HARROW: More than two billion people living in the Earth’s northern hemisphere may face an impending water crisis as the snow deposits that help provide them with much needed water supply are beginning to decline as a result of climate change.
In a study featured in the journal Environmental Research Letters, scientists from Columbia University have discovered that increasing levels of winter precipitation are falling as rain instead of snow because of warming temperatures.
This in turn severely limits the buildup of snowpacks in mountainous regions, which are relied on by farmers in low-lying areas for water during growing seasons.
“Snow is important because it forms its own reservoir. But the consequences of reduced snowpack are not the same for all places–it is also a function of where and when people demand water,” Justin Mankin, a researcher from Columbia’s Earth Institute and lead author of the study, said.
“Water managers in a lot of places may need to prepare for a world where the snow reservoir no longer exists.”
Mankin and his colleagues found that out of the 421 drainage basins in the northern hemisphere that they examined, 97 of them have at least a two-thirds chance of experiencing declines in snowpacks. The melting snow from these basins provides water for around two billion people living in the region.
