Global warming to cut snow water storage 56 percent in Oregon watershed
http://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/2013/jul/global-warming-cut-snow-water-storage-56-percent-oregon-watershed07/25/2013
The study this story is based on is available online: http://bit.ly/13ZLzl1
[font size=3]CORVALLIS, Ore. – A new report projects that by the middle of this century there will be an average 56 percent drop in the amount of water stored in peak snowpack in the McKenzie River watershed of the Oregon Cascade Range - and that similar impacts may be found on low-elevation maritime snow packs around the world.
The findings by scientists at Oregon State University, which are based on a projected 3.6 degree Fahrenheit temperature increase, highlight the special risks facing many low-elevation, mountainous regions where snow often falls near the freezing point. In such areas, changing from snow to rain only requires a very modest rise in temperature.
As in Oregon, which depends on Cascade Range winter snowpack for much of the water in the populous Willamette Valley, there may be significant impacts on ecosystems, agriculture, hydropower, industry, municipalities and recreation, especially in summer when water demands peak.
The latest study was one of the most precise of its type done on an entire watershed, and was just published in Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, with support from the National Science Foundation. It makes it clear that new choices are coming for western Oregon and other regions like it.
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We live in the McKenzie River watershed. In fact, we are very close to the Trout Creek monitoring station used in the study - it's not one of the snowpack measurement/forcing sites, only ~600 ft. and usually no lasting snow accumulation.
We moved here in 1991 and started a blueberry farm. For a while after the move I was still commuting to my software development job at a Silicon Valley startup. On one flight back to Oregon I was sitting next to an Oregon State University professor. I don't recall her field/department, but as we chatted I described our new 'adventure' and having just completed planting of our first 3 acres of blueberries. Quickly she became quite energized and started talking about her research in climate change and impact on wildlife, plants, and water. At that point global warming and climate change were only of peripheral interest to me and I don't recall much of her discussion. However, one remark she made has stayed with me - it was something like "You may have made a wrong decision in planting blueberries. Given the changes that are coming a better choice might have been pineapples."
Well, it's 22 years later and the 30 acres of blueberry plants are still thriving. No pineapple plantations in the area yet. But it's very clear to me that anthropogenic global warming is a fact and that the world is experiencing the consequences in myriad ways. Studies like this one on the McKenzie watershed are important demonstrations of what we must expect will happen.
I'll be 98 years old in 2050 (mid-century). I can hope, but I don't really expect that I'll be actively engaged in the blueberry farm then. However, that 3.6 degree temperature increase isn't going to happen all at once, so neither is the 56% decrease in water from snowpack. Our current year-to-date precipitation is 9.67 inches, 15.66 inches below normal. Due to global warming? Maybe, we've seen similar deficits in the last 20 years.
Perhaps I better read up on growing pineapples. 
