From Deseret News archives:
Global-warming debate heats up in S.L.
Disaster for ski industry? Rocky, scientist disagree
But the chief snowpack scientist in Utah says the decades of data he's seen don't indicate such a pending disaster.
"Here in the state of Utah we have not seen that," said Randy Julander, snow survey supervisor for the U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service in Salt Lake City.
Julander's observation came after a press conference in Library Square where Anderson, a Sierra Club official and others released a non-government study that claims the winter snowpack of the Colorado River Basin is threatened by global warming.
The report, "Less Snow, Less Water: Climate Disruption in the West," was sponsored by the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization of Louisville, Colo., and the group "Clear the Air," based in Washington, D.C.
The Sierra Club's press release announcing the news conference says, "Utah's water supply is currently being threatened by warmer winters caused by global warming."
The study says that in the upper basins of four rivers studied — the Columbia, Missouri, Colorado and Rio Grande — human-caused climate change increased temperatures, caused more warming in the winter and spring and reducing the snowmelt.
Snowpack levels were below average in the Colorado River Basin for 11 of the past 16 years, it adds.
That is a crucial consideration for Utahns because the snowpack not only provides winter recreation and millions of dollars of income from skiers, but it is the main source of Utah's water supply when the yearly snowmelt runs off from the mountains into streams, rivers and reservoirs.
However, Julander said that at least in this state no snowpack decline has occurred in records stretching back 30 years.
"The latest data and studies that have been done indicate there has been no change of the snowpack, either in terms of it getting more or less, or melting sooner or staying later," Julander said in a telephone interview.
"There's nothing we can see at this point."
Tim Wagner, the Sierra Club's Utah Chapter conservation coordinator, said at the press conference that the study's findings "are not less than startling."
Among the impacts of human-caused global warming, he said, are "more frequent and more intense drought."
The study shows there are local impacts because of climate change, Anderson said, describing it as a wake-up call for "every level of government . . . for every business and each of us as individuals."
All have the means within reach to make a significant difference, he said. He cited the city's efforts to reduce greenhouse emissions, which are blamed for global warming.
These include use of more energy-efficient lights and buying wind-power electricity.
"We all have to join together" to reduce the emissions, he said.
E-mail: bau@desnews.com
