Sierra Nevada, California 500 Year Snowpack Reconstruction Belmecheri, S.; Babst, F.; Wahl, E.R.; Stahle, D.W.; Trouet, V. Belmecheri, S. Babst, F. Wahl, E.R. Stahle, D.W. Trouet, V. Other Hydroclimate Reconstruction QUDG Quercus douglasii Hook. and Arn. blue oak earth science/paleoclimate/climate reconstructions|tree ring (age,null,null,year Common Era,null,climate reconstructions|tree ring,null,null,N,null) earth science/paleoclimate/climate reconstructions|tree ring (snow water equivalent,null,null,dimensionless,Apr,climate reconstructions|tree ring,null,null,N,first principal component) earth science/paleoclimate/climate reconstructions|tree ring (snow water equivalent,null,null,dimensionless,Apr,climate reconstructions|tree ring,null,null,N,first principal component; low elevation Sites <2129.8m) earth science/paleoclimate/climate reconstructions|tree ring (snow water equivalent,null,null,dimensionless,Apr,climate reconstructions|tree ring,null,null,N,first principal component; high elevation Sites >2669.2m) earth science/paleoclimate/instrumental (snow water equivalent,null,null,dimensionless,Apr,instrumental,null,null,N,first principal component; 1930-2015) earth science/paleoclimate/instrumental (snow water equivalent,null,null,dimensionless,Apr,instrumental,null,null,N,first principal component; low elevation Sites <2129.8m; 1930-2015) earth science/paleoclimate/instrumental (snow water equivalent,null,null,dimensionless,Apr,instrumental,null,null,N,first principal component; high elevation Sites >2669.2m; 1930-2015) earth science/paleoclimate/climate reconstructions|tree ring (snow water equivalent,null,unspecified error upper bound,dimensionless,Apr,climate reconstructions|tree ring,null,null,N,first principal component) earth science/paleoclimate/climate reconstructions|tree ring (snow water equivalent,null,unspecified error lower bound,dimensionless,Apr,climate reconstructions|tree ring,null,null,N,first principal component) earth science/paleoclimate/reconstructions (Sierra Nevada>LATITUDE >LONGITUDE ) California is currently experiencing a record-setting drought that started in 2012 and recently culminated in the first ever mandatory state-wide water restriction. The snowpack conditions in the Sierra Nevada mountains present an ominous sign of the severity of this drought: the 1 April 2015 snow water equivalent (SWE) was at only 5% of its historical average. In the Mediterranean climate of California, with 80% of the precipitation occurring during winter months, Sierra Nevada snowpack plays a critical role in replenishing the state's water reservoirs and provides 30% of its water supply. As a result, a multi-year and severe snowpack decline can acutely impact human and natural systems, including urban and agricultural water supplies, hydroelectric power and wildfire risk. The exceptional character of the 2012-2015 drought has been revealed in millennium-length palaeoclimate records, but no long-term historical context is available for the recent snowpack decline. Here, we present an annually resolved reconstruction of 1 April SWE conditions over the whole Sierra Nevada range for the past 500 years. We combined an extensive compilation of blue oak tree-ring series that reflects large-scale California winter precipitation anomalies with a tree-ring-based California February-March temperature record in a reconstruction that explains 63% of the Sierra Nevada SWE variance over the instrumental period. STUDY NOTES: April 1st Snow Water Equivalent reconstruction using tree-rings and temperature reconstruction (1500-1980) NCDC-Paleoclimatology https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/paleoclimatology-data - Bauer Bruce Investigator : Belmecheri, S. Investigator : Babst, F. Investigator : Wahl, E.R. Investigator : Stahle, D.W. Investigator : Trouet, V. 2015-10-01 ONLINE Files online, ASCII https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/study/19319 https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/treering/reconstructions/california/sierra2015swe.txt https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/treering/reconstructions/california/sierra2015swe.txt English https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/study/19319 https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/treering/reconstructions/california/sierra2015swe.txt Soumaya Belmecheri, Flurin Babst, Eugene R. Wahl, David W. Stahle and Valerie Trouet2015Multi-century evaluation of Sierra Nevada snowpackNature Climate Change10.1038/nclimate2809http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2809.html START YEAR: 1500 AD * END YEAR: 2015 AD -121.422 36.57 118.768 41.583