Public Lands Clips: January 11, 2024

 

 

House

 

‘House Of Cards’: Watchdog Slams NPS During Hearing — “Republicans on two House Natural Resources panels vowed Wednesday to step up oversight of the National Park Service after the Interior Department’s chief watchdog criticized the agency for its financial oversight of long-delayed maintenance projects. At a joint hearing of the subcommittees on Federal Lands and Oversight and Investigations, Inspector General Mark Greenblatt said the agency had first used inaccurate and unreliable methods to track its swelling backlog and then muddied the situation by applying a blanket 35 percent markup to its projected costs in 2021. ‘One could argue that the prior estimates were akin to a house of cards built upon a house of cards,’ Greenblatt told lawmakers. Republicans cited the backlog — which has nearly doubled in recent years to more than $22 billion — as the agency’s most pressing challenge in the new year. ‘If this was the private sector and a company inflated its profits by 35 percent without proper documentation, its CEO would go to jail,’ said Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.), chair of the Federal Lands panel. ‘Yet in the federal government this is being treated as business as usual.’” [E&E News, 1/11/24 (+)]

 

House Republicans Blast EPA Methane Rule As ‘Serious Threat’ To Energy Producers — “House Republicans took aim at the Biden administration’s new methane tax and performance standards Wednesday, arguing that the final rule poses a serious threat to many domestic oil and gas operators and will drive up energy costs at a time of supply disruptions and geopolitical uncertainty. The EPA’s final rule, announced at the United Nations Climate Change Conference last month, builds on the agency’s previous actions under the Clean Air Act to more aggressively crack down on methane emissions from the nation’s oil and gas sector — the largest source of industrial methane emissions in the U.S., EPA officials said in a statement. But Republicans argued that any benefits from the EPA’s rule are far outweighed by its costs, which they say will include higher energy prices for consumers and lower production from small- and medium-sized companies. Speaking Wednesday at a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Environment, Manufacturing, and Critical Materials, the head of the subcommittee, Rep. Bill Johnson (R-OH), said the EPA’s final rule threatens an ‘unworkable regulatory structure’ for many of the smaller U.S. producers, due in large part to the high compliance costs required.” [Washington Examiner, 1/10/24 (=)]

 

 

 

Big Trump Energy — “Donald Trump skipped another GOP debate Wednesday night, instead holding a town hall on Fox News, where he repeated some of his favorite — but incorrect — claims about his energy accomplishments. ‘We had so much energy we were ready to start supplying energy, selling energy to Europe, Asia,’ he said, despite the fact that oil and gas production has reached record levels during Biden’s term. He also repeated that he’d ‘drill, baby, drill’ during his dictator-just-for-a-day pitch, before pivoting to accuse Biden of pushing up energy prices — were actually still weak from the drop in demand during the pandemic — and enabling Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. ‘Biden drove up the cost of energy. That is what caused inflation. But it’s also what caused Putin to become rich enough to prosecute a war. He is the one that caused that war,’ Trump said. Trump also asserted that New Hampshire voters should support him because they pay the highest energy prices in the United States. While New Hampshire ranks in the top 5 of U.S. states with the highest average costs, Hawaiians pay the most on average for their power.” [Politico, 1/11/24 (=)]

 

DeSantis And Haley Pledge To Reject Climate Policy — “Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley avoided attacks on former President Donald Trump in Wednesday’s Republican presidential debate — while indicating they would copy his dismantling of climate policy. The Florida governor and former South Carolina governor, respectively, are likely competing for second place behind Trump in a primary race that could be over by March. They spent the two-hour CNN debate in Iowa trying to tear each other down over everything from abortion laws to fracking, while offering mild criticism of Trump for refusing to show up. With only 15 minutes left in the debate, CNN moderator Jake Tapper asked what they would do to address climate change. Both candidates repeated Trump’s energy policy to increase oil and gas production while scaling back on clean energy incentives. DeSantis made it clear that he would pursue Trump’s energy policy on his first day in office by rolling back the Inflation Reduction Act, President Joe Biden’s landmark climate package of clean energy manufacturing subsidies and investments in electric vehicles.” [E&E News, 1/10/24 (=)]

 

 

 

Interior's People To Watch In 2024 — “Personnel is policy. It’s a well-known truism in political circles, and for the Interior Department in 2024, some changing personnel lineups could make for intriguing policy moves. The personnel worth watching include some longtime agency veterans, such as the National Park Service’s deputy director, Mike Reynolds. Some are political appointees shifting sideways or upward from another spot, like Deputy Secretary Laura Daniel-Davis, who will be charged with keeping the departmental trains running smoothly for Interior Secretary Deb Haaland. And some are entering from the outside, like Sharon Buccino, who’s coming from Wyoming to lead the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement. Here are some of the Interior Department people to watch in the coming year.” [E&E News, 1/10/24 (=)]

 

 

 

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

 

Right Whale Calf Expected To Die After Apparently Hit By Boat — “A North Atlantic right whale calf injured off the coast of South Carolina was likely to die after getting struck by a boat propeller, NOAA Fisheries said Wednesday. ‘After reviewing this case, NOAA Fisheries biologists made a preliminary determination that it meets the criteria of a ‘serious injury,’ the agency said in an announcement. ‘This means the whale is likely to die as a result.’ In videos shared on social media, the calf was seen last week with several propeller wounds to the head, mouth and lip. Officials said the injuries were consistent with a vessel strike. Green groups urged NOAA to step up its protections for the endangered whales. Fewer than 360 of them now remain. ‘At a time when every single calf is vital to the survival of the critically endangered right whale, once again one has been struck and mortally injured by a vessel,’ said Jane Davenport, a senior attorney at Defenders of Wildlife. ‘A right whale calf currently has a 1-in-14 chance of dying before its first birthday from a vessel strike.’” [E&E News, 1/10/24 (+)]

 

 

 

EPA Aims To Avoid Overstating Methane Releases, Goffman Assures Hill — “EPA’s top air official is offering assurances to lawmakers from oil and gas states that the agency is aware of concerns that its proposed Greenhouse Gas Reporting Rule updates for the sector could overestimate reported emissions, and thus new fees on companies, and that the agency is striving to ensure that a final rule would not do so. ‘We certainly don’t want to end up with a final reporting rule that would inflate data and therefore inflate liability for companies,’ testified EPA air office principal deputy assistant administrator Joe Goffman, during a Jan. 10 House Energy & Commerce Committee environment panel hearing. Goffman’s reference to companies’ liability alludes to the interplay between EPA’s methane reporting rule and its forthcoming proposal to implement the Inflation Reduction Act’s (IRA) methane emissions charge, given that such levies are based on a company’s reported emissions. The hearing also featured testimony from small operators expressing concern over those rulemakings, as well as debate over the merits of EPA’s recently final methane emissions standards for the sector.” [Inside EPA, 1/10/24 (=)]

 

GOP Says EPA Methane Rule Will Hurt Small Producers — “Congressional Republicans slammed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday over its recently finalized rule imposing sweeping methane emissions control requirements for oil and gas infrastructure, arguing that the rule will increase consumer costs and inflation, and is intended to put small fossil fuel operators out of business. The EPA unveiled the final rule in December during the United Nations’ climate change conference in Dubai, marking the culmination of a rulemaking process that began with a November 2021 proposal and involved a supplemental proposal built off more than 470,000 public comments. While intended to create a comprehensive plan to reduce methane and volatile organic compounds pollution and increase monitoring to identify ‘super-emitters’ for prompt mitigation, Republican representatives sitting on the House Subcommittee on Environment, Manufacturing and Critical Materials — including outgoing Chairman Bill Johnson, R-Ohio — maintained in a hearing Wednesday that the final rule is part of an unworkable regulatory structure for small and midsize independent oil and gas producers.” [Law360, 1/10/24 (=)]

 

 

 

Fossil Energy

 

US Oil Lobby Launches Eight-Figure Ad Blitz Amid Record Fossil Fuel Extraction — “The American oil lobby has launched an eight-figure media campaign this week promoting the idea that fossil fuels are ‘vital’ to global energy security, alarming climate experts. ‘US natural gas and oil play a key role in supplying the world with cleaner, more reliable energy,’ the new initiative’s website says. The campaign comes amid record fossil fuel extraction in the US, and as the industry is attempting to capitalize on the war in Gaza to escalate production even further, climate advocates say. Launched Tuesday by the nation’s top fossil fuel interest group, the Lights on Energy campaign will work to ‘dismantle policy threats’ to the sector, the American Petroleum Institute (API) CEO, Mike Sommers, told CNN in an interview this week. The ad blitz – which uses images of farm vehicles, footballers under floodlights and concert goers holding phones lit up – comes after US oil production reached a record high in 2023, which was also the hottest year ever recorded.” [The Guardian, 1/10/24 (+)]

 

The Hand That Feeds You — “The fossil fuel industry’s leading trade group, the American Petroleum Institute, plans to aggressively target rollbacks of some of the Biden administration’s crowning climate policy achievements — and it isn’t afraid to work with a Republican president to do so if the White House flips in 2024, CEO Mike Sommers laid out at an event on Wednesday. API supports repealing a number of provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act, particularly the methane fee that charges companies for their methane leaks, Sommers told reporters at the association’s annual event in D.C. It does want to maintain the legislation’s 45Q tax credits paying companies to store their carbon dioxide, he said. He added that there was ‘no question’ that API would work with a Republican administration to roll back IRA provisions the industry didn’t like. The remarks come after former President Donald Trump said late last year he would gut the IRA if he wins another term.” [Politico, 1/11/24 (=)]

 

Chesapeake, Southwestern To Merge As New Gas Behemoth — “Chesapeake CHK -1.49%decrease; red down pointing triangle Energy and Southwestern Energy SWN -0.29%decrease; red down pointing triangle have agreed to merge in an all-stock transaction valued at $7.4 billion that creates one of the largest natural-gas producers in the U.S. The companies on Thursday said the value is based on Chesapeake’s closing price as of Wednesday. With a market capitalization of more than $17 billion, the combined company will aim to take advantage of a resurgent boom in natural gas. The U.S. is now the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas. Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Southwestern and Chesapeake were close to a merger. The deal strengthens Chesapeake’s position in Louisiana and the Gulf Coast, where most refrigeration plants that then ship LNG around the world are based.” [The Wall Street Journal, 1/11/24 (=)]

 

Op-Ed: Want To Attract Gen Z Workers? Reduce Methane Emissions — According to Jackson Paul, “It is in large part thanks to the Permian Basin that Texas remains a global leader in energy production. To maintain this position, however, Texan firms must continue to innovate to create energy more cleanly, efficiently and cheaply than ever before, and limiting methane emissions is key to achieving this goal. Methane is a byproduct of oil and natural gas drilling, which, if properly stored, can be used for agriculture, in certain manufacturing processes, or to generate heat or electricity. However, if the proper infrastructure for utilizing methane does not exist, it is often cheaper to simply vent the methane into the atmosphere — forgoing the profit from selling the methane to keep costs down. Additionally, drillers will sometimes unintentionally, or even unknowingly, leak methane during drilling. These methane leaks are bad both for our economy and our environment. As a greenhouse gas, methane is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide, and as a pollutant, it is responsible for around 1 million premature deaths a year worldwide, according to a U.N. report. About $2 billion worth of methane is lost each year to the atmosphere, further damaging our climate without any corresponding benefit to consumers.” [The Dallas Morning News, 1/11/24 (+)]

 

 

 

Greens See AI As A Tool In ESA Work — “Artificial intelligence tools can help protect and restore threatened and endangered species, an environmental group says in a report that peers ahead into the Endangered Species Act’s next half-century. Prepared by the Defenders of Wildlife’s Center for Conservation Innovation, the report is billed as a look at ‘The Next 50 Years and Beyond’ for the landmark environmental law that just finished its first 50 years. ‘The Endangered Species Act’s commitment to using best available science makes it an incredibly powerful and flexible tool in the fight against extinction,’ said Lindsay Rosa, vice president of conservation research and innovation for Defenders and head of the group’s Center for Conservation Innovation. Much of the report looks back at the ESA’s history, as well as its successes with recovered species like the American alligator and the lesser-known Okaloosa darter. The report also puts a spotlight on the Fish and Wildlife Service’s ESA staffing and budget shortfalls.” [E&E News, 1/10/24 (+)]

 

 

 

Colorado

 

Thompson Divide Withdrawal Package Nears Submission To The Sec. Of The Interior As U.S. Forest Service Considers The Last Of Public Comment — “The public comment period on the draft environmental assessment (EA) and finding of no significant impact (FONSI) published by the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) on Dec. 7 closed Monday, ending the public comment opportunity on a massive proposed mineral withdrawal in the Western Slope. The Thompson Divide is a 224,713-acre swath of mostly public land across Pitkin, Garfield, and Gunnison counties, though the economic impact of the land also includes Delta County. USFS holds the majority of the land, 200,518 acres — of which approximately 78,000 acres fall in the White River National Forest. Portions of the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre, and Gunnison national forests account for about 122,000 acres. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) holds 15,465 acres, and 8,700 acres are privately-owned land with federal minerals underground, according to USFS.” [The Aspen Times, 1/10/24 (=)]

 

Idaho

 

$138 Million Investment To Support Wildland Firefighting Announced In Boise — “Wildland fire management is getting more support to the tune of $138 million as part of President Biden’s Investing in America agenda. During a visit to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise on Tuesday, Acting Deputy Secretary of the Interior Laura Daniel-Davis announced the national investment. Through the agenda and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, $1.5 billion is being invested in wildland firefighting support over five years. Daniel-Davis announced the $138 million investment in fiscal year 2024 will go toward training, helping reduce the risk of extreme wildfires, rehabilitating burned areas and advancing fire science. ‘In Idaho, to date, the Interior Department has allocated more than $17 million from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for plant fuels management, and importantly, postfire rehabilitation projects,’ Daniel-Davis said. Boise Mayor Lauren McLean and the Bureau of Land Management were also in attendance for Tuesday’s event at the National Interagency Fire Center campus.” [KTVB-TV, 1/10/24 (+)]

 

Interior Announces New Wildfire Spending — “An allocation of $138 million from the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will go toward helping protect communities from the risk of wildfires through better firefighter training, more fire breaks and other means, a top Interior Department official said Monday. Modernizing firefighter training, reducing the risk of extreme fires, rehabilitating burned areas and advancing fire science are among targets for the funding. ‘As climate change drives increasingly extreme wildfires across the nation, the Interior Department is expanding the nation’s preparedness to address wildfire activity while building climate resilience across landscapes and communities,’ acting deputy secretary Laura Daniel-Davis said. ‘We are accelerating the pace and scale of efforts to reduce the risk of extreme wildfires and help affected areas recover, investing in improved science and technology to enable a more strategic approach, and ensuring our wildland fire workforce receives the support it deserves.’” [Capital Press, 1/10/24 (+)]

 

‘Another Busy Season’: $138 Million Investment In Wildland Fire Management Announced In Boise — “Wildland fire management is a year-round endeavor, even with snow covering Idaho rooftops. On Tuesday while visiting the National Interagency Fire Center, Acting Deputy Secretary of the Interior Laura Daniel-Davis announced a $138 million national investment to support wildland fire management. The funds are part of President Biden’s Investing in America agenda and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which is investing $1.5 billion over five years to support wildland fire management across the United States. According to Daniel-Davis, the department has allocated over $70 million to Idaho from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for post-fire rehabilitation projects and plant fuels management. Over $22 million of those funds have already been spent. While it’s unclear how much of these new funds will be directly allocated to Idaho, the state will likely benefit from the funds indirectly, as they’re slated to be used to fight wildfires in the west.” [Idaho Press, 1/10/24 (+)]

 

$138 Million Investment To Firefighting Across The US Announced In Boise — “Acting Deputy Secretary of the Interior Laura Daniel-Davis was at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise on Jan. 9 where she announced a $138 million allocation from President Biden’s Investing in America agenda to help combat wildfires across the country. The department is investing $1.5 billion over the next 5 years into wildland firefighting through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law which was enacted in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. With the Jan. 9 announcement, which builds on an overall $647 million allocated since 2022, over half of that money has now been allocated. … ‘As climate change drives increasingly extreme wildfires across the nation, the Interior Department is expanding the nation’s preparedness to address wildfire activity while building climate resilience across landscapes and communities,’ said the Acting Deputy Secretary. ‘Through President Biden’s Investing in America agenda, we are accelerating the pace and scale of efforts to reduce the risk of extreme wildfires and help affected areas recover, investing in improved science and technology to enable a more strategic approach, and ensuring our wildland fire workforce receives the support it deserves.’” [KIVI-TV, 1/10/24 (+)]

 

Utah

 

10th Circ. Urged To Keep National Monuments Designation — “Native American tribes and environmental organizations have urged the Tenth Circuit to uphold a lower court decision dismissing Utah and other groups’ challenge to President Joe Biden’s redesignation of large swaths of the state as part of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments. The Hopi Tribe, Navajo Nation, Pueblo of Zuni, and Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, as well as the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and other green groups, argued in their Tuesday briefs that the plaintiffs fighting Biden’s restoration of the national monuments lack standing to press their claims. The tribes argued that U.S. District Judge David Nuffer correctly ruled that Utah, its residents and two counties cannot challenge Biden’s restoration of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante because the president’s proclamations are not reviewable by a district court. ‘Longstanding Supreme Court precedent has upheld the president’s broad discretion to create national monuments,’ the tribes said. ‘The Antiquities Act exudes deference to create national monuments in nearly every clause, and President Biden’s proclamations establishing Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante National Monuments easily comport with the statute.’” [Law360, 1/10/24 (=)]

 

Tribes: Appeals Court Should Dismiss Utah Monuments Case — “Native American tribes accused Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R) and local officials of ‘political theater’ in their bid to roll back the boundaries of two national monuments and urged a federal appeals court to dismiss the lawsuit. In a brief filed Monday in the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the Native American Rights Fund and the Navajo Nation Department of Justice argued that a lower court judge ruled correctly last year when he dismissed Utah’s dual challenges to the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments. ‘Unfortunately, the state and counties are determined to use taxpayer money to pursue a case that is based on a list of grievances and political theater rather than on legal standing,’ Matthew Campbell, the Native American Rights Fund’s deputy director, said in a statement. NARF represents the Hopi Tribe, Pueblo of Zuni and Ute Mountain Ute Tribe in the lawsuits. The legal battle centers on President Joe Biden’s use of the Antiquities Act of 1906 to reset the boundaries of both national monuments, which former President Donald Trump slashed in 2017 at the behest of Utah Republican lawmakers.” [E&E News, 1/10/24 (=)]

 

West Virginia

 

Greens Sue Forest Service To Protect Tiny Fish In West Virginia — “Conservationists claim the Forest Service has violated the Endangered Species Act by allowing coal hauling in West Virginia’s Monongahela National Forest without taking the necessary steps to protect a tiny fish that inhabits the region. In a lawsuit filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, environmental groups said that coal hauling, or carrying oversized coal loads and supplies, on gravel roads in the Cherry River watershed has polluted waterways and harmed the endangered candy darter. ‘I’m appalled by the Forest Service’s blatant disregard for the candy darter and the Cherry River watershed,’ said Meg Townsend, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a statement. ‘These beautiful little fish are on the knife’s edge of extinction, and they can’t withstand any more harm from the coal industry.’ The candy darter — a teal, red and orange fish that only resides in portions of Virginia and West Virginia — was initially listed as endangered in 2018. Later, the government listed 370 stream miles as critical habitat for the fish.” [E&E News, 1/10/24 (=)]

 

 

 

We’re In Danger Of Falling Off A ‘Snow Loss Cliff.’ Here’s What That Means. — “Snow is piling up across much of the United States this week, but new research shows this is the exception rather than the rule: Seasonal snow levels in the Northern Hemisphere have dwindled over the past 40 years due to climate change. Even so, snow responds to a warming planet in different ways. ‘A warmer atmosphere is also an atmosphere that can hold more water,’ said Alex Gottlieb, a graduate student at Dartmouth College and lead author on the new study in the journal Nature. That can increase precipitation, spurring snow, or even extreme storms and blizzards that offset the effect of snowmelt amid warmer temperatures. That has made it harder for scientists to calculate how snowpack has changed over time. But the new findings reveal that areas of the United States and Europe are nearing a tipping point where they could face a disastrous loss of snow for decades to come. ‘Once you pass this threshold, which we refer to as the snow loss cliff ... with even modest amounts of warming you can get these really accelerating losses,’ Gottlieb said.” [The Washington Post, 1/10/24 (+)]

 

Climate Change Is Shrinking Snowpack In Many Places, Study Shows. And It Will Get Worse — “River basins around the world that were once regularly snowbound are increasingly seeing their snowpack shrink and climate change is to blame, a new study found. ‘Many of the world’s most populous basins are hovering on the precipice of rapid snow declines,’ concluded the study of snow amounts since 1981 in Wednesday’s journal Nature. That’s because the study found a key threshold for the future of snowpacks in the Northern Hemisphere: 17.6 degrees (-8 degrees Celsius). In places where the winter temperature average is colder than that, the snowpack often survives because it’s cold enough. But areas warmer than 17.6 degrees for a winter average tend to see their winter wonderland dreams melt like the wicked witch of the west. And it’s happening fast.” [Associated Press, 1/10/24 (+)]

 

Big Thing: Winter Roars To Life In The U.S. — “The winter of 2023-24 has suddenly shifted from being delayed, with snow-starved ski areas and balmy northern cities, to highly active, Andrew writes. The big picture: The multiple winter storms crossing the country can be partially traced to weather patterns high above the Arctic, specifically the contortions of the polar vortex and a strong area of high pressure meandering near Greenland. Yes, but: A new study published Wednesday found that over the long term, there is a detectable, climate change-related trend toward less spring snow cover in parts of the Northern Hemisphere, including in places where the liquid contained in the snowpack is crucial to water supplies.” [Axios, 1/11/24 (+)]

 

What Are Snow Droughts And Is Climate Change Making Them Worse? — “Scientists distinguish among an expanding variety of droughts. There are droughts when it doesn’t rain. There are droughts when soil is too dry, when rivers and groundwater levels fall, and when water storage can’t meet society’s needs. Increasingly, researchers also are talking about snow droughts, which a new study in the journal Nature links to climate change. There are also connections between snow droughts and wildfires.” [Bloomberg, 1/10/24 (+)]

 

The U.S. Is Missing A Ton Of Snow — Even With Recent Storms — “Storms are hammering much of the northern U.S., a welcome relief for some parts of the country that have received little or no snow in recent months. A sluggish start to winter through early January has constrained ski areas and raised early concerns about the water supply for summer. ‘We’re playing catch-up now,’ said Dan McEvoy, a regional climatologist at the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada. About 800 monitoring stations track snow accumulation in the West, and more than 90% of those stations reported measurements below the median for this time of year, McEvoy said. It’s not unusual for parts of the West to trail seasonal averages, but it is rare for so many regions to fall behind at once. In western states, the size of the snowpack influences how much water farmers can use, how challenging the wildfire season will be and how much power hydropower dams can generate. Climate scientists expect snowpack to decrease as the climate warms, further threatening a supply that’s already strained in most parts of the West.” [CNBC, 1/10/24 (+)]

 

VIDEO: Snow Is Disappearing As The Planet Warms - A New Study Shows Who's Losing The Most — “A new analysis found a declining trend in snowpack across 82 out of 169 major Northern Hemisphere river basins, including the Colorado River in the U.S., which winds its way along the state of Utah.” [CNN, 1/11/24 (+)]

 

Snowpack At Record-Low Levels To Start 2024 Across Much Of Montana — “Snowpack in many areas of Montana is at record-low levels to start 2024, and above normal precipitation is needed through the rest of the winter in order to get the state back in line with median levels, according to state and federal forecasters. The statewide snowpack sat at 4.7 inches of snow water equivalent as of Wednesday, which is 0.8 inches below the lowest average snowpack seen since 1991 statewide, according to data from the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. That is also more than 3 inches below the median snowpack for Jan. 10 since 1991. While a multi-day blast of Arctic air will bring below-zero temperatures across the state for the next several days, and a few inches of snow, particularly in western Montana, forecasters said in a report released on Jan. 1 that most mountain ranges’ snowpack was only about 30 to 60% of normal for this time of year, and an ongoing lack of precipitation could have dire consequences for the ski industry this winter and water supply moving into the summer.” [Daily Montanan, 1/10/24 (+)]

 

Spring Snowpack Has Shrunk Significantly Over The Last 40 Years Due To Warming — “On the heels of the planet’s hottest year on record, new research out of Dartmouth has found that seasonal snowpack across the Northern Hemisphere has shrunk significantly over the last 40 years due to global warming — potentially putting millions of people at risk of worsening water instability. Between 1981 and 2020, dozens of river basins have seen a significant decline in snow water equivalent, or the amount of water contained in the snow, due to human-caused climate change, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. The sharpest drops — between 10% and 20% per decade — were in the Southwestern and Northeastern United States, as well as Central and Eastern Europe. That includes the Colorado River basin, a key source of water for California and the Southwest, which dwindled to dangerous lows during the most recent drought. The basin has seen spring snowpack declines of about 7% per decade over the last 40 years due to climate change, the study found — or roughly 25% to 30%.” [Los Angeles Times, 1/10/24 (+)]

 

Climate Change Is Driving A Sharp Drop In Snow Levels, Study Finds — “Changing snow patterns have far-reaching consequences, from water shortages to shuttered ski resorts. A new study confirms that human-caused climate change has affected snow patterns across the Northern Hemisphere, including clear declines of snowpack in at least 31 individual river basins. What’s more, the researchers found that when a region warms to an average temperature of 17 degrees Fahrenheit, or minus 8 degrees Celsius, over the whole winter, it appears to reach a tipping point that snow starts to melt away quickly. ‘Beyond that threshold, we kind of see everybody go off a cliff,’ said Justin Mankin, a professor of geography at Dartmouth College and co-author of the study, which was published on Wednesday in Nature. Declines in snowpack, the total mass of snow on the ground, have serious implications for places that depend on spring snow melt as a water source.” [The New York Times, 1/10/24 (+)]

 

Less Snow, Same Blizzards? Climate Change Could Have Weird Effects On Snowfall In US. — “Will climate change mean fewer big snowstorms like the blizzards occurring on both coasts and across the country this week? You might be surprised. Researchers studying how the warming climate is changing snowfall and snowpack are drawing new conclusions about the future of snow, and it’s a mixed bag. Some researchers find overall snowfall declining in many areas, leaving less snow packed into mountain ranges in the spring, while others say the warmer winters won’t prevent some of the more intense snow storms − at least not yet. A new study by two Dartmouth College researchers looked at the decline of spring snowpack in major river basins in the Northern Hemisphere. They concluded the losses may be already be greater than anyone has realized, in part because it’s such a challenging thing to measure. Their study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, linked human-caused warming to declines in snowpack in at least 31 river basins in the hemisphere since 1981.” [USA Today, 1/10/24 (+)]

 

The Beleaguered Whitebark Pine Is In Trouble. Can It Be Saved? — “Sitting atop the highest slopes in western North America, the whitebark pine has adapted to the continent’s harshest growing conditions. Temperatures in the sub-alpine zone where it thrives are often well below zero, snow is measured in feet, and winds often exceed 100 miles an hour. These stout, twisted trees are survivors: The oldest have grown for nearly 13 centuries. But change has come to this high-elevation redoubt, threatening not only the whitebark pine’s survival but that of a host of creatures — from birds to bears — that rely on this keystone species. Warmer temperatures, a fungal disease called white pine blister rust, and swarms of mountain pine beetles have killed hundreds of millions of whitebark pines across the West. Wildfires are taking an increasing toll, and other conifer species are moving upslope in the rapidly changing environment, outcompeting the whitebark for nutrients and moisture. In some areas, including regions within the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem, which has Glacier National Park at its center, more than 90 percent of whitebark pine trees have died. Across the tree’s range, there are more dead trees than live ones, and high-country skylines in many places are marked by their skeletal remains.” [Yale Environment 360, 1/10/24 (+)]

 

 

 

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