Study Of 36 Yrs Of Snow Records Shows Declines Of Up To 41% In Snowpack, 1-Month Loss In Season
The mountains of the High Sierra and the Rockies are, in effect, shrinking, according to a new analysis of the nation’s snowpack over the past 36 years. These places are experiencing a shorter winter with less snow, just like regions closer to sea level.
That’s not good news for ski resorts and snowmobilers, as well as rural homeowners worried about wildfires that erupt in the summer and fall, experts say. In fact, it’s not so good for anyone living in Los Angeles, Phoenix or Denver, either. High mountain snowpack supplies drinking water throughout vast areas of Northern California and the Mountain West.
Some parts of the western United States have seen a 41 percent decline in the annual mass of snow since 1982. The affected region is about the size of South Carolina, according to a research team led by Xubin Zeng, professor of hydrology and atmospheric sciences at the University of Arizona. “For the future, that percentage will keep increasing,” says Zeng, who presented his findings at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington.
At the same time, the length of the snow season shrank by 34 days for the snowiest regions. Zeng used data collected by a network of backyard weather collectors who report snowfall every day to the National Weather Service across the United States, as well as an automated system of recording devices in the high mountains. These machines use 10-foot-wide rubber bladders filled with an anti-freeze solution that weigh how much snow lies on top of them. Zeng and his colleagues then divided up the continental US into 2.5-mile squares to get a finer-resolution picture of how much snow was on the ground and for how long. Previous snowpack estimates used much larger 40-mile squares. A paper based on the new data is being published today in the Journal of Geophysical Letters.
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https://www.wired.com/story/as-snow-disappears-the-sierras-and-rockies-are-shrinking/
