{"id":625057,"date":"2018-09-11T12:00:29","date_gmt":"2018-09-11T18:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=625057"},"modified":"2018-09-10T20:23:50","modified_gmt":"2018-09-11T02:23:50","slug":"colorado-river-declines-due-to-warming-new-study-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2018\/09\/colorado-river-declines-due-to-warming-new-study-finds\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado River declines due to warming, new study finds"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Colorado

Laura Paskus \/ New Mexico Political Report<\/p>

The Colorado River supplies water to seven states, including New Mexico.<\/p><\/div>\n

The Colorado River supplies water to seven states, including New Mexico, before crossing the border into Mexico. Then \u2014 theoretically, nowadays \u2014 it reaches the Sea of Cortez. Demands from cities and farms, along with climate change, strain the river and affect its flows.<\/p>\n

Now, a new study shows that even though annual precipitation increased slightly between 1916 and 2014, Colorado River flows declined by 16.5 percent during that same time period. That\u2019s thanks, in large part, to \u201cunprecedented basin-wide warming.\u201d Warming reduces snowpack and increases the amount of water plants demand.<\/p>\n

Using experiments and a hydrology model, the trio of authors from the University of California-Los Angeles and Colorado State University found that 53 percent of the decrease in runoff is attributable to warming; the rest to reduced snowfall within regions that feed into the system.<\/p>\n

One of the study\u2019s authors, Bradley Udall, co-authored an\u00a0earlier paper with Jonathan Overpeck<\/a>\u00a0showing a drop in river flows. What\u2019s striking about the new study, Udall explained, is how much of the decline is due to warming relative to precipitation.<\/p>\n