Here's a very interesting piece from Bob Berwyn. Up and over on the Summit County Citizens Voice.
Bob Berwyn:
"SUMMIT COUNTY — Researchers who set out to study whether deforestation on the slopes of Kilimanjaro is affecting the mountain’s ice cap concluded that large-scale climate changes have much more of an impact on the glaciers. But they also documented that clear-cutting the mountain’s forests is having a distinct effect on precipitation at the mid-level elevations, where rainfall has been reduced.
The findings could have implications for Colorado, where some forest landscapes are experiencing wholesale changes after the pine beetle epidemic. Both scientists said that, depending on the scale of changes in Colorado and the rest of the region affected by the outbreak, the changes in land cover could have an effect on summer rains by changing the amount of moisture available for convection in the lower atmosphere.
After reading about the Kilimanjaro research, I corresponded with two scientists who have studied how land-use changes can affect mesoscale weather, including Thomas Mölg (University of Innsbruck, Austria), who conducted the study at Kilimanjaro, and Roger Pielke, Sr., of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES).
Since both researchers were kind enough to give detailed written answers to my email questions, I’m posting the Q & A rather than shortening or paraphrasing their quotes...."
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