[HN Gopher] Why isn't Colorado's snowpack ending up in the Color...
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Why isn't Colorado's snowpack ending up in the Colorado River?
Author : wglb
Score : 83 points
Date : 2024-08-18 23:42 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| bacon_waffle wrote:
| Because it's in the Arkansas River drainage?
| justinator wrote:
| Hmm, no. The water that's diverted from the Colorado via the
| Grand Ditch goes into the Cache la Poudre River,
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Ditch
|
| Though it gets a lot more involved,
|
| https://issuu.com/cfwe/docs/cfwe_cgtb_web
| bacon_waffle wrote:
| It was a stupid riff on the title. But, the Arkansas River
| does start in Colorado, and so some amount of Colorado's
| snowpack does wind up in Arkansas' river.
| julienchastang wrote:
| The Colorado snow pack ends up in the Rio Grande, and
| Platte as well.
| tadeegan wrote:
| > With less rain, the plants in the area rely more on the
| snowmelt for water, leaving less water to make its way into the
| nearby streams. Decreased rain also means sunny skies, which
| encourages plant growth and water evaporation from the soil.
|
| Logical next step: remove the vegetation for more human
| population!
| hulitu wrote:
| > Logical next step: remove the vegetation for more human
| population!
|
| It is renewable, isn't it ? /s
| lenerdenator wrote:
| "What if we took the people and businesses from the places with
| large rivers and continental climates, and put them in a sun-
| blasted hellscape that these native gentlemen keep telling us
| cannot sustain life?" - American policy from 1840 to now
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| I think the global north doesn't really line up with human
| instinct in a lot of ways. Climate, day length pattern,
| vegetation.
|
| I guess somewhere in Africa should per perfect? I doubt the
| humans who split off and went north have had their instincts
| change enough to not prefer that sort of climate, and that
| explains the draw to sun rich areas. Not to mention those who
| left that region much more recently.
|
| It's interesting that I haven't seen any groups with a
| Darwinian Zionism, so to speak. An ancestral claim to the
| region where humans evolved.
| apercu wrote:
| I don't know, I love the northern flora, too, Rattlesnake
| master, moline, dogwood, black-eyed susan, blazing star,
| echinacea (purple coneflower) and so many more.
|
| More importantly, humans need water.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| I think emotional attachment does form to what is
| familiar within our lifetimes.
|
| But what is a more typical "dream" desire by the average
| human? To retire in a northern forest, or to retire on a
| tropical island? Where do people typically vacation, when
| the surroundings and how they feel are the primary focus?
| Do the very wealthy, who can do whatever they like,
| usually spend more time in the woods or in the tropics?
| Did Ellison and Zuckerberg buy large swaths of temperate
| forest? Etc.
| mannykannot wrote:
| It seems unlikely that climate-zone preferences motivated
| the prehistoric spread of humanity, as that would require
| both a knowledge of the possibilities and the means to
| exploit them. More likely, people settled where they could
| support themselves and moved when that no longer was the
| case, either from micro-climactic changes or population
| pressure.
|
| Large-scale migration into the arid parts of North America
| and elsewhere was first facilitated by the development of
| the technology to use deep aquifers.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| Other way around. Humans and pre-human hominids evolved
| in a more confined region of the world for an extremely
| long time, and they left recently enough that they still
| instinctively prefer the climate of that region.
|
| Prehistoric spread was driven by other factors that were
| more important than climate preference. But that doesn't
| eliminate climate preference, and all else equal humans
| will act on that preference.
| mannykannot wrote:
| Oh, I see, I think: you are saying that we have preserved
| a preference for our ancestral habitat, and that has
| motivated recent migration into arid areas? Maybe so; we
| still have some physiological adaptions for warm
| climates.
|
| When it comes to agriculture in the desert, which is
| still the major reason why the snowpack shortfall is a
| matter of concern, the motivation seems more economic:
| crops grow very well in sunny climates, so long as you
| can give them adequate water - and we could, for a while,
| but probably not sustainably.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Modern humans came frome the Ethiopian plateau right? So
| low of 75F high of 80F sort of thing. High altitude
| equatorial. Bogota is similar but cooler. As is Quito.
| Much of coastal Europe and west coast North America is a
| decent approximate.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| I mean the Mediterranean climate is traditionally the most
| baseline hospitable to human life, but it's also usually
| pretty susceptible to drought.
| apercu wrote:
| Lol, you forgot "let's move to Arizona because I have
| allergies, and then plant all of the plants that caused my
| allergies in the yards and parks, and plant lawns, with all
| of these things not being native to the climate/drought
| resistant".
|
| I too like nice weather, but it's getting to the point that
| the summers over large parts of the US are as harsh as the
| midwestern winters everyone wants to avoid.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| > these native gentlemen keep telling us cannot sustain life?
|
| I mean they were wrong, it obviously does sustain life.
| You're just grumpy about what it looks like.
| II2II wrote:
| I suppose it depends upon what you mean by sustain life. If
| somebody is hooked up to life support in a hospital for the
| rest of their life, does that mean their body is able to
| sustain life or does it mean the hospital is able to
| sustain life? That is somewhat similar to what we are
| talking about. All of this technology is wonderful to
| introduce stability, to get us through the rough patches,
| but a permanent dependence upon it is questionable.
|
| As for that native gentleman, I'm not sure what the
| situation is down south, but the prairies of Canada and the
| Northern US have been known to have dry spells. The 1930's
| were particularly bad, but apparently early explorers
| returned conflicting reports about the habitability of the
| prairies simply because of the variability in precipitation
| across the years. Of course, aboriginals would have
| knowledge of that since they inhabited those lands for time
| immemorial. I have even seen suggestions that those who
| lived in the regions were nomadic since they had to follow
| the food (which, of course, had to follow its own food).
| This is in sharp contrast to those who inhabited other
| parts of the Americas, who were settled.
| fiftyfifty wrote:
| One of these years the Colorado mountains are going to get a
| fraction of the snow they normally get and it's going to be a
| disaster for the entire southwest US. It almost happened in the
| winter of 2020-21, the snowpack statewide was just 30-40% of
| average at the end of winter. A heavy, wet, late spring storm
| dropped a ton of snow in the Colorado mountains in April of 2021
| and saved the day, but man if that storm hadn't
| happened...imagine the 60 odd million people from Colorado to
| Mexico fighting over just a third of the normal amount of water
| they have to work with?
| tony_cannistra wrote:
| Indeed. Worse, it's likely that "one of these years" will turn
| into "most of these years" before long.
|
| It sounds like you know this already, but the core issue here
| is that the 1922 agreement which divided the river's flow to
| various stakeholders overestimated the amount of water in the
| river even before the impacts of our modern warmer, drier
| climate.
|
| We're left with the consequences of this overestimate mostly in
| the form of gridlocked renegotiation conversations as the
| agreement is reworked for the modern resource scenario.
|
| Probably the biggest tl;dr here is: it's not going to be 60
| million people fighting over water. It's going to be far fewer,
| and they're all alfalfa farmers.
| margalabargala wrote:
| > the impacts of our modern warmer, drier climate.
|
| Nit: on average, the world will get wetter as it warms.
| Warmer air carries more water, so the volume of precipitation
| each year is likely to increase averaged over the planet.
|
| The issue for many of these areas is that that increased
| precipitation is not going to be evenly distributed. The
| trend has been wetter areas getting wetter, drier areas
| getting drier, and increased warmth causing increased
| evaporation and less snowpack persistence into summer.
| subsubzero wrote:
| This is total fiction, Colorado as a whole has been getting way
| more snow per year on average in the past 15 years(except the
| 1990s which were very snowy) than at any time in the past 120
| years, I know I live in Colorado and crunched the numbers
| myself. I pulled the numbers from the NOAA gov site. I have
| both rain and snow totals so as you can see mother nature is
| doing her part, its just that the population has exploded here
| in the past 15 years(15% or 800,000 new people since 2010) and
| that is what is driving down the water supply. See data by
| decade below:
|
| Snow Totals - taken from
| https://psl.noaa.gov/boulder/bouldersnow.html
|
| 1900's 72.34 avg
|
| 1910's 66.19 avg
|
| 1920's 63.83 avg
|
| 1930's 54.65 avg
|
| 1940's 87.85 avg
|
| 1950's 84.45 avg
|
| 1960's 77.22 avg
|
| 1970's 81.2 avg
|
| 1980's 65.06 avg
|
| 1990's 98.32 avg
|
| 2000's 84.25 avg
|
| 2010's 94.79 avg
|
| 2020's 97.52 _avg over 4 years not 10
|
| rain totals taken from -
| https://psl.noaa.gov/boulder/Boulder.mm.precip.html
|
| 1900's 19.21 avg
|
| 1910's 18.12 avg
|
| 1920's 18.61 avg
|
| 1930's 16.46 avg
|
| 1940's 21.72 avg
|
| 1950's 18.49 avg
|
| 1960's 17.8 avg
|
| 1970's 18.35 avg
|
| 1980's 19.71 avg
|
| 1990's 22.68 avg
|
| 2000's 19.04 avg
|
| 2010's 22.25 avg
|
| 2020's 19.84 _avg over 4 years not 10
| Ario5 wrote:
| one city on the front range that isn't even in the colorado
| river watershed is hardly indicative of the snow pack /
| snowfall inside that watershed. The inflows into lake Powell
| are a much better equivalent for the entire watershed and do
| show a decline. https://graphs.water-data.com/lakepowell/
| though that doesn't show diversions / how much is being
| caught in upstream reservoirs. and the snotel graphs for the
| watersheds in the colorado basin are a much better source htt
| ps://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/ftpref/support/states/CO/produ...
| a_wild_dandan wrote:
| By "Colorado as a whole", do you mean "Boulder in
| particular"?
| kamikazeturtles wrote:
| I'm surprised they had less rain. Here in Minnesota, it's been
| constant heavy rain. My pond floods almost every week. I have to
| pump it out into a nearby lake and that's a pain.
| smeej wrote:
| Am I the only one surprised this took as much detailed study as
| it did? Nobody noticed a lot more greenery about in the basins
| they're talking about? Or nobody noticed the fact that it hadn't
| been raining in those places in the spring and wondered why the
| plants there were still fine?
|
| These don't seem like observations that require laboratories and
| massive studies to me.
| tony_cannistra wrote:
| In the context of managing water resources in an increasingly
| variable future, it's very important to quantify the relative
| impact of these kinds of factors on streamflow.
|
| While perhaps it might be intuitive to you that transpiration
| impacts streamflow (which, if it is, you should consider a
| career in water resource management!), it's not sufficient to
| stop there when trying to model the future.
| mannykannot wrote:
| Its one thing to form a hypothesis, and another to demonstrate
| that it is correct, especially when there are alternatives (in
| this case, sublimation was one.) Where climate and ecology are
| involved, it takes some time to gather robust data, and there
| is no suggestion that this was a massive study over that
| period.
| tallowen wrote:
| As someone who has lived in the southwest, it can't be
| understated how important the issue of water is.
|
| One thing to keep in mind is that most estimates place human
| consumption of water at below 20% - a ton of the water of the
| basin goes to agriculture. To be clear, I think this makes sense
| - with added water regions in the basin can be some of the most
| productive ag regions in the country.
|
| The big problem is policy has not adapted to scarcity. There are
| real tradeoffs when we have 30% less water than forecast and it's
| not clear who should suffer them.
|
| I think there is often a misconception that this area is somehow
| "too hot" to live in. Since the advent of air conditioning, we
| have moved past this. Generally speaking similarly sized homes in
| Boston will consume more energy for HVAC than Phoenix will simply
| because heating homes in cold winters is often more energy
| intensive than cooling in the summer.
|
| Water usage in the colorado basin:
| https://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/article/meat-of-the-matter-col...
| gamepsys wrote:
| Seems pretty clear to me that agriculture should wax and wane
| it's consumption and humans should have access to a consistent
| generous ration.
| nicholasjarnold wrote:
| Yes, and we should be investing heavily into technologies and
| techniques that maximize the efficiency of the water that is
| consumed by agriculture. The government should probably
| subsidize the expense of the conversion. We should also get
| rid of any "use it or lose next year's ration" rules that are
| in place which cause some farmers to literally just run water
| out of their pipes to ensure they're recorded as having "used
| their allocation" and therefore "still require that much next
| year".
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Using a normal common law water rights system is literally
| prohibited by some state constitutions (e.g. AZ article
| 17). It would take a movement on the order of civil rights
| to fix water rights.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Humans should have access to a consistent generous ration for
| hygiene, drinking water, and moderate home gardening. I think
| it's reasonable to cut people off (during a major drought
| with rationing) when they start focusing on trying to
| maintain large lawns, golf courses, swimming pools, etc.
| tony_cannistra wrote:
| > Generally speaking similarly sized homes in Boston will
| consume more energy for HVAC than Phoenix will simply because
| heating homes in cold winters is often more energy intensive
| than cooling in the summer.
|
| This is true, and I definitely agree that the majority of the
| work to match consumption with water availability lies in the
| hands of agriculture.
|
| With that said, it's important to recognize that the CO basin
| states (AZ, WY, UT) have some of the highest per-capita
| domestic water use figures in the nation - far above the
| national average.
|
| https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2017/1131/ofr20171131.pdf
| onlypassingthru wrote:
| Not sure about the other two, but it might be the ubiquitous
| swimming pools in AZ. The evaporation in an AZ pool during
| the summer is dramatic. You need to have a pool water leveler
| on 24/7 or leave the garden hose trickling constantly.
| rurp wrote:
| Conservation has to start with agriculture since that's the
| vast majority of usage. The simplest and most effective step
| would be to stop subsidizing that water usage so heavily. Last
| I looked the average farmer paid about 1/10 the price per
| gallon as residents, but it varies a lot and some pay less than
| 1/100. That leads to exactly the behavior you would expect:
| completely unsustainable high water usage crops being grown in
| large amounts.
| estebank wrote:
| If you don't mind the presentation style,
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XusyNT_k-1c is great presents
| an even direr situation: because water rights are "use it or
| lose it", we are actively _encouraging_ water misuse, beyond
| just "it's cheap enough to misuse it".
| animal_spirits wrote:
| Anytime water and the southwest comes up I always recommend the
| documentary series Cadillac Desert, based on the book. It's on
| YouTube and tells the story of how the southwest became livable
| due to the damming of many major rivers.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PR2BSGQt2DU
| igtztorrero wrote:
| Answer: The very bad math drying up the Colorado River
|
| https://youtu.be/AzpYHXgfbbI?si=Snwfv4ocXn018CF_
| cdaringe wrote:
| I used to live in Albuquerque, which sources water from a few
| places--a small mountain range to the east, aquifer, and the rio
| grande (aka the rio not-at-all-grande).
|
| > Settlements in the region depend on groundwater. In the 1960s
| the City of Albuquerque began to extract large quantities of
| potable groundwater from wells drilled in the southeast and
| northeast heights. It was thought that this water came from a
| huge aquifer that would take centuries to exhaust. In the late
| 1980s there were declines in the water levels near Coronado
| Center causing concern that the water resource was not properly
| understood
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albuquerque_Basin
|
| Whoopsie!
|
| The RG AFAIK is also supplied by primary Colorado mountain
| sources, but also from various other smaller mountain and
| rainfall feeds. I get that the Colorado River is the big kahuna.
| Id would love to see the RG at least casually discussed in these
| bigger sw water discussions.
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