Due to different rates of melting snowpacks, climate scientists predict that this can disturb the flow of water resources as a few regions are more likely to experience increasing rainfall and snowfall due to climate changes.
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Researchers said that snow melts gradually and feeds water sources across the world. But a new study has brought forwards another impact of climate change and shrinking ice. They found 97 of those natural reservoirs are critical water supplies for 2 billion people and there are two third chances that they will decline if the water demand continues the same way.
Global warming is something that has been on our back for quite a few time now, but the results from the recent study clearly send out an urgent message to all individuals living around the northern hemisphere. Studies are showing that winter precipitation is falling as rain, not snow in many parts of the world, and washing away, while snow that does fall is settling at higher elevations, yet melting earlier.
Mankin explains how this snowpack is crucial as it is capable to form its own reservoir however, the effects of reduced snowpack is varying in different regions. The team estimated and predicted the possible consequences of reduced snowpack, in relation to the amount of people who rely on snowmelt water.
“Managers need to be prepared for the possibility of multi-decadal decreases in snow water supply”, Mankin said.
The alarming findings were published on Thursday, November 12, in the online journal Environmental Research Letters. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change.
Using new climate models, American and European researchers looked at a total of 421 drainage basins across northern hemisphere.
Of those, 32 basins are the most sensitive to changes in snowmelt-including the Rio Grande and the Colorado River.
“Humans have a great deal of agency in this picture of water availability moving forward”, says Mankin.
Also on the list is the volatile Shatt al Arab basin, which channels meltwater from the Zagros Mountains to Iraq, Syria, eastern Turkey, northern Saudi Arabia and eastern Iran.
But warmer temperatures increasingly also mean the water that once fell as snow, to be preserved until the summer, now falls as winter rain, and runs off directly. All things considered, supplies could stay about the same in India’s Indus and Ganges basins, home to about 1 billion people.
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And accelerated melting of the glaciers could actually increase water supplies for a few central Asian nations, including Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Across most of North America, northern Europe, Russia, China and southeast Asia, rainfall alone is projected to keep meeting human demand. “Both these outcomes are entirely consistent with global warming”. Researchers say water managers should prepare for what’s to come.
