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Less Rain
Tue Nov 15, 2005
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 Nickish 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.
Nickish reports that, even in the best case scenario, water supplies for cities and
farms, as well as wildlife, will far outstrip demand, in just half a century.
Funding for our Climate Change series comes from Environmental Defense. Regular
funding is provided by Subaru of America.
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