Constrained Earth system models show a stronger reduction in future Northern Hemisphere snowmelt water

Yuanfang Chai, Chiyuan Miao (), Pierre Gentine, Lawrence Mudryk, Chad W. Thackeray, Wouter R. Berghuijs, Yi Wu, Xuewei Fan, Louise Slater, Qiaohong Sun and Francis Zwiers
Additional contact information
Yuanfang Chai: Beijing Normal University
Chiyuan Miao: Beijing Normal University
Pierre Gentine: Columbia University
Lawrence Mudryk: Environment and Climate Change Canada
Chad W. Thackeray: University of California, Los Angeles
Wouter R. Berghuijs: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Yi Wu: Beijing Normal University
Xuewei Fan: Beijing Normal University
Louise Slater: University of Oxford
Qiaohong Sun: Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology
Francis Zwiers: Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology

Nature Climate Change, 2025, vol. 15, issue 5, 514-520

Abstract: Abstract Although Earth system models (ESMs) tend to overestimate historical land surface warming, they also overestimate snow amounts in the Northern Hemisphere. By combining ground-based datasets and ESMs, we find that this paradoxical phenomenon is predominantly driven by an overestimation of light snowfall frequency. Using spatially distributed emergent constraints, we show that this paradox persists in mid- (2041–2060) and long-term (2081–2100) projections, affecting more than half of the Northern Hemisphere’s land surface. ESMs underestimate the frequency of freezing days by 12–19% and overestimate snow water equivalent by 28–34%. Constrained projections indicate that the raw ESM outputs overestimate future Northern Hemisphere snowmelt water by 12–16% across 53–60% of the Northern Hemisphere’s land surface. This snowmelt water overprediction implies that the amount of water available in the future for agriculture, industry, ecosystems and domestic use may be lower than unadjusted ESM projections suggest.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-025-02308-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcli:v:15:y:2025:i:5:d:10.1038_s41558-025-02308-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nclimate/

DOI: 10.1038/s41558-025-02308-y

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Climate Change is currently edited by Bronwyn Wake

More articles in Nature Climate Change from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().