Click the link to read the article on the KKCO11News.com website (Ja’Ronn Alex). Here’s an excerpt:
September 20. 2024
The 2024 Annual Water Seminar was hosted by the Colorado River District at Colorado Mesa University. The event featured many big names in the community including John Marshall, Andy Mueller, David Payne, Merrit Linke, Bart Miller, Cleave Simpson, and many more…Their goal was to highlight the challenges the Western Slope faces now and will face in the future. These challenges pertain to the ever-present climate change crisis and bureaucracy…
According to Andy Mueller, the general manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District, one of those bureaucratic obstacles is an agreement that was signed in the 1920s. This limits our entitlement to around 55% of the flow of the Colorado River. Another issue he tells us is communities in the Lower Basin—areas in California and Arizona—are keen on securing water. And with a growing population on the Front Range, Mueller says there is a heightened emphasis on securing the Shoshone Water Rights. “We are concerned that if we do not lock in the Shoshone Water Rights, we will see more water leave the Colorado River Basin, and there will be less water for the population and environment on the Western Slope.”
The Shoshone Water Plant is expected to have a $99 million price tag and is slated to increase the amount of available water to farmers and consumers. So far, we are told $56 million has been raised.
Click the link to read “Climatologist: Warming of state almost certain to continue” on the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel website. Here’s an excerpt:
September 21, 2024
On the heels of Grand Junction’s hottest summer on record, Colorado’s state climatologist advised Friday that the state’s warming trend over recent decades is all but certain to continue in coming ones. Russ Schumacher, also director of the Colorado Climate Center at Colorado State University, said at an event at Colorado Mesa University that temperatures in Colorado and globally have been warming and the projection is for continued warming in the future, “and there is very high confidence in that.”
There’s less certainty about what the future holds for precipitation levels in the future in the state, other than that they will continue to be highly variable. But increasing temperatures will have water-related impacts even if precipitation patterns don’t change much, he said during the Colorado River District’s annual water seminar. He said seven of Colorado’s nine warmest years on record, averaged across the state, have occurred since 2012 and the warming trend has been particularly notable in the summer and fall. This year’s climatological summer, from June through August, tied for the sixth-warmest on record in the state, and the nine hottest summers all have been since 2000, he said. The average summer temperature at the Grand Junction Regional Airport this year was the hottest on record, he said…lows in the Colorado River have been declining since 2000. Annual flows at Lees Ferry below Lake Powell averaged 15 million acre feet during the 20th century but have averaged about 12.5 million acre feet since 2000, which has had some very dry years, he said…
The Colorado Climate Center addressed the impacts of climate change in the state in a report it issued in January. It projects that by 2050, under a medium-low carbon emissions scenario, Colorado statewide annual temperatures will warm between 2.5 to 5.5 degrees Fahrenheit compared to a 1971-2000 baseline, and 1 to 4 degrees compared to today.
Shumacher said that although there’s less certainty how climate change will affect precipitation in the state, warmer temperatures along with wind and low humidity result in increased evaporative demand, with dry air pulling moisture from trees, soils, crops and surface waters. That means there are times even when precipitation levels are higher that the water doesn’t go as far. Higher evaporative demand also increases the odds of drought happening and makes droughts more intense…At the Colorado River at Dotsero, peak flows already are declining and there has been about a 25% decline in flows in July and August, he said. Climate projections for the river at Dotsero show increased streamflows in the spring as runoff happens earlier due to earlier snowmelt, but then big declines in flows in July and August, “which is when you really need (water), especially if you don’t have storage,” Schumacher said. The changing climate also is expected to result in a continued trend of more and bigger wildfires, and possibly cause more extreme precipitation and flooding, among other hazards. But Schumacher said it’s important to remember that what is projected to happen in the Colorado Climate Center report isn’t all locked in, as it is a trajectory based on where things are headed now in terms of carbon emissions and the climate policies currently in place.