 Poster: A snowHead
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The UK government is predicting a 59% decline in snowfall for Inverness over the next 40 years, adding to concerns about the viability of skiing in Scotland. With two Scottish ski areas - Glenshee and Glencoe - now under new ownership, the various lift operators are waiting for the first serious snowfall of this winter, while anxiety over climate change continues...
The UK government has itself recently conceded that its targets for CO2 reduction, originally aimed to exceed the stipulations of the Kyoto Protocol, will not be met. Snowfall on the Scottish mountains continues to be a graphic indicator of the changing climate.
The Herald ran a short news story on this yesterday. Click here.
Prospects for the Scottish ski season, forecasts, and current conditions can be checked on www.winterhighland.com and http://ski.visitscotland.com
Last edited by Poster: A snowHead on Wed 15-12-04 15:02; edited 1 time in total
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Sloppy journalism at it's best.
All the reports I've seen so far indicate that there will be less snowfall below 500 to 600m in Scotland. Above that level even the worst climate forecasts indicate that there will be little change in the level of snowfall. Since the majority of runs in Scotland are above that level then I can't see how anything can be adding to concerns about the viability of skiing in Scotland. If anything is causing concern it's the quality of journalist who writes articles about skiing in Scotland. Especially one who thinks that what happens in Inverness is indicative of whats happening at the top of a mountain.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Lager, surely the facts and trends are staring us in the face? I've skied in Scotland for over 25 years, and recent winters have been way more unreliable than they were in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. It's reckoned that the turning point was about 15 years ago.
If you want to make accusations of sloppy journalism, I'd politely request you to specify the source(s) of your claim:
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| All the reports I've seen so far indicate that there will be less snowfall below 500 to 600m in Scotland. |
Which reports?
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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| David Goldsmith wrote: |
Lager, surely the facts and trends are staring us in the face? I've skied in Scotland for over 25 years, and recent winters have been way more unreliable than they were in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. It's reckoned that the turning point was about 15 years ago.
If you want to make accusations of sloppy journalism, I'd politely request you to specify the source(s) of your claim:
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| All the reports I've seen so far indicate that there will be less snowfall below 500 to 600m in Scotland. |
Which reports? |
Sorry was going from (faulty) memory, should have been 300 - 500m. Anyway Ray Zorro linked to a Government report in this thread. Unfortunately when I went to look at it again it's been timing out. Was definetely there at one point though. 
The argument about recent winters and recent trends though is a bit different from the simplistic it's global warming and if it doesn't snow in Inverness it won't snow on top of Cairngorm argument being put forward in the original article. I don't pretend to understand all of the arguments but the main one seems to be that the UK weather is greatly influenced by short term (in climate terms) warm and cold anomolies. Recently we've been in a warm anomoly phase, but we are about due to switch back and have a run of colder winters again. Of course what's going on is far more complicated than all that and I won't even pretend I know the half of it. But I do know that things aren't as simple as no snow, it's all down to global warming, we're all doomed.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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The problem with applying the effects of climate change on one, very small, area is that global warming is so called because it is just that, the warming of the average temerature across the globe. This does not mean that some areas will not get cooler as weather patterens change. It also just means that where temperature rises, the average temperature will increase over time. If short-term and local variability are greater than that average rise, then you will find less colder extremes, and more warmer ones (this does not have to be an even shift, one may change by more than the other), but you should still get cold and warm extremes. Any other cycles (such as NAO) will continue to have an effect and as long as their effect is greater than the long-term temperature change, then you will see more effect from such cycles.
At the moment, Scotland's weather is far more likley to be directly affected by synoptic set-up than by global warming, and the synoptic set-up can be heavily influenced by NAO. However, one indirect effect of global warming is that it may increase SST (sea surface temperatures) which will affect (warm) any air mass reaching Scotland that takes such an oceanic track.
Applying anything more than general trends of weather to an area, based on the increase in average temperatures is fraut with difficulty. There are model outputs that attempt to show these trends, but even these are based on as yet, not fully known feedback mechanisms. There is however, starting to be some independant agreement between these models (the MIT one for example was in broad agreement with the Hadley Centre ones - though I don't have a link to hand, sorry).
So remember all that (inc. any errors I may have made  ) when reading stories about how global warming will mean this specific effect for this specific area.
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brian
brian
Guest
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| David Goldsmith wrote: |
Lager, surely the facts and trends are staring us in the face? I've skied in Scotland for over 25 years, and recent winters have been way more unreliable than they were in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. It's reckoned that the turning point was about 15 years ago.
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I've been skiing in Scotland for over 20 years and the 80s were definitely a golden era. However, I've heard people with long memories say that the 60s were pretty dire as well.
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I must admit I didn't actually ski up there until early December 1974, when we had a pretty good winter that continued well into May 1975. Cairngorm's first major lift went up in 1961 and its lift network was all in place by the early 70s, so I guess it can't have been that bad in the 1960s, especially since the Aviemore Centre - the biggest investment of all - went up in the mid 60s.
The problem is that the past decade and a half has only seen a few really good winters.
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