7. Future mountains with low-to-no snow and ice

Details

  • Full Title

    Future mountains with low-to-no snow and ice – a community perspective

  • Scheduled

  • Moderated by

    Jakob Steiner, Erica Woodburn, Alan Rhoades, Fabien Maussion, Areidy Beltran, Silvia Terzago

  • Scientific Committee Teams involved

    Several

  • Type

    Synthesis-Workshop

Description

The mountain cryosphere provides vast freshwater reservoirs critical to ecosystems and downstream communities. Yet they are harbingers of a changing climate through their sensitivity to warming.  A low-to-no snow (L2NS) future, or widespread, persistent, and deleterious snow, ice, and permafrost loss, is possible given increasing temperatures and alterations in precipitation magnitude and phase.  L2NS will impose a series of cascading hydrologic changes to the water-energy balance, impacting vegetation processes, surface and subsurface water storage, streamflow, and ultimately water-energy resources and ecosystem function. Strategies for adaptation of livelihoods, power generation, and ecosystem function post-L2NS are rarely exchanged across sectors, research communities, and mountain ranges. This session aims to bring together a diverse set of researchers and stakeholders to exchange successes and failures from regions where L2NS is or will be a future reality and discuss how to overcome uncertainties in estimating the warming level and time horizon of L2NS emergence.

Assigned Focus Sessions

ID06: Andean glaciers and their role in the high mountain water cycle

#IMC22

ID21: Glacier and permafrost risks in a changing climate

#IMC22

ID22: Glacier tourism in times of climate change: Past, present and future

#IMC22

ID27: High Asia cryo-hydrology: processes and impacts across elevations

#IMC22

ID72: The status and future of mountain waters

#IMC22
Implementing the Sendai Framework in Mountains
ID85: Final Results from the Interreg Alpine Space Alpine Drought Observatory Project
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