Winter without snow is coming, scientists
Parts of the Mountain West could be nearly snowless for years at a time in just a few decades.
Aspen Colorado's Downtown City street
Sarah Sax
Published
Jan 03, 2022
This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Across the Central Rockies, it’s been an unseasonably warm, dry year. Denver smashed the record for its latest first measurable winter snow. Colorado ski resorts delayed opening because temperatures were too high to even produce fake snow. And Salt Lake City was entirely snowless through November, for only the second time since 1976.
These snowless scenarios, while still an exception, are set to become much more common as early as 2040, according to a paper published in Nature Reviews Earth and Environment. Drawing from years of snowpack observations, the researchers project that in 35 to 60 years, the Mountain West will be nearly snowless for years at a time if worldwide greenhouse gas emissions are not rapidly reduced. This could impact everything from wildfires to drinking water.
The purpose of the study was twofold. First, researchers wanted to highlight the extent of snow loss in the last several decades, and in those to come. “This is not an issue in a hypothetical future,” said Erica Siirila-Woodburn, a research scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and one of the study’s lead authors. The Mountain West has already lost 20 percent of its snowpack since the 1950s and could lose another 50 percent by the end of the century. Another key objective, said Siirila-Woodburn, was to provide more accurate and usable information to water managers and policymakers who need precise information on how much time they have to prepare for a future with much less snow.
https://grist.org/climate/winter-without-snow-is-coming-scientists-warn/
