From mavensnotebook.com – A new study co-authored by UC Merced researchers assesses the effect of a warming climate in pushing the elevation of snow to rain higher during a storm, increasing runoff and the risk of flooding. “With climate models projecting a dramatic increase in extreme-precipitation events in the basin, 3.6 °F of warming could push the average transition elevation 1,000 feet higher, meaning less snow and more rain falling in higher-elevation areas,” said lead study author Guotao Cui, a postdoctoral scholar with UC Merced’s Sierra Nevada Research Institute. “Moreover, compared to the historical conditions, the same transition-elevation uncertainty in climate-warming conditions nearly triples its impacts on runoff-forecasting uncertainty, posing additional challenges to flood management.” (more)