Alaska Snowpack Response to Climate Change: Statewide Snowfall Equivalent and Snowpack Water Scenarios Completed

Understanding how snow will change over the coming century is vital in understanding environmental changes across Alaska. Changes in snow are also economically important to many sectors, from recreation to commercial fishing. An earlier set of rain-snow partitioning and snowfall equivalent projections based on downscaled CMIP3 temperature and precipitation projections have been used extensively. In this project, we developed updated projections for the fraction of precipitation days that are snowy (vs. rainy) and the amount of precipitation that likely falls as snow to be consistent with the newest downscaled temperature and precipitation released by SNAP. The outputs are decadal monthly averages. The updated snow products compare well with independent observations. They also demonstrate that more southerly low-elevation locations are likely to transition from snowy to rainy winters. More northerly and higher elevation locations will still have snowy winters on average, but the snow season is likely to be shorter.