The amount of snow falling in Alaska’s Denali National Park, home to North America’s tallest mountain, has more than doubled over the past 150 years, according to a new study.
The amount of snow falling in Alaska’s Denali National Park, home to North America’s tallest mountain, has more than doubled over the past 150 years, according to a new study.
Scientists conducting the research near 20,310-foot Denali (formerly Mt. McKinley) say that an increase in annual snowfall from roughly 8 feet before the Industrial Revolution to 18 feet today is the result of a warming climate as more precipitation falls on the high peaks of the Alaska Range.
Researchers from Dartmouth College, the University of New Hampshire, and the University of Maine at Orono set up a camp at 13,000 feet on Mt. Hunter, near Denali. They then drilled two ice cores that contained records of snowfall dating back 1,200 years. The cores revealed a 117 percent jump in wintertime snowfall on Mt. Hunter since the mid-19th century.
“We were shocked when we first saw how much snowfall has increased,” Eric Osterberg, an assistant professor of earth sciences at Dartmouth and the study’s lead investigator, said in a statement. “We had to check and double-check our results to make sure of the findings.”
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Figure: Time series shows the dramatic doubling of snowfall around North America's highest peaks since the beginning of the Industrial Age. Inset shows summer (red) and winter (blue) snowfall since 1870. FIGURE PROVIDED BY DOMINIC WINSKI / DARTMOUTH
