A pair of governors on Sunday called on the federal government for help and pushed for solutions as their states grapple with recording-breaking temperatures, drought and wildfires that officials have said is being driven by climate change.
The Colorado River provides water to 40 million people around the West, including New Mexico, but the historic drought gripping our region has prompted a 20% drop in flows in the river. Reservoirs are drying, with Lake Mead at its lowest levels since it was filled in the 1930s. As scientists incorporate these changes into future projections, an article in Science magazine urges them to plan for even greater declines in the river.
California’s reservoirs and rivers are startlingly low, forcing many of the state’s more than 270 hydropower facilities to generate less power.
Lake Oroville, one of the state’s largest reservoirs, made headlines because its water levels have dropped so low the power plant may need to shut down for the first time. While most other hydropower plants aren’t at risk of shutting down, plants that rely on watersheds up and down the state are not able to generate normal amounts of power.
Major renovations will begin Wednesday on the Anderson Dam tunnel project in Santa Clara County. The project will require the reservoir to be drained – and it will be unable to be used for 10 years.
A UCLA study shows that abnormally heavy rain and snowfall events since as early as the 1980s are intensifying globally due to human-driven climate change, researchers said Tuesday.
“These findings further elevate the urgency of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to prevent even larger impacts down the road,” said senior author Alex Hall, director of the UCLA Center for Climate Science, which is a part of the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. “We can now say that extreme precipitation is increasing globally due to human-induced climate change.”
Radhika Fox vividly remembers growing up in rural India without running water or flushing toilets.
The newly confirmed head of EPA’s Office of Water lived with her grandmother while her parents finished their medical training in New York City.
Skiers and snowboarders pray for snow so they can shred the slopes. Climatologists and hydrologists have an entirely different and more critical reason to cross their fingers for the “white gold.”
The West’s historic drought has many impacts, including water shortages, more severe wildfire seasons and unprecedented heat waves, to name a few. Intense droughts are a result of many factors, one of which scientists have recently begun to analyze with more scrutiny: snow drought.
As someone working on water issues in the West for more decades than I care to admit, I have found myself repeating the same mantra over and over again: When you’re in a drought, it’s too late to prepare.
Well, we’re in drought, again, and I can’t help feeling a sense of personal failure for how ill prepared we are. This time is worse, however — worse because surely, we should have learned by now to prepare better and worse because record-breaking heat and early wildfires indicate the climate change ratchet has clearly clicked several notches tighter.
NBC4’s Conan Nolan talks with Adel Hagekhalil, the new head of Metropolitan of Water District. The MWD – the largest in the nation –provides water to 20 million customers all over Southern California. Nolan and Hagekhalil discuss the state of water supply and the controversial vote that got Hagekhalil to power.
Drought-stricken reservoirs and rivers in Northern California mean painful water cutbacks for farmers and towns. Some are trying hard to conserve to avoid even worse to come.
