Not too Cold Here in BC anymore
There is a major difference between 1st year sea ice and older, multi-year sea ice. 1st year ice has much more salt in it, and therefore melts at a faster rate than older ice with less sea salt.
The winters here are now much milder than they ever were in the decades of 1950-1980. Heck, we can grow kiwi's, palms, and even bananas on the coast of British Columbia.
Our ski hill closed down in the 1990's, was put up for sale in 2007. No one bought it, and it has only opened once this decade. We never get temperatures lower than about -25 Celsius, but in the 1950's and 1960's we would get -40 celsius temperatures.
And even more weird is the fact that the coldest temperatures of the year is not always January, but can be in March or earlier in November.
I used to fly small planes in the winter here. Most years Shuswap Lake froze over, as did Kamloops Lake. Last winter was the first winter this decade that ice formed on Kamloops Lake.
Even some large lakes in Wells Gray Park are not freezing up.
The only lake in BC which has "never" frozen over in the interior is Kootenay Lake....but now the trend, more often than not, is that most large lakes in the southern half of BC are not freezing over at all.
Plus, I completed graduate course work in climate change science, and agree that climate modification is in progress because of anthropogenic emissions such as GHG's, deforestation, inputs of ozone depleting substances into the stratosphere, more aerosols than ever (China and India together lead the pack in this which causes cooling in the North Pacific, increase snow melt and ice melt due to lower albedo's).
The real serious issue in my opinion with rapid climate change is the loss of habitat and species extinction. Humans can adapt, but most terrerstrial life forms cannot adapt fast enough, or move....so there will be some species at risk of extinction, and adding to the normal rate of habitat loss, that means disaster for most ecosystems.
In BC because the winters never get cold, the Mountain Pine Beetle has (MPB) killed off most of the Ponderosa and Lodgepole pine here. The extent of the epidemic is shocking. Over 80% of the mature timber in the Caribou and other regions is dead. The MPB larvae are killed off when winter temperatures reach -37 celsius or lower for a sustained time.
Since the bulk of the pine forest is 100+ years old, we have a very good record of what past winter temperatures were on average here in BC: and that is that it has always reached lower temperatures than -37 celsius here on average.
There was some past epidemics of MPB in southern BC, but they did not become large, nor impact the entire provincial forest containing pine.
regards
JMF
Biting the hand that feeds IT
