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It's surprisingly hard to say exactly how much water trapped in the Rocky Mountain snowpack will actually reach the Colorado River in a given year. In this report for NPR's Morning Edition, KUNC's Alex Hager explores how Sublimation of Snow Project scientists are looking for ways to help people downstream know how much water to expect.

KUNC Colorado reporter Alex Hager followed the Sublimation of Snow Project team in the mountains above Crested Butte, Colorado, as they dug for clues to how much Rocky Mountain snow disappears into the air before it has a chance to melt and reach the Colorado River.

A University of Washington project, aided by the Department of Energy's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility, leverages a rare confluence of collaborators to study snow sublimation.

As the impacts of climate change intensify, experts predict fundamental shifts in mountain hydrologic cycles, with consequences for snow-reliant people and ecosystems. California can serve as a case study to help connect the dots between rising temperatures and regional atmospheric patterns.

In January 2023, the Sublimation of Snow project team skied out to our field site at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory for an Intensive Observation Period – a chance to validate instrument readings, align data approaches, and connect with the landscape and weather of this remarkable research location.

Field notes on the October 2022 install and reflections from the Sublimation of Snow Project Principal Investigator Jessica Lundquist.

A single snowflake hadn’t yet fallen when a team of snow researchers descended on a small town in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains this past fall. But that was intentional — they were preparing for the coming winter’s mission to answer a longstanding research question: What happens to snow after it falls?

In October, Sublimation of Snow project research partners installed a suite of field instruments to fill in data gaps on the poorly understood process of how snow behaves in windy mountain environments.

“I've never witnessed such extreme weather events. It was the first time that I realized…how bad things could be in that region, how quickly things were changing.” -- Dr. Heïdi Sevestre, glaciologist