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Climate and Management of the Colorado River

Co-PIs

Doug Kenney, University of Colorado (CU), Natural Resources Law Center; Andrea Ray, NOAA Climate Diagnostics Center (CDC); and Roger Pulwarty, NOAA/CU Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES)

Contributors

Connie Woodhouse, NOAA National Climatic Data Center; and James Saunders, CU/CIRES. All project researchers are based in Boulder, CO.

Ongoing drought in the Colorado River basin has significantly depleted storage in Lake Powell and, to a lesser extent, Lake Mead. As of May 31 2004, storage in Lake Powell, the massive 27 million acre-feet (MAF) impoundment formed by Glen Canyon Dam was at 10.6 MAF, or 43% of usable capacity, its lowest level since the early 1970s when the reservoir was filling for the first time. Typically, the massive storage capacity on the river provides ample protection against drought shortages. However, the declining reservoir levels are raising the prospect that the states of the Upper Basin (Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico) may soon be required to cease water diversions that are junior to the 1922 Colorado Compact in order to meet obligations to downstream users.

This event would be unprecedented and would have wide ranging consequences, and until the recent 5-year drought, had not been seriously considered by the research or management community with one notable exception: the Severe Sustained Drought in the Southwestern United States (SSD) study (hereafter the "SSD study"). This research was primarily conducted between 1989 and 1994 in 2 phases, involving approximately 40 researchers from a dozen different universities, and sustained by funding from the US Department of State (Man and Biosphere Program), USGS, Corps of Engineers, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, and the Upper Colorado River Basin Commission. This landmark study used tree-ring research (the classic Stockton and Jacoby reconstructions) to identify the region's worst sustained drought of the past half century-highlighted by the 1579 to 1600 period-and then used this data (slightly modified) to drive a modern water allocation model. In many respects, the current drought is more severe than that used in the SSD research.

Now more than a decade old, the SSD study has become widely acclaimed both for its forward-looking conclusions and for its methodological approach blending research in paleoclimatology, water management, economics, and legal and policy analysis. As water storage dwindles in the Colorado Basin, there are several reasons to revisit and update the general assumptions, themes and findings of the SSD study, which is the intent of this NOAA-HD project. This update will primarily focus on three changes to the system over the last decade: (1) the sociopolitical, legal and demographic context of the region has evolved rapidly, especially in the Lower Basin; (2) new water projects and management regimes have been implemented; and (3) there is currently a much more advanced understanding of the climate system-past, present, and future-including the potential impacts of climate change and shorter drought periods on water management that were not included in the original investigation. The overarching issue to be addressed in the proposed work is to understand how the changing context of the region has introduced criticality for water management with respect to shortages due to increasing demand and shortages related to climate variability and change.

A key focus of this work-and a subject not addressed in the original SSD study-will be to identify current and future NOAA climate products that can aid the increasingly difficult and urgent water resource decision-making processes in the Colorado basin, especially as they relate to issues such as compact compliance. Already in recent years, improving the use of climate information regarding Upper Colorado River reservoir management has been an active area of applied research. The development and use of additional decision-relevant climate products must be based on a consideration of the region's unique decision environment, including the importance of multiple and overlapping temporal and spatial scales. Our work will be largely exploratory, based on a review of the relevant literatures, a small amount of new modeling, and interviews/interactions with key regional decision-makers, particularly federal water managers. Our intent is not to duplicate or replace the SSD study, but to stand on its shoulders using a mostly qualitative and reconnaissance level approach to better identify the likely intersection of climate, water management, and future decision making in the Colorado River during periods of water scarcity.

The project began in Spring 2005 and will be conducted over 18 months.

For more information, contact:

Doug Kenney (project PI)
Natural Resources Law Center, Univ. of Colorado
UCB 401, Boulder, CO 80309-0401
(303) 492-1296; Douglas.kenney@colorado.edu