Lake Mead is America’s largest reservoir, supplying water for 25 million people across the southwest. It’s also drying up - a kind of poster child for the ongoing drought in the West. But upstream, a much larger but lesser known source of stored water is also disappearing: mountain snow.
This is how climate change is throwing one of the United States’ most critical sources of water out of whack.
In the near future, the West could lose about a quarter of its historical snowpack. As for the end of the century, that’s where climate models start to diverge, largely depending on how fast we end up taking action on the climate crisis.
Sources:
Siirila-Woodburn et al. 2021
www.nature.com/articles/s4301...
Huning et al. 2020
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas...
Swain et al. 2015
agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.c...
Swain et al. 2014
www2.ametsoc.org/ams/assets/F...
Drought.gov
www.drought.gov/great-western...
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