CNN - New maps show where snowfall is disappearing
“Understanding the implications of less snowfall on the global water supply is far more complicated than simply saying less snow falling means less available water, Mankin said. It depends greatly on location and a variety of other dynamic snow factors. The important thing to track for water availability is not the amount of snow, but the amount of water in the snow, Mankin said, which can vary greatly. A light, fluffy snow will have low water content, but a dense, heavy snow will have a high water content.”
“Less snow is falling worldwide
Snowfall has declined 2.7% globally since 1973. The decline is particularly notable in the Northern Hemisphere's mid-latitudes, where much of the world’s population resides.”
Sources: European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts and climate scientist Brian Brettschneider. Graphic: Renée Rigdon, CNN
Click here to read the CNN Article
A new CNN article highlights the impact that climate change is having on global snowfall, and the resulting changes to how water resources are managed in different climatic regions.
“Understanding the implications of less snowfall on the global water supply is far more complicated than simply saying less snow falling means less available water, Mankin said. It depends greatly on location and a variety of other dynamic snow factors.
The important thing to track for water availability is not the amount of snow, but the amount of water in the snow, Mankin said, which can vary greatly. A light, fluffy snow will have low water content, but a dense, heavy snow will have a high water content.
Additionally, the same extreme precipitation events causing more snow may also mean more rain, which “could potentially compensate those snow losses,” Mankin said.
But the scope of the problem of missing snow is still massive.
A 2015 study by Mankin found 2 billion people who rely on melting snow for water are at risk of snow declines of up to 67%. This includes parts of South Asia, which rely on Himalayan snowmelt; the Mediterranean, including Spain, Italy and Greece; and parts of North Africa like Morocco, which rely on snowmelt from the Atlas mountains.”
How will climate change impact snow pack density across Canada, and by extension Canada’s water resources? The tripartite modelling framework of the Canada1Water project should provide a good starting point for further research. We’re using the Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF) to simulate regionally downscaled daily transient temperature and precipitation to the end of century. These new regionally downscaled climate forecasts will then inform an instance of the Community Land Model v5 (CLMv5) to simulate daily transient soil temperature, snow depth and density. The results of the WRF and CLMv5 simulations are then being used as forcing data for a series of river basin scale HydroGeoSphere models to simulate integrated groundwater and surface water dynamics.
Want to learn more about the snow modelling the C1W team is undertaking? Read the following climate modelling project spotlight: