By Brad Udall and John Fleck Earlier this year, we argued in a Science magazine editorial that Colorado River forecasting must take the growing risk of climate change seriously. The latest five-year projections from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation offer a practical example of the challenge. Published July 8 (see here and here) with an …
Continue reading ‘Is the Colorado River “Stress Test” stressful enough?’ »
Not gonna lie – watching Colorado River reservoirs decline so precipitously has been painful. But it is important to cultivate optimism, and there is, in fact, reason to be hopeful about our ability to deal with the challenges. That’s the message the University of Arizona’s Bonnie Colby and I shared in a recent conversation with …
Continue reading ‘Walking and chewing gum: mixing crisis narratives and messages of optimism’ »
While the historic June 15 low for Lake Mead has drawn headlines – “its lowest level on record since the reservoir was filled in the 1930” – we’re about to hit a similar milestone upstream at Lake Powell that has received less attention, but may in fact be more important. It was co-author Eric Kuhn …
Brad Udall on twitter yesterday ran through a striking series of graphs of the current state of the Colorado River. With his permission, I’m posting them here along with a slightly polished version of his accompanying commentary. Some key points that grabbed my attention: Second-lowest Powell inflow in a period of record we use dating …
Continue reading ‘Brad Udall: Second-worst Powell inflows in more than half a century’ »
Thanks to Megan Kamerick and KUNM, our New Mexico public radio juggernaut, for offering the platform and leverage to help boost our message about climate change response on the Colorado River: [N]obody’s going to sort of voluntarily raise their hand and say, ‘Yeah, we’re happy to have less.’ And so negotiating those agreements where everybody …
By Eric Kuhn and John Fleck Unlike the Lower Colorado River Basin States, which have traditionally taken pragmatic and self-serving views of the 1922 Colorado River Compact, the Upper Basin States have largely shown the century-old document unwavering reverence. The reverence comes from the way the agreement protected Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico against …
Continue reading ‘Reverence or Pragmatism? The Upper Colorado River Basin’s Compact Dilemma’ »
A guest post from Tom McCann, retired Deputy General Manager of the Central Arizona Project and a longtime leader of Arizona’s Colorado River governance. (This grew out of a comment from Tom on the blog and a subsequent email exchange.) By Tom McCann As we struggle with a long term management plan for water use …
Preparing for climate change on the Colorado River is hard. But we will make it harder, and narrow the scope of our options for dealing with it, if we don’t incorporate realistic flow reduction scenarios in our planning efforts. That’s the thrust of an editorial Brad Udall and I have in this week’s issue of …
Continue reading ‘Taking climate change seriously on the Colorado River: a practical step’ »
The latest US Bureau of Reclamation “24-month study” – the monthly update to projected reservoir storage on the Colorado River – shows the bottom dropping out of Lake Powell inflows after a starkly dry April. With inflows down a million acre feet from the April version of the study, the Bureau is now projecting total …
It’s been more than a year since I’ve been able to update my Lake Mead bathtub ring pictures, but perhaps this graph, updated with the new Bureau of Reclamation projects into fall 2022, will help us visualize what we’re up against.