The Cameron Peak wild fire in 2020 - one of the worst in Colorado history
The hydrological analysis in Physics Today (Trends in the hydrology of the western US bear the imprint of manmade climate change ) was blunt and to the point: The American West is drying up. Even with a few days of snowfall this week Colorado remains bone dry with barely enough to get the reservoirs up to 1/2 by May. Yet by all accounts people are still migrating to the state, despite precipitously low water levels. What to do when too many people keep piling into states that are already bone dry and running low on water? Well, banning them isn't on given this is supposedly the "land of the free" but the affected states can still impose development fees and taxes, for each new residence - including rentals.
Developers need to be forewarned here in Colorado and throughout the Mountain West that any new developments must prove there are adequate existing water resources to support them, and not depend on only existing aquifers, reservoirs.
Colorado Springs, for example, currently has a population of 476,000 and is expected to increase to 723,000 by 2070. Apart from the fact there's scant place to put the projected homes, there is also no idea of how to get water to them. Hence, the brainstorm notion to inundate the natural water storage wetlands to build a dam and reservoir. A nifty idea in theory, but in practice it's doomed to failure.
The fact is the Springs' leaders haven't come to grips with
the water crisis staring them in the face. The new home "build
out" will require some 136,000 acre -feet of water per
year, at minimum. This is up from the current 70, 766 acre-feet
used. Hence, nearly double the existing supply despite that supply
basically vanishing by the year 2070 if not before. But lo and behold, the
power brokers and developers are intent on destroying the wetland wilderness
areas to try to get that water.
Even beyond the earlier Physics Today forecasts, the American West’s megadrought deepened so much last year that it is now the driest in at least 1,200 years and is a worst-case climate change scenario playing out live, a new study finds. A dramatic drying in 2021 has pushed the 22-year drought past the previous record-holder for megadroughts in the late 1500s and shows no signs of easing in the near future, according to a study in the journal Nature Climate Change. E.g.
The
study calculated that 42% of this megadrought can be attributed to
human-caused climate change. The
“Climate
change is changing the baseline conditions toward a drier, gradually drier
state in the West and that means the worst-case scenario keeps getting worse. This is
right in line with what people were thinking of in the 1900s as a worst-case
scenario. But today I think we need to be even preparing for conditions in the
future that are far worse than this.”
Williams
studied soil moisture levels in the West — including areas in California,
Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, most of Oregon and Idaho, much of New
Mexico, western Colorado, northern Mexico, and the southwest corners of
Montana and Texas — using modern measurements and tree rings for estimates that
go back to the year 800. That’s about as far back as estimates can reliably go
with tree rings.
A
few years ago, Williams studied the current drought and said it qualified as a
lengthy and deep “megadrought” and that the only one worse occurred in the 1500s. He
figured the current drought wouldn’t surpass that one because megadroughts
tended to peter out after 20 years. Moreover, 2019 was a wet year so it
looked like the western drought might be coming to an end or at least mitigated.
But
the region dried up again in late 2020 and 2021.
According to a currently used drought monitor, 55% of the U.S. West is in drought with 13% experiencing the two highest drought levels. This megadrought really kicked off in 2002 — one of the driest years ever, based on humidity and tree rings, according to Williams.
Williams used 29 models to create a hypothetical world with no human-caused warming then compared it to what has happened to the real planet Earth. This is the scientifically accepted way to check if an extreme weather event is because of climate change. Not surprisingly, he found that 42% of the drought conditions are directly from human-caused warming. Without climate change, the megadrought would have ended earlier because 2005 and 2006 would have been wet enough to break it.
In the words of Prof. Jonathan Overpeck, dean of environment at the University of Michigan:
"The study is an important wake-up call. Climate change is
literally baking the water supply and forests of the Southwest, and it
could get a whole lot worse if we don’t halt climate change soon.”
Williams said there is a direct link between drought and heat and the increased wildfires that have been devastating the West for years. For many climate researchers we may have well passed the point of no return, especially as the warmer winters have triggered an explosion of the mountain pine beetle which has turned forests to tinder.
The salient point here is that the beetle is a major catalyst for all the ongoing and uncontained wild fires in Colorado, and in much of the west. People moving here do so at their own risk, I don't know how to put it any plainer than that.
See Also:
Colorado isn’t getting enough snow to fully recover drought-stricken rivers and reservoirs
And:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/science/18trees.html?pagewanted=all
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