{"id":4695,"date":"2011-08-04T08:30:44","date_gmt":"2011-08-04T15:30:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/?p=4695"},"modified":"2011-08-03T22:51:57","modified_gmt":"2011-08-04T05:51:57","slug":"colder-and-cloudier-summers-in-the-pacific-northwest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2011\/08\/04\/colder-and-cloudier-summers-in-the-pacific-northwest\/","title":{"rendered":"Colder and cloudier summers in the Pacific Northwest?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I came here for the weather. Seriously. East Coast winters (cold) and East Coast summers (Triple-H: hot hazy humid) drove me bonkers.<\/p>\n<p>But global warming is making me feel a bit like Rick in Casablanca: <em>misinformed<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Misinformed &#8211; you know, that great line where Louis asks Rick why he came to Casablanca, to which Rick replies, &#8220;for the waters.&#8221; When reminded that Casablanca is in the desert, Rick deadpans, &#8220;I was misinformed.&#8221; See the clip here:<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Casablanca 1942 Movie Clip I came for the waters\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0gC29ArkGG0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Well, it seems global warming is going to teach all of us a lesson or two about being misinformed.<\/p>\n<p>While we&#8217;re not getting that much hotter (at least not in my lifetime, it seems), extreme heat <em>inland<\/em> will cause a curious weather pattern over the ocean in our immediate vicinity: one of increased clouds and cold during our spring and summer months.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, if you thought this year&#8217;s spring and summer (for the most part) have been cold and depressing, you&#8217;re absolutely right! They have.<\/p>\n<p>And climatologists and weathermen have predicted it for years.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier this week, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kplu.org\/\">KPLU<\/a>, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/\">NPR<\/a> affiliate radio station in Seattle, ran this report: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kplu.org\/post\/seattle-spring-was-coldest-one-cloudiest-record\">Seattle spring was the coldest, one of the cloudiest on record<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Listen <a href=\"http:\/\/pd.npr.org\/anon.npr-mp3\/148\/ingest\/2011\/08\/20110802_ingest_124255447.mp3\">here<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kplu.org\/post\/seattle-spring-was-coldest-one-cloudiest-record\">read<\/a> an extract:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Scientists have confirmed what many suspected about this year\u2019s weather. It was the coldest spring on record for Washington and one of the cloudiest.<\/p>\n<p>The average temperature for April, May and June was lower than any year since 1900, say University of Washington scientists. And the days were more cloudy than all but one year since those records began 60 years ago.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>One of the weather scientists quoted is <a href=\"http:\/\/cliffmass.blogspot.com\/\">Cliff Mass<\/a>, who adds, &#8220;the hotter it gets inland, the more we seem to get the sort of pattern that brings cooler air from the ocean into western Washington.&#8221; This is obviously exactly what we&#8217;re getting in British Columbia, and it seems to be happening to some extent further south as far as Northern California, too.<\/p>\n<p>But get this: Cliff Mass was already telling us about this five years ago, when our spring and summers were still pretty sweet to gloat about to our Eastern brethren. Mass called it in a 2006 <strong><em>Seattle Times<\/em><\/strong> article: <a href=\"http:\/\/seattletimes.nwsource.com\/html\/localnews\/2003040140_futureweather05m.html\">An even grayer Seattle from global warming?<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>For those harboring the guilty hope that global warming will transform Seattle into a sun lovers&#8217; paradise on par with the C\u00f4te d&#8217;Azur, meteorologist Cliff Mass has some bad news: It might actually get cloudier.<\/p>\n<p>Mass and his colleagues at the University of Washington recently completed the most detailed computer simulation ever conducted of the region&#8217;s future weather. Among the surprises was a big boost in cloud cover in March, April and May.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The spring is going to be gunkier \u2014 if you believe this \u2014 under global warming,&#8221; he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Gunkier? Ohhh-kaaayyy&#8230; That&#8217;s a good way to describe it, I suppose.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">&#8230;<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 458px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/picasaweb.google.com\/lh\/photo\/ce8FxFGiE3Zu0Sew8k6hmA?feat=directlink\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" \" style=\"border: 8px solid white\" src=\"https:\/\/lh5.googleusercontent.com\/-ijvKkkQScIs\/TjosQHCeuyI\/AAAAAAAAB50\/7fRbsboQJDE\/s640\/CIMG0986.JPG\" alt=\"\" width=\"448\" height=\"336\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">What a gunkier &quot;spring&quot; looked like in Victoria British Columbia<\/p><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">&#8230;<\/p>\n<h3><strong>Gunkier.<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>In the article, Mass also predicts more heat spikes and problems relating to the water supplies (say what?, in Cascadia, land of rain and ice-pack? &#8230;Oh, wait&#8230; Ice-melt&#8230; Ice melts <em>away<\/em>&#8230;).<\/p>\n<p><strong>In other words, global warming is actually <em>global weirding<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Overall, I&#8217;d say this part of the globe is not a bad place to be if you don&#8217;t want to die of heat in the summer. But the gloomy and cold spring (and summer up until just a week ago) wasn&#8217;t a lot of fun, either.<\/p>\n<p>My money is on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.geekwire.com\/2011\/qa-cliff-mass-on-science-math-carl-sagan-the-weather-and-whatever-else-he-wants-to-talk-about\">keeping an eye on Mass&#8217;s work<\/a>, at any rate (I really like how he thinks in other areas, too). He&#8217;s taking climate modeling seriously, and clearly getting things right, as his 2006 predictions would indicate. The key is in the details, taking local terrain into account, as the <em><strong>Seattle Times<\/strong><\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/seattletimes.nwsource.com\/html\/localnews\/2003040140_futureweather05m.html\">article<\/a> explained:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Earlier forecasts relied primarily on global climate models, which give a planetary view of the way temperatures will rise as global warming continues. But those models lack any detail about the mountains and inland waters that play such an important role in local weather.<\/p>\n<p>So, using a global model as a starting point, Mass fine-tuned those projections with a high-resolution regional model that can distinguish topographical features down to a scale of a few miles.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If you&#8217;re going to play the game around here, you&#8217;ve got to have the resolution to see local terrain,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Even with the university&#8217;s enormous data-processing capacity, it took two months of continuous computer runs to simulate each decade into the future. The researchers also factored in things such as changes in soil temperature, which can affect weather.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Fascinating article, props to the <strong><em>Seattle Times<\/em><\/strong> for having published it and keeping it available online.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, I find myself humming a line from an old Frank Sinatra song, <em>The Lady is a Tramp<\/em>: &#8220;&#8230;she&#8217;s broke but it&#8217;s ok &#8230;hates California, it&#8217;s cold and it&#8217;s damp &#8230;that&#8217;s why the lady is a tramp&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>We can sing that up here, too.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Lady is a Tramp - Frank Sinatra\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_VJY97l0jVA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I came here for the weather. Seriously. East Coast winters (cold) and East Coast summers (Triple-H: hot hazy humid) drove me bonkers. But global warming is making me feel a bit like Rick in Casablanca: misinformed. Misinformed &#8211; you know, that great line where Louis asks Rick why he came to Casablanca, to which Rick [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2168,407],"tags":[16147,31171,33],"class_list":["post-4695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-green","category-nature","tag-climate_change","tag-global_weirding","tag-weather"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4695"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4713,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4695\/revisions\/4713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}