Scholarly Conversation
The date of annual melt is of great interest as a potential indicator of climate change. In order to determine whether the earlier disappearance of spring snow cover in northern Alaska is related to global warming verses an appearance of a more natural, continual cycle of the climate, further study and monitoring is necessary.
Large year to year variability complicates the picture and furthers the debate. Inter-annual variability of springtime snow pack comes largely from variability of winter month precipitation which is in turn related to the variability of key patterns of atmospheric circulation.
A study of the mountains in the western United States show a region wide decline in spring snow-pack since the mid-1900s, dominated by loss at low elevations where winter temperatures are near freezing. These losses are an indication of increased temperatures which lead to snow loss via some combination of increased regularity of rain versus snow and increased melting during winter months. These natural variations make it challenging to quantify trends with confidence, to deduce observed changes to predict future climate, or to clearly detect changes in snow-pack due to human impact on warming trends.
Read more about this topic: Snowmelt
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