Puget Sound’s ‘warm snow’ makes region vulnerable to climate shifts

Written by

Harriet Morgan, research consultant with the Climate Impacts Group, is interviewed for this article on how decreasing snowpack in the mountains stands to affect humans and wildlife. “We are experiencing a change in the fundamental characteristics of our hydrology,” Morgan says. “We are going to have more water in winter when we don’t need it and less water in summer when we do.”

New report describes anticipated climate-change effects in WA State

Written by

CIG Director Amy Snover was interviewed for this blog post summarizing CIG’s recent Snowlines and Shorelines report. “That’s the happy secret of climate change,” Amy says. “There is more happening than most people know. That being said, it isn’t really enough. It’s just the beginning, and a lot more needs to be done.”

What climate change means to our crucial snowpack

Written by

Our colleagues in the Office of the Washington State Climatologist at the University of Washington recently wrote an excellent Op-Ed on the importance and future of snowpack in the Pacific Northwest in a warming climate. “The bottom line is that year-to-year variability will continue to be the dominant effect on our snowpack over at least the next decade or two. At some point, however, these variations will be overwhelmed by a warming of the Pacific Northwest. Years such as 2015, specifically its warm winter temperatures, will become more the rule rather than the exception by about the 2050s.” Read the article here.