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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><a href="https://apnews.com/346a99e6db54474f8d3f13929d072c09/Study%3A-Snowpack-has-declined-dramatically-across-US-West">https://apnews.com/346a99e6db54474f8d3f13929d072c09/Study%3A-Snowpack-has-declined-dramatically-across-US-West</a><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:3.75pt;margin-left:0in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l3 level1 lfo1;background:#F9F9F9'><![if !supportLists]><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Symbol'><span style='mso-list:Ignore'>·<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'> </span></span></span><![endif]><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:15.0pt'><span lang=EN style='font-size:18.5pt;font-family:GoodWeb-Book'>Study: Snowpack has declined dramatically across US West<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:GoodWeb-Book'>GILLIAN FLACCUS<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:GoodWeb-Book'>Mar. 02, 2018<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:FreightText'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;line-height:18.0pt'><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:FreightTextProBook'>PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Scientists have found dramatically declining snowpack across the American West over the past six decades that will likely cause water shortages in the region that cannot be managed by building new reservoirs, according to a study published Friday.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;line-height:18.0pt'><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:FreightTextProBook'>The study led by scientists from Oregon State University and the University of California, Los Angeles found drops in snow measurements at more than 90 percent of regional snow monitoring sites that have consistently tracked snow levels since 1955, said Philip Mote, director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute at Oregon State University.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;line-height:18.0pt'><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:FreightTextProBook'>Study authors also used modeling to show the average snowpack in the region dropped between 15 and 30 percent in a little more than a century, he said, and that modeling paralleled the actual findings based on existing measurements.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;line-height:18.0pt'><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:FreightTextProBook'>That means the region’s average snowpack has lost the equivalent volume of water that it would take to fill Lake Mead, the West’s largest man-made reservoir, Mote said.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;line-height:18.0pt'><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:FreightTextProBook'>The study appeared in <i>NPJ Climate and Atmospheric Science</i> and was a follow-up study to one completed in 2005. This analysis found the loss of snowpack has accelerated, Mote said.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;line-height:18.0pt'><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:FreightTextProBook'>“It’s a bigger decline than we expected,” he said. “In many lower-elevation sites, what used to fall as snow is now rain. Upper elevations have not been affected nearly as much, but most states don’t have that much area at 7,000-plus feet.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;line-height:18.0pt'><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:FreightTextProBook'>The amount of water stored in the region’s snowpack is roughly the same as all the water stored in the region’s reservoirs, he said.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;line-height:18.0pt'><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:FreightTextProBook'>“The solution isn’t in infrastructure. New reservoirs could not be built fast enough to offset the loss of snow storage,” Mote said.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;line-height:18.0pt'><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:FreightTextProBook'>The study found California had the most gains in snowpack since 1955, but recent droughts erased those gains and caused the snowpack to fall in many locations.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;line-height:18.0pt'><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:FreightTextProBook'>Eastern Oregon and northern Nevada saw the worst decreases in snowpack over the span of the study.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;line-height:18.0pt'><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:FreightTextProBook'>Individual sites in California, Montana, Idaho, Washington and Arizona saw snowpack declines of more than 70 percent, the study found.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;line-height:18.0pt'><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:FreightTextProBook'>Mote said it’s not snowing less, but that the snow is melting sooner in the season at higher elevations, leading to low levels in river and reservoir levels during the driest days of summer and early fall.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;line-height:18.0pt'><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:FreightTextProBook'>The study focused on data from 1,766 snowpack monitoring sites across the western U.S., most of them tracked by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the California Department of Water Resources.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;line-height:18.0pt'><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:FreightTextProBook'>Researchers looked at snow measurements taken April 1, which is typically at the height of the snowpack, but also looked at measurements taken in January, February, March and May.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;line-height:18.0pt'><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:FreightTextProBook'>“We found declining trends in all months, states and climates,” Mote said.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;line-height:18.0pt'><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:FreightTextProBook'>Snowpack levels are below average in the western U.S. so far in 2018 as well, he said.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;line-height:18.0pt'><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:FreightTextProBook'>_____<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;line-height:18.0pt'><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:FreightTextProBook'>Follow Gillian Flaccus on Twitter at <a href="http://www.twitter.com/gflaccus"><span style='color:blue'>http://www.twitter.com/gflaccus</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></body></html>