CAREER: Historical and projected changes in the spatiotemporal variability of western U.S. snowpack

Mountain snowpack is essential to society: snow sustains water resources for agriculture, municipalities, and energy, and supports healthy ecosystems. Extreme high or low snow conditions can therefore impact water resources and ecosystems. This project aims to advance understanding of how these snow extremes are changing over time by evaluating how widespread snow extremes are and how often conditions swing rapidly from one extreme to the other. To build the scientific workforce prepared to advance our understanding of hydrology for national water security, the researchers working on this project will also collaborate with a non-profit environmental education organization that serves thousands of middle school students each year. This project will use existing snow datasets for future scenarios and will develop a new, spatially distributed ensemble snow dataset across the western U.S. that extends from 1950 to the present. This product will be transformative due to the use of state-of-the-art modeling approaches that allow for high-resolution simulations using an unstructured mesh, simulation of lateral snow transport, and comparison among multiple snow model structures. The project will also support development and delivery of a new snow hydrology lesson plan in which middle school students will collect snow data and compare it with existing snow data products, and will host environmental educators for research opportunities. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria. NSF Award ID: 2541087 | Program: 01002627DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT,01003031DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT,01002930DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT | Principal Investigator: Adrienne Marshall | Institution: Colorado School of Mines, GOLDEN, CO | Award Amount: $448,074 View on NSF Award Search: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award/?AWD_ID=2541087 View on Research.gov: https://www.research.gov/awardapi-service/v1/awards/2541087.html