Global Snow is Totally Flaking Out

 

“The freezing point of water is nonnegotiable.”                                                                                                                                            John Andrew, deputy director of climate resilience at the California Department of Water Resources

For so much of the world, fresh water is a product of snowmelt. And while commercial interests generate revenues from related sporting activities, notably skiing and snowboarding which are essential revenue-generating activities in many communities/resorts everywhere, water for life itself is paramount. Since water is the lifeblood of human existence, from growing crops to quenching our most basic thirst, any signs of long-term drought or desertification are critical to understand, prepare for and adapt to. But most of all, dwindling water supplies in critical part of the planet, even as there might be flooding elsewhere, become an existential threat to billions of people all over the planet. Ancillary impacts, from wildfires to destruction of habitat, have dramatic consequences for all forms of life. 

Snow has an additional benefit: unlike rain which dissipates quickly – sometimes as a blessing, sometimes as a flood – snow sticks to the land and generally melts over time to resupply rivers, lakes, streams and aquifers in a slower, more sustainable way. Unless the snowmelt is too rapid, the annual snowmelt loses the least amount of runoff wasted water, particularly when compared to heavy rainfall. Less snow, even with more rain, and the amount of retained usable water drops, you should pardon the expression, precipitously. Our reality is witnessing a decrease in our annual snowpack in critical regions all over the earth with obvious consequences. This lack of snow impacts not just the mountains of Asia, Europe and Latin America but is increasingly hard felt in the Western United States. Climate change is wreaking havoc with our snowpack.

Scientists, measuring the damage, are alarmed at the data: “Snowpack in the Sierra and Cascade ranges could decline 45% by 2050, a study led by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory concluded… “It was 55 degrees and sunny Thursday [12/2] at [Lake Tahoe’s] Sugar Bowl Resort [above], where the opening day of the 2021 ski season — already delayed because of warm weather — was still listed as ‘TBD .’… ‘Winter hasn’t quite arrived in Tahoe yet,’ officials wrote in a note about the postponement. ‘The team will be working nightly and ready to flip the switch when Mother Nature cooperates.’…

“But the mountain isn’t the only place feeling the pinch from lack of snow. A new study led by researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that dwindling snowpack across California and the western United States could shrink dramatically more — or in some cases disappear — before the end of the century.

“The study, published recently in the journal Nature Reviews Earth and Environment, paints a worrisome picture of the ‘potentially catastrophic consequences’ of a future with less snow, including the massive implications it holds for California’s water supply, as well as rippling effects on soil, plants, wildlife and even the increased frequency of wildfire.

Should greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated, the study found, winters of low snow, or even no snow, could become a regular occurrence in as little as 35 years… The projections ‘are a little bit shocking,’ said Alan Rhoades, a hydroclimate research scientist and coauthor of the study. ‘As a kid who grew up in the Sierra, it’s kind of hard to fathom a low- to no-snow future.’

“In many ways, the changes have already begun. California this year experienced its hottest summer on record, while Los Angeles and San Diego both just saw their driest Novembers in decades. The entire state is also under a drought emergency… But the paper is the first to synthesize ‘any and every available study’ of future snowpack projections to construct a more confident timeline, said Erica Siirila-Woodburn, a research scientist at the Berkeley Lab and another coauthor of the study.

“Many of the worst effects will be felt in California, she said, where snowpack in the Sierra Nevada and Cascade ranges could decline 45% by 2050, compared with about 25% in other western ranges such as the Rockies and the Wasatch-Uinta.

“Jeffrey Mount, a water scientist at the Public Policy Institute of California who did not work on the study, said that level of snow loss could fundamentally alter life in the Golden State, where mountains have historically served as a critical resource for regional water supplies by capturing, storing and releasing moisture downstream… ‘Believe me, we all read it,’ Mount said of the study, noting that California has ‘built an entire water supply system around the reliable appearance of snowpack in our mountains.’” Haley Smith writing for the December 3rd Los Angeles Times

It's the same in other Western states as it is in parts of Europe. Cold but no precipitation where it matters. We face serious challenges whether many of America’s (the world’s) cities will be able to endure without massive and very expensive deliveries of water or whether prime U.S. farmland will simply dry up and blow away. For politicians remaining at some level of denial, where minimal investments against climate change are as far as they are willing to go, I suggest they might want to pick up older movies, like Waterworld, Max Max or Dune to see what the world might look like before the end of the century.

I’m Peter Dekom, and once we pass a major tipping point – and we very close – the misery and economic harm that will result will make every nasty climate change disaster we have experienced seem trivial by comparison.