What will it take to stabilize the Colorado River?

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) | July 21st, 2022

The Colorado River supplies water to more than 40 million inhabitants in the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico. A basin-wide water supply crisis is occur

The Colorado River supplies water to more than 40 million inhabitants in the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico. A basin-wide water supply crisis is occurring because of decreased watershed runoff caused by a warming climate and legal and water management policies that allow systematic overuse. By the end of 2022, combined storage in Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the two largest reservoirs in the United States, will have declined from 95% full in 2000 to approximately 25% full. If this “Millennium Drought” persists, then stabilizing reservoir levels to avoid severe outcomes will require reducing water use to match diminished runoff. With a process underway to renegotiate interstate and international agreements on consumptive uses of the river, we describe a promising new management approach based on combined storage of both reservoirs, rather than just Lake Mead as currently used, to trigger consumptive use reductions to the Lower Basin and Mexico.

Widening of the tropical belt in a changing climate

Nature Portfolio (Springer Nature) | December 2nd, 2007

Some of the earliest unequivocal signs of climate change have been the warming of the air and ocean, thawing of land and melting of ice in the Arctic. But recent studies

Some of the earliest unequivocal signs of climate change have been the warming of the air and ocean, thawing of land and melting of ice in the Arctic. But recent studies are showing that the tropics are also changing. Several lines of evidence show that over the past few decades the tropical belt has expanded. This expansion has potentially important implications for subtropical societies and may lead to profound changes in the global climate system. Most importantly, poleward movement of large-scale atmospheric circulation systems, such as jet streams and storm tracks, could result in shifts in precipitation patterns affecting natural ecosystems, agriculture, and water resources. The implications of the expansion for stratospheric circulation and the distribution of ozone in the atmosphere are as yet poorly understood. The observed recent rate of expansion is greater than climate model projections of expansion over the twenty-first century, which suggests that there is still much to be learned about this aspect of global climate change.

Wildfire and Drought: Impacts on wildfire planning, behavior, and effects

National Integrated Drought Information System | March 4th, 2016

The relationship between drought and wildfire can appear to be simple, but the drought and wildfire nexus encompasses a profusion of human and environmental impacts. Imag

The relationship between drought and wildfire can appear to be simple, but the drought and wildfire nexus encompasses a profusion of human and environmental impacts. Images of burning forests, neighborhoods, and “smoked out” communities are all now commonplace. The National Integrated Drought Information System, in partnership with NOAA’s Western Regional Climate Center (WRCC), the California Nevada Applications Program (CNAP, a NOAA Regional Integrated Science Applications team), the Desert Research Institute (DRI), and the National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC), hosted the Integrating Drought Science and Information into Wildfire Management Workshop in Boise, Idaho on 21-22 October 2015.  The 22 participants in the workshop were invited as representatives of a broad spectrum of expertise including prescribed fire, wildland fire management, climatology, smoke and air quality, fuels management, fire behavior, drought, and policy. In this report, we present the opportunities and challenges the workshop participants identified and the impacts of drought on wildfire. The workshop also provided the opportunity to identify next steps in understanding and addressing drought impacts on wildfire.