As the planet warms and more snow falls as rain, the danger of flooding, and less water stored for summer, increases.
This is one of the conditions we took into account when we decided to support the construction of the Auburn dam on the American River.
Scientists set up in Sierra to track shrinking snowpack
Carl T. Hall, Chronicle Science Writer
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Sequoia National Park -- Coping with climate change takes sophisticated analytical tools. In the mountain environments of the West, it also takes mules, shovels and plenty of sweat.
Noah Molotch, a UCLA research scientist, and Paul Kim, an undergraduate at UC Merced, had no need for their jackets as they broke ground at California's latest global warming research site: a stony Sierra hillside a half-hour's hike uphill from an old ski lodge in Sequoia National Park.
A pack train loaded with tools and equipment was due in an hour. But daylight and decent weather are precious at these elevations. Molotch, part of a weekend work crew of five scientists and student helpers, had come up with Kim ahead of the mules for an early start building a new kind of mountain observatory -- what may well be the world's most elaborate snow gauge.
They are installing a unique network of ground sensors, weather gear and other equipment to measure how much snow and ice build up each winter in the 400-mile Sierra range -- and then see where the snowmelt goes.
Warming during this century is expected to shrink the snowpack by pushing snow lines to higher elevations. Even if the same amount of precipitation falls, it's expected to come more as rain, less as snow, while spring snowmelts are likely to arrive sooner. That would mean less effective water storage during the long Sierra winters and, possibly, an increased risk of floods from fast mountain runoff.
