Science Source
Mote, Philip W., Rupp, David E., Li, Sihan, Sharp, Darrin J., Otto, Friederike, Uhe, Peter F., Xiao, Mu, Lettenmaier, Dennis P., Cullen, Heidi, Allen, Myles R.
Geophysical Research Letters
Published date October 28, 2016

Perspectives on the causes of exceptionally low 2015 snowpack in the western United States

  • States that over 80 percent of measurement sites west of 115°W experienced record low snowpack in 2015
  • Estimates a return period of 400–1000 years for California's snowpack under the questionable assumption of stationarity
  • Hydrologic modeling supports the conclusion that 2015 was the most severe on record by a wide margin
  • Shows that both human influence and sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies contributed strongly to the risk of snow drought in Oregon and Washington: the contribution of SST anomalies was about twice that of human influence
  • Finds that SSTs and humans appear to have played a smaller role in creating California's snow drought
  • Concludes that in all three states, the anthropogenic effect on temperature exacerbated the snow drought

Related Content

Science Source
| AMS Journal of Climate
Is There a Role for Human-Induced Climate Change in the Precipitation Decline that Drove the California Drought?
Richard Seager, Naomi Henderson, Mark A. Cane et al
Science Source
| AMS Journal of Hydrometeorology
Indications for Protracted Groundwater Depletion after Drought over the Central Valley of California
S.-Y. Simon Wang
Science Source
| Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
EEE 2013: Causes of the Extreme Dry Conditions Over California During Early 2013
Hailan Wang and Siegfried Schubert
Science Source
| Nature Climate Change
California from drought to deluge
S.-Y. Simon Wang, Jin-Ho Yoon, Emily Becker and Robert Gillies
Resource Hub