Climate Change Impacts on Snowstorms and implications for Skiing in California
Abstract
Abstract This study investigates the effects of climate change on snowstorms over California and the ski areas located in the Sierra Nevada Mountains using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. To examine the response of snowstorms to climatic shifts, the pseudo-global warming (PGW) framework was employed across four distinct epochs: the 1850s, the present day, the 2070s, and the 2090s, with future perturbations derived from the SSP2-4.5 scenario. Two historical storms with different dynamical mechanisms were selected to cover a wider range of possible future storms. Validation indicates that WRF adequately reproduces precipitation patterns, with absolute relative bias of 17.6% and 25.5% relative to SNODAS and SNOTEL accumulated precipitation over the 10-day simulation period. Our PGW experiments show that the total precipitation increased by an average of 2.8% over both storms, with precipitation shifting inland as climate change progresses. Integrated Vapor Transport (IVT) over the study region increased for both storms due to projected warming with the 2024 storm also experiencing a northward shift. Future PGW simulations indicate a significant phase shift, with increased liquid precipitation extending to higher elevations and ski resort areas. Specifically, for the 2090s period, liquid precipitation increased by 12.43% across the study region, while solid precipitation decreased by 8.37%. These projected changes suggest increasing socio-economic impacts…
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