Weather Update

Ok -- it's time to get back to business...

So -- those of you living in California will have noticed that it rained a lot recently. Has it rained "enough"? No.

This story reports on how ski resorts in the Sierra Nevada Seca are opening late in the season. Resorts are adjusting to new norms by advertising themselves as places for outdoor fun 9 months of the year instead of winter wonderlands 4.5 three months of the year. It ends with the tragicomic tale of snow-makers who saw a night's work melt and flow away.

DWR's Weather and Climate newsletter [PDF] goes from good news to bad news:

There were 21 days in November that California set new temperature records! Almost all of them were high records (153 new high maximums, 40 new high minimums, with 196 total new records; 3 were new lows).

[snip]

Several storms have hit California since mid-December, providing a boost to Sierra snow, if not making a major impact to current reservoir storage. At least one big weather maker will slide through between now and New Year's. There's good news and bad news with this present situation.

Good news is, anything will help from a drought standpoint. A 75% of average runoff year would keep things just as poor, reservoir-wise. So we really need to see something more substantial than that. Last water year (hydrological water year ending September 30, 2008) ended with 57% of average runoff; the year prior, 53%. Hence this is the start of what could be a 3rd dry year. If we did end with close to average runoff (95-100%), the upstate reservoirs could spring back up to normal. Areas south of the Delta will have supply issues even if we had a great snowpack, but that's not my department, as they say. Other positive factors are that the systems have so far been fairly cool (snow levels low to moderate). That provides snowpack, while keeping down the risk of flood in burn areas.

Bad news factors: The season started okay, took a hiatus most of November, and now we're looking at a drying trend after Christmas. Yes, a couple systems come by, but they may be fast. Quicker storms, less resulting precip. Also the precipitation that has occurred has not brought significant runoff into the reservoirs. Shasta stands at 46% of average for this time of year, Oroville at 44% of average, and Folsom (Have you SEEN it lately?!?) at 44% of average; 21% of capacity.

PG&E is "adopting" to climate change by seeding the clouds, i.e., "enhancing" snowfall. Why is a power company doing that? Because more snow means more water to power PG&E's hydro-plants (and hydro can be sold at premium, green power prices...)

I've never liked cloud seeding (and other types of geoengineering), but PG&E claims that it doesn't have adverse impacts. Predictable response, but true?

That's the situation from California, but what of the rest of the world? In the recent issue of Nature's Climate Change, the news is not good:

2008 went down as the coolest year of the current decade, if still the tenth warmest since instrumental measurements began in 1850. But the past 12 months have done little to cool concerns over the forecast for climate change. If anything, the science that has emerged this year paints a far bleaker picture than the landmark reports released in 2007 from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The latest in a slew of convictions against greenhouse gas emissions, this year scientists for the first time attributed the major changes occurring in physical and biological systems throughout the globe — from early onset of spring to trends in ice melting — to human-caused climate change.

Oh, and we should now start to worry about methane as a potent greenhouse gas that's going to be far more common as cow offgassing (farts) are supplemented by melting permafrost in Siberia and the Arctic circle.

Rapid methane release is one of the four main causes of "abrupt climate change". To learn about the others (rapid glacial melting, changes in the hydrological cycle and ocean currents), read this recent USGS report.

Bottom Line: This winter is not going to fix our water shortage problem, and the effects of climate change are going to make everything worse -- leading to abrupt disruptions in our lifestyle.