased snow supply this coming century. Further, in the multi-model mean, 68 basins (with a present population of >300 million people) transition from having sufficient rainfall runoff to meet all present human water demand to having insufficient rainfall runoff. However, internal climate variability creates irreducible uncertainty in the projected future trends in snow resource potential, with about 90% of snow-sensitive basins showing potential for either increases or decreases over the near-term decades. Our results emphasize the importance of snow for fulfilling human water demand in many NH basins, and highlight the need to account for the full range of internal climate variability in developing robust climate risk management decisions.
Read more: http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/11/114016
What a pointless effort. The authors predict water shortages which might occur in the near future, but also claim climate variability may mask this effect for decades to come. The authors present a claim of imminent potential danger, with no possibility of imminent falsification. All the predictions are based on climate models, which have never demonstrated predictive skill with average global climate, let alone regional climate.
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Well the important thing is they got funding, and a plug in for more funding.
Snowpack can be replaced by more water storage lakes.
More lakes we can afford; telling the CO2 to go back, we cannot afford. We don’t know anything that King Canute didn’t know.
g
I do believe we can actually get water from water, as well as from snow, ice, hail, sleet, and any other forms of water like polywater.
Snow just stores up the rain in huge abundance to be released in a deluge when the snow melts in spring.
With water storage, you collect up the water in a controlled fashion as it falls periodically through the year.
The monsoon nations don’t have any snow to store water for them. Yes I know the himalayers are near monsoon areas.
g
@ur momisugly george, sadly enough there will always be the idiots like in Cali that tear down dams and let water run out into the ocean to save a few fish! ( For Salmon? that is a fallacy salmon stop eating as soon as they start up estuaries of rivers and water turns “sweet” and die after spawning)
As they told us out here in Colorado, rain doesn’t fill up reservoirs, only snow can do that. Evidently rain isn’t the same water as snow.
@george e. smith
“Snowpack can be replaced by more water storage lakes.”
Please tell that to Governor Moonbeam Brown. As others have said, they are dismantling dams instead of building more needed ones in CA for the interment droughts. Even during this drought, there have been some good rains, but most of that needed fresh water went rushing into the ocean.
J. Philip Peterson,
Correctomundo. Moonbeam presided over the destruction of the giant Auburn dam. We could sure use that water now.
The same Gov. Moonbeam who is pushing the monumentally stupid Train to Nowhere” that no one wants, and costing way over $100 billion.
Stupid trains, A-OK.
Water for residents, No deal; minnows have priority over people.
I suggest you look up “polywater”. The premise was proved to be incorrect back in the 1970s.
Well its the salmon smolt going down stream, that require running water, and a lack of dams to go crashing over.
Actually, the northern California rivers that run out under the Golden Gate, benefit the entire Monterey Bay ecology.
But pumping their water to make golf greens green in a SoCal desert, doesn’t even benefit the desert pup fish.
g
Agriculture in California is about 2% of our GSP, I believe, and gets 80% of our water.
Me; I’d rather have a nice rock cod, than a salmon any day.
“””””…..
Paul Martin
November 17, 2015 at 1:26 am
I suggest you look up “polywater”. The premise was proved to be incorrect back in the 1970s. …..”””””
Where did you see me say it was real ?? I just used the term; ain’t going to look it up.
g
This is chump change in comparison to climate change being responsible for the rise of ISIS.
Sorry, forgot the sarc tag.
Oh come on, you know climate change is the most serious threat that humanity has ever faced. A few scalliwags in some remote desert just pale into insignificance /sarc /Justin Trudeau
Remember how climate change forced them to attack Europe around 1100 years ago? Climate change has always been a threat to mankind.
Charles Martel (688 or 686, 680 – 22 October 741) one of the greatest Europeans to have lived, now largely forgotten unfortunately.
Most of the past is forgotten by many. When some want to blame the western world for the Crusades, they conveniently forget what took place in Spain, Sicily, or Italy, plus in other locations for several hundred years.
So in the future snow will be a thing of the past?
No. It means our children won’t know what snow is… when they are dead of old age.
As unprovable as any other Theology.
But less practical than most.
. . . One that won’t be catching on in Scotland, I suspect . . .
…like Manna?
Sounds like a snowjob to me
Is that a Charlie Sheenism?
Winning!!!!!!!
Now that the world knows he has been infected with HIV (likelythrough his life choices), Charlie Sheen is a perfect metaphor for the Obama Era.
Which of course we are living in an Orwellian Era when truths and denials are reversed.
More snow becomes less snow.
An actual Colder decade (RSS) means a warmer decade (NASA, NOAA, HadCRU).
More polar sea ice means less sea ice.
Climate scientists are the deniers of reality, skeptics are the scientists.
No John, it’s an expression we old guys are familiar with. The metaphor is a blizzard of words from a huckster that obscures the truth
Instead of snow, there should be a lot more rain since the positive feedback that more CO2 will allegedly create will also make more atmospheric water vapour. The increased precipitation will also provide a cooling effect which…hey … bring back the snow. Problem solved. Good ole Gaia.
Good point!
Janice Moore = Biologist ?
Stephen Richards! — am I glad to see you post. I gave a shout out to you on the thread with about 50 jillion comments about “Breaking News …” about the Islamic terror in Paris on 11/13. Hoped you were okay (given that you are in your usual town of residence, Paris — sorry I spelled your name with an “a,” too — oops). All is well? Hope so.
And, no, lol, I am not a biologist. I’m just a …. oh, I’ll just keep that to myself (not an occupation many people have a very high opinion of, I’m afraid).
Damn JimS, this is climatology: logic not allowed here. Besides, modern water is different now that it is full of CO2 — just ask any climatologist.
If we need a snark tag in this thread, someone is just humorless.
Damnit Jim, I’m a doctor not a climatologist.
Hey! I just typed in Markstoval’s comment — !! aack — not a good thing that WordPress makes altering another’s comment possible (if “Mark W lo” is still in markstoval’s 11/17 1:50am comment, I mean).
@ur momisugly MarkW — lol. Love it.
Just a follow-up — though the cursor was inside that other comment, the text I typed disappeared upon posting my reply to MarkW.
In other words, this article adds up to NOTHING.
Nice post, though, Mr. Worrall for it does reveal much about the conjecture-some-mistakenly-label-“hypothesis” of human-caused global climate change. LOL.
Aw I dunno about that. It certainly nails down the other 10% chance anything else could happen.
lol #(:))
Janice Moore-
It is worse-r than I thought.
“…with about 90% of snow-sensitive basins showing potential for either increases or decreases over the near-term decades.”
The paper concludes there is a “potential” for blah blah blah.
This is equivalent to saying that a snow-sensitive basin will increase, decrease or remain the same over the near-term decades.
The obvious conclusion is that regional precipitation predictions from models are essentially noise.
There we go, my day is better now. A day without a multi-model ensemble is like a day without sunshine.
Note to self: Topic to research Spring Flooding
Making predictions is hard, especially about the future.
That just about covers it.
+1
Janice, good to see you back the past few days!
Thank you, you ol’ Sybot, you. 🙂 And, thank you for saying so. Good to see you, too.
While “things” are the same with me, I realized that adding WUWT to my load counterintuitively lightened my burden, for the kindness of commenters like you far outweighs the snarls, sneers, and sexism of others.
Janice Moore is always an important voice on WUWT. She is not a scientist, and neither and I, but she understands “The Key To Science”, as do I.
Thank you for your kind endorsement, J. Philip. Pitiful as it may sound, I need that kind of thing — LOTS of it, I’m afraid. Your insights are always worthwhile (esp. when they are nice things about me, lolololol).
I also would like to say “good to see you Janice”.
Mark Stoval?! — cool! I thought you found my comments far more irritating than illuminating (remember my telling you to “Call your mother” when you were on that snowy, long, drive in north Florida?, heh). Thanks! Glad you’re still hanging around here, too.
… or was that Mark Bofill? … hm.
TonyL — well answered, laughing out loud — Eugene WR Gallun
Like “Deja Vu all over again”. Apparently the late, great, Yogi Berra was The Original Climate Soothsayer.
To borrow from him, I’m looking forward to the day when: ‘…. no one reads WUWT anymore, the site is overloaded and the page takes forever to come up’.
And their models can’t predict the past.
Are we sure this “research” wasn’t produced by The Onion?
/snark
… says it all. Thanks for that , Latitude.
No fair. That data looks to be un-adjusted and you know we don’t use raw data in climatology. When the “official” graph is drawn from politically adjusted “data” we will see a major lack of snow. A team at NASA (or the DNC) is working on that now..
Iffen the Lakes in the northern US don’t get a “skiff” of ice on them pretty soon like …. then the 2015/16 Snowfall accumulation totals will “jump” big time.
Our SUVs are creating more uncertainty about climate, so if we keep going the way we are, the children aren’t going to know what climate change is.
From my observation of today’s kinder, parents don’t care about anything…much less their kinder. However their is the potential for kinder care to increase or decrease.
There is already snow on the not very high mountains out my window.
It’ll be down here at 1700 feet on Monday.
I’m fleeing of a white Xmas.
It snowed in Albuquerque NM yesterday and it’s continuing today.
So, the NH opens the betting with 2+ billion people for Paris reductions …
Aaaaand, Sixty-eight Basins raises you $300 million. Do I hear 2.5 billion? …. Come on, folks, ‘ow about you? Yeah, you with the moustache, over there, standing behind that tree in the corner, what about all them Eskimos you keep yammerin’ about? Another 7,000, mebbe, but, hey! Those population count (using kriging — can’t leave out all the Eskimos out at sea hunting seals, can you??!)error bars are + or – 200 million, so, there ya go!
{{{{silence}}}
Aaaand, SOLD to Sixty-eight Basins for 2.3 billion!
Congratulations!
It’s rotten ice! Al told me so just the other day.
Nice try, rishrac, but Sixty-eight Basins is STUCK with its deal. 🙂
plot all possible climate movements and link CAGW to an outcome plotted for the next generation. Then completely ignore your published position 20 years from now. Brilliantly deceitful.
I just finished scooping 8 inches of wet, heavy, global welfare.
Are they actually saying we will have less water ?? Snow that is not snow would be RAIN !!!
Actually, in places like California, without the massive Sierra snowpack, available water during the always-dry summer months would be severely reduced. It would be more like Australia: flood and drought without the dampening effect of slowly melting snow.
Of course, these geniuses are actually claiming that warmer air means more droughts, but historical climatology paints a different picture, one that confirms what atmospheric physics predicts: warmer air means more evaporation; more evaporation means more clouds; more clouds means more rain. They also conveniently ignore that more clouds means greater reflection of insolation back into space, as all their models add positive feedback from evaporation. In fact, they seem unaware of the very concept of negative feedback.
The “inconvenient truth” is: if earth was as sensitive to CO2 changes as they claim, earth would’ve become a mini-Venus billions of years ago–and I’ve even heard a few of the lesser educated ones claiming earth was on its way to becoming just like Venus, not understanding that Venus receives 90% more solar radiation AND the atmosphere is 90 times denser than earth.
Oh, well. Neither apostle nor acolyte in the new religion care about accuracy of data or verifiable predictions, because, like any religion, they won’t let facts get in the way of their Truth. And….to prevent contamination by unsupportive viewpoints, they also work to silence dissent.
November 8, 2015
Sierra Nevada Mountains, California, USA (youtube)
Janice
Do you know what’s the nicest thing about the news clip you show; young people having fun in the snow, as it should be.
Time for these ninnies to stop trying to frighten people and leave them to just enjoy life.
michael
We predict: if you do not enslave yourselves to our demands, earth will fry within a century. You’ll get proof a hundred years from now, but we don’t dare wait!!
+1
“In our study, we took a sampling of 112 snowflakes, and determined no two were alike,……”
with about 90% of snow-sensitive basins showing potential for either increases or decreases over the near-term decades
Then they wonder why their credibility has gone where dead crabs go…
You couldn’t make it up…but unfortunately, you don’t have to.
Totally agree. I’m amazed these people don’t realize how foolish they sound. Foolish, stupid and desperate.
Given the fact that they have never been nurtured to “think for themselves” it is therefore an impossibility for them to “realize” much of anything about anything.
To “realize” is to ”think” …….. and “mimics” do not think.
Samuel, that’s well observed. Scary isn’t it!
This is typical of the warmist articles coming out now – they conclude nothing, make no specific point and contain all the alarming buzz words – melt, availability, human, risk, uncertainty… the list goes on. So now that the predictions, projections and scare tactics have all been proven false, there is no article to write – so they publish rubbish with the buzz words. Just make sure the words are there and the subconscious will do the rest.
This is what you get when you don’t have a “consumer” in the grant money transaction. There is no angry consumer to demand value for their money. This is truly the biggest problem in the vicious cycle of bad science and bad journalism. Until value is demanded in exchange for funding, the global warming nonsense will continue.
Stockbroker: And, here, boys and girls, is your TIP OF THE DAY! 90% of the stocks in your portfolio have the potential to go up or down! (the other 10% are frozen up in Chapter 11 …. or something….)
Now, hand over my commission!
Client: That is what you have been telling me for a year, now. You’re fired.
Abstract (translation)
Alarmist predictions are regarded as an essential contributor to the making of further successful grant applications for researchers in environmental science. Numerous studies point to the advantage that the magnitude of alarmist predictions can confer to grant approval. But analyses focused only on magnitude of alarmism do not show where refusal of grant approval are likely to present the most pressing challenges. We identify the specific funding bodies that offer the greatest potential for the supply of easy cash. Cash that may otherwise be diverted towards real scientific research. Using a multi-model ensemble, we find that the amount of money required by environmental science researchers will always tend to exceed the amount of money that exists in the known universe. However, complex internal professional conflicts and allegiances create irreducible uncertainty in the projected future trends in cash availability, with about 90% of alarmism sensitive funding bodies showing potential for either increases or decreases over the near-term decades. Our results emphasize the importance of the continued supply of plentiful cash in the near term, since we have completely failed to determine what the f**k is actually going on.
it is one of those “honey i ran the climate model” papers and like all such papers, if you read the “we don’t really know” disclaimers carefully and take them to heart you will wonder why this paper was written in the first place.
“this study is cautious enough to predict more snow, less snow, or no change, for at least the next few decades.”
For once, the warmists have a chance of getting a prediction right.
RoHa —
Give credit where credit is due!!!!
What is really amazing about their predictions is they don’t have to fudge the data to make them come true!! Now that is a huge step up for climate science!!!!
Eugene WR Gallun
Now now don’t fall for Mr Worrall’s sleight of hand here, putting words in climatologists’ mouths and concentrate hard on the facts before us-
“However, internal climate variability creates irreducible uncertainty in the projected future trends in snow resource potential, with about 90% of snow-sensitive basins showing potential for either increases or decreases over the near-term decades.”
While Mr Worrall could be correct in concluding there might be no change in snow fall potential in the other 10% of basins, like the cautious authors, we can’t rule out them being hit by a giant asteroid too.
Quote: “However, internal climate variability creates irreducible uncertainty in the projected future trends in snow resource potential, with about 90% of snow-sensitive basins showing potential for either increases or decreases over the near-term decades.”
I’m shocked. Shocked I tell you. I had absolutely no idea that precipitation has the potential to change over time in 90% of any given areas, let alone 100%. Are they certain that this could never happen in 100% of snow-sensitive basins?
I sure am glad we have these brilliant scientific light bulbs to tell us there things. I shudder at the thought of what life would be like without them. But I sure wish there was way for me to find out.
Well they did say “about 90% of snow sensitive basins” so does that clarify the science for you?
Dear Mods,
Am I for some reason on double secret moderation or permanently streng verboten on this blog?
Just wondering. If so, will stop trying to comment.
Thanks.
[Reply: No, just a temporary shortage of moderators. ~mod]
…there is a 90% potential that the mods will increase…or decrease…in length, or number, or…spirits consumption… 🙂
…so no posting till the mod’s potential has a measurable change of snowballing.
ROTFLMAO….. Thanks, I didn’t want that beer anyways, But a little warning would have prevented the sticky alcohol mess on my screen !!!
moderators will be increasing in length? Are you the Marquis de Sade or something?