Sentences with phrase «snowpack year»

Species that live downslope will also be hurt by changes on mountaintops; the Sierra Nevada mountain yellow - legged frog, for example, depends on runoff from snowpack year - round to support its three - to four - year life stage as a tadpole, and earlier spring snowmelt runoff caused by global warming may leave this hardy, once - abundant creature high and dry in the summertime.

It compared the future to the lowest snowpack year seen over that recent 30 - year span.

Conversely, particularly high - snowpack years may effectively compensate for warming temperatures by offsetting rapid snowmelt.

A succession of high - snowpack years or operational decisions to transfer water storage from Lake Powell to Lake Mead could also result in large releases of clear water that typically cause sandbar erosion; indeed, such releases occurred from 1996 to 2000 [Mueller et al., 2014] and in 2011.

Not exact matches

But existing models of water flows don't provide the full range of possible outcomes: «A 50 - year rain can produce a 100 - year flood if it falls on a watershed that's already soaked or on snowpack or if it coincides with a storm surge.»

«The 2015 snowpack season was an extreme year,» Mote said.

«The snowpack we had this year was below average — around 70 percent of average towards the end of February, followed by one of the driest, warmest Marches on record,» said Tim Mathews, a fire meteorologist with the Rocky Mountain Coordination Center.

A total of 454 sites in the western United States (or 81 percent of the total sites) recorded record - low snowpack levels that year;

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

The Sierra Nevada normally hits maximum snowpack for the year in early April, but by April 1, alpine meadows usually buried in 5 feet of snow were bare.

While we have long range climate predictions that show a decline of snowpack by the end of the century and short - range rain and snow forecasts, until now there has been little information on what to expect in the next two months to two years.

Snowpack in the northern Rocky Mountains has shrunk at an unusually rapid pace during the past 30 years, according to a new study.

But for the past 30 years or so, snowpack in both regions has shrunk.

Although the new study describes ongoing decline in snowpack throughout the Rockies, this year has bucked that long - term trend.

The researchers then went to an intermediate elevation and simulated climate change by reducing the snowpack, which made the plants flower seven days early, similar in magnitude to flowering time shifts over 20 to 30 years of climate change.

Sampling 7,000 - year - old ice cores as well as snowpack dating from 1969 through the mid-1990s, Barbante's team found that concentrations of the metals had risen almost sevenfold since the mid-1970s, when catalytic converters first came into widespread use.

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.

Levels of snowpack are 12 percent of average for this time of year, down from 20 percent on Jan. 3 (E&EN ews PM, Jan. 3).

This year, heavy snowpack and spring precipitation have brought the region some relief by partially refilling the reservoirs.

«While reduced snowpack has been predicted for some time, they find that the shift toward low snow years and increasing water stress in the Northern Hemisphere is «imminent,»» said Andrew Fahlund, executive director of the Water in the West program at Stanford.

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

Current infrastructure was built for a snowpack and water runoff system that the study predicts won't exist in the years to come, he said.

The study examined what is likely to be seen in terms of precipitation, snowpack accumulation and water runoff over the next century, versus the same data for the years from 1976 and 2005.

Vast stands of whitebark pine help to maintain the mountain snowpacks that provide water to more than 30 million people in 16 U.S. states each year.

The snow readings are important during this time of the year, as several locations depend on the meltwater from that snowpack for drinking water and irrigation through the drier and hotter summer months.

While the western snowpack levels have improved over last year's dismally low levels overall, there are still places below average in Colorado, Montana, and New Mexico.

The average snowpack in the Cascades has declined 50 percent since 1950 and will be cut in half again in 30 years if we don't start addressing the problems of climate change now.

Snowpack is at 6 percent of normal for this time of year with the southern and central Sierra Nevada mountains registering a goose egg in terms of snow on the ground.

Large interannual variability in snowpack can be nested within Pacific Decadal Oscillation (and Pacific North American) driven patterns (e.g., see the high snow years of 1996 and 1997 that occurred during a 25 - year period of below average snowpack).

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

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

The snow readings are important during this time of the year, as several locations depend on the meltwater from that snowpack for drinking

While this year's snowpack is fairly healthy, in a world warming from increasing greenhouse gases, the early spring snowpack has been declining over the long run.

A new study published in npj Climate and Atmospheric Science (a Nature publication) shows that snowpack levels across the western U.S. have declined over the last 100 years.

This varies from year to year, and the onset of the fire season can be delayed by abundant mountain snowpack or a cool and wet start to summer.

For Immediate Release: October 21st, 2016 Northwest off to a snowy start for the upcoming ski season According to the Open Snow website «Multiple storms hit the west coast and Pacific Northwest during the first half of October, which has resulted in a healthy snowpack for this time of the year».

According to the Open Snow website «Multiple storms hit the west coast and Pacific Northwest during the first half of October, which has resulted in a healthy snowpack for this time of the year».

But that snowpack has been light the past couple of years, and it's likely to get worse.

Long - time Colorado residents know that St. Mary's glacier is a fragment of its former, frozen self, and that the snowpacks on even our 14ers are diminishing more quickly and more dramtically each year.

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 lack of snowpack in 2014 is all about ENSO and resulting jet stream patterns, something well known for years.»

In an average year California get 194 maf (million acre feet) of rainfall / snowpack and only about 82 maf is captured within the labyrinth of water systems: of which 8.8 maf goes to cities, 34.3 maf to agriculture and 39.4 maf to the environment.

In just two years, Nevada's snowpack has gone from near record low in 2015 to a record high in 2017, reaching 17 ′ at Mt. Rose and outstripping measurement tools (Spillman 2017).

The snowpack density was noted for its consistency, ranging from 0.54 - 0.56 in July, from year to year and place to place (LaChapelle, 1954; Miller and Pelto, 1999).

«The strength of the relationship between forest greenness and snowpack from the previous year was quite surprising to us,» Molotch said.

According to official records, California's snowpack is the lowest on record for this time of year at around a mere 20 % of the average since records began.

A new University of Colorado Boulder - led study that ties forest «greenness» in the western United States to fluctuating year - to - year snowpack indicates mid-elevation mountain ecosystems are most sensitive to rising temperatures and changes in precipitation and snowmelt.

The implications are important, since climate studies indicate the snowpack in mid-elevation forests in the Western United States and other similar forests around the world has been decreasing in the past 50 years because of regional warming.

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?

Given that late spring / early summer NH snowpack has been showing a decline for many years, we can hardly get a cooling from that.