Abstract
Abstract
The vast majority of surface water resources in the semi-arid western United States start as winter snowpack. Solar radiation is a primary driver of snowmelt, making snowpack water resources especially sensitive to even small increases in concentrations of light absorbing particles such as mineral dust and combustion-related black carbon (BC). Here we show, using fresh snow measurements and snowpack modeling at 51 widely distributed sites in the Rocky Mountain region, that BC dominated impurity-driven radiative forcing in 2018. BC contributed three times more radiative forcing on average than dust, and up to 17 times more at individual locations. Evaluation of 2015–2018 archived samples from most of the same sites yielded similar results. These findings, together with long-term observations of atmospheric concentrations and model studies, indicate that BC rather than dust has dominated radiative forcing by light absorbing impurities on snow for decades, indicating that mitigation strategies to reduce radiative forcing on headwater snow-water resources would need to focus on reducing winter and spring BC emissions.
Funder
USGS Rocky Mountain Snowpack Chemistry Project
Desert Research Institute
Subject
Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health,General Environmental Science,Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment
Reference67 articles.
1. Characteristics of the western United States snowpack from snowpack telemetry (SNOTEL) data;Serreze;Water Resour. Res.,1999
2. Potential impacts of a warming climate on water availability in snow-dominated regions;Barnett;Nature,2005
3. Mountains of the world, water towers for humanity: typology, mapping, and global significance;Viviroli;Water Resour. Res.,2007
4. Changes of snow cover, temperature, and radiative heat balance over the Northern Hemisphere;Groisman;J. Clim.,1994
5. Controls on Northern Hemisphere snow albedo feedback quantified using satellite Earth observations;Fernandes;Geophys. Res. Lett.,2009
Cited by
2 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献