OK, the usual caveat – one data point is not enough to prove that anthropogenic climate change is upon us, just as one data point would prove that it isn’t. But here’s another one that is entirely consistent with the models’ predictions: early snow melt in Yosemite. (We watched the same thing happen in the watersheds of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado that feed our rivers here.)

This is the sort of thing that the models predict. Note that this is another chance to test whether the pattern of change is a result of natural variability or human-caused climate change. In this case, the potential source of natural variability, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, doesn’t fit the warming seen in the last few years.