Dramatic declines in snowpack in the western US

Mountain snowpack stores huge amounts of water in the western US, supplying much of the water used to grow crops. A team of researchers from Oregon State University and UCLA found that spring snowpack declined almost everywhere, especially in the coastal states and other locations with mild winter climate. (Skiers will be relieved that declines were smaller in winter.) Not surprisingly, the declines are mostly related to warming climate. Using a physically-based model of the hydrologic cycle, which takes daily weather as inputs and computes snow accumulation and melt, runoff, etc., the researchers computed the total snowpack in the western US. Total snowpack declined 15–30%, and the amount of that lost water is comparable in volume to the West’s largest man-made reservoir, Lake Mead. Many water managers are already planning for a future with less snow, but this research emphasizes that the future is here.