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by robocat 1464 days ago
Local anecdotes are great if you are old enough to have seen changes, because they are simple and relatable examples.

In Christchurch, New Zealand, a notable example for me is that the snow line has receded since I was a child. Low lying ski fields are struggling to stay open. My parents have noticed less snow on the ground during winter at their rural place (they have been there ~30 years).

> remember where the sea level was back when I was little and also see where it's at now

I am a bit skeptical of that claim! Then again, sea level changes would be difficult to notice in Christchurch because we had fast uplift locally: “these events caused ground motion at the Lyttelton TG [tide gauge], the largest single vertical [earthquake] displacement was >50 mm (cumulative displacement ~110 mm)”[1] and slow uplift probably has occurred too “slow slip events has uplifted sites by up to 0.8 mm/year on average in Wellington and Dunedin”. 150km away the coastline uplifted 2 metres (2 yards)[2], boy was that stinky.

I think this quote is interesting: “At interannual and decadal time scales TG records typically show variations in annual means on the order of 5–10 cm and a possible 60-year oscillation of up to 3 cm. Although to estimate the long-term trend in relative sea level (RSL), five to six decades of reliable and essentially complete TG records are typically required, techniques exist that can use sparse data sets. A TG measures the RSL trend or the change in sea level relative to the adjacent land. Independent estimates of the vertical land motion (VLM) are required to estimate the absolute sea level (ASL). Such motion may occur due to tectonic movements, ice mass loading, glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA), or local site instabilities due to, for example, compaction, sedimentation, or water, oil, or gas extraction (Carter et al., ). The stability of a TG site is a critical issue that requires verification (Bevis et al., ) and needs to be considered at both local and regional scales. Historically, many TGs are located in shipping ports where harbor infrastructure is often developed on reclaimed or modified land.”[1].

[1] https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/201...

[2] https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/89206/powerful-eart...

1 comments

I told my kids yesterday while cleaning up when we found their sled that they are probably the last generation of Dutch kids to have used one, they don't have skates because there never is a winter long enough to make the ice safe (when I was a kid you could skate on IJsselmeer, and the ice would be 20 cm thick at the end of the winter).
Your comment reminds me of the article written in 2000 that said that by 2010 kids won’t even know what snow is.

That article was online until about 2015 until it was so widely mocked it was finally deleted. Here’s a screenshot for you.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/snowf...

yes, in my hometown there is no more snow in winter while 40 years ago i was happily cross-country skiing there. On the positive side - the peaches, apricots, cherries, etc. - the stuff of my childhood dreams sold back then only at farmers markets at astronomical prices by the traders from South - is now easily growing there in people's backyards/gardens. Though not oranges/mandarins nor watermelons yet - seems needing a bit more warming which looks to be just a matter of [pretty short] time.
In Christchurch we are also getting a lot more mosquitoes than I recall as a child*, which you may get with a warmer climate, so it definitely isn’t all wins.

* Lots of possible reasons for apparently more mosquitoes: perhaps they are evolving to match the environment here?

Can you give me a location so I can look at the historical snowfall record for that location?
That reminds me of this article I've read about the River Thames Frost Fairs... The last of which was done in 1814, with people preparing for one in 1870s or so but was cancelled.

Little Ice Age ended, you see...