In British Columbia, seasonal snowpacks serve vital roles in municipal water supplies, hydroelectric power generation, agriculture, and ecosystem functions. With climate change, decreases in snow storage and changes in the timing and duration of snow melt are expected, particularly at lower and more sensitive elevations, whereas higher elevation snowpacks may be relatively insensitive to ongoing climate change. This study uses (1) observed daily snow water equivalence (SWE) data from the snow pillow network in British Columbia given in CanSWE, and modelled SWE data from the ERA5 Reanalysis project to examine linear trends in key snowpack metrics between 1979 and 2022. These metrics include maximum SWE, the timing of maximum SWE, the timing of snowpack disappearance (SWE = 0), and the duration between maximum SWE and snowpack disappearance. After filtering for years with sufficient daily observations, few significant trends were found in the observational SWE dataset, and the overall average trends in these metrics are not significantly different from zero. Results from the ERA5 dataset are pending, and will be used to confirm or refute the lack of climate change signals, and the role of elevation in observational and modelled snowpack trends will be examined.
1125 Colonel By Dr
Ottawa ON K1S 5B6
Canada