From Mountain Research Initiative
Decline in Mountain Snow and Ice May Be Faster Than Anticipated
“Enhanced mountain warming coupled with reduced elevation dependency of precipitation may deplete stores of mountain snow and ice more rapidly than previously thought, new research conducted by the MRI’s Elevation-Dependent Climate Change Working Group has found.
Mountains hold most of the world’s snow and ice outside of polar regions and play an essential role in supplying water to meet the needs of both fragile ecosystems and a significant proportion of the world’s population. By the mid-21st century, it is anticipated that about 1.5 billion people in lowland areas – almost a quarter of the world’s lowland population – will critically depend upon water from mountains. The retreat of glaciers, rising snow lines, and changes in precipitation as a result of climate change, both now and in future, therefore have serious implications.
In order to help us anticipate and respond to future challenges, quantifying rates of climate change in mountain regions is essential. In view of this, the MRI’s Elevation Dependent Climate Change Working Group was established in 2012. It began its activities by assessing if, where, to what extent, and why mountains and other high elevation regions are warming more rapidly than lowlands. This ultimately resulted in the 2015 publication ‘Elevation-Dependent Warming in Mountain Regions of the World’ in Nature Climate Change, which reviewed the evidence for elevation-dependent warming and examined the mechanisms that may account for this phenomenon. Now, in a new article published in Reviews of Geophysics, this working group has turned its attention towards examining evidence of elevation dependency in precipitation trends, in addition to updating its analysis of temperature changes.
Statistically Significant Change
“Elevation-dependent warming occurs when a systematic and statistically significant change in warming rates with elevation is found,” explains article co-author Dr. Elisa Palazzi of the National Research Council of Italy. “And though this change may, in principle, not always be positive – meaning that warming rates can both increase or decrease with elevation – this is often the case.”
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