Western Water Essay

Western Water Assessment

Brad Udall is a scholar and first senior water and climate research at Colorado State University. He finished his environmental engineering degree from Stanford University and MBA from Colorado State University [1]. Udall has expertise in global climate change, hydrology and water policy issues of the American West. He has worked with different local and federal agencies and private sector contractors. His recent publication is Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, which is collaborative research with different scientists assessing the impacts of climate change in western water.

A presentation video uploaded in YouTube shows, Udall presentation on climate change and its impacts to water resources.

Udall says that the climate change and the water cycle are joined at the hip (00:16). Water cycle is a phenomenon where earth spreads heat from one area to the other. Global warming promotes water cycle by heating more surface water to the atmosphere. Udall points that every 1 Fahrenheit increase in temperature is 4% increase in moisture in the atmosphere (02:37). Thus, as a result the weather forecasting is getting less accurate. The high precipitation area is getting more precipitation and dry area is getting drier. The change in precipitation intensity makes floods and drought to become more common. In fact, the flood return period data using historical timeline are becoming more obsolete. The areas with high snowfall will experience changes in the future; Udall indicates that changes in Colorado will be less significant because of the mountains maintaining a buffer period. However, over time these changes will impact the flow rate of the rivers which pose a huge impact on the water shareholders and consumers. The graph of Green River, a tributary of the Colorado River, shown in the presentation (06:22) predicts that the river flow will be reduced and peak flow rates are skewed from June to May by the end of the 21st century. To sum up, in the near future, rivers in Colorado water runoff will be early, warm flows in late summer, and the annual decline in water flow. Further, it changes the water quality of the river like increasing both dissolved oxygen (DO) concentrations and water turbidity. Over time, pathogen contents in water increases significantly requiring further expensive treatment for public and utility