News From the Field
Smaller Colorado River Projected for Coming Decades, Study Says
December 23, 2012
Some 40 million people depend on the Colorado River Basin for water, but warmer weather from rising greenhouse gas levels and a growing population may signal water shortages ahead. In a new study published in Nature Climate Change, climate modelers at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory predict a 10 percent drop in the Colorado River's flow in the next few decades--enough to disrupt longtime water-sharing agreements between farms and cities.