New CAP Use Agreement on Firming, Wheeling, and Exchanges Proposed
A “CAP System Use Agreement” has been drafted by the Central Arizona Project (CAP) and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, with input from the Arizona Department of Water Resources and the Arizona Water Banking Authority (AWBA), that provides a framework for use of the CAP system going into the future. It would authorize the use of the CAP canal system to implement the final, critical, pieces of Arizona’s water banking program in which nearly four million acre-feet of CAP water has been stored by the AWBA for later recovery and delivery to CAP customers. The Agreement also would resolve outstanding legal, financial, and operational issues to allow CAP to transport non-project water through the CAP system. It would facilitate voluntary exchanges of water between CAP’s long-term contractors, creating additional flexibility for the system. It also would establish a process for federal approval for projects to expand system capacity. The agreement can be downloaded from http://www.cap-az.com/public/blog/482-proposed-new-cap-use-agreement-on-firming-wheeling-and-exchanges.
UA Researchers See Drying Trends in the West
A team of authors led by Thomas Meixner, Professor of Hydrology and Water Resources at the University of Arizona (UA), synthesized the current state of knowledge about how aquifers in the western United States might respond to projected climate change. Eight representative aquifers located across the region were evaluated. For each aquifer, the authors examined four standard recharge mechanisms: diffuse, focused, irrigation, and mountain-systems recharge. Future changes in individual recharge mechanisms and total recharge were then estimated for each aquifer. Mountain-system recharge is expected to decrease in the southern and western portions of the West because of decreases in precipitation. Decreased diffuse recharge is also expected in the south. Changes in focused and irrigation recharge were too uncertain to characterize. To read the article, go to http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022169415009750
Connie Woodhouse, UA Professor of Geography and Development and Dendrochronology, and her co-authors examined the influence of precipitation, temperature, and soil moisture conditions on Upper Colorado River basin streamflow over the past century. Cool season precipitation has been a robust predictor of streamflow, but over-prediction may result if warming spring and early summer temperatures are not adequately considered. There has been a marked increase in the frequency of warm years with lower flows than expected, since 1988. This suggests that warming temperatures will be increasingly important in reducing future water supplies in the Upper Colorado River basin. The full article can be accessed at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015GL067613/full
NOAA’s Rapid Response Field Campaign Studies El Niño
During January through March of 2016, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) took advantage of an unusually strong El Niño to mount a land, sea, and air campaign in the tropical Pacific that provided the unprecedented opportunity to accelerate advances in understanding and predictions of an extreme climate event and its impacts. The El Niño Rapid Response Field Campaign deployed NOAA’s Gulfstream IV research plane and NOAA Ship Ronald H. Brown, NASA’s Global Hawk unmanned aircraft equipped with specialized sensors, and researchers stationed on Kiritimati (Christmas) Island in the Republic of Kiribati, approximately 1,340 miles south of Honolulu. Weather balloons, twice-a-day were launched from Kiritimati Island. In addition, Scanning X-Band Radar was temporarily installed in the South San Francisco Bay to fill coverage gaps in the existing radar array and provide more accurate rainfall estimates for the region. Daily briefings presented from January 19 to March 10 are archived at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/rapid_response/forecasting/briefings.html.
Changing Weather Patterns Trend Toward a Drier Southwest
Researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research published a study that linked changes in weather patterns with drier conditions in the southwestern United States. Weather systems that typically bring large quantities of rain and snow to the region are forming less often. Analysis of 35 years of data identified common weather patterns and then looked to see whether those patterns were becoming more or less frequent. Weather patterns in which low pressure is centered in the North Pacific near Washington tend to bring wet weather to the Southwest, but between 1979 and 2014 these low-pressure systems formed with decreasing frequency. In February study results were published online in the American Geophysical Union’s journal Geophysical Research Letters. Although climate change is a plausible explanation for less frequent moisture-bringing weather events, more study is needed to confirm the connection. For more details, go to https://news.agu.org/press-release/southwest-sliding-into-a-drier-normal-weather-patterns-that-bring-rain-are-becoming-less-frequent/.
Arizona Commits to Water Sustainability Actions for White House Water Summit
On March 22, 2016—World Water Day—the Obama Administration hosted the first-ever White House Water Summit for which institutions and organizations from all sectors were called on to make new commitments to build a sustainable water future in the United States. Arizona institutions and organization answered the call as described in a 37-page fact sheet listing the commitments made for the Water Summit. The Cities of Tucson and Phoenix announced the next step in their 2014 exchange agreement that allows Phoenix to store some of their CAP water in Tucson’s underground recharge facilities [see AWR Winter 2015 and Summer 2015]. Over the next year, they will work together to achieve a more than five-fold increase of water stored under this agreement. Arizona State University (ASU), pledged to implement a five-year research initiative focused on water security, with components in urban landscape design and renovation; training on food-energy-water nexus issues; and testing innovative approaches to agriculture in the arid Southwest. ASU is also involved in SciStarter, which will advance citizen science by expanding the network and impact of citizen scientists and establishing a “Lending Library” of monitoring equipment. The University of Arizona is collaborating on projects to explore linked energy-water microgrids for the purpose of improving co-management of distributed water and energy systems, and to develop an “Ethics-Based Decision Support Tool” for guiding technology, policy, and investment decisions in the water sector. The Sonoran Institute and the Central Arizona Conservation Alliance will develop a collaborative conservation plan that will help the 24 cities and towns in Maricopa County protect local watersheds and encourage sustainable recharge of aquifers. Finally, a group made up of the Colorado River Basin States, the Southern Nevada Water Authority, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the Central Arizona Water Conservation District, Denver Water, the Upper Colorado River Commission, and U.S. Bureau of Reclamation committed to launching Phase II of a program that compensates water users for implementing voluntary water-conservation projects in order to improve critical water-storage levels at Lakes Powell and Mead. The complete fact sheet can be accessed at https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/documents/White_House_Water_Summit_commitments_report_032216.pdf.