Global Warming Solutions - Will They Affect Snow Levels?

We are talking about snow levels here and how changes in the climate will affect our ski weather for the rest of the century; we are not suggesting global warming solutions or getting into the politics.

Let’s assume - to avoid argument - that the world is heating up at an exponential rate whether we like it or not (forgive the pun). Let’s forget the slow, upsetting music soundtrack with doom laden commentary and the occasional sound of thunder. We are not discussing the apocalypse here. It’s the effect that global warming will have on snow levels that I’m interested in as a skier. Last ski season had some of the biggest snowfalls ever - check this clip which demonstrates the current ski weather trend.

Over the next hundred years there could be a maximum increase of up to 6.4°C in global temperatures, which is approximately five times the surge during the whole of the twentieth century. It’s generally thought that snow levels will fall or that it will surely be raining on the mountain tops, or there will be neither rain nor snow, but this is not likely.

This is how the world’s climate works - it’s not the whole story but gives an idea into how precipitation (that’s rain or snow) is governed by the climate. Water vapour or hot wet air ascends from the equator, warmed up by the sun. This water vapour forms the continual circular weather systems in the north and south hemispheres as it cools and descends, moved along by the earth’s rotational forces.

North of the equator, for example, the major weather systems make their way from west to east on account of the earth’s rotation and precipitation mostly takes place as these systems hit the land. In this case, as the moist air hits the mountains on the west coast of America and the Alps in Europe, it rises up, cools down and falls as snow and rain.

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With the climate warming up we are going to get an increase in moist air in the weather systems coming up from equatorial regions, so the precipitation will be greater. But will it be rain or snow?. If the Earth’e temperature rises by 6.4°C in the next ninety years it will mean that the rain snow location on a mountain will move higher. If for argument’s sake the snow level on a mountainside is at 1000 metres, by the the end of this century it will have risen to 2000 metres as the temperature drops by roughly 6.5°C per 1000 metres. The precipitation will be more pronounced and the rain/snow level wil be moving up the mountainside at a speed of about 10 metres each year.

So it appears there may be a few years skiing yet, and I’ll finish by throwing this little snippet into the algorithm. As the world warms up the Greenland icecap will melt even faster. It is not fully known what, if any, effect this will have on the Gulf Stream. Presently, this fast moving mass of warm seawater, coming up from the Equator, protects western Europe from the cold winters usual at that latitude. But thirteen thousand years ago an inland sea in Canada stopped the Gulf Stream dead when it overflowed its banks, dropping into the Atlantic and starting an Ice Age in Europe. The same pattern could emerge if the accelerated melting of the Greenland icecap pours a massive amount of cold freshwater into the Gulf Stream and click - it switches off. Then we would have more blizzards than we bargained for…

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