Snow guns silent in late October as temps run 15 degrees above average
2014 on track to become warmest year ever.
How will the ski industry weather global warming?
By Bob Berwyn
FRISCO —Last year’s winter Olympics helped cast a spotlight on global warming and the ski industry. As the snow at Sochi’s alpine venues visibly melted during the live television coverage of the games, winter sports athletes advocated for action on climate change.
Now, just a few months later, some of those same ski racers who had planned early season training sessions at Copper Mountain, Colorado will have to wait. A run of extraordinarily warm temperatures in October all but silenced industrial snowmaking operations at several resorts, as both Copper and Keystone delayed scheduled openings because of the balmy conditions.
Copper has rescheduled opening day for Nov. 7, while Keystone Resort officials said they will announce a new opening day as conditions permit. By contrast, Arapahoe Basin, at a much higher elevation than either of the other areas, was able to find a short weather window for snowmaking, which enabled the area to cover one trail with man-made snow.
Fall weather in the Rocky Mountains has always been variable, often swinging between wintry, early season snowstorms and warm, sunny days, but this year’s late-October warmth including record-breaking highs and unusually persistent warm nighttime temperatures, all in the context of record-warm global conditions, as climate scientists announced that 2014 is on track to be the warmest year ever for Earth.
The warm nighttime readings in October aren’t a complete surprise to climate trackers. Some observational records show that autumn temperatures have been warming faster than the year-round average, although widely accepted global records suggest that the rate of warming is pretty even year-round, according to atmospheric scientist Kevin Trenberth.
Normally, the longer nights of fall allow for plenty of radiational cooling, especially in the mountains (thinner atmosphere), but if the temperatures are warmer to begin with, it takes just that much longer for the autumn cool-down to kick in. And a global trend of increasing nighttime temperatures has been especially pronounced, according to the IPCC.
During late October, high temperatures around Copper Mountain and Keystone consistently ran between 10 and 20 degrees above average, and nighttime lows were 10 to 15 degrees warmer than the the norm. Instead of a solid eight hours of sub-freezing temperatures at the resort, temperatures barely dropped to below freezing for a just a couple of hours each night. Similarly warm conditions reigned across the West, with temperatures averaging 2 to six degrees Fahrenheit above average from the Rockies all the way to the West Coast.
In the bigger picture, changes in the jet stream, driven by the Arctic sea ice meltdown, could result in stronger and more persistent areas of high pressure, leading to conditions like the historic California drought.
Early season snow at Colorado’s major resorts is a bonus for skiers and snowboarders, but it’s also important to the resorts, which plan their operations — everything from staffing to food services, around a fixed opening date.
The delay also causes uncertainty in the minds of resort customers, who may, somewhat illogically, assume that the dearth of early season snow indicates a poor season. None of this means that the winter will be a bust. Colorado may go on to have a record snow year, but the early season perceptions can affect the remainder of the winter. Many skiers make their winter plans this time of year, and all other things being equal, are likely to look for a destination where they’ll find the best snow conditions.
Given their high elevation, Colorado ski areas may be buffered from the full impacts of global warming for a few more decades, which is a time frame that’s far beyond the horizon of most industry executives, who think mainly in terms of quarterly earnings. But nationally, research shows that climate change will be costly. A University of New Hampshire study a couple of years ago found that economic losses could climb to $1 billion per year.
Even if this year’s warm autumn is just part of a natural climate variation, there’s reason for concern. A recent state climate report suggests that there will be more and more events outside what humans have come to see as the natural range of variability.
Even without being amplified by human-caused global warming, paleoclimate records show decades-long warm and dry spells in the West far more intense than the droughts of the past few decades.
