Global warming takes toll on Utah snow, and it looks to get worse – ‘Our climate trend is changing in Utah’

By JUDY FAHYS, The Salt Lake Tribune
14 April 2012 What Bruce Tremper saw when he ventured into the Wasatch backcountry this spring surprised him. Bare patches littered the winter landscape where he was used to seeing snow — even on high-elevation ridge tops. In one of his last forecasts of the season for the Utah Avalanche Center, Tremper noted that this year might wind up being the worst for snowfall in the 67 years that records have been kept at the Alta Guard Station. It was certainly the worst in his 30-year experience of Utah snow seasons. “I have never seen that before in April as far as I can remember,” he said, recalling the recent trip up the canyon. “Last year, there was more snow on that same slope in July than there is this year in the first part of April.” While you could say Tremper’s is just one person’s observation, it echoes the theme of several recent scientific studies that paint a grim picture of Utah’s famed mountain powder. Climate change is withering the spring snowpack in the Mountain West — the Wasatch Range included — the studies suggest. That’s the trend discovered by Robert Gillies, Utah’s state climatologist, and colleagues at Utah State University. Their paper, soon to be published in the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Climate, showed a 9 percent increase in the amount of precipitation that fell as rain rather than snow. It is the most detailed and comprehensive scientific look at snow/rain patterns in Utah so far. “Our climate trend,” Gillies said, “is changing in Utah.” He and co-authors Simon Wang and Marty Booth examined the state’s snow patterns with a variety of scientific measurements — with data points “up there in the millions,” according to Gillies. […]

Warming takes toll on Utah snow, and it looks to get worse