Tam Moore — East Oregonian Publishing Group Climatologist George Taylor, head of the Oregon Climate Center based in Corvallis, takes a hands-off view of climate change, saying it’s debatable how much of recent temperature shifts can be attributed to human activity.
Tam Moore — East Oregonian Publishing Group Snowfall data from Oregon’s Siskiyou Mountains is highlighted by Climatologist George Taylor, left, as he sets up a data transfer assignment for an Oregon State University student.
Oregon's climate guru shrugs off criticism, focuses on science
By TAM MOORE East Oregonian Publishing Group
CORVALLIS - Heavy rain beat down on Strand Agricultural Hall on the Oregon State University campus as students emerged from the south entrance heading for their 3 o'clock classes.
Up in room 326, a student working for Oregon Climate Service got a quick lesson in how to harvest data from Althouse No. 2, a snow survey station in Southern Oregon's Siskiyou Mountains. Rain streaked by the windows, occasional elm leaves fluttered down.
George Taylor, the 59-year old Oregon state climatologist, lined out available Althouse information for the student, then turned to his umpteenth interview with a reporter since he came to Corvallis looking for a job in 1989.
Taylor is a popular man on the speaking circuit, at schools, service clubs and other venues. He conducts perhaps 50 to 60 talks a year, with his trusty PowerPoint spelling out seasonal forecasts, and his take on long-term climate trends in Oregon and elsewhere. Events such as the November storm that in 24 hours dumped 14.3 inches of rain on Lees Camp, east of Tillamook, stick in Taylor's mind.
The Lees Camp reading was unofficial, but it beat, by 2.5 inches, the Oregon record for 24-hour precipitation. In a state full of weather extremes, Taylor remembers the records. However, he spends most of his time looking at trends that extend over very long periods. No rolling 30-year averages like the National Weather Service.
His computers have Oregon weather data starting in 1895 - that's even before Strand Agricultural Hall was built on the Corvallis campus.
Learning from the past
Some records go farther back. You can even find the mean monthly temperature for part of 1890 in Jordan Valley, a southeastern Oregon town almost in Idaho. He likes to reference things in terms of the "Little Ice Age" that ended in 1850, and floods and the periods of prolonged drought afterward that stand out in Oregon history.
Taylor, for example, was the climatologist who a few years ago highlighted the return to more normal precipitation patterns in the Pacific Northwest after the drought of the 1990s and early 2000s.
He's one of the climate gurus who looked north of equatorial sea surface temperatures to discover the North Pacific's Pacific Decadal Oscillation of surface temperature. It seems to indicate big weather trends and perhaps is connected to flows of ocean currents that send salmon one year toward Alaska, another toward the coasts of Washington, Oregon and Northern California.
Two Oregon State University Press books, "The Climate of Oregon" and "The Oregon Weather Book," are Taylor productions used as reference. Working with a $100,000 appropriation from the state general fund since 1991, plus up to a half-million dollars of grant money depending on projects in progress, Taylor presides over a staff of eight and up to four student employees.
Kelly Redmond, climatologist for the Western Regional Climate Center in Reno, Nev., and Taylor's predecessor as Oregon climatologist, said Taylor is highly regarded among those in the profession, "with the exception of his position on climate change."
Taylor holds the position that it's difficult to tease out human-caused impact on rising temperature from impacts of the natural elements of climate.
Redmond said if you understand climatologists, you know that many share Taylor's views because of the nature of the job. It deals with stacks of weather observation data describing complex climate systems.
"It is very hard to appreciate how hard it is, how complicated," said Redmond.
Dangerous?
Taylor's pronouncements on climate change are so controversial that environmental journalist Paul Koberstein, writing in an August 2005, Willamette Week report, called Taylor "one of the most dangerous men in Oregon."
"It is one of the big unanswered questions in climate science, in my opinion," Taylor said a year later. "There are people that say the science is settled on this issue, and this issue really is how much of the change we see is caused by human activity. ... I don't believe that we are seeing unprecedented conditions in Oregon and if I thought we were, I would probably be a lot more alarmed than I am."
That anti-Taylor article came the same year Oregon's Legislature named the pear the state fruit. An editorial cartoonist pictured a pear in one panel, Taylor in another, and labeled him "Oregon's new state nut" uttering "human-caused global warming does not exist."
As he printed out a copy of the cartoon from his digital archives, Taylor said, "And I've never said that in my life."
What Taylor does say is that he's not an atmospheric scientist. That's the professional specialty that originates most of the computer modeling of relationships between human-caused greenhouse gas emissions and recent temperature increases. In the past century, average temperatures on Earth increased about 1 degree Centigrade. The various models say by 2100, the Earth will warm another 1 to 6 degrees C.
Not his original path
Taylor began his undergraduate work in mathematics, then added a second major in geography and went to work for a firm doing air quality environmental impact assessments.
"I realized that this field (of climatology) was a really interesting combination of math and geography, my two subjects of interest," he said.
After working for a consultant in air modeling, Taylor went off to the University of Utah to earn a master's degree in meteorology "to keep the job" he had in Santa Barbara. Advanced degree in hand, he returned to consulting in California, then decided to move to Oregon.
It was 1989, the year Redmond left the Oregon climatologist job for the Western Regional Climate Center in Nevada.
"I had plenty of computer background and I knew a bit about meteorology, but the fact that I had operated my own business really helped because in directing an office like this (it) is pretty much like running your own business," said Taylor.
High-tech information sources
Taylor is proud of the extensive digital library amassed on the state-run computers, and of the near two million hits a year the Oregon Climate Center Web page receives. He has two big projects in process. One is a map of evapotranspiration - plant and tree water use - that could help Oregon's farmers plan which permanent crops to establish. Another is mapping the best locations in Oregon for solar radiation and wind, among a suite of climate factors. It promises to be a reference for businesses and landowners who want to get into alternate energy generation.
"Having access to information like this readily available is clearly important to a lot of people," said Taylor. As he spoke, most of his staff had left the office, some carrying umbrellas. Outside, rain water and wet leaves shared the steps of Strand Agricultural Hall as they have beneath the feet of generations of OSU students. For an outfit that keeps the historic weather records, Strand is a fitting place for Oregon Climate Service. The building complex is named for A.L. Strand, appointed president of what was then Oregon State College in 1942. He served until 1961. The north wing of the building, the original Agriculture Hall of Oregon Agricultural College, was built in 1909. The part where Taylor's computers sit was completed in 1913.
A lot of rain has passed by the windows since then.
"Most of my stuff is putting current weather and climate into historical perspective," he said.
Tam Moore is a Capital Press staff writer based in Medford.
