TGR goes to Washington: Jeremy Jones shreds Capitol Hill.
Two weeks ago, NASA announced that the past decade was the warmest on record for planet Earth, based on measurements of land and sea temperatures.
While not immune to political pressure, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration isn’t exactly a partisan apparatus, making its findings all the more pointed. From the N.Y. Times:
The agency also found that 2009 was the second warmest year since 1880, when modern temperature measurement began. The warmest year was 2005. The other hottest recorded years have all occurred since 1998, NASA said.
We need only to look at the forests of Wyoming, ravaged by drought in the early part of the decade, for a record of climate change. The vast stands of red, dead pines stand as a testament to warm and dry patterns that weakened the trees and left them more vulnerable to beetle infestation.
Reading the Times story, I was reminded of a conversation I had with Jackson meteorologist Jim Woodmencey last summer, in the midst of all the rain in June and snow in August. Woody and I talked primarily about how cold the summer was (not nearly as cold as 1993, he said), but we touched on a few noteworthy historical trends — and these could be troubling for skiers.
First, in the 50-year period between 1951 and 2000, there was a 7 percent decrease in snowfall in the town of Jackson, from an average of 79 inches to 73 inches per year, Woody said.
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Posted under Democratic Party, Environment, Politics, Ski Resorts
Tags: climate change, films, national forest, powder, skiing, snowboarding, teton gravity research
