Summit County Citizens Voice

Studies suggest a significant long-term decline in western snowpacks

Western snowpack has been dwindling for a century, with a few blips driven by cyclical weather variations like La Niña cycles and decadal oscillations.

By Summit Voice

SUMMIT COUNTY — This winter’s snowy La Niña episode may only be a small blip of relief in a century-long trend of declining snowpack across the West, according to a U.S. Geological Survey study released last month.

Besides measuring overall snowpack losses, the researchers compared the northern and southern Rockies, finding that long-term historic patterns have been upended in the past few decades. The results suggest that snowpack declines in the Rocky Mountains during the last 30 years are unusual compared to the past few centuries.

With a few exceptions (the mid-14th and early 15th centuries), the snowpack reconstructions show that the northern Rocky Mountains experience large snowpacks when the southern Rockies experience meager ones, and vice versa. Since the 1980s, however, there were simultaneous declines along the entire length of the Rocky Mountains, and unusually severe declines in the north.

Prior studies by the USGS and other institutions attribute the decline to unusual springtime warming, more precipitation falling now as rain rather than snow and earlier snowmelt.

More frequent dust storms originating in the desert Southwest are probably another factor, as the dust darkens snow in the southern Rockies, leading to much more rapid melting of the snowpack. If the climate model predictions of more frequent and severe Southwestern drought are accurate, those dust storms will become even more frequent. That will intensify the climate feedback loop, because when the snow melts sooner, the darker-colored ground absorbs more heat.

The USGS scientists partnered with researchers at the Universities of Arizona, Washington, Wyoming, and Western Ontario to look at 66 tree-ring chronologies covering 500 to more than 1,000 years. The network of sites was chosen strategically to characterize the range of natural snowpack variability over the long term, and from north to south in the Rocky Mountains.

“Over most of the 20th century, and especially since the 1980s, the northern Rockies have borne the brunt of the snowpack losses,” said USGS scientist Gregory Pederson, the lead author of the study. “Most of the land and snow in the northern Rockies sits at lower and warmer elevations than the southern Rockies, making the snowpack more sensitive to seemingly small increases in temperature. Also, winter storm tracks were displaced to the south in the early 20th century and post-1980s. Forest fires were larger, more frequent and harder to fight, while Glacier National Park lost 125 of its 150 glaciers.”

“The difference in snowpack along the north and south changed in the 1980s, as the unprecedented warming in the springtime began to overwhelm the precipitation effect, causing snowpack to decline simultaneously in the north and south,” said USGS scientist and co-author Julio Betancourt. “Throughout the West, springtime tends to be warmer during El Niño than La Niña years, but the warming prior to the 1980s was usually not enough to offset the strong influence of precipitation on snowpack.”

The La Niña episode this year is an example with lots of snow in the north while severe drought afflicts the south. In the West, the average position of the winter storm tracks tend to fluctuate north and south around a latitudinal line connecting Denver, Salt Lake City and Sacramento. In El Niño years, winter storms track south of that line, while in La Niña years, they track to the north.

This study supports research by others estimating that between 30-60 percent of the declines in the late 20th century are likely due to greenhouse gas emissions. The remaining part of the trend can be attributed to natural decadal variability in the ocean and atmosphere, which is making springtime temperatures that much warmer.

“What we have seen in the last few decades may signal a fundamental shift from precipitation to temperature as the dominant influence on western snowpack.” Pederson said.

The warming and snowpack decline are projected to worsen through the 21st century, foreshadowing a strain on water supplies. Runoff from winter snowpack – layers of snow that accumulate at high altitude – accounts for 60 to 80 percent of the annual water supply for more than 70 million people living in the western United States.

“This scientific work is critical to understanding how climate change is affecting western water supplies,” Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said. “It helps land managers adapt to changing conditions on the ground, assists water managers with planning for the future, and gives all of us a better understanding of the real impacts that carbon pollution is having on our resources and our way of life.”

The study, The unusual nature of recent snowpack declines in the North American Cordillera, is online at Science magazine.

Filed under: climate and weather, Colorado, global warming, La Niña, Snow and weather Tagged: | Environment, global warming, Summit County News, tree-ring studies, Western snowpack declining