Canadian Rockies - Ringrose Peak
Canada Vancouver - On the Beach With Palms
Upslope in the Canadian Rockies, or downslope on the shore in Vancouver. I think this matters…
Original images. First, Ringrose Peak
Canadian Rockies – Ringrose Peak
For reasons that are completely opaque, WordPress sometimes gets it’s nose out of joint on some hypertext and just becomes a pill about it, stripping out the “offending html” even if there is nothing wrong with it. I’ve tried for about an hour to get this URL to “stick” inside an HTML tag, and it won’t. No idea why right now. I’ll come back to it some other day. But if you want to see the original Vancouver beach scene you will need to do a ‘copy paste’ and put this address in your browser. (And yes, I know the HTML to build the link and yes I’ve tried it – along with a dozen capricious variations that sometimes get WordPress to change it’s mind – all to no avail.)
Rockies? ROCKIES? We Don’t Need No Stinking Rockies!
Oh, Canada! Being turned into one flat hockey field!
The absolute lowest point in the Canadian Rockies is a river valley, and it is above 300 m in elevation. So as you watch all that “stuff” above 300 m slowly erode, you can just imagine it being deposited on a beach near the ocean…
Look at ./Alts/Therm.by.Alt403.Dec.ALT (Y/N)? y
Year -MSL 20 50 100 200 300 400 500 1000 2000 Space
DAltPct: 1779 0.0 0.0 0.0 75.0 25.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
DAltPct: 1829 0.0 0.0 0.0 68.0 32.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
DAltPct: 1839 0.0 0.0 0.0 84.6 15.4 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
DAltPct: 1849 0.0 0.0 0.0 80.5 19.5 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
DAltPct: 1859 0.0 0.0 23.5 60.8 7.8 0.0 7.8 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
DAltPct: 1869 0.0 0.0 22.2 53.3 13.3 11.1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
DAltPct: 1879 10.1 9.5 21.1 31.9 21.4 4.4 0.0 1.5 0.0 0.0 0.0
DAltPct: 1889 12.8 7.5 9.9 24.9 21.3 7.8 2.8 10.5 2.5 0.0 0.0
DAltPct: 1899 14.5 7.1 9.1 17.7 15.0 9.8 7.1 15.2 4.6 0.0 0.0
DAltPct: 1909 14.6 5.9 9.2 16.8 13.7 9.4 7.2 18.9 4.3 0.0 0.0
DAltPct: 1919 10.6 5.3 8.3 14.2 14.5 10.8 8.7 23.1 4.5 0.0 0.0
DAltPct: 1929 10.4 5.3 7.6 13.7 12.9 12.1 8.8 25.2 4.0 0.0 0.0
DAltPct: 1939 11.1 6.8 7.4 12.6 12.2 13.0 7.6 25.6 3.7 0.0 0.0
DAltPct: 1949 12.0 10.0 8.7 12.5 10.9 12.6 6.5 23.5 3.2 0.0 0.0
DAltPct: 1959 12.4 10.8 11.2 12.9 10.3 12.3 5.3 22.1 2.7 0.0 0.0
DAltPct: 1969 13.4 11.4 11.6 11.9 10.3 12.2 4.4 22.0 2.8 0.0 0.0
DAltPct: 1979 13.2 11.7 11.1 11.1 10.6 10.9 4.4 23.6 3.3 0.0 0.0
DAltPct: 1989 13.0 12.0 10.6 10.7 11.7 9.6 4.0 24.6 3.7 0.0 0.0
DAltPct: 1999 17.5 19.8 14.8 9.1 10.6 6.7 2.0 18.0 1.6 0.0 0.0
DAltPct: 2009 22.0 23.2 10.0 8.1 8.9 9.3 2.9 14.4 1.2 0.0 0.0
For COUNTRY CODE: 403
Almost half of Canada is below 50 m elevation and 55% is below 100 m elevation.
Notice that this chart has asymmetrical altitude bands. The gradations are smaller at the low altitudes than they are at the top. In the middle, I go by 100 m, then a 500 m jump, then 1000 m, then everything above 2000 m.
Musings from the Chiefio 
Excerpt from the Summits of Canada web site:
“Temperatures are extremely cold on and near Mount Logan. On May 26, 1991 a record -77.5 °C (-106.6 °F) was observed, making it the coldest recorded temperature outside of Antarctica. (It is not counted as the coldest temperature in North America since it was recorded at a very high altitude.)”
http://www.summitsofcanada.ca/canatrek/summits/yukon.html
It’s also interesting that Banff is listed as the highest town in Canada with an altitude of 1,463 m. This is lower than Denver.
How can they decide to just leave it out due to altitude? All of the high plateau of Antarctica is high elevation and we don’t leave it out…
Meanwhile, in the U.S. Rockies, the continental US hit its coldest recorded temperature of -70 °F on January 20, 1954 at Rogers Pass, Montana. The pass sits at 5,470 feet elevation in the Rocky Mountains.
The two reference thermometers in Montana are at Missoula and Billings. Missoula is at about 3200 feet and is far from representative. I live 8 miles from there and my temps are typically 4-5 degree lower and ppt. is 2″ to 3″ higher on an annual basis.
Missoula is about 75 miles from Rogers Pass. I suspect including Great Falls or Havre and Kalispell or Libby would go a long ways in balancing the temperature profile for Montana
REPLY: [ I started in doing a ‘by alititude’ profile for the western states, but there is not a convenient division of the ‘country code’ to capture what I was looking to capture. I’m still working on it… but there is clearly some evidence that the same effect is working in the USA, with thermometers running ‘down slope’ away from the snow and toward the beach… or the meadow, for Montana ;-) -ems ]
OT, but I want to reach you. I just posted the following on the Tips thread at WUWT.
Att: EM Smith & other interested persons
Looks to me like NOAA has just taken down its 2 lists of GHCN stations that were formerly posted at http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_….
Sorry, the ends of those links don’t show on my bookmarks pull-down. Wouldn’t matter anyway, the listing has been removed.
One list purported to show stations actually in use; the other a larger list of stations that were eligible for use. Do you have them archived?
Guess here is that you do have them archived. Just in case you don’t, I just found the “List of All Stations” that I downloaded a few days ago.
jws
@juanslayton
All of GISS seems to be “down” right now.
Since I have archived copies of the GHCN and USHCN data, I can recreate the used vs not used from that.
I’ve put up a “GISS Watch” posting as we wait to see what tomorrow brings…
I have a list of ‘stations actually used’ in Excel if anyone needs. It is useful as it can be readily sorted by lat/long, by country code etc. as well as providing a search capacity for any name or Station ID.
email is under full profile on site.
Testing comment link handling: