Excerpts:
The Sierra Nevada snowpack, which provides 60 percent of the state’s water via a vast network of dams and reservoirs, has already been diminished by human-induced climate change and if emissions levels aren’t reduced, the snowpack could largely disappear during droughts, according to findings in the study published today in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
“The cryosphere — frozen parts of the planet — has shown the earliest and largest signs of change,” said UCLA climate scientist Alex Hall, who along with study co-author Neil Berg modeled what future California droughts will look like in terms of snowpack loss. “The Sierra Nevada are the little piece of the cryosphere that sits right here in California.”
Full Article at UCLA Newsroom