Tuesday November 30, 2021
Courthouse News Service —
The U.S. will need to make some serious changes to its water supply strategies as Earth’s climate continues to warm and snowpack in the country’s western mountains becomes much harder to come by in the coming decades, according to a new study.
In America’s long and often strained history of managing its water infrastructure massive amounts of water from mountain snowpack has long been viewed as a comforting constant. Frigid temperatures and frequent snowfalls allow nearly 162 million acre-feet worth of snow to accumulate in the western mountains each year, only to melt during the spring and summer seasons when it becomes a key component of America’s water supply.
But, as with countless other things, climate change is about dramatically change that.
In a study published in the science journal Nature, experts warn that human-driven climate change is currently on track to send the country’s supply of snow plummeting. Scientific circles largely agree that if current trends keep up, roughly a quarter of the snowpack in the western mountains will be gone by 2050.