Guest essay by Eric Worrall
UCLA thinks that by the end of the century, Climate will reduce the Sierra Nevada snowpack by 85%.
Climate change puts California’s snowpack in jeopardy in future droughts
UCLA research shows how warming trends affect the Sierra Nevada now and in the future
Belinda Waymouth | March 09, 2017
Skiing in July? It could happen this year, but California’s days of bountiful snow are numbered.
After five years of drought and water restrictions, the state is reeling from its wettest winter in two decades. Moisture-laden storms have turned brown hillsides a lush green and state reservoirs are overflowing. There’s so much snow, Mammoth Mountain resort plans to be open for business on Fourth of July weekend.
…
The Sierra Nevada snowpack, which provides 60 percent of the state’s water via a vast network of dams and reservoirs, has already been diminished by human-induced climate change and if emissions levels aren’t reduced, the snowpack could largely disappear during droughts, according to findings in the study published today in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
“The cryosphere — frozen parts of the planet — has shown the earliest and largest signs of change,” said UCLA climate scientist Alex Hall, who along with study co-author Neil Berg modeled what future California droughts will look like in terms of snowpack loss. “The Sierra Nevada are the little piece of the cryosphere that sits right here in California.”
During a drought we see less overall precipitation. Adding in warmer air caused by climate change a greater share of precipitation falls as rain, and snow melts more rapidly. So a frozen resource that gradually melts and recharges reservoirs is particularly vulnerable to a warming climate and droughts that are expected to become increasingly severe.
To protect California’s future from the threat of warming temperatures California needs to rapidly reconfigure its water storage systems and management practices.
“I think there are serious questions about the suitability of the current water storage infrastructure as we go forward,” said Hall, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences said.
Besides offering a window into the future, the UCLA study revealed some climate effects that are already happening. Hall and Berg found that the Sierra Nevada snowpack during the 2011 to 2015 drought was 25 percent below what it would have been without human-induced warming. The effect was even worse at elevations below 8,000 feet, where snow decreased by up to 43 percent.
“Seeing a reduction of a quarter of the entire snowpack right now — not 20, 30 or 40 years from now — was really surprising. It was almost as if 2015 was the new 2050 in terms of the impacts we were expecting to see,” said Berg, who is a scientist at RAND Corp.
…
Read more: http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/climate-change-puts-california-s-snowpack-under-the-weather
The abstract of the study;
Anthropogenic Warming Impacts on California Snowpack During Drought
Authors Neil Berg, Alex Hall
Accepted manuscript online: 9 March 2017
Sierra Nevada climate and snowpack is simulated during the period of extreme drought from 2011 to 2015 and compared to an identical simulation except for the removal of 20th century anthropogenic warming. Anthropogenic warming reduced average snowpack levels by 25%, with mid-to-low elevations experiencing reductions between 26-43%. In terms of event frequency, return periods associated with anomalies in 4-year April 1 SWE are estimated to have doubled, and possibly quadrupled, due to past warming. We also estimate effects of future anthropogenic warmth on snowpack during a drought similar to that of 2011 – 2015. Further snowpack declines of 60-85% are expected, depending on emissions scenario. The return periods associated with future snowpack levels are estimated to range from millennia to much longer. Therefore, past human emissions of greenhouse gases are already negatively impacting statewide water resources during drought, and much more severe impacts are likely to be inevitable.
Read more (paywalled): http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016GL072104/abstract
Climate scientists regularly embarrass themselves with “end of snow” predictions, because they are an inevitable consequence of the “projections” (don’t say predictions) of their runaway climate models.
“End of snow” is one of the funniest and most revealing manifestations of this silliness, though at least some scientists appear to have learned from previous red faces to put the date of their predictions well into the future, presumably so they will never have to answer for their accuracy.
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It’s been so long since Viner stuck his foot in his mouth, I was beginning to think that children soon wouldn’t know what silly prognosticators are.
I take it the publications cycle at this journal is quite long, maybe 2 years.
Meanwhile, in the real world, 3rd most snow in recorded history brings out a rotary snow plough from the 1920s:
https://www.iceagenow.info/rotary-snowplow-returns-donner-pass-cool-video/
E.M.Smith March 11, 2017 at 1:45 am
Magnificent.
E.M.Smith:
I rarely watch posted videos but that one is wonderful and its associated text is fascinating.
Thankyou for posting it. You have made my day.
Richard
E.M. Smith: That plow video was terrific. I like trains, must be because….wait for it….I am an engineer.
It’s the circle of sobbing in the “Cry-o-sphere” They cry over Polar Bears too.
“Cry-o-sphere” I like it.
I smell a HUGE request for Federal funds to build additional “water storage systems” despite California’s refusal to follow Federal immigration laws and disallow sanctuary status to illegal aliens.
Looks like negotiations will favor President Trump since CA’s leadership has led to disaster already.
And corals. Boy how they howl and rend their hair over corals!
It should be easy to avoid these embarrassing projections; just insert into the model the pre-condition: “Children are not going to know what end of snow is”, that should take care of the problem.
I love the “end of century” predictions. No one will be alive that was involved. Also, no one will care back when Idiocracy was the norm.
Predicting is always difficult. Especially about the future!
Especially since it is unverifiable, we have to wait 83 years to see if it is true or not. I imagine I will have checked out by then.
I like this!
Is that before or after the Pacific Ocean dries up?
This will occur right after the San Andreas causes San Francisco to fall into the ocean, the BIG ONE.
Unfortunately San Francisco is east of the San Andreas, so N. America is stuck with it.
An outcome not physically possible on the San Andreas. Falling into the Pacific would require both a different kind of fault ( a “normal” fault, as opposed to a strike slip fault, which is what the San Andreas is), and for the continent to be moving eastward, toward Europe. Sorry.
Compared to the Cascadia Subduction Zone, the San Andreas is a baby.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one
If it goes…
“Kenneth Murphy, who directs fema’s Region X, the division responsible for Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Alaska, says, “Our operating assumption is that everything west of Interstate 5 will be toast.”
Yup.
“This will occur right after the San Andreas causes San Francisco to fall into the ocean, the BIG ONE.”
Whose Fault will that be ?
Lol. Trump’s because he didn’t stop AGW as Obama did.
Trump would collect some points in my eyes by making sure California is prepared to the big fault jumping at some 8 richters in the next decades. Much more devastating than some CC.
Well, it enters the state from the Gulf of California so maybe Trump can add to the benefits of his wall by requiring it to stop at the border.
Another prediction that will be used for political purposes now and then forgotten all about in the future when it proves to be wrong.
And that PS is the basis of all politics old buddy. Memory is the politicians worst enemy. The average polly is a peddler of unlearnt lessons.
And then they will claim that it wasn’t really a prediction, but a projection.
That’s the modern doublespeak, for scientists is it projection, for politicians and for the general population it is prediction.
…and, for skeptics, it is merely a potential future scenario based on “adjusted” data a d faulty models.
So….the big droughts California experienced before Europeans arrived in North America might be returning? Because of global warming? And what caused it in the past? Environmental omens?
Oh yes, the reconstructions via proxy of droughts before Europeans were keeping records would indicate that the period that California belonged to the US was unusually wet.
And what caused it in the past?
Why those Conquistador coal driven power plants and gold ore smelters!
Unicorn farts.
Too many flatulent unicorns.
I have a trinket that keeps them away though.
Works too, I haven’t seen a unicorn since I started wearing it.
You must shop at the same place I got my pink elephant repellant. 😀
Did I tell you about the time I shot an elephant in my pajamas? How he got in my pajamas I’ll never know.
HT Groucho
The only gas emissions that are creating Warming is from the mouths of these so called scientists, from their hot air. Global Warming/climate change is do-do. This climate change is designed as a political redistribution of wealth, yours and mine.
Jeff Heller, Ph.D.
Distribution of wealth: Confiscate money from poor people in rich countries and give it to rich people in poor countries.
RE- Distribution of wealth. oops
+97
The snowpack’s been shot. Round up the usual suspects.
Printed and filed away for the future when I will be forced to travel to work in a horse drawn buggy and solve problems on a slide rule because of false CAGW legislation.
I bet the Sierra snow doesn’t disappear.
I love slide rules. They are beautiful. The physical sensation of using a slide rule is wonderful. They move so smoothly. When I was a student, my eyes were sharp and I didn’t mind the intricate markings. The slide rule was so much faster than using log or trig tables.
On the other hand, using slide rules was often painful. Analyzing an AC circuit could take an hour because every calculation involved polar-rectangular and rectangular-polar conversions. In the early 1970s, HP brought out a calculator with a button that did those conversions. The same circuit analysis then took less than ten minutes.
Stop it, Griff thinks you are talking about box shaped bears……
Who was the prune in Britain who said several years ago that British children would never again see snow?
Dr. David Viner.
“That’s not snow. That’s…uhm…frozen global warming! Yeah! Don’t play in that stuff, kids. You’ll get climate cooties!”
Hysterical.
I think I know what happened. According to USA Today:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/03/02/western-snowpack-too-deep-scientists-measuring-devices/98623436/
“the snow is so deep that scientists don’t have any tools to measure it”
Do you think the Bruins assumed the lack of a measurement meant there was no snow?
Maybe they should check with the LA Times who reported on March 1 that the snowpack was 185% of normal.
human induced warming……….
“During a drought we see less overall precipitation.” This guy Alex Hall is a freaking genius.
Reminds me of when I played the part of Sgt. Trotter in our High-school production of “The Mousetrap”. I forgot my line and argued: “We must find out who killed Mrs. Boyle so we will know who the murderer is!” (crickets)
When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment results.
Calvin Coolidge
“I thought you were Sergeant Trotter, not Captain Obvious.”
Was this a special take-out order for Jerry Brown?
“Hall and Berg found that the Sierra Nevada snowpack during the 2011 to 2015 drought was 25 percent below what it would have been without human-induced warming.”
I would like to see them prove that claim. The part about “human-induced warming” that is.
All these studies start out with the assumption/speculation that CO2 is causing and will cause atmospheric warming, and then they do their study based on that speculation being actual fact. But there is no evidence that CO2 is causing any warming. They are assuming something not in evidence.
This is what used to drive me nuts when reading climate science in Scientific American: Assuming facts not in evidence. The CAGW promoters have been doing this for over three decades now, and have never provide one bit of solid evidence that any of this is happening in the real world.
Claim after claim with no basis in fact.
Rule No.1 Increasing C02 CAUSES a temperature increase.
Rule No.2 If there are doubts, refer to Rule 1
Alarmist predictions have failed one after the other and no one keeps score because everyone is informed that the science is settled. In any other employment this level of failure would be classed as incompetence and probably result in job termination. In the world of climate science they are rewarded with more research funding. The terms of reference that govern the research into AGW are preset to place the causation on mankind as a default. It is therefore quite unremarkable that reality never complies with their predictions. If the investigative start point is the answer required, is working backward to provided the corresponding data that would solve for this answer really science? If so then professional opinion is no better than non professional opinion, at best it’s a guess or alternatively it’s a leap of faith. Producing a consensus of opinion about the future climate of 100 years hence is not science, it’s an opinion. Science is never an opinion.
For half the funding I bet another group could predict that the Sierra Pack could double if that was the goal just like these clowns.
Not to worry. Global warming will cause the Earth to expand, putting a big crack in the ground and UCLA will float off towards Asia in the resulting tsunami – the resultant volcanoes will cool the planet and put it into another ice age. Recycle ad infinitum.
Has there been a re-definition of climate from 30 years average to 4 years?
No, but there’s apparently been a re-definition of the plural form of is.
Very Cherry picked drought period.
I suppose this year’s record snowpack would be 5 to 10 feet deeper except for our SUV emissions.
Actually, it would be deeper by 3 more inches if VW hadn’t been fudging its emissions testing.
Why simulate something that existed and was measurable?
Obviously Mother Nature is in the pocket of Big Oil and can’t be trusted. (She’s still waiting for her check, by the way.)
Alarmists never learn!!! One would think that by now with the miserable performance of their climate models and so many other of their dire predictions and projections having been proven totally false as the time of their supposed occurrence passed with no consequence that these people would learn. They don’t. And I’m not just talking about “science” either. One would think that the authors would have noticed that the executioner is sharpening his axe and indications are that it is going to be used to chop off the bulk of federal funding for such drivel in the foreseeable future. But I guess that isn’t going to phase the human caused climate change evangelicals in the continued promotion of their religion.
Actually, they do learn. As noted, they were smart enough this time to push the projection over 80 years into the future so they can’t be held accountable. Unfortunately, pushing it over 80 years into the future also results in the “who cares?” question being asked a lot.
Let’s see … in 80 years I will be 150 years old – biding my time in some cryogenic crypt, waiting for a cure for death-by-heat prostration from global warming.
Simple: build new nuclear power plants in the eastern California deserts (away from seismic areas and coastal tsunami threats), then build transmission lines direct desalination plants. The nuclear stations could use Colorado River water for evap cooling, like AZ’s PaloVerde complex.
Problem solved forever.
I have a better solution that would drive the Greens into knots.
Build some tunnels from the coast to the Salton Sea. It is 235.2 ft (71.7 m) below sea level, so you can generate some serious hydro power without needing dams.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Sea
Desalinate the water with the power from the hydro, then fill the Sea with fresh water and use it to supply water to people and agriculture in the area.
And the Greens get wound into knots when you point out that you are lowering the ocean levels and combating sea level rise caused by globull warming without needing fossil fuels for power.
Plus there is the possibility for aquaculture and recreation on the newly filled sea.
That sound much better than Brown’s Toonerville Trolley.
Israel studied this sort of thing for the Dead Sea. It was some years back and no, I don’t have a link, and don’t know if it went anywhere. But it was a good idea.
But OTTOMH desalinating a cubic metre of water would take more energy than dropping it down a pipe would generate.
Felflames you mentioned the elevation, but what about the distance? A straight-line to the Pacific looks to be about 100 miles. If you want to “generate some serious hydro power,” you need some “serious” flows. You’re going to have to address the friction losses in the piping along the way. Terrain and other issues won’t be pretty to deal with, either.
Desal is a nice technology, but where are you going to put the waste? Membrane fouling is another issue. It’s not just about power requirements.
I have an even better solution. Send them luggage so they can move from where there is not enough water to where there is plenty of it. The only problem with this plan is the crazies will come too.
California’s Sierra Nevada has 500 inches of snow, only the highest snowfall in memory Feb 23. NOAA says December and January were the “record wettest” in California’s northern region (Sierra Nevada)- feeding Oroville Dam.
Never mind. UCLA did not predict this record snowfall (nor anybody else did), but that does not mean that models are unreliable. Quite the contrary! It shows that we have to trust models. (Why exactly, that eludes me, but then I am not a climatologist. Climastrologist.)
Maybe not the record snow levels, but I did correctly predict the very heavy rains for the West Coast back in early 2014. Moreover, this upcoming winter will be similar, and may exceed this winter’s rain/snow in Northern California, Oregon, and Washington, or potentially in that entire region.
Curious George: That is why the Royal Society established as its Motto:
The Royal Society explains:
Current climate models predict tropical tropospheric temperatures that are “only” 300% hotter than reality from a 1979-81 baseline to the present! As shown by Spencer’s (2014) and Christy’s (2016) figures.
Yes, we must trust the government models! It’s only in weakness that we have strength! Surrendering to power will make us free! 🙂
“an appeal to facts”
Yeah, we need a whole lot more of that.
goldminor March 10, 2017 at 9:41 pm
The rainfall data for the state doesn’t indicate any trend in amounts at all. Interestingly, there does seem to an increase in “extreme” weather over time. The deviation from a typical year’s record from the long term average [1896-2014]) has been increasing over time, and is “significant” at the 0.05 level (I figure 1:20 is gambling odds so not really something to write home about in reality). This is mostly created by individual, much wetter than normal years punctuated by dry(ish) spans of two or more years. The dry spans are not strikingly drier than normal, though 2014 was one of the three direst recorded years.
The other issue I see with these kinds of studies is that these manuscripts were most likely completed and sent to the journals for review 6 months or more ago.
In this manuscript’s current incarnation, GRL received it on 11December2016, accepted on 28 Feb 2017. Internally to the study group, it was most likely in drafted 4-6 months before that.
Submission was 1 month after Trump’s win, but before the current end of Cal’s Permadrought was recognized. Only the authors know where it was submitted before that, and rejected (maybe Nature Climate Change or similar). They shock of Trump Detangement Syndrome probably still has not worn off the authors.
Hence the UCLA press release to coincide with the end of the embargo date had to do some backpeddling on the recent reality that the “permadrought” was not so permanent.
In the model world maybe, but the relationship between the model world and the real world is on the rocks. Divorce can’t be ruled out.
We’d probably settle for a legal separation.
Will the modelers be paying any alimony?
Modellers need restraining orders against them.
They don’t get the kids or the dog.
Empirical reality has taken enough abuse.
They just don’t quit.
And neither must we.
“For those regions characterized by consistent monitoring and with the most robust statistical reproducibility, we find no statistically significant trends in their periods-of-record (up to 133 years) nor in the most recent 50 years. This result encompasses the main snowfall region of the western slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains” (John Christy Journal of Hydrometeorology 2012).
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/18/christy-on-sierra-snowfall-over-the-last-130-years-no-trend-no-effect-from-co2/
Even the moderate bounce back from the low 1933-34 was pretty impressive.
I used to consider the mid 90s epic … until 2010-11 happened. Skiing all the way down to the parking lot on Memorial Day.
Reblogged this on Climatism and commented:
“Climate scientists regularly embarrass themselves with “end of snow” predictions, because they are an inevitable consequence of the “projections” (don’t say predictions) of their runaway climate models.”
Dr David Viner of CRU should have taught the climate catastrophists a lesson or three. Although, that was back in 2000. Short memories them climate “scientists”.
I could also be eaten by space aliens.
Let hope they all look like this:
No way…
https://www.google.com.au/search?q=nichelle+nichols&espv=2&site=webhp&tbm=isch&imgil=FK5E5lDH_v7_cM%253A%253BaSuR0KkHP3ZviM%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.blackfilm.com%25252Fread%25252F2016%25252F08%25252Fstar-treks-nichelle-nichols-joins-young-restless%25252F&source=iu&pf=m&fir=FK5E5lDH_v7_cM%253A%252CaSuR0KkHP3ZviM%252C_&usg=__zPg_EQq1yIM7WQo4q1-2FTCPdaQ%3D&biw=1243&bih=606&ved=0ahUKEwjr0K3vn87SAhWLbbwKHQczDq8QyjcIhwE&ei=L9LDWKv9Fovb8QWH5rj4Cg#imgrc=FK5E5lDH_v7_cM:
Uhura
The girla
my dreams.
Is that Seven of Nine or Ten out of Ten, I forget.
Star Trek: Jeri Ryan in a Bodysuit
Wait? Whaddaya mean that’s not what it’s called?