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--></style><title>Mountain streams face combined climate hits?: Snow
loss, a</title></head><body>
<div><font face="Geneva"><i>Environmental Research Letters </i>
Published 13 April 2016</font><font face="Arial"><br>
</font><font
face="Geneva"><u>http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/11/4/044015</u></font
><font face="Arial"><br>
</font><font face="Geneva">OPEN ACCESS</font><br>
<font face="Arial"></font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva"><b>Energy budget increases reduce mean
streamflow more than snow-rain transitions: using integrated modeling
to isolate climate change impacts on Rocky Mountain
hydrology</b></font><font face="Arial"><br>
</font><font face="Geneva">Lauren M Foster, Lindsay A Bearup, Noah P
Molotch, Paul D Brooks and Reed M Maxwell</font><br>
<font face="Arial"></font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva">Abstract<b> (Open access)</b></font><font
face="Arial"><br>
</font><font
face="Geneva"><u
>http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/4/044015</u></font
><br>
<font face="Arial"></font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva">In snow-dominated mountain regions, a warming
climate is expected to alter two drivers of hydrology: (1) decrease
the fraction of precipitation falling as snow; and (2) increase
surface energy available to drive evapotranspiration. This study uses
a novel integrated modeling approach to explicitly separate energy
budget increases via warming from precipitation phase transitions from
snow to rain in two mountain headwaters transects of the central Rocky
Mountains.<b> Both phase transitions and energy increases had
significant, though unique, impacts on semi-arid mountain hydrology in
our simulations.</b> A complete shift in precipitation from snow to
rain reduced streamflow between 11% and 18%, while 4 °C of uniform
warming reduced streamflow between 19% and 23%, suggesting that
changes in energy-driven evaporative loss, between 27% and 29% for
these uniform warming scenarios, may be the dominant driver of annual
mean streamflow in a warming climate. Phase changes induced a flashier
system, making water availability more susceptible to precipitation
variability and eliminating the runoff signature characteristic of
snowmelt-dominated systems. The impact of a phase change on mean
streamflow was reduced as aridity increased from west to east of the
continental divide.</font></div>
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color="#000000"
>^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^<span
></span>^^^^^^</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" size="-1" color="#000000"><br>
"The greatest disturbances of which we are aware are those now
being introduced by man himself. Since his tampering with the
biological and geochemical balances may ultimately prove injurious --
even fatal -- to himself, he must understand them better than
today."</font><br>
<font face="Geneva" size="-1" color="#000000"></font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" size="-1" color="#000000">"The acceleration
in the consumption of fossil fuels implies that the amount of carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere will keep climbing ...... A fundamental
question is : What will happen over the next 100</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" size="-1" color="#000000">or 1,000 years?
Clearly the exponential changes cannot continue."<br>
<br>
Bert Bolin. "The Carbon Cycle."</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" size="-1" color="#000000">Scientific
American, September 1970<br>
<br>
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</font><font face="Bookman Old Style" color="#000000"></font></div>
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