Michiel van den broeke of utrecht university in the netherlands and colleagues began by modelling the difference in annual snowfall and snowmelt in greenland between 2003 and 2008 to reveal the net ice loss for each year .
A study last year in the american journal of tropical medicine and hygiene suggested that early snowmelt in western states had led to drier soil in rodent burrows and fewer fleas to spread plague .
While the date of maximum snowmelt varies from year to year , peak snowmelt now arrives an average of two-and-a-half weeks earlier than it did in 1961 , when peak snowmelt was first measured .
