Slush part of the big picture

Monday was a typical day for this winter: Heavy snow becoming slushy by midday.

In years past, you might have expected December’s heavy snowfall to be piled up all over town. And while there’s certainly evidence of winter on the ground, a lot of this year’s snow hasn’t stuck around long – at least not long enough to make you think that December 2007 was among the snowiest in history.

The University of Montana’s Steve Running, among hundreds of climate scientists who shared in the Nobel Prize awarded to Al Gore, is seeing the same thing in Missoula: There are fewer below-zero days each year, and snow melts quickly.

“On average, these warmer winters mean more days that are like this than days of pure, cold snow,” he said Monday.

It’s foolish to connect any single day’s weather to global warming, and Running wasn’t trying to do that. But there’s an unmistakable regional trend toward winter slush – along with longer growing seasons and record summer wildfires, Running said.

Those are the pieces of the Northwest’s part of the global rise in temperatures that he and hundreds of other scientists are studying. He says that if Americans don’t find the personal and political will to reduce energy use, the consequences will be disastrous.

“This is not optional,” he said. “We can’t just choose to ignore this and go on our merry way.”

Running was in Spokane as part of a recruiting trip by UM President George Dennison and other university officials to attract students to the Missoula campus. He’s among the school’s most prominent scientists and is helping develop an interdisciplinary focus on the topic. Running is something of a regional evangelist on the issue of global warming, giving a presentation he calls “The 5 Stages of Climate Grief.” In it, he argues that the science is essentially in on global warming: Researchers agree it’s happening, and humans play a role through greenhouse gas emissions. Now it’s just a journey, he says, from denial to acceptance.

He says the world is developing the technology to reverse the trend, but may lack the political and personal will.

“We need to get a solid voting majority all the way to the acceptance stage,” he said.

Running and other scientists contribute research to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose reports have been most influential in charting the change in global climate and bolstering the case for global warming. Along with Gore, they were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October.

“We were just as astonished as could be,” Running said. “When we, as the authors, got that e-mail, we thought, ‘Man, this really is the big enchilada.’ ”

Running’s research involves using NASA satellites to gather data on photosynthesis worldwide. In essence, he tracks plant growth globally as one measure of the planet’s health.

One regional measure of warming is the extension of growing seasons in the Northwest – he said Spokane’s frost-free growing season is likely two weeks longer than it was 50 years ago. That may be good for gardeners, but it’s hard on the water supply and has contributed to years of drought, he said.

Worse, the longer warm spells have helped drive record wildfire seasons for several years running.

“That does seem ominous,” he said. “We’re getting so every summer is a big wildfire summer.”

In Spokane, December brought the most days with snowfall since 1969, a year many consider the region’s worst winter. And the temperatures, on average, were slightly higher than normal – the average high of 33.3 was a half-degree warmer than normal, and the average low temp of 23.6 was two degrees warmer than the typical low.

Such small changes can bring big differences.

“A few degrees makes all the difference between the kind of slush we’re seeing today and heavy, dry snow that sticks around,” he said.