We went through a meteorological time machine this year. You experienced the meteorology of 25-50 years into the future.
For example, we have lived through a summer with the snowpack expected in 2050.
The second-lowest snowpack over the past decades.
Let me prove this to you.
Below is a plot of Pacific Northwest snowpack on April 1 (after the winter accumulation season) since 1984.
Wow, we had the second-lowest snowpack in over 40 years. Roughly 50% of normal.
When would we expect such a reduction in snow based on global warming?
Let us assume the RCP 4.5 global warming scenario, which is typically used by the research community these days.
Under this scenario, here are the April 1 snowpack predictions for the Puget Sound region. Snowpack doesn't decline to as much as this year until the end of the century!
Same thing for the entire Pacific Northwest:
So this year provides a taste of the snowpack in roughly 75 years into the future, assuming nothing major is done about greenhouse gas emissions.
What about temperatures? As shown below, it was much warmer than normal tduring the past year, roughly 2-4 F above normal in much of the area!
Again, comparing to a regional climate simulation, this is like being transported in time to around 2050.
This meteorological time travel is exhausting!
Announcement
I have a few thoughts about this:
ReplyDelete-You say that this last year will be the typical year in 2050 and we will be fine because there was still enough water. I assume by typical you mean it will be the "average" year. Doesn't that mean our low years will be extremely limited snow pack?
-I think that measuring how we did this year based solely on the crop yield does a disservice to the complexity of the water system, farming and how they function. There were emergency measures put in place this year that won't be possible for what is just an average year in 2050. There are also many areas that rely on pumping from what is a rapidly decreasing water table. Will that be available as a resource to draw from in 25 years?
Also, just because crop yields were normal doesn't mean that the farms were financially stable.
-It is convenient for us to only look 20-30 years in the future and say, "look it will be fine", when things will only continue to get more challenging for our area and the world in the decades that follow.
I worry about the world we are leaving my children's children.
Thanks for continuing to discuss and bring attention to PNW weather and climate. The dialogue is important.
It is true that some farmers use well water to get through this year. They/we are not going to stand still. I assume there will be more reservoir activity in 20-30 years......something that is being discussed today. Farmers will use more efficient irrigation systems (many waste water today). Perhaps we will scrap the silly senior water rights system, which results in some farmers wasting water.
DeleteWas going to make a similar comment -- the situation today, of a single atypical year, is pretty different than if this atypical year is the norm and we have atypical years *of top of* that new norm.
DeleteThe question is whether the variability around the mean will be the same later in the century....that many not be true.
DeleteI agree that the senior water rights system throughout the west is not right. I have a friend who has a "hobby" farm in the Twisp valley and he says that if he doesn't use a certain amount of water from his well, he will lose the rights to it. On the other hand I believe there are places where you do not have automatic rights to collect rain that falls on your property. Seems like you should to me. Indeed, water law show be revisited and rewritten.
DeleteHave our farmers really had enough water this year? Multiple smaller farmers at our local markets told me that they went for weeks without water which was a real challenge for them this year.
ReplyDeleteIt is true, it has been a challenge for those in areas where water was tight (e.g., Yakima Valley). But most learned how to function on less water and thus production held.
DeleteThe UW "farm" near the Center for Urban Horticulture has study sections exploring crop varieties that may be better suited to drier versions of our PNW climate. A good example of proactive, positive work at "learning how to function on less water..."
DeleteMy concern is less about an average year in 2050, but a drier/hotter than average year.
ReplyDeleteMy concern is the democrats will not understand this data and start taxing us more
ReplyDeleteIf this summer was a preview of what the weather will typically look like in 2050, then it honestly wasn't that bad. Drier and warmer than normal years will be more of an issue than they are now (not to say that they aren't an issue now...they most certainly are), so we'll have to work on making sure that we can manage those years.
ReplyDeleteNow for the next big question: will this upcoming winter be a good representation of what a typical 2050s winter will look like? Because the predictions for this winter are getting darker by the day.
This is fairly good news for our region. Glad to hear this. Nevertheless, we don't exist in a vacuum. What about other regions of the nation and globe, and how that will affect us here regarding economic trade, climate migrants, geopolitics, etc? Maybe not a fair question, but my concern is the PNW fairing well during upcoming climate change effects won't leave us unaffected by how things go outside of our region.
ReplyDeleteHopefully regional leaders are working hard to solve our water challenges. It was less than 100 years ago that Central and Eastern Washington had very little irrigation and very little agriculture. We were able to work together to create the hydroelectric projects which also provided irrigation water. We should do it again.
ReplyDeleteBy 2050 leaves 25 years for Washington state government planners to build ample new reservoir storage for water not snow..
ReplyDeleteInteresting. This summer wasn’t that bad, really. 2015 seemed worse.
ReplyDeleteI think looking ahead 25-50 years while basing your conclusions on current population and consumption data is an error. With a current 0.8% growth rate the state will contain over 10M people by 2075.
Certainly the news has or will get out that the PNW is attractive to people fleeing from regions less insulated from climate change effects like, say, the Gulf coast, or the eroding arctic coastlines. How many more people will our water well and hydro systems be required to support over what is produced now, as folks flock here from elsewhere for relief from the heat?
How will the hotter weather in the coming decades affect our agriculture? Will crops fare better or worse on average? Will there need to be a shift in what’s grown to accommodate the increasing heat?
This is a very good point, time2lose. Climate migration is a real thing and it affects regions on the receiving end.
DeleteHumans will survive. We will do better if we are not taxed into extermination by the climate change scare artists. That said, planning departments Ecology should Encourage every kind of water retention from the wet season that can be invented. Rain barrels, cisterns, ponds, reservoirs. Ecology forbids much of this now. That needs to turn around. Rivers should be managed To slow them down, provide fish habitat, anticipate where floods are going to disrupt human habitat. Farmers along rivers should be anticipating fall and winter floods to allow the river to expand at those times. Water retention projects over a certain capacity on private properties should get property tax breaks. They should get a water right if they continue to document the amount of water retained from wetter seasons and released during dry season for either irrigation or stream enhancement.
ReplyDeleteOne of the wisest maxims I've ever heard is: "You can't drive a boat by only watching the wake."
ReplyDeleteI don't know how much time anyone's put into looking at the historic ups-and-downs of precipitation in the Pacific Northwest, but there have been very (very) dry decades followed by very (very) wet decades, and I don't know that the main drivers of the water cycle have the Pacific Northwest heading toward "drier and drier" in a linear fashion. As for the importance of snow as a harbinger of anything, the vast majority of land is NOT hydraulically connected to snowpack, that's a fact. Much of this state that has always been sandy and dry - so in what manner should statistics about "snow in the mountains" drive the bus? The predominant theory is that a warmer ocean will make for MORE rain, not less overall in this corner of the USA. Does that mean summers will be drier? I certainly don't know why that would necessarily be true - maybe there will be more summer rain as well. I have no idea. But storage is always a good idea; many states with far less precipitation overall (like the midwest) have lots of "happy face" water tanks.
As for "western water law," I've never had any particular dislike for use-based 'rights' as opposed to some people holding "paper rights" (dog-in-the-manger, if you will) to water they're NOT making good use of. Water is a natural resource that we all should be able to use - meaning actually USE, so some people holding unused "rights" might prevent others from access at all. I, for one (and I"m a water commissioner) think that yes we need better methods for managing real ("wet") water allocation, but this isn't the place for debating that. There was a movie made decades ago (..."beanfield war" in the title)... "Riparian rights" can be nasty indeed....
Please listen to Johan Rockstrom on the BBC World Service podcast on Sept 28, 2026. Has the world lost the fight against heat? - The Climate Question podcast, BBC World Service
ReplyDeleteThe path we are on will take us to 3 degrees C above baseline by 2100 IF we transform agriculture from a large source of emission to a sink, we take care of the forests and oceans so they continue to take up 25% of our emissions each AND we are able to successfully remove carbon from the atmosphere at huge levels. It does not appear that we will do any of these.