Researcher says climate change may be cooling California
By: By Matt Weiser
Published: Sat, 06/04
Spring passed California by, and summer remains in hiding.
Nine tornadoes have torn up the Sacramento Valley from Oroville to Fairfield. A giant Sierra snowpack, still frozen fast, has put innumerable summer adventures on hold.
The Golden State’s weather has gone haywire.
And it’s not over yet: Sacramento can expect as much as another 1.4 inches of rain this weekend and temperatures 20 degrees below normal, with more mountain snow.
“It’s what I call global weirding,” said Bill Patzert, a climatologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. “This has been a very strange year all over the planet.”
What’s going on?
Global Warming Impacts in California
Losses to the Sierra snowpack and water supply. The Sierra Nevada snowpack functions as the most important natural reservoir of water in California. Under current conditions, the snowpack is created in fall and winter and slowly releases about 15 million acre-feet of water in the spring and summer, when California needs it most. California’s dams and water storage facilities are built to handle the snow melt as it happened in the past. Higher temperatures are now causing the snowpack to melt earlier and all at once. Earlier and larger releases of water could overwhelm California’s water storage facilities, creating risk of floods and water shortages.
http://ag.ca.gov/globalwarming/impact.php
For a Climatologist the guy don’t know $hit about weather. If he has to ask what is happening he is in the wrong business and flipping burgers may also be above his mentality level. The main Weirding going on is the stupidity of the Expert Climatologists.
This may also be the attempt at “Better Communications” with the public! I think someone has passed around “Stupid Pills”.
Under current conditions, the snowpack is created in fall and winter and slowly releases about 15 million acre-feet of water in the spring and summer, when California needs it most.
Unless you voted Republican – in which case SF democrats turn off the water pumps and you go thirsty.
This post is over simplified. The full article does talk about the PDO and a negative arctic oscillation as being factors. Explicitly they state that the negative arctic oscillation is pushing more cold air from the arctic toward the mid lattitudes (like the US west coast and the parts of eastern Europe and Asia) which is true enough but they cite a reference to a melting arctic and attribute this to climate change which I see as both wrong but predictable. If I’m not mistaken, I heard that global circulation models predict fewer negative polar oscillation and strong blocking patterns as the poles warm more than the equatorial zones, just the opposite of what is happening.
yeah that’s in the graphic too. They have a big upside down question mark showing the jet stream traveling down the Rockies until it hit’s Idaho, then it takes a right turn back out over the ocean toward Hawaii, later looping back over southern California.
I didn’t know the jet stream could travel west against the rotation of the planet.
If you looked at the circulation pattern in Europe during the past couple of cold winter spells, the cold air that hits the UK originate over Scandinavia when there is a negative arctic oscillation. these negative oscillations suddenly seem to be happening a lot more. I’ve seen people speculate on solar effects or ENSO effects as drivers but something is different than what we’ve gotten used to. However it seems to be similar to weather in the cold phase of the PDO earlier in the 20th century.
circulation patterns, smirculation patterns.
Everything is global warming to them. Sure they’ll talk about natural variation now. But it’s still all global warming.
The front page has a huge NOAA graphic showing Siberia, Alaska, and Canada as piping hot, with California a neutral, natural vegetation color – under the headline CALIFORNIA’S CHILL PUZZLES EXPERTS.
It sort of reminds me of how their “experts” are always surprised when the economy “unexpectedly” takes a nose dive under their manchild .
You are all missing the point: California has already cooled and the communist are concerned that citizens will no longer support their efforts to impose an eco-dictatorship!
Weather does unusual things. Always has, always will. That is why there are so many weather nuts/storm chasers out there. If every day was perfect, would anyone be interested?
“Earlier and larger releases of water could overwhelm California’s water storage facilities, creating risk of floods and water shortages.”
Floods and water shortages. What am I missing?
http://lakepowell.water-data.com/