Cascades climatology indicates melting, despite views of canned climatologist

Seems to me that there was a climate change denier state meteorologist who got canned for being dumb on this issue, and then got all huffy about it.

Yes, yes, yes. Here it is, and here's the dispute in all its ragged glory:

Associate State Climatologist Fired for Exposing Global Warming Myths

I'll try to excerpt to get to the pith of the myths:

"University of Washington climate scientist Mark Albright was dismissed on March 12 from his position as associate state climatologist, just weeks after exposing false claims of shrinking glaciers in the Cascade Mountains. Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels (D) had asserted in a February 7 Seattle Times editorial, "the average snow pack in the Cascades has declined 50 percent since 1950 and will be cut in half again in 30 years if we don't start addressing the problems of climate change now." Albright knew from his research that the Cascade Mountains snow pack had not declined anywhere near what Nickels asserted, and that the snow pack has actually been growing in recent years."

Skip down to where it gets interesting:

"Albright noted in his emails the current snow pack is only marginally lower than the long-term average since 1943. Moreover, the Cascade Mountains snow pack has been growing since the late 1970s. Albright's emails were particularly embarrassing to Philip Mote, the Washington state climatologist. Mote had become well-known within the scientific community through his work documenting an asserted decline in Cascade Mountain glaciers. In late February, [noted] University of Washington atmospheric scientist Dennis Hartmann agreed to referee the brewing dispute."

After reviewing the data, Hartmann concluded on February 22, "While some stations show a 50 percent downward trend in April 1 snow water equivalent between 1950 and present, we believe the overall observed trend for the Cascade Mountains of Washington and Oregon is smaller. "One set of observations using all of the Cascade mountain stations in Washington State ... from 1945 until the present shows a snow water equivalent decrease of about 30 percent," Hartmann noted. "If an earlier starting date is chosen, the trend is smaller, but the number of stations available before 1945 is relatively small and their average altitude is high."

Subsequent to this review, Albright kept sending out emails telling other people his assessment of the Cascade snow pack. Mote told him to pass the emails through him first, as his supervisor. Albright didn't. Mote fired him. CENSORSHIP! cried the denier community.

Hartmann, on the other hand, was probably troubled by the uncertainty. So he did what good professors do, I'm guessing: he put a grad student on the case.

Guess what!?

Warming Climate Is Affecting Cascades Snowpack

"There has been sharp disagreement in recent years about how much, or even whether, winter snowpack has declined in the Cascade Mountains of Washington and Oregon during the last half-century. But new research leaves little doubt that a warmer climate has a significant effect on the snowpack, as measured by water content on April 1, even if other factors keep year-to-year measurements close to normal for a period of years."

Skipping down:

"All things being equal, if you make it 1 degree Celsius warmer, then 20 percent of the snowpack goes away for the central Puget Sound basin, the area we looked at," said Joseph Casola, a University of Washington doctoral student in atmospheric sciences. That means that even in years with normal or above-normal snowfall, the snowfall probably would have been even greater except for climate warming."

[Note that Casola is a grad student in atmospheric sciences, Hartmann's specialty.]

Now it gets really interesting, because first Casola confirms what Albright was saying:

"Annual snowfall variability makes it difficult to plot a meaningful trend, Casola said. Starting in a year with high snow accumulation will imply a significant decrease over time, while starting in a year with average or low snow totals will imply little change or even an increase. So, for example, measuring from 1944 to 2005 shows just a slight decline in snowpack but changing the starting year to 1950 more than triples the decline. However, the measurements also show a slight increase in the last 30 years, a period of significant climate warming. That is probably because trend measurements include declines from climate warming as well as increases and decreases from other factors."

So, skipping down some more, what's the summary and conclusion? Albright right, or Alwrong?

"The new research used four different methods to examine decades-long records of water contained in Cascades snowpack in the central Puget Sound basin on April 1 of each year. Scientists used simple geometry to estimate temperature sensitivity of snowpack, made detailed analysis of seasonal snowpack and temperature data, used a hydrological model to examine the data, and analyzed daily temperature and precipitation measurements to estimate water content of snowpack on April 1.

"If you assume precipitation is the same every year and look at the effects of temperature alone, all the ways we examined the data converge at about a 20 percent decline in snowpack for each degree Celsius of temperature increase," said Casola.

He [Casola] is lead author of a paper detailing the work, part of his doctoral thesis, which is being published online May 14 in Journal of Climate, published by the American Meteorological Society. Co-authors, all from the UW, are Lan Cuo, Ben Livneh, Dennis Lettenmaier, Mark Stoelinga, Philip Mote and John M. Wallace.

[No Hartmann; he must have recused himself.]

So the real "bottom line" is that to have an increase in the snowpack when it's getting warmer, you have to have more snow. And even if there's more snow, there's less snow than there would have been if it wasn't as warm. Which means that under virtually every climate scenario for the next 30 years, the Cascades snowpack will get smaller. Which is what the mayor said. Which is what Albright statistically asserted was wrong, because his trend was smaller based on a different starting date.

All of which makes perfect sense to me. Can't wait for the rebuttal statements from Albright. They should get picked up by all the denier mouthpieces. Guess I'll have to stay tuned and see watt's up.