Sentences with phrase «snowpack melting»

«A lot of the West relies on snowpack melting in the spring for its water,» she said.

More melting news Watch Greenland Melting - on the Icecam Sierra Snowpack Melting Likely to Be Faster than Previously Expected 50/50 Bet North Pole Melts Away This Summer

So far, though, only minor flooding has resulted from snowpack melting in recent days.

«With snowpack melting earlier in the year, that has a cascading effect on when the growing season of montane environments begins,» Woodburn said.

Additionally, as the state's snowpack melts earlier because of warming, Cayan said, there is more runoff from higher elevation, which increases flooding.

The snowpack melted about 50 days early because dust put massive stress on high mountain vegetation and lowland farms and fields.

Enough of that warm rain and the snowpack melts, quite suddenly, and we get floods, then drought in summer.

A large chunk of humanity is dependent on glacier melt (also snowpack melt — e.g., I think in the U.S. west).

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.

But peak water flow is typically a seasonal event driven by snowpack melt, so the price - reducing effect of hydropower normally lasts only a few months each year, typically in the spring and early summer.

Not exact matches

Indeed, thanks to a snowy winter and cool spring, the snowpack covering the entire Pacific Northwest — the vast majority of which is over 1,000 metres elevation and still snowbound — is creating a glut of zero - emission energy as that huge annual reservoir melts and powers hydroelectric turbines.

They rely on melting mountain snowpack for their water in the parched summer months.

When the temperature beneath a layer of snow crystals is significantly higher than the temperature above, ice from crystals lower in the snowpack sublimes — that is, vaporizes directly without melting — and then refreezes onto overlying crystals.

They also used a physically based computer model of the hydrologic cycle, which takes daily weather observations and computes the snow accumulation, melting, and runoff to estimate the total snowpack in the western U.S.

When the researchers took density of snow into account, they found that ice shelves lost about five times more ice by submarine melting than they gained from new surface snowpack.

This melting snow comes from snowpack, the high elevation reservoir of snow which melts in the spring and summer.

But dust from the Sahara also blows up onto the snowpack in the Alps, causing early melting.

And dust begets more dust: It reduces the reflectance of the winter snowpack and increases the absorption of sunlight, causing snow to melt sooner.

Surprisingly, cloudy, gray and humid winter days can actually cause the snowpack to warm faster, increasing the likelihood of melt during winter months when the snowpack should be growing, the authors report.

Researchers have evaluated different mechanisms that could account for declining snowpack in a warming world: earlier onset of snowmelt, a change in melt rates and shifts from snow to rain under certain conditions.

«As we reach a tipping point and see our customary water storage system, the snowpack, melting more and earlier in the winter, systems that rely on snowmelt will need to be reevaluated and modified.»

Like all giant sequoias, these five have a short growing season and depend on melting snowpack from the Sierra Nevada mountains for many months of the year.

The lakes receive a large amount of runoff in the spring from the melting snowpack.

It is also likely to affect the ability to control floods, as snowpack that melts earlier in the year increases downhill runoff.

Changes come even with lower warming What was most surprising, Diffenbaugh said, is that the accelerated melting of the snowpack would occur even if the world were able to limit warming to the target of a 2 - degree - Celsius increase agreed upon in international climate negotiations in Copenhagen, Denmark.

«The usual climate here is that we come out of winter with a pretty good snowpack, and then that slowly melts over spring into summer,» State Climatologist Nick Bond said.

stories,» says Musselman, who used historical snowpack measurements and computer models to predict how the melting rate will change by the end of the century (Nature Climate Change, DOI: 10.1038 / NCLIMATE3225).

Then, add to that reality the fact that nearly 400 million people rely, to some degree, on Himalayan snowpack and glacier melt to feed the Ganges and Brahmaputra Rivers which provide irrigation and drinking water for the heavily populated lands surrounding northern India.

That ridge has blocked water - laden winter storms, sending them spiraling northward instead of into the Golden State, reducing snowpacks that Californians use as they melt to satiate their thirsts, lawns and industrial operations.

It also serves as a long - term measurement, as in a warming world, the spring snowpack will melt more quickly as summer nears.

Spring and summer temperatures have been rising across the West, and mountain snowpack has been melting earlier.

One of the biggest drivers in this trend is disappearing spring snowpack, which is tied to a mix of rising temperatures and more rain melting it earlier than usual.

Peter Gleick, a climate expert at the Pacific Institute, warned that seven days of sustained warmth could melt as much as 30 percent of California's snowpack.

Water managers are warning that soaring temperatures are also causing the region's already stressed snowpack to melt faster.

Snowpacks continue to melt causing thousands to be displaced, dozens of local states of emergency

Could be they leave space behind dams for possible flooding — for instance if your watershed is a snowpack, it'll either melt slowly if the weather stays cold, or melt suddenly in warm spring rains and send a lot of water downstream.

The observed melting is greatest at lower elevations, a trend matched in snowpack declines across the Western U.S.

You don't need to go to Switzerland to see that glaciers and snowpacks are melting and that drinking water is in peril.

Fires in the West, droughts in the Southwest, melting snowpack in the Northwest, flooding and heavy rainfall in the Northeast, the much stronger coastal storms and hurricanes that we've seen in the Gulf: we've gotten to the point where we can all point to something that's happening and say: «This is what climate change is doing to our region.»

Experts point to high temperatures, drying rivers, and melting snowpack as some of the factors behind the dry spells.

Phenomena such as a diminished regional snowpack, which robbed the environment of moisture that would ordinarily have cooled the air and quenched plants and animals as it melted amid the shortage of rain.

But there are risks that the snowpack could melt faster than the reservoirs can handle the runoff.

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.

The melt rate until mean snowpack disappearance on July 1 is 4.4 cm / day (1.6 inches per day)(Figure 1 and 2).

By early July snowpack beyond the glacier margins is limited, Snotel sites have lost their snowcover, and yet streamflow is still heavily dependent on snow and ice melt from glaciers (Fountain and Tangborn, 1985; Pelto, 1996).

A rise in precipitation and a fall in snowpack can only be accounted for by greater melting or rainfall during the winter.

No matter the probability or intensity of USGS ARkStorm it would have to drop precipitation (not snowpack which melts slower) where the watersheds are for the 10 dams in Northern California shown on the map at the following link (the 2 dams in Southern California only receive water from the Northern Cal dams and should not be considered): Link

The Lyman Glacier monitored by the North Cascade Glacier Climate Project is three kilometers away and at 6400 feet the snowpack remains until early August the July - August melt rate is 5.6 cm / day.

Well, it nearly * tripled * from mid February to late March, yet never reached above about 65 % of average at any point this season (and recent record warmth has already triggered melting; the snowpack is already back down to 55 % of average for the date).

A declining ratio indicates that greater percentages of precipitation occur as rain instead of snow and / or that melt of winter snowpack is increasing.