Winters in New England are warming faster than any other time of year, and that’s creating new challenges for the region like droughts, flash flooding and lost revenue from poor ski seasons.
Now, a team of researchers at universities in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine are teaming up to look at how snowpack here is faring in real time.
The collaborative has secured a $5.9 million grant from the National Science Foundation to develop the first-ever comprehensive snowpack monitoring system for the region.
As precipitation in New England consolidates into more extreme events, and increasingly falls as rain on snow, researchers say more data is needed to keep the public informed in real time and help industries adapt.
Skiing is a $1.6 billion industry in Vermont that brings millions of visitors to the state each year, and outdoor recreation is a backbone of northern New England states’ economies.
Climate change directly threatens its viability, with some climate models showing that small ski areas may not be viable in the region by 2080 if the world continues to burn fossil fuels at its current pace, leading to a predicted shrinking of the ski season by one month.
“It’s a really significant part of the way our economy runs, and when we have disruptions to our regularly scheduled winter weather in the form of warmer temperatures, snow melt, rain and snow events or pure lack of snow, that puts a big dent in our economy,” said Elizabeth Burakoswki, a snow scientist who will lead the group’s work in New Hampshire.
New England ski areas are already fighting to adapt. Burke Mountain in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom has announced plans to “farm snow” by storing it under industrial tarps over the summer, and Craftsbury Outdoor Center and Sleepy Hollow nordic centers are also experimenting with the approach. Some 85% of ski industry workers in New Hampshire say climate change has them worried about their jobs.
Burakowski says better data, and data that is available to resorts and to people recreating and working in New England in real time, would make navigating change much easier.
“Most snow measurements are collected by hand, so there’s physically a person going out into the snowpack, inserting either a ruler or a tube and measuring how much water is in that snowpack, or just how physically deep that snowpack is, and reporting it back to the people who need to make decisions,” she said of the current system.
Starting this winter, Burakowski and her colleagues across the region will be setting up automatic sensors on mountaintops, at middle elevations and in valleys to be able to collect that data in real time.
Keith Jennings is leading the work for the University of Vermont. He says one tool they’ll employ is something called a “snow pillow,” a special scale that measures the density of the snow that falls on it, so scientists can predict how much water it holds and can be expected to release when it melts.
This sort of technology is standard out west, and as New England sees more climate change fueled weather hazards like flash flooding after heavy rain storms that fall on deep snow, he says it’s time to install it here.
Right now, he says, it’s incredibly difficult for hydrologists to predict how and where flooding might play out during a rain on snow event, and this new effort could change that as soon as this winter.
“These events can actually be really complex and difficult to forecast because you need to know how much snow there is, where it is, what the conditions of the snowpack are, if it’s ready to melt, already melting, if it has liquid water in it,” he said. “That’s really one of the major things that we’re looking forward to providing in partnership with the National Weather Service and Northeast River Forecast Center.”
The data will also help scientists document climate change in real time. And, Jennings says, there’s a hidden perk for skiers, too.
Snow scientists might finally be able to answer the onslaught of questions they get from friends every fall about whether it will be a good ski season.
“We don’t really know what’s going to happen with snow in a super El Nino like we’re headed into this winter,” he said. “But by getting these stations on the ground and being able to monitor them, that could … help us understand if there is a connection between El Nino and snow accumulation and melt in the Northeast.”
