Men's Journal Highlights Climate Change in Yellowstone
Posted March 29, 2011 in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places, Solving Global Warming, The Media and the Environment
Dead whitebark pine trees in a high alpine basin in the Madison Mountains in Montana.
The April issue of Men’s Journal features a lengthy article on climate change in Yellowstone. It’s an issue NRDC is heavily involved in, and I got to spend a few days out here with the writer last fall.
We flew low in a small plane over a hefty swath of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, floated the Yellowstone River, and hiked in the Gallatin Mountains. As the article explains, when it comes to Yellowstone, climate change is not some abstract threat lurking in the future. It’s here, right now, affecting this landscape in profound ways.
At the roof of the ecosystem, whitebark pine trees are dying in stunning numbers. As my colleagues and I have previously explained, due to warmer winter temperatures, mountain pine beetles are surviving at higher elevations because the requisite prolonged cold snaps needed to kill the beetles are not occurring. As a result, the native beetles are murderously working their way through whitebark country, leaving a trail of dead trees in their wake.
Whitebark pine is a keystone species; it affects the entire ecosystem. Whitebark pines stabilize the soil, shade snowpack into the summer, and their fatty seeds feed Clark’s nutcracker birds, red squirrels, and grizzly bears. The loss of whitebark is affecting snowpack, vegetation, and wildlife.
Down in the valleys, climate change is affecting the legendary coldwater fisheries of the Northern Rockies. In the Yellowstone River, for example, native fish are declining and warm-water fish species continue to be found farther upstream.
What will happen as the West continues to get warmer?
In the Northern Rockies, we have a “snowpack economy,” as someone noted last fall. Our snowpack builds up over the fall, winter, and spring, melts off over the summer, and then the buildup process begins anew. In the hot, dry weeks of late summer, the snowmelt feeds our rivers with badly needed cold water. Picture a big snowball hanging over the Northern Rockies; it gets bigger in the winter and then drips and gets smaller in the summer.
As such, if our annual snowpack shrinks (i.e., less snow, starts to build up later, starts to melt earlier, etc.), we’re in trouble. Even if we get the same amount of moisture (but more rain and less snow), if that snowball’s not dripping in August, our rivers and the fish in them are going to be severely stressed.
The reality of climate change in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is no secret here. And, fortunately, there are many government agencies, conservation organizations, scientists, and citizens working hard to better understand climate change in the West and develop solutions to deal with it going forward.
But, unfortunately, the issue still does not garner the national attention it deserves. And thus it is encouraging to see a major national magazine take an up-close look at this issue. While the article can be a little over-the-top to catch readers’ attention, it shines a bright light on a big problem.
And for that I’m grateful.
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Comments
Paul Homewood — Mar 31 2011 07:46 AM
Interesting article.
Only one slight problem - winter temperatures in Wyoming are unchanged for the last 60 yrs and indeed have actually been dropping for the last few years.
http://climvis.ncdc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/cag3/hr-display3.pl
Les Johnson — Mar 31 2011 08:22 AM
maybe a few slight problems, Matt. North American winter snow cover is increasing.
http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_seasonal.php?ui_set=namgnld&ui_season=1
Wyoming had above average snow this winter.
http://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/ftpref/data/water/wcs/gis/maps/wy_swepctnormal.pdf
Wyoming winter precipitation is deceasing, but at only 0.06 inches per decade, as is spring precipitation. Summer and fall are unchanged.
http://climvis.ncdc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/cag3/hr-display3.pl
And, as noted, the temperature is pretty constant over the last 1/2 century.
Please explain how climate change is responsible for the pine beetle, when there is no statistical change in the climate.
Matt Skoglund — Mar 31 2011 12:50 PM
Paul and Les,
Thank you for your comments. Here are a few things in response:
(1) Snow is not the same as temperature. Significant snowfall does not mean it has not gotten warmer. The prolonged cold snaps needed to kill the beetles in whitebark country are not happening as regularly these days, which is why the vast majority of whitebark pines in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem are dead or dying. Whitebark pine protects the snowpack, but whitebark pine survival is not dependent on it. Finally, even if there’s above-average snowpack, if it melts abnormally early, we still end up with low – potentially dangerously low – water levels in late summer.
(2) Average annual temperature is rising, especially in the West:
http://www.southwestclimatechange.org/figures/western_temperature
(3) As I’ve already stated, we’re no longer getting the prolonged cold snaps needed to kill the beetles, and the connection between beetles and temperature is well documented:
http://www.actionbioscience.org/environment/loganmacfarlane.html
(4) Here’s a report on the West’s changed climate:
http://www.nrdc.org/globalwarming/west/west.pdf
(5) Here’s a recent report on the status of whitebark pine in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem:
http://docs.nrdc.org/land/files/lan_10072101a.pdf
(6) Lastly, in response to a previous commenter raising questions about climate change in the West, its connection to whitebark and beetles, etc., I wrote a separate blog post on this subject. Check out the post and the comments (which include a couple of comments from Dr. Jesse Logan, a leading scientist on whitebark, beetles, and climate):
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/mskoglund/global_warming_dead_forests_im_1.html
Thanks again for commenting.
Matt
Les Johnson — Mar 31 2011 01:18 PM
Snow is not the same as temperature. I never said it was. You implied that changes in snow pack could lead to other problems. I merely pointed out that there had been no significant change in Wyoming precipitation.
But what is the same, is that the temperature in Wyoming is the same as it was 60 years ago. There has been no significant rise in temperature in Wyoming, according to the NCDC.
Nor has there been a significant change in Wyoming precipitation, again according to the NCDC..
If precipitation and temperature has not changed, neither has the climate.
If the climate has not changed, its hard to blame climate change on the pine beetle resurgence.
What kills the beetle is EXCEPTIONAL cold snaps, especially in the fall or spring. "Exceptional" in this case, would be in the multi-decadal scale, not yearly or decadal.
Les Johnson — Apr 2 2011 10:49 AM
Steven Goddard just plotted the USHCN numbers for the Yellowstone weather station.
Over the last 100 years, the temperature at Yellowstone has fallen about 1 degree.
Jessica M — Apr 8 2011 03:46 PM
Apparently he has no response to your findings guys. Good Research! It seems there is always someone or some group trying to twist data to lead people astray on the real problems, not saying that is exactly what Matt is doing, but sure seems strange to me.