A new study published in the Journal of Hydrometeorology has revealed that the Northern Hemisphere has seen a significant decline in snow cover in the last 50 years, with snow presence in the Arctic and southern latitudes of the Northern hemisphere usually decreasing.
Researchers used weekly satellite flyovers between 1967 and 2021 to evaluate snow cover patterns, dividing it into grid sections for analysis. The study found that snow cover is dropping in nearly twice as many grids as it is progressing, and hundreds of grids showed at least 97.5% assurance that snow cover was declining.
The high albedo and insulating properties of snow play a significant role in the global energy balance, influencing regional surface temperatures and continental thermal stability.
The study’s sophisticated mathematical models and statistical methodologies are believed to be the first fully reliable estimate of snow cover patterns in the Northern Hemisphere due to the precision of the researchers’ statistical methodology.
However, the study also found that some satellite data collected in mountainous places were unreliable, indicating no snow in the winter and several weeks of snow in the winter.
This research can serve as a resource to the scientific community for further analysis of snow cover data.
