Climate Change Behind Sharp Drop in Snowpack Since 1980s

Study finds steepest drops in areas of the Northern Hemisphere reliant on snow for water.

1/10/2024

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As in many recent winters, the lack of snowfall in December seemed to preview our global warming future, with peaks from Oregon to New Hampshire more brown than white and the American Southwest facing a severe snow drought.

On the other hand, January has brought some heavy snow to New England, and record blizzards in early 2023 buried California mountain communities, replenished parched reservoirs, and dropped 11 feet of snow on northern Arizona, defying our conceptions of life on a warming planet.

Similarly, scientific data from ground observations, satellites, and climate models do not agree on whether global warming is consistently chipping away at the snowpacks that accumulate in high-elevation mountains and provide water when they melt in spring, complicating efforts to manage the water scarcity that would result for many population centers.

Now, a new Dartmouth study cuts through the uncertainty in these observations and provides evidence that seasonal snowpacks throughout most of the Northern Hemisphere have indeed shrunk significantly over the past 40 years due to human-driven climate change. The sharpest global warming-related reductions in snowpack—between 10% to 20% per decade—are in the Southwestern and Northeastern United States, as well as in Central and Eastern Europe.



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