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Forecasting Water Supply in Colorado River May Benefit Water Resource Management

/in , , /by /Utah Public Radioby Harriet Cornachione

What if I purchase an early season ski pass– will it pay off with good snow this winter? Yoshimitsu Chikamoto, a climate scientist at Utah State University Utah had an idea to use climate modeling to help him decide.

Weather forecasting targets a short term, days to weeks, mostly based on atmospheric conditions. Forecasting climate patterns a year in advance is more complex, said Chikamoto.

“Weather forecasting needs the atmospheric model. In the climate model the atmospheric model is one component of the climate that also needs ocean and sea ice, and the land,” Chikamoto said.

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Pure Water San Diego Launches Guided Virtual Tour

/in , , /by /Water News Network

The City of San Diego’s Pure Water Demonstration Facility public tour is now available as a virtual tour. A new video provides an up-close look at the technology behind the water purification plant.  In-person tours are on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic and will resume once it is safe to do so. Since opening in June 2011, nearly 19,000 people have toured the one-million-gallon-per-day facility in person.

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Disasters Waiting to Happen: 5 Major Infrastructure Projects in Need of Repair

/in , , /by /Construction Diveby Kim Slowey

There’s nothing quite like an infrastructure disaster to get the American public’s attention, whether it is the discovery of a drinking water system with dangerous levels of lead in Flint, Michigan, or a near-catastrophic dam failure in Oroville, California.

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Testing in an Effort to Flush Out the Coronavirus

/in , , /by /NPRby Elissa Nadworny

Twice a week, mathematics professor Andrea Bruder squats in the sewage tunnels below South Hall, a mostly freshman dorm at Colorado College. She wears head-to-toe protective gear and holds a plastic ladle in one hand and a to-go coffee cup in the other. Bruder hovers above an opening in a large metal pipe and patiently waits for a student to flush.

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Oilfield Wastewater Slowly Gains Value in Agriculture

/in , , /by /The Bakersfield Californianby John Cox

Conceptually it makes a lot of sense to farmers and oil producers alike: Use the latest filtration technology to turn one of Kern’s most troublesome waste streams — oilfield produced water — into a safe irrigation source.

For decades it’s been done on a relatively small scale near Bakersfield, and recent studies confirm it doesn’t threaten crop safety. So why aren’t more local oil producers giving farmers the briny water that comes up from the ground along with oil?

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Globalized Economy Making Water, Energy and Land Insecurity Worse: Study

/in , , /by /Phys.Orgby University of Cambridge

The first large-scale study of the risks that countries face from dependence on water, energy and land resources has found that globalisation may be decreasing, rather than increasing, the security of global supply chains.

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Opinion: Can We Have a Power Grid That is Both Renewable and Reliable?

/in , , /by /CalMattersby Julia Levin

With more than 4 million acres burned this year – shattering a state record – California’s wildfire season came with a wicked ferocity, along with the climate-induced crises of crippling heatwaves and forced power outages.

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Ahead of Rain, Beaumont Plans for Unprecedented Flooding

/in , , /by /Patch.comby Renee Schiavone

It won’t take much, and the Pass Area as we know it may look dramatically different come wet weather this fall and winter. That’s according to public safety officials from various Riverside County agencies who are working to get the word out about the danger of “flood after fire.”

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Hauck Mesa Storage Reservoir to Improve Water Reliability

/in , , /by /Water News Network Quoted: San Diego County Water Authority

The San Diego County Water Authority is gearing up to construct a 2.1 million-gallon drinking water reservoir on the Valley Center Pipeline to enhance service reliability throughout the region. The Hauck Mesa Storage Reservoir project in northern San Diego County is part of the Water Authority’s Capital Improvement Program. Construction work is scheduled to begin in early 2021 and is estimated to be completed in the winter of 2022.

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Is Ecosystem Change in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Outpacing the Ability of Science to Keep Up?

/in , , /by /Western Water News (Water Education Foundation)by Gary Pitzer

Radically transformed from its ancient origin as a vast tidal-influenced freshwater marsh, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta ecosystem is in constant flux, influenced by factors within the estuary itself and the massive watersheds that drain though it into the Pacific Ocean. Lately, however, scientists say the rate of change has kicked into overdrive, fueled in part by climate change, and is limiting the ability of science and Delta water managers to keep up. The rapid pace of upheaval demands a new way of conducting science and managing water in the troubled estuary that is central to California’s water conveyance system.

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