Low snowfall sign of climate change, Utah scientists say

(KUTV) - The season’s low snowpack is a symptom of climate change, according to scientists.

Professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Utah, Jim Steenburgh, said Northern Utah is on track to see one of the lowest snowfalls in more than 40 years.

“This time of year, we should be getting 1.5” of water a week to build the snowpack up and we haven’t seen that really at all this winter,” he said.

Brian McInerney with the National Weather Service said global warming has been increasing drastically since the 1980s.

“The Arctic is warming faster than the equator, relatively, and as a result, the jet stream that used to be a straight shot is now more of an elongated sine wave. And the weather patterns are more stagnant as a result,” he said. “As long as we keep putting CO2 and nitrous oxide into the environment at the rate we are [] that amount of additional CO2 is like a warm blanket over the atmosphere and that’s changing the weather patterns as we speak.”

He said it’s only a matter of time before we start to see long-term effects as a result of global warming.

“Short-term, we’re ok because we have the reservoir system. Long term, we’re going to have to find a way to store water when we have mostly rain in the wintertime as we get to 2100. Temperatures here in Salt Lake will be 12 degrees warmer on average,” said McInerney. “It’s not a very optimistic scenario, but we’ll see. We’ve got about two decades before we can turn this ship around.”

Even with Saturday’s storm bringing double-digit snow totals to the mountains, Steenburgh said the snowpack will not contain much water.

“Only 3% water content for the 10” that fell. That’s as dry as it gets,” he said. “Bone dry. Great for skiers. Not great for water managers.”

Luckily, last season’s heavy snowfall provided enough water to fill reservoirs and provide water for the next few years.

“The good news is the reservoirs are pretty full. The bad news is unless we have a really big change in the weather pattern – which we can’t rule out, but is getting unlikely – We’re going to have a pretty poor runoff this spring,” said Steenburgh.