There’s a downside to those early, “unseasonably” warm spring days.
photo by Jacob W. Frank, NPS.gov
Transcript of the Audio Podcast:
Most of us cherish warm spring days, but there’s a downside… on this Currentcast.
When it comes to fresh water, high mountain areas act as reservoirs – holding water in the form of winter snow, and then slowly releasing it in spring and summer to the thirsty cities and farms below.
But climate change is disrupting this system. Greg Pederson, a researcher with the U.S. Geological Survey, says rising spring temperatures in the Rocky Mountains are causing the snowpack to melt earlier.
Pederson: “And resulting in, basically, a set-up where later in the summer, when we need that water most, it’s already left the system.”
That leaves cities struggling to prioritize water use.
Pederson: “The traditional ways we’ve done business and managed water are changing and are going to need to change a lot more for the future.”
Support for CurrentCast comes from the Mitsubishi Corporation Foundation for the Americas. Learn more online at CurrentCast.org.
Learn More:
Photo by Ben Hoppe / NPS.gov
- “Snowpack, Ice Cover Shrinking on Rocky Mountains” from Scientific American
- “Warm Springs Linked to Dwindling Snow in Rockies” from LiveScience
- “Regional patterns and proximal causes of the recent snowpack decline in the Rocky Mountains, U.S.” from Geophysical Research Letters
- “The Unusual Nature of Recent Snowpack Declines in the North American Cordillera” from the USGS NOROCK Research Center
- “Variability Common to First Leaf Dates and Snowpack in the Western Conterminous United States” from Earth Interactions
- “Northern Hemisphere Modes of Variability and the Timing of Spring in Western North America” from Journal of Climate
- “Recent Declines in Western U.S. Snowpack in the Context of Twentieth-Century Climate Variability” from Earth Interactions
- “Glacier variability in the conterminous United States during the twentieth century” from Climatic Change
- “Long-term variability in Northern Hemisphere snow cover and associations with warmer winters” from Climatic Change
- Greg Pederson’s Staff Page
