Publication Date:
2011-06-11
Description:
In western North America, snowpack has declined in recent decades, and further losses are projected through the 21st century. Here, we evaluate the uniqueness of recent declines using snowpack reconstructions from 66 tree-ring chronologies in key runoff-generating areas of the Colorado, Columbia, and Missouri River drainages. Over the past millennium, late 20th century snowpack reductions are almost unprecedented in magnitude across the northern Rocky Mountains and in their north-south synchrony across the cordillera. Both the snowpack declines and their synchrony result from unparalleled springtime warming that is due to positive reinforcement of the anthropogenic warming by decadal variability. The increasing role of warming on large-scale snowpack variability and trends foreshadows fundamental impacts on streamflow and water supplies across the western United States.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Pederson, Gregory T -- Gray, Stephen T -- Woodhouse, Connie A -- Betancourt, Julio L -- Fagre, Daniel B -- Littell, Jeremy S -- Watson, Emma -- Luckman, Brian H -- Graumlich, Lisa J -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2011 Jul 15;333(6040):332-5. doi: 10.1126/science.1201570. Epub 2011 Jun 9.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center, 2327 University Way, Suite 2, Bozeman, MT 59715, USA. gpederson@usgs.gov〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21659569" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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