Warming Facts – How Global Warming Will Affect Snow Levels
This is not a political or emotive piece about what we can do to find global warming solutions or stop climate change; it is about the direct effect global warming and climate change will have on snow levels and ski weather in the next ninety years.
Forgive the pun, but whether we like it or not, there's no doubt the world is getting warmer faster than it has ever done before. Cue heavy and sinister background music with thunderstorms, tornadoes and tsunamis and we could easily be pulled into the final scene of an apocalypse, but that's not the object here. I want to know about the what's going to happen to ski weather and the global warming facts that may change mountain snowfall. Last ski season had some of the biggest snow dumps ever – check this clip which demonstrates the current snow levels trend.
In the space of the next hundred years there maybe a maximum increase of up to 6.4°C in global temperatures, which is approximately five times the upward swing during the whole of the twentieth century. Many people assume that snow levels will drop as rain takes over, but this is not definitely the case.
We can only briefly and in the simplest terms describe how 'precipitation' (rain or snow) affects ski weather. Water vapour or hot wet air ascends from the equator, warmed up by the sun. This water vapour forms the vast circular weather systems in both hemispheres as it cools and drops down, propelled by the earth's rotational forces.
For the sake of argument let's confine our explanation to the weather systems in the northern hemisphere where they move from west to east and most of the preciption occurs on continental landfall. As the moist air in these systems makes landfall Europe and North America, it is forced upwards by the mountains, cools and drops as either snow and rain.
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As the climate warms we are going to get an increase in moist air in the weather systems travelling up from the equator, so the precipitation will be higher. But will it be rain or snow?. If the Earth'e temperature rises by 6.4°C this century it will mean that the rain snow location on a mountain will move higher. If for example the snow level on a mountain is at 1000 metres, by the century end this will have risen to 2000 metres as the temperature decreases by roughly 6.5°C per 1000 metres. We are going to get more preciptation and the altitude where rain turns into snow will be moving up the mountain by approximately ten metres every year.
Well, that's it then – more snow. But it's not that easy. What effect, for example, will the melting Greenland glaciers have on the Gulf Stream? It may not be the only question, but this is the biggest. Known as the Atlantic conveyor this massive current brings warm water up from the tropics past the coast of Europe. Thirteen thousand years ago it stopped flowing. And why? A huge lake of cold freshwater burst its banks in eastern Canada and dropped into the North Atlantic, halting the Gulf Stream almost straightaway. The same thing could happen if the accelerated melting of the Greenland glaciers pours a massive amount of cold freshwater into the Gulf Stream and clunk – it switches off. Then we would have more snow than we bargained for…
For the full article and more visit Ski Jungle – Snow Levels
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