Cliff Mass vs. the Tree-Ring Gang in a PDO Classic University of
Washington atmospheric scientist Cliff Mass has some debating
words for authors of a recent study (“The Unusual Nature of
Recent Snowpack Declines in the North American Cordillera“)
suggesting the Western snowpack is dramatically shrinking due to
climate change. If you really check out the Science paper and
look at the data, the loss of snowpack during the past few
decades have not been serious. There is no clear smoking gun of
anthropogenic global warming. That is in stark contrast to the
paper’s summary, which claims: Over the past millennium,
late-20th century snowpack reductions are almost unprecedented
in magnitude across the northern Rocky Mountains, and in their
north-south synchrony across the cordillera. Both the snowpack
declines and their synchrony result from unparalleled springtime
warming due to positive reinforcement of the anthropogenic
warming by decadal variability. To be clear–as Mass responded to
one blog commenter thanking h