Mead & Powell Combined Water Content Lowest Since 1965; Bleak Outlook For Basin W. Long-Term Warming

[hatrack]

Last edited Mon Apr 26, 2021, 09:01 AM - Edit history (1)

The water level of Lake Mead, the country’s largest reservoir, has dropped more than 130 feet since the beginning of 2000, when the lake’s surface lapped at the spillway gates on Hoover Dam. Twenty-one years later, with the Colorado River consistently yielding less water as the climate has grown warmer and drier, the reservoir near Las Vegas sits at just 39% of capacity. And it’s approaching the threshold of a shortage for the first time since it was filled in the 1930s.

The latest projections from the federal government show the reservoir will soon fall 7 more feet to cross the trigger point for a shortage in 2022, forcing the largest mandatory water cutbacks yet in Arizona, Nevada and Mexico. The river's reservoirs are shrinking as the Southwest endures an especially severe bout of dryness within a two-decade drought intensified by climate change, one of the driest periods in centuries that shows no sign of letting up.

EDIT

Many scientists describe the past two decades in the Colorado River Basin as a megadrought that’s being worsened by higher temperatures with climate change. While the Southwest has always cycled through wet and dry periods, some scientists suggest the word "drought" is no longer entirely adequate and that the Colorado River watershed is undergoing “aridification” driven by human-caused warming — a long-term trend of more intense dry spells that’s here for good and will complicate water management for generations to come.

Both Lake Mead and the upstream reservoir Lake Powell are dropping. Taken together, the country’s two largest reservoirs now hold the smallest quantity of water since 1965, when Powell was still filling behind the newly built Glen Canyon Dam. The Colorado River has long been overallocated to supply farmlands and growing cities from Denver to Phoenix to Los Angeles. And the growing strains on the river suggest that Lake Mead, its sides coated with a whitish “bathtub ring” of minerals along its retreating shorelines, will continue to present challenges as the Southwest adapts to a shrinking source of water.

EDIT

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-environment/2021/04/23/snow-and-shrinking-flows-colorado-river-shortage/7294203002/

[mopinko]

1. i remember reading a couple stories here about

ways to condense water from the air, and iirc the stories were set in the andes.
why isnt cali doing anything like that, or are they?
i mean, it wasnt a LOT of water, but it was a small device, mounted on a light pole or a highway sign. solar powered.
or desalinization.

and did they ever deploy the black plastic balls that were supposed to decrease evaporation?

we need to figure this shit out.

[mountain grammy]

2. As the southwest grows and grows

More people using less resources. What could possibly go wrong?

[hatrack]

3. Yes, but we simply MUST feed the national surplus of alfalfa and cotton!!!

There's just no other way.