This story was originally published in High Country News.
Gothic Mountain stood strong as fierce winds battered its peak, overlooking the cabins nestled in Gothic, Colorado. This remote outpost is only accessible by skis during the harsh alpine winters of the valley. Plumes of snow would briefly form clouds before vanishing into thin air.
While most people might not notice the snow disappearing, in a region where water availability is dwindling, every snowflake counts. Each winter, a certain amount of the Rocky Mountain West’s snowpack evaporates into the atmosphere, including the snow on Gothic Mountain near Crested Butte, a popular ski-resort town.
In the East River watershed, part of the Colorado River Basin, a group of researchers at Gothic’s Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL) is focusing on sublimation to solve this mystery. Sublimation is when snow in the high country skips the liquid phase and transforms directly into vapor. This phenomenon could account for anywhere between 10 to 90 percent of snow loss, creating uncertainty for water managers trying to predict future water availability.
Measuring how much snow accumulates and melts is possible, but accurately determining the amount lost to the atmosphere remains a challenge, according to Jessica Lundquist, a researcher from the University of Washington. Supported by the National Science Foundation, Lundquist led the Sublimation of Snow project in Gothic during the 2022–’23 winter season to investigate snow loss and the environmental conditions driving it.
Lundquist describes this problem as a “nasty, wicked” one, as it is difficult to see and measure sublimation. Additionally, the effects of climate change further complicate the predictions of water availability and the proportion of water that ends up in the atmosphere.
The melted snow from Gothic Mountain replenishes the streams and rivers that flow into the Colorado River. Insufficient runoff puts even more strain on a system already burdened by persistent drought, climate change, and increased demand. In 2021, snowpack levels near the region’s headwaters were close to the historical average, but the snowmelt that filled the Colorado River’s tributaries was only 30 percent of average.
Julie Vano, the research director at the Aspen Global Change Institute, is working to decipher the science behind these processes to assist water managers. She questions, “It just wasn’t there. Where did the water go?”
As the Western region continues to dry up, accurate predictions of spring water inflow become crucial for water managers. Sublimation is one of the significant unknown factors contributing to water loss, along with transpiration and soil-moisture levels, according to Ian Billick, the executive director of RMBL. Addressing this uncertainty is essential to balancing the water budget.
The East River’s tributaries ultimately flow into the Colorado River, supplying water to about 40 million people in seven western states, various indigenous tribes, and parts of Mexico. This watershed has become a convergence of more than a century’s worth of biological observations, many focused on understanding the water’s lifecycle.
Lundquist’s project adds to this growing knowledge base. To explore the complex processes of sublimation, the team installed over 100 instruments in an alpine meadow named Kettle Ponds, just south of Gothic.
Lundquist says, “No one’s ever done it right before. And so we are trying our very best to measure absolutely everything.”
Throughout winter, graduate students Daniel Hogan and Eli Schwat, who work under Lundquist, made regular trips from their snow-covered cabin in Gothic to Kettle Ponds. Equipped with skis fitted with skins for better grip, they trekked through the snow, hauling their gear on sleds.
In March, Hogan and Schwat dug a pit outside the canopy of instruments and recorded the snow’s temperature, density, and the structure of individual snowflakes at different depths. These factors impact the snowpack’s vulnerability to sublimation.
Hogan compares the measurements taken throughout the winter to a book, with each snow pit serving as a single page. Analyzing the collected data will hopefully provide water managers with a better understanding of how sublimation affects the region’s water supply, aiding more accurate predictions in a future characterized by even hotter and drier conditions.
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