Global warming to cut snow water storage 56 percent in Oregon watershed

[DreamGypsy]

4. This is getting personal ... but not unexpected.

We live in the McKenzie River watershed. In fact, we are very close to the Trout Creek monitoring station used in the study - it's not one of the snowpack measurement/forcing sites, only ~600 ft. and usually no lasting snow accumulation.

We moved here in 1991 and started a blueberry farm. For a while after the move I was still commuting to my software development job at a Silicon Valley startup. On one flight back to Oregon I was sitting next to an Oregon State University professor. I don't recall her field/department, but as we chatted I described our new 'adventure' and having just completed planting of our first 3 acres of blueberries. Quickly she became quite energized and started talking about her research in climate change and impact on wildlife, plants, and water. At that point global warming and climate change were only of peripheral interest to me and I don't recall much of her discussion. However, one remark she made has stayed with me - it was something like "You may have made a wrong decision in planting blueberries. Given the changes that are coming a better choice might have been pineapples."

Well, it's 22 years later and the 30 acres of blueberry plants are still thriving. No pineapple plantations in the area yet. But it's very clear to me that anthropogenic global warming is a fact and that the world is experiencing the consequences in myriad ways. Studies like this one on the McKenzie watershed are important demonstrations of what we must expect will happen.

I'll be 98 years old in 2050 (mid-century). I can hope, but I don't really expect that I'll be actively engaged in the blueberry farm then. However, that 3.6 degree temperature increase isn't going to happen all at once, so neither is the 56% decrease in water from snowpack. Our current year-to-date precipitation is 9.67 inches, 15.66 inches below normal. Due to global warming? Maybe, we've seen similar deficits in the last 20 years.

Perhaps I better read up on growing pineapples.