Snow-bound Italy
Santa Claus may someday need wheels for his sleigh - satellites show a decreasing amount of snow in the Northern Hemisphere. A new analysis of snow cover observed by satellites shows record lows in Eurasia for June each year since 2008. In addition, three of the past five years have seen record low cover in North America. This is the lowest June snow extent since satellite observations began some 45 years ago. June snow cover is found to be falling much faster than expected from climate models, and is disappearing even quicker than summertime Arctic sea-ice. These results, published in Geophysical Research Letters in October and based on snow chart data from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), are consistent with indications of a decline in monthly-average snow mass, published last year as part of ESA's GlobSnow project. The results show that the maximum amount of snow across the Northern Hemisphere is slowly falling, while spring snow - particularly at high latitudes - is melting significantly earlier.
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