Tracking Colorado’s Changing Snowpack Patterns

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Here we are at Swamp Angel study plot and the elevation’s about 11,200 feet. So we do snow pits here. So we dig snow pits usually every couple weeks where we do a snow profile. We check for new dust, we do a variety of snow pack measurements, And this is the century site for our dust on snow program. So this is where we kind of started monitoring dust on snow and where we do the most intensive monitoring. We also take dust samples to look at how much dust, the mineral composition of the dust and how how many layers there are at a given time. Big thing that we monitor here is the albedo of the snow pack, which is the reflectivity of the snow surface. The main thing that dust does is reduce the albedo. And in the springtime when the days are lengthening, you get more solar radiation and that’s actually what kicks off melt. So in the spring, if you have dust layers, they blow in, they form a layer in the snow pack, and then you get more snow on top. In the spring, the snow starts to melt. Once that dust is exposed, it stays on the surface for the remainder of the melt season. And those dark particles really impact how much solar radiation is absorbed. So that big energy input is what can really kick off melt. And you can see the snow pack melting out earlier than normal. Even mild dust layers can result in earlier melt out. A lot of places in Colorado are experiencing their lowest snow pack on record. You can really directly link these warm temperatures to climate change. Human emissions driven climate change. And that affects the snow pack in multiple ways. Not as obvious as it just, it’s hot, so it’s melting. But in terms of you get more rain instead of snowfall, which translates to less water as runoff into streams. So snowpack provides like 70% of the water input into stream flow. In Colorado, we’re seeing declines in like 90% of snow monitoring sites across the Rockies. So you can attribute that to more rain than snow, more plants exposed, like more bare ground and less snow covered area makes you lose water to the atmosphere due to that transpiration. So you have a worse runoff efficiency, even where you might have a normal snow year. because of those warm temperatures. Is low precipitation related to climate change? To say that this year precipitation is low due to climate change, we’ve seen this low precipitation before, still could be due to climate change. I think that is a little less understood. We sort of are living with wildfire risk all year round and a low spring snow pack is is definitely increasing that risk for a lot of people.

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