Scholarly Conversation
The date of annual melt is of great interest as a potential indicator of climate change. In order to determine whether the earlier disappearance of spring snow cover in northern Alaska is related to global warming verses an appearance of a more natural, continual cycle of the climate, further study and monitoring is necessary.
Large year to year variability complicates the picture and furthers the debate. Inter-annual variability of springtime snow pack comes largely from variability of winter month precipitation which is in turn related to the variability of key patterns of atmospheric circulation.
A study of the mountains in the western United States show a region wide decline in spring snow-pack since the mid-1900s, dominated by loss at low elevations where winter temperatures are near freezing. These losses are an indication of increased temperatures which lead to snow loss via some combination of increased regularity of rain versus snow and increased melting during winter months. These natural variations make it challenging to quantify trends with confidence, to deduce observed changes to predict future climate, or to clearly detect changes in snow-pack due to human impact on warming trends.
Read more about this topic: Snowmelt
Famous quotes containing the words scholarly and/or conversation:
“Almost all scholarly research carries practical and political implications. Better that we should spell these out ourselves than leave that task to people with a vested interest in stressing only some of the implications and falsifying others. The idea that academics should remain “above the fray” only gives ideologues license to misuse our work.”
—Stephanie Coontz (b. 1944)
“Were you to converse with a king, you ought to be as easy and unembarrassed as with your own valet-de chambre; but yet every look, word, and action should imply the utmost respect.... You must wait till you are spoken to; you must receive, not give, the subject of conversation, and you must even take care that the given subject of such conversation do not lead you into any impropriety.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)