Winter is the fastest warming season East of the Mississippi River, with winter warming hotspots (greater than +2.5ºC since 1970) concentrated in the northeastern United States. Over the past 100 years, the region has lost 2-3 weeks of sustained winter conditions across low elevations and some high montane areas. Most of what we know about winter climate change in the northeastern US comes from low-elevation weather stations in populated areas, with a scarcity of snowpack and weather observations across elevational gradients in more remote areas. This differs from the western U.S., where the Natural Resources and Conservation Service Snow Telemetry (SNOTEL) network monitors snowpack, weather, and other climate elements at over 900 automated stations providing critical data for hydrological monitoring and water resource management. The Northeast Snow Survey (NESS) Feasibility Study was funded in the FY 2023 federal omnibus bill to identify interest-holder needs for snowpack and weather monitoring and design a station network and supporting operations within the northeastern U.S. to meet those needs. This project will also allow Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) to continue to engage citizen scientists in snow monitoring through Community Snow Observations, a useful source of on-the-ground data to assess siting.
The University of New Hampshire will lead the overall Northeast Snow Survey feasibility study, funded with tri-partisan support in the Snow Survey Northeast Expansion Act (FY2023). The University of New Hampshire leads are Dr. Elizabeth Burakowski and Dr. Alix Contosta, in the Earth Systems Research Center at the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space.
Drs. Contosta and Burakowski have published foundational papers regarding changing winters in the Northeastern United States. Over the past century, winter in the region has shortened by three weeks, driven largely by earlier onset of spring (Contosta et al. 2019). The future of winter includes loss of deeper snowpacks and an increase in the days above freezing that could be mitigated by reductions in the emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases (Burakowski et al. 2022).
The Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) is coordinating stakeholder engagement, due to our reach at the regional scale and our network of partners across federal, state, NGO, local, and private sectors.
Research Director Dr. Sarah Nelson will serve as the lead for AMC, with Staff Scientist Georgia Murray and Research Assistant Kyler Phillips working on coordination with existing climate monitoring sites in the White Mountains, assessing potential NESS locations across the region using a geographic information systems framework, and overseeing stakeholder engagement.
AMC is working with the Forest Stewards Guild's Maine-based team on stakeholder engagement. The Forest Stewards Guild is a 50l(c)3 nonprofit organization with a mission of promoting and practicing ecological and socially responsible forestry. The Guild partners frequently with federal and state agencies, conservation organizations, Tribal Nations, and universities to implement projects that advance forest stewardship in forested regions across the country. In the Northeast, the Guild has a strong base of work in forest climate adaptation science and practice. A stakeholder workshop is tentatively planned for an AMC location, such as the Highland Center.
The University of Vermont team is led by Joshua Beneš, the Assistant Director for the Natural Areas and Mountain Environmental Science (NAMES) Research Initiative. Beneš has been supporting research activities on and around Mount Mansfield in Vermont and has been coordinating monthly meetings with partners across the region to develop a regional group of mountain observatories for climate change monitoring and research. This effort includes coordination with snow and climate scientists across the region, who will be key partners in NESS.
Beneš works closely with faculty, post-doctoral associates, and students who manage the Cold Regions Summit to Shore Environmental Observation Network. The network manages snow and meteorological monitoring stations from nearby Lake Champlain to the Summit of Mount Mansfield and across the state to the Kittredge Hills (Sleepers River Research Watershed). This network will be leveraged to develop a new mountain weather observatory network that will include Whiteface Mountain in New York and Mount Washington in New Hampshire. Some of these monitoring stations may be a good fit for placement of NESS monitoring infrastructure in the future.
UVM is also the only institution in the northeast that is a member of the Cooperative Institute for Research to Operations in Hydrology (CIROH). CIROH is a national consortium of science and services to provide actionable water resources intelligence to improve a national water model and flood forecasting. There are active projects that focus on snow through this cooperative effort. NESS will support the development of infrastructure that will help improve models and flood forecasts throughout the region as they relate to snowmelt.
Dr. Chris Nadeau of The Schoodic Institute, the non-profit partner of Acadia National Park in Maine, conducts research on climate change in mountain environments, with a focus on science-based strategies for managing forest and summit ecosystems, as well as other research and monitoring. Dr. Nadeau's team will be leading a review of existing literature on manual and automated snow observations in the northeastern United States.