Tag Archive for: Climate Change

Colorado’s Monsoon Season Is Struggling To Bring Relief to Rivers, Ranchers And Wildfires as the Climate Warms

/in , , /by /CPR Newsby Michael Elizabeth Sakas

The North American monsoon has returned to Colorado, and the rain has brought some much-needed relief to some of the driest parts of the state — after multiple back-to-back years of almost no summer rain. “We call it the no-soon, because we just didn’t get anything,” said Bill Trampe, a third-generation rancher from Gunnison in southwestern Colorado. Gov. Jared Polis has recently declared a drought emergency for the region and the rest of western Colorado.

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Can San Diego County Get Ahead of the Climate Change Curve?

/in , , /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby Deborah Sullivan Brennan

San Diego County is launching aggressive efforts to counter climate change, with a new climate action plan and a sweeping sustainability plan designed to reduce net carbon emissions to zero by 2035.

The County Board of Supervisors received reports on both projects Wednesday and discussed the balancing act required to slash carbon emissions while preserving jobs and expanding housing.

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A Delta in Distress

/in , , /by /Inside Climate Newsby Liza Gross

Global warming has already left its mark on the backbone of California’s water supply, and represents a growing threat to its first developed agricultural region, state experts have warned in a new study.

The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta fuels California’s $3 trillion economy, including its $50 billion agricultural industry, sustains more than 750 plant and animal species and supplies 27 million people with drinking water.

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Opinion: Californians Will Adapt to Living With Drought, As We Always Have

/in , , /by /CalMattersby Jay Lund

Climate change is exacerbating droughts and accelerating the transformation and decline of California’s native forest and aquatic ecosystems.  As a state, we are poorly organized to manage these effects, which need extensive focused preparation.  We need to adapt (and we will make mistakes in doing so).  Our human, economic and environmental losses will be much greater, however, if we manage poorly because of delay, complacency or panic.

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Severe Drought Threatens Hoover Dam Reservoir – and Water for US West

/in , , /by /The Guardianby Oliver Milman

Had the formidable white arc of the Hoover Dam never held back the Colorado River, the US west would probably have no Los Angeles or Las Vegas as we know them today. No sprawling food bowl of wheat, alfalfa and corn. No dreams of relocating to live in a tamed desert. The river, and dam, made the west; now the climate crisis threatens to break it.

The situation here is emblematic of a planet slowly, inexorably overheating. And the catastrophic consequences of the extreme weather this brings.

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“Water Battery” Being Considered on Mokelumne River

/in , , /by /Sierra Nevada Allyby Scott King

Earlier this year, GreenGenStorage received a renewal of their licensing period to submit Pre-Application Documents to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for their proposed Mokelumne Pumped Storage Water Battery Project. The developer hopes to submit their PAD by the end of the year for the project, which would utilize excess solar and wind energy to power their pumped storage technology, thereby generating electricity for the grid at peak energy-usage hours.

“During the midday peak of solar energy generation, we would pump water uphill to an upper reservoir,” Nicholas Sher, manager at GreenGenStorage said. “Then in the evening where energy usage is consumed the most, we would release that water downstream and it would drive a turbine, thus generating energy. Then by soaking up wind power in the evenings for release in the morning peak hours, we’re essentially just time-shifting renewable energy.”

By using renewable energy to transfer water back and forth between two reservoirs, the project would be a non-consumptive means of using water to generate power. In the case of the Mokelumne Pumped Storage Water Battery Project, the Salt Springs Reservoir has been identified as the lower reservoir, as it already has a small hydro-facility on it that generates about 44 megawatts of energy.

Two options are currently being explored for the upper reservoir that Salt Springs would be connected to via penstock pipes: the Lower Bear or Upper Bear Reservoir.

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Amid a Megadrought, Federal Water Shortage Limits Loom for the Colorado River

/in , , /by /NPR

The Colorado River is tapped out.

Another dry year has left the watershed that supplies 40 million people in the Southwest parched. A prolonged 21-year warming and drying trend is pushing the nation’s two largest reservoirs to record lows. For the first time, a shortage is expected to be declared by the federal government this summer.

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California’s New Summer Normal: Use Less Power and Water

/in , , /by /Bloombergby David R Baker, Brian K Sullivan, and Mark Chediak

Californians once greeted hot summers by blasting the air conditioners and filling the pool. No longer.

Battered by drought and heat waves that are straining the power grid, the Golden State is asking residents to make do with less water and electricity, just when they really want to use both. It’s an uncomfortable new normal for a state that used to celebrate summer.

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After Decades Of Warming And Drying, the Colorado River Struggles to Water the West

/in , , /by /KPBS

A prolonged 21-year warming and drying trend is pushing the nation’s two largest reservoirs to record lows. For the first time this summer, the federal government will declare a shortage.

 

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The Colorado River is Drying Up Faster Than Federal Officials Can Keep Track. Mandatory Water Cuts are Looming

/in , , /by /The Colorado Sunby Michael Booth

Ablunt new report based on June runoff conditions from the Colorado River into Lake Powell and Lake Mead shows the reservoirs fast deteriorating toward “dead pool” status, where stored water is so low it can’t spin the massive hydroelectric power generators buried in the dams, and large swaths of Arizona farmland going fallow.

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