Speakers provide international spin on climate change

With rivers flooding and record snowpack recorded in the mountains, this is a tough year to convince people that human-caused global warming will eventually melt Montana’s glaciers and parch the landscape, says noted climate scientist Steve Running.

But Running, a University of Montana forestry professor who shared in the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his work documenting climate change, reminded a Billings audience Wednesday that annual precipitation varies greatly throughout the West.

Despite this year’s record precipitation, long-term trends point to big problems in coming decades, he said, mentioning that wildfires raged throughout Eastern Montana during January just a few years ago.

Running’s research has found a steady decline in Montana river flows since the 1950s, and that points to an increasingly arid landscape throughout the West.

By TOM HOWARD Of The Gazette Staff

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