Rio Grande Reduced To A Trickle; What Remains Under Siege - NYT
FABENS, Tex. On maps, the mighty Rio Grande meanders 1,900 miles, from southern Colorados San Juan Mountains to the Gulf of Mexico. But on the ground, farms and cities drink all but a trickle before it reaches the canal that irrigates Bobby Skovs farm outside El Paso, hundreds of miles from the gulf.
Now, shriveled by the historic drought that has consumed California and most of the Southwest, that trickle has become a moist breath. Its been progressively worse since the early 2000s, Mr. Skov said during a pickup-truck tour of his spread last week, but he said his farm would muddle through if the trend did not continue. The jurys out on that, he said.
Droughts grip on California grabs all the headlines. But from Texas to Arizona to Colorado, the entire West is under siege by changing weather patterns that have shrunk snowpacks, raised temperatures, spurred evaporation and reduced reservoirs to record lows.
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Rising temperatures are the reason. The federal Bureau of Reclamation, which manages much water in the West, reported in 2013 that average temperatures in the upper Rio Grande, in Colorado and New Mexico, rose almost 2.8 degrees during the 40 years ending in 2011 and could rise an additional four to six degrees by 2100. The 40-year increase, twice the global average, was beyond anything seen in the last 11,300 years. Future warming has the potential to cause significant environmental harm and change the regions hydrology, the bureaus analysis stated.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/13/us/mighty-rio-grande-now-a-trickle-under-siege.html