John Upton considers what climate change means for the snow-topped mountains of the American West:
New research has painted a vivid picture of the global warming-induced fate of what currently are snow-peaked mountains across the region. Within 50 years, University of Idaho scientists concluded, the lower-elevation peaks could be wholly rained upon instead of receiving mixtures of snow and rain. And across much of the region, the snow season is expected to contract from five months every year to just three months. Those were some of the findings of an attempt to model how global warming will shift rain-snow transition zones upward throughout a vast swath of the United States. It’s a swath of the nation where farmers and residents rely heavily on melting snowpacks for water supplies during the warmer months. That means the change from wintertime snow to rain could worsen both winter floods and summer droughts.
(Photo: A Dish reader’s airplane window view of Mt. Rainier, southeast of Seattle. More VFYAWs here)
The Dish 