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Snow shortage threatens Alps with wet winter season

bbc.com

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Re: Snow shortage threatens Alps with wet winter season

#31

Post by subradios »

macinjosh wrote: post #3
sdfgdfghj wrote: post #2

For the first time ever I had to cancel my holidays due to climate change. I was planning on skiing in the first week of January, not gonna happen. It was 14 degrees during the day on 31 Dec. 20 years ago it was unusual not to have snow for Christmas and New Year.

Weather is not climate.

Extremely funny, because for the last fifteen years whenever it got bitterly, unseasonably cold (like in the US last week) - climate deniers would quietly chuckle and be shouted down with screams of "weather is not climate".

Which it's true, it was stupid then to take a cold snap as "climate change is fake lol", but it's also stupid now to take a warm spell as "we are doomed climate chaaange".

Re: Snow shortage threatens Alps with wet winter season

#32

Post by kergonath »

vasqw wrote: post #16
syzarian wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the purpose of your comment? Do you have a belief that if the global mean temperature were, for instance, raised 3 degrees celsius that this change would not result in noticeable changes in weather? Weather does not affect or result in global warming but global warming does affect and result in weather change.

Many people maliciously conflate "climate change" with "man-made climate change".

For all intents and purposes, at our scale both are the same. You have to go back several decades for baseline natural variation to be larger than the human-caused increase in average temperatures.

Re: Snow shortage threatens Alps with wet winter season

#33

Post by secretsatan »

njarboe wrote: post #23

With the energy crisis in Europe this winter, I'm sure most people will trade a shorter ski season for higher average temperatures. Maybe Switzerland does not import much gas and would be the exception to this?

I think Switzerland has, in general, not suffered the energy price increases of other countries, but it varies from canton to canton depending on their energy supplies, I think some cantons won't do so well.

My canton uses nearly all renewables, but price increases are still predicted, mine are far less than other cantons, but it still goes up because of grid costs

Re: Snow shortage threatens Alps with wet winter season

#35

Post by sneed-oil »

kergonath wrote: post #29
njarboe wrote: post #23

With the energy crisis in Europe this winter, I'm sure most people will trade a shorter ski season for higher average temperatures. Maybe Switzerland does not import much gas and would be the exception to this?

> With the energy crisis in Europe this winter, I'm sure most people will trade a shorter ski season for higher average temperatures. Those around the Mediterranean, who’ve lived through 46°C last summer? Even England was miserably hot. Nobody wants it to get any hotter.

Who are you referring to? I live within a couple of kilometers from the Mediterranean and I don't remember the temperature ever reaching 40°C. I don't think summers are much hotter compared to when I was a kid, I still use the AC from early June to early September. Winters did get warmer, and I don't see how that's a bad thing.

Re: Snow shortage threatens Alps with wet winter season

#36

Post by ThePadawan »

kergonath wrote: post #30
ThePadawan wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 20 years ago it was unusual not to have snow for Christmas and New Year. This is one of those widely spread Mandela effect-style misconceptions. The chances of a white Christmas in the UK are around 10%, and depending where you are in the US [0], especially if you consider the population density not pictured in that chart, even lower. Humans generally hugely overestimate how often a white Christmas actually happens…

> The chances of a white Christmas in the UK are around 10%, and depending where you are in the US [0], especially if you consider the population density not pictured in that chart, even lower. Why do you assume the OP is in the UK or US? We’re discussing climate and weather in the Alps; there are plenty of places in Europe where a white Christmas really was not unusual.

The probabilities in Germany are around 12.5% and around 40% in Switzerland itself [0].

To live anywhere where to quote OP "it [would be] unusual not to have snow for Christmas and New Year" would basically mean living in a skiable country itself, so I did do a lot of assuming there.

But then I don't ski. I wouldn't know if skiers take vacations around the world to see different snow.

[0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wei%C3%9Fe_Weihnachten_(Wetter...

Re: Snow shortage threatens Alps with wet winter season

#37

Post by adammarples »

subradios wrote: post #31
macinjosh wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weather is not climate.

Extremely funny, because for the last fifteen years whenever it got bitterly, unseasonably cold (like in the US last week) - climate deniers would quietly chuckle and be shouted down with screams of "weather is not climate". Which it's true, it was stupid then to take a cold snap as "climate change is fake lol", but it's also stupid now to take a warm spell as "we are doomed climate chaaange".

Generally I wouldn't characterise the climate change deniers as "quietly chuckling", while the other side was "screaming". But no, neither weird cold snaps or weird heatwaves are climate change. However, increased volatility and unusual variation both ways can indeed be caused by and associated with global warming.

Re: Snow shortage threatens Alps with wet winter season

#38

Post by kergonath »

sneed-oil wrote: post #35
kergonath wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With the energy crisis in Europe this winter, I'm sure most people will trade a shorter ski season for higher average temperatures. Those around the Mediterranean, who’ve lived through 46°C last summer? Even England was miserably hot. Nobody wants it to get any hotter.

Who are you referring to? I live within a couple of kilometers from the Mediterranean and I don't remember the temperature ever reaching 40°C. I don't think summers are much hotter compared to when I was a kid, I still use the AC from early June to early September. Winters did get warmer, and I don't see how that's a bad thing.

Sorry I got my memories mixed up. The 46°C record was in 2019 (near Nîmes, south of France, where I go regularly on holiday). This year we’ve had the usual 40°C, just in 3 waves from mid-June to mid-August instead of the usual August hot week. The water was at 30°C, though, which was unheard of. We’ve also had a lot of wildfires, even more so than usual, although they were less catastrophic than those near the Atlantic.

They did break records on the Atlantic side, with 43°C near Bordeaux and 40°C in Brittany (!)

> Winters did get warmer, and I don't see how that's a bad thing.

It is terrible for several reasons, for example:

- the plant’s cycles are out of whack, with flowers in January that are then destroyed by frost in March

- pests and parasites are not killed by the frost in the winter, which leads to a whole bunch of them in both spring and summer. Look at what this is doing to forests in California.

And that’s considering only local effects. Ecosystems are getting destroyed in real time in the mountains and in the Arctic, where the ground is not permanently frozen anymore, leading to all sorts of fun things (landslides, methane release, wildfires).

There are absolutely no upsides near the Mediterranean, where it never was particularly cold in the first place.

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