Colorado could dry up – the question is, how soon?
July 21st, 2009 by Jim JustAll reservoirs along the Colorado River could dry up by mid-century.
That’s the conclusion of a new study by Balaji Rajagopalan and colleagues of the University of Colorado in Boulder (CU-Boulder). If climate change results in a 20% flow reduction – as predicted in some climate change models – the chances of fully depleting reservoir storage in any given year will exceed 50% by 2057.
The study will appear in the journal Water Resources Research, published by the American Geophysical Union (AGU).
Similar research by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography published in 2008 warned the Colorado will reach that 50% chance of depletion as early as 2021. The new study assumed the Bureau of Reclamation would sharply cut water deliveries to cities, leaving more in the reservoirs.