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North Country readers want to know: Can we hurry up with global warming?

Posted 3/8/15

By PAUL HETZLER I had such high hopes for global warming, but as frozen February gave way to frigid March, I felt disappointed. Betrayed, even. I thought the planet was heating up. All my plans for a …

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North Country readers want to know: Can we hurry up with global warming?

Posted

By PAUL HETZLER

I had such high hopes for global warming, but as frozen February gave way to frigid March, I felt disappointed. Betrayed, even. I thought the planet was heating up. All my plans for a northern NY citrus and banana orchard, out the window.

Turns out it’s easy to mix up climate and weather, two very different things. There’s a saying in the Adirondacks (and elsewhere, I’m sure) that if you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes. That’s weather: what we experience in a given day, week, season or year.

Climate, on the other hand, refers to long-term trends in weather patterns over decades and centuries. When you have a hundred years of weather records in hand (which we do, and then some) you can begin to look for patterns in climate.

Imagine riding a bicycle from Long Lake, elevation 1,900 feet, to the Hudson River at Albany, just about at sea level. Even if you’re not in shape it’s no sweat because the trip is all downhill, right? You should be able to coast the whole way. Actually you do want to be in good condition for that trek. While the general trend is downhill, there are many steep uphill climbs in there, too.

Or consider average life expectancy in the US. We know it has steadily risen for the past couple centuries, and is now roughly 79 years. Yet we all know people who, sadly, have died at a much younger age. While unfortunate, this doesn’t reflect the long-term trend.

Long-term climate trends going back thousands of years can be gleaned from air trapped in ice cores and pollen trapped in lake sediment cores. Of course you have to take scientists’ word on that sort of thing, and rumor has it some of them favor progressive politics.

It’s unlikely that thermometers have a secret political agenda, though, and reliable temperature records date back to about 1850. The consensus of these impartial instruments is that the average temperature of our planet has definitely risen over the last century.

Let’s bring it closer to home. According to local records our region is on average about two degrees warmer than it was 100 years ago. Lake Champlain ice data, which reach back more than 200 years, indicate in the 19th century there were only three years in which the lake didn’t freeze over. But in the 20th century the lake failed to freeze in twenty-eight winters, mostly since 1950.

This warming has wrought other changes. We now get three more inches of precipitation per year than in 1970, leading to rises in the water levels of lakes and ponds whose outflows are not artificially controlled. Since 1970, the level of Lake Champlain has risen twelve inches.

So what about this winter? The coldest air in the northern hemisphere is usually found—duh—near the North Pole. Dubbed a “polar vortex” in the 1950s, this large pocket of frigid, stable air normally hovers over the Arctic quite reliably. On occasion this bitter-cold beanie gets whacked by the jet stream and slips down the face of the planet, bringing the Arctic to us.

While we’re colder than usual, many places have been hotter. In late February, most of Alaska was between 18 and 36 degrees above normal. Ditto for a big splash of northeastern Russia, and another chunk in the Russian northwest. All of the Arctic has been 5 to 15 degrees above normal. Planet-wide, it averages out. Unfortunately it hasn’t been in our favor lately.

It’s not that our winter is cold—it’s just that somebody else is having it. Anyone want to invest in a pineapple plantation in Anchorage?

Paul Hetzler is a forester and horticulture and natural resources educator with Cornell Cooperative Extension of St. Lawrence County.