Tag : Freshwater

Washington: A research team has found that the Andean region of Chile could face noticeable snow loss and roughly 10% less mountain water runoff with a global warming of approximately 2.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels over the next three decades. The study also shows that what happens in the Andes could be a harbinger of what is to come for the California Sierra Nevada mountain range, and highlights the importance of carbon-mitigation strategies to prevent this from occurring. But this valuable water">freshwater resource is in danger of disappearing. The planet is now around 1.1 degrees Celsius (1.9 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than pre-industrial levels, and mountain snowpacks are shrinking. Last year, a study co-led by Alan Rhoades and Erica Siirila-Woodburn, research scientists in the Earth and Environmental Sciences Area of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), found that if global warming continues along the high-emissions scenario, low-to-no-snow winters will become a regular occurrence in the mountain ranges of the western U.S. in 35 to 60 years. Now, in a recent Nature Climate Change study, a research team led by Rhoades found that if global warming reaches around 2.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels, mountain ranges in the southern midlatitudes, the Andean region of Chile in particular, will face a low-to-no-snow future between the years 2046 and 2051 -- or 20 years earlier than mountain ranges in the northern midlatitudes such as the Sierra Nevada or Rockies. (Low-to-no-snow occurs when the annual maximum water stored as snowpack is within the bottom 30% of historical conditions for a decade or more.) The researchers also found that low-to-no-snow conditions would emerge in ...