In yet another sign of the impacts of climate change, scientists at the UA Lab of Tree-Ring Research released a report showing that the snowpack in California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range is the lowest it’s been in five centuries; The release from UA News:

Snowpack in California’s Sierra Nevada in 2015 was at the lowest level in the past 500 years, according to a new report led by University of Arizona researchers.

The team’s research is the first to show how the 2015 snowpack compares with snowpack levels for the previous five centuries.

“Our study really points to the extreme character of the 2014-15 winter. This is not just unprecedented over 80 years — it’s unprecedented over 500 years,” said Valerie Trouet, an associate professor of dendrochronology at the UA Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research.

“We should be prepared for this type of snow drought to occur much more frequently because of rising temperatures,” Trouet said. “Anthropogenic warming is making the drought more severe.”

California’s current record-setting drought began in 2012, the researchers note in their report.

On April 1 of this year, California Gov. Jerry Brown declared the first-ever mandatory water restrictions throughout the state while standing on dry ground at 6,800-foot elevation in the Sierra Nevada. The historical average snowpack on that site is more than five feet, according to the California Department of Water Resources.

The lack of snow in 2015 stems from extremely low winter precipitation combined with record high temperatures in California in January, February and March, Trouet said. About 80 percent of California’s precipitation occurs in the winter months, she said. Snowpack level is generally measured on April 1 each year, a time when the snowpack is at its peak.

“Snow is a natural storage system,” Trouet said. “In a summer-dry climate such as California, it’s important that you can store water and access it in the summer when there’s no precipitation.”

In past years, the snows of the Sierra Nevada slowly melted during the warmer months of the year, and the meltwater replenished streams, lakes, groundwater and reservoirs. In a winter with less snow or with winter precipitation coming as rain rather than snow, there is less water to use during California’s dry summers.

First author Soumaya Belmecheri said of the extremely low snowpack in 2015, “This has implications not only for urban water use, but also for wildfires.”

Belmecheri is a postdoctoral research associate at the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research.

To determine snowpack levels for the past 500 years, Trouet and her colleagues used previously published tree-ring data that reflects annual winter precipitation in central California from 1405 to 2005 and annual snowpack measurements since the 1930s. The team also used a previously published reconstruction of winter temperatures in southern and central California that spanned the years 1500 to 1980.

Trouet, Belmecheri and their colleagues’ report, “Multi-century evaluation of Sierra Nevada snowpack,” is scheduled for online publication in Nature Climate Change today.

This article appears in Sep 10-16, 2015.

Getting hassled by The Man Mild-mannered reporter

12 replies on “UA Researchers: Sierra Nevada Snowpack at Lowest Level in 500 Years”

  3. Warmer winters will reduce carbon emmissions from power plants and the snow melt will help drought stricken areas. Our weather is continuing it’s cyclical changes. We are still departing the ice age.

    Nobody tried to make those folks crazy.

  5. Another scientist leaves the “farm.”

    But seven years after signing the letter, Giaever now mocks President Obama for warning that “no challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change”. Giaever called it a “ridiculous statement.”

    Giaever, a former professor at the School of Engineering and School of Science Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, received the 1973 physics Nobel for his work on quantum tunneling. Giaever delivered his remarks at the 65th Nobel Laureate Conference in Lindau, Germany, which drew 65 recipients of the prize.

    http://www.globalclimatescam.com/obama/nobel-prize-winning-scientist-says-obama-is-dead-wrong-on-global-warming/

  6. Rat, do I note a bit of tounge-in-cheek? The west heats with natural gas not electricity. And in case you hadn’t noticed, the polar vortex is making the east coast colder in winter, not warmer. Lastly, snow that doesn’t fall doesn’t melt….so I think you’re maybe having a good laugh with the touchy people here…

  8. No, Rat actually believes himself. He’s president of Gadflies Against Science (GAS), a small segment of society who tout their opinions as if they were fact, even in the face of a global consensus among tens of thousands of scientists that global climate disruption is real, man-made, and extremely dangerous to homo sapiens, not to mention all other species….

  10. So skinnyman you don’t believe in the big bang theory or evolution? Has anything ever survived temperature changes in the past? You sound pretty narrow minded in your atmospheric views.

  12. Thought police?

    Arizona Democratic Rep. Raul Grijalva went after universities employing these researchers, which resulted in one expert being forced to get out of the field of climate research altogether.

    “I am simply not initiating any new research or papers on the topic and I have ring-fenced my slowly diminishing blogging on the subject,” Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. of the University of Colorado wrote on his blog.

    “Congressman Grijalva doesn’t have any evidence of any wrongdoing on my part, either ethical or legal, because there is none,” Pielke wrote. “He simply disagrees with the substance of my testimony – which is based on peer-reviewed research funded by the US taxpayer, and which also happens to be the consensus of the IPCC (despite Holdren’s incorrect views).”

    Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2015/09/17/scientists-ask-obama-to-prosecute-global-warming-skeptics/#ixzz3m6vdkq2V

    So much for honest debate. What are they hiding?

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