Western U.S. Snowmelt Streamflow Has Already Occurred

As we all know, much of the western U.S. has been in extreme drought for several years. This year's incredibly low snowpack is going to make it even worse. The snowpack works by storing water in the mountains during the winter, then slowly releasing it during the spring and summer to provide water during the dry season. But, not this year. The snowpack is already gone in most of the west and the streamflow has already occurred. Now, there will be no flow during the hot, dry summer months that are about to start. Try to imagine what the headlines are going to look like this summer.

Lake Mead reached the lowest level ever recorded at the end of April - 1079.03 feet. If it falls below 1075 feet by January 1, mandatory water restrictions will be put into effect. The lake level has fallen 132 feet since 1998.

The drought itself is not believed (at this time) to be anything really out of the unusual. What is different is our ability to change things. We have changed the land use, but most importantly, we have changed the climate. The temperature is higher, which means mountain precipitation is falling as rain instead of snow. The snow line gets higher every year, so even the places that do get snow are getting less. And, the higher temperatures mean there is a much higher rate of evaporation of the existing water. That leads to less water and even higher temperatures.

What was that about climate change being good for us? I didn't quite catch that.

Did the California Drought Just Get a Lot Worse?

A California appeals court has ruled a tiered-water rate in San Juan Capistrano, CA is unconstitutional. Like many communities, San Juan charged an increasing rate for users who used greater amounts of water. The residents passed a law saying the government can not charge more for a service than the cost of that service. Using that law as a basis, the residents claimed the tiered-rate system was arbitrary and unfair. The courts agreed.

Does this mean the end of tiered-rate practices in California? That would be a very bad thing. The idea behind a tiered-rate is to have affordable water for low-income families but to discourage the waste of water. As we all know, California cannot afford to waste water anymore. And, yet, that is exactly what some people are doing. Despite the drought, people are failing to conserve water. In other words, they are wasting water the community can't afford to waste simply because they can.

If this ruling sticks and spreads throughout the state, it will have a serious impact on an already serious situation.

Good luck, California.

California Snowpack

There has been a lot of news coverage of how California Governor Jerry Brown mandated water restrictions due to the record low snowpack. Many of the articles I've read have not done what I would consider an adequate report on the snowpack level. Most of them merely say the April snowpack is at 5% of the historic level. That is frightening enough, but there's more to the story than that. The 5% figure is for the entire range.

The April snowpack is historically the largest of the year. With a full season of snowfall behind it and the melt season not yet begun means the mountains are normally stoked with stored water this time of year. But, when the California Department of Water Resources took the April snowpack measurements they found the ground was bare below 6800 feet and there no snow at all. All total, that 5% figure translates to a mere 1.4 inches of water compared to the historic average of 28.3 inches (4.9%) for April 1. This was the lowest measurement ever made for April.

But, even this isn't the worst of it.

This is the fourth measurement the Department of Water Resources has done for the media this winter. The previous three were on December 30, January 29 and March 3. The snowpack as a percentage of the historic average on those dates was 50%, 25% and 19%, respectively. And now, 5%. This is a very bad trend.

Why the decline? After all, there were some big storms this winter. Well, not really. Northern California has recorded 76% of normal precipitation this precipitation year, which began on October 1, 2014. Central and Southern California have had 41% and 42% respectively. You don't break a drought with below average precipitation.

Also, it has been so warm the precipitation fell as rain instead of snow. Some of it was captured in reservoirs and they are much better than this time last year, but still far below historic averages (typically 60% to 75% of historic averages). Some soaked into the ground. But most was lost to runoff and evaporation. None of this bodes well for California this year. The state's wettest months of the year have already passed. There is no way the snowpack runoff can be replaced and the reservoirs and ground water are already stressed. I can't see this playing out well for anyone this year.

One of the false claims deniers keep making is that there are no climate change predictions that have come true. As I said, this is false and the record is full of things that have played out just as predicted. Unfortunately, California is now on that list. It has long been predicted that rising temperatures would result in a reduced snowpack as snow fell as rain and this would, in turn, lead to increased chances of drought. 

But, of course, if they were interested in the facts they would no longer be deniers.

Future of California Water Looks Bleak

As you have probably heard, the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountains this winter is running at merely 19% of the long-term average. Not good for a state that gets 30% of its water from snow runoff and is already in a prolonged drought. But stay tuned. This is just the beginning.

The future of the snowpack in the western U.S. was examined in the paper Extent of the rain-snow transition zone in thewestern U.S.under historic and projected climate, by P. Zion Klos, Timothy E. Link and John T. Abatzoglou, DOI: 10.1002/2014GL060500, Geophysical Research Letters, Volume 41, Issue 13, pages 4560–4568, 16 July 2014.  Their conclusion?

At broad scales, these projections indicate an average 30% decrease in areal extent of winter wet-day temperatures conducive to snowfall over the western United States. 

A 30% decrease? That leaves 70% of 19%, which comes out to be 13.3%! Yikes! That would translate into a loss of over 15% of their water from that one source alone. And, don't forget the other ramifications, such as the hit to the winter recreation industry. How many jobs does California have in that one industry? I couldn't find that specific number, but I found the numbers for the entire outdoor recreation industry for the whole country:

- 6.1 million American jobs

- $646 billion in outdoor recreation spending

each year

- $39.9 billion in federal tax revenue

- $39.7 billion in state/local tax revenue

The winter recreation industry for California will be only a part of that, but even a small part would be a lot of jobs and money.

And, let's not mention the hit the environment and ecology will take.

Sure, there will be years that see big snowfalls. But, the overall average does not look good.

Water Supply In the Colorado River Basin

Many of the people objecting to my challenge say it should be about why we need to worry about global warming, or even about what to do. They clearly have not paid attention to what the challenge is all about.

But, they are correct in one thing, we need to discuss the effects of global warming more. Is global warming good for us? Bad for us? Or, does it even make a difference? I will be spending more time addressing this issue in the future once I am done with the challenge (come on July 31st!).

In that vein, here is a NASA news release about a study of water in the Colorado River Basin. It paints a pretty bleak picture about what is going on with water in the Southwestern U.S. Using data from the GRACE satellite, scientist have been able to identify the amount of mass the basin area has lost since 2004 and determined it has lost about 53 million acre-feet of water. That is almost twice the total volume of Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the U.S. What is really scary is that 41 million acre-feet of that amount came from ground water. Imagine you lost 75% of your income and you then started depleting your savings to maintain the same standard of living. Eventually, your savings are going to run out and you will be faced with a bad situation. That is where the Southwest is today in regards to water. The area has lost its water supply and has been relying on ground water to keep things going the same way instead of changing the way they do business. But, as they say in the new release, we don't know how much ground water there is, so we have no idea how long it will last. If it starts to run out, then there will be a very bad situation in the Southwest.

So, what does this have to do with global warming? Well, there is growing evidence the on-going drought is the result of global warming, and there is growing evidence that the effects of droughts are made worse by global warming. Basically, rainy areas will see more rain while dry areas will see less. Additionally, precipitation that falls as snow on the mountains melts slowly over time and provides water into the summer. As the temperature goes up, it gets too warm for snow and the precipitation falls as rain, which runs off and is no longer available when the dry months of summer come along. To make it worse, the higher temperatures mean there is more evaporation and the area loses even more water. None of these scenarios are good for the future of anyone depending on the water of the Colorado River Basin.

Read this article on the effects of global warming on the area. Richard Seager, a climate scientist who studies water issues at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University in New York does not believe the drought is caused by global warming, but he goes on to point out that the Southwest has suffered drought conditions in some form for 15 years, and warmer climates have resulted in winter precipitation tending to fall as rain rather than snow. With less snow melting during the spring there is a lack of water during the hot summer months.

"It all adds up across the Southwest to an increasingly stressed water system," he said. "That’s what they might as well get ready for."

So, even someone who doesn't believe the drought is caused by global warming believes it has been made worse by global warming. He also believes this is the new normal for the area.

This is not good news. 

In regards to the debate on if global warming is good or bad for us, I think we can put a very firm check mark in the "Bad for us" column on this one.