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.
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?
The only thing that these “Educated” people got right in the whole study was this: “California needs to rapidly reconfigure its water storage systems and management practices.’
Should have done that years ago with a few more dams, stopped worrying about a few small fish and waste good water and a few other idiotic measures they put in place.
California should have installed a minimum of fifty new dams over the last ten years each with 500MW hydroelectric generation facilities. This would have allowed the state to go reliably green and create a sufficient quantity of water storage to supply the states need during the recurring 5 year drought periods
These are the same folks who say no new dams can be built and oh yeah millions of illegals (and their water needs) are welcome.
They’re far to busy spending all the revenue they don’t have on social justice and high speed trains to nowhere to be bothered with little things like dam and reservoir infrastructure, desal plants, and electrical power generation.
My oldest sister’s family lives in Bakersfield and probably doesn’t think of it as “nowhere”. But she certainly has little use for Moonbeam’s new train set.
And this “study” gets published without question. The vapid prognostications are catching up to the warmist crowd.
Wow, 85% reduction to the snowpack in 85 years…how symmetrical!
I actually thought his happened every summer. My bad.
Of course one cold, wet and deep snow winter couldn’t be global cooling or the end of global warming right? 😉
Why am i NOT laughing?!
Because there’s a whole lot of cruelty and tragedy lurking behind the joke. But then, humor IS the bridesmaid of tears.
What will happen if there is more typical snow for the next few years, or even above average?
The hypesters will simply adjust their “predictions” to blame it on CO2 more.
The circular reasoning fallacy in this is that GCMs are proven useless for not only long term predictions, but short term as well.
“Climate change puts California’s snowpack in jeopardy in future droughts”
Yes. As the climate cools, less evaporation means less precipitation. Of course, here in the Sierra, there is no such thing as an average winter. If just bounces between extremes. This year happens to be a good one, relative to the snow pack.
UCLA is certainly fielding new levels regarding graduates stunted ability to think logically. UCLA graduates bring confirmation bias to new depths of a global minimum.
Temperatures at high altitudes are increasing? Assuming that high elevations rise 1°C by 2100; that is what, a 100m-130m increase in elevation to reach the original temperatures?
Researchers without simple common sense who develop models in closed rooms without direct observations or experience at proper elevations.
All guess work = very bad assumptions and models.
Hello!
Is anyone there!?
This is a true “Look into my crystal ball” climate medium scam. The article’s authors delved into the mystical climate powders and irrational assumptions.
I doubt their models could predict tomorrow’s and next week’s weather.
Their predictions are busted already.
Well, no snow during droughts looks like a reasonable prediction. Doesn’t it happen already?
Exactly.
and the pattern is surely going to be one of continued droughts, interrupted by the odd extreme weather event.
A year on year continued snowfall with small variation from year to year is different from one of low snowfall and continued drought interrupted by colossal snowfalls…
you might get the same average over a decade, but it is pretty different.
The California climate has changed, hasn’t it?
No
Climate is an average of weather over 30 years, ie, made up!
To expand on Eric’s reply:
I am a native Californian who has spent nearly all my life here. I first started observing and caring about our weather in about 1957, so call it 60 years ago. In the 70s, there was a climate shift to warmer and more mild (prior to that we had the new little iceage scare). About 2008 we shifted back to the cooler phase of the cycle. Weather now is substantially identical to what it was before the 70s shift.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/14/on-hartmann-and-wendler-2005-the-significance-of-the-1976-pacific-climate-shift-in-the-climatology-of-alaska/
This is an absolutely normal cycle that has a roughly 60 year period, with alternating 30 year 1/2 cycles of warm and cold.
BTW, the worst drought I remember was about 1976 when I learned to downhill ski. Squaw Valley had no snow to speak of at 6200 ft and coming down mountain run from 8200 feet I got to walk over straw patches placed to cover bare spots… That was at the tail of the Ice Age Scare. The lack of ice kind of sunk it. Like now the record snow is sinking the global warming scare.
California has never had “A year on year continued snowfall with small variation from year to year”, that is a fantasy of your creation. When I was a small child, my Dad drove the family to Donner Pass to see the extreme snow. It had not been like that since the Donner Party got stuck in 1846:
http://www.legendsofamerica.com/ca-donnerparty.html
So, you see, it has always been like this. Years of nearly no snow. Years of near record snow.
So not only “no”, but “hell no”, and you need to read some history, since clearly you have not lived it or remembered it.
Griff’s version of history is what happens in his Granny’s basement. !!
Nothing else is real to it.
Griff, you should consider moving to London. The climate has four seasons over there: wee hours, midday, evening and night.
Griff, California regional climate always bounces between drought and flood, like Texas, Australia, and many other regions of the world. “Normal” does not equal “small year to year changes”. “Normal” can mean multi decade drought. “Normal” can mean rains that turn California’s central valley into a short term inland sea. Both normal extremes have happened in the past, long before the CO2 obsession.
@AndyG
I don’t even want to think about what happens if Griff’s granny’s basement.
Such clairvoyance would lead ME to play the lottery. Just saying.
Wow griff, considering the massive amounts of energy required to change oceanic-atmospheric teleconnected systems from one regime to another, the relatively small amount of CO2 in the atmosphere that is thought to be from human emissions is magically powerful stuff!!!
To think my daughter and son-in-law graduated from UCLA…hope their education was better than this study. I have lived most of my almost 60 years in California and water/snow has always been feast or famine.
I don’t like to feed the trolls but below is a link to Mammoth Mountains snow history. When you get to the page scroll down to the bottom of the “Daily Message” and click on the down arrow next to the words “Extended Snow History”.
Their history goes back to 1969/1970 and has monthly totals for each year since.
Some of the highlights or low lights. The average for all 48 years including this year is 342.45 inches of snow. There are 26 years below and 22 years above that number. The lowest two year period was 75/76-76/77 and averaged 145.75 and the highest two year period was 2009/2010-2010/2011 and averaged 613.20. The next is ten year averaging and it shows the snow increasing not decreasing.
1969/1970 to 1978/1979 – average of 298.95 inches
1979/1980 to 1988/1989 – average of 334.31 inches
1989/1990 to 1998/1999 – average of 339.87 inches
1999/2000 to 2008/2009 – average of 395.52 inches
2009/2010 to 2016/2017 – average of 386.68 inches
The last 8 years, even in the middle of the drought still showed above average snowfall in Mammoth. My conclusion is that although the past drought was bad (not as bad as 76-77) the problem was made worse by poor water practices, lack of adequate storage and stupid judicial decisions.
https://www.mammothmountain.com/winter/mountain-information/mountain-information/snow-conditions-and-weather
Progreenesjaydubbleyew-liberals are only interested in history when they can find something WRONG to lecture us deplorables about. E.g. Hand-wringing over Huckleberry Finn using the n-word. Context, historical or otherwise, be damned.
Skankhunt42, er, I mean Griff, there is an excellent video by July Talk called, “Picturing Love”. Sounds exactly what you do in an attempt to believe that we are all going to hell because of our amazing quality of life.
Which, for all practical purposes, is migrating CO2 back into the atmosphere after hundreds of millions of years of sequestering. We are SAVING the planet by releasing this CO2 back into the atmosphere.
However in your very feeble, simplistic grey matter, you are of the opinion that all that our species does is damaging to our environment.
You truly sicken me.
Nope. Not in any way that is recognizable to real people in their everyday experience.
There probably will be less snow, but more cold.. certainly hasn’t happened this year where there is more snow than ever.. but this century will be changing to a cold/dry climate after the wet/warm climate of the recent warm cycle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1KYvz7FFrE
Antarctica is the world’s largest desert for a reason.
The End has never been so Nigh.
“Nye” maybe????
I recently looked up Dr. David Viner, he of “children will (sob) grow up not knowing what snow is” ignominy (actually he didn’t say ‘sob’ but I enjoyed inserting it). His career is doing just fine, thank you. He moved on from UEA (University of Easy Access) to lucrative positions with Natural England (Principal Climate Change Specialist) (principal? He has underlings?) and then the British Council (the UK’s “international organization for cultural relations and educational opportunities”) and Dave has now moved on to work for a major consultancy, Mott McDonald. His children are doubtless growing up knowing (snigger) what bread is.
Birds have enough brains to migrate north. Plenty of cryosphere, fresh water, cool air, bitesize protein and living space around. And the best of all, the seafront properties extend perpetually – the otherwise geologically stable land rises faster (recovering from the last ice age) than the sea level is claimed to.
Belinda Waymouth, Neil Berg and Alex Hall in UCLA should aim to outsmart the birds.
If they are so sure about this, and the effect on runoff, they should start building enough large dams to catch and hold the annual water supply. They make no bones about it: it is not going too stop raining, it is going to stop coming down as snow.
Fine. But then start digging. And they might as well put in turbines because it would be a shame to waste all that renewable hydro power.
We are actually paying for these ‘scientists’ to declare “During a drought we see less overall precipitation.”
I feel for these delusional Moche civilisation level climationists. They know they have no proper job, and their failed beliefs are so often laid bare by their gods. Sky still not falling. Glaciers hanging in there. Change looking quite moderate and normal within historical ranges. More Polar bears than ever, etc. So now they cast their climate runes to predict things that cannot manifest themselves in the lifetimes of ordinary mortals, mostly affect rich Californian skiers with money to support them in this case, would have been good news for the Donner Pass wagon train but put snowshoe Thompson out of a job. They are now preserved for future generations in the book of climate models, powered by the very silicon of their Valley, so must be the word of the lord. Or Saint Steve. Amen.
Time for the “First Church of Cimate Science”?
After all, irrational religion is the biggest business in the USA, loads of hard of thought people desperate to believe rather than understand, and a load of snake oil salesman and priests ready to sell them cures for their every anxiety. And what will the climate priests do for money when Trump turns off the subsidy tap to their trough?
Real science? Surely not? They deny basic energy physics, so hard science should not employ any of them without a written denial of their pseudo science models as any sort of fact, supported by a provable peer reviewed paper that applies proven science in a repeatable way. Te absolvo. And don’t call me Shirley.
Those who cannot cope with the impudent “science denial” of independent valldation of their science by experiment may have to leave academe altogether, to get useful honest jobs that add value to society. Perhaps building better infrastructure to protect us from natural climate events, however caused? Cleaning the BS (Bad Science) out of University libraries? Is it now time to flush these false priests of pseudo science themselves out of their privileged jobs and into the gutter where they and their deliberate deceits with their huge, regressive and avoidable economic costs belong? Discuss.
PS It’s so much easier to write opinion than explain science facts to zealots. You can’t fix stupid.
Brian, I do belive that is one of the better comments on this matter that I have ever read!
It is bizarre that the climate hypesters cycle through such memes so frequently. All they did with this prophecy of doom is in effect to learn from the failed UK Met prediction about snow. Instead of talking about how kids of today wouldn’t know what snow is, the authors of this bit of hype pushed the date of doom out far enough that no one will remember how stupid they turn out to be. If they were serious about this work, they would offer an analysis of why not one earlier climate doom prediction has failed and what they have done differently in this new work to make it a meaningful analysis.
….typing on a smart phone is dumb when attempted pre-coffee….”not one climate doom prediction has SUCCEEDED”….. sorry about the editing.
Phil Mote of Oregon State University was the lead author of an article blaming the low snowpack of 2015 in the Pacific Northwest, including northern California, on greenhouse gases. Of course, the strong El Nino was the true culprit, as evidenced by this season’s heavy snowfall.
“The 2015 snowpack season was an extreme year,” Mote said. “But because of the increasing influence of greenhouse gases, years like this may become commonplace over the next few decades.” Impacts of the snow drought in California, Oregon and Washington led the governors of those states to order reductions in water use and saw many ski areas, particularly those in lower elevations, struggle.
http://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/2016/oct/study-west-coast-record-low-snowpack-2015-influenced-high-temperatures
The fact that this Alarmist garbage could be regarded as science is just sad.
I would suggest that all the so-called experts on GW be assembled with their little theories. Then when shown that observations do not match their “predictions/projections” explain why they were wrong and what do they plan on doing next. My suggestion would be for them to transition to writing rules for board games or something equally useful.
Note to parents paying exorbitant fees and living expenses to educate your children in the US. Stop wasting your money. You can see from works like these that many of our institutions of higher learning have deteriorated into paychecks for idiots schemes. Stick with the local teachers who are focused on teaching the basics. If you have the cash give them a foreign trip as a graduation present. Sending them here is guaranteed to narrow their horizons. Apologies to the few good professors remaining.
test, test, is this thing on
Oregon is chock full O nuts. And they are in control. A very beautiful state though. Maybe they should enjoy all of those natural treasures instead obsessing about them. And no believing in the climate boogey man isn’t the same as conserving the natural environment. It is the opposite of that.
What I think is being used here is the model that results in more [less] El Niño [La Niña] events as a result of increasing atmospheric heating ending up in the equatorial ocean. I remember when the Arctic Oscillation was the darling of AGW scientists because it was trending up, until it began trending down, which resulted in the same string of nonsense.
So let me clarify the current model emerging from Vaunted Ivory Towers (a British comedy waiting to be staged if there ever was one) in the form of a tunable model: Anthropogenic Global Warming will likely cause the [enter name of atmospheric system] to [enter desired direction up or down] leading to [enter more/less] [enter weather pattern desired for greatest effect] which will result in [enter desired catastrophic result to flora and fauna], unless emissions are reduced to [enter the EXACT number here] ppm.
And you are welcome.
This study comes to the correct recommendation – albeit through a misuse of ill- suited climate models.
To meet future water needs, California must have additional water storage capacity – meaning dams and reservoirs. We see thus Spring that in water rich years, they must release they extra water to the sea, they can not save this year’s excess for the future. If they get a hot quick snow melt, they same will happen again — much needed water will be sent to the Pacific.
California has always used the Sierra and other snow pack as water storage, counting on its slow release in the Spring to replace reservoir water as it is used. Snow pack as reservoir works, usually but is not dependably predictable.
California needs to do something pretty impressive….a big percentage increase in storage.
Of course, that’sounds what the study recommends. They didn’the need another study to know that, it’s been a fact for 50 years.
But their record on dam building is not that great. A number of dam failures points to poor site selection and bad engineering.
And it pains Governor Brown immensely that a trickle of river actually reaches the ocean. Actually it doesn’t happen often; what happens is during wet years the water goes to L.A. and during dry years the water goes to L.A. In the 1977 drought Southern Cal flooded their lush lawns and gushed their pretty fountains with impunity while Northern Californians weren’t allowed to flush their toilets or get a glass of water in a restaurant. My Encino relatives never even knew about the emergency waterpipe to Marin and had absolutely no rationing.
And it’s even worse now, with huge expensive tunnels being planned for sucking even more water southward while the existing infrastructure decomposes. And the State of Jefferson is gaining momentum, wonder why.
wonder if there is a way to recharge groundwater with the “excess they have been dumping into the ocean
True, There is but you won’t see the climateers pushing for this. It takes a little engineering. With the ‘cold blob’ replacing the Warm Blobs of several years, it could be wet in Cali for a few years and that will return some water to aquifers. Good time to build some water reservoirs.
During the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s, Crater Lake averaged 614.48, 623 and 571.51 inches of seasonal snowfall, respectively. By 2000 to 2013, the average was 459.73 inches. The decrease in snowfall across the Pacific Northwest is clearly visible in this EPA graph.
1.2 percent change?? Really? Dude, they’re playing around in the Noise. This is baloney.
Seems to be cherry picking endpoints. Comparing a 10-year average to a 4-year average that contains 2 drought years is a little disingenuous, isn’t it? If we add the last 2 years, the recent average will increase.
Bear in mind that the paleo record for the west coast shows past droughts that lasted for many decades, so a 10-year ‘average’ itself is not very meaningful.
It would be nice to specify the time frame…
Not a scientist but I’m wondering. Is it standard practice nowadays to issue Ouija boards with diplomas at science school graduation? I thought the idea of science was to learn things.
“There’s so much snow, Mammoth Mountain resort plans to be open for business on Fourth of July weekend.”
My sources tell me that Mammoth will be open all summer long and even Squaw will be open on the 4’th. Other resorts are thinking about it as well. The demand for skiing this winter has been very high and the conditions are outstanding.
These idiots predicting the end of snow don’t have a clue. If it actually was getting warmer, we would have more seasons like this, not less. Droughts happen when there’s no rain and warming increases evaporation which increases precipitation. The driest place on Earth is in Antarctica.
https://ourplnt.com/top-ten-driest-places-earth/
The average temperatures during winter storms in the Sierra are well below freezing, even at 6000′, so a degree or 2 of extra warmth will not stop the snow, nor will it melt Antarctica, whose average temperatures are far below freezing. What these narrative driven prognosticators seem to ignore is the effect of altitude on temperature.
Very unlikely that Mammoth will be open for skiing all summer. Possibly until the end of July. Partly depends on temps and snowfall in April and May.
I’m at Mammoth now and there’s a ton of snow. Based on the last time they were open all summer long, the snow is comparable and there is a lot of season yet to come.
It takes time to publish a paper so these clowns missed the latest data where the snowpack is ~200% more than normal for 2016/2017 season! I know the paid rapid responders will advise they are talking about a 100yrs from now, but we all know this worthless paper would not have been written if the big dump had occurred in 2015.
Does that mean without global warming it would be 25% greater than the already record depth this year? Or does global warming only have an impact during drought years? Mammoth was open for skiing last year on the 4th of July so it’s not all that unusual.
No snow, no water, drought, flood, warm, cold? Hey folks, forecasting is very difficult, especially about the future. So, here are the conclusions, let’s try to find some facts to support them!
Once they get a climate alarmist in charge of the snow pack measurement data, after a couple of decades of adjusting the data the 2016/2017 winter snow pack level will be no where near record levels.
The problem with natural weather pattern variation is that they can trend in one direction or another for as long as a human life span. Therefor when liberal thinking environmentalists (who consider all negative weather experiences to be human caused) hold sway in the Ivory Towers AND in government you have the makings of a perfect storm that can last for decades. And that storm is generally pointed at the rest of “us”. Thank God for Trump. Love him or hate him, he will hopefully save the world from those who erroneously think we need to be saved from ourselves.
“UCLA thinks that by the end of the century, Climate will reduce the Sierra Nevada snowpack by 85%.”
____________________________
As I understand it, the researchers estimate that snow-pack between 2011-15 was 25% smaller than it would have been without the warming attributed to human activity. If the warming continues as forecast, depending on emissions scenario, then their model shows that during future similar droughts snow-pack could be 60-85% smaller than it would have been without man-made warming.
Assuming the warming continues, as these authors do, then that doesn’t seem such an unreasonable conclusion.
Yawn. Easy to make predictions for 80 years hence. So what? And even it if comes to pass, I’m sure that 80 years of technological progress will allow the people of 2100 to be able to deal with it anyway. I’m sure that adults living in 1940 could not imagine how we would solve many of the future problems facing them at the time. And yet we did.
Paul Penrose
“I’m sure that 80 years of technological progress will allow the people of 2100 to be able to deal with it anyway.”
______________
Can’t say I disagree with you Paul. It just seems to me that the headline of the article is slightly misleading given the content of the paper it refers to.
No one is forecasting an ‘end of snow’. They are explicitly referring to future periods of drought and extrapolating simulations out with the assumption of further warming.
That assumption may turn out to be wrong; but if it turns out to be right then this is precisely the sort of information that will inform the technological process you refer to.
DWR54,
My point is that those kinds of extrapolations are worthless for future planning as they don’t tell us anything new. We already know that part of the country experiences cycles of deep drought and monsoon-like precipitation. History tells us this. The prudent person/society would use this information to plan for these cycles so as to be able to ride them through.
The best part about this prediction is that some of our children might still be alive at the end of the century. Of course they won’t remember this prediction but it is pretty scary today which serves the purpose.
Well gee, perhaps they should figure out how to harvest and store the bounty they are receiving now. I saw something about how some are trying to refill the aquifers but they need to do a better job of it.
Just sayin’
Is it the college educational system that makes “climate scientists” so f**king stupid, or is there some other cause? Why do these pinheads keep wasting their lives by continuing to screech all this Chicken Little wolf crying bullsh*t? Get real jobs and do something useful. Worried about potable water for future generations in southern Cali? Then go to work for a company building desalination plants. Scared of the persistent wildfires there? Gather all your ecotard buddies and go clear the non-native species and dead underbrush so it won’t burn. Start a campaign to have only native, drought resistant plants in landscaping throughout the region. Why is all of this so difficult for college “educated” people to figure out?
And the difference between this study and Dakota James’ scribblings is? …..
James, writing during the mid 80s, depicted the year 1997. In that depiction, the Great Lakes had dried up, they were selling vacation properties in Antarctica, and, here in California there was no more need, even in our coastal areas, for outer clothing.
Reality in 2017, 20 years after that prog? I hate … hate … hate cold winters. Especially when it comes time to pay my PG&E bill. Silver lining … skiing on Memorial Day … to the sweet melodies of Rasta tunes wafting in from the band playing on the patio of the lodge.
I do hope that UCLA ends all snow predictions. Since snowfall is demonstrably a broad-band random process, it’s an otiose exercise.
I’m sure that most of the residents in northern Nevada and California had known this before getting dumped on by 700 inches (and counting) this winter.
May have been comforting