Evidence of human influence on Northern Hemisphere snow loss

Documenting the rate, magnitude and causes of snow loss is essential to benchmark the pace of climate change and to manage the differential water security risks of snowpack declines 1 – 4 . So far, however, observational uncertainties in snow mass 5 , 6 have made the detection and attribution of hum...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature (London) Vol. 625; no. 7994; pp. 293 - 300
Main Authors: Gottlieb, Alexander R., Mankin, Justin S.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 11.01.2024
Nature Publishing Group
Subjects:
704/106/125
704/106/694/674
Attribution
Basins
Climate change
Climate change mitigation
Cold
Cryospheric science
Emissions
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
Global Warming - prevention & control
Global Warming - statistics & numerical data
Human Activities
Human influences
Humanities and Social Sciences
Meteorology
multidisciplinary
Nonlinear systems
Nonlinearity
Northern Hemisphere
Precipitation
River basins
Science
Science & Technology
Science (multidisciplinary)
Security
Simulation
Snow
Snowpack
Temperature
Trends
Water resources
Water security
Water Supply - statistics & numerical data
Winter temperatures
Northern Hemisphere
Asia
Eurasia
North America
Europe
ISSN:0028-0836, 1476-4687, 1476-4687
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Documenting the rate, magnitude and causes of snow loss is essential to benchmark the pace of climate change and to manage the differential water security risks of snowpack declines 1 – 4 . So far, however, observational uncertainties in snow mass 5 , 6 have made the detection and attribution of human-forced snow losses elusive, undermining societal preparedness. Here we show that human-caused warming has caused declines in Northern Hemisphere-scale March snowpack over the 1981–2020 period. Using an ensemble of snowpack reconstructions, we identify robust snow trends in 82 out of 169 major Northern Hemisphere river basins, 31 of which we can confidently attribute to human influence. Most crucially, we show a generalizable and highly nonlinear temperature sensitivity of snowpack, in which snow becomes marginally more sensitive to one degree Celsius of warming as climatological winter temperatures exceed minus eight degrees Celsius. Such nonlinearity explains the lack of widespread snow loss so far and augurs much sharper declines and water security risks in the most populous basins. Together, our results emphasize that human-forced snow losses and their water consequences are attributable—even absent their clear detection in individual snow products—and will accelerate and homogenize with near-term warming, posing risks to water resources in the absence of substantial climate mitigation. Snowpack reconstructions for major river basins in the Northern Hemisphere reveal that the snowpack has declined in almost half of the basins, with roughly one-third of the declines attributable to human-induced warming.
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SC0022302; NA20OAR4310425
USDOE Office of Science (SC)
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
ISSN:0028-0836
1476-4687
1476-4687
DOI:10.1038/s41586-023-06794-y