There is a lot of anecdotal evidence that suggests dirty snowpacks melt off sooner. But the phenomenon is now receiving systematic study by scientists such as Thomas Painter, who recently joined the University of Utah’s geography department to head the Snow Optics Laboratory. "Dust is coming off the disturbed lands of the Colorado Plateau and shortens the snow-cover duration by a month,” Painter said. “That has enormous implications up and down the line.” The dirt on the snowpack comes from dust lifting off the West’s arid lands, long disturbed by agriculture, grazing and urbanization, said Painter, a snow hydrologist who most recently worked for the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder. His field of study is albedo, or the reflectivity of the snowpack. Dust deposition dulls the snow’s albedo, and as a result, less solar radiation is reflected into space. Today’s dirty snowpacks are absorbing twice as much heat as they would were they clean and are disappearing more quickly in the spring.

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