Warming Facts - How Global Warming Will Affect Snow Levels

Posted by Rolf Joho on December 7th, 2009 filed in What Causes Global Warming

We are discussing snow levels here and how climate change will affect our ski weather for the next ninety years; we are not recommending global warming solutions or discussing the politics.

Let’s assume – to avoid argument – that the world is warming up at an alarming rate whether we like it or not (pardon the pun). Let’s avoid the slow, threatening music soundtrack with doom laden commentary and the occasional crash of thunder. We are not talking apocalypse here. As a lifelong skier I’m interested in finding out about about global warming and how it will affect ski weather and snow levels. Last winter had some of the biggest snowfalls ever – check this clip which demonstrates the current snow levels trend.

During the next hundred years there maybe an increase of up to 6.4°C in global temperatures, which is about five times the surge during the whole of the last century. A lot of people think that the snow will disappear all together, and rain will be predominant, or that there will no rain either, but this is highly unlikely.

We can only briefly and in the simplest terms describe how ‘precipitation’ (rain or snow) affects ski weather. The major weather systems of the earth are formed at the equator, where hot, wet air rises as the surface of the ocean is heated by a powerful sun and then gradually cools, descending as it flows south in the southern hemisphere and north in the northern hemisphere.

North of the equator, for example, the major weather systems move from west to east because of the earth’s rotation and precipitation mainly occurs as these systems meet the land. In this scenario, as the moist air arrives at the mountains on the west side of America and the Alps in Europe, it rises up, cools down and falls as snow and rain.

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Now we can deduce, because the earth is getting warmer, that there will be more water in the form of vapour drawn up from the equator. But will it metamorphose into rain or snow after it’s long journey to the mountains?. If as we believe the temperature will be 6.5°C warmer by the end of the century we can deduce that the altitude where rain changes to snow will progrees up a mountain roughly 1000 metres during this time. This is because the temperature falls by about 6.5°C per 1000 metres of altitude. We are going to get increased preciptation and the altitude where rain turns into snow will be moving up the mountain by about ten metres every year.

Therefore the simplistic answer seems to be that there’s going to be much snow to come, but why not throw just one spanner in the works, and believe me, there are a few. What effect will the disappearing Greenland icecap have on the Gulf Stream?. Known as the Atlantic conveyor this massive current brings warm water up from the tropics past the western seaboard of Europe. Thirteen thousand years ago it stopped flowing. And why? A huge lake of cold fresh water burst its banks in eastern Canada and dropped into the North Atlantic, disrupting the Gulf Stream almost straightaway. Do you see where this is leading? The Greenland icecap melts even faster than it is at the moment and the sheer volume of freshwater flowing into the ocean will switch it off. We’ll then have more snow than we could have ever dreamt about. Only this time it may just turn into a nightmare…

For the full article and more visit Ski Jungle – Ski Weather