Climatologists from the United States predict a decrease in snowfall due to global warming
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Human pollution of the environment can cause precipitation to fall more as rain than snow. This threatens water and food problems for billions of people, US climate scientists predict.
Snowfall is declining around the world as temperatures rise due to anthropogenic climate change, new analysis and maps from climatologists at the US National Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) show.
“Due to global warming, we will increasingly see the “transformation” of snow into rain. It may not be noticeable so quickly, but the laws of thermodynamics will prevailBrian Bretschneider, a climatologist from the National Weather Service in Alaska, believes.
As the publication writes, according to the analysis of data from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, annual global snowfall has already decreased by approximately 7.2%.
| Photo: Stefania Pelfini/gettyimages |
The downward trend is especially noticeable in the middle latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere – north of the tropics and south of the Arctic – where, for example, the United States is located.
According to Jessica Lundquist, a professor of environmental engineering at the University of Washington, less snowfall threatens to cause a catastrophic decrease in water supplies, especially in California and other parts of the American West.
“There is no rain in California in the summer, and water from melting snow is necessary for all ecosystems, for all agriculture“, says Lundqvist.
As the study showed, the snow cover provides water for more than 50% of the territory of the arid West. The same study predicts that the level of snow cover in the West will decrease by more than a third by 2100 due to persistent air pollution that leads to a warming planet.
The decline in snowfall over the past 50 years has been particularly pronounced in parts of the western United States.
At the same time, as scientists say, the probability of extreme snowfall is increasing in the northeastern United States.
“Even though the total snowfall was positive, the number of days of the year when it snows is very small. This means more snow fell in fewer days, which could be a sign of more extreme snowfall predicted with climate change“, says Bretschneider.
Read also: “Global warming has accelerated, we are in the early stages of a climate emergency – scientists”
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