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Less Water
Tue Feb 10, 2004
Listen in RealAudio 
Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton and this is our weekly segment on global climate change. Shrinking
glaciers and rising sea levels are not the only suspected consequences of a warming planet. A
new report suggests that another result could be less water, particularly in areas where the
precious resource is already scarce. Correspondent Curt Nickisch reports from South
Dakota.
Two dozen scientists and engineers from around the country teamed up to find out how global
warming will affect the supply of water in the western United States.
TB: We found bad news, unfortunately.
Tim Barnett, Research Marine Physicist at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography coordinated
the climate change study. He says, currently, snow pack serves as a natural reservoir, storing
water until the spring and summer when the demand is high. Barnett says the situation will
change with global warming.
TB: It gets a little warmer, so you have more rain or snow. It gets a little warmer, so the
snow melts earlier. It sort of pushes the whole spring flood season earlier in the annual
cycle and there's not enough storage capacity to catch that water.
Some rivers in the West aren't as vulnerable to this because they have reservoirs and dams to
store winter rain and early snow melt until it's needed, but Barnett says those rivers are
extremely susceptible to any drop in precipitation global warming might bring. One example is
the Colorado River system.
TB: What we found is that the system had been pushed right to the brink using all the water
that there is, so common sense tells you that if we have some dryness due to global warming,
that system is going to fail.
Even in the reports, best case scenario predicts that in 25 to 50 years water supplies in the
West will fall far short of the demands of cities, farms and wildlife. In Sioux Falls, I'm
Curt Nickisch.
Our segments on global climate change are produced with support from the New England Science
Center Collaborative and the Roy A. Hunt Foundation.
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