Global Warming and Snowfall in the PNW

Yah, direction certainly plays a more dramatic role if it's a more SW, W, or NW... but a couple degrees warmer on average will make those SW flows more devastating. Ocean temp seems to be the largest determining factor in when we get snow or rain... Though the last few years it seems like SW flows have been more dominant in the PWN compared to W, and NW... with high pressure riding becoming more frequent.

I've lived in the BC interior all my life... And while higher elevation mountain snow has remained consistent... it's the lower elevation snow pack that seems to be establishing later, melting earlier and more frequent freeze/thaw cycles through mid-winter.

My hometown hill back in the day was Mt Shasta ski park, wonder how much longer they can stay in business without opening for holiday periods etc. They're finally opening this week without much terrain, such a weird paradox, terrible resort skiing but such great BC access and altitude there.

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Originally Posted by snapt

My hometown hill back in the day was Mt Shasta ski park, wonder how much longer they can stay in business without opening for holiday periods etc. They're finally opening this week without much terrain, such a weird paradox, terrible resort skiing but such great BC access and altitude there.

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Yeah man. They've had a really rough time of it the last few years for sure.

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Originally Posted by LightRanger

Yeah man. They've had a really rough time of it the last few years for sure.

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We see it here too with our little hills at low elevation, I feel for the new owners of Soldier Mountain, missed out on the holidays due to lack of snow/warm storms etc.

Interesting stuff but I'm not sure the problem lends itself to such simplistic modeling or that the errors tend to cancel themselves out. My non-scientific observation has been that Mt. Baker Area has actually benefitted from climate change in some ways. Yes, there are more rain events but warmer temperatures appear to have increased snowfall events during colder weather patterns resulting in more snow during periods that would historically have been cold and dry. This could be due to more overall moisture in the atmosphere.

Also, if I understand your model, it is based upon three recent years having been an average of 2.6 degrees warmer than the historical norm. Weather is highly variable. I believe that for a temperature deviation to be statistically significant it would need to include many more than three years. In other words, the 2.6 degree difference appears to be a number simply pulled out of a hat. And even without any global or regional warming trend, it's normal for snowfall amounts to vary dramatically from year to year. I'm curious, have you explored a particular years average temperature to verify that it is positively correlated to snowfall amounts?

Using average annual temperature deviations from the entire contiguous U.S. when discussing PNW winter snowfall seems rather crude. Global warming affects different regions differently and different seasons differently. I think global warming has disturbed the normal flow of the jet stream and caused the PNW to experience more winter weather that has dropped down from the Gulf of Alaska. It's possible that global warming has increased PNW snowfall as much as it has decreased it. At least for the time being and in certain locals. And that's assuming the PNW region has actually warmed from historical norms which is not clear from the continental data sets you used. Have the average PNW winter temperatures actually warmed?

I know modelling such complex processes based on a few data sets is necessarily imprecise. My thought is that trying to predict snowfall deviations based on the limited data sets you used is perhaps an interesting exercise but ultimately not correlated to the physical world in any meaningful way.

What I find more interesting is how otherwise intelligent beings can deny that human activity has, and will continue to, alter the global climate in an alarming and unacceptable manner. My personal belief is that the climate will reach a tipping point and that the changes we will see in our lifetime will be far more dramatic than even the most alarming scientific projections have predicted.

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Originally Posted by AweShuksan

What I find more interesting is how otherwise intelligent beings can deny that human activity has, and will continue to, alter the global climate in an alarming and unacceptable manner. My personal belief is that the climate will reach a tipping point and that the changes we will see in our lifetime will be far more dramatic than even the most alarming scientific projections have predicted.

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that's my fear

exposed earth warms fast and holds heat energy that snow cover reflects, it's exponential as the lower elevation snowpack(much larger acreage than mt. tops) recedes

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Originally Posted by AweShuksan

Interesting stuff but I'm not sure the problem lends itself to such simplistic modeling or that the errors tend to cancel themselves out. My non-scientific observation has been that Mt. Baker Area has actually benefitted from climate change in some ways. Yes, there are more rain events but warmer temperatures appear to have increased snowfall events during colder weather patterns resulting in more snow during periods that would historically have been cold and dry. This could be due to more overall moisture in the atmosphere.

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There's some truth here. I think the easiest note is that warmer temperatures have a higher absolute humidity. In our case I think you would get around a 5% increase in water based on the increased temperature alone. It's enough to slightly dampen the effects, but not reverse them. You could argue the overall weather patterns would change in our favor, but that is all speculation, there is no data to really support one way or the other at this point. Just as likely the weather patterns stay the same or make it even worse.

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Originally Posted by AweShuksan

Also, if I understand your model, it is based upon three recent years having been an average of 2.6 degrees warmer than the historical norm. Weather is highly variable. I believe that for a temperature deviation to be statistically significant it would need to include many more than three years. In other words, the 2.6 degree difference appears to be a number simply pulled out of a hat. And even without any global or regional warming trend, it's normal for snowfall amounts to vary dramatically from year to year. I'm curious, have you explored a particular years average temperature to verify that it is positively correlated to snowfall amounts?

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The last 3 years are not an anomaly, they've followed the same trend we've seen over the long term. If you look at the total global warming in a larger sense, it would be closer to 1C, or just under 2F. This number will always lag the most recent values if we are in a continuing trend. There's no argument that we have not been warming, but you could use different values for this warming to explore different scenarios. I think all would be directionally similar.

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Originally Posted by AweShuksan

Using average annual temperature deviations from the entire contiguous U.S. when discussing PNW winter snowfall seems rather crude. Global warming affects different regions differently and different seasons differently. I think global warming has disturbed the normal flow of the jet stream and caused the PNW to experience more winter weather that has dropped down from the Gulf of Alaska. It's possible that global warming has increased PNW snowfall as much as it has decreased it. At least for the time being and in certain locals. And that's assuming the PNW region has actually warmed from historical norms which is not clear from the continental data sets you used. Have the average PNW winter temperatures actually warmed?

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Yes. Look at the below animation, year to year the warming has not been uniform as expected, but it's all warmer. PNW looks warmer than the global average over the past 5 years. If I used regional numbers they would have been even warmer than what I have, but then we are arguing we need less temporal resolution and higher spatial resolution, and I don't see an obvious reason to do that.

https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4546

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Originally Posted by AweShuksan

I know modelling such complex processes based on a few data sets is necessarily imprecise. My thought is that trying to predict snowfall deviations based on the limited data sets you used is perhaps an interesting exercise but ultimately not correlated to the physical world in any meaningful way.

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My claim would be warmer temperatures correlate to lower snowfall, especially at lower elevations. I don't think this is controversial or even all that insightful. The absolutes have some conversation, but if you see no correlation with that I don't think different math will do much.

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Originally Posted by AweShuksan

What I find more interesting is how otherwise intelligent beings can deny that human activity has, and will continue to, alter the global climate in an alarming and unacceptable manner. My personal belief is that the climate will reach a tipping point and that the changes we will see in our lifetime will be far more dramatic than even the most alarming scientific projections have predicted.

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I didn't go here because I didn't want to speculate. Although it may be true, there's no science behind a tipping point, and the argument that humans have warmed the atmosphere, although strong, is harder to prove than getting agreement that we have already warmed. I think the pushback on a lot of climate science is a belief system as you noted, it was the reason to abstract some of that and do math, get away from some of the politics/beliefs. In this case, we're arguing a tipping point based on anthropogenic warming, but struggle to agree that warmer temperatures already observed have led to less snowfall.

"...What does this mean for snowfall in the Pacific Northwest?..."
"...This [predicted deviation in snowfall] puts many of the ski areas in the Northwest out of business..."

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Originally Posted by cmor

...Any thoughts on the methodology or outcome?

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You seem to conclude that a future deviation from a 20th century average temperature means that Northwest ski areas will experience a deviation between their supposed business success in the 20th century and their future business success. This conclusion does not follow from the data analyzed, because the Northwest ski areas were not even in business at all when averaged over the full duration of the 20th century. If you want to compare 2 periods of business success, the baseline period should be chosen such that business was actually attempted for the duration of the baseline period.

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Originally Posted by Vitamin I

"...What does this mean for snowfall in the Pacific Northwest?..."
"...This [predicted deviation in snowfall] puts many of the ski areas in the Northwest out of business..."



You seem to conclude that a future deviation from a 20th century average temperature means that Northwest ski areas will experience a deviation between their supposed business success in the 20th century and their future business success. This conclusion does not follow from the data analyzed, because the Northwest ski areas were not even in business at all when averaged over the full duration of the 20th century. If you want to compare 2 periods of business success, the baseline period should be chosen such that business was actually attempted for the duration of the baseline period.

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Don't be stupid.

The diminishing snow is a reality and given the trend, it does not look good for the region.

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Originally Posted by Vitamin I

"...What does this mean for snowfall in the Pacific Northwest?..."
"...This [predicted deviation in snowfall] puts many of the ski areas in the Northwest out of business..."



You seem to conclude that a future deviation from a 20th century average temperature means that Northwest ski areas will experience a deviation between their supposed business success in the 20th century and their future business success. This conclusion does not follow from the data analyzed, because the Northwest ski areas were not even in business at all when averaged over the full duration of the 20th century. If you want to compare 2 periods of business success, the baseline period should be chosen such that business was actually attempted for the duration of the baseline period.

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It's a good point that the ski business started in the latter half of the century, the analysis is showing the deviation from the century as a whole. For most of us we have not experienced this claimed reduction in snowfall in terms of something we could track, it's already occurred. I think that's why the numbers are bigger than what I would have expected, it's closer to say this is comparing an average 1950 year to 2018. I don't know if the out of business comment is accurate, I would say at risk might be a better term when referring to an additional 1C of warming.

Thoughts on the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and it's affects on comparing numbers over the past few decades to numbers from the 50s-70s? Especially "20th century norms", a century that had two rather cold oscillations. It seems that the average could have been skewed cooler during some of these colder oscillations, which could possibly return.

As for "don't be stupid its happening", I think we all know that. I'm not arguing that human influenced climate change isn't happening and that it needs to be fixed as quick as we possibly can, but also wondering if things like this are skewing our predictions a little more doomsday than they actually should be?

http://research.jisao.washington.edu/pdo/

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Originally Posted by fullStack

You should show everyone how smart you are and quit skiing now to get ahead of the curve.

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WTF, retard? Blame someone for citing an evidence based trend?

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