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Dispute About Snowpack Decline Spurs Heated Debate A new study by University of Washington scientists suggesting that the Cascade Mountain snowpack isn’t suffering from the effects of human-induced climate change has become the source of debate both within the university and in the larger climate change debate.
Cliff Mass, one of the study’s co-authors, says that conventional projections showing the Cascade snowpack’s decline are affected by the years used as benchmarks. Snow levels in the 1950s, his team argues, were unusually high. This results in current levels appearing to decline more dramatically than may in fact be the case.
Because measurements before the 1950s were rare, Mass and his colleagues attempted to estimate snowpack based on measurements of the volume of streams that would have been fed by the melting snow. Using that method, they concluded that the current snowpack has only declined 23 percent since the 1930s—a change that could be attributed to ocean-influenced weather patterns.
Mass also predicts that the oceans in the Pacific Northwest will warm more slowly than oceans elsewhere in the world, initially sheltering the Cascades from a rapid rise in temperatures.
However, Mass doesn’t say the region will be spared from an eventual drop in snowpack that will dramatically reduce water supplies. He thinks that will happen by the end of the 21st century.
The study, which has yet to be peer-reviewed, has already been disputed by several of Mass’s U of W colleagues, who say the statistical models used tend to exaggerate ocean effects while underestimating human-induced global warming effects. The debate continues an argument that arose in 2007, when another UW meteorologist, Mark Albright, who challenged colleagues’ claims that Northwest snowpacks had declined by half in the second half of the 20th century, was subsequently stripped of his title as associate state climatologist. Albright is a co-author of the new study. Return to September 2008 Western Energy News To sponsor Western Energy News , please contact WEI at 503 231-1994.
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