During the series Wringing Water from the Rocks Chips Barry warned that water supply unpredictability was his biggest worry going forward. Here's an article about atmospheric warming and the possible effects on supply from today's Rocky Mountain News [November 17, 2005, "Snowmelt may dwindle"]. From the article, "Until now, much of the analysis done on the complex interrelationships between temperature and climate have indicated that winter snowpacks are likely to melt earlier, that more rain and less snow will fall, but that overall amounts of precipitation would stay about the same in the West. But the new findings indicate that there will be a marked decrease in the total amount of water in streams in some regions, said Christopher Milly, an author of the Nature report and a research hydrologist for the United States Geological Survey in Princeton, N.J...The precision is thanks largely to new international data collection and coordinated international modeling efforts. That work has resulted in much more reliable global and regional analyses. Milly said it isn't entirely clear why runoff is shrinking in some regions, but he believes that one plausible explanation for its occurrence in the West is this: As the atmosphere warms above the ocean, it is able to hold more water. As these warm ocean winds blow across the hot, semi-arid West, they warm even more, holding more water and ultimately carrying that water out of the region rather than allowing it to fall. Those findings don't necessarily conflict with a recent report by Boulder climate researcher Gerald Meehl, who published a paper in September indicating that total annual precipitation in Colorado would change little over the next century. But even a slight decrease in precipitation can trigger a much more dramatic decrease in runoff, Milly said."
Category: Colorado Water
6:22:52 AM 
|
|
