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A longer snow-free environment will promote more severe wildfire activity at higher elevations and the numerous cascading impacts severe wildfire brings to ecosystems, life and property, and public health.

As the snowline moves upslope, increased winter runoff will occur at the expense of spring runoff, a change our current water management paradigm is not designed for.

“Its warming-driven upslope retreat poses numerous implications for the aspects of mountain environments we rely on for water resources, ecosystem function, and recreation. “ The snowline is an iconic component of mountains,” Hatchett says. With less snow in California’s future, there will be wide-ranging impacts on landscapes, ecosystems, and water availability for human communities. The team combined seven decades of temperature and precipitation data with projections about climate change to examine the growing impact of atmospheric rivers, which tend to be warmer than other storms. DRI’s Benjamin Hatchett, Ph.D, and Michael Dettinger, Ph.D., coauthored a new study in the journal Climate Dynamics that predicts dramatic changes for California’s future snowpack.

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