The Rocky Mountain Climate Organization, a Colorado-based group that monitors climate change in the region, predicts that snowpack and snowmelt in the Colorado River Basin could decline by as much as 24 percent by 2039 and up to 30 percent by 2069, based upon current precipitation and warming trends.

That has tremendous implications for a region that depends so heavily on the Colorado River Basin's water supply for its existence. In fact, study co-authors Stephen Saunders and Maureen Maxwell say the report's findings should be nothing less than a call to arms for those who call the West home.

"In the West, no other effect of climate disruption rivals in importance how it endangers our already too-scarce snowpacks and water supplies," the study said. "With the inherent vulnerability of the dry West to even small changes in the snow-water cycle, these risks alone present ample reason for Westerners to take action to protect this special region."

Among the the key findings of the report, which used data from the National Oceanic Atmospheric Association (NOAA):

l Snowpack levels in the Colorado River Basin have been below average in 11 of the last 16 years, a trend that is echoed in snowpack totals in the Columbia River, Missouri River and Rio Grande river basins.

l In each of the West's major river basins, the most recent five-year period was the hottest in the past 110 years. In the Colorado basin, temperatures were 2.1 degrees hotter than the historic average.

l In what the study calls a "signature of climate disruption," the extent of the warming between 1995 and 2004 was greatest in January, February and March - consistent with predictions that temperature increases resulting from global warming will be at their highest in winter and spring. This also is when warming has the greatest impacts on snowpack and the release of snowmelt from the mountains.

The upshot, the report says, is that the water-scarce West could soon be getting by with even less as a result of smaller snowpacks, earlier snowmelt, more evaporation and dryness and more flooding because of an increase in the volume of stream flows due to higher spring temperatures.

Groundwater supplies, which account for 28 percent of the West's water needs, also could be at risk because an estimated 50 percent to 90 percent of aquifer recharge comes from snowmelt.

"This is an astoundingly important report," said Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson, who attended a Thursday morning news conference unveiling the study. "It should serve as a wake-up call for governments, businesses and individuals."

Climate change has certainly gotten the attention of the Utah ski industry, whose existence - and a significant chunk of the state's tourism revenue - is based on the quantity and quality of snow that falls in the Wasatch Mountains.

"Our mantra is 'The Greatest Snow on Earth,' said Onno Wieringa, general manager of Alta Ski Area. "We don't want it to become 'Warm, wet and less.' "

Wieringa says his resort and the others are always prepared for short-term fluctuations in snow totals. Longer-term forecasts, as indicated by the study, are more troubling. But he refuses to believe that the ski industry faces eventual extinction because of global warming.

"If you have no faith in the ability of mankind to make a change, then it's doomsday," Wieringa said. "But the way I look at it, we've identified the problem and we know what we have to do. And the thing is, so many of the changes are so easy to make."

In the absence of leadership from Washington, D.C., those changes have begun to emerge at the local level. Salt Lake City, as had been well publicized, is moving to reduce greenhouse emissions to 21 percent below 1990 levels, in accordance with the Kyoto Accords. Anderson says the city is already more than 70 percent of the way there.

Park City also has taken an aggressive posture toward reducing its reliance on polluting fossil fuels, purchasing 23 percent of its electricity through Utah Power's Blue Skies program, tranferring the city's transit system to bio-diesel fuel and making significant open space purchases.

"We're now seeing countries in Europe that have passed the 40 percent mark in their use of renewable energy," said Park City Mayor Dana Williams. "In the U.S., it's 1 percent. We can do better."

Read the report

The Rocky Mountain Climate Organization's report, "Less Snow, Less Water: Climate Disruption in the West," can be found at http://www.rockymountain climate.org.

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