Final Blog



Sandpoint, Idaho from 100 million years in the past, to presents, and 100 million years in the future will have a very unique climate change. Plate tectonics and continental drift will have an enormous effect on the climatology of Sandpoint.

http://www.cpgeosystems.com/105moll.jpg

100 million years in the past the earth looked much different than it does today.  The plates were close together and there were large bodies of water in the middle of North America.  Luckily for the past 500 million years there have been tons of ice core dating for detecting the carbon dioxide levels of earth.  Most models show that the Polar Regions were up to 72 degrees F warmer; “100 million years ago, the Earth's temperature was 20° - 40° Celsius warmer (or 36 ° - 72 ° F) in the polar regions, although only a few degrees warmer around the equator. Evidence suggests that during warm Cretaceous periods, levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide was higher” (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/ctl/cliscibeyond.html).  The sea levels will be the largest meso climate control for Sandpoint. 

Sandpoint was roughly located at 45 N, 105 W.  Typically this would mean that it would be affected by the polar jet streams and possibly Maritime Polar and Continental Polar.  However, since the Polar Regions were much warmer it probably meant that Sandpoint stayed at a relatively stable climate much like Portland Oregon is today.  Sandpoint would be much closer to the Pacific Ocean and would not have the large mountain range.  With no mountain range causing a rain-shadow affect on Sandpoint it caused its Kogger-Geiger classification Csb: Warm temperatures-climate, summers dry and warm summer.  I predict that it also much of the precipitation in the winter, because of the polar jets.  Probably more precipitation then present day Portland, because with warmer temperature there is an increase of precipitation.

Month	Average Temperature (F)	Precipitation (in.)
Jan	51	9
Feb	55	8
Mar	63	5
Apr	67	4
May	72	3
Jun	75	1
Jul	80	1
Aug	81	2
Sep	74	3
Oct	66	5
Nov	63	8
Dec	53	10

Present day Sandpoint’s climate has cooled a lot since 100 million years ago.  There is also a lot less precipitation due to the Big Horn Mountain Range.  For more information about present day climate in Sandpoint refer to Blog 3.

Month	Average Temperature (F)	Precipitation (in.)
Jan	26	3.94
Feb	30	3.47
Mar	37	2.85
Apr	45	2.25
May	53	2.27
Jun	59	2.46
Jul	64	1.63
Aug	64	1.43
Sep	56	1.6
Oct	45	2.3
Nov	34	4.75
Dec	27	4.75

100 million year into the future earth will keep changing as it has done since the beginning of time.  Plate tectonics will once again move and will be a large impact on the climate of Sandpoint.  There are several different images and ideas for what earth will look like.  I choose the YouTube video for referring to 100 million years in the futures plate tectonic movement:

As you can see most of the continents move northwest or northeast.  This opens up the Atlantic Ocean and causes the Pacific Ocean to narrow.  The continental drift will open more ocean space, but we cannot see increasing sea level.  This to me indicates that the temperatures will be relatively the same as current day however, not in the same regions.  For instance, Sandpoint moves to roughly 60 N, 135 W now being in the polar region.  The temperatures will be high latitude with long summer daylight hours and long winter nights.  This will cause drastic seasonal variations in temperatures.  As the Greeks theorist would say it is in the “frigid zone”.   The temperatures would be similar to that of Whitehorse, Yukon. Temperatures will rarely reach into double digits above zero.  It will also have low amounts of precipitation and be very cold!

Month	Average Temperature (F)	Precipitation (in.)
Jan	-10	0.5
Feb	-5	0.39
Mar	-2	0.35
Apr	3	0.23
May	5	0.5
Jun	9	1.18
Jul	13	1.4
Aug	15	2
Sep	10	1.33
Oct	0	0.9
Nov	-2	0.7
Dec	-10	0.7



The following are the three climographs based on 100 million years ago and 100 million years in the future (I thought of) and current climate:

Reflection Sandpoint vs Palm Desert

Sandpoint Idaho and Palm Desert may experience contrasting weather patterns throughout the year, but they still have similar climatology.

The biggest similarity would be on the meso-scale climate control with their mountain ranges.  Palm Desert has the San Jacinto Mountains to the west as Sandpoint has the Big Horn Mountain range to their west.  The mountain ranges specifically to the west cause tremendous effects on the climate to the areas of the east of them.  The biggest is the high winds that come off the mountains and the little precipitation that is left for that region. 

San Jacinto Mountains, Palm Desert, CA
http://www.northcountycruisers.com/palmdeserttrip.html

Another meso-scale that plays a role on both locations is the water that is close to them.  For Palm Desert, the Salton Sea is located just southeast. For Sandpoint, they have Lake Pend Oreille, which is the largest lake in Idaho.  The water does not play that large of a role for these areas, but it is a factor.  The lakes help control some of the temperature changes throughout the night and day (latent heat flux).

  

Pend Oreille Lake, Sandpoint, ID
http://www.idahobyways.gov/byways/panhandle-rivers.aspx

Salton Sea, Palm Desert, CA
http://sky.colabour.com/pages/p5.html

Based on the Koppen-Geiger Climate Classification Palm Desert is classified as BWh and Sandpoint is classified as Bsk.  Both locations general climate is B indicating it is an arid climate.  Precipitation wise they are also similar Palm Desert is classified as a desert where Sandpoint is a steep (not quite a desert, but very similar just up to 50 cm more of precipitation).  However since they are located at different latitudes they experience different temperatures Palm Desert is in a hot arid region where Sandpoint is in a cool arid region.  Even though comparably speaking Sandpoint and Palm Desert experiences huge temperature scales they are very similar climatically when talking about precipitation and general climate.

Source: Excel, http://sandpointidahoweather.blogspot.com/2011/10/blog-post.html, and http://palmdesertwx.tumblr.com/  



Blog III

The Koppen-Geiger Climate Classification map classifies Sandpoint, Idaho’s climate as a BSk climate. BSk indicated that Sandpoint’s main climate is Arid, it has a steep precipitation, and cold arid temperature. There greatest meso-scale climate control for Sandpoint is that it is located in a continental region.  Because this area is surrounded by land it is not humid and has mostly continental air masses that affect its climate. 

http://koeppen-geiger.vu-wien.ac.at/present.htm

As for the micro-scale climate of Sandpoint it is much like Denver, Colorado. Sandpoint is orographically situated by a mountain range. They also have a very large mountain range to the west that causes  a rain shadow effect on Sandpoint. This rain shadow effect causes Sandpoint to have decreased precipitation amounts and to be effected by strong winds. If looking at the Koppen-Geiger Climate Classification Sandpoint is one of the few areas in the northwest region to be classified as BSk most of that region is subjected to Dfb (snow climate, fully humid precipitation, and warm summers) and Dfc (snow climate, fully humid, and cool summers).  Topography really has a large part to do with Standpoint's climatology.

Sandpoint maybe affected at most part with the Big Horn Mountain range and it’s topography, however, its location also has a large part to do with its climatology.  For instance another micro-scale climate control is secondary atmospheric circulation patterns and for Sandpoint the polar fronts can cause massive blizzards for Sandpoint.  This last year Sandpoint experienced a blizzard February 24, 2011 where it snowed for 24 hours and had wind gust up to 46 mph.

http://m.spokesman.com/galleries/2011/feb/23/winter-weather-feb-23/

http://localism.com/id/sandpoint/schweitzer?page=5

http://m.spokesman.com/galleries/2011/feb/23/winter-weather-feb-23/

The best weather data for Sandpoint only goes back to 2003 so I looked at October 2003 and October 2011 to compare the change in Climatology.  There was little change overall a few increases in temperatures from 2003 to 2011, but the greatest temperature increase was the mean temperature increased by 11 degrees from 2003 to 2011.

Data from October 2003:

   

http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/KSZT/2003/10/30/MonthlyHistory.html?req_city=NA&req_state=NA&req_statename=NA

Data from October 2011:

http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/KSZT/2011/10/30/MonthlyHistory.html?req_city=NA&req_state=NA&req_statename=NA