If you live in certain regions of the U.S., climate change is making temperatures hotter and is affecting water levels. According to climate experts from the University of Arizona and the University of Colorado, climate indicators from this decade compared to the entire last century show that Western and Southwestern states should be prepared for hotter annual temperatures and less water.
New writings by Jonathan Overpeck, principal investigator with the Climate Assessment for the Southwest at the UA, and Bradley Udall, director of the Western Water Assessment at the University of Colorado, recently published in Science show that climate change in Western and especially Southwestern U.S. has led to “rising temperatures, earlier snowmelt, northward-shifting winter storms, increasing precipitation intensity and flooding, record-setting drought, plummeting Colorado River reservoir storage, widespread vegetation mortality and more large wildfires.” Temperature increases in the regions have passed averages of the previous century by one to two degrees resulting in lower late-season snowpack contributing to a 50 percent decrease in water reservoirs.
Although the scientists believe much of the changes to be driven by humans, they are not yet ready to blame drought on them, but that does not diminish the fact that the Colorado River, a main source of water for the area, is expected to reduce by 20 percent over the next 40 years. Even though we don’t know the exact source of the drought, which has plagued the Southwest over the past ten years, Overpeck says that determining the cause is important to discovering what will come next. “The best strategy now — the no-regrets strategy — is to prepare for a hotter and drier West, Southwest and Arizona, and to make sure we don’t commit water to things now in ways that could make water shortages in the future more difficult to deal with.”
Making changes in human behavior is the best way to offset these climate changes. Overpeck and Udall point to conserving water usage (although some cities and towns are in disagreement over the best way to encourage this behavior), and looking into renewable energy sources (e.g., wind and solar).
