Drought, The Everything Disaster

Nearly 89 percent of nine western states are in some form of drought, and more than a quarter of the region is considered in exceptional drought, the worst category in the U.S. Drought Monitor.

The indicators of widespread dryness are everywhere. Lakes Mead and Powell, the major reservoirs on the Colorado River, are 35 percent full with a two-year outlook that worsened each month this spring. California officials told vineyards along the Russian River in May that the system is too depleted for most of them to withdraw water. In Utah’s Great Salt Lake in April, sailboats were lifted out of receding waters too shallow to float. In the Klamath River that flows between Oregon and California, few juvenile salmon are expected to survive this season. In Arizona, the Rafael Fire, burning in the Prescott National Forest some 25 miles southwest of Flagstaff, grew to 36,000 acres since it was sparked on June 18 by lightning.

When water stops flowing, painful days are at hand.

HotSpots H2O: Longstanding Drought in Iran Begets Farmer Protests, Power Outages, and Widespread Water Rationing

Lack of water is one of Iran’s biggest environmental and social risks. On the outskirts of Tehran, and in the country’s rural expanses, the signs of such stress are abundantly visible: brittle plains, cracked ground, sinkholes, sandy plateaus. 

A decades-long drought in one of the warming world’s most arid regions, heightened by what many consider to be governmental mismanagement, has set the stage for a severe, dangerously dry 2021. The National Water and Wastewater Engineering Company of Iran warned this month that at least 210 cities will face water shortages in the summer. Over 7,000 rural districts will require the delivery of potable water via tanker trucks and other services. Many more communities are likely to be added to this list, and populous areas will be forced to ration water, said Hamid Reza Janbaz, the deputy adviser for water and soil in the Ministry of Agriculture Jihad.

What’s Up With Water – June 21, 2021

Featured coverage from this week’s episode of What’s Up With Water looks at:

• In the Middle East and North Africa, leaders of Arab countries have taken steps on a controversial dam project in the Nile basin.
• In research news, a new study is sounding the alarm on groundwater depletion in Iran.
• In the United States, drinking water supplies for more than 500,000 Iowa residents are at risk from drought and toxic algal blooms.

Study: Decades-long ‘Megadroughts’ in U.S. Southwest and Central Plains More Likely Due to Climate Change

If the world continues to add carbon to the atmosphere at current rates, ‘megadroughts’ lasting more than two decades will be commonplace by the end of the century in the driest region of the United States — the triangle from Texas to South Dakota and California — according to the most comprehensive study to date of drought risk in the western United States.

Moreover, the end of the 21st century will likely be drier than any period in the last millennium as a result of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, the researchers found.

Earlier studies hinted at the magnitude of the changes, prompting water managers in California and the Colorado River Basin to begin changing their management practices and assessing risks to their water supplies. The 2015 study adds new depth to a large body of drought research and reveals an even greater risk from climate change to the Great Plains and Southwest than previously thought.

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