Josh Simerman, Flickr

Hot Creek, near Mammoth Lakes, was one of 20 streams in the Western U.S. examined in a study by Oregon State researchers who found no clear relationship between increasing air temperatures and stream temperatures.

Rising sea levels, melting glaciers, intensifying storm events – evidence is mounting that the effects of a warming planet will be far-reaching and potentially catastrophic. But one natural system may be more resilient than others when it comes to global warming: mountain streams.

Researchers from Oregon State University report in the journal Geophysical Research Letters that small streams in the western United States have not heated up in response to the region’s warming air temperatures.

Water temperature is a critical variable for aquatic ecosystems. Some fish, for example, time egg-laying to minute changes in water temperatures; in other species, stream temperatures are a key factor in determining the sex of juvenile fish.

The Oregon State team’s findings are based on an analysis of temperature data from 20 streams in seven western states, including California’s Hot Creek, a waterway fed by geothermal springs in Inyo National Forest, near Mammoth Lakes. (More than 600 streams were originally considered but that set was winnowed down, taking into account only streams with few human impacts and  records spanning more than 12 years.)

“It is a small set and we are trying not to extrapolate too much from this data. But some streams in our study seem to be getting warmer,” lead author Ivan Arismendi told me. “Others are getting cooler and some have not changed much at all. But our data suggests that warming air temperatures are not having a corresponding effect on streams.”

The question, of course, is why. Arismendi explains that a number of factors in addition to ambient air temperature influence — and may buffer — stream temperatures, including wind and humidity, timing of snow melt, interaction with groundwater, and variations in solar radiation.

Other studies, such as a 2010 report published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, have suggested that streams and rivers in the U.S. are warming up along with the climate. But Arismendi points out that many of the waterways in those studies had lots of human influences such as stormwater runoff, impoundments and diversions. All can drastically influence water temperature, he adds, which makes it impossible to determine if it is the air or some other host of factors causing the rising water temperatures.

Arismendi says the research will continue, focusing on current computer models used to predict how streams will respond to a warming climate.  “Most of the predictions in the models are based on a correlation [between air and stream temperature],” says Arismendi. “So we are trying to test how good those models are for specific sites.”

Molly Samuel

Scientists gather on Freel Peak to take a census of the plants on the summit.

Mountaintops can be good places to study the effects of climate change because there aren’t any things like factories or highways or garden weeds up there. In that way, they’re more like laboratories.

So, even though it involved a tough hike, about a dozen scientists gathered at the top of Freel Peak near South Lake Tahoe earlier this summer to count every single plant at the summit. It was for GLORIA, short for Global Observation Research Initiative in Alpine Environments, a project that sends botanists and plant ecologists to the world’s highest mountains to document the tiny, colorful plants that live on them.

GLORIA surveys are repeated every five years, and this was the second survey on Freel Peak. By tracking the changes here, scientists can gain a better understanding of how alpine regions differ in their responses to climate change, and what the future may hold for lower elevations.

“Because of the nature of the alpine habitat, it is more sensitive to environmental changes,” explained GLORIA coordinator Colin Maher. “It’s kind of a beacon. It’s like a warning sign. We might not know for 20 years what’s happening, but it’s a place where change is more likely to happen and we can detect it.”

Plus, the plants are cool for their own sake. They’re specially adapted to live in tough conditions, and even though they’re tiny, many of them can live for decades. But they may not be here forever, and Maher said, that’s another reason to study them now.

“If the climate warms, they’re on an island, essentially. A shrinking island. And since they can’t move down, they can only go up, and that’s only so far,” he said.

Small Budget, Big Commitment

GLORIA is based in Austria, where it was founded about ten years ago. There is no central funding, and so the tools the scientists use to conduct the surveys are inexpensive: plastic flags, colorful string, school binders. Many of the botanists and ecologists are volunteers.

Connie Millar, a researcher with the U.S. Forest Service, helped bring GLORIA to North America. She got a little choked up talking about the people who come out to help.

“The volunteerism is amazing to me. How people feel committed to it. The excellent botany and the care they give,” she said. “It’s very difficult working on summits. It’s extremely challenging. The commitment is extraordinary.”

Listen to the companion radio piece for this story on The California Report. ]]> http://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/2011/09/16/plant-scientists-look-for-trends-in-high-places/feed/ 0 Freel http://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/2011/02/17/beetlemania-creeping-into-california/ http://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/2011/02/17/beetlemania-creeping-into-california/#comments Fri, 18 Feb 2011 04:48:54 +0000 Craig Miller http://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/?p=11130 Continue reading →]]> As if drought and wildfires weren’t enough, California’s coniferous forests face another climate-related threat

(Photo: Reed Galin/Lone Tree Productions)

In the last decade, tiny forest-dwelling beetles have wiped out pine trees on millions of acres in the Canadian and American West, including Southern California. The rest of the state has been largely spared, but forest ecologists say that’s likely to change.

Reporter Ilsa Setziol recently spent some time tracking these bugs with an entomologist from the US Forest Service. They found beetles at work in Jeffrey pines and coulter pines in the San Bernardino National Forest, east of Los Angeles.

You can hear her radio feature on The California Report, produced by KQED Public Media. She also put together a slide show, so you see for yourself how these tiny creatures — normally part of a healthy forest ecosystem — can, under the right conditions, quickly run amok.

Frank Gehrke conducting last year's first snow survey of the season. (Photo: Gretchen Weber)

All the wet weather that’s been drenching much of the state has left the Sierra Nevada with an extra-thick blanket of snow, which has water officials optimistic about the state’s water supply for 2011.

Using a combination of manual and electronic measurements, the state’s Department of Water Resources conducted its first snow survey of the season on Tuesday, and found the water content of the state’s snowpack at 198% of normal for this time of year.   Last year at this time, the statewide average was just 85% of normal.

Surveyor Frank Gehrke said all this precipitation has California off to an unusual start this winter season, especially because it’s a La Niña year, which usually means a drier winter throughout much of California. “You generally don’t expect to see these really significant accumulations at all,” said Gehrke. “So, we’re a little bit scratching our heads going ‘Hmm, this is a little outside of the pattern.”

Particularly unusual, he said, is the situation in the southern Sierra, where the water content of the snowpack is currently 261% of normal for this time of year. Water content is a better indicator of spring runoff than snow depth alone.

But just because we are starting out wet doesn’t mean we’ll stay that way.  Gehrke said he predicts a lull in the storms sometime soon, and just how long that lull is could determine what the water allocations will be in the spring.

“A common feature of a Niña is a pretty decent start to the year with a lapse in the January/February timeframe,” said Gehrke.  “And that could put us in a less than optimal circumstance come April 1.”

That didn’t dampen the optimism of Gerhke’s boss at DWR. “This boosts our hopes that we will have an adequate water supply for our cities and farms as we continue to shake off the effects of the 2007-2009 drought,” said director Mark Cowin in a press release Tuesday.

Earlier this month the agency said it would likely deliver 50 percent of the water requested for the coming year, which is what it delivered in 2010, but the agency said Tuesday that cities and farms are “all-but-certain” to get more water from the state in 2011 than they have in years.

Most of California’s reservoirs are at or above normal storage levels for this time of year.  You can track the state’s water supply with our interactive map, which now includes key information from the snow survey: California Reservoir Watch.

View KQED: California Reservoir Watch in a larger map

For the farms and towns that depend on deliveries from the SWP, the outlook for the coming year is better than in recent years, which is not to say ideal.

State water managers today made their preliminary estimate that customers would get one quarter of the water requested from the system. That beats last year’s initial estimate of five percent–the lowest on record. Mark Cowin, who heads the state Department of Water Resources, says these early estimates are intentionally stingy:

“Over the past few dry years, CA has made good progress in improving our ability to conserve water,” Cowin told reporters in a conference call today, but cautioned that “We must continue to promote an ethic of using water efficiently—regardless of  the day-to-day outlook for water supplies.”

But Cowin says that between the wet spring and early start to the rainy season this fall, chances are good that the initial 25% projection will rise.

A key reservoir on the system, Lake Oroville, stands at more than three-quarters of its average for this time of year, whereas last year at this time, it was only about half full. By the time the water year was winding up, DWR officials had raised the allocation to 50%. They added that with average precipitation the rest of the way, customers could end up with about 60% of their hoped-for deliveries in 2011. So far this season, precipitation is running ahead of the long-term average.

You can check on how the state’s major reservoirs are doing throughout the year, with our interactive map.
View KQED: California Reservoir Watch in a larger map

View KQED: California Reservoir Watch in a larger map

Water in the State Water Project, like the federally run Central Valley Project, comes in large part from the mountain snowpack of the Sierra and lower Casdade ranges. Growers typically make up for shortfalls by pumping more groundwater.

Lake Tahoe's water level could drop within the century. (Photo: Lauren Sommer)

The average snowpack in the Tahoe Basin could decline 40 to 60% by 2100 and some years could see all rain and no snow. That’s according to climate change forecasts released this week by the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center.

The decrease in snowpack would be driven by two processes, according to study author Geoffrey Schladow. With warmer temperatures, more precipitation will fall as rain during the winter, instead of snow. And as any skier knows, when rain falls on snow, it melts the snowpack in what scientists call “rain-on-snow” events.

These findings are a concern since the Sierra Nevada snowpack is often called California’s “frozen reservoir.”  That reservoir is critical to the state’s water supply — and it’s free. “What the snowpack affords us is a way to very economically store water,” said Schladow. “If the water is falling as rain, rather than snow, then we have to build more dams and reservoirs to catch it, which is expensive.”

The study also forecasts several climate change impacts on Lake Tahoe itself. Prolonged droughts in California could cause the lake level to fall below out-take valves, which feed the Truckee River. The Truckee supplies water to Pyramid Lake and the city of Reno, Nevada. Output levels have fallen in the past, but under the worst case climate change scenario, those periods could stretch 10 to 20 years.

That would also change the face of the iconic lake. “Suddenly lakefront homes would be hundreds and hundreds of feet from the water. It’s going to be a very different looking lake,” said Schladow.

Lake Tahoe’s unique ecology could also change. Mixing of water from different depths is a critical process for any lake, since it takes oxygen from the surface and makes it available for fish and other species living throughout the water column. Because Lake Tahoe is so deep, today it only mixes fully every three to four years. By the second half of the century, that mixing period will become longer. “At some point, it may not mix for decades at a time,” said Schladow.

Schladow says the study focused on Lake Tahoe as an important case study for changes happening throughout the Sierra Nevada. “These same processes are happening everywhere across the West. Tahoe is the canary in the coal mine.”

Forecasting climate change impacts like these at the regional level has become a Holy Grail for climate scientists. Historically, computer climate models could only scale down to sections of land hundreds of miles across, which made it difficult to predict changes in a landscape as varied as California.

Schladow says newer climate models allow them to see changes at a much more granular level. “What we were able to do is to use grids that were more like one or two miles. That way we could distinguish between effects at the mountain peaks and effects down at the lake level.”

Schladow is hopeful that this study can give land and water managers an early indication of what the future may hold.

A misty Lake McDonald in Glacier National Park; metaphor for the park's murky future? (Photo: Craig Miller)

Last month, in a post from Glacier National Park, I noted that Park Service director Jon Jarvis was not in a mood to mince words, calling climate change “the greatest threat to the integrity of the national park system that we’ve ever faced.”

That assertion was underscored last week in a new report on potential impacts to the parks from climate change. The collaboration by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization, attempted to zoom in on specific parks and projected changes ahead for ten national parks in California, as well as impacts on the state’s economy.

Death Valley is already the hottest spot in North America. The highest recorded temperature there is 136 dF. (Photo: Craig Miller)

Some conclusions under a “medium-to-high” emissions scenario, toward the end of this century: Higher temperatures in Joshua Tree National Park would mean the end of, well, Joshua trees in the park. Muir Woods could be as warm, on average, as San Diego has been historically, making it less hospitable to the park’s legendary coast redwoods. Death Valley, already the hottest spot on the continent, could become virtually uninhabitable during the summer, as average temperatures rise by more than eight degrees, Fahrenheit, over average readings from 1961 to 1990.

And of course, for Montana’s Glacier National Park, the report’s authors cite projections that the last of the park’s glaciers will be gone within 20 years, if not sooner.

This is, perhaps, a good place to pass along a favorite mantra of park rangers of late; that Glacier park wasn’t actually named for its glaciers, but for the geologic history that formed the region’s spectacular features. But it’s logical that Glacier, tucked into the northwestern corner of Montana, has become the “poster child” of climate change in the national parks. Scientists estimate that its 25 remaining glaciers could well be gone in a dozen years or so. Superintendent Chas Cartwright conceded that may be a small part of why Glacier is seeing record numbers of visitors — more than two million this year, which is the park’s centennial.

“Glacier isn’t the only place we’re seeing direct effects from climate change on the ground, right now,” Jarvis said, standing on a gravel bar in McDonald Creek. The parks chief cited apparent climate effects throughout the park system, including receding glaciers, withering water content in the mountain snowpack, and rain-on-snow events shifting from spring to fall. “That completely changes the system,” said Jarvis, who said they’re also seeing wildland fires burning an average of 20 days longer into the season, encroachment of more exotic plants, and species moving up in elevation or vanishing from the landscape entirely. “We’re not just gonna sit around and not do anything about it.”

The question is what to do about it, which presents some unprecedented dilemmas for park managers and scientists, which, Jarvis says, are “causing us to rethink even the fundamental principles of national parks.” Where as in years past, for example, new species moving into a park were looked upon as invaders to be dealt with inhospitably, now “they may be coming in because this is their last refuge.”

Accommodating migrating species is one thing. But also on the table is direct, possibly radical intervention to save others. Jarvis recounts the time when a park scientist asked him, sardonically, “When do you put a sprinkler system on the giant sequoias?” Jarvis asks rhetorically, “Where is the next habitat for the giant sequoia and are we as a society willing to move them, or plant them (somewhere else)? “The biggest step in climate change is starting to ask those kinds of questions and to bring the very best minds to help us begin to wrestle with those as a society.”

To this end, Jarvis is advancing a strategy with four key components:

- Expand the science and develop long-term data sets

- Embrace adaptation and multiple-scenario planning “at the landscape scale”

- Continue mitigation efforts, reducing the carbon footprint of the parks themselves

- Communication, leveraging the “extraordinary bully pulpit” that the parks provide, training scientists to speak to the layman, seizing opportunities to talk to the public about climate change.

Park managers worry about the "downstream" impacts of vanishing glaciers. (Photo: Craig Miller)

Jack Potter, who directs science at Glacier, reinforced that this isn’t just tomorrow’s problem. He noted that spring “green-up” is occurring about three weeks ahead of the 40-year average at Glacier, which means that the landscape is drying out sooner in the season. “No matter what scenario you look at, it’s going to be drier,” said Potter, pointing toward distant mountain snowfields. “That has all kinds of cascading effects downstream.”

Potter said park managers are being forced to re-examine “the role of parks as reservoirs for biodiversity” and “how we view the type of appropriate management…in the face of the possible scenarios that are out there relating to climate.”

To read about another challenge facing the parks, see Lauren Sommer’s story on air pollution impacts at Yosemite.

National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis at McDonald Creek, Glacier National Park (Photo: Craig Miller)

Jarvis made the comment yesterday while touring Glacier National Park in Montana, with members of the Society of Environmental Journalists. “Renewables do not get a free ride,” said Jarvis, when asked about how the parks would treat development of renewable energy sources on park property.

Using the backdrop of Glacier National Park, where the remaining 25 glaciers (out of an estimated 150) are expected to disappear by 2030, Jarvis called climate change the most serious threat ever posed to the integrity of the park system.

But Jarvis said the Service is “struggling” internally with issues like the visual impact of large solar arrays, which can also be large water consumers. “Frankly, it’s a conundrum for us,” he said, because often the alternative is large coal-fired power plants, emissions from which degrade air quality and visibility.”We don’t want to stand up and say we’re against all forms of renewable energy that you can see from a national park,” said Jarvis. “But we do believe that it can be mitigated in some ways.”

Jarvis cited original proposals that included running electrical transmission lines through Lassen Volcanic National Park in northern California. “We were very successful in pushing every one of those out,” said Jarvis, noting that pre-existing transmission lines still transit Lake Mead National Recreation Area, near Las Vegas. “There are challenges,” said Jarvis, “But I think the key is active early engagement.”

At the same time, Jarvis said the Park Service is on an aggressive path to reducing its own carbon footprint, conducting a series of reviews that he said should be completed in 2012. He said all new buildings will comply with at least the LEED “silver” rating for sustainable construction, established by the US Green Building Council, and noted that at Joshua Tree National Park in southern California the Service is producing 60% of its power from solar panels. But, said Jarvis, “You really don’t want to put a large solar array in Glacier National Park.”

Jarvis is a survivor, having come up through the ranks to head the Park Service and locked horns with California Senator Dianne Feinstein over oyster farming near the Point Reyes National Seashore.

Photo: Craig Miller

I don’t know Mark Cowin, the director of the state’s Department of Water Resources. I haven’t even met the man, in person. But after listening to and reading his pronouncements about the state’s water supply, I’d guess he’s a guy who would barely crack a smile if he found himself holding a winning lottery ticket. I hazard that opinion because even after today’s great news about the Sierra snowpack–which is a little like finding out the state has won its annual water lottery–what Cowin emphasizes is that California isn’t out of the woods after the dry spell of 2007-2009. But more about that to follow. First, the details on the DWR’s final Sierra snow survey.

DWR announced on Friday that statewide, the water content stored in the Sierra snow is at 143% of normal for the date; 188% in the northern Sierra, 121% in the central mountains, and 139% in the southern reaches of the range. Up and down the Sierra, those figures are more than double the levels of the past two years, and are up to seven times as much as surveyors found in the bone-dry spring of 2007.

Last week, the Department announced it would increase allocations from the State Water Project to 30% of the amount requested from 29 urban and agricultural customers. Today’s snowpack news prompted the department to say that it’s likely to increase deliveries. How much? “Only marginally,” Cowin said in a phone interview this afternoon. “We’ll have to run the numbers, and we’ll probably make that determination in the next week or two.”

How much water will State Water Project customers get, eventually? Let’s run some numbers of our own.

The main reason the department cites for the very tight supply in the midst of a year of “normal” precipitation is the continuing below-average levels at California’s biggest state-owned reservoir, Lake Oroville. As of Friday afternoon, the lake is at 72% of normal for the date and about 60% full. But the stats that Cowin’s water geeks are crunching aren’t about the level today, but where they guess it will be as runoff begins to pour from the snow-blanketed mountains through the Feather River watershed into Lake Oroville. DWR officials have insisted that it believes runoff will be held down because of dry conditions caused by the last three drought years. You wonder if they’ll still believe that after assessing the impact of an unusually wet April and its impact on the snowpack.

While pondering that, here are some other numbers to consider if you want to play what I’ll call the State Water Project Allocation Game:

• After running far below its 2008-2009 levels all season, the water storage in Lake Oroville caught up and passed year-ago levels this week. The lake’s storage has increased six percent—more than 150,000 acre-feet—since last Friday.
• As noted above, this year’s snowpack is better than double last year’s.
• Last year, the state delivered 40 percent of requested water shipments to its SWP customers. The average allocation for the past 10 years is 68 percent.

Considering all of the above—last year’s deliveries, the snowpack, the sudden late-season surge in Lake Oroville’s levels—it’s a no-brainer that water deliveries will at least match last year’s 40 percent. The question is whether the allocation will go higher. All Cowin would say on that subject today is that he thinks that 45%, the amount DWR described two months ago as the upper limit for shipments this season, is still accurate.

But Cowin did say, as he has more and more frequently of late, that a preoccupation with the this year’s water level misses the point about California’s water reality.

“That’s why we’re so concerned when we get the black and white question, ‘Is the drought over,’” he said. “We are in a period of long scarcity in California. We have no idea what next year’s water supply picture will look like. It’s possible we could have two or three more dry years in a row. So we’re trying to get a message out that we need to have a new attitude about how we use water in California, and it shouldn’t depend on this week’s outlook. We need to conserve water just as a way of life.”

If you want to explore the state’s water supply picture for yourself, check out our California Reservoir Watch map, below:

View KQED: California Reservoir Watch in a larger map
View KQED: California Reservoir Watch in a larger map

Jeff Dozier approaches an instrument tower on Mammoth Mountain. Photo: Molly Samuel

When Jeff Dozier, a hydrologist at UC Santa Barbara, goes to work, he gets to enjoy quite a view. His snow lab is perched halfway up Mammoth Mountain in the central Sierra. We took a gondola to get up there; the other passengers were skiers and snowboarders itching to get out on the freshly fallen snow.

But the instrument platform from which we enjoyed views of the White Mountains is really only half the story. Dozier’s computer lab has much less of a view. In fact, it has no view. It’s buried under the snow, accessible only through what he calls a “Santa Claus entrance” (in the picture above, you can see the entrance–it’s the white tubular “chimney” extending down into the snow from the center of the platform).

The snow lab, operated by both UCSB and the U.S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL), uploads information about the snowpack to a website every fifteen minutes. You can see nearly real-time readings on, among other things, snow depth, temperature, humidity, and radiation.

Dozier in the computer lab. Photo: Molly Samuel

Radiation is an important one. Instruments called radiometers are mounted on the tower. Some point up, measuring the radiation coming from the sun; others point down, measuring how much is reflected back to the sky by the snow.

“Albedo” is the measurement of how reflective the snow is. Something completely white that reflects all of the sun’s energy has an albedo of one; something black, that absorbs all the energy, is zero. Bright, freshly fallen snow has a high albedo, typically above 0.8.

Even if the term is new to you, albedo is probably a familiar concept. As I reported for KQED’s The California Report this morning, Hans Moosmuller of the University of Nevada’s Desert Research Institute explains it in terms of outfits: on a sunny day, if you wear a black sweater you’ll be warmer than if wear a white one. You may notice it with roofs, too. I grew up in Atlanta, in a house with a black roof. Before my parents got an air conditioner, the upstairs bedrooms were unbearable in the summer. If we’d had a white

These radiometers measure radiation coming from the sun. Photo: Molly Samuel

roof, it would have been a little more bearable (though I can’t say it would have helped with Atlanta’s other charming summer attributes, humidity and mosquitoes).

The color sweater you wear has no bearing on the earth’s climate. Roof color could have an effect on a large enough scale. What really matters are the huge swaths of dark and light that cover the globe: ocean and snow.

When warming causes sea ice near the poles to melt faster, areas that had a high albedo (ice is very reflective) become  areas with a very low albedo (the blue ocean absorbs more radiation than forests or plain dirt). Moosmuller says it creates a feedback loop. The more dark spots there are, the more radiation is absorbed. So melting speeds up, and warming increases, exposing even more dark areas, and so on.

Pollution plays an important role that’s coming under increasing scrutiny. Deposits of soot or dust make the snow darker, so it melts faster, exposes more dark ground, and there’s that feedback loop again. In the Himalayas soot, also known as black carbon, from stoves, tailpipes, factories, and fires is having a measurable impact.

In the Rockies, there’s a similar problem caused by dust kicked up from ranches. Tom Painter of the University of Utah says the snow in the Colorado River Basin melts a full month earlier than normal. The difference the dust makes is so drastic, Painter says, that “We’re in an entirely new regime for snow melt…it would be like if we started measuring climate impacts fifty years from now.”

No one has yet done a long-term study on the effects of dust and soot on the Sierra Nevada snow pack. Moosmuller says he’s beginning to look into it now. In the summer, black carbon drifts into the mountains from California’s cities, ports, highways and farms in the Central Valley. Tony Van Curen, in a research project at UC Davis, has found that soot blows over from Asia, too.

There is good news in all of this: Black carbon, unlike most greenhouse gases, lingers in the atmosphere only for a couple of weeks. So reducing emissions could have a relatively quick impact.

Listen to the radio piece.