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Understanding What the ‘New Normal’ Means for Water in the West
Understanding What the ‘New Normal’ Means for Water in the West
After 20 years of drought conditions, some scientists are calling for better terminology to describe the impact of rising temperatures in the region.
APRIL IS OFTEN a time of abundance in the mountains of the American West, when snowpack is at or near its peak, and forecasters work to determine how much runoff will course through our rivers and fill reservoirs later in the season.
This year, across much of the West, particularly the Southwest, there’s little in the way of abundance. At Lake Powell, the second-largest reservoir in the West, runoff is predicted to be only 43 percent of average. Arizona is looking at one of its lowest runoff years in history. And in New Mexico, stretches of the Rio Grande have already run dry, months ahead of normal.
The only consolation is that last year was a wet year and reservoirs received a boost. While it’s typical in the West to have big swings in precipitation from year to year, what has concerned scientists lately is that even good years are no longer producing the kind of runoff seen historically.
It’s even prompted a group of scientists with the Colorado River Research Group to call for a new language to describe the conditions they’re seeing.
“There’s lots of talk of drought but there’s not enough talk that this is likely the new normal,” said Brad Udall, a member of the group and a senior water and climate research scientist at Colorado State University. “We really need to think in the long term that we are actually going to see less water in the [Colorado River] basin and we’re never going back to the 20th century.”
And in the Southwest, this “new normal” may look more like “aridification” than drought.
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A New Global Tinderbox: The World’s Northern Forests
A New Global Tinderbox: The World’s Northern Forests
Rapidly rising temperatures, changes in precipitation, and increased lightning strikes are leading to ever-larger wildfires in the northern forests of Alaska, Canada, and Siberia, with potentially severe ecological consequences.
Ted Schuur has spent the better part of his career making the connection between climate change and wildfires that are burning an increasing amount of land in Alaska and in sub-Arctic and Arctic forests around the world. So the Northern Arizona University scientist wasn’t all that surprised this summer to find his field stations in the interior of Alaska surrounded by fires on three sides. At the time, the state was well on track to recording its second-worst fire season ever.
The surprise came in mid-summer when Schuur took a few days off from his research to attend a meeting in Colorado. He had hoped the trip would give him a break from Alaska’s noxious smoke. The smoke in Boulder, however, was so thick that the state’s Department of Public Health and Environment was advising parents with young children and people with heart disease and respiratory problems to limit their outdoor activities.
As Schuur soon learned, the pall of smoke in Denver had actually drifted down from a large number of forest fires in the Pacific Northwest and Canada. “I’ve never seen anything quite like this summer,” says Schuur. “It seemed like half the continent was on fire at one time or another.”
Schuur wasn’t exaggerating. In June, as many as 25,000 men and women were fighting thousands of wildfires that were burning out of control in states such as Alaska, Washington, California, and Idaho, and in the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan.
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Rising Temperatures on Land and Sea Made 2014 Hottest Year
Rising Temperatures on Land and Sea Made 2014 Hottest Year
High temperatures across most of the globe made 2014 Earth’s hottest year in records dating back to 1880, a government report showed.
The combined land and ocean temperature on the planet was 1.24 degrees Fahrenheit (about 0.7 Celsius) above the 20th-century average, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrationsaid in a statement. An independent analysis by the National Aeronautic and Space Administration also found 2014 to be the warmest on record.
Rising global temperatures can lead to higher ocean levels, disruptions to global agriculture, the spread of tropical diseases and a change in weather patterns, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
“Climate change is perhaps the major challenge of our generation,” Michael Freilich, director of NASA’s Earth Science Division in the Space Mission Directorate in Washington, said on a conference call with reporters.
The western U.S., parts of Russia, interior South America as well as most of Europe experienced record heat, NOAA said. Northern Africa, western Australia and parts of the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans also were warmer.
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