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#CRWUA2025 Day 2 #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification
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Day: December 18, 2025
#ColoradoRiver gathering kicks off with rhetoric, concerns over river’s future — Shannon Mullane (Fresh Water News) #CRWUA2025 #COriver #aridification
Click the link to read the article on the Water Education Colorado website (Shannon Mullane):
December 17, 2025
LAS VEGAS — About [1,700] people from every corner of the Colorado River Basin flocked to the palm tree-lined Caesars Palace casino in Las Vegas this week thirsty for insights into the stalled negotiations over the future management of the river.
New insights, however, were sparse as of Tuesday morning.
The highly anticipated Colorado River Water Users Association conference is the largest river gathering of the year. It’s a meet up where federal and state officials like to make big announcements about the water supply for 40 million people, and when farmers, tribal nations, city water managers, industrial representatives and environmental groups can swap strategies in hallway chats.
The meetings started Tuesday morning before the conference officially kicked off. Officials from basin states, including Colorado, set the tone by digging into their oft-repeated rhetoric about the worrisome conditions in the basin, impacts in their own states and conservation efforts. Conference-goers pushed state leaders for more transparency and progress in the discussions over the river’s future.
The basin’s main reservoirs, lakes Mead and Powell, have fallen to historic lows despite pouring state and federal dollars into broad conservation efforts, said Commissioner Becky Mitchell, Colorado’s governor-appointed negotiator on Colorado River issues.
“We’re in a precarious time because none of that is enough,” Mitchell told hundreds of audience members during an Upper Colorado River Commission meeting Tuesday. “It has not been enough.”
As the river’s water supply is strained by a 26-year drought and human demands, officials are trying to replace an expiring agreement from 2007, which manages how Mead and Powell capture water from upstream states and release it downstream for water users in Arizona, California, Nevada and Mexico.
The Department of the Interior is managing the effort, dubbed the post-2026 process, but deciding new rules is simpler said than done: Basin officials will have to address a changing climate and decide on painful water cuts going forward.
The Interior Department has given the seven basin states until Feb. 14 to reach a consensus. If they can agree, the feds will use the states’ proposal to manage the basin’s reservoirs. If not, the federal officials will decide what to do.
Officials from the Upper Basin states — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — did not share examples of progress in the post-2026 negotiations. They said the basin’s water cycle, not its legal issues, are the main problem.
“It’s not political positions. It’s not legal interpretations,” Brandon Gebhart, Wyoming’s top negotiator, said. “It’s the hydrology of the entire basin.”
Others, including some of the 30 tribes in the basin, saw it differently. Some tribal representatives called for more transparency. Others said they couldn’t support a plan that is geared toward sending water to downstream states.
“Despite those that think hydrology is the problem, it’s not, and it can’t always be the scapegoat,” said Kirin Vicenti, water commissioner for the Jicarilla Apache Nation, located within New Mexico just south of the Colorado state line. “Our planning and policies must allow flexibility, and innovative and dynamic solutions.”
A basin divided by a Rome-inspired wall
Relationships between upstream states and Lower Basin states — Arizona, California and Nevada — have been strained since the post-2026 effort kicked into gear in 2022 and 2023.
On the other side of the casino wall from the Upper Basin meeting, the Colorado River Board of California met Tuesday morning. Each audience could hear muffled clapping from the other room as the officials spoke to their constituents.
“We know one thing for sure, which is that we have a smaller river and that requires less use,” JB Hamby, chairman of the Colorado River board and California’s top negotiator, told the gathering.
He lauded California’s “massive” and expensive efforts to address the river’s shrinking supply while still growing the state’s economy and agriculture industry.
California has cut its water use to 3.76 million acre-feet, the lowest it has been since 1949, state officials said. It has a proposed plan to conserve 440,000 acre-feet of river water per year.
One acre-foot roughly equals the annual water use of two to three households.
“We hear lots of applause lines from our friends next door, and we encourage them to take some examples from what California has been able to put together,” Hamby said. “We must all live with the resources we have, not the ones that we wish for.”
Crossing basin lines
While the states might be divided in water politics, conference attendees like Ken Curtis of Colorado moved between the rooms to hear each group’s discussion.
“We appear to be talking past each other,” said Curtis, the general manager of the Dolores Water Conservancy District in southwestern Colorado.
Some water managers from central Utah said they were already looking beyond the current negotiations to the next few decades. The basin’s challenges don’t end next fall — this is just a speed bump in a long future ahead, they said.
Others were waiting for updates from federal officials, scheduled for Wednesday. The Department of the Interior is set to release a highly anticipated look at different options for how to manage the basin around the end of the year.
Curtis said he is at the conference mainly to learn how other states were grappling with the tough water conditions and to get more insight into the negotiations beyond what’s in the media, he said.
“Squeezing it (water) out of the Upper Basin isn’t going to make enough water for the Lower Basin demands,” Curtis said. “And that may be a biased view, obviously, so I’m trying to get a little bit beyond my own biases.”
The latest #ElNiño/Southern Oscillation (#ENSO) Diagnostic Discussion is hot off the presses from the #Climate Prediction Center
Click the link to read the discussion on the NOAA website:
December 11, 2025
ENSO Alert System Status: La Niña Advisory
Synopsis: La Niña is favored to continue for the next month or two, with a transition to ENSO-neutral most likely in January-March 2026 (68% chance).
La Niña persisted in November, as indicated by the continuation of below-average sea surface temperatures (SSTs) across the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean. The latest weekly Niño-3.4 index value was -0.5°C, with the other Niño index values between -0.2°C and -0.4°C. Recent negative subsurface temperature anomalies weakened slightly (averaged from 180°-100°W; but below-average temperatures continued from the surface to 200m depth in the eastern half of the equatorial Pacific. The tropical atmosphere reflected La Niña, with low-level easterly wind anomalies evident in the central Pacific and upper-level westerly wind anomalies observed across most of the equatorial Pacific Ocean. Enhanced convection persisted over Indonesia and suppressed convection was near the Date Line. The traditional and equatorial Southern Oscillation indices were positive. Collectively, the coupled ocean-atmosphere system remains consistent with La Niña.
The IRI multi-model predictions indicate La Niña will continue in the December-February (DJF) 2025-26 season, but then ENSO-neutral is favored for January-March (JFM) 2026. Together with the North American Multi-Model Ensemble, the team continues to slightly support a weak La Niña through DJF (54% chance), before transitioning to ENSO-neutral in JFM. Even after equatorial Pacific SSTs transition to ENSO-neutral, La Niña may still have some lingering influence through the early Northern Hemisphere spring 2026 (e.g., CPC’s seasonal outlooks). In summary, La Niña is favored to continue for the next month or two, with a transition to ENSO-neutral most likely in January-March 2026 (68% chance).
This discussion is a consolidated effort of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), NOAA’s National Weather Service, and their funded institutions. Oceanic and atmospheric conditions are updated weekly on the Climate Prediction Center web site (El Niño/La Niña Current Conditions and Expert Discussions). A probabilistic strength forecast is available here. The next ENSO Diagnostics Discussion is scheduled for 8 January 2026.
To receive an e-mail notification when the monthly ENSO Diagnostic Discussions are released, please send an e-mail message to: ncep.list.enso-update@noaa.gov.
Where the wild things thrive: Finding and protecting nature’s #ClimateChange safe havens — Toni Lyn Morelli and Diana Stralberg (TheConversation.com)
Toni Lyn Morelli, UMass Amherst; U.S. Geological Survey and Diana Stralberg, University of Alberta
The idea began in California’s Sierra Nevada, a towering spine of rock and ice where rising temperatures and the decline of snowpack are transforming ecosystems, sometimes with catastrophic consequences for wildlife.
The prairie-doglike Belding’s ground squirrel (Urocitellus beldingi) had been struggling there as the mountain meadows it relies on dry out in years with less snowmelt and more unpredictable weather. At lower elevations, the foothill yellow-legged frog (Rana boylii) was also being hit hard by rising temperatures, because it needs cool, shaded streams to breed and survive.
As we studied these and other species in the Sierra Nevada, we discovered a ray of hope: The effects of warming weren’t uniform.
We were able to locate meadows that are less vulnerable to climate change, where the squirrels would have a better chance of thriving. We also identified streams that would stay cool for the frogs even as the climate heats up. Some are shaded by tree canopy. Others are in valleys with cool air or near deep lakes or springs.
These special areas are what we call climate change refugia.
Identifying these pockets of resilient habitat – a field of research that was inspired by our work with natural resource managers in the Sierra Nevada – is now helping national parks and other public and private land managers to take action to protect these refugia from other threats, including fighting invasive species and pollution and connecting landscapes, giving threatened species their best chance for survival in a changing climate.
Across the world, from the increasingly fire-prone landscapes of Australia to the glacial ecosystems at the southern tip of Chile, researchers, managers and local communities are working together to find and protect similar climate change refugia that can provide pockets of stability for local species as the planet warms.
A new collection of scientific papers examines some of the most promising examples of climate change refugia conservation. In that collection, over 100 scientists from four continents explain how frogs, trees, ducks and lions stand to benefit when refugia in their habitats are identified and safeguarded.
Saving songbirds in New England
The study of climate change refugia – places that are buffered from the worst effects of global warming – has grown rapidly in recent years.
In New England, managers at national parks and other protected areas were worried about how species are being affected by changes in climate and habitat. For example, the grasshopper sparrow (Ammodramus savannarum), a little grassland songbird that nests in the open fields in the eastern U.S. and southern Canada, appears to be in trouble.
We studied its habitats and projected that less than 6% of its summer northeastern U.S. range will have the right temperature and precipitation conditions by 2080. https://www.youtube.com/embed/W2VmrdbCbmU?wmode=transparent&start=0 The grasshopper sparrow. American Bird Conservancy
The loss of songbirds is not only a loss of beauty and music. These birds eat insects and are important to the balance of the ecosystem.
The sand plain grasslands that the grasshopper sparrow relies on in the northeastern U.S. are under threat not only from changes in climate but also changes in how people use the land. Public land managers in Montague, Massachusetts, have used burning and mowing to maintain habitat for nesting grasshopper sparrows. That effort also brought back the rare frosted elfin butterfly for the first time in decades.
Protecting Canada’s vast forest ecosystems
In Canada, the climate is warming at about twice the global average, posing a threat to its vast forested landscapes, which face intensifying drought, insect outbreaks and destructive wildfires.
We have been actively mapping refugia in British Columbia, looking for shadier, wetter or more sheltered places that naturally resist the worst effects of climate change.
The mapping project will help to identify important habitat for wildlife such as moose and caribou. Knowing where these climate change refugia are allows land-use planners and Indigenous communities to protect the most promising habitats from development, resource extraction and other stressors.
British Columbia is undertaking major changes to forest landscape planning in partnership with First Nations and communities.
Lions, giraffes and elephants (oh, my!)
On the sweeping vistas of East Africa, dozens of species interact in hot spots of global biodiversity. Unfortunately, rising temperatures, prolonged drought and shifting seasons are threatening their very existence.
In Tanzania, working with government agencies and conservation groups through past USAID funding, we mapped potential refugia for iconic savanna species including lions, giraffes and elephants. These areas include places that will hold water in drought and remain cooler during heat waves. The iconic Serengeti National Park, home to some of the world’s most famous wildlife, emerged as a key location for climate change refugia.
Combining local knowledge with spatial analysis is helping prioritize areas where big cats, antelope, elephants and the other great beasts of the Serengeti ecosystem can continue to thrive – provided other, nonclimate threats such as habitat loss and overharvesting are kept at bay.
The Tanzanian government has already been working with U.S.-funded partners to identify corridors that can help connect biodiversity hot spots.
Hope for the future
By identifying and protecting the places where species can survive the longest, we can buy crucial decades for ecosystems while conservation efforts are underway and the world takes steps to slow climate change.
Across continents and climates, the message is the same: Amid our rapidly warming world, pockets of resilience remain for now. With careful science and strong partnerships, we can find climate change refugia, protect them and help the wild things continue to thrive.
Toni Lyn Morelli, Adjunct Full Professor of Environmental Conservation, UMass Amherst; U.S. Geological Survey and Diana Stralberg, Adjunct professor, Department of Renewable Resources, University of Alberta
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.