{"id":33369,"date":"2018-04-13T11:39:20","date_gmt":"2018-04-13T16:39:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=33369"},"modified":"2018-04-13T11:39:20","modified_gmt":"2018-04-13T16:39:20","slug":"understanding-what-the-new-normal-means-for-water-in-the-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=33369","title":{"rendered":"Understanding What the \u2018New Normal\u2019 Means for Water in the West"},"content":{"rendered":"<header>\n<h3 class=\"title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsdeeply.com\/water\/articles\/2018\/04\/11\/understanding-what-the-new-normal-means-for-water-in-the-west\">Understanding What the \u2018New Normal\u2019 Means for Water in the West<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"holder\">\n<div class=\"inner\">\n<p class=\"lede\"><strong>After 20 years of drought conditions, some scientists are calling for better terminology to describe the impact of rising temperatures in the\u00a0region.<\/strong><\/p>\n<figure class=\"article-feature\"><figcaption>Humphrey\u2019s Peak in Arizona is experiencing one of its lowest runoff years in history.<cite>Education Images\/UIG via Getty Images<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<div class=\"body clear-content\">\n<p><span class=\"start\">APRIL IS OFTEN <\/span>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.<\/p>\n<p>This year, across much of the West, particularly the Southwest, there\u2019s little in the way of abundance. At Lake Powell, the second-largest reservoir in the West, runoff is predicted to be only <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbrfc.noaa.gov\/wsup\/pub2\/discussion\/current.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">43 percent of average<\/a>. Arizona is looking at one of its <a href=\"https:\/\/new.azwater.gov\/news\/articles\/2018-06-04\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">lowest runoff years<\/a> in history. And in New Mexico, <a href=\"http:\/\/nmpoliticalreport.com\/822352\/its-only-april-and-a-stretch-of-the-rio-grande-has-already-dried-en\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">stretches of the Rio Grande<\/a> have already run dry, months ahead of normal.<\/p>\n<p>The only consolation is that last year was a wet year and reservoirs received a boost. While it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s even prompted a group of scientists with the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.coloradoriverresearchgroup.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Colorado River Research Group<\/a> to call for a new language to describe the conditions they\u2019re seeing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s lots of talk of drought but there\u2019s not enough talk that this is likely the new normal,\u201d said Brad Udall, a member of the group and a senior water and climate research scientist at Colorado State University. \u201cWe really need to think in the long term that we are actually going to see less water in the [Colorado River] basin and we\u2019re never going back to the 20th century.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And in the Southwest, this \u201cnew normal\u201d may look more like \u201caridification\u201d than drought.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Understanding What the \u2018New Normal\u2019 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\u00a0region. Humphrey\u2019s Peak in Arizona is experiencing one of its lowest runoff years in history.Education Images\/UIG via Getty Images APRIL IS OFTEN a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[8096,220,2710,19783,866,19784],"class_list":["post-33369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-american-west","tag-drought","tag-rising-temperatures","tag-tara-lohan","tag-water","tag-water-deeply"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33369"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33370,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33369\/revisions\/33370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}