[1] Northwest Snowpack Up Since 1970s
Salmon recovery planners who having been taking heat from critics ever since the hydro BiOp came out in 2008 may be somewhat off the hook if a new analysis from University of Washington climate scientists is correct. Environmental and fishing groups have long complained that BiOp actions did little or nothing to counteract the impacts of climate change.
But a new paper, titled "A New Look at Snowpack Trends in the Cascade Mountains" which will soon be published in the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate. says snowpack in the Cascades actually increased by 19 percent from 1976 through 2007, compared to the 1961-1990 average.
That analysis seems at odds with a world of rising temperatures, and it has been a hard pill to swallow for some scientists. But on the fourth try, the study has finally passed peer review.
Lead author Mark Stoelinga told NW Fishletter that his trip through peer-review hell began back in October 2008 when the paper was first submitted to the journal for publication. It was co-authored by UW researcher Mark Albright and Cliff Mass, well-known professor of atmospheric sciences.
One of its main conclusions is that after accounting for effects of warming and cooling cycles in the North Pacific, Cascades snowpack has declined only 2 percent for each decade from 1930 through 2007.
It's not exactly news, since various versions of their findings have been in the public realm and debated for nearly two years, but their results have now been approved by their peers.
As average global temperatures have climbed, the paper says, a lack of warming in the northeast Pacific Ocean may have played a significant role in keeping snowpack levels higher than many scientists expected.
Other studies have pegged nearly a 50-percent decline in snowpack from 1950 to 1995, but since that period began with a series of high snowpack years, and ended with years of relatively low snowpacks, it has likely overstated the decline. And, as the paper points out, some findings in these other studies "make the picture less clear."
The authors cited two 2005 studies that showed snowpack declines were much less when the period covered began before 1945. One that used hydrological model simulations estimated only a 5-percent loss from 1913 to 2003, and another one showed no losses or even slight gains.
The new paper concluded that the 48-percent decline in snowpack between 1950 and 1997 "is mostly attributable to natural variability in the north Pacific region." The authors found that variable modes in the winter-mean north Pacific sea-level pressure field explained about 80 percent of the downward trend in snowpack during this time frame.
"The total residual loss from 1930-2007 is 16 percent, and is very nearly statistically significant. An unknown portion of this residual loss may be due to anthropogenic global warming."
Using other modelers' estimates of a 0.21 C degree increase in temperature per decade over the northeast Pacific, the authors calculated that the cumulative loss of Cascade spring snowpack from 1985-2025 will be 9 percent, "which is considerably less than the 29 percent loss projected for the same period by a recent climate impacts report for Washington state."
The paper also estimated that during the 1930-2007 period, the days when maximum snowpack and 90 percent melt-out occurred had shifted five days earlier, but "neither of these shifts is statistically significant."
The authors noted that their estimates contained large confidence intervals, and there was large uncertainty built into some estimates when using such short records as the 1970-2006 time frame.
But their results run counter to scary pronouncements in a 2004 document called "Scientific Consensus Statement on the Likely Impacts of Climate Change" on the Pacific Northwest, which was signed by some of the region's most well-known scientists, including Jane Lubchenco, now head of NOAA, and several UW professors, including climate scientist Phil Mote, who also served as Washington's climatologist. However, none of the authors of this paper had endorsed it.
The 2004 "consensus" stated that in some places, peak snowpack had shifted 40 days earlier, that cumulative snowpack had declined by about 50 percent, with modeling showing that half the reduction was due to warming trends, and half to downward trends in precipitation.
Since then, those findings have been used by several Northwest politicians, like former Seattle mayor Greg Nickels, who used the 50-percent loss figures in February 2007 to push anti-warming policy initiatives.
Co-author Albright, a research meteorologist at the UW, who was assistant Washington state climatologist at the time (he had served as climatologist until 1998), made news that year after e-mailing colleagues to say he could see no basis for the 50-percent loss that politicians were talking about.
A debate began between Albright and Mass on one side, and several climate scientists from the UW's Climate Impacts Group on the other, which included Albright's boss, Phil Mote.
The disagreement culminated in a statement released by the University on Feb. 22, 2007, that described the results of a meeting between the scientists to straighten things out.
Dennis Hartmann, chair of the UW's atmospheric sciences department, said the overall snowpack decline from 1945 to the present was more like 30 percent, and about two-thirds of the trend could be "associated" with temperature increases.
"The absence of a trend in the last 30 years seems to be associated with increased precipitation rather than with a lack of warming," said the statement.
"The warming projected for the 21st century is expected to have a significant negative impact on snowpack," said Hartmann, "particularly mid-elevation snowpack, even if increased precipitation from natural variability and/or climate change is enough to 'hold off' the impacts of warmer temperatures on snowpack in the near term. Changes in 21st century precipitation are less certain than temperature, however. Given that approximately 50 percent of the snowpack in the Cascades sits below 4200 feet, where spring snowpack is very sensitive to small increases in average temperature, preparing for climate change impacts is critical."
According to The Seattle Times, Mote was sore that Albright was distributing his work without letting his boss see it first. Mote said Albright's work had to be reviewed by him, if it was tied to the climatologist's office. After Albright refused to accept Mote's order, Mote fired him.
Cliff Mass told The Times that Albright was doing nothing wrong--"simply airing his analysis and seeking feedback. "In all my years of doing science, I've never seen this sort of gag-order approach to doing science," Mass said, in the March 2007 story.
Mote disagreed, and said he only wanted to check for quality, not squelch debate.
More recently, in a June 2009 letter to her state's Congressional delegation that urged them to support the energy bill working its way through Congress, Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire said the state had lost 20 percent of its snowpack in the last 30 years, citing a UW study that no one can point to now.
Meanwhile, the Stoelinga et al. paper has finally got the stamp of academic approval, though it wasn't easy.
By e-mail, Stoelinga told NW Fishletter that the problem was a "combination of bad reviewers and an editor who refused to exercise editorial leadership. His solution in each iteration was to add more reviewers, rather than make an editorial decision. This allowed opposing reviewers to hold up the process and nearly argue the paper to death."
Stoelinga said the paper was read by seven separate reviewers, an editor, and then chief editor of the journal.
"What finally broke the logjam was when Cliff Mass contacted the chief editor to complain about the process. The entire review package was transferred from the editor to the chief editor, and then it went through very quickly. Chief Editor Andrew Weaver should be commended for his handling of the situation."
Stoelinga said the reviewers were a mixed bag.
"Some were so opposed to the paper they rejected it without any real explanation why," he said. "And the opposition came from both sides. Some did not want to accept our conclusions about less influence of global warming on snowpack than had been implied by previous work, while in contrast, one reviewer in particular did not want to accept even the 2 percent per decade decline that we concluded might be due to global warming. On balance, however, the former complaint was probably more prevalent." -Bill Rudolph
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