Sentences with phrase «less snowpack»

John Day, Oregon, is concerned about diminishing water resources for its community from less snowpack.

Snowpack is melting earlier as winter and spring temperatures rise, and in most states an increasing percentage of winter precipitation is falling as rain, meaning there is often less snowpack to begin with.

Not exact matches

The reasons for this are many: less cold water from Sierra snowpack, less cold freshwater being released from the Delta due to farming needs and other water policies, warm waters caused by El Nino flowing into the Bay, and other variables.

Also an author on the fourth IPCC report, he had led a 2005 study on western snowpack levels that had also documented declines that were less dramatic than those in this new study.

The year 2015 was the warmest on record for Oregon, resulting in low snowpacks and less water in many lakes and rivers.

«If we have a warmer spring, we anticipate that the river flows will be less relative to the amount of snowpack.»

Singer suggested a regional decline in snowpacks and less groundwater recharge at the mountain fronts has negatively affected water resources.

Because of a drought in California, the snowpack in the Rocky Mountains in 2015 (right) was much, much less than one year earlier (left).

Negative: Lower and shorter duration snowpack and shift from snow to rain - dominant precipitation regimes resulting in less water available in summer

Negative: Combined with less available water from reduced and shortened snowpack, drier summers could reduce or shift growing season

That threat is a concern with this year's low snowpack, as less snow leads to a drier landscape, Brettschneider said.

The climatic stress facing the poor countries of West Africa is not fundamentally different from the climatic stress facing the states of the southwest U.S., namely, less water availability for their burgeoning populations, the former through natural and human - induced variations in the WAM (West African Monsoon) and the latter from natural and human - induced variations in the snowpacks in the Sierra Nevada and Rocky mountains.

Most of the West's surface water comes from snowpack, which is declining as more precipitation falls as rain and snowpack melts earlier, leaving less water available for summer when it is needed most.

Snowfall varies across the region, comprising less than 10 % of total precipitation in the south, to more than half in the north, with as much as two inches of water available in the snowpack at the beginning of spring melt in the northern reaches of the river basins.81 When this amount of snowmelt is combined with heavy rainfall, the resulting flooding can be widespread and catastrophic (see «Cedar Rapids: A Tale of Vulnerability and Response»).82 Historical observations indicate declines in the frequency of high magnitude snowfall years over much of the Midwest, 83 but an increase in lake effect snowfall.61 These divergent trends and their inverse relationships with air temperatures make overall projections of regional impacts of the associated snowmelt extremely difficult.

Glaciers and snowpacks in the Himalayas are less extensive.

How do you answer an 8 - year - old who asks that question, when Oregon's snowpack will be less than 50 % of what it is now within 4 decades if carbon emissions aren't cut quickly and substantially?

The rather striking graphic above demonstrates just how strong this elevational snowpack gradient has been in 2017 — with near - record snow water equivalent comparable to 1983 at the highest elevations and dramatically less accumulation further down the slopes.

The document mentions the flow of the Colorado River diminishing, water shortages in the Southwest becoming more acute, and less winter snowpack in the Rockies.

Winters are shorter, fewer cold records are set, more precipitation is falling as rain and less as snow — although whopper snowstorms are even more likely in some places — and snowpacks are shrinking and melting earlier.

Decreased snowpack has brought less water into reservoirs (such as Lake Oroville, pictured, in Northern California), while increased temperatures have led to greater evaporation of surface water.

In particular, groundwater use increases during droughts when there is less water available in lakes, rivers, and mountain snowpack.

The fact background temperatures in 1977 were not as hot very likely had something to do with the far less dire snowpack situation.

This has significant implications for the Pacific Northwest — which stands a good chance of seeing very dry and warm conditions — and for California, which may see quite a lot of water falling from the sky in liquid form but considerably less falling as snow and sticking around to form a substantial middle - elevation snowpack.

This could translate into more rain, but less snow to pad the state's critical snowpack and fill reservoirs later in the year.