Objectives

1. Develop a database of extreme regional snow ablation events throughout the United States over the past 50 years.

2. Determine hydrologically significant ablation events for individual basins identified in the first objective.

3. Quantify the global and synoptic-scale forcings associated with these events, with particular attention to the role of major atmospheric and oceanic teleconnections.

4. Ascertain the “pathways” for these relationships through the frequency of common synoptic patterns and their associated surface energy budget components.

5. Establish how these global and synoptic-scale forcings are manifested in future climate scenarios.