Scientific team calls for better understanding of warming climate at high altitudes. April 23 2015
Rutger's professor James Miller in the Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences collaborated with an international team of scientists on a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change showing evidence that global warming often occurs more rapidly at high altitudes.
They call on improved observations, satellite-based remote sensing and climate model simulations to better understand "elevation-dependent warming" (EDW).
Miller was quoted saying, “Snow reflects a lot of solar radiation so, if that snow melts, radiation gets absorbed by the ground which heats the ground and warms the air, right at the snow line, as the snow melts, it gets significantly warmer. And that’s the same sort of thing that happens in the Arctic when the sea ice melts. In the United States, areas such as southern California and Arizona, which rely on water brought from the mountains, stand to be most adversely impacted. “