According to a report by climate researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, if human-caused climate change continues to make the region surrounding the Colorado River drier, the river will miss 60 to 90 percent of scheduled deliveries by mid-century.
‘All water-use planning is based on the idea that the next 100 years will be like the last 100,’ Scripps research marine physicist and co-author of the report Tim Barnett said. ‘We considered the question: Can the river deliver water at the levels currently scheduled if the climate changes as we expect it to? The answer is no.’
Barnett co-authored the paper, ‘Sustainable water deliveries from the Colorado River in a changing climate,’ with Scripps climate researcher David Pierce. It appears in the April 20 edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The report says that conservation and water transfers will be able to compensate for the delivery shortfalls in most years, but that dry, low-delivery years pose a greater chance of problematic shortages.
‘Fortunately, we can avoid such big shortfalls if the river’s users agree on a way to reduce their average water use,’ Pierce said. ‘If we could do that, the system could stay sustainable further into the future than we estimate currently, even if the climate changes.’