The health of our waters is the principal measure of how we live on the land — Luna Leopold
Click the link to go to the CRWUA website to access the presentations from the conference.
Click the link to read the article on the InkStain website (John Fleck):
December 20, 2023
The news out of last week’s Colorado River Water Users Association is that, behind the scenes, a deal is taking shape with the potential to bring Colorado River Basin water use into balance with water supply.
The deal would eliminate the “structural deficit”, and creates a framework for a compromise over the Upper Basin’s Lee Ferry delivery/non-depletion obligation.
This is huge. But so are the caveats – in terms of both the challenges remaining for a deal, and the definition of the problem we are trying to solve.
The U.S. Lower Basin states – California, Arizona, and Nevada – have converged on a set of numbers to permanently reduce their use on a year-in, year-out basis by a minimum of 1.25 million acre feet per year, eliminating the “structural deficit” – the year-in, year-out gap between inflows and outflows that has drained Lake Mead over the last two decades.
California and Arizona seem to have found a path to a compromise (the details of which have not been made public) after the early-2023 cage match that seemed to place us on the path to interstate litigation, with six states arguing for sharing the pain and California insisting on a priority administration that would have largely placed the burden of the impact of climate change on Arizona.
If separate negotiations with Mexico lead to additional reductions south of the border (which is how this has played out in the last two rounds of basin scheming), total durable, permanent Lower Basin reductions on the order of 1.5 million acre feet a year appear to be within reach.
If more cuts than that are needed to balance the system, the Lower Basin states at CRWUA made it pointedly, publicly clear that they are asking the Upper Basin states to share in the additional pain.
Implicit in that final point is the opportunity for a version of what we used to call the “Grand Bargain” – a Lower Basin concession that the river’s flow may not be sufficient to deliver 82.5 million acre feet per year. That would require even deeper cuts in the Lower Basin. To avoid interstate litigation over a Colorado River Compact delivery shortfall, the Lower Basin is offering a “Modest Bargain” of a sort – an Upper Basin contribution of water matching in some way (it’s not clear in what proportion to the additional Lower Basin cuts) in return for the Lower Basin not wading into a legal fight over the meaning of Article III(d) of the Colorado River Compact.
To the extent that this moves from the meeting rooms and hallway conversations of CRWUA to public view, the seven states need to come together on something that can be put down in writing, publicly, by (I think) March in order for the Bureau of Reclamation wizards to begin the modeling work. So this is on a very fast track.
This is a very big deal, and very good news. But….
SOME TERMS AND CONDITIONS MAY APPLY
There are a bunch of caveats.
The final AZ-CA-NV split of the 1.25-ish million acre feet is not fixed, but it is close, converging on a set of numbers that make sense, respecting some of California’s senior priority status, but not insisting on it as thoroughly as the state’s proposal of last February.
Suffice to say that the remarkable Lower Basin use numbers this year – currently at 5.8 million acre feet for the three U.S. states, the lowest total U.S. draw on Lake Mead since the modern record-keeping regime began in 1964 – shows that cuts like this are totally doable without wrecking the economies of the three states.
If we don’t have three-state numbers yet, we’re a lot farther from figuring out how each of the three states will divvy up the cuts among their users. This will be hard. Well for two of the states, anyway, Nevada just has one major user to do the divvying.
But will voluntary cuts of the scale needed be possible without the big inflow of federal cash that has helped so much this year? The precedent set by all the money sloshing around the Lower Basin right now poses a challenge.
And what of the Upper Basin’s relentless “it’s a Lower Basin over-use problem!” rhetoric over the last year. Now that the Lower Basin folks have basically said “Yup, and here’s what we’re gonna do about that”, have the Upper Basin folks painted themselves into a corner that makes the broader compromise needed on the next steps that much harder?
WHO’S AT THE TABLE RIGHT NOW?
All of this is predicated on a narrow definition of the problem we are trying to solve, which is basically a mass balance problem – figuring out how to match our use of water with the supply available, rather than over-using and draining the reservoirs. This is important! But it’s not the only thing.
This is a process dominated by the economically and politically powerful current water users. If we have a collective action problem here, we also have a “collective agency” problem. It is a system under which “agency” – the power to influence outcomes – is tightly controlled and narrowly distributed.
What about interests other than the big water agencies and their representatives in state government? This is clearly a state-to-state conversation right now, heading toward a desire for a seven-state proposal come March. In the last two rounds of this – the 2007 Interim Guidelines and the Drought Contingency Plan – the states’ proposals have carried the day.
What about the Colorado River Basin’s 30 Tribal Sovereigns? It’s not clear to me how their needs and interests are being incorporated into this process. In this regard, one is reminded of Neil Gorsuch’s dissent in this year’s Navajo decision, where he analogized to the tribe standing in line after line again and again at the DMV, only to be told that this isn’t the right line. Then which is?
What about non-water-consuming environmental values, which have similarly had a hard time figuring out which process might be the right one? The states could, in theory, act on behalf of those non-water agency interests in the deal they’re so furiously negotiating. Will they? Will the federal government step in and insist if the states don’t?
There was hope as we headed into the negotiation of the post-2026 river management regime that broader interests and values would be represented. It will be interesting to see what else beyond a seven-state proposal gets consideration in the discussions to come.
A note on sources and methods: I spent last week resting, looking at art, watching falling snow, reading a book (actually several), and not going to CRWUA. My deep thanks to my many friends who attended and filled me in what they heard and saw. All errors are mine. (Also, is that a Cocker Spaniel in the picture, a couple of seats to the chair’s left?)
Click the link to access the report on the NIDIS website (Britt Parker; Joel Lisonbee, Elizabeth Ossowski ; Holly R. Prendeville; Dennis Todey). Here’s the executive summary:
Over the past few decades, significant advances have been made to improve the Nation’s capacity to proactively manage drought risk by providing those affected with the best available information and resources to diagnose and quantify—or assess—drought conditions. Drought assessments can be a snapshot of present drought severity and extent, an analysis over time of drought duration, a retrospective look at the underlying drivers of a drought, an analysis of the impacts of drought on people or systems, or any other attempt to understand the dynamics of a particular drought. These assessments have a vital role to play in supporting communities in preparing for, mitigating, and responding to drought.
Improvements in data products, more accurate drought assessments, and investments in better coordination have served drought-prone communities well. Continuous integration of new needs and requirements from those communities is essential to maintaining the continuity of progress our country has already made. Today, the changing climate is causing the probability of extreme events to change, a phenomenon known statistically as non-sta-tionarity. In the future, the intensity, duration, and frequency of droughts may change. This poses new challenges that are being raised by scientists, decision-makers, and practitioners. These challenges include the difficulty to distinguish natural variability, meaning the naturally occurring oscillations in the climate system, from forced trends, or the seemingly permanent changes caused by anthropogenic climate change. This also includes the complexity of understanding drought within socio-economic considerations and resource constraints (e.g., funding, capacity) that might limit the ability to integrate the latest science into operational data products.
Around the country, those engaged in drought decision-making are considering a number of questions such as: Do current methods for assessing drought conditions consistently and deliberately consider non-stationarity? If not, could this result in a missed opportunity to promote drought planning and response strategies that build long-term community resilience and reduce risk? What research is needed to produce drought indicators that account for climate change? And what resources are available to support their development and integration into the current suite of indicators?
A technical meeting to discuss this issue was co-hosted by NOAA’s National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) and USDA Climate Hubs on February 28–March 1, 2023, where scientists, decision-makers, and practitioners were asked to address an overarching question: “What approaches should be taken to better incorporate non-stationarity into drought assessment?” Answering this question thoroughly demands thoughtful consideration of (1) the phenomenon of drought itself; (2) the experience of drought and its impacts; (3) the purpose of assessment of drought and its impacts; and (4) the preparation for and response to drought and its impacts, including actions to reduce impacts as well as policies and adaptation. Of these considerations, the technical workshop focused largely on better understanding and assessing the phenomenon itself by breaking the topic down into four sub-topics: (1) considering climate variability and drought assessment; (2) understanding drought in an aridifying (drier-trending) climate; (3) discerning drought in a humidifying (wetter-trending) climate; and (4) defining drought in terms of risk and likelihood of event.
This report captures the ideas and feedback of more than 100 subject matter experts from over 44 institutions across the drought research and practitioner communities who participated in the meeting and reviewed this report. The two-day meeting identified priority actions and outstanding research questions that would continue to advance drought assessment in a changing climate. From the large volume of input received at the meeting, ideas were collated and refined; however, they were not distilled down to a few top priorities, nor were ideas further fleshed out to incorporate a prescriptive scale for implementation. Instead, this report captures the breadth of feedback from the meeting itself.
In total, the report highlights priority actions and research questions across the following fifteen focus areas to improve drought assessment by addressing gaps identified by the research and practitioner community. These fifteen focus areas are presented individually with the acknowledgement that if they are approached as siloes, progress will be curtailed. Many are cross-cutting, progress in one will accelerate progress in another, and it is key that the drought community approach these issues collaboratively. Finally, while the primary focus of the technical working meeting was on better understanding and assessing the phenomenon (of drought) itself, focus areas on related planning, governance, and communication considerations are also critically important and were captured.
- Learning with Indigenous Communities
- Benchmarking our Understanding and Assessment of Drought in a Changing Climate
- Ensuring Equity in Drought Monitoring and Assessment
- Evaluating Data Relevance, Fidelity, Integration, Metadata and New Technologies
- Determining the Physical Drivers of Drought and How They Are Changing
- Understanding Drivers of Aridification and Their Interactions with Drought
- Addressing Regional Differences in Non-stationarity
- Improving Drought Indicator Performance
- Using Precipitation Effectiveness More Broadly to Capture Rainfall Variability
- Quantifying Water Demand in a Changing Climate
- Evaluating Drought Impacts and How They Are Changing
- Assessing Drought in Terms of Risk
- Assessing Policy through the Lens of Non-stationarity
- Strengthening Planning, Management, and Adaptation
- Improving Communication and Collaborative Knowledge Exchange
Across this discussion of diverse and important focus areas, chronic issues emerged that plague our Nation’s efforts to adequately assess drought and its impacts, and these are exacerbated by climate change. These include gaps in drought monitoring and assessment that present equity issues and under-resourced observation and monitoring networks that require additional investment.
This report offers a rich collection of ideas for action and research that federal, tribal, state, local agencies and academic institutions can advance. Further prioritization and specification may be warranted to discern where limited resources might be most impactful, and this will be the focus of an accompanying synthesis paper for publication in 2024. Although the intent of the report is not to provide authoritative guidance or design specifications for specific research or programmatic endeavors, it is intended to illuminate current and future needs to best account for a changing climate in our drought assessment practices.
Click the link to read the article on the Sibley’s Rivers website (George Sibley):
I was planning for this post to be tip-toeing into a conversation about the prior appropriation doctrine, a conversation which we badly need to have throughout the interior West, but which will likely be vigorously, even violently, opposed by those holding senior water rights in every western watershed.
But instead of that – I’ve been captured by the season, the dark season of long nights and short days that has made us – all the way back to our distant ancestors living in stick-and-mud wickiups (maybe especially them) – want to take a break from the daily round, and instead contemplate the larger problem of helping the sun return. So – a short break here, from worrying about the water we don’t have, or about 2026 and a new set of bandaids and splints for dragging into the future the Marley’s Chain that we call the Law of the River. No big bonfire either, or Saturnalia or Christmas or Kwanzaa just yet, although each in its good time. Instead, just a celebration, or at least acknowledgement, of our currently fading sun – and a revisit to the relationship between the sun and the water that the sun giveth and taketh away, the two things without which we would not be here.
Think, for starters, of the planet misnamed ‘Earth,’ held by the mysterious force of gravity in an uneven circle around the sun at about 66,000 miles per hour, too fast for gravity’s centripetal force to pull it into the sun, but not so fast that centrifugal force would let it leave the sun’s’pull on a straight line into the black night of space – a delicate kind of dynamic balance.
But – ‘Earth’: had we seen it first from above like we can now, from satellites on the upper edge of our atmosphere, we would have called the planet ‘Water,’ or maybe more romantically, ‘Oceania.’ Water covers 70 percent of the planet; we are a planet awash in water. Where the water came from, we can only hypothesize; but we have it – and we are also just the right distance from the sun we circle so that a lot of our water is in its liquid form. A few million miles closer to the sun and our water would be vapor in the atmosphere, as on Venus; a few million miles farther away, and the oceans and land would lie under deep layers of ice – the recent Pleistocene writ larger. But we are in the ‘sweet spot’ between those extremes, where the tilt of the planet is such that in our year’s passage around the sun, most of us are getting a taste of both the water-as-ice world and the water-as-vapor world, winter and summer; but thanks be, water-as-liquid continues to be where, or what, most of the water is.
The majority of that water, of course – 97 percent of it – is too salty for land-based life on the 30 percent of the planet currently not underwater. We know that the presence of any water at all on that 30 percent of the planet depends on the sun turning water-as-liquid to water-as-vapor – in effect, ‘desalinating’ it – then wafting some of that cleansed water-as-vapor over the land on winds also generated by the sun, where the water-as-vapor cools as it rises over the land and condenses as precipitation – water-as-ice or water-as-liquid, but either way, what we call ‘freshwater,’ and need more than any other single resource (with the possible exception of the sun).
More than two-thirds of the freshwater that falls over the land gets ‘banked’ on the planet’s remaining glaciers and ice sheets, mostly useless to life. A majority of the remaining third (of just 3 percent of the total water, remember) soaks in as groundwater, some of it ‘tributary’ (eventually working its way underground into streams), and the rest non-tributary (going into ‘deep-storage’ in aquifers). The top layer of water that soaks into the ground is what most of our land-based plants depend on for life and living.
The diminished remainder – less than one percent of all the water on the planet – is surface water: the rivers, streams and lakes we see, use, play in and generally love to death. This is the water that most of the animal life on earth, including us mammals, depend on for life and living. We human mammals, however, have learned how to pump groundwater up to the surface for animal uses.
But this is the point at which the sun ceases to be just a good friend. Its propensity for turning water-as-liquid into water-as-vapor does not stop at the edge of the ocean, and as soon as the sun and its agent winds deliver the precipitation to us – mostly water-as-ice in the Colorado River’s mountains – it goes to work converting it back to water-as-vapor.
The sun and wind don’t even wait till the water-as-ice turns to water-as-liquid; the wind goes to work as soon as the snow lands, the sun as soon as the clouds disperse; both sun and wind begin turning an unknown quantity of the water-as-ice directly into water-as-vapor, through the process of sublimation. Only snow that falls on the lee and shaded side of rocks, trees or ridges, or falls through a forest to the ground, is safe from the sun and wind. If it is intercepted on the branches of forest trees, it is sublimated from there too. Estimates of the amount of a snowpack lost to sublimation on exposed areas range as high as 30 percent. Researchers on a large Department of Energy project are making a very complex and instrument-intensive effort to determine more accurately how much is lost to sublimation, and studies are going on in the Western forests to see if there are management strategies that would better protect the snow from sublimation.
The snowpack that survives the winter melts in the spring and early summer, water-as-liquid that either soaks into the ground or runs off in streams, both processes in which its meets other sets of challenges from the sun. The sun that soaks into the ground is eagerly sought out by the roots of plants, and is carried up into their stems, leaves and flowers. There, around 5-10 percent goes into the growth of the plants, and most of the rest is transpired through leaves into the atmosphere as vapor, partly to create a favorable micro-environment around the plant, and – one irrationally suspects – patly because that’s what their lord and master sun wants them to do. (False fact alert.)
The water that runs off, either because the slope is too steep or rocky to soak in or because the ground is already saturated, encounters other challenges. Bouncing down the mountainsides in whitewater streams, dry air catches and vaporizes tiny droplets. Then once the water-as-liquid calms down in the valleys, it encounters lots of users, including us. Much of it is captured by plants, some ‘wild,’ some domesticated, with a large portion of that being transpired back to the atmosphere. Anywhere it is exposed to the sun, some of it is evaporated. In the Colorado River Basin, the water-as-liquid eventually encounters a dam and reservoir, where it becomes a sitting duck for the sun. The hotter the reservoir’s environment, the more is lost – although reservoirs in the upper reaches of the river are only partially exempted from evaporation; they lose water-as-liquid into thinner dry air. Again, we don’t have an accurate measure of evaporation from the sun and its sidekick winds, but estimates I’ve seen are around 800,000 acre-feet in ‘system losses’ (mostly evaporation) from the states above the canyons, and 1.2 million acre-feet system losses from the states below the canyons. Nearly a sixth of the river as it has been running the past 20 years – and those numbers get a little worse in dry years of low precipitation.
So the sun giveth and the sun taketh away. A 2022 summary study of Colorado River science cites findings that only 10 percent of the precipitation that falls over the Colorado River Basin actually shows up in the river. A goodly portion of the rest undoubtedly goes to groundwater – but a recent US Geological Survey study (too complex in its science for me to really comprehend) shows that roughly half of the river’s water below the snowpack zone (roughly 8,000 feet elevation and above) is groundwater making its way into the stream. Since about 85 percent of the river’s water originates above the 8,000 foot elevation, the sun clearly does quite a lot of its taking-away before the streams ever emerge in what could be called the human-use region.
There is, however, another co-conspirator with the sun, in determining the ratio of water-as-liquid to water-as-vapor, and that is the planet’s atmosphere – what is in the atmosphere. The atmosphere has a regulatory function for the ratios of water-as-ice to water-as-liquid, and water-as-liquid to water-as-vapor. Small changes in the amount of carbon and nitrogen gases in the atmosphere change those ratios significantly. At the height of the Pleistocene Epoch (most of the past two million years plus) the quantity of carbon gases in the atmosphere had dropped to less than 200 parts per million (ppm), decreasing the capacity of the atmosphere to hold solar heat, and the precipitation that fell as snow and piled up in glaciers in the mountains and ice sheets on the leveler land – ice masses with a weight sufficient to crack and depress the continental crust, leaving depressions that filled up with the Great Lakes when the ice melted.
Sometime in the last half-million years or so, however, something caused the carbon gases in the atmosphere to begin slowly increasing, and the balance of water on earth began to shift back from the cold dry epoch of water-as-ice toward water-as-liquid. Perhaps volcanic activity, perhaps fires in forests dried out for want of water, maybe some assistance from paleo-people burning forests and grasslands to keep forage optimal for the animals they hunted – some combination of factors and events bumped up the carbon gases in the atmosphere to 300 ppm plus or minus, and the planetary climate grew warmer and wetter, mellowing into the Holocene Epoch these past 10,000-15,000 years.
So comparatively mellow was the Holocene, with water-as-liquid replacing water-as-ice in comparative abundance, that all the forms of life that had survived the Pleistocene thrived – thrived so well that many species, plant and animal, experienced episodes of the ‘trauma of success’: outgrowing their resource base in episodes of swarming, and ultimately being brought back into balance through rough action by the rest of their environments, by ‘nature’ – a menu of measures that includes pandemic disease, famine, infighting, social breakdown, and all the other consequences of too many individuals competing for too little food, water, and ‘elbow room.’
We are certainly in that category of swarming species, but are a unique case, being not locked into instinctual behavior, but either blessed or cursed with the capacity to see what’s going on and take steps to adapt culturally, thus avoiding (or at least deferring) the depredations of famine, pandemic disease and war over food, water and land. But our adaptations get ever more complex and difficult to maintain, and usually have unforeseen consequences that have to be dealt with through even more complexity.
Our current success in staying ahead of the disasters that usually brings swarming species back into balance quickly, if brutally, has depended heavily on releasing carbon substances long sequestered in the ground, burning them – and consequently driving up the capacity of the atmosphere to hold the sun’s heat. The good news there is that we’ve probably precluded the usual interstadial return to the Pleistocene winter. But the bad news is that we have begun to significantly increase the conversion of water-as-liquid to water-as-vapor. We’ve all seen the summer virga, when falling precipitation over a desert is evaporated by rising heat before it can get to the ground – beautiful in the desert, but not something we want to see everywhere and all the time….
But time next year for all that. Wishing you all a meaningful and (if it’s not contradictory) joyful holiday season. See you again in 2024 – when we’ll again go down by the river and all its problems (for which a good primer would be to look at the Seven Principles of Kwanzaa).
Click on a thumbnail graphic to view a gallery of drought data from the US Drought Monitor website.
Click the link to go the US Drought Monitor website. Here’s an excerpt:
This Week’s Drought Summary
Moderate or heavy precipitation amounts fell in three main areas this week: central and northern California, parts of the southwestern Great Plains (especially southwest Kansas through the Oklahoma and Texas Panhandles), and along the East Coast. Warmer-than-normal temperatures occurred this week across much of the central and northern contiguous United States. For areas in drought or abnormal dryness that received heavy precipitation amounts, improvements occurred locally due to lessening precipitation deficits and increased streamflow and/or soil moisture. In areas between the southern Great Plains heavy rain and the East Coast heavy rain, deficits in streamflow, soil moisture, and precipitation worsened, leading to widespread degrading conditions. Heavier rains fell on the northeast half of Puerto Rico this week, and scattered moderate drought and abnormal dryness continued on the island. A mix of degradations and improvements occurred in Hawaii this week, with a wet trade wind pattern bringing needed rainfall to windward slopes of Oahu and Molokai. Alaska remained free of drought and abnormal dryness…
High Plains
In parts of southern Colorado, south-central and eastern Nebraska, and much of Kansas, moderate to heavy precipitation amounts fell this week. Improvements to ongoing drought and abnormal dryness occurred in a north-to-south band across central and western Kansas, where this week’s precipitation lessened precipitation deficits and improved soil moisture. Localized improvements to drought also occurred in south-central Nebraska, where this week’s rain was enough to alleviate precipitation and soil moisture deficits somewhat. Low snowpack and dry conditions for the past few months continued in northern Colorado, leading to a southward expansion of moderate drought and abnormal dryness in high elevations.
The wet weather in southern Colorado led to some improvements to drought conditions. Dryness from the past couple of months increased in eastern South Dakota and in the Black Hills, leading to abnormal dryness expanding or developing in both areas. Temperatures in Nebraska, Colorado, and Kansas were mostly 3 to 9 degrees above normal, with a few local cooler exceptions. In the Dakotas, temperatures ranging from 6 to locally 15 degrees warmer than normal were common…
Coastal central and northern California, and parts of the northern Central Valley and northern Sierra Nevada, received heavier precipitation this week, exceeding 2 inches in some places. Lighter precipitation amounts fell in coastal portions of Oregon and Washington. In parts of northern and southeast New Mexico, precipitation this week was enough to improve streamflow, soil moisture and precipitation deficits sufficiently for localized improvements to drought conditions. Short-term drying in parts of east-central Utah led to a small expansion of abnormal dryness. In southwest and south-central Montana, low snowpack amounts, short-term precipitation deficits, and soil moisture deficits led to localized expansion in drought and abnormal dryness. A reassessment of short- and long-term conditions in northwest Montana, the northern Idaho Panhandle, and parts of central and western Washington led to localized improvements to ongoing drought and abnormal dryness…
South
A soaking rain event occurred this week in parts of the western Great Plains, especially in the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles and adjacent western Oklahoma and western north Texas. In these areas, precipitation deficits and soil moisture improved enough for widespread improvement to abnormal dryness or drought. Recent rains from before this week led to a reassessment of conditions and some localized improvements in eastern Tennessee. Drier weather occurred in between these locations, with the exception of some rain across Louisiana (which did little to improve the situation but prevented worsening of conditions). Deficits in soil moisture, streamflow, and short- and long-term precipitation continued to locally worsen in northeast Texas, Arkansas, northern Mississippi, and western Tennessee, leading to degrading conditions in some of these areas. Other than parts of Mississippi and Louisiana, most of the region experienced warmer-than-normal temperatures this week, with western Oklahoma and parts of western north Texas and the Texas Panhandle coming in at 4 to 8 degrees above normal…
Looking Ahead
From Wednesday, December 20 to Christmas evening, the National Weather Service Weather Prediction Center is forecasting three areas of heavier precipitation accumulations. The first, where amounts are likely to be between 0.75 to 3 inches of precipitation, is forecast for far western Oregon and Washington. In the Southwest, 0.75 to 2 inches of precipitation is forecast from Arizona into southern California, with higher amounts possible near and northwest of Los Angeles. From the central Gulf Coast northward to the middle Missouri and Mississippi River Valleys, precipitation amounts are forecast to range from a half inch to 2 inches, with locally higher amounts possible from northeast Texas into western Arkansas, and along the Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama coasts.
From December 26-30, the NWS Climate Prediction Center forecast favors below-normal precipitation for most of the region from the Mississippi River and Great Lakes west to the Great Basin. Above-normal precipitation is favored along the West and East Coasts and in deep south Texas. Below-normal temperatures are favored in areas near the Louisiana and Texas coasts. Elsewhere, near- or warmer-than-normal temperatures are forecast for much of the rest of the contiguous United States. Except for southwest Alaska, above-normal precipitation is favored for much of the state. Colder-than-normal temperatures are more likely in the western third of Alaska, while the eastern third is more likely to see warmer-than-normal weather. Drier-than-normal weather is favored across Hawaii, and cooler-than-normal temperatures are favored on the Big Island and the eastern half of Maui.
Click the link to read the article on the Carbon Brief website (Multiple Authors):
Nearly every country in the world has agreed to “transition away from fossil fuels” – the main driver of climate change – at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai.
It is the first time such an agreement has been reached in 28 years of international climate negotiations.
The commitment is included in the first “global stocktake” of how countries can accelerate action to meet the goals of the landmark Paris Agreement.
However, many countries walked away from the talks frustrated at the lack of a clear call for a fossil-fuel “phase-out” this decade – and at a “litany of loopholes” in the text that might enable the production and consumption of coal, oil and gas to continue.
Despite an early breakthrough on launching a fund to pay for “loss and damage” from climate change, developing countries were left disappointed by a lack of new financial commitments for transitioning away from fossil fuels and adapting to climate impacts.
COP28 president and oil executive Dr Sultan Al Jaber hailed the “world-first” achievement of getting “fossil fuels” in a UN climate change agreement.
However, his presidency was overshadowed by allegations the UAE intended to use COP28 to make oil-and-gas deals.
Away from the negotiations, COP28 brought a wave of new international pledges – covering everything from oil-and-gas company emissions and tripling renewables, through to food systems and how the world can better integrate action on climate change and biodiversity loss.
Here, Carbon Brief provides in-depth analysis of all the key outcomes in Dubai – both inside and outside the COP.
- Formal negotiations
From email from CDPHE:
Join the Air Pollution Control Division to discuss further reducing greenhouse gas emissions from oil and gas operations. The division is leading a workgroup that is making a plan to address emissions from the industry’s midstream facilities. Midstream facilities include compressor stations and natural gas processing plants. Fuel combustion equipment at these facilities emit greenhouse gases and other air pollutants. This equipment includes engines, boilers, reboilers, heaters, and turbines.
Public feedback will help the workgroup draft an emissions reduction plan. The draft plan will be open for public comment in 2024. See below for more details and opportunities to comment on the draft plan, once available.
The division invites all Coloradans to participate. In particular, the division would like to hear from:
- Communities living or working near midstream oil and gas facilities.
- Communities disproportionately impacted by pollution.
The public meeting agenda will include:
- A plain language presentation.
- An opportunity to provide public comments.
- A question and answer session.
Registration is required. Language interpretation services are available upon request.
Registration:
- Virtual meeting: Thursday, January 18, 10 – 11:30 a.m.
- Register to join the Jan. 18 meeting.
- Virtual meeting: Tuesday, February 20, 2 – 3:30 p.m.
- Register to join the Feb. 20 meeting.
- Virtual meeting: Thursday, March 7, 10 – 11:30 a.m.
- Register to join the March 7 meeting.
Questions? Contact cdphe_apcd_outreach@state.co.us. Please include “Midstream Public Meeting” in the subject line. More information is available on the division’s website, including a fact sheet.
Draft emission reduction plan for oil and gas midstream facilities
Join us in spring 2024 for public meetings on the draft emission reduction plan. The plan will focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions from midstream oil and gas facilities.
The draft emissions reduction plan will be available on the division’s website. The draft plan will also be open for a 30-day public comment period once available, starting likely in mid-April 2024.
The meeting agenda will include:
- An opportunity to provide verbal public comments.
- Information on how to submit a written public comment.
Registration is required. Language interpretation services are available upon request.
Registration:
- Virtual meeting: Saturday, April 27, 10 a.m. – 12 p.m.
- Register to join the April 27 event.
- Virtual meeting: Thursday, May 2, 6 – 8 p.m.
- Register to join the May 2 event.
Questions? Contact cdphe_apcd_outreach@state.co.us. Please include “Midstream Public Meeting” in the subject line.
Background on Colorado’s greenhouse gas reduction planning
This work is part of Colorado’s ongoing efforts to achieve greenhouse gas reduction targets.
Colorado’s Greenhouse Gas Pollution Reduction Roadmap outlines targets by sector.
The Colorado Environmental Justice Act set statewide greenhouse gas reduction targets for the industrial sector. This includes reducing greenhouse gas emissions 20% by 2030 below the 2015 baseline for fuel combustion equipment in the oil and gas midstream segment.
For more information, please visit the division’s greenhouse gas reduction planning program webpage. Register to receive email updates.
Meeting accommodation notice
Auxiliary aids and services for individuals with disabilities may be provided upon request. Please notify cdphe_apcd_outreach@state.co.us and the Nondiscrimination Coordinator at cdphe_nondiscrimination@state.co.us or 303-692-2102 at least one week prior to the meeting to make arrangements.
Click the link to read the article on the Aspen Journalism website (Heather Sackett):
Water managers, state and county elected officials and representatives from environmental and recreation organizations all gathered in Glenwood Springs on Tuesday to mark a historic deal intended to keep water in the Colorado River.
The Glenwood Springs-based Colorado River Water Conservation District has inked a nearly $100 million deal with Xcel Energy to buy one of the oldest and biggest non-consumptive water rights on the main stem of the Colorado River, a first step in ensuring the water continues flowing west.
“How does history feel?” Marc Catlin, vice president of the River District and state Representative from District 58, asked the audience. “Feels pretty good today, doesn’t it?”
At a packed meeting at the Hotel Colorado, River District President and Eagle County Commissioner Kathy Chandler-Henry signed a purchase and sale agreement with Xcel Energy for water rights associated with the Shoshone hydropower plant in Glenwood Canyon. The River District and other partners will pay $98.5 million for two water rights: a 1902 right for 1,250 cubic feet per second and another from 1929 for 158 cfs.
River District board members on Tuesday approved the purchase and sale agreement with Public Service Company of Colorado, a subsidiary of Xcel Energy, and approved spending $20 million from River District’s Community Funding Partnership grant program toward the deal.
The move represents the culmination of years of work on the part of the River District to secure the rights.
“Over the past few decades, 19 western Colorado entities have been working together tirelessly to find a permanent way to preserve these flows, which served as the backbone of western Colorado’s economy and environment,” River District General Manager Andy Mueller said.
When the Shoshone plant is operating, it draws 1,408 cfs of water downstream, which adds up to about 1 million acre-feet each year, according to the River District. Upstream junior water rights holders, some of which are Front Range diverters that take water from the headwaters across the Continental Divide, must leave enough water in the river for Shoshone to receive its full amount. It also means that the water is available for other downstream users on the Western Slope, including for endangered fish in the critical 15-mile reach of the Colorado River in the Grand Valley.
In recent years, the Shoshone plant has been down often for maintenance and has been damaged or made inaccessible by ice jams, wildfires, rockfall and mudslides in the disaster-prone canyon. A 2016 agreement known as the Shoshone Outage Protocol (SHOP) allows the plant to continue calling for water even when it’s not operable. But SHOP is not permanent, which made Western Slope water managers uneasy. They worried that if Xcel sold or stopped operating the plant permanently, that water would no longer continue flowing downstream or another entity would seek to purchase the water rights.
According to Hollie Velasquez Horvath, regional vice president for state affairs and community relations for Xcel, the River District approached the utility four times about purchasing the rights.
“While we have no plans to not operate the Shoshone plant, we also understand the critical risk if there is ever a point in which that plant does not operate for our customers,” Horvath said. “This deal is important to our customers and I know our communities on the Western Slope.”
Xcel will continue to lease the hydropower rights from the River District for as long as the plant is in operation. The reach where the instream flow rights tied to the deal would be used would run about 2.4 miles from the point of diversion at the Shoshone Dam at the Hanging Lake Tunnel to the outfall of the powerplant penstocks.
Commissioners through whose counties the Colorado River and its tributaries flow — Grand, Summit, Eagle, Garfield, Mesa — each got a few minutes at the podium.
“Grand County is the most heavily diverted … in the state and this is a big deal for us,” said Merrit Linke, commissioner from Grand County, much of whose headwaters are taken eastward to the Front Range. “From tourism to ag and everything in between, Grand County relies on the Colorado and its tributaries. Just to name a few: Williams Fork, Willow Creek, the Fraser, the Muddy, the Blue. For all of those tributaries of the Colorado that flow west, thank you.”
According to the purchase and sale agreement, the River District must pay $1 million by Jan. 1, but that is just the start. Closing the deal is contingent on four more conditions that must be fulfilled by the end of 2027: negotiation of an instream flow agreement with the Colorado Water Conservation Board, (the only entity allowed to hold instream flow rights); a change of water right decree that would allow the rights to be used for instream flow in addition to hydropower; approval of the deal by the Colorado Public Utilities Commission; and securing the remaining funding.
The River District has asked the CWCB to contribute $20 million; $10 million is expected to come from the Western Slope coalition, a group including the River District and 18 other local governments and water entities, and the remaining $49 million from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation through the Inflation Reduction Act that made available $4 billion in funding for drought mitigation.
At Tuesday’s event, which also served as the kick-off for the Shoshone Water Right Preservation Campaign, elected officials vowed to raise their share of the money.
“Garfield County is committed to this project, not only in heart and soul, but in money,” said Garfield County Commissioner John Martin. “We’re going to raise as much as possible and we’re challenging each one of you. … Don’t give me $100, don’t give me $1,000, don’t just give me $1 million.”
State Sen. Dylan Roberts, a Democrat from District 8, which includes Clear Creek, Eagle, Garfield, Gilpin, Grand, Jackson, Moffat, Rio Blanco, Routt and Summit counties, committed to working to secure the funding from the CWCB.
“I applaud you on your excellent work and express my solemn and steadfast commitment to make sure that the state of Colorado does its part in making sure that we can preserve the Shoshone water rights forever,” Roberts said.
Mueller told Aspen Journalism in an earlier interview that securing the Shoshone water rights has been a goal of the River District since the organization’s inception in 1937. He said the deal is a permanent solution to keep water in the river, whose flows have been diminished by drought and climate change.
“While $99 million seems like a lot, in terms of its value to the river and in the communities that depend on it, it’s worth vastly more than that,” he said.
More Shoshone coverage from Coyote Gulch.
Click the link to read the article on The Nevada Current website (Jennifer Solis):
Nature offered the Colorado River Basin states a reprieve last winter after a heavy snowpack and generous rainfall saved the region’s two largest reservoirs from collapse.
But one good year won’t solve decades of drought in the West, and the deadline for a new set of rules to manage the Colorado River looms over seven states dependent on its flow.
Top water officials for the seven Colorado River Basin states met last week during this year’s Colorado River Water Users Association conference in Las Vegas. With a few more years of stability secured for the river, state representatives resumed negotiating a new compromise for how they will share — and cut back on — water use after 2026.
States will begin crafting their proposals by March of 2024 before finalizing a new agreement by the 2026 deadline. Negotiators acknowledged they have three options to decide how states will share the river’s waning water supply going forward: litigation, legislation or negotiation.
Negotiations are the preferred option, state water commissioners agreed.
“The only option that reduces the risk to our water users is a consensus solution. Anything else is taken out of our hands, likely by people who understand the situation much less than we do,” said Brandon Gebhart, Wyoming’s river commissioner. “Russian roulette sounds like an interesting, sometimes lucrative game, until it doesn’t work out for you any longer. That’s what the Supreme Court and the Congress is for us.”
The federal government has told states they will need to reduce water use on the Colorado River by 2 million to 4 million acre-feet per year to address the unresolved water shortfall and the effects of climate change. State water commissioners agreed that the longer it takes to compromise and conserve the water needed to keep the river stable, the more likely reservoir levels will continue to plummet, leaving states with fewer and fewer options.
Lake Powell and Lake Mead — the two largest reservoirs in the nation — fell below critical thresholds in 2021 and 2022, triggering emergency cuts and federal action to protect the lakes.
“Tensions are seeping through. That’s good. It should be tense. These are serious things and these are serious people,” said John Entsminger, Nevada’s top water official Thursday.
Those tensions were reflected on the panel as water managers in the Upper Basin — Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming and Utah — reminded other states that they don’t have structures on the scale of Hoover Dam and Glen Canyon to store their water and can only take what nature gives them.
Entsminger agreed the Lower basin states — Nevada, Arizona, and California — have long failed to live within the means of what the river provides. Year after year, Lower basin states have used nearly all their 7.5 million acre-feet Colorado River allocation compared to the 4.5 million acres-feet used by the upper basin states.
“We can’t accept something that continues to drain the system, that puts 40 million people at risk,” said Colorado’s river commissioner Becky Mitchell.
Lower Basin officials acknowledged that their overuse has outpaced the river’s supply and the need to significantly cut their use.
“There is a supply-demand imbalance in the Lower Basin,” said JB Hamby, California’s top negotiator and vice president of the Imperial Irrigation District. “Where we’re at in the Lower Basin is a recognition that we have to solve and own that supply-demand imbalance. It’s going to be tough. It’s going to be challenging. But it’s absolutely necessary.”
In recent months, California and Arizona have signed conservation agreements with the federal government, made possible thanks to massive federal funding.
During the conference, California water agencies committed to conserve up to 643,000 acre-feet of water through 2025 under an agreement with the federal government, more than double Nevada’s total annual water allocation. Federal water managers also announced they reached an agreement with the Quechan Indian Tribe to save up to 39,000 acre-feet of water in the reservoir through 2025.
Earlier this month, the Imperial Irrigation District — the Colorado River’s largest water user — signed an agreement with the federal government to conserve about 100,000 acre-feet of water in 2023, enough to support upwards of 300,000 single family homes for a year.
Arizona recently pledged to conserve up to 348,680 acre-feet of water in Lake Mead in 2023, and up to 984,429 acre-feet through 2026, in exchange for hefty federal funds.
Lake Mead water users have already conserved up to 348,680-acre feet of water in the reservoir this year— that’s more water than has been conserved in a single year over the past 30 years, according to federal officials.
Water conservation agreements signed this year between the federal government, states, and tribes will conserve more than 1.5 million acre feet through 2026, including up to 984,429-acre feet of water in Lake Mead through 2026.
Still, hydrologists say climate change will require more cuts to water use in the west in order to stabilize the river in the long-term. A Nevada study in 2022 estimated that about 1.5 million acre-feet of water is lost per year because of evaporation and transit loss in the Lower Basin, which remains unaccounted for in official counts.
State water officials say their new reality will only complicate negotiations, but Entsminger said that he still has hope that “compromise on this river system is still possible.”
“The one thing I can tell you with absolute certainty is that the post-2026 guidelines will deliver a messy compromise that will be judged harshly by history. That’s the cold reality,” Entsminger said.
Click the link to read the blog post on the NOAA website (Nat Johnson):
After the last three winters of La Niña conditions (weren’t we all ready for a change!), the tropical Pacific is looking much different this year, with a strong El Niño likely this winter (1). Historically, how has El Niño shaped precipitation (rainfall + snowfall) over the U.S.? Let’s dig in and find out!
What happened during December-February for previous strong El Niños?
For the 7 strongest El Niño events since 1950, wetter-than-normal conditions occurred along the West Coast and southern tier of the U.S., especially in the Southeast. This is expected because El Niño causes the jet stream to shift southward and extend eastward over the southern U.S. However, there are clearly some differences among the events if you look at the details in the maps. For instance, the 2015-16 and 1957-58 strong El Niños were not as wet as expected over the southern U.S. and were even dry in some locations. What is the story there?
The devil is in the details
When forecasters put together a prediction, one consideration is the forecasts generated by climate models, such as from the North American Multi-Model Ensemble (NMME). You might think that the NMME produces a single forecast map for the upcoming winter, but nope! Each month, the NMME produces hundreds of forecast maps from several different models. Why so many maps? Well, the short version of the story is that the chaos of weather can have big consequences for our seasonal predictions (head over to footnote #2 if you would like a few more details). We cannot possibly say what the weather will be like on January 1st based on model forecasts that were made in early November. So, by running models many times, we are simulating a lot of different possible “weather outcomes” that can occur over a season.
The easiest way to examine these model predictions is not by staring at hundreds of maps (trust me, we’ve tried), but rather by examining the average of all the maps (this is called an “ensemble mean”). The average isolates the seasonal forecast signal (like El Niño) while removing the noise of chaotic weather. This map of forecast averages (3) is shown in the top left panel below, and because we are expecting a strong El Niño this winter, the map, not surprisingly, bears a striking resemblance to the expected winter El Niño precipitation pattern to its right (4).
However, this is a bit misleading because, as just noted, there are actually hundreds of forecasts, and this map is just an average of all of them! We know, because of chaotic weather, that the upcoming reality could more closely mimic any of the hundreds of individual forecasts. And these forecasts can differ considerably from each other.
For example, the map in the bottom left represents one forecast that looks quite similar to the NMME average. On the other hand, the forecast to its right, which was taken from the same model from the same starting month with basically the same El Niño, has almost the opposite pattern! And we cannot rule out either outcome actually happening for the upcoming winter!
This, in a nutshell, is the curse of internal variability. Basically, a single model, run forward with slightly different initial states, can lead to very different forecasted outcomes for the upcoming El Niño winter.
So, what’s the point of making winter predictions?
If I’m basically saying that anything can happen this winter, then why do we bother to produce seasonal predictions? Well, as we have emphasized on the blog, although almost anything can happen in a given winter, El Niño or La Niña can tilt the odds in favor of a particular outcome, meaning that those hundreds of predictions may lean in a certain direction. Additionally, the stronger the El Niño, the more likely the U.S. winter precipitation pattern will match both the average of the computer model forecasts and the typical El Niño precipitation pattern. Because there are higher chances in certain outcomes (e.g., a wetter winter), the presence of El Niño can help users assess risk and make plans.
Not convinced yet? We can put my claim to the test by assessing how well the typical or expected El Niño winter precipitation pattern matched up with what actually occurred for past winters. We can do that by examining all previous U.S. precipitation forecasts produced by the NMME, the hundreds of individual forecasts and the multi-model average, for all past winters from 1983-2022. The schematic above breaks down these evaluations.
I have taken every winter precipitation pattern from this period (like the 1997/98 winter pattern shown on the left) and calculated how well that pattern matched the individual NMME forecasts for that winter (top right), the NMME average forecast (middle right), and the expected El Niño precipitation pattern (bottom right) (5). The values in this evaluation (6) range from -1 to +1, with values closer to +1 indicating a good match with the actual observed pattern, values near 0 indicating no match, and negative values closer to -1 indicating an inverse match (“mirror image”). All these calculations for all 40 winters are presented in a single plot and arranged from left to right according to the strength of the La Niña (strongest farthest left) or El Niño (strongest farthest right), as shown in the bottom left of the schematic.
Show me the data!
There’s a lot to take in from these comparisons, but there are three main takeaways. We’ll break it down into a sequence of three steps, starting with a focus on the NMME forecast performance.
The first plot in this sequence reveals two of the main takeaways.
- The stronger the El Niño or La Niña, the more likely that the actual winter pattern will match the average model forecast pattern. This is why seasonal predictions work, and why we care so much about ENSO! This point is made by the upward slope of the green dashed line in the figure, which represents the tendency for the average model forecast to perform better at stronger Niño-3.4 index values. In fact, by this metric, the forecasts have performed quite well for most (but not all! – more on that below) moderate-to-strong El Ninos.
- For a given winter forecast, chaotic weather causes a wide range of performance among individual model forecasts. This second takeaway, which causes the most wailing and gnashing of teeth among forecasters and their users, is brought out by the vertical stripes that represent the performance from individual model forecasts. In fact, for a given winter, there are usually some forecasts that perform quite well and some that perform quite poorly, even though there are no major differences in the models’ ENSO forecast between the high- and low-performing forecasts. Instead, the main difference is what we saw in those two forecast maps above: unpredictable, chaotic weather. Unfortunately, it’s likely impossible to distinguish those high- and low-performing model forecasts well in advance. Again, that’s the curse of internal variability.
In the second step of this sequence, we now include with red and blue diamonds how well the observed precipitation pattern matched the expected El Niño or La Niña precipitation pattern.
This addition reveals the third takeaway.
- The average model forecast closely resembles the “expected” El Niño/La Niña precipitation pattern for most winters. This point comes out when we consider that that the dark grey circles representing the average model forecasts, are usually close to the red or blue diamonds that represent the El Niño (right) or La Niña (left) precipitation pattern for a given Niño-3.4 index value. This is the models’ way of agreeing with what we’ve been claiming at the ENSO Blog for years: ENSO is the major player for predictable seasonal climate patterns over the U.S. If there were another more important source of predictability, we would expect a bigger separation between those colored diamonds and the dark grey dots.
The comparison between the two biggest previous El Niños in this record, the winter of 1997/98 (a forecast success) and 2015/16 (widely regarded as a forecast “bust,” or how forecasters generally describe a bad forecast), are a great illustration of this final point. Check out footnote #7 for the details, but the upshot is that the influence of chaotic weather variability could have reduced the 1997/98 forecast performance much more than it did, and it likely was a factor in why the 2015/16 forecast performed so much worse.
Finally, let’s put these comparisons in the context of the forecast for the upcoming winter.
The likelihood of a strong El Niño increases the chance that the precipitation pattern for the upcoming winter will match both the NMME average and the expected El Niño pattern reasonably well, but, as I have been emphasizing, we cannot rule out the possibility that reality will have other plans.
That’s awfully convenient!
At this point, you might be saying, “Hold on, Nat, you’re telling me that ENSO is the main driver of the winter precipitation outlook, and if it busts, we can just blame it on the noise of chaotic, unpredictable weather? That sounds like a cop-out (and a little suspicious coming from a writer for the ENSO Blog).” That’s a fair question! As scientists, we need to continuously reevaluate our assumptions, check for blind spots, and tirelessly strive to improve our understanding of our forecast models. I can assure you that these efforts are being made, especially when the seasonal conditions deviate from expectations, and hopefully they will lead to better seasonal predictions with higher probabilities.
The main point I’m trying to make, however, is that when a forecast busts, it isn’t necessarily because there is a clear reason, a model bug, or a misunderstanding of the drivers. It could just be because there is a certain amount of unpredictable chaotic weather that we cannot predict in advance. That means that we must remember that seasonal outlooks are always expressed as probabilities (no guarantees!) and that we need to play the long game when evaluating seasonal outlooks – a single success or bust is not nearly enough.
The official CPC seasonal outlook for this upcoming 2023-24 winter has been updated and you can find it here. We need to keep in mind that other climate phenomena (e.g., MJO, polar vortex) that could shape conditions this winter are mostly unpredictable for seasonal averages, but are more predictable on the weekly to monthly time horizons (8). That means you may want to consider shorter-range forecasts, like CPC’s Monthly, Week 3-4, 8 to 14 Day, and 6 to 10 Day outlooks. We at the ENSO Blog will be closely monitoring how conditions evolve this winter, and we’ll be sure to keep you updated!
Footnotes
- Following the description in Emily’s post, we consider El Niño to be strong when the Oceanic Niño Index for the season exceeds 1.5° C. As of CPC’s November ENSO forecast update, the probability that the Oceanic Niño Index will exceed 1.5° C for December – February 2023/24 is 73%.
- One of the main sources of uncertainty in our seasonal predictions stems from the state of our climate system (ocean, land, and atmosphere) at the start of a forecast (“initial conditions”). Why does this matter? Well, we do not perfectly observe and understand the current oceanic, land, and atmospheric conditions over the entire globe at any single moment in time. Because of this uncertainty at the very start of a forecast, we run prediction models from slightly different starting conditions, making hundreds of different predictions at any one time (“an ensemble of many different members”). Those tiny differences in starting conditions can lead to very distinct seasonal predictions through the chaos of weather (as Emily wrote, think of a difference equating to a flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil at the start of a forecast leading to a tornado forming in Texas several weeks later). Another source of uncertainty is the imperfect way that climate models represent physical processes relevant for our weather and climate. Although that is not the focus of this post, it’s the main reason why the NMME is a combination of many different models – the multi-model average tends to filter out the errors of individual models and produce a more accurate forecast.
- Specifically, I averaged all the forecasts produced in September, October, and November of this year from 7 different models. Each model has a set of forecasts (ranging from 10 to 30) with slightly different initial conditions to sample the different possible realizations of chaotic weather variability. By taking the average of all forecasts, we tend to average out the effects of chaotic weather variability and isolate the predictable seasonal forecast signal. The NMME precipitation map was produced by averaging 324 individual forecast maps (108 for each of September, October, and November). You might ask, why don’t I just use the latest (November) forecast? Well, the more maps that I average, the more I can average out that chaotic weather and perhaps some of the individual model errors. It turns out that the average of these three months produces a precipitation forecast that performs slightly better than the November forecast.
- I calculated the “typical winter El Niño precipitation pattern” as the linear regression of December-February precipitation anomalies on the Niño-3.4 index from 1952-2022. Because of the method that was used, we can just flip the sign of the precipitation anomalies in the map to get the “typical winter La Niña precipitation pattern.” The map is scaled by the December-February Niño-3.4 index, so we would multiply this map by the Niño-3.4 index to get the expected precipitation anomaly amplitudes for that winter (i.e., the stronger the El Niño, the stronger the expected precipitation anomalies).
- If the Niño-3.4 index was less than zero for that winter, then the forecast would be compared with the expected La Niña precipitation pattern, which would be the same spatial pattern as the El Niño pattern but with anomalies of opposite sign. The method for calculating this pattern is described in the previous footnote.
- Specifically, I am evaluating the forecasts with a pattern correlation, which is a metric we have used before on the blog (like here).
- The U.S. precipitation pattern correlation analysis shows that the average 1997/98 NMME forecast, which featured a classic El Niño precipitation pattern, performed very well (pattern correlation exceeding 0.8, as shown in the schematic) and likely helped to shape expectations for the major El Niño that occurred in 2015/16. The precipitation pattern in 2015/16, however, didn’t materialize as expected, especially in California, and that winter precipitation forecast was widely panned as a bust for that region.The analysis confirms that the average NMME forecast in 2015/16, which again resembled the classic El Niño pattern, performed unusually poorly for a strong El Niño, with a pattern correlation near zero. There are many studies that have attempted to address what contributed to the unusual pattern in 2015/16, but this figure reveals that chaotic weather may have been a major factor. In particular, we see that many individual forecasts in 2015/16 performed much better than the average (check out some of the individual forecasts with pattern correlations greater than 0.5), even better than many individual forecasts in 1997/98. This suggests that the influence of chaotic weather variability did not harm the 1997/98 forecast nearly as much as it could have, but it likely was a factor in why the 2015/16 forecast performed so much worse.For a very good detailed and technical discussion on the challenges of seasonal precipitation prediction over California, I recommend Kumar and Chen (2020). Also, check out Tom’s previous post on the topic.
- We have covered many of these phenomena on the ENSO Blog, including sudden stratospheric warmings, the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO), the Arctic Oscillation/North Atlantic Oscillation, the North Pacific Oscillation-West Pacific teleconnection, and the Pacific/North American pattern.
From email from Reclamation (Erik Knight):
Releases from the Aspinall Unit will be decreased from 650 cfs to 575 cfs on Wednesday, December 20th. Releases are being decreased in response to drier than average conditions in the Gunnison Basin.
Flows in the lower Gunnison River are currently above the baseflow target of 1050 cfs. River flows are expected to remain above the baseflow target for the foreseeable future.
Pursuant to the Aspinall Unit Operations Record of Decision (ROD), the baseflow target in the lower Gunnison River, as measured at the Whitewater gage, will be 1050 cfs for December.
Currently, Gunnison Tunnel diversions are 0 cfs and flows in the Gunnison River through the Black Canyon are around 620 cfs. After this release change Gunnison Tunnel diversions will still be 0 cfs and flows in the Gunnison River through the Black Canyon will be near 550 cfs. Current flow information is obtained from provisional data that may undergo revision subsequent to review.
Click the link to read the conference Tweets.
Click the link to read the article on the Arizona Department of Water Resources website:
An essential part of knowing where you’re going is having a solid understanding of where you’ve been.
That’s no less true for the future of the Colorado River system – one of the most complex managed waterways in the world – than it is for anything else.
At the Colorado River Water Users Association’s annual end-of-year conference, a panel of river experts on Wednesday summarized and analyzed the sometimes-positive, sometimes not-so-positive recent history of the river.
The panelists of “A Site Review: Effectiveness of Current and Past Programs” included:
Moderator Terry Fulp, the former Regional Director, Lower Colorado River Basin, Bureau of Reclamation; David Palumbo, Deputy Commissioner of Operations, Bureau of Reclamation; Eric Kuhn, the retired General Manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District of Colorado; Amy Haas, Executive Director, Colorado River Authority of Utah; Patrick Dent, Deputy General Manager, Central Arizona Water Conservation District; and, Greg Walch, General Counsel, Southern Nevada Water Authority.
Summarizing the status of the river system today, Eric Kuhn of Colorado observed that the 2023 winter snowpack season in his state “is off to an uninspiring start.”
He observed that Colorado snowpack today stands at about 60 percent of normal. The next 24-month study of river conditions, produced by the Bureau of Reclamation, could show a river-production drop of 1 million acre-feet from previous expectations, he said.
David Palumbo of the Bureau discussed the wide range of federal programs that are being implemented currently, many of them dedicated to conserving water in the river system.
The now-famous “2007 Interim Guidelines,” which set guidelines for shortages that each Lower Basin state would take in the event of delivery shortfalls, “were fundamental to the operation of the Colorado River,” he said.
Although those ’07 Guidelines proved insufficient for keeping the river system reservoirs from descending to critical surface levels, they were “rooted in the best available guidelines that we had at the time.”
Amy Haas of Utah recalled the history of the 2019 Drought Contingency Plannegotiations – the second great collaborative effort by Colorado River user-states to protect the system.
Patrick Dent of the Central Arizona Water Conservation District – operators of the Central Arizona Project canal system – observed the substantial increases in conservation efforts over the years. Conservation in 2014 by the Colorado River states amounted to less than 1 million acre-feet.
By 2023, however, the amount conserved to protect the system shot up to 6.93 million acre-feet. That staggering conservation figure, he noted, Intentionally Created Surplus water stored by the United States; contributions stipulated in the 2019 Drought Contingency Plan; system conservation efforts and other conservation efforts, as well as water saved under the terms of the ’07 Guidelines.
Click the link to read the article on The Denver Post website (Elise Schmelzer). Here’s an excerpt:
The final recommendations from a statewide task force charged with finding water-saving solutions for the drying Colorado River focus largely on expanding and tweaking existing programs…Delivered after four months of hours-long meetings, all but one of the eight recommendations would expand or change current programs, including initiatives aimed at continuing the measurement of snowpack, improving water infrastructure and boosting a program to replace thirsty grasses with native plants…
State lawmakers formed the 17-member Colorado River Drought Task Force in May, charging it with drafting recommendations for legislation to address drought and overuse in the Colorado River Basin. Members of the task force spanned a wide range of water interests, including representatives from environmental nonprofits, utility companies, the agricultural sector, state and local government, the Ute Mountain Ute and Southern Ute tribes…
The task force’s eight recommendations to the legislature are to:
- Expand a program that helps local entities apply for federal grant money for water projects
- Direct more money to state programs that pay for improving and repairing aging water infrastructure, like ditches and headgates. The improvements will help water systems be more efficient and lose less water to leakage or transit.
- Create stronger criteria to receive state funding for Community Wildfire Protection Plans
- Expand a program that allows some water rights holders to loan their water to the Colorado Water Conservation Board to preserve and improve the environment
- Expand statewide a program that allows agricultural water rights holders to lease, loan or trade part of their allotment
- Continue funding improvements to technology to measure stream flows and snowpack statewide
- Pay for a statewide assessment of changes in riparian plant communities and fund a statewide program to control and remove invasive plant species that hurt waterways, such as tamarisk and Russian olives
- Increase funding from $2 million to $5 million for an already established program that incentivizes the replacement of water-sucking turf with native grasses and plants
[…]
The task force’s recommendations might do some good but they only “scratch the surface of the problem,” Mark Squillace, a water law professor at the University of Colorado, wrote in an email. The inherent problem is that people who use Colorado River water are using more than the river produces in an average year, he said. Solutions must involve permanent reduction of consumption, he said, such as paying farmers to switch to plants that consume less water or limiting water rights so that farmers have a slightly shorter growing season. More broadly, the seven Colorado River states should consider creating a new compact with a promise to modernize their water laws, he said.
Click the link to read the article on the Politico Website (Annie Snider and Camille von Kaenel). Here’s an excerpt:
Western states are on a collision course as they scramble to cut a deal to dramatically shrink their use of the drought-stricken Colorado River ahead of a March deadline from the Biden administration. The brawl unfolding among the states that rely on the West’s most important waterway will shape the economies for cities from Denver to Los Angeles as well as some of the nation’s most productive agricultural areas. And it poses a political dilemma for President Joe Biden, who could see the problem complicate his political calculations in a trio of swing states — Arizona, Nevada and Colorado — along with California, home to many of his most deep-pocketed donors…The tensions were apparent this week as negotiators here exchanged heated words from the podium in front of the hundreds of technocrats, tribes, and farmers who manage the river’s water and were gathered at a Las Vegas casino for their annual conference.
“Ideally this is something that all seven basin states can come up with together. But I want to be real clear that we can’t accept something that continues to drain the system, that puts 40 million people at risk,” said Becky Mitchell, the fiery lead negotiator for the state of Colorado who has objected to her state accepting reductions to its water use…
Much of the tension now centers on whether the Upper Basin states should share in the cuts needed to bring water use in line with the shrinking supply. Arizona, Nevada and California’s negotiators say they are close to a long-term deal that would stanch their use to bring it in line with the water that the river has delivered historically — a gap known as the “structural deficit.” But that just deals with the century-old over-allocation problem. Those reductions will almost certainly fall short of what will be needed to deal with the pain Mother Nature is inflicting, and those Lower Basin states argue that burden should be shared by Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico, as well as Mexico, which gets a slice of the river, too…
“The structural deficit — we’re going to own that,” said Tom Buschatzke, Arizona’s lead negotiator. But what it takes after that to stabilize the river “will be a shared responsibility. A shared responsibility for everybody in the basin — all seven states and Mexico.”
Click the link to read the article on the Aspen Journalism website (Heather Sackett):
December 15, 2023
Representatives from two lower basin states on the Colorado River have said they would finally address something that the upper basin states, including Colorado, have long pressed them to do: Fix the supply/demand imbalance sometimes called the “structural deficit.”
Water uses in the lower basin — California, Arizona and Nevada — have in recent years exceeded the supply in the drought-strapped Colorado River. Water managers in the upper basin — Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming and Utah — have long pointed to the lower basin not living within the means of what the river provides as a driving force behind plummeting reservoir levels, leading the system to the verge of collapse in 2022. On Thursday, lower basin representatives agreed.
“There’s a mismatch there,” said J.B. Hamby, chair of the Colorado River Board of California. “And so, where we’re at in the lower basin is a recognition that we have to solve and own that supply/demand imbalance. It’s going to be tough. It’s going to be challenging. But it’s absolutely necessary.”
The remarks came during a panel at the Colorado River Water Users Association conference in Las Vegas, the largest annual gathering of the basin’s water managers, policy experts, environmental advocates, state and federal officials, and tribal leaders.
The structural deficit can be thought of as the amount lost to evaporation and transit loss in the lower basin, estimated in 2022 by Nevada water officials to be about 1.5 million acre-feet per year, which currently remains unaccounted for in supply/demand balance sheets, plus the lower basin states’ 750,000 acre-foot obligation to Mexico. These amounts have historically been able to be satisfied by system storage. But as drought and climate change have robbed the river of flows, Lake Powell and Lake Mead have flirted with falling below critical thresholds, triggering federal action in 2021 and emergency calls for cuts in 2022.
The amount of the structural deficit is on top of the 7.5 million acre-feet the lower basin uses — its entire share under the Colorado River Compact. The upper basin has never used its whole allocation.
The exact number of acre-feet needed to cure the structural deficit is unclear, and officials say it still won’t be enough to solve shortages on the beleaguered river, which supplies water to farms, ranches, cities and industries throughout the Southwest.
“I think that number is not quite defined yet,” said Tom Buschatzke, director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources and the state’s principal negotiator on Colorado River matters. “There’s a range that that number might be, and so we are going to own that. But I expect once we own that, there’s the need to further stabilize the river.”
Becky Mitchell, Colorado’s representative to the Upper Colorado River Commission, said it was exciting that lower basin officials finally acknowledged that the structural deficit was their problem to solve. But the success or failure of any conservation plan will be borne out in the details.
“The proof is in the pudding of what that looks like,” Mitchell said. “Is it real, meaningful cuts? Are they permanent? When do they take place and how do we quantify that?”
Post-2026 guidelines
Officials have their work cut out for them as a deadline for managing the river looms on the horizon. Representatives of the seven Colorado River basin states have begun negotiating new guidelines for reservoir operations to replace the current ones, which expire at the end of 2026.
Developed in response to drought conditions in the first years of the century, the current guidelines set shortage tiers based on reservoir levels and spell out which states in the lower basin take shortages and by how much their water deliveries will be cut in dry years. At this year’s CRWUA conference, several officials have publicly acknowledged the flaws and shortcomings of these 2007 guidelines and their desire to not repeat those mistakes.
One of the mistakes that officials are working to rectify is the historical exclusion of tribes from policy talks and decision-making. In its notice of intent regarding the post-2026 guidelines negotiations, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said it intends to develop an approach that facilitates and enhances tribal engagement and inclusivity.
At Wednesday’s meeting of the UCRC, which took place in Las Vegas as part of the CRWUA conference, representatives from the upper basin’s tribes — Jicarilla Apache Nation, Navajo Nation, Paiute Tribe of Utah, Southern Ute Indian Tribe, Uintah-Ouray Ute Indian Tribe and Ute Mountain Ute Tribe — were invited to speak. Tribal leaders have been meeting with UCRC officials and working to codify their inclusion in the post-2026 guidelines negotiations and other future decision-making processes.
Many tribes, especially those in the lower basin, have unquantified water rights on paper that have never been used, although some tribes say they still intend to develop their water. But in an already shortage-prone system, any new water project that takes more from the Colorado River could be problematic. Tribes’ unused water has been propping up the system for years, and when finally put to beneficial use, it could exacerbate shortages for other water users. Continuing to exclude tribes from decision-making is no longer tenable, upper basin officials say.
On Wednesday, Lorelei Cloud, tribal council vice chair for the Southern Ute Indian Tribe and a representative on the Colorado Water Conservation Board, hinted at a forthcoming memorandum of understanding.
“We want to work toward creating an MOU or some type of mechanism that is going to formalize this process so that these relationships and these conversations continue,” Cloud said. “It’s something that I think tribes have been wanting for quite a long time, to be at that level.”
A big snowpack during the winter of 2022-23 provided water managers some breathing room after three consecutive dismal years. Lake Powell saw about 12 million acre-feet of inflow for water year 2023, the third-best year in the past two decades.
But even though some urgency has been lifted, tensions still ran high among the seven basin state negotiators Thursday. The legacy of the 1922 Colorado River Compact, which divided the waters equally between the upper basin and lower basin, has often put the two regions at odds.
Mitchell spoke passionately about the need for pain to be shared among the basin’s water users. Others reaffirmed their commitments to compromise. Southern Nevada Water Authority General Manager John Entsminger said there is no silver bullet, only silver buckshot.
“Expunge ‘can’t’ from your vocabularies,” he told the crowd. “The savings we need are all around us. They’re small. They’re incremental, but they’re there. … I’m asking every water user to look at every water use and figure out how incrementally we all contribute our little BB of silver buckshot to the solution.”
Click the link to read the release on the Colorado Department of Natural Resources website:
December 15, 2023
This week, Rebecca Mitchell, Colorado’s full-time Commissioner to the Upper Colorado River Commission, addressed the more than a thousand Colorado River Water Users Association conference attendees at the 2023 annual meeting in Las Vegas.
There, Commissioner Mitchell stood up for Colorado water users who live on the front lines of climate change and regularly take significant cuts to their water supply.
“When we say there’s little water to conserve in Colorado, we’re not being uncooperative. It’s because we don’t have large reservoirs above our diversions,” said Commissioner Mitchell. “We divert directly from creeks, streams, tributaries, and the river itself. We use less water when there’s less available. When we have a bad snowpack, we can’t drain a massive reservoir to bail us out. Instead, our water users go without and aren’t compensated for it. Colorado communities are doing their part, and they feel the pain.”
This year’s sold-out conference’s theme was ‘Constructing a Resilient Future: Rebuilding From the Ground Up.’ The meetings, panels, and hallway conversations helped set the stage for ongoing negotiations on improving the management of the river’s largest reservoirs– Lake Powell and Lake Mead. Both reservoirs hit record lows in recent years as unprecedented drought and overreliance on the river continue to threaten a water supply for millions of people. The 30 Colorado River Basin Tribes, seven states, and Mexico are confronted with the extraordinary challenge of creating new operating rules for Lake Powell and Lake Mead to sustain and share this dwindling resource.
“My water users have let me know very clearly that they are not going to accept a deal that maintains the status quo and continues to allow the Lower Basin to drain the system at all of our expense, but especially at the expense of the Upper Basin,” Commissioner Mitchell said during a panel with the seven Colorado River Basin States. “Colorado water users are not interested in striking a deal that continues to allow Lower Basin overuse to deplete storage, drive the system to crisis, and then look upstream to us for help.”
Less water flows into Lake Mead than what Nevada, Arizona, and California take from it. This has resulted in a “structural deficit,” contributing to the reservoirs hitting critically low levels. During the seven-state panel, representatives from these Lower Basin states agreed that the deficit is their problem to solve in a Post-2026 Operations agreement.
“Colorado has asked for the Lower Basin states to recognize this overuse, and I appreciate that they have publicly accepted responsibility for fixing the structural deficit,” Commissioner Mitchell said. “I look forward to working alongside Arizona, California, and Nevada, along with upper-division partners, to achieve this important goal of making sure we protect water users across the basin from another series of crises on the river well into the future.”
Click the link to read the article on the Water Education Colorado website (Jerd Smith):
Colorado’s health department is years behind in processing special Clean Water Act permits critical to protecting water quality in the state’s streams and rivers.
Right now, just 33% of the active discharge permits on file with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s Water Quality Control Division, are current, far below the agency’s 75% goal, according to the agency. Under the federal Clean Water Act, entities that discharge fluids into streams, including wastewater treatment plants and factories, must get approval from water quality regulators to ensure what they’re putting into the waterways does not harm them.
But it is a tough job, as pressure on streams rises due to the warming climate, populations grow, and new toxins, such as PFAS, emerge. PFAS make up a large class of chemicals used in everything from firefighting foam to Teflon. They are known as “forever chemicals” because they last decades in the environment and the human body. The EPA has just begun setting regulatory standards for them. “Colorado could be doing better and it should be doing better,” said John Rumpler, senior attorney and director of clean water at the Boston-based Environment America.
Lagging EPA standards
Permitting backlogs exist across the country, due in part to the EPA’s failure to update the standards the states work to enforce, he said.
“We’re tolerating more pollution in our waterways than the law should abide,” Rumpler said. “Old threats we have succeeded in reducing, but new ones emerge. Now we have PFAS in our waterways, urban runoff and new chemicals. We’re just not keeping up.”
In an email, EPA officials said they’re aware of the issue. “EPA currently is in the process of evaluating permitting data for all states, including backlogs, and will be posting that information on our website by the end of January,” said Rich Mylott, a spokesman for EPA’s Region 8 office in Denver.
Of the more than 10,129 active discharge permits in Colorado, 67% have been continued without a formal review. The state’s Water Quality Control Division has wrestled with the problem for several years as staffing shortages and budget shortfalls grip the agency.
Though holders of expired permits are legally allowed to discharge under the Clean Water Act, the special status means dischargers face major uncertainty about what future requirements may be and how much it will cost to meet them, said Nicole Rowan, director of Colorado’s Water Quality Control Division.
“What is challenging is when permits are backlogged and older, they aren’t current with environmental regulations,” Rowan said.
“And if a facility wants to expand or change something, we can’t do it because it is in that administrative state,” she said.
Those facilities operating with expired permits include Metro Water Recovery in Denver, which processes wastewater for millions of metro area residents. It is Colorado’s largest wastewater treatment plant. The agency declined an interview request, but in a statement said that resolving the backlog would help everyone.
“Like many public agencies, Metro understands that the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment is resource constrained. … Metro believes that it is in the best interest of all parties for permits to be renewed within a five-year cycle so that they are consistent with the current regulatory framework.”
The City of Aurora is also among those agencies operating with a expired permit, according to spokesman Greg Baker. Aurora’s permit expired in 2017. Baker declined to comment on the impact of the delay.
In response to the problem, state lawmakers agreed earlier this year to add $2.4 million temporarily to the division’s budget.
“What the General Assembly did was a really big step in providing us some stability,” Rowan said.
But funding lasts only until June 2025, at which point the agency must present a formal plan to lawmakers for keeping the permitting system current and adequately funded.
Rowan and others are hopeful the revamp of the system will dramatically improve the state’s ability to monitor and protect water quality. Anyone interested in participating and tracking the state’s process can do so by signing up here. The next meeting is Dec. 18.
Fresh Water News was launched in 2018 as an independent, nonpartisan news initiative of Water Education Colorado. Our editorial policy and donor list can be viewed at wateredco.org.
More by Jerd SmithJerd Smith is editor of Fresh Water News. She can be reached at 720-398-6474, via email at jerd@wateredco.org or @jerd_smith.
It is yet another example of extremely vague and watered down texts full of loopholes that in no way is even close to being sufficient for staying within the 1,5° limit and ensure climate justice.
Click the link to read the release on the USBR website (Doug Hendrix and Michelle Helms):
Nearly $295 million from President Biden’s Investing in America agenda will conserve up to 643,000 acre-feet of water through 2025
December 13, 2023
The Biden-Harris administration today announced agreements with several California water agencies to conserve up to 643,000 acre-feet of water in Lake Mead through 2025. The agreements include approximately $295 million in new investments from President Biden’s Investing in America agenda, a key pillar of Bidenomics, which will fund projects for water conservation, water efficiency, and protection of critical environmental resources in the Colorado River System.
Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton joined federal, Tribal and state leaders in Nevada today to announce the execution of new water conservation agreements, including an agreement with the Coachella Valley Water District to save up to 105,000 acre-feet of water through 2025 and an agreement with the Quechan Indian Tribe to save up to 39,000 acre-feet through 2025. The event also commemorated a recently signed agreement with the Imperial Irrigation District to conserve approximately 100,000 acre-feet of water in 2023. The leaders also announced that additional system conservation agreements with the Palo Verde Irrigation District, Bard Water District – in cooperation with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California – and a second agreement with the Coachella Valley Water District are expected to be finalized in the coming weeks.
The investments are part of the Biden-Harris administration’s all-of-government approach to improve and protect the stability and sustainability of the Colorado River System now and into the future. They are administered through the Lower Colorado River Basin System Conservation and Efficiency Program and funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest climate investment in history.
“Thanks to President Biden’s Investing in America agenda, the Interior Department is working collaboratively with states, Tribes, farmers, and water districts across the West to help address, improve and protect the long-term stability of the Colorado River System,” said Secretary Deb Haaland. “The Biden-Harris administration is using every tool and resource at our disposal to continue our sustained, collaborative progress in increasing water conservation across the West.”
“These agreements represent another critical step in our collective efforts to address the water management challenges the Colorado River Basin faces due to drought and climate change,” said Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton. “Addressing the drought crisis requires an all-hands-on-deck approach, and close collaboration among federal, state, Tribal and local communities. When we work together, we can find solutions to meet the challenges of these unprecedented drought conditions.”
President Biden’s Investing in America agenda is integral to these efforts to increase near-term water conservation, build long term system efficiency, and prevent the Colorado River System’s reservoirs from falling to critically low elevations that would threaten water deliveries and power production.
Conservation efforts made possible by this funding have already benefited the system this year. The California conservation agreements announced today join 18 water conservation implementation agreements with critical partners in Arizona, including state agencies, Tribes, and agricultural and municipal water users, which commits water entities to conserve up to 348,680-acre feet of water in Lake Mead in 2023, and up to 984,429-acre feet through 2026. The agreements are part of the 3 million acre-feet of system conservation commitments made by the Lower Basin states, 2.3 million acre-feet of which will be compensated through funding from the Inflation Reduction Act.
As a result of the commitment to record volumes of conservation in the Basin, as well as recent hydrology, Interior Department announced in October 2023 that the chance of falling below critical elevations has been reduced to eight percent at Lake Powell and four percent at Lake Mead through 2026. Lake Mead is currently about 40 feet higher than it was projected to be at this time last year.
To date, the Department has announced the following investments for Colorado River Basin states through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act, which will yield hundreds of thousands of acre-feet of water savings each year once these projects are complete:
- $281 million for 21 water recycling projects that are expected to increase annual water capacity by 127,000 acre-feet annually;
- Up to $233 million in water conservation funding for the Gila River Indian Community, including $83 million for a water pipeline project;
- Over $73 million for infrastructure repairs on water delivery systems; $19.3 million in fiscal year 2022and another $54 million announced in April 2023;
- $71 million for 32 drought resiliency projects to expand access to water through groundwater storage, rainwater harvesting, aquifer recharge and water treatment;
- $50 million over the next five years to improve key water infrastructure and enhance drought-related data collection across the Upper Colorado River Basin; and
- $20 million in new small surface and groundwater storage.
Click on a thumbnail graphic to view a gallery of drought data from the US Drought Monitor website.
Click the link to go to the US Drought Monitor website. Here’s an excerpt:
This Week’s Drought Summary
Heavy precipitation fell this week across parts of the Pacific Northwest, associated with an atmospheric river. While precipitation amounts were hefty, improvements to drought were primarily confined to lower elevation areas, given the higher snow levels with this system. Aside from parts of the Rockies in Colorado and southeast Idaho and northwest Wyoming, mainly drier weather occurred from the southwest United States through the Great Plains and Upper Midwest. Widespread moderate to heavy rain fell with showers and thunderstorms from southeast Texas across much of the Southeast into the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions. Widespread improvements to drought conditions occurred with these heavier rains, though they were somewhat tempered by ongoing long-term precipitation deficits in some areas. Northwest of the heavy rains, drought and dryness expanded in some spots in Arkansas and in parts of the Upper Great Lakes and Midwest, as short-term precipitation shortfalls grew amid lowering streamflows and soil moisture. Rainfall from last week’s Kona low in Hawaii led to further improvements across parts of the state this week. For more local information, please see the regional summaries below…
High Plains
Warmer-than-normal weather continued this week across the High Plains region. Temperatures ranged from mostly 4 to 12 degrees above normal, with locally higher readings. Weather across the lower elevation parts of the High Plains this week was mostly dry, which led to a few local degradations. In southeast Kansas, moderate drought expanded a bit, as streamflow and soil moisture dwindled and short-term precipitation shortages grew. Moderate drought expanded a small amount in western Kansas, where short-term precipitation shortfalls grew amid higher-than-normal atmospheric thirst. Larger changes occurred primarily in higher elevation parts of the region in Colorado and Wyoming. Conditions improved near Pueblo, Colorado and in adjacent parts of the plains, where recent snowfall alleviated short-term precipitation deficits. Low snowpack in the San Juan Mountains, on top of a drier-than-normal monsoon, led to the development of severe drought around Ouray and surrounding counties. Low snowpack in the Sangre de Cristo Range also led to the expansion of moderate drought outside of the San Luis Valley and into the high peaks east and north of Great Sand Dunes National Park. Severe drought also developed in and near parts of the Snowy Range of southern Wyoming, where the start of winter has featured much below normal snowpack. Southwest of there, recent snowfall has helped to alleviate precipitation deficits in parts of south-central Wyoming and northwest Colorado, leading to localized improvements. The northwest portion of the Wind River Mountains in Wyoming have seen much below normal snowpack to start the winter, and abnormal dryness has developed there…
West
A recent atmospheric river delivered widespread precipitation to the northwest United States, especially in high elevation areas, leading to local improvements to drought conditions. As this was a warmer atmospheric river, snowpack is still well below normal in some areas despite the atmospheric river, due to high snow elevation levels. Thus, improvements to drought conditions were somewhat tempered this week while the effects of this precipitation are being evaluated. Heavy rainfall doused parts of the central Oregon Pacific coast, leading to increases in streamflow and continued lessening of precipitation deficits; abnormal dryness was removed from this area. In eastern Washington, the Idaho Panhandle, and far northeast Oregon, conditions improved in lower elevation areas where streamflow increased and precipitation deficits lessened. In central Idaho, low snowpack, soil moisture and water year precipitation led to an expansion of abnormal dryness. Precipitation in central New Mexico last week lessened precipitation deficits and increased streamflow and soil moisture enough to improve severe drought to moderate drought. Temperatures in central California were mostly within a few degrees of normal. Otherwise, warmer-than-normal weather was common across the region, especially in Montana, where temperatures ranging from 8 to 16 degrees warmer than normal were typical…
South
Rainfall was widespread across parts of Louisiana and the southern half of Mississippi and far southeast Texas, and scattered parts of Arkansas saw heavier rain amounts. Otherwise, the rest of the region was quite dry, including most of Texas and Oklahoma. Short-term precipitation deficits worsened in parts of northeast Texas, northeast Oklahoma, and northern Arkansas, along with some reduction in soil moisture in some of these areas, leading to locally degrading conditions. In central Texas and parts of the Edwards Plateau, long-term precipitation deficits continued amid dwindling groundwater and paltry streamflow, leading to some expansions in severe and extreme drought. Conditions were reassessed in and around Midland and in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, where some minor improvements to ongoing severe drought and moderate drought were made. Farther east in the region, more significant changes occurred. The northwest-to-southeast gradient in precipitation amounts across Mississippi, Louisiana and southeast Texas led to primarily an increase of drought in southern Arkansas, northern Mississippi and east-central Texas, while conditions across other parts of Louisiana and Mississippi and southeast Texas saw improvements as short-term precipitation deficits lessened. Similar to areas farther east, long-term precipitation deficits and continued soil moisture and streamflow deficits limited these improvements.
Click the link to read the roundup on the Carbon Brief website:
For the first time ever, COP28 ended with a deal to transition the world away from fossil fuels, Bloomberg reports. It says the United Arab Emirates (UAE) president Sultan Al Jaber arrived at a deal “strong enough for the US and EU on the need to dramatically curb fossil fuel use while keeping Saudi Arabia and other oil producers on board”. It notes that Al Jaber brought the gavel down on the so-called “global stocktake” text on Wednesday morning – a day later than when COP28 was scheduled to conclude – and was greeted by applause and cheers by delegates. The draft text of the global stocktake deal, which was published early this morning, “calls on parties to contribute to the following global efforts”, including “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net-zero by 2050”, Le Monde reports. It notes that the text does not include a request to “phase out” fossil fuels as many countries and civil society groups hoped for. According to the Press Association, the agreement “defied the expectations of many observers who thought that the host country being a major oil exporter would be too much of a conflict of interest”. The Guardian notes that “climate-justice advocates said the text fell far short of what was needed for a fair transition”. The New York Times lists some of the text’s other commitments, including calling on nations to triple the amount of renewable energy installed around the world by 2030 and to slash emissions of methane. The Guardianand BBC News have both been live-blogging the latest reaction to the final text before and after it was agreed.
Coverage from yesterday – published prior to the emergence of the new text – details how, as BusinessGreen describes it, the presidency and negotiating delegations had reportedly been up until 4am “attempting to broker a compromise on the global stocktake text”. The i newspaper says both the US and the UK had been branded “hypocrites” by climate campaigners for “criticising countries that do not agree to a ‘phase out’ of fossil fuels while continuing to develop oil and gas fields domestically”. The Financial Times frames the disputes that had been taking place as “the majority of countries present clash[ing] with Saudi Arabia”.
In wider COP28 news, the Independent has a piece about Tina Stege, climate envoy for the Marshall Islands, and her effort to secure a more ambitious outcome for her country. The Guardian has an explainer detailing the importance of “means of implementation” – climate finance and other support measures – for developing countries. New Scientist has a piece about how COP28 has “changed the conversation” around fossil fuels.
Click the link to read the article on the Inside Climate News website (Bob Berwyn and Marianne Lavelle ):
Small island states that arrived after the document was approved, don’t accept the outcome as a consensus decision.
December 13, 2023
Going into overtime under the cover of a dark winter night in Dubai, climate negotiators at COP28 cooked up a weak sauce of climate half-measures that fail to adequately address the existential risk of global warming to millions of people around the globe, according to leading climate experts at the conference.
The UAE Consensus, COP28 president Sultan al-Jaber said, represents a clear step in a just transition away from fossil fuels, but the tarnished image of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and its process requiring consensus among nations, took another big hit because 39 small island states most affected by global warming were not in the room when al-Jaber signaled acceptance during the closing plenary.
As a result, there will be an asterisk next to COP28 in the future. To activists and many country delegates, the way the outcome came about further undermined al-Jaber’s leadership, which had been questioned since it was announced last year due to his apparent conflict of interest as head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, one of the biggest fossil fuel producers in the world.
The conference started Nov. 30 with a growing coalition of countries calling for a fossil fuel phase out, and earlier drafts of the decision documents all included some iteration of that language, raising hopes that the UNFCCC would face the heart of the problem head-on.
But the finalized text calls only for accelerating efforts to “phase down” the use of unabated coal power, to “[transition] away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner,” and to accelerate action toward that transition “in this critical decade.”
Some of the speakers at the closing plenary, including Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry, said the mere mention of moving away from fossil fuels could be interpreted as a successful outcome for the climate summit. Al-Jaber tooted his own horn during the closing plenary by saying, “We have delivered a robust action plan to keep 1.5 in reach.”
That reference to the Paris accord’s goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels elicited an immediate response from some climate scientists, including Rob Larter, a polar researcher with the British Antarctic Survey.
“When you see statements like this you know you’re being lied to,” Larter wrote in a social media post. “What’s been agreed certainly does not keep 1.5C in reach.”
Larter was one of the first scientists to highlight the abrupt and alarming decline of Antarctic sea ice this year. The vast expanses of ice at the poles function as one of the planet’s main cooling systems by reflecting a lot of incoming solar energy back into space. A permanent reduction of that surface would lead to additional heating of the atmosphere.
Other scientists at COP28 warned that the current level of warming, set to come close to 1.5 degrees Celsius this year, is already driving parts of the planet’s climate system toward irreversible tipping points.
The statement about a transition away from fossil-fuels remains too vague, “with no hard and accountable boundaries for 2030, 2040 and 2050,” said Johan Rockström, co-director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
He faulted the statement for ignoring that carbon dioxide removal technologies will need to be scaled up massively to meet the 1.5 degree Celsius goal, and said there is still no convincing plan on how the transition away from fossil fuels will occur.
“We know it will not happen through national voluntary means alone. Collective, global agreements, on finance, carbon pricing, and technology exchange, are also needed, at a scale that vastly exceeds what is now on the table,” he said.
The new COP28 agreement also calls for “accelerating and substantially reducing non-carbon-dioxide emissions globally, including in particular methane emissions by 2030,” and for speeding the reduction of emissions from road transport, as well as “phasing out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that do not address energy poverty or just transitions, as soon as possible.”
Kerry said the document should be seen as a significant achievement, given the challenge of trying to win consensus among 200 parties. “For the first time in the history of our regime, the decision supported by all nations of the world calls for transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, so as to achieve net zero by 2050,” Kerry said.
“That is clear,” he said, even if it is not as strong as many would have liked.
Kerry said the applause that rang out in the plenary for the small island state representatives was “a clarion call to all of us about our obligation and responsibility over these next months to make sure we’re reaching as far as we can to implement as fast as we can.”
Consensus, or Not?
The Alliance of Small Island States addressed its absence during the decision-making phase of the final plenary directly.
“We are a little confused about what just happened,” the delegate from Samoa said on behalf of AOSIS. “It seems that you gavelled the decisions, and the small island developing states were not in the room. We were working hard to coordinate the 39 small island developing states that are disproportionately affected by climate change, and so were delayed in coming here.”
The agreement falls far short of what would be needed to prevent some island states from being swamped by rising seas by the end of the century, AOSIS wrote, referring to it as a “draft decision,” which implies that the group doesn’t consider the document finalized.
“The course correction that is needed has not yet been secured,” the AOSIS statement continues. “We have made an incremental advancement over business as usual when what we really needed is an exponential step-change in our actions and support … We do not see any commitment or even an invitation for Parties to peak emissions by 2025.”
Although the decision frequently refers to science showing that fossil fuels must be phased out, the agreement doesn’t include a path toward the needed actions, the island states said.
“It is not enough for us to reference the science and then make agreements that ignore what the science is telling us we need to do,” the group wrote.
“I think AOSIS wanted to highlight that this decision could not be seen as being adopted in their name,” said Sébastien Duyck, a senior attorney with the Center for International Environmental Law. “The outcome is not enough to protect their sovereign rights, human rights of future generations.”
That, he said, could be important in an international legal context, with the International Court of Justice preparing to look at the responsibility of states in the context of climate change.
“A Leaky Canoe”
Statements from other countries during the closing plenary showed that the consensus touted by al-Jaber is fragile, and was reached mainly to avoid the appearance of a disappointing failure.
The German delegate said there were tears in the room, but that they were not all tears of joy, and spoke directly to island states: “Samoa, Marshall Islands, we see you, we feel you, we know this might not be enough.”
Some oil producing countries from the Arab League said the new agreement veered too far off the Paris Agreement by ignoring the principle of national self-determination, by mentioning a timeline, however vague, for the energy transition, and by shifting the conversation away from emissions to the source of emissions.
COP28 followed a now-familiar pattern: Heads of state, heads of governments and ministers flying in on private jets at the beginning of the talks—in the case of the United Kingdom, three high-level representatives all arriving on separate private jets—and making flashy announcements about scientifically unfounded non-binding deals. [ed. emphasis mine]
Representatives for Indigenous communities and civil society environmental groups said the agreement doesn’t go nearly far enough to ensure the fossil fuel phase out science demands, or toward ensuring climate justice for developing countries.
Missing is language to ensure that rich nations go first and fast to end their fossil fuel addiction, and the groups pointed out that planned oil and gas developments in just a handful of rich, developed countries are enough to “bust the goal of 1.5 degrees.”
The outcome perpetuates a 500-year legacy of colonialism and will lead to more inequality in the future by continuing to encourage the commodification of nature, the Indigenous representatives said. And even though the final documents recognize the role of Indigenous people as the guardians of Mother Earth, “Our rights and knowledge continue to be sidelined in these discussions,” an Indigenous representative said.
The head of the Marshall Islands delegation, John Silk, called the outcome dishonest.
“I came from my home islands to work with you to solve the greatest challenge of our generations, to build a canoe together for my country …” he said. “We have built a canoe with a weak and leaky hull. Yet we have to put it into the water because we have no other option,” he said.
“I appreciate the effort that has gone into this outcome, but it has not been inclusive,” he said. “The fact that the decision was gavelled without a major group in the room … is unacceptable … This is a small step in the right direction in this process, a good signal. But in the context of the real world, where temperatures are rising and people are dying, it is not enough. And so as we sail this leaky canoe together, let’s agree to patch the holes so we can keep the canoe afloat for the sake of all of us, especially the most vulnerable.”
Only 2015 & 1997 were warmer in Niño 3.4 over the same time period, dating back to 1981.
Click the link to read the article on The Land Desk website (Jonathan P. Thompson):
December 12, 2023
The lopsided ways of Western water law
Back in 1996, the town of Silverton, Colorado had a rude water awakening. It had been a sparse winter and spring, snow-wise, in the San Juan Mountains, though nothing compared to what would come over the next couple of decades. By mid-summer the streams were running fairly low, and downstream irrigators began to worry that they might not be able to divert enough water for their uses. That prompted rumblings of a possible “call” on the river, in which senior water rights holders force junior rights holders — including Silverton — to shut off their spigots.
Silverton, which sits near the headwaters of the Animas River, gets its municipal water from Boulder and Bear Creeks, two small streams that have remained mostly unsullied by acid mine drainage and heavy metal loading, natural or otherwise. The creeks weren’t in danger of running dry that year, and continued to carry plenty of water to supply the town and then some. But a call could very well force the town to shut off its pumps and to watch all of that water flow by. Why? Because under Colorado water law, usually summed up as “first in time, first in right,” Silverton’s right to pull water from the streams are inferior — or junior — to many downstream users.
Silverton was founded in 1874 and settler-colonial miners had been diverting water for a few years by then. That, theoretically, would have put them near the top of the “first in time” list for beneficial users of Animas River water (behind the Ute, Navajo, and Pueblo people who preceded them by centuries, of course). The earliest appropriation dates on the Animas River (and southwestern Colorado, in general) are in 1868, which is probably tied to the Ute Treaty of that same year. The Animas Ditch, diverted from the river south of Durango, has an 1868 date, while the Animas Consolidated, Reid, and Wallace Ditches north of Durango have mid-1870s dates.
But Silverton’s founders — perhaps believing their proximity to so many streams’ headwaters would guarantee unfettered access to all the water they’d need in perpetuity — failed to secure their water rights. As a result, their earliest appropriation date, for the Boulder Creek diversion, is 1883, and the Bear Creek diversion is in 1904. That puts both of Silverton’s main water sources way down the priority line (number 123, in fact), meaning if downstream senior rights holders were not getting their allocated water, they could put Silverton into a pickle.
This small town’s woes came to mind recently when I stumbled upon this 1916 map of the Colorado River, which shows the approximate amount of water each tributary contributes to its total flow. The takeaway? Nearly every drop of water in the river originates in the Upper Basin States, or Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. (This isn’t a surprise, but seeing it laid out so simply on a map really drives the point home.) And yet the river’s largest users and most senior water rights holders are in the Lower Basin States, namely California. So basically it’s a macro version of the Silverton situation: The Upper Basin produces the water, and the Lower Basin uses it and controls it.
Okay, that’s a rather crude way of explaining a rather complicated situation, but it’s really not that far off. For example, in 2023, the Imperial Irrigation District in Southern California consumed 2.3 million acre-feet of Colorado River water; the entire state of Colorado used just 2.1 million acre-feet (MAF).2
And what about the downstreamers controlling the water?
The Colorado River Compact divided the presumed 15 MAF in the river equally, with 7.5 MAF going to the Lower Basin and 7.5 MAF going to the Upper Basin. That sounds fair, right? Thing is, the Compact doesn’t just cut the total annual flow of the river in half, which would be fair. Nor does it allow the Upper Basin to withdraw its 7.5 MAF, leaving the remainder to flow downstream. Nope. It requires that the Upper Basin leave enough water in the river to ensure that 7.5 MAF flows past the Lee (or Lee’s or Lees) Ferry gage into the Lower Basin each year.3 That mandate holds regardless of how much water is actually in the river, meaning that if there is anything less than 16.5 MAF, the Upper Basin’s gotta eat it (and it also forces the Upper Basin to include evaporative losses into its total water use, since it leaves that much less water to send downstream). That potentially puts the entire Upper Basin into the same boat as Silverton, just on a much larger level.
That’s where reservoirs, especially Lake Powell, come in. The Upper Basin can save surplus water during wet years and release it during dry years to comply with the Compact’s downstream delivery mandate. And it also explains why Lake Powell is in danger of hitting dead pool: The Upper Basin has been burning up its savings to make its annual payment to the Lower Basin.
And that brings us to today’s second map: a profile of the entire Colorado River Basin with existing and proposed dams, circa 1946. I’m including this here for a couple of reasons. First off, I think it’s a really cool way to map a river system in quasi-3D without a bunch of technology. Second, the number of dams that might have been built if the mid-century water buffaloes had their way is mind-blowing.
Zoom in on the profile and you’ll see that Glen Canyon Dam was still only an itch in Floyd Dominy’s proverbial pants. It got built not long afterward, though. Also proposed: The Marble Canyon and Bridge Canyon Dams in the upper and lower Grand Canyon, respectively; a whole series of dams on the lower San Juan River; the Echo Park Dam on the Green and Yampa; the Dark Canyon, Moab, Dewey, and Whitewater Dams on the Colorado River between Grand Junction and Glen Canyon; and the Desolation and Rattlesnake Dams on the Green River.
Had all those structures been built, there’d only be a handful of stretches of actual river remaining. Yikes!
Silverton’s 1996 water scare died down after the rains came that year. Had the call actually gone through, though, the town would have had an interesting way of keeping its water taps from going dry. The Sunnyside Mine would open up the valve on its American Tunnel bulkhead and release the required volume of water from the mine pool — a 1,200-foot-deep underground reservoir of water backed up inside the byzantine workings of the Sunnyside Mine.
It just goes to show you that water in the West is important and that Western water law is weird.
Click the link to read the article on the WeatherNation website (Lucy Bergemann). Here’s an excerpt:
After a record setting 2022-23 winter season for the Southwest U.S. including 12 atmospheric rivers that brought heavy rain and snow to California, Nevada and the 4 Corners region, the 2023-34 Winter season is getting off to a slower start. In fact, 73% of western U.S. snow reporting stations are seeing Snow Water Equivalent [SWE] below normal and 42% of stations are below the 30th percentile for SWE. Some of the most drastic conditions are in the Sierra Nevada and northern Montana. NIDIS attributes the drought conditions due to the minimal precipitation or “snow drought” seen across the region. In Colorado and Utah, most reporting stations are seeing SWE right around average with the worst of the conditions in the Rio Grande Basin and the Sangre de Cristo mountains of southern Colorado and New Mexico.
Of course snow drought isn’t the only reason why the intermountain west is experiencing drought conditions. A lackluster monsoon season in New Mexico can be blamed for setting up extreme (level 4 out of 5) drought conditions from summer into early fall. In the latest Drought update, the National Integrated Drought Information System with NOAA announced that the southern 4 Corners region of Arizona and New Mexico are experiencing high levels of drought with 96.8% of New Mexico in drought conditions…
The other factor has been warmer than average temperatures, due in part to a strong El Nino pattern which typically results in warmer temperatures for the western states and northern Rockies. That pattern is likely to continue into the winter months. The other factor with El Nino is the likelihood of drought conditions expanding across the Southwest U.S. which could be trouble for an area that is still recovering from decades-long drought. Despite the active 2022-23 winter and meaningful moisture contributing to low reservoirs across the mountain west, “Lakes Powell and Mead continue to run very low with respect to long-term averages, given the overall dryness and warmth of the last couple of decades” according to Curtis Riganti of the National Drought Mitigation Center in Nebraska.
Rick Thoman, University of Alaska Fairbanks; Matthew L. Druckenmiller, University of Colorado Boulder, and Twila A. Moon, University of Colorado Boulder
The year 2023 shattered the record for the warmest summer in the Arctic, and people and ecosystems across the region felt the impact.
Wildfires forced evacuations across Canada. Greenland was so warm that a research station at the ice sheet summit recorded melting in late June, only its fifth melting event on record. Sea surface temperatures in the Barents, Kara, Laptev and Beaufort seas were 9 to 12 degrees Fahrenheit (5 to 7 degrees Celsius) above normal in August.
While reliable instrument measurements go back only to around 1900, it’s almost certain this was the Arctic’s hottest summer in centuries.
The year started out unusually wet, and snow accumulation during the winter of 2022-23 was above average across much the Arctic. But by May, high spring temperatures had left the North American snowpack at a record low, exposing ground that quickly warmed and dried, fueling lightning-sparked fires across Canada.
In the 2023 Arctic Report Card, released Dec. 12, we brought together 82 Arctic scientists from around the world to assess the Arctic’s vital signs, the changes underway and their effects on lives across the region and around the world.
In an area as large as the Arctic, setting a new temperature record for a season by two-tenths of a degree Fahrenheit (0.1 degrees Celsius) of warming would be significant. Summer 2023 – July, August and September – shattered the previous record, set in 2016, by four times that. Temperatures almost everywhere in the Arctic were above normal.
A closer look at events in Canada’s Northwest Territories shows how rising air temperature, sea ice decline and warming water temperature feed off one another in a warming climate.
The winter snow cover melted early across large parts of northern Canada, providing an extra month for the Sun to heat up the exposed ground. The heat and lack of moisture dried out organic matter on and just below the surface; by November, 70,000 square miles (180,000 square kilometers) had burned across Canada, about a fifth of it in the Northwest Territories.
The very warm weather in May and June 2023 in the Northwest Territories also heated up the mighty Mackenzie River, which sent massive amounts of warm water into the Beaufort Sea to the north. The warm water melted the sea ice early, and currents also carried it west toward Alaska, where Mackenzie River water contributed to early sea ice loss along most of Northeast Alaska and to increased tundra vegetation growth.
Similar warmth in western Siberia also contributed to quickly melting sea ice and to high sea surface temperatures in the Kara and Laptev seas north of Russia.
The Arctic’s declining sea ice has been a big contributor to the tremendous increase in average fall temperatures across the region. Dark open water absorbs the Sun’s rays during the summer and, in the autumn, acts as a heating pad, releasing heat back into the atmosphere. Even thin sea ice can greatly limit this heat transfer and allow dramatic cooling of air just above the surface, but the past 17 years have seen the lowest sea ice extents on record.
The report includes 12 essays exploring the effects of climate and ecosystem changes across the Arctic and how communities are adapting. One is a wake-up call about the risks in subsea permafrost, a potentially dangerous case of “out of sight, out of mind.”
Subsea permafrost is frozen soil in the ocean floor that is rich in organic matter. It has been gradually thawing since it was submerged after Northern Hemisphere ice sheets retreated thousands of years ago. Today, warmer ocean temperatures are likely accelerating the thawing of this hidden permafrost.
Just as with permafrost on land, when subsea permafrost thaws, the organic matter it contains decays and releases methane and carbon dioxide – greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming and worsen ocean acidification.
Scientists estimate that nearly 1 million square miles (2.5 million square kilometers) of subsea permafrost remains, but with little research outside the Beaufort Sea and Kara Sea, no one knows how soon it may release its greenhouse gases or how intense the warming effects will be.
For many people living in the Arctic, climate change is already disrupting lives and livelihoods.
Indigenous observers describe changes in the sea ice that many people rely on for both subsistence hunting and coastal protection from storms. They have noted shifts in wind patterns and increasingly intense ocean storms. On land, rising temperatures are making river ice less reliable for travel, and thawing permafrost is sinking roads and destabilizing homes.
Obvious and dramatic changes are happening within human lifetimes, and they cut to the core of Indigenous cultures to the point that people are having to change how they put food on the table.
Western Alaska communities that rely on Chinook salmon saw another year of extreme low numbers of returning adult salmon in 2023, scarcity that disrupts both cultural practices and food security. Yukon River Chinook have decreased in size by about 6% since the 1970s, and they’re producing fewer offspring. Then, in 2019, the year when many of this year’s returning Chinook salmon were born, exceptionally warm river water killed many of the young.
The returning Chinook salmon population has been so small during the past two years that fisheries have been closed even for subsistence harvest, which is the highest priority, in hopes that the salmon population recovers.
The inability to fish, or to hunt seals because the sea ice has thinned, is not just a food issue. Time spent at fish camps is critical for many Alaska Indigenous cultures and traditions, and kids are increasingly missing out on that experience.
As Indigenous communities adapt to ecosystem changes, people are also working to heal their landscapes.
In Finland, an effort to restore damaged reindeer habitat in collaboration with Sámi reindeer herders is helping to preserve their way of life. For many decades, commercial logging was allowed to tear up hundreds to thousands of square miles of reindeer peatland habitat.
The Sámi and their partners are working to replant turf and rewild 125,000 acres (52,000 hectares) of peatlands for reindeer grazing. Degraded peatlands also release greenhouse gases, contributing to climate change. Keeping them healthy helps capture and store carbon away from the atmosphere.
Temperatures in the Arctic have been rising more than three times faster than the global average, so it’s not surprising that the Arctic saw its warmest summer and sixth warmest year on record. The 2023 Arctic Report Card is a reminder of what’s a stake, both the risks as the planet warms and the lives and cultures already being disrupted by climate change.
Rick Thoman, Alaska Climate Specialist, University of Alaska Fairbanks; Matthew L. Druckenmiller, Research Scientist, National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), University of Colorado Boulder, and Twila A. Moon, Deputy Lead Scientist, National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), University of Colorado Boulder
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Click the link to read the release on the Department of Interior website:
December 12, 2023
Funding will provide relief to Tribes confronted by drought conditions threatening homelands, food sources and cultural resources
The Department of the Interior today announced the availability of $16.5 million through the Bureau of Reclamation to expand access to clean, reliable water supplies for Tribes confronted by drought conditions that threaten Tribal homelands, food sources, and cultural resources. Two funding opportunities are now available through Reclamation’s Native American Affairs Program: a $12.5 million investment from President Biden’s Investing in America agenda — funded through the Inflation Reduction Act — and $4 million in annual funding for technical assistance and cooperative agreements.
Funding from Reclamation’s Native American Affairs Program has previously supported projects including irrigation projects; municipal, industrial, and rural water systems; dam construction and dam safety; drought relief; emergency assistance; planning and engineering studies; and other activities that facilitate the negotiations and implementation of Indian water rights settlements. This round of funding is available without cost-share or matching requirements, making it easier for smaller and less-resourced Tribes to access this critical funding.
“As Tribal communities across the West experience severe drought conditions, we are bringing every tool and every resource to bear, including historic investments through President Biden’s Investing in America agenda, to conserve and secure local water supplies, and ensure no community is left behind,” said Secretary Deb Haaland. “Today’s funding opportunity will allow us to partner with Tribes on projects that can have a real, tangible impact in Indian Country.”
“Reclamation is committed to working with sovereign nations to mitigate the devastating impacts of drought while securing ongoing investments in Tribal water projects,” said Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton. “This year’s additional emergency drought funding has no cost-share or matching requirements, helping get dollars to Indigenous communities swiftly and leveraging near-term efforts to build drought resilience in the face of a changing climate.”
Commissioner Touton announced the funding opportunity at the third Post-2026 Federal-Tribes-State partnership meeting — a new forum to enhance Tribal engagement and promote equitable information-sharing and discussion among the sovereign governments as the Department develops guidelines for the next several years of management of the Colorado River.
President Biden’s Investing in America agenda represents the largest investment in climate resilience in the nation’s history and is providing much-needed resources to enhance Western communities’ resilience to drought and climate change. Through the Inflation Reduction Act, Reclamation is investing nearly $4.6 billion to advance water system conservation and mitigate drought impacts, building on $8.3 billion provided through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to revitalize aging water infrastructure systems, advance water reuse methods and deliver water resources to rural and hard to reach communities.
Tribes and Tribal organizations in the 17 Western states in which Reclamation operates are encouraged to apply for both funding opportunities. Technical assistance grants and cooperative agreements are available up to $400,000. Grants for emergency drought relief must provide drought relief benefits within two years from the date of award and be completed within three years. The maximum award per project is limited to $500,000, and the maximum total awards per Tribe is limited to $1 million.
This funding opportunity advances the Biden-Harris Administration’s ambitious environmental justice agenda through the Justice40 Initiative, which set the goal that 40 percent of the overall benefits of certain covered Federal investments flow to disadvantaged or Justice40 communities, which include all Federally Recognized Tribes and Tribal entities.
More about these and other funding opportunities can be found at Reclamation’s website.
Click the link to read the release on the Colorado State University website (Jana Crouch)
December 11, 2023
In the semi-arid Colorado climate, long periods of hot and dry conditions are often broken up by rapid torrential rains. Stormwater runoff can contribute to water pollution and cause flooding and erosion, creating a paradox of water being precious and scarce, yet hazardous and contaminated.
What if stormwater could instead be collected in biological green spaces to minimize runoff and filter the water for reuse as irrigation?
Two CSU researchers are collaborating with municipal officials in Denver to improve urban landscaping design for green stormwater management systems. Professors Sybil Sharvelle, civil and environmental engineering, and Jennifer Bousselot, horticulture and landscape architecture, have joined forces to integrate green infrastructure and stormwater reuse into the urban landscape.
The many dimensions of water and vegetation
The multi-faceted project will examine how different types of captured water (i.e., graywater, stormwater, etc.) affect various combinations of soil and vegetation. Additionally, the researchers will collect data on vegetation in street-level planters and green roof systems that will maximize the removal of toxins and pollutants from water.
“Typically research focuses on one element. By approaching this work with equal weight given to the agriculture side and the engineering side, we have a robust project that is more valuable and useful to the end users,” said Bousselot, an expert in green roof development and urban horticulture.
By testing different sources of water, soil, and vegetation, their research will identify ideal combinations for urban landscaping that reduces pollution, minimizes damage from flooding and runoff, and sustainably treats and reuses stormwater. The four-year project will also capture how the vegetation responds in each weather season in Colorado.
CSU Spur serves as collaborative hub
At the Hydro Building of CSU Spur, the team has access to concrete test plots in Hydro’s Backyard to function as experimental bioretention cells mimicking streetside planters commonly found in urban landscapes. Spur’s Hydro Building also has a green roof space for testing the viability of vegetation irrigated with different non-potable water types.
“I love that Spur serves as a space to connect CSU’s agriculture and water engineering programs where we have enhanced collaboration opportunities. We can work on projects in the same location, and with the Terra Building right beside the Hydro Building, it is an area for elevated research where students get great experience,” said Sharvelle, an expert in urban stormwater management and head of the Water Technology Acceleration Platform Lab (Water TAP) at Spur.
“The outdoor lab at Hydro is a great place to interact with the public. I think school kids will love to visit, learn about how we are trying to protect our water resources, and hopefully be inspired to help too,” stated Colin Bell, Senior Engineer at the Division of Green Infrastructure within the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure for the City and County of Denver.
Sharvelle and Bousselot are co-advising civil engineering PhD student Amanda Guedes Salerno. Salerno will manage plant growth, measure water outflow from the bioretention cells and green roof, and other hands-on data collection at Spur. She earned her undergraduate degree in environmental engineering in her home country of Brazil, then came to CSU for a master’s degree in horticulture.
Her current PhD research is in many ways a continuation of her master’s research with green roof systems.
“The facility at Spur is amazing,” said Salerno. “As a master’s student, I studied green roof infrastructure but had to perform research in small simulation boxes. Now, we can access the fully functional green roof at Spur. The integration between the water science and horticulture science in one place is incredible.”
Partnering for the public good
The results of this research will provide guidance on stormwater treatment, water quality improvement, and the viability of vegetation in bioretention cells and green roof systems. The guidance will then inform future projects by the Division of Green Infrastructure and the Denver metro area’s Mile High Flood District(MHFD), who are jointly funding the project.
“This has been a really exciting collaboration with our local utilities and municipal partners. We are able to perform research and water quality testing at a level they may not have the resources for, and it has a direct impact on them,” said Sharvelle.
The Director of Research and Development at Mile High Flood District, Holly Piza, shared “The CSU and MHFD partnership at Spur allows us to connect academic research with practitioners in our region. This research is informing our regional criteria and advancing the practice of stormwater management.”
“It’s a great team. CSU brings the research expertise and an amazing facility, MHFD has a strong history of developing innovative stormwater criteria, and DGI will use the findings to build on an existing network of over 200 facilities in Denver,” said Bell.
Click the link to go to the Colorado Water Congress website to apply:
Contract Opportunity
The Colorado River Project Coordinator (Coordinator) represents Colorado River water users in Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah in the implementation of the Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program (Recovery Program) (https://coloradoriverrecovery.org/uc/). A broad coalition of twenty-three water users in Colorado and Utah provide funding for a Coordinator through the Colorado Water Congress Colorado River Project (Project). Each contributing water user is a member of the Project’s Executive Committee and provides guidance and direction to the Project Coordinator and is kept informed of Recovery Program activities through regular meetings with and correspondence from the Coordinator.
The successful candidate will collaborate with the current Coordinator for sufficient time to gain a complete understanding of the Program and the responsibilities of the position. The water users have benefitted from having the current Coordinator since the inception of the Recovery Program with one point of contact and consistent, successful representation in all of the Recovery Program facets. The water users realize how unique the arrangement has been with the longevity and the waters users will have an ongoing need for a Coordinator as long as the Recovery Program exists. The Recovery Program or its successor is expected to be permanent. A candidate that has a vision to provide a way for historic knowledge learning, retention and application, along with the ability to look toward the future, for a time period of 10-years or more is desired.
Coordinator will be an independent contractor and not an employee of the Colorado Water Congress (CWC). Coordinator could be an individual or a company. If a company wishes to apply, please identify and provide qualifications of the primary person responsible for the scope of work and any additional supporting staff. The company must provide a commitment that one person will serve as Coordinator and that any change in staff must be approved by the Executive Committee. This does not preclude that person from other duties. The estimated time requirement averages 20 hours per week. The applicant must disclose any potential conflicts of interest.
Compensation range: $120 – $200 per hour, depending on knowledge, skills, and experience.
Minimum Qualifications: Bachelor’s Degree from an accredited college or university in Planning, Natural Resource Management, Environmental Science, Watershed Science, Engineering, or related field. Minimum 6 years of related work experience. Any equivalent combination of certifications, education, or experience that provides the required skills, knowledge, and abilities for the position.
Preferred Qualifications: A candidate with skills/experience in working with Congress on appropriations/authorizing legislation, a track record of successfully working with members of diverse groups to achieve consensus on difficult issues, ESA experience, and knowledge of the Recovery Program is preferred.
Here’s the detailed Scope of Services.
Applicant Submittal Information
Please submit your letter of interest and resume or documents using the portal on the Colorado Water Congress website HERE.
The position will be open until filled. Initial interviews are anticipated to be conducted the week of January 29thcoordinated with the Colorado Water Congress Annual Convention, January 31 to February 2, 2024, in Aurora, Colorado.
Please direct any questions to John McClow at jmcclow@ugrwcd.org
This is an equal employment opportunity.
Background
In mid-1983, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released a draft proposal to restrict future water development in the Upper Colorado River Basin in order to protect native fish species listed as endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act. The Colorado Water Congress (CWC) Colorado River Project was established on December 1, 1983 by a coalition of Colorado and Utah water users. The objective of the Project was to develop an acceptable administrative solution to resolve conflicts between protection of federally listed endangered fish species and development and management of water in the Upper Colorado River Basin. Negotiations among federal agencies, the states of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, water interests, and environmental organizations between 1984 and 1987 resulted in establishment of the Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Implementation Program (Recovery Program) on January 22, 1988 by agreement of the Secretary of the Interior, the Administrator Western Area Power Administration, and the governors of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. The Recovery Program has the objective of recovering endangered fish while water development and management activities proceed in compliance with the ESA, Reclamation project authorizations, and state water and wildlife law. This objective is being achieved.
Current participants in the Recovery Program include four federal agencies (U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Bureau of Reclamation, National Park Service, and Western Area Power Administration), the states of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming, Upper Basin water users, Colorado River Storage Project power customers (Colorado River Energy Distributors Association), and environmental organizations (The Nature Conservancy, Western Resource Advocates).
Recovery Program actions taken to recover the species include construction of fish passages, fish screens, habitat improvements, non-native fish control, enhancing instream flows in accordance with state water law and interstate compacts, stocking, monitoring, and research. These actions provide the ESA compliance for water depletions and water management in the Upper Colorado River Basin for federal, non-federal, and tribal water projects. In entering the agreement to establish the Recovery Program, the United States agreed that any water needed for endangered fish would be acquired in accordance with state law and interstate compacts, and that there would be no taking of water or condemnation of water rights. The states, water users and the Bureau of Reclamation committed to finding ways to provide water for endangered fish in accordance with state law, interstate compacts and Reclamation project authorizations.
As of December 31, 2022, the Recovery Program has provided ESA compliance for 2,203 water projects depleting approximately 2.8 million acre-feet/year in Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. This includes 1,262 projects in Colorado depleting 2.1 million acre-feet per year, 266 projects in Utah depleting 619,439 acre-feet per year, and 434 projects in Wyoming depleting 124,463 acre-feet per year. No lawsuits have been filed on ESA compliance provided by the Recovery Program.
Role of the CWC Colorado River Project in the Upper Basin Recovery Program
The CWC Colorado River Project (Project) plays a key role in Recovery Program implementation. The Project supports participation by the water users’ representative in the Recovery Program’s governing and technical committees. Participation ensures that the Recovery Program is implemented in accordance with existing agreements. The Coordinator confers with and seeks input from the Executive Committee on key Recovery Program issues and provides assistance to water users throughout the Upper Colorado River Basin when needed to assure that ESA Section 7 consultations on water projects are carried out in accordance with Recovery Program agreements.
Because the Project is not part of a federal or state agency, it has considerable latitude in dealing directly with the United States Congress and presidential administrations with respect to Recovery Program matters. Since its inception, the Project has been involved in successful efforts to secure federal funding for the Recovery Program. In 2000, the Project garnered Congressional support for and coordinated passage of federal legislation (P.L. 106-392) that authorized federal cost sharing for the Recovery Program and use of Colorado River Storage Project hydropower revenues for Recovery Program activities, and recognizes non-federal cost sharing. This legislation also authorized funding for the San Juan River Basin Recovery Implementation Program (https://coloradoriverrecovery.org/sj/). The Project has played a leading role in passage of subsequent amendments to expand federal cost-sharing as needed. Each year the Project works with other non-federal participants in both recovery programs to secure annual appropriations by Congress for the Recovery Program and the San Juan Recovery Program in accordance with the authorizing legislation. The annual appropriations are divided between the two programs pursuant to the authorizing legislation. As of September 30, 2023, Congress has appropriated $173,552,000 in support of the Recovery Program and authorized $115,774,000 in Colorado River Storage Project Colorado River Project hydropower revenues to support the Recovery Program. Total Recovery Program costs from FY 1989 through FY 2023 were $478,919,000, including non-federal contributions and credits to participants for various activities.
Click the link to read the article on the Aspen Journalism website (Heather Sackett):
December 8, 2023
The results of a recent economic study of Grand County irrigators show that certain water conservation programs may be worth it for irrigators who grow hay but not for those who grow cows.
In 2020, a group of nine flood irrigators in the Kremmling area, scientists and conservation groups began a multiyear research project to find out what happens when irrigation water is withheld from high-elevation fields for a full season and a half-season. The project, officially called “Evaluating Conserved Consumptive Use in the Upper Colorado,” is ongoing through 2023, but preliminary results from 2020-22 show that the effects of taking water off a field linger beyond one season and that these types of programs may not make financial sense for irrigators who raise livestock.
In 2020, control fields were irrigated normally; some fields received no irrigation water and some received irrigation water only through June 15. Normal irrigation practices were resumed in 2021, 2022 and 2023. But the fields with no or less water in 2020 did not fully bounce back and produce the same crop yield as the control fields in subsequent years. The amount of water used by the plants, known as consumptive use, as well as the amount of forage crop production, lagged behind the control fields even two years after resuming normal irrigation, something maybe partly due to the extreme drought in the summers of 2020 and 2021.
Perry Cabot, a researcher with Colorado State University, and Hannah Holm, associate director for policy with environmental group American Rivers, worked on the project and presented their findings to the Colorado Basin Roundtable last month.
“2020 was such an awful, horrible drought year, especially late in the season,” Holm said. “We are wondering if the fact that there was basically no precipitation falling from the sky, and that summer of 2021 [was also dry], might have knocked back the treatment fields that much harder. … We do see substantial recovery when returned to full irrigation, but it’s not uniform across the fields and it seems to not be 100% a couple of years later.”
Where water was removed for half of the irrigation season, irrigators received $281 per acre, and those with full irrigation withdrawal received $621 per acre in 2020.
The study was funded by the Colorado Water Conservation Board, with support from the Colorado Basin Roundtable, The Nature Conservancy, Trout Unlimited and American Rivers.
The 2020 Economics and Enterprise Budgeting Report, released in August as part of the preliminary project report, found that these amounts need to be increased for irrigators who also raise livestock to make participation in the program worth it for them. The report, which is based on interviews, financial data and budgets from six of the participating irrigators, said agricultural producers who relied on their hayfields to feed cattle experience a net loss of profit, despite the payments.
Producers with livestock would have needed an average payment of at least $971 per acre to fully compensate them for the additional costs of not irrigating their fields. This was mostly due to the high cost of having to buy hay in a drought year to replace the hay they didn’t grow.
Those just growing hay saw an average of a $197 increase in income per acre on the full-season treatment fields; those growing hay saw an average $46 loss per acre on the half-season treatment fields. Those who also had a herd of cows to manage in addition to growing hay lost an average of $350 of income per acre on the treatment fields.
Paul Bruchez, a Kremmling rancher and CWCB member, is one of the project’s leaders.
“We were part of creating a deficit in our local hay market,” he said. “That was compounded by what was a natural drought. And then the end result was that hay was off-the-charts expensive.”
Many ranchers continue irrigating late into the season after their last cutting of hay so that they can grow back a little bit of grass, alfalfa or other forage crop on which their cattle can graze for several weeks in the fall before they start feeding them hay. Ranchers who participated in the project also lost this bit of fall grazing because they didn’t irrigate.
“They had a loss of production initially for the harvesting of the hay to feed them through the winter, but then they also lost fall grazing,” said Jenny Beiermann, an agriculture and business management specialist with Colorado State University, who co-authored the economics study. “They incurred a lot of additional expenses compared to those who were just harvesting hay, and that’s why they needed a higher rate of payment for their fields.”
System conservation
These findings could have basinwide implications for the Upper Colorado River Commission’s System Conservation Program, which in September water managers voted to continue in 2024. The federally funded program pays irrigators to forgo watering their fields for a season with the goal of protecting critical elevations in the nation’s two largest reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead. The 2024 program will have a narrower scope that explores demand-management concepts and supports innovation and local drought resiliency on a longer-term basis.
For the 2023 System Conservation Program, water managers set the opening payment to producers at $150 per acre-foot conserved, a number that some producers told Aspen Journalism was insultingly low. Producers could then negotiate up from there. SCP project participants in Colorado were paid an average of about $394 for every acre-foot conserved. The average price per acre-foot across the four upper basin states — Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico — was $422.
For 2024, the program will offer Colorado irrigators a fixed price of $509 per acre-foot conserved.
UCRC Executive Director Chuck Cullom said the agency used projected commodity prices and crop budgets from CSU to arrive at the amount of compensation offered to producers for 2024 and did not take into account whether an irrigator had a cow/calf operation.
Another thing the project is studying is how birds use irrigated agricultural lands. But the results through 2022 of an avian monitoring project by Audubon Rockies were inconclusive. Researchers expected that when irrigation was resumed in the years after 2020, there would be more water-associated birds. The number of bird species counted did increase in 2021 — the first year irrigation water returned — but not in 2022.
“In some regard, the results from 2022 were diminished from those in 2020 (treatment year), which further opposed our expectations,” the report reads. “Birds are highly diverse, mobile creatures that use a wide array of habitats for many different seasonal purposes, often making it challenging to interpret the outcomes of avian monitoring efforts.”
The thing to keep in mind about the economics study, Beiermann said, is that it was small and that conditions in high-elevation Grand County can be particularly brutal, with long winters. Drought and water availability can vary widely across the upper Colorado River basin and from year to year. Still, a key takeaway is that these types of water conservation programs may be better suited for irrigators who grow only hay.
“Agriculture is a really risky business and being profitable is really tough,” she said. “There are too many variables (for livestock producers). Generally speaking, they are going to have a lot higher costs.”
This story ran in the Dec. 9 edition of The Aspen Times.
Last week, gains at the Upper Colorado sites were about 112% of normal and the South Platte sites had gains of 122%.
From Emily Ransdell’s new book of the same name, “One Finch Singing”
From the poet’s website:
One Finch Singing
Some days I want to fill my pockets
with everything I’m afraid of losing.
How much milkweed to save
the monarch? How many foil blankets
to keep an ancient redwood alive?I worry about finches. Smaller
than a fist, wingspan no bigger
than an open hand. I keep thinking
of what it took for them to get here, flying
all those miles up to Oregon. I keep thinking
of heat. Cities hitting triple digits. London
for god sake. Italy on fire.There’s smoke again in Ashland,
like the time Kay and I went for a getaway.
All we had were bandanas, useless
against that stench and ash. We walked
the streets like grandmotherly bandits,
drank gin with the Airbnb windows shut.
By then I knew she was terminal.
Still, it felt impossible she could die.I worry about beetle kill and rivers
missing their fish, the dry tinder of California
as creeks in Kentucky rage.
I read that finches can live on thistles, as if
to say, There’s hope. The ancients thought
finches carried souls to the afterlife, and the sound
of one finch singing meant an end to grief.Last week a brush fire ignited within sight
of my porch — just like that — flames leapt
from slash and grass to standing firs.
Two thousand acres burned.
Where did the birds go then?I miss my friend.
I want to know those finches are somewhere.
Safe and singing. From meadow rush
and ditch shrubs, calling
to their kind.
Click the link to read the article on the KUNC website (Alex Hager). Here’s an excerpt:
The biggest water policymakers in the arid West (and Coyote Gulch) will soon convene at the Colorado River’s marquee annual event – the Colorado River Water Users Association meeting in Las Vegas. Ahead of this year’s conference, leaders say they have more bandwidth to find a solution to the growing supply-demand imbalance that is straining the river. The event brings together hundreds of scientists, politicians, tribal members, farmers and others with a stake in the future of the water supply for roughly 40 million people across the Southwest. While they’re still facing the daunting challenge of agreeing on cutbacks to water use by farms, ranches and cities from Wyoming to Mexico, many say last year’s wet winter helped clear the way for more productive talks…
Since the earliest days of Colorado River management, Indigenous people have been on the fringes of talks about how to share its water. Some of the 30 federally-recognized tribes which use water from the Colorado River say they’re still being kept out of the rooms where important decisions are made about water policy. Calls for greater inclusion of tribes have been a staple of recent annual meetings in Las Vegas, but tribal water advocates say there’s still a need for more.
“We want our participation to be institutionalized,” said Lorelei Cloud, acting chairman of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe. “That is going to be key.”
Cloud, whose tribe sits in the southwest corner of Colorado, said she and other Indigenous water leaders are pushing for legally-protected seats at the table in post-2026 water management. Those seats, she said, should be designed to withstand changes in tribal, state or federal administrations. Tribal leaders say some progress has been made to give them a larger role in water talks. Cloud, who recently became the first Native American person to serve on the Colorado Water Conservation Board, praised the efforts of her state and the Upper Colorado River Commission. That body helps give Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico a unified voice in region-wide water talks.
“We’ve had to hash out a lot of historical traumas and things that have happened to us, preventing us from being a part of those conversations,” she said. “In the Upper Basin, I think we’re blazing that trail right now. We’re ahead of the game.”
[…]
“As we listen to the agreements, you would think that our rate of consumption was significantly less than it had ever been after any other wet year, and that is not the case,” said Jack Schmidt, who directs the Center for Colorado River Studies at Utah State University. “We are sort of using water at a similar rate as in other years.”
Schmidt wrote about the current status of reservoir storage around the Colorado River basin in a blog post showing that the boost from last winter has been relatively modest and is being depleted in a way that could quickly erase any temporary gains. He said the region is currently using water at a rate that is “unexceptional,” comparing the current situation to 2011, 2017 and 2019, when big winter gains were consumed or lost to evaporation within two years.
I am psyched for the conference this week. You can follow the sessions on Twitter with the hash tag #CRWUA2023.
CRWUA website here.
Conference agenda here.
2023 Blog here.
CRWUA Instagram here.
Click the link to read the latest briefing on the Western Water Assessment website:
December 6, 2023 – CO, UT, WY
November was generally drier and warmer than average across the region. Regional snowfall was also below average during November and the month ended with Colorado at 54% snow water equivalent (SWE) statewide and Utah at 60% of average SWE. Drought conditions expanded slightly to cover 14% of the region with the most severe conditions in western Colorado. Strong El Niño conditions currently exist and there is an 80% chance that El Niño conditions continue through spring. NOAA seasonal forecasts suggest an increased probability of above average December–February precipitation for much of Colorado and Utah and an increased probability of below average precipitation for northern Wyoming.
November precipitation was below normal for much of the region, especially in Colorado and eastern Wyoming where large areas received less than 50% of average monthly precipitation. A few locations in southern Colorado received record-low November precipitation. Locations in southwestern and central Wyoming received average to above average precipitation. In Utah, November precipitation was a mix of below and above average conditions.
Regional temperatures were above average during November. In Utah, western Colorado and southwestern Wyoming, November temperatures were slightly above average. In eastern Colorado and much of Wyoming, temperatures were generally 2-4 degrees above average.
November snowfall was below average across the region. As of December 1, snow water equivalent was below to much-below average for all river basins; statewide SWE was 60% of average in Colorado and 54% of average in Utah. A prolonged winter storm affected the region on December 1-3, significantly improving snowpack conditions across most of Utah, western Colorado and parts of Wyoming.
Monthly streamflow during November was lowest relative to the average in Colorado where many sites along the Arkansas, Rio Grande and San Juan Rivers reported below to much-below average streamflow, coinciding with regions experiencing the worst drought conditions. November streamflow in Utah was near-average at most streamflow gauges except for a few drier sites in central and southeastern Utah. In Wyoming, November streamflow was average across most of the state except for northern Wyoming where November streamflow was above average. The Colorado Basin River Forecast Center will issue its first water supply forecast of the season by December 13.
Regional drought conditions expanded slightly during November and now cover 14% of the region, a 3% increase from late October. Drought conditions remained largely unchanged in Utah and Wyoming, but expanded in Colorado. By late November, most of western Colorado was in drought and extreme (D3) drought developed in the Rio Grande River Basin.
El Niño conditions continued during November and Pacific Ocean temperatures are consistent with a strong El Niño. There is over an 80% probability of El Niño conditions persisting through spring and a 55% chance of a strong El Niño continuing through mid-winter. The NOAA temperature outlook for December suggests an increased probability of above average temperatures for much of the region. The NOAA seasonal forecast for December–February suggests an increased probability of above average precipitation for much of Utah and Colorado and an increased probability for below average precipitation across much of Wyoming. In northern Wyoming, there is an increased probability of above average temperatures from December–February.
Significant weather event. December 1-3 winter storm. November was a relatively quiet month for regional weather, but December began with a very powerful winter storm impacting most of Utah, northern Colorado and western Wyoming. The three-day storm began very cold with snowfall across all elevations, but warmed significantly during the second half of the storm. Utah saw the most significant snowfall and statewide SWE improved from 60% of average before the storm to 113% of average after the storm. Colorado’s statewide SWE improved from 54% to 85% following the storm. While early season snowpack as a percentage of average can change dramatically with single storms, snowfall, especially in northern Utah, was significant. Snowfall and SWE totals from the storm included: 38” of snow (6.6” SWE) at Tony Grove Lake near Logan, 50” of snow (6.6” SWE) at Ben Lomond SNOTEL near Ogden and 51” of snow (4.7” SWE) at Alta. The storm also brought prolonged periods of very strong winds with peak gusts approaching 110 mph at 11,000 feet in the central Wasatch Mountains.
Click the link to read the article on the Department of Interior website:
Projects funded from President Biden’s Investing in America agenda will generate renewable energy, increase water efficiency
December 8, 2023
The Biden-Harris administration today announced $5.65 million from President Biden’s Investing in America Agenda for the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona to construct and install solar panels over the Casa Blanca Canal. Acting Deputy Secretary Laura Daniel-Davis and Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton celebrated the investments with the Gila River Indian Community today.
“President Biden’s Investing in America agenda is unlocking resources for new and innovative ways to combat the climate crisis, including simultaneously generating renewable energy and increasing water efficiency,” said Acting Deputy Secretary Laura Daniel-Davis. “In partnership with local stakeholders, the Interior Department will continue to invest in essential water infrastructure projects that mitigate the worst impacts of climate change and invest in communities across the country.”
“We look forward to working with the Gila River Indian Community on this novel idea to conserve water and generate renewable energy with funding from President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act,” said Reclamation Commissioner Touton. “Reclamation is working hard on projects that support water conservation and energy efficiency. This project will help inform similar projects to better understand their impacts and make that information publicly available so that we can all understand the scale and corresponding benefits they provide.”
Solar panels placed over canals have the potential to create several significant benefits, including:
- Generating renewable energy;
- Reducing evaporation losses of the canal;
- Increasing efficiency and production of solar panels because of the cooling effect of the water beneath the panels;
- Creating land savings for open space and agricultural use;
- Reducing facility maintenance by mitigating algae and/or aquatic plant growth; and
- Reducing the energy footprint and carbon emissions required to operate and maintain the facility.
The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation will work with the Gila River Indian Community to cover 2,782 linear feet of the Casa Blanca canal with approximately 2,556 solar panels. The solar panels are expected to generate 1.31 megawatts of clean energy, providing 2.26 million kilowatt-hours of annual electricity to the Gila River Indian Community. This pilot will serve as a five-year study period and provide important information for future solar projects over canals and for the Gila River Indian Community as they seek to include solar panels over 18.5 miles of canal.
President Biden’s Investing in America agenda represents the largest investment in climate resilience in the nation’s history and provides much-needed resources to enhance Western communities’ resilience to drought and climate change. The Inflation Reduction Act made available $25 million for the design, study and implementation of projects to cover water conveyance facilities with solar panels. Today’s announcement is the first award of this funding, with more expected in the coming months.
Through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Reclamation is also investing $8.3 billion over five years for water infrastructure projects, including rural water, water storage, conservation and conveyance, nature-based solutions, dam safety, water purification and reuse, and desalination. Over the first two years of its implementation, Reclamation selected 372 projects to receive almost $2.8 billion.
This funding is also advancing President Biden’s Justice40 Initiative, which aims to ensure that 40 percent of the overall benefits of certain climate, clean energy, and other federal investments flow to disadvantaged communities marginalized by underinvestment and overburdened by pollution.
Click the link to read the post on the NOAA website (Amy Butler and Laura Cisato):
We are excited to announce that NOAA Climate.gov, home of the highly popular ENSO Blog, is venturing into a colder, darker, and windier corner of the atmosphere with the new Polar Vortex Blog. We plan to explore various facets of the winds, climate, and chemistry within the fascinating region of the atmosphere known as the polar stratosphere, and explain how this region can sometimes drive big changes in our weather patterns!
While ENSO may be the seasoned celebrity in the seasonal forecasting world, in recent years the stratospheric polar vortex has become a rising star: constantly making headlines and being stalked by the paparazzi, but often misunderstood or misrepresented. We hope to clear up misconceptions, highlight new research, and discuss what the polar vortex is up to and how it may affect our winter’s weather. We expect there to be 1-2 posts per month between December and March, with the initial focus on the Northern Hemisphere polar vortex (yep, there’s one down south, too!).
So who’s on the team?
- Amy Butler is a research scientist at the NOAA Chemical Sciences Laboratory and an expert on the stratosphere and its influence on weather;
- Laura Ciasto is a meteorologist at the NOAA Climate Prediction Center. She leads the development of stratospheric and teleconnection forecast products, but is also a Week 3-4 forecaster (NOAA’s description for forecasts of weather conditions 3-4 weeks in the future);
- The Climate.gov graphics and data visualization team and managing editor, Rebecca Lindsey, with the NOAA Climate Program Office.
While we [Amy & Laura] are the lead editors of the blog, we hope to have guest contributors who can share their own perspectives and research on the polar vortex and related topics. And of course, this blog will not succeed without active engagement from you, our readers. We are happy to hear your constructive feedback and suggestions, and are excited to engage with you on this topic!
After reading this introduction, the first question you might have is likely: What is the polar vortex? And so, that’s where we’ll begin!!
What is the stratospheric polar vortex?
In recent years, most people have heard the phrase “the polar vortex”, which has made regular appearances in media headlines, often with an exciting, albeit sometimes ominous “Day after Tomorrow”, flavor:
- “Get ready: here comes the polar vortex”
- “Northeast U.S. latest to experience polar vortex temperatures”
- “Polar vortex invades central U.S.”
- “Polar vortex breaks record-low temps, snaps steel, empties cities”
But the “polar vortex” is not actually a synonym for “cold snap”; rather, it’s a well-known feature of Earth’s atmosphere that describes the high-altitude winds that blow around the pole every winter, miles above us in a region called the stratosphere.
The stratospheric polar vortex forms in the winter hemisphere when the Earth’s pole is pointed away from the sun. The polar stratosphere enters darkness and becomes cold relative to the tropical stratosphere [footnote 1]. The temperature contrast makes for strong winds in the stratosphere that blow from west to east. This wintertime stratospheric wind is what we call the Arctic polar vortex [footnote 2].
An atmosphere dance party: who’s the wallflower, and who’s the extrovert?
If we were at a dance party, your first impression might be that the stratospheric polar vortex is the wallflower standing alone on the upstairs balcony, while the tropospheric jet stream is showing off on the dance floor with its flamboyant troughs, ridges, and cut-off lows. But as is so often true, first impressions are not always correct: while the polar vortex often doesn’t mind doing its own thing, it is not a passive watcher of the atmospheric dance down below. With some encouragement, polar vortex can actually become one of the most dynamic dancers there.
Making an impression
Why does the polar vortex matter to us, given it is so high and far away in the polar atmosphere? That’s one of the things we hope to explore in much more detail on this blog. But one of the main reasons is because the vortex does not always sit quietly by itself. Though it might (literally) need a little push from the troposphere to get its groove on, it can really break down with a move called a “sudden stratospheric warming”.
In this move, the polar vortex may wobble, swing far from its normal position over the pole, or stretch itself way out, sometimes even splitting in two (doing the “splits”? We can hear the groans from here…). And when this happens, the chances of cold weather across many populated regions can increase for many weeks afterwards.
Alternatively, sometimes the vortex does another extreme move where it becomes super fast and stable, encouraging the cold air at the surface to stay over the pole, which increases the chances of winter heat extremes in some regions. We will be getting into all the details of these events and their influence on our weather in future blog posts.
Polar vortex groupies
It’s hard to not be fascinated by the strong silent type that suddenly wows you with its awesome dance moves, particularly when those moves can cause extreme weather impacts, so scientists and forecasters have increasingly appreciated the need to monitor what the polar vortex is doing. We usually start by looking at the zonal (east-west) winds at 60N (the latitudes near Anchorage, AK or Oslo, Norway) at around 19 miles (30 kilometers) in altitude, where the air is so thin that the pressure is only 10 millibars (10 hectoPascals). By looking at a time series of these zonal winds we can get an idea of whether the polar vortex is really strong and stable, or weakening and ready to bust into its sudden stratospheric warming moves.
In addition to the strength of the vortex, we often want to know more about its shape. A great way to do this is by simply looking at a map of the thickness of the atmosphere. Throughout the winter, the polar vortex can shift, stretch, or just wobble from its usual spot over the pole, kind of like dancing in place. During strong events or sudden stratospheric warmings, these moves become much more distinct. Seeing the shape shows us which areas are poised to feel the biggest impacts of any unusual polar vortex behavior. There are other cool ways to see what the polar vortex is up to and whether it’s interested in tangoing with the troposphere but we’ll leave that for another post.
So what’s the polar vortex doing now? For the last few weeks it’s been embracing its wallflower persona as it sits over the polar region with stronger than average westerly winds. However, it does look like the stratosphere is at least thinking about joining the winter dance. If we look at the average of all the model forecasts from NOAA’s operational forecasting system (known as the Global Ensemble Forecasting System, or GEFS), it predicts that the zonal winds will weaken through the start of the new year.
The real question is whether the polar vortex just wants to dance in place (like it often does) or really show its steps. If we look at the individual forecasts that make up the average, some indicate that those polar vortex westerlies will not only weaken but change direction to blow from east to west [footnote 3], which is how we define a sudden stratospheric warming. In addition, the leading forecast system for Europe (the ECMWF model, short for European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasting) shows an even higher likelihood that the vortex will be weaker than normal during December. These hints of a shift towards a weaker polar vortex means we will keep a close eye on whether the polar vortex wants to join an early winter party or sit this one out.
Further Reading
If you can’t wait for the next post to learn more about the polar vortex, our friends at the ENSO blog and at Climate.gov have posted several primers on the polar vortex and some of its most recent disruptions.
- Polar Vortex
- Understanding the Arctic Polar Vortex
- 2021 Sudden Stratospheric Warming
- 2023 Sudden Stratospheric Warming
Other good references on the polar vortex:
- The Stratospheric Polar Vortex and Sudden Stratospheric Warmings
- What Exactly is the Polar Vortex?
- What’s in a Name? On the Use and Significance of the Term “Polar Vortex”
Footnotes
- Now, you might be thinking, “But isn’t the stratosphere always colder at the poles than it is at the equator? No! In the summer, it’s actually warmer. We’ll cover this in a future post.
- Most of our descriptions in this post are talking about the Arctic polar vortex, but there is also an Antarctic polar vortex at 60S. It has some of the same features as its Arctic counterpart, but the Antarctic polar vortex is also unique, often dancing to the beat of a different song. We’ll delve into that more in future posts.
- When the winds blow from west to east, as is typically the case with the stratospheric polar vortex, this is said to be “westerly” flow, and is marked by zonal wind speeds that are positive in sign. When the winds blow from east to west, which is what happens when a sudden stratospheric warming occurs, the flow is instead called “easterly” and is denoted by zonal wind speeds that are negative in sign.
Click the link to read the article on the Aspen Daily News website (Austin Corona). Here’s an excerpt:
As competition grows for Colorado’s limited water resources, Front Range cities are disproportionately vulnerable to interstate water cuts on the beleaguered Colorado River, according to a recently updated study. The study found that 96% of Front Range water use from the Colorado River is subject to possible cuts under an interstate agreement. Updated this year by Hydros Consulting, the study was conducted on behalf of the Colorado River Water Conservation District. It is part of a seven-year effort to analyze the potential impacts of water cuts under the Colorado River Compact in Colorado…
While the vast majority of Front Range water use is theoretically subject to compact curtailment, only 30% of Western Slope water use — consumptive use, not diversions — shares the same vulnerability. In addition, the Front Range accounts for 48% of the state’s curtailable Colorado River water use, despite only making up 23% of the state’s overall use of the river. The majority of Front Range water rights on the Colorado River are vulnerable to curtailment because they are newer than the Colorado River Compact, which was signed in 1922. In Colorado water law, water rights receive priority during shortages according to their age, meaning the compact trumps any water rights newer than it…
The study found that under current hydrologic trends and reservoir operations, Colorado’s growing water demand is not likely to trigger this situation. [ed. emphasis mine] A sustained period of severe drought, however, could make it happen. In the last 20 years, the Colorado River’s average flow dropped to 11 million acre-feet for a period of seven years (the longer-term norm has been 13 million). Study facilitators say that if that seven-year stretch were to become the new normal, river flows would drop below the lower basin’s entitlement, even if Colorado’s water demand stays flat. If Colorado’s water demand follows future growth projections, it would likely speed up that process, potentially decreasing annual flows by an additional half-million acre-feet. Even without a natural drop in river flows, rising Colorado water demand could cause other interstate issues on the river outside of the Colorado River Compact. Under Colorado water demand projections for 2050, created by the Upper Colorado River Commission, the upper basin could fail to meet its obligation of sending an additional .75 million acre-feet downstream to Mexico.
Click the link to read the article on the Alamosa Citizen website (Chris Lopez):
December 9, 2023
State Engineer Kevin Rein is retiring at year’s end and agreed to join The Valley Pod podcast for an interview with host Chris Lopez before he departs. We’re calling it an exit interview.
In it, Rein talks about the importance of bringing sustainability to the unconfined aquifer of the Rio Grande Basin, how the economic future of the San Luis Valley and its agricultural industry is at stake without a sustainable aquifer system, the unique nature of the Rio Grande compared to the Colorado River Basin and others, and the urgency of achieving sustainability in the face of prolonged drought and climate change.
“I wish there was enough water for everybody, but we developed agricultural and municipal uses in a state that is largely a desert and it often has an abundance for a couple months out of the year,” Rein said. “I think it’s good for us to at least feel comfortable that we have that structure in place. But the other thing we need to know, as I alluded to, is that that structure is going to cause us to make difficult decisions, especially as we see climate change, the effects of climate change reducing our water supply, and we see our demands grow.”
Here’s an edited version of the conversation. The full Valley Pod episode is here.
ALAMOSA CITIZEN: Thank you again for giving us some of your time as you exit. And again, congratulations on your retirement. Is the stress of the job starting to subside?
KEVIN REIN: No. The stress, if we can call it that, is not subsiding at all. This trepidation that I face with the idea of retirement and ending a job that I really love doing, weighs pretty heavily on me and wanting to get in every last bit of good work I can do. That’s weighing on me. Yes. Yeah, it’s very important for me to try to finish this. We’re doing as much as I can.
AC: We want to start with some local issues with you of the Rio Grande Basin and then stretch more into the role of the state engineer for Colorado, if you don’t mind. First, can you sum up the importance of the upcoming year 2024 and the influence upcoming water court trials will have on the Rio Grande Basin? And we’re thinking specifically of the water trial around Subdistrict 1 Plan of Water Management, the alternative plan for operating in that particular subdistrict with the Sustainable Water Augmentation Group court filing, and then the idea of the U.S. Supreme Court weighing in on a new settlement between Texas, New Mexico and Colorado when it comes to the Rio Grande Compact. 2024 seems like a significant year in water court.
REIN: It’s going to be very significant that affects the people in the Valley to greater or lesser degrees depending on those three items that you just mentioned. And so that is critical. And Chris, I’ll apologize to you and the listeners that I’m going to be very cautious about my comments on these because of the legal implications and the fact that it’s really active litigation in three areas and regarding the lawsuit on the Rio Grande Compact with Texas and New Mexico. And then as you mentioned the United States, I will probably not say much at all about that because the facts are there and I don’t want to step in front of our good legal staff and say something that is not quite true to the case in terms of the legal implications of what’s going on. But when it comes to SWAG and that case and the groundwater management plan containing the plan of water management for Subdistrict 1, those are very important issues. And I will admit that I’m going to be a little guarded in my comments about those two because pardon me, as you know, the SWAG case was dismissed, but they have re-filed and we may see that play out in a similar fashion. And without saying too much about that and the groundwater management plan for the subdistrict, from my perspective as a state engineer, there’s one critical aspect of that for both cases and that is the sustainability of the unconfined aquifer. As we know, that’s a difficult component of groundwater management in the Valley because we have a statutorily required sustainability objective. And that has found its way into the rules and into the groundwater management plan for the subdistrict. And I’ll speak to the existing groundwater management plan that’s in place right now that has a deadline of 2031 to meet the objectives, the sustainability objectives, that that very plan sets out. As we all know, and I’ve been on record through letters and public comments, that it’s going to be very difficult to meet that sustainability objective under that existing plan of water management. And I know that the subdistrict has worked hard toward an alternative in this current plan that I approved and is before the court and the way that plays out is going to be so important to the irrigators in the Valley under the rules under their annual replacement plans. And I look forward to seeing the resolution of that. Obviously I won’t be the state engineer at the time and I’m not certain to what extent I personally will stay involved in that, but it is critical to get resolution on that for the irrigators. And since we are under active litigation, if I can use that term for the groundwater management plan component of the plan of water management, I’ll stop right there, but I will mention that as we know, the SWAG applicants have also attempted to address sustainability, at least in their previous application they did. That was dismissed. And for this upcoming application, I’ll admit that I have not reviewed that in detail yet, but that will be also very important to properly review and respond to sustainability objectives in the upcoming SWAG case.
AC: Why is it important for the water court to be dealing with these particular issues now? Can you address the importance of the court doing its work in 2024 and what’s the best scenario in terms of how the court adjudicates these trials or deals with these cases?
REIN: The importance of the water court’s involvement now is because the issue is important now in 2024. The reason it’s important right now is because we’re currently working under the 2031 deadline, and that seems, it doesn’t just seem it is seven years away, it seems like a lot of time, but as we know, we’re under sustained drought in the valley and obviously the economic future is at stake. We can’t just shut down production. So we need to find that way to address sustainability now. And as I said, we’re under sustained drought. There’s no confidence I think from anyone in saying that that will turn around and end. You have to assume a difficult case scenario. And with that seven years is not a lot of time to make up the perhaps 1 million acre-foot gain that would be necessary to get to the sustainability standard. Therefore it is timely.
AC: Do you think groundwater users as a whole in Division Three are making good or reasonable enough progress in solving our water security challenges and what stands out for you there?
REIN: Yeah, so a broader water groundwater availability use challenges, and I need to break away from this sustainability discussion for a minute and just talk about the efforts of all the water users through seven subdistricts under the rules in the Rio Grande Basin. And as we know, the rules that became final in 2019 and are now completely applicable do hold the water users to a high standard. It’s a standard that we have statewide. It’s a standard that came out of our 1969 water right Determination and Administration Act that we need to administer groundwater in conjunction with surface water in the prior appropriation system. That’s what came upon the water users in the Rio Grande gradually over the last 10 to 15 years, but again, in 2019 and certainly a couple years later, finally hit them. And what they have done is developed very comprehensive, very complex annual replacement plans that allow them to pump and comply with the law. What is compliance with the law? Basically it means replacing depletions to the stream system in time, location and amount to prevent injury to senior surplus water rights, and obviously the stay of compliance with a compact. And let me just say quickly, we have a unique situation in Division Three, the Rio Grande Basin, that instead of replacing depletions, they can enter into forbearance agreements to just compensate financially for that. But that’s what they have done to respond to this groundwater challenge is they have developed these annual replacement plans, they have gotten their sources of replacement water, they operate according to the Rio Grande decision support system to ensure that their depletions are properly recognized at the time, location, and the amount so that they can be replaced. I think it’s very gratifying. I wish I could take more credit, but I think it’s very gratifying that the water users, excuse me of the basin, have responded as they’ve needed to, but responded in such a complete and detailed and verifiable way. And I really can’t say that without also addressing the division of water resources staff in our Alamosa office, Craig Cotton and his highly competent staff, they’ve just put in countless hours to analyze and verify and approve these annual replacement plans. Without those, the wells just simply are not pumping.
AC: I want to ask you one more question about 2024 and the Rio Grande Compact because there’s a lot of people scratching their heads around the federal government’s opposition to the negotiated agreement between Texas, New Mexico and Colorado is also a party, too. And I just wonder if you’ve figured out the federal government’s motivation in that case?
REIN: Chris, that’s a very good question and if you don’t mind, I’d like to just not answer that because of the legal implications and I leave those questions to our attorney general staff.
AC: No, I appreciate that. One of the issues or one of the programs right now is the Groundwater Compact Compliance Fund and the $60 million that was put into that fund through Senate Bill 28. What should be the overall outcome of that $60 million for both the Rio Grande Basin, the Republican River Basin as it’s spent? What’s the expectation and what is the advantage gained by spending that money on those two basins?
REIN: The ultimate outcome for both basins is similar but distinct and the mechanism by which those outcomes are realized is also pretty similar. But let me just start with the end game. The outcome for the Republican River Basin, first of all, is to assist in the retirement of irrigated acres to comply with a 2016 resolution entered into by the states of Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado. And it’s tempting to get into great detail, but just let me say at a high level that part of compact compliance in the Republican River Basin is operating a compact compliance pipeline to deliver water at the state line to make up for overuse of Colorado’s allocation in the Republican River Basin. That works well except for a detail that not all the water is delivered exactly where it should be. And to deal with that, the three states entered into a resolution that among other things, allows a consideration that Colorado is meeting the compact. If Colorado retires 25,000 acres, this began in 2016, by the year initially 2027 but now 2029, with that background, how to retire 25,000 acres, it’s very difficult because people own land, they have water rights, they want to continue irrigating. So it’s through funding. The funding is difficult, you’re assessing fees, you are asking people to help fund this out of their economic development. Senate Bill 28 for the Republican (River Basin) then brought that $30 million in to help fund the irrigated acres, the reduction of irrigated acres, and it’s just purely economic incentive. People want to do the right thing, but it’s very helpful to have that economic incentive. So thank you for letting me go into some detail, but that is the outcome. The desirable outcome is to stay in compact compliance by tying that 25,000 acres in the south port and it’s working well. We’ve met an intermediate goal for the Rio Grande. It is a similar situation as you know, with great interest toward meeting sustainability obligations in the unconfined aquifer, but in general throughout the basin, reducing groundwater usage. And then to do that, and let me just go back specifically to our sustainability discussion in the unconfined aquifer. Subdistrict 1, reduce those irrigated acres. Their current plant of water management has a goal of reducing 40,000 irrigated acres. Reduce that and then you’re going to reduce groundwater consumption. That helps the water balance so that the aquifer can begin to, and they can meet their sustainability obligation. But we have to say that it’s not limited to Subdistrict 1 or the unconfined if we are reducing groundwater usage throughout the basin. The endgame again is to meet the sustainability obligations and also it makes it easier to comply with a compact if we do that, but reduce the pumping from the aquifers and reduce that groundwater usage.
AC: Does it look to you now that that money, all $60 million, $30 million for each basin will get appropriated at this point? Does it look like the conservation districts have put in place enough of the programs for that money to get spent?
REIN: I believe first of all on the Republican (River Basin) that since they had a structure in place and were already retiring acres in the south, just not at the pace they wanted, that with that structure in place, they are on a good pace to use that funding. For the Rio Grande, they did not have as much of a structure in place and have developed that. But with that development, I believe they have the interest, the applications, I can’t quantify that or go into detail on that, but they certainly will have the interest. And I believe that I would have to really check in with some of the district and subdistrict folks to see what their projection is. But certainly the need is there and the funding is there. So we would hope those come together to see the effective use of all that funding to accomplish the goals.
AC: When you think of the work that’s been done and being done both on the Rio Grande Basin and then Colorado River Basin, what lessons, if any, can be learned from those efforts as we work to bring sustainability to our water resource, our water supply? What are the lessons or what is the work that stands out for you now.
REIN: My role as state engineer, I like to keep my eyes on a few different things just to ensure balance. And we need to look in both the Rio Grande Basin and the Colorado River Basin, first and foremost at the importance of agriculture and how important that is in the Rio Grande Basin. It’s the culture, it’s the economy, it’s a way of life. That’s what sustains that basin. And that’s also true in the Colorado River Basin, but in different ways for the Rio Grande. We just need to balance that attention to the importance of agriculture, to compliance with the law, balance those and balance the importance of agriculture with a compact. And that’s why we have to make these difficult decisions to reduce irrigated acreage because with drought and with demands, the water is just not there. We can’t achieve a water balance. And so that’s how we do that. And I can’t therefore go to the Rio Grande Basin and encourage as much beneficial use as they can possibly accomplish because that would run counter to this effort to comply with the Arps and to achieve sustainability in a slightly different way. I have to deliver a message to the Colorado River Basin that says, yes, our balance is important to the way we regard agriculture and it’s important. And my message to them is, if you have water available and you have a beneficial use and you have the right to water as your water administrator, I’m going to tell you to divert it. I don’t have a basis to tell you to try to conserve, to try to curtail because this is important. I deliver a message of beneficial use on the Colorado River Basin. Now that’s within their water right. And within our system of prior appropriation and in consideration of the fact that in the Colorado River Basin, those tributaries in Colorado and the other three upper basin states, we use less than our allocation under the compact. But there’s no basis to tell people as the state engineer, I want you to conserve. That might be a message from someone else, but not from me. And that’s the message I have to deliver there. But at the same time, we need to be mindful of what other obligations could be put on Colorado in the future. And perhaps you or others who’ve heard me talk about that in the Colorado River Basin right now, we are well in compliance with a compact 75 million acre-feet over every running 10 years. Well in compliance. I spoke to the task force about it just a couple days ago, and we have to be mindful of that number. And if we ever do drop below that number as four upper basin states, the next question is ‘Did we cause it?’ Which really goes to the language of the compact. So it’s very complex and it’s inquiry based. I can’t really project in the near future that we would be out of compliance with a compact. So that’s that different message. But still responsible water usage is the same.
AC: I want to switch to another general topic here, and that’s water for the state of Colorado and the Front Range communities as a whole. In your judgment, have Front Range communities secured enough water for their future or what has to happen for the Front Range to be able to maintain any of its population growth?
REIN: I’m going to give you some quick background as far as our role, and then I’ll be giving you a couple of thoughts on your question. But first of all, it’s good to understand that the role of the Division Water Resources from a statutory standpoint is somewhat limited. And certainly when there’s a development in an unincorporated area, we have a statutory responsibility to provide an opinion to the county, whether the water supply for that developing area is adequate and can be delivered without causing injury. So we do that and that really helps the developments incorporated areas take the steps to ensure that they don’t overextend themselves so that they don’t develop land that has no reliable water supply. When we look at the big municipal and quasi-municipal water providers along the Front Range, it’s a different approach because we don’t have that role or that authority to review their portfolio, review their developments, and ensure that they have enough water. And my observation, even though it’s not a statutory obligation, is that their approach is to develop their water supplies, look closely at their developments, and then they have their role, to things like water and restrictions or other steps. They might take incentives for turf removal, conservation measures, funding conservation measures, or encouraging conservation measures. And that’s how they, and by they I mean greater minds than mine, run municipal water systems. That’s how they keep that balance and ensure that they’re able to provide the water they need to, for their communities in the future.
AC: We’re used to associating you with the enforcement of groundwater rules in the San Luis Valley and Rio Grande Basin. But in reality, that’s just a portion of what the state engineer’s responsible for. Explain the larger role and where the majority of the focus is in the state engineers position.
REIN: The state engineer’s role is just so interesting, and I can’t help but go back about 140 years to 1881 when the position of the state hydraulic engineer was created. And that was created largely to major stream flows so that we could implement these tenets of our prior appropriation system and know the stakes of our 10 newly appointed water commissioners, how to administer water rights that called for the state hydraulic engineer. And over time some of those responsibilities developed to approving bridge design and highway design and reviewing county surveys. But it has both narrowed and expanded in the last 140 years and actually, beginning a hundred or more years ago, to administering these water rights in prior appropriations statewide and supporting our local staff that does that. And of course our dam safety and our water information program. But to answer your question more directly, it is that oversight and support of on-the-ground, bread-and-butter water administration. We have a hundred, 120 water commissioners on the ground that do this work and do it well. What do we need to do to support them? That’s often engineering and technical support. And that comes to a large degree through our involvement in water court, ensuring that we have decrees that are administrable that can be implemented through proper accounting. And then one other facet of that that is very significant, Chris, that I’d like to highlight is what I call or what are known as administrative approvals. And those administrative approvals substitute water supply plans or in the case of the Valley, annual replacement plans, or in the case of the Arkansas, replacement plans. And these are plans that allow water users to use water out of priority, which otherwise would just be disallowed, and recognize their efforts to quantify their impacts to the stream and mitigate those impacts usually through replacement water. This is a significant matter, particularly in the South Platte, the Arkansas and the Rio Grande Basin, and it’s much of what we talked about earlier. It is recognition that groundwater, our formal recognition in 1969, groundwater impacts surface water diversions and we need to account for that in prior appropriation. So since we talked about that in depth before, I will say that much of our staff is actively reviewing the engineering and the administration and the legal aspects of these plans to use groundwater out of priority with replacement to the stream to keep the stream and therefore the other water users whole.
AC: What should the general public know about water as a resource when you think of the years ahead?
REIN: First, I would say that we’re very fortunate in Colorado that we started 150, 160 years ago with a structure in the system called prior appropriation that although it can be very rigid and very harsh, gives us structure and order in what we do so that people have a reasonable ability to project how their water supply may or may not be affected by future conditions and how it might be administered. That structure is so important. I wish there was enough water for everybody, but we developed agricultural and municipal uses in a state that is largely a desert and it often has an abundance for a couple months out of the year. I think it’s good for us to at least feel comfortable that we have that structure in place. But the other thing we need to know, as I alluded to, is that that structure is going to cause us to make difficult decisions, especially as we see climate change, the effects of climate change, reducing our water supply, and we see our demands grow. Those two curves have unfortunately crossed and when they cross, we call it over-appropriation. So we’ve got to implement that. But I think people should also know that Coloradans are smart, they’re creative, they’re solution-oriented. So a lot of these areas where we do see that crossing of those curves, that conflict of the water balance between demand and supply, we’re trying to solve that in ways that address people’s needs. And that may be, or it is so well articulated in our Colorado water plan, but it also is what you see daily on the ground as people maybe seek new initiatives to the general assembly on ways to do things or just creative ways to share water with each other all within the legal structure of our prior appropriation system. Of course. And that’s what I see for the future of Colorado water. We’ve got a difficult balance to achieve, but people are being creative within the system to achieve it.
AC: What is the effect of these drought periods and the warming temperatures that we definitely are feeling in the San Luis Valley and across Colorado?
REIN: Let me be very specific and then work my way out to a more geographically diverse answer to that. But let’s go back to the unconfined aquifer again. Why are we struggling? The fact is that with the prolonged at this point, 20-plus year drought, oh, we’ve had a couple of good years, but the trend is, it’s a 20-year drought that reduced inflows into the unconfined aquifer. There are sources that recharge either through import or through natural inflow. These sources recharge the unconfined aquifer and provide water for the wells to pump, plain and simple. When that inflow is reduced, there’s less water to pump. And that’s also made more difficult by the fact that under these drought conditions, higher temperatures, drier climate, then those crops are going to demand more water. So we get hit twice by that climate impact, and that’s just the unconfined aquifer. If we look at the Rio Grande Basin in general and the reduced snowpack and the San Juans and the Sangres, then we’re going to see less water in the rivers available for diversion. And of course, the compact is somewhat complex in the way that flows are indexed within the state and result in the need to deliver a certain amount to the state line. That’s of course more difficult because of the prolonged drought and the climate change. That’s the impact in the Rio Grande statewide, because we are this headwater state, because we rely so heavily on snowpack that occurs in our central mountains and flows out of the state, then that reduced snowpack is a big part of what’s going to impact us and we’ll get less runoff typically. And that reduced runoff also may occur later, earlier in the season, more likely earlier, and that changes the dynamics. But then the crops are going to demand irrigation at different timing. And again, like I said, for the Rio Grande, the crops have a higher demand if we have a hot or drier climate, so we get hit twice. Again, all in all, it’s that reduced supply generally from snow, excuse me, generally from snowpack that’s going to impact our water users. Now you’ve noticed my focus is really on agriculture because as most Coloradoans know around 85 percent of our diversions go toward agriculture. Now consumption is always a different, more complex matter, but at least 85 percent or so of our diversions go toward agriculture. The municipal supplies are being managed, but that’s where we see the big impact, our lion’s share of diversions.
AC: What is the most worrisome aspect you see when it comes to water as a natural resource?
REIN: I would say that the most worrisome aspect is, again, watching your irrigators. Let me say our irrigators in the Valley. I’ve spent enough time and I seem to know those folks and have a high regard for them. So hopefully they’ll let me say our irrigators in the Valley and the impacts it has on them as they try to deal with this reduced water supply. It’s happening in the Republican River Basin, it’s happening on the South Platte, all of our irrigators in their diversions in the Colorado River Basin. And when I say that, I mean all the tributaries from the YM of the white, the Colorado main stem, the Gunison, the San Juan Animas, La Plata, Dolores, all those areas on the west slope that contribute to the Colorado River. Their irrigation diversions are incredibly important to them. They’re necessary. It’s part of the economy on the west slope. So I spent a lot of time thinking about their need for solutions and strategies and initiatives. That’s an answer to your question of what is worrisome to me. But again, I need to go back to what I said earlier, it’s worrisome but then I also watch creative people with creative solutions. So maybe that takes away some of my worry.
AC: Are there improvements that have to happen so Colorado and the Division of Water Resources get a better at reading snowpack levels with what we’re seeing in the changes of the environment? Because you hear different things about the snowpack itself and is it really as strong as it appears?
REIN: I think that Colorado can benefit from more measurement. I won’t say that Colorado has to get better because Colorado does so many things so well, but I’ll be geographically specific and address the Rio Grande Basin. Due to the nature of the compact and the way Craig Cotton has to administer the compact, I know that he is uniquely interested in good snowpack data because he needs literally to forecast amounts of water so that he knows how much will need to be delivered to the state line on a year-to-year, sorry, maybe I should say on a month-to-month basis. And in order for him to do that, he is actively curtailing water rights again, just to ensure that he comes close to hitting that target and that target is so dynamic based on the types of flows that are occurring. So he has that unique interest in being able to see what’s up in the mountains early on and what could occur as runoff around the state in general, we do have an interest in that. It helps our water users, our municipalities, our producers, forecast what they’re going to see and maybe they can make their own economic decisions too. More data is always good, so I won’t deny that, but I’ll fall short of saying Colorado needs to do better.
AC: Fair enough. Again, we really appreciate all the time you’ve given us. Let me ask you, what’s the advice you leave for your successor when dealing with the Rio Grande Basin and Colorado River issues moving forward?
REIN: My advice for my successor in the Rio Grande and the Colorado River Basin probably applies statewide, but you are right on target that those are two very sensitive areas. And my advice is we really need to give our water users the assurance that the structure I described – prior appropriation, water court decrees – are in place and they’re there for a reason. They’re there for us to abide by them, but we also need to keep one eye on solutions that are based on flexibility, technical innovation that you described, new ways of looking at old problems and being very thoughtful and deliberative about those potential solutions. Can we, under our very rigid system, entertain those solutions? And of course, the answer should be yes, but it requires a character that is willing to say, let me look at that. Let me consider, even though I have concerns right now, let me consider whether there are ways that we can make that work and not injure other water users and not step outside of our very important legal tenants that we have to follow.
AC: What’s next for you?
REIN: Oh boy. I am so looking forward to doing more things with my wife, who, of course, she’s my bride all that time and love in my life, and I have kids and a grandson. And so to have so much of my time opened up to do that is important. Will I step away from water? That would be very hard to do. Do I have a specific plan? No, but I do intend to, either as an observer or something beyond a passive participant, I plan to stay mentally engaged in water.
Click the link to read the article on The Pagosa Springs Sun website (Josh Pike). Here’s an excerpt:
At a Nov. 16 meeting, the San Juan Water Conservancy District (SJWCD) Board of Directors discussed a report from Ehat Consulting and next steps on the district’s reservoir project. SJWCD board president Al Pfister opened the discussion, noting that the board previously discussed se- curing a grant from the Southwest Basin Roundtable to fund a project coordinator for the reservoir project, though SJWCD grant writer Renee Lewis subsequently advised the board that the roundtable does not typically fund staff and conversations with roundtable staff indicated that “it’s a very gray area” on whether the grant would be successful.
Pfister added that the effort to secure funding for the coordinator is “ongoing” and that he also wanted to propose to the board hiring a contractor in 2024 to locate land for a land exchange with the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) to secure all the land necessary for the proposed reservoir. He added that he believes the board is making progress and that the SJWCD’s volunteer board members should not be expected to oversee the entirety of the reservoir project without assistance.
Click the link to read the article on The Pagosa Springs Sun website (Derek Kutzer). Here’s an excerpt:
After a Pagosa Springs Sanitation General Improvement District (PSS- GID) Board of Directors special meet- ing on Dec. 5, it appears that the board is poised to raise its fee rates to $66.50 — the rate recommended by the hired consultant Roaring Fork Engineering, who analyzed the town’s wastewater system and conducted a rate study analysis for the district.
The rate for the district’s customers is currently set at $53.50, but after problems with a wastewater conveyance system that sends wastewater several miles uphill to the Vista wastewater treatment plant (run by the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District, or PAWSD), as well as confronting the reality of aging infrastructure, the board is “seeing increased operational costs and mounting costs for capital projects tomaintainandplanforfutureneeds,” states agenda documentation.
Interim Town Manager Greg Schulte explained that the board is faced with three choices, and that all of them include raising rates. The board could choose to raise rates to the $57.25 number that’s in the 2024 budget draft; it could raise them to the level recommended by Roaring Fork, $66.50; or it could arrive at a number somewhere in the middle.
Click the link to read the article on the Steamboat Pilot & Today website (Suzie Romig). Here’s an excerpt:
Residents and river lovers may have noticed weeks of river cleanup and streambank restoration work that took place this fall along the Yampa River in south Steamboat Springs at the site of a former concrete batch plant of decades past. For about five weeks this fall, workers removed dozens of dump truck loads of concrete, rebar, debris and an old concrete truck, said Mitch Clark, owner of Snow County Nursery, who purchased the 10-acre site located off Dougherty Road just south of the current southern end of the Yampa River Core Trail. Heavy machinery could be seen in the river this fall moving huge boulders…
Clark purchased the land on either side of the Yampa River adjacent to his existing nursery, garden center and landscape company. The business owner received a floodplain development permit to clean up the river bank, stabilize the bank, prevent erosion, increase sediment transport and provide habitat, according to Alan Goldich with Routt County Planning. The river work was designed by Landmark Consultants in Steamboat..
“The floodplain permit does allow for that type of activity, and he did receive an Army Corps permit as well,” Goldich noted.
Clark received significant grant support for the restoration project through the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Services EQIP program, or Environmental Quality Incentives Program, which provides financial and technical assistance to agricultural producers, said Vance Fulton, NRCS engineering tech in Steamboat…Fulton said the Yampa River through the property was too wide and too shallow, so material was being deposited in that section of the river during high water runoff in the spring.
Click the link to read the release on the USDA website (Elizabeth Thomas):
December 8, 2023
This Friday meet Audrey Gehlhausen and Chris Dellabianca of Billy Goat Hop Farm LLC, located in Montrose, Colorado. Chris and Audrey’s passion for the industry started while working in different microbreweries in Idaho, and they eventually decided to start the process of owning an operation to grow hops. This operation is a dream come true for these beginning farmers, and it was made possible with hard work, determination, and a beginning farmer loan from USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA).
Chris found an internship with an 800-acre Idaho hop farm where he experienced all the aspects of the job throughout a full hop season. After the season, Chris and Audrey packed up their life to go on a road trip across five states to learn more and find the right land to start their own operation, eventually planting roots in Montrose in 2017.
Settling Down in Colorado
“We really enjoyed the craft brew scene, the people we were around, and the outdoors,” Audrey said. The town’s access to outdoor activities and agricultural resources like local cooperatives, irrigation companies, and a local USDA Service Center made Montrose a great fit.
Once settled in Colorado, Audrey and Chris reached out to their local FSA office to apply for a farm ownership loan to purchase their land.
Farm ownership loans can be used to purchase or expand a farm or ranch. This loan can help with paying closing costs, constructing or improving buildings on the farm, or to help conserve and protect soil and water resources.
“We would not have done this if that didn’t exist and that opportunity was not there,” Audrey said. “I don’t think we would have even gone on the road trip looking at properties without the FSA loan. We were really starting at ground zero for everything and a [traditional] bank isn’t going to loan you that kind of money.”
Once the land was purchased, Audrey and Chris utilized FSA’s operating loans to establish the stand of hops and to purchase farm equipment for harvesting, drying and baling. Operating loans help producers start, maintain, and strengthen a farm or ranch.
Billy Goat Hop Farm sits on 32-acres where they produce hops and brew beer, in addition to offering brews from other farms. They are currently partnered with eight local breweries on the eastern slope of Colorado and sell microbrews to over 120 different breweries across the United States.
Growing for the Future
Audrey and Chris recently received the prestigious Cascade Cup Award, judged by the Hop Quality Group. They submitted their sample and won first place, being the first ever to win outside of Washington or Oregon, the largest hop producing states in the country.
Outside of their success, Audrey and Chris are passionate about bringing awareness to communities about agriculture and the smaller producers.
FSA’s operating loans helped establish the stand of hops and to purchase farm equipment for harvesting, drying, and baling. Billy Goat Hop Farm
“[People] have gotten used to looking for local products and that’s normal,” Audrey said. “When you go to a local craft brewery, you are looking at supporting the local brewery, but you aren’t necessarily thinking where the ingredients come from.”
Audrey and Chris don’t plan to slow down any time soon. They have high hopes for the future and have set goals of selling out their hops before the next harvest and building a client base that cares.
More Information
Visit local farms, ranches, forests, and resource areas through our Fridays on the Farm stories. Meet farmers, producers, and landowners who are working to improve their operations with USDA programs.
USDA offers a variety of risk management, disaster assistance, loan, and conservation programs to help producers weather ups and downs in the market and recover from natural disasters as well as invest in improvements to their operations. Learn about additional programs.
For more information about USDA programs and services, contact your local USDA service center.
Elizabeth Thomas is the communications coordinator for FSA in Colorado.
Click the link to read the article on the NOAA website:
Record-warm seas fuel active Atlantic hurricane season and a lake-effect snowfall buries portions of the Northeast in more than three feet of snow
Key Points:
- Record- warm sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic basin brought 20 named tropical systems during 2023, ranking fourth for the most named storms in a year since 1950. Three of these storms made landfall—Hurricane Idalia and tropical storms Harold and Ophelia.
- The first significant lake-effect snowstorm of the season occurred on November 27–29, bringing snow accumulations of greater than 40 inches to portions of New York state.
- Year-to-date temperatures across the eastern U.S. have been warmer than average in 2023 with 31 states experiencing a top-10 warmest January–November.
- Although no new events were identified in November, a total of 25 separate billion-dollar weather and climate disasters have been confirmed this year—the most events on record during a calendar year. The total cost of these events exceeds $81.0 billion.
- November 2023 was the 19th-warmest November on record for the nation, and precipitation ranked 12th driest in the historical record for the month.
Other Highlights
Temperature
The average temperature of the contiguous U.S. in November was 44.4°F, 2.7°F above average, ranking 19th warmest in the 129-year record. Generally, November temperatures were above average across much of the contiguous U.S., while below-normal temperatures were observed in parts of the Northeast. No state ranked among their top-10 warmest or coldest November on record.
The Alaska statewide November temperature was 20.3°F, 8.6°F above the long-term average, ranking fourth warmest in the 99-year period of record for the state. Above-normal temperatures were observed across the entire state during the month.
The meteorological autumn (September–November) average temperature for the contiguous U.S. was 56.1°F, 2.5°F above average, ranking sixth warmest on record. Temperatures were above average across most of the contiguous U.S., with record-warm temperatures observed in parts of New Mexico, western Texas and northern Maine. New Mexico and Texas each ranked third warmest on record, while Maine ranked fourth warmest for this autumn season. An additional 10 states ranked among their top-10 warmest on record for this period.
The Alaska autumn temperature was 29.6°F, 3.7°F above the long-term average, ranking 13th warmest on the record for the state. Temperatures were above average across most of the state of Alaska while some parts of south-central Alaska saw near-average autumn temperatures.
For January–November, the average contiguous U.S. temperature was 55.8°F, 2.0°F above average, ranking 10th warmest on record for this period. Temperatures were above average from parts of the Southwest to the East Coast and along much of the Northern Tier, with near- to below-average temperatures from the central Rockies to California and in parts of the northern and central Plains. Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi each ranked warmest on record while Massachusetts, Connecticut and Florida each ranked second warmest for the January–November period. An additional 25 states had a top-10 warmest year-to-date period. No state experienced a top-10 coldest January–November.
The Alaska January–November temperature was 30.5°F, 2.5°F above the long-term average, ranking 18th warmest in the historical record for the state. Much of the state was above normal for the 11-month period while temperatures were near average across small parts of western and interior parts of the state.
November precipitation for the contiguous U.S. was 1.38 inches, 0.85 inch below average, ranking 12th driest in the historical record. Precipitation was near to below average across most of the contiguous U.S., while above-normal precipitation was observed in parts of southern California, the Rockies, central and southern Plains and Southeast. No state ranked in their top-10 wettest November on record for this period. On the dry side, Indiana ranked third driest on record for the month, while four additional states in the Midwest ranked among their top-10 driest November on record.
Across the state of Alaska, the average monthly precipitation was 4.62 inches, ranking as the 16th- wettest November in the historical record. Precipitation was above average in parts of the North Slope, Interior and along parts of the Gulf of Alaska, while precipitation was near normal across much of the West Coast and in parts of the Southwest, northeast Interior and Panhandle. Below-normal precipitation was observed in the parts of the Aleutians during the month.
The U.S. autumn precipitation total was 5.66 inches, 1.22 inch below average, ranking 15th driest in the September–November record. Precipitation was below average across much of the eastern half of the U.S., the Southwest, California and in parts of the Northwest and central Plains. Autumn precipitation was above average from the northern Rockies to the western Great Lakes and in parts of the Great Basin, southern Plains, Northeast and Southeast. Tennessee ranked third driest with three additional states in the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys ranking among their top-10 driest autumn season on record. No state ranked in their top-10 wettest on record for the September–November period.
For autumn season precipitation, Alaska ranked in the wettest third of the record with wetter-than-average conditions observed across much of the state. Near-normal precipitation was observed in parts of the Interior and south Central Alaska, while below-normal precipitation occurred in parts of the Southwest and Aleutians during this season.
The January–November precipitation total for the contiguous U.S. was 26.89 inches, 0.70 inch below average, ranking in the driest third of the 129-year record. Precipitation was near to above average across much of the Northeast, from the northern Plains to the West Coast, as well as in parts of the central and southern Plains, northern Great Lakes, Lower Mississippi Valley and Southeast. Wyoming ranked seventh wettest on record, while four additional states ranked among their top-10 wettest for this year-to-date period. Conversely, precipitation was below average from parts of the Southwest to the Gulf of Mexico and in parts of the Northwest, upper and central Mississippi Valley and Mid-Atlantic during the January–November period. Louisiana and Maryland ranked seventh and eighth driest on record, respectively, for this 11-month period.
The January–November precipitation ranked ninth wettest in the 99-year record for Alaska, with above-average precipitation observed across most of the state. Near-normal precipitation was observed in parts of the Southwest, while parts of the Aleutians experienced below-average precipitation during this period.
Other Notable Events
Persistent heat brought above-normal temperatures to much of the U.S. during 2023. Approximately 32 million people were impacted by record heat during the January–November period.
By November 21, more than 39 inches of snow accumulated in Anchorage, Alaska, with this November becoming the snowiest November since record-keeping began in 1953—the previous record was 38.8 inches set in 1994.
Much of the country observed temperatures 10–20°F below average during the late part of November. On the morning of November 29, record-low temperatures occurred over parts of the eastern U.S.
A Kona Low brought heavy rains and flooding to parts of the Hawaiian Islands during late November. Parts of the Big Island received up to 7 inches of rain while higher elevations reported up to 5 inches of snow.
Drought
According to the November 28 U.S. Drought Monitor report, about 36.1% of the contiguous U.S. was in drought, down about 0.4% from the end of October. Moderate to exceptional drought was widespread across much of the Lower Mississippi Valley to the Tennessee Valley, central Great Plains and Southwest, with moderate to extreme drought across parts of the southern Great Plains, Hawaii and in parts of the Florida Peninsula. Moderate to severe drought was present in parts of the Northwest, Mid-Atlantic and New York, as well as moderate drought in parts of the Great Lakes and Puerto Rico.
Drought conditions expanded or intensified across much of the central Mississippi and Ohio valleys, and in parts of the Southwest, central plains, Southeast, Mid-Atlantic, Northeast and Hawaii this month. Drought contracted or was reduced in intensity across much of the Northwest and southern Plains, and in portions of the Southeast, Great Lakes and Puerto Rico.
Monthly Outlook
According to the November 30 One-Month Outlook from the Climate Prediction Center, above-normal monthly average temperatures are favored for much of the contiguous U.S. and parts of northern Alaska in December, with the greatest odds across parts of the Mississippi River Valley. Below-normal temperatures are most likely for parts of Southwest Alaska this month. Much of the Pacific Northwest and parts of the central and southern Plains to the East Coast, as well as eastern Alaska are favored to see above-normal monthly total precipitation while below-normal precipitation is most likely to occur for parts of North Dakota to northern Michigan. Drought improvement or removal is forecast along parts of the Pacific Northwest coast, for parts of the central and southern Plains, Hawaii, and in parts of the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic. Persistence is more likely across much of the Northern Tier, Southwest and upper Midwest.
According to the One-Month Outlook issued on December 1 from the National Interagency Fire Center, the islands of Hawaii have above-normal significant wildland fire potential during the month of December.
This monthly summary from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information is part of the suite of climate services NOAA provides to government, business, academia and the public to support informed decision-making. For more detailed climate information, check out our comprehensive November 2023 U.S. Climate Report scheduled for release on December 13, 2023. For additional information on the statistics provided here, visit the Climate at a Glance and National Maps webpages.
