Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

A 155-Year Tree-Ring Based Record Of Warm And Dry Snow Droughts For The Cascade Range, Usa, Laura A. Dye

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Contributing 50-80% to the surface water for the region, mountain snowpack is a pillar of the hydrologic cycle in the western US, and is projected to decrease to 44% by 2100 in the Cascade Mountains alone. The western US has recently been identified as a global snow drought hot spot, exhibiting more frequent, intensified, and lengthened snow drought events in recent decades. Only recently has the need to understand the types of snow droughts and their driving mechanisms become critical to understand and quantify. Recent research suggests ‘warm’ snow droughts caused by winter precipitation falling as rain rather than snow …