Weather woes heating up

By Kevin Woster, Journal staff | Friday, April 20, 2007

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Western South Dakota’s historic water woes are likely to get worse as global warming complicates the region’s already challenging precipitation patterns, a federal water specialist said Thursday.

Chris Milly, a senior scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Princeton, N.J., told other resource specialists gathered at the Western South Dakota Hydrology Conference that government leaders and citizens shouldn’t delay in preparing for water challenges that will inevitably come with increasing climate change.

Milly also said those who believe that the issue is a problem lost in the far-off future are kidding themselves.

“The climate’s changing. It’s time to face the music. So let’s all get to work,” he said in closing his keynote address at Rushmore Plaza Civic Center.

Milly said he was hesitant to tell water managers in this region how to prepare for the challenges to come. But obvious options include more aggressive water-conservation programs and planning for water projects to address potential shortages to come, he said.

Or, to put it simply: Use less water. Find more.

Water managers who have already foreseen problems in future years could face them sooner than expected because of the Earth’s warming climate and its effect on water patterns, Milly said.

“This is not news to those who manage in this area,” he said. “It may mean you’ll hit the limit sooner than you would have otherwise.”

That struck home to city water division manager John Wagner, who said Milly’s presentation was a realistic warning that Rapid City residents and government officials should heed.

“I thought that was very important, the modeling that showed the reduction of the norm in precipitation,” Wagner said. “If the models prove out, and they seem fairly accurate, instead of probably getting the 17 inches of rain we get normally, we might be getting only 15.”

That probability should encourage residents of Rapid City and other communities to work even harder to conserve water through controlled lawn watering and other measures, Wagner said. And it affirms the importance of city projects and plans to get the most of out its water resources — centered on the Rapid Creek watershed and the storage capabilities of drought-plagued Pactola Reservoir — now and in the future, he said.

That the warming trend is likely to increase water problems is irrefutable, Milly said. There is enough accumulated energy in the warming trend already to raise the earth’s temperature a half degree over this century, even if all human causes ceased, he said.

Milly, who will help brief congressional staffers on the climate change and water issues in Washington, D.C., next week, said there’s little logic in denying the warming of the Earth’s climate, as some skeptics continue to do. And there is little doubt that human activities, including internal-combustion engine and power plants, are contributing to that trend, he said.

That doesn’t mean Milly is trying to blame global warming for the ongoing dry spell in western South Dakota. The region has a history of drought that is certain to continue but likely become more pronounced because of climate change, he said.

“It’s true that there was natural variability. Even without climate change, you could face a drought,” Milly said. “This is a different issue, on top of that.”

In his luncheon address, Milly mixed scientific data with some playful pictures and songs, including a recording of Bob Dylan and “The Times They Are A-Changin’.”

Milly also offered a variation on the politically inspired “red-state-blue-state,” theme, with red states likely to suffer a loss of water resources in the future and blue states to experience gains that could be problems in themselves. The general rule will be pretty simple, he said.

“Water-poor states become water poorer, and water-rich states become water richer — and not necessarily to their benefit,” Milly said.

Environmental models predict that Alaska, for example, will be a big gainer in water, just as California and much of the Southwest will be even bigger losers than they are, Milly said. Water increases are projected in parts of the Midwest and on into the Northeast states.

South Dakota has shades in between but can expect a drier trend. Along with a change in the amount of moisture, a warmer future also could change the way the precipitation falls across much of the nation. Less will be snow and more will be rain, adding to an existing flood risk that is currently mitigated in many areas by the more gradual runoff brought by snowmelt.

That more intense, shorter-lived runoff also could make things dry out sooner after the rains, adding to fire danger, Milly said. All told, the picture demands action, not delays, he said.

“These changes in water availability are in the pipeline,” he said. “And we better get started.”

Contact Kevin Woster at 394-8413 or kevin.woster@rapidcityjournal.com