For decades, Californians have depended on the reliable appearance of spring and summer snowmelt to provide nearly a third of the state's supply of water. But as the state gets drier, and as wildfires climb to ever-higher elevations, that precious snow is melting faster and earlier than in years past — even in the middle of winter.
That's posing a threat to the timing and availability of water in California, according to authors of a recent study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, which found that the effects of climate change are compounding to accelerate snowpack decline.
"As wildfires become larger, burn at higher severities, and in more snow-prone regions like the Sierra Nevada, the threats to the state's water supply are imminent," said Erica Siirila-Woodburn, a research scientist with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and one of the authors of the study.
