SOURCE: AAAS
DATE: March 2, 2018
SNIP: CORVALLIS, Ore. – A new study of long-term snow monitoring sites in the western United States found declines in snowpack at more than 90 percent of those sites – and one-third of the declines were deemed significant.
Since 1915, the average snowpack in western states has declined by between 15 and 30 percent, the researchers say, and the amount of water lost from that snowpack reduction is comparable in volume to Lake Mead, the West’s largest manmade reservoir. The loss of water storage can have an impact on municipal, industrial and agricultural usage, as well as fish and other animals.
“It is a bigger decline than we had expected,” said Philip Mote, director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute at Oregon State University and lead author on the study. “In many lower-elevation sites, what used to fall as snow is now rain. Upper elevations have not been affected nearly as much, but most states don’t have that much area at 7,000-plus feet.
[S]nowpack levels in most of the western U.S. for 2017-18 thus far are lower than average – a function of continued warming temperatures and the presence of a La Niña event, which typically results in warmer and drier conditions in most southwestern states.