Winter Weather and Climate Flashback

     

We were in a nice multi-day storm cycle last winter, a Westerly Flow we used to call a Rocky Mountain - Eight Day Blow.  It was fueled by cold air from Alaska and moisture from Hawaii, prosaically called the Pineapple Express, that they now call an Atmospheric River, to better sell the weather on TV.  Moisture shot off the Pacific between the counter rotational pressure zones like baseballs out of a wheel driven pitching machine.  It was just a series of disturbances that floated through our area on a favorable jet-stream, enhanced by the Nevada desert, the warm Great Salt Lake and the orographic lift of the Wasatch Front. It wasn't huge and it felt like it would last forever but we skied it everyday like it would stop tomorrow. 

Snow falls lightly and calmly here now without the frontal energy of a historical  storms.  Gone are the predictable prefrontal south winds and the violent frontal passage that shift winds to the north west in a matter of minutes.  Daily accumulations are moderate now, not the four - foot storms of bygone days.   We now get two foot snow storms in the Cottonwood Canyons, one foot on the Wasatch backside and six inches in my Park City driveway, with maybe three wet inches on the Salt Lake City benches and nothing but rain nowadays at the International Airport.  It is nice for tourists and nouveau powder hounds without the reference of how it was in 83-84 but skiing has gotten so busy and the climate is changing so rapidly that things are not what they used to be.  Both are the compounded effects of too many people.  I blame mankind.  And Vail.

This is the new norm caused by the uneven heating of the atmosphere and oceans, the north migrating jet stream, and the resulting persistent positions of the highs and lows.  It is the tangible unintended consequences of ignoring our effects on the climate.  ‘Climate always changes’ or ‘Man could not possibly affect the big global climate’ the deniers insist. ‘God would not let that happen’ the evangelicals claim or ‘it is a liberal conspiracy to limit family size ‘ the local brethren here claim in legislative message bills.  But there are 9 billion of us taking our daily little slice of the sky and as they say, ‘death by 9 billion slices is still death’.  But it is not just normal change.  It is the change in the change, geometric, exponential. 

Exponential change is not intuitive.  That’s why it surprises and excites us.  It is the change in the rate of change, the second derivative.  The change in the change.  Where the fun is.  Like acceleration, gravity and most natural phenomenon, because of their compounding derivative based relationships.  Like compound interest, "the greatest force known to man", according to Einstein.  We think and extrapolate linearly and need imagination, vision and leadership to process exponential change. It excites like gravity and confounds with the  compounding.

It is the change in the change of the climate, it is our fault and we might be able to do something about it if we try hard, now.  And the rate of change has increased, exponentially, due to compounding climate effects and tipping points.  Polar ice melts and reflects less light, for example, and then the great invisible heat sink mass of the oceans heats more, changing its chemistry and constitution. Long term drought dehydrates and desiccates all vegetation - tinder dry.  Then huge  fires burn in un-raked California, un-managed Australia and in the developing Amazon.  The lungs of the planet, burning and smoking for a few new farms, instead of breathing for the entire world.

We are wired to take care of ourselves and the present.  We have a harder time thinking about the common good and the future.  That’s why we won’t address the climate until it is a catastrophe that affects us and our pocketbooks.  Why should I change if no one else changes.  Why should China and India change if the US won’t.  The Tragedy of the Commons, the masses, the public welfare.

I follow the weather for my recreation and the climate for my work as a hydrologist.  I see it, I feel it, I study it, I live it, every day, for 40 years, since it all started really changing in 1980s.  It is the event of my career and it is the issue of our generation.  Weather and Climate have both changed in my lifetime, anecdotally, measurably and dramatically and it causes me pain. If you don't think the climate is changing, you need to get out more.

All weather is local, personal.  My weather.  Weather is what happened today, to me, in my back yard.  I take it personally.   If you don't like the weather, move ten miles or wait ten minutes.  Climate is global, it is what happens state wide, nationwide, world wide, over the past 30 years, and the next 30.  One bad-ass storm does not give you climate change but climate change will give you at least one bad-ass storm.  We have to start thinking globally, naturally, exponentially, imaginatively and empathetically.  We have to stop burning stuff, growing rice and cotton in the desert and eating so much meat, ignoring the future for the present. 

 This winter thing is hard and it is getting weird.  My body is worn out from climbing up stuff and skiing down it, jumping off stuff and falling down.  It is tired of shoveling snow and getting in cold cars.  I am tired of the long dark nights and the grey days that are becoming de-rigor.  Perched at the north end of the Colorado Plateau we used to have a high dessert climate with snow or sun but now it seems that the cloudy, grey continental climate of Wyoming and Montana has taken over here and we are in that pissy rain/snow in between flow again. Mostly it is too many people.  We are a migrating race and we move someplace new and wear it out and then move again, until we run out of places to move and ruin. As Jimmy Buffet said before he knew, " I want to go where its warm."