Western Water Managers Grappling With Drier, Hotter West; Upper CO Basin Facing Permanent Shortfall

[hatrack]

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A senior climate researcher and scientist at Colorado State University, Udall continues to get the attention of water managers with studies that tie rising temperatures to declining river levels. Udall recently published a paper, along with Mu Xiao and Dennis Lettenmaier, on the declining flows of the Colorado River. The paper found that flows in the upper Colorado River Basin declined by 16.5 percent from 1916 to 2014, while annual precipitation increased only slightly, by 1.4 percent.

By conducting experiments with a model that uses temperature and precipitation as inputs, the researchers found that “53 percent of the decreasing runoff trend is associated with unprecedented basin-wide warming, which has reduced snowpack and increased plant water use,” Udall explained. “The remaining 47 percent of the trend is associated mostly with reduced winter precipitation in four highly productive sub-basins, all located in Colorado.”

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Jim Lochhead, the CEO and manager of Denver Water, said during his remarks at the Colorado Water Congress meeting that the impact of climate change goes even beyond supply issues. “A warming climate is something we’ve built into our scenario planning process, but it’s not just a water supply concern,” Lochhead said, also citing wildfires and the resulting runoff into reservoirs and rivers, and the increased cost for water treatment from “warmer water” and “emerging contaminants.”

He also said Denver Water no longer thinks that the past is a reliable guide to the future, citing the “over-assumptions of water supply” in interstate compacts like the 1922 Colorado River Compact, the state’s water rights system, which is based on “past hydrology,” and state and federal regulations that are based on “past water temperatures and water quality parameters.” “Those are all geared to the past and not to the future,” Lochhead said.

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https://www.newsdeeply.com/water/articles/2018/10/08/in-colorado-water-bosses-begin-to-accept-climate-change-impacts

[Crutchez_CuiBono]

1. Fracking isn't helping, they get a total pass as if it's G.M. taking the resources. Very few jobs.

Contaminating water and using it in high pressure systems, and, it's never reclaimed.
Where's the salt water purifiers? They've been available since the 60's but they say they are "too expensive"....how expensive is what's happening?

[lapfog_1]

2. the snowpack in Colorado alone

feeds the headwaters of the following major western state river systems:

The Platte
The Arkansas
The Rio Grande
The Colorado