Thanks to higher temperatures and lower precipitation levels, the Sierra Nevada snowpack in Northern California has dipped to its lowest level in the past 500 years, a new study has found.

This is just the latest in a series of studies of the declining Western snowpack, which can fuel wildfires, limit drinking water and cause agricultural irrigation systems to run dry, all symptoms of a changing climate.

In the latest paper, researchers from the University of Arizona used previously published tree-ring data, which reflects annual winter precipitation from 1405 to 2005, as well as snowpack measures since the '30s. The findings indicate a loss “unprecedented” not just for the modern era, but for the past five centuries.

"Our study really points to the extreme character of the 2014-15 winter,” Valerie Trouet, an associate professor of dendrochronology at the UA Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, said in a press release. “… We should be prepared for this type of snow drought to occur much more frequently because of rising temperatures.”

Typically, a climate such as California's relies on wintertime precipitation to gradually melt and supply water for drinking and agricultural use throughout the year. The lack of snow is a major contributing factor to the California drought.

Benjamin Cook, a climate scientist with NASA who was not involved with the research, told that the new research adds “another piece of the puzzle in an increasingly converging picture of a really exceptional California drought.”

Just recently, unrelated data found the snowpack in the Cascade Mountains of Washington has suffered “disastrous” losses. The glaciers in that region are now as small as they have been in the past 3,000 years, . On Washington's third-highest mountain, Mt. Baker, the ice is melting off the glacier at a staggering rate of three inches per day, Mauri Pelto, a member of the survey team that keeps track of glacial volume in the North Cascade Range, told The Seattle Times.

The new paper, "Multi-century evaluation of Sierra Nevada snowpack," was published Monday inNature Climate Change.

MORE ON WEATHER.COM: Striking Photos of the California Drought

Aerial view overlooking landscaping on April 4, 2015, in Ramona, Calif. (Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images)