 Poster: A snowHead
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It's not known whether meteorologists ever invest in the ski industry, though they surely sometimes buy lift tickets.
Alex Hill, "the chief government adviser with the Met Office" [he has certainly been the head of the London Met Office for many years] according to this report, predicts that there is very unlikely to be a ski industry in Scotland in 50 years.
This report from The Scotsman: "Skiing is doomed ... so enjoy it while it lasts".
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| "The amount of snow has been decreasing for the last 40 years, and there's no reason why it's going to stop now." |
Reference is then made to the consistent run of excellent snowy winters in the 1970s, which were not 40 years ago.
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Tania Alliod, marketing manager for Cairngorm Mountain ski resort, agreed that the future could be difficult due to climate change.
However, she added: "I think there will still be a ski industry in 50 years' time The snow line might move further up the mountains, but I think there will be snow resorts in Scotland that will still offer skiing." |
So, who's right - the marketing manager, or the meteorologist?
Last edited by Poster: A snowHead on Tue 10-02-09 11:13; 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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I thought that the melting Polar ice cap would make the gulf stream cooler which would give us far colder winters.
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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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Can't they just put the existing mountains up on bricks? As long as they move with the snow line, we'll be fine.
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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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Nobody knows. Anyone who says they know is deluded or a charlatan.
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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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There is absolutely no way of predicting the weather 50 years hence.
Based on Malenkovich theory, we are long-overdue an ice age. In the 70s, journalists were writing articles along the lines of "the world is cooling, we are heading for an ice age, what are the Governments going to do to prevent this?"
Que sera, sera.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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| Quote: |
| Based on Malenkovich theory, we are long-overdue an ice age. |
While I agree with your larger point, this is an oxymoron. If a theory predicts something that doesn't happen, it's not a very good theory. That's why I think the AGW-GHG theory is usually overstated - because it didn't predict what's happened in the last 10 years. If you replace "are long overdue" with "should soon expect" the sentence would make sense (and is probably true).
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isn't there the theory now, that we're actually on the tail end of an ice age..(probably a global warming refusenik argument..but who knows) I always thought that we were just going to get more of what you already had, a more intense varaiation of current weather patterns..so spain gets hotter..and we get wetter, windier, snowier, and hotter all in equal measure on mainly bank holiday mondays!
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papasmurf, technically, we are in an ice age, which is usually defined as the presence of polar icecaps. For most of an ice age, the ice caps extend to (what are currently) temperate latitudes. However, ice-ages are punctuated by short (around 10,000 years) "inter-glacial" periods, where the ice caps recede. The current inter-glacial period has lasted for 10,000 - 11,500 years, so (in some sense at least) we might expect a full-blown ice-age any century now. That is a truly worrying prospect.
Last edited by After all it is free  on Tue 10-02-09 11:25; edited 1 time in total
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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though no imediate panic..I take it is a fairly long process, rather then an instant weather 'event' type ice age hollywood like. Might give us time to get biospheres that actually work going.
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It's defiantly warmer here today than yesterday..although last week was quite cold...
My theory is the climatologists think they know about as much about the weather as bankers thought they knew about banking.. sweet FA
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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| papasmurf wrote: |
| though no imediate panic..I take it is a fairly long process, rather then an instant weather 'event' type ice age hollywood like. Might give us time to get biospheres that actually work going. |
The end of the Younger Dryas (a sort of mini ice age that happened at the tail end of the last ice age) is a prime example of "instant" weather event. It is estimated that global temperatures rose 10 degrees in 10 years. Read more here:
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/pi/arch/examples.shtml
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| Quote: |
This report from The Scotsman: "Skiing is doomed ... so enjoy it while it lasts".
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We're doomed, DOOMED!!! 
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You know it makes sense.
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Don't Panic !!! 
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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Based on the fact that the met office is only something like 44% accurate the fact that they say not to invest in Scotland would suggest that in actual fact it would be a very wise thing to do
If you just say the weather tomorrow will be the same as today youd be 70% accurate and not need a billion pound computer (paid for by us tax payers)
I mean they forcast snow yesterday, nothing!. they cant even predict 3 hours ahead let alone 50 years. They also seem to have not noticed that accurate satellite and baloon temperature readings are showing the planet cooling presently
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Poster: A snowHead
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| Bode Swiller wrote: |
| I thought that the melting Polar ice cap would make the gulf stream cooler which would give us far colder winters. |
Water movement through the oceans is controlled by salinity, fresh water is heavier than salt water and therefore sinks (with a hell of a lot of energy) near the polar icecaps (arctic in this eg) where the water is more dilute due to the proximity of large quantities of fresh water (ice) it then gets pushed around the planet, on the ocean floor all the time picking up salt until it is salty enough to rise to the surface, it then makes a return journey around the planet until it gets back to the Greenland area and gets diluted and the whole process starts again.
Now... If you look at our latitude on a globe (that's our horizontal position) we should, by all rights have the same climate as northern Canada & Siberia i.e. bloody cold (ok we don't have the drying effect of huge land masses to help our chilly cause but it should still be blooming cool!) What stops our climate from becoming cold? Something called the Gulf Stream, this is a powerful band of warm water which originates in the Gulf of Mexico moves up the east coast of America and then heads accross the Atlantic, splitting in 2 as it goes. One part hits northern Europe (Ireland being the most important to us,) the other Africa. This stream of warm water, as well as keeping our coastal waters on the west relatively warm also heats up the air above it and so keeps our climate temperate. The Gulf stream is powered by the same global salinity conveyor belt as above.
There is a theory (one which was explored in 'The Day After Tomorrow' which was bollox by the way but made for good TV) that theorises that if the icecaps melt fast enough they will alter the salinity of the ocean and there fore turn the conveyor belt up or down or possibly switch it off all together. If the speed of the conveyor is altered by masses of fresh water entering the ocean the Gulf Stream could potentially be shunted south meaning it would hit the coast of France & Spain rather than us. If it shut down completely we would see the same effect in that we wouldn't benefit from the warm water and warm air, our climate would become what (in positional terms) it should be, i.e. arctic and the rest.... well you can work out for yourselves, suffice to say, the experts claim this would mean anywhere north of Birmingham would become uninhabitable!
What's really frightening is the speed this change could occur... Ice Ages take 10s if not 100s of thousands of years to come and go, it is quite possible that an event such as this could happen in as little a period as 10 years! Remember it is the effect of global warming (man made or natural) melting the ice caps and de-salinating the oceans that could cause this, nothing to do with ice ages or inter glacial periods...
All I can say is.... hey... I think Scotland could have a fantastic... all year round... ski industry in 50 years  then again so could Wolverhampton.... mountains aren't very big though! 
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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What about the sun? And the effect it's solar flare (may well use wrong term here) has on the Earth's weather? I know in 2012 it starts a new cycle.. would be interesting to see what happens. If anything.
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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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The world has been melting for thousands of years.
Scotland used to be glaciated.
The Northern Hemisphere is currently in the middle of a cluster of colder Winters and Summers.
But the melting will soon resume.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Timmaah, there's an approximately 11-year sunspot cycle. Long cycles with low peaks seem to correlate with cold weather: for example the Maunder minimum in the late 17th century (when sunspot activity was virtually absent for decades) and the shorter Dalton minimum in the early 19th century.
2008 was the second least spotty year in the last 100 (the next cycle is still "overdue"), following a peak that was a little bit short of the previous two, which might explain why the earth's surface has been cooling recently (in a fairly modest way). It will be very interesting to follow the mean global temperature if the current inactivity continues!
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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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I'm not quite following, will the next overdue cycle mean something similar to the maunder minimum (which saw cold or warm temps??)?
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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Timmaah, cold (ice fairs on Thames, etc), or so the theory goes. But the next cycle is (I think) no more than a year "overdue", while the Maunder minimum was about 30 spotless years, so a long way to go.
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| Quote: |
Water movement through the oceans is controlled by salinity, fresh water is heavier than salt water and therefore sinks
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I think your scenario is almost right except that fresh water is less dense than salt water and doesn't sink. Currently the conveyor is (quote from Wikipedia) largely formed in the Labrador Sea and in the Greenland Sea by the sinking of highly saline, dense overflow water from the Greenland Sea.
In a warmer climate, the theory is that more fresh water from melting permafrost will dilute the salt water enough to prevent sinking and turn off the "pump", flipping western Europe into a colder climate.
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| Vipa wrote: |
the experts claim this would mean anywhere north of Birmingham would become uninhabitable!
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A change in the current situation where most places south of Birmingham are uninhabitable
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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| laundryman wrote: |
| ...I think food production would dwindle quite quickly... |
I remember reading a while back that during glacial periods the biomass on the earth actually increases. As so much water is stored in the glaciers the sea levels are much lower, resulting in a greater land area in the tropics. This 'new land' would actually have a greater biomass than that lost in the glacier covered areas. Though of course this wouldn't happen overnight. As I said, it was a while back so might not still be thought to be the case.
| laundryman wrote: |
| ...Humans very nearly became extinct in the last ice age.... |
Did we? That surprises me as the ice didn't make it Africa. Was there a desertification of what had been savannah?
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Are there any other locations in Scotland that would have more reliable snow?
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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sloop, pushing my knowledge to the limit now, but with all that water locked up in ice sheets (and more insulated from the atmosphere by sea ice), I imagine that there wasn't much of an evaporation / rainfall cycle in the bits of the world that weren't white.
Edit: one theory here and here.
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| According to the Toba catastrophe theory, 70,000 to 75,000 years ago a supervolcanic event at Lake Toba, on Sumatra, reduced the world's human population to 10,000 or even a mere 1,000 breeding pairs, creating a bottleneck in human evolution. |
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| According to Ambrose, the Toba explosion reduced the average global temperature by 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) for several years and may have triggered an ice age. |
I thought 70,000 years ago was well into the middle of the ice age, but possibly such an eruption made it even colder.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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laundryman, cheers for that, interesting stuff
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| Paul-B wrote: |
| Quote: |
Water movement through the oceans is controlled by salinity, fresh water is heavier than salt water and therefore sinks
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I think your scenario is almost right except that fresh water is less dense than salt water and doesn't sink. Currently the conveyor is (quote from Wikipedia) largely formed in the Labrador Sea and in the Greenland Sea by the sinking of highly saline, dense overflow water from the Greenland Sea.
In a warmer climate, the theory is that more fresh water from melting permafrost will dilute the salt water enough to prevent sinking and turn off the "pump", flipping western Europe into a colder climate. |
You are absolutely right.... I was thinking (for some bizzare reason) of the dead sea where, due t the hypersalinity you float.... so had salty water & floating fixed in my mind.... but it's the body that floats because the salty water is so dense 
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You know it makes sense.
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All very interesting, but being a kindof liveforthemoment kinda person, I say enjoy it while its here. And its here just now, but may or may not be in 50 years... who knows! According to this http://www.yipadoo.com/scottish-ski-conditions its pretty good up there just now, unfortunately the forecast doesn't stretch to 50 years from now... but then I'll be 82 by then, so hopefully will be heli-skiing in AK rather than worrying about whether the Scottish resorts are still running! Heh heh...
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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soulrider, welcome to snowHeads!
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Poster: A snowHead
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Thanks laundryman, I'm touched!
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