Water supply risk on the Colorado River: Can management mitigate?

Population growth and a changing climate will tax the future reliability of the Colorado River water supply. Using a heuristic model, we assess the annual risk to the Colorado River water supply for 2008–2057. Projected demand growth superimposed upon historical climate variability results in only a small probability of annual reservoir depletion through 2057. In contrast, a scenario of 20% reduction in the annual Colorado River flow due to climate change by 2057 results in a near tenfold increase in the probability of annual reservoir depletion by 2057. However, our analysis suggests that flexibility in current management practices could mitigate some of the increased risk due to climate change–induced reductions in flows.

[1]  W. Warne,et al.  BUREAU OF RECLAMATION , 2000 .

[2]  P. Gleick,et al.  Sensitivity of streamflow in the Colorado Basin to climatic changes , 1991 .

[3]  Upmanu Lall,et al.  A Nearest Neighbor Bootstrap For Resampling Hydrologic Time Series , 1996 .

[4]  A. Georgakakos,et al.  Assessment of Folsom Lake response to historical and potential future climate scenarios: 2. Reservoir management , 2001 .

[5]  D. Lettenmaier,et al.  The Effects of Climate Change on the Hydrology and Water Resources of the Colorado River Basin , 2004 .

[6]  A. V. Vecchia,et al.  Global pattern of trends in streamflow and water availability in a changing climate , 2005, Nature.

[7]  Konstantine P. Georgakakos,et al.  Utility of Ten-Day Climate Model Ensemble Simulations for Water Resources Applications in Korean Watersheds , 2005 .

[8]  J. Prairie,et al.  Natural Flow and Salt Computation Methods, Calendar Years 1971-1995 , 2005 .

[9]  Dennis P. Lettenmaier,et al.  A multimodel ensemble approach to assessment of climate change impacts on the hydrology and water resources of the Colorado River Basin , 2006 .

[10]  Connie A. Woodhouse,et al.  Updated streamflow reconstructions for the Upper Colorado River Basin , 2006 .

[11]  R. Seager,et al.  Model Projections of an Imminent Transition to a More Arid Climate in Southwestern North America , 2007, Science.

[12]  Gregory J. McCabe,et al.  Warming may create substantial water supply shortages in the Colorado River basin , 2007 .

[13]  Malcolm K. Hughes,et al.  Medieval drought in the upper Colorado River Basin , 2007 .

[14]  J. Eischeid,et al.  What a difference a century makes: Understanding the changing hydrologic regime and storage requirements in the Upper Colorado River basin , 2008 .

[15]  Gerrit Bloemendal,et al.  HOW LOW CAN IT GO , 2008 .

[16]  N. Graham,et al.  Potential Benefits of Seasonal Inflow Prediction Uncertainty for Reservoir Release Decisions , 2008 .

[17]  G. McCabe,et al.  Joint Variability of Global Runoff and Global Sea Surface Temperatures , 2008 .

[18]  Balaji Rajagopalan,et al.  A stochastic nonparametric approach for streamflow generation combining observational and paleoreconstructed data , 2008, Water Resources Research.

[19]  David W. Pierce,et al.  When will Lake Mead go dry? , 2008 .

[20]  B. Bates,et al.  Climate change and water. , 2008 .

[21]  David W. Pierce,et al.  Sustainable water deliveries from the Colorado River in a changing climate , 2009, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.