NASA: California has one year of water left
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NASA: California has one year of water left
http://www.newsweek.com/nasa-califor...er-left-313647
California is screwed if this really happens.
Plagued by prolonged drought, California now has only enough water to get it through the next year, according to NASA.
In an op-ed published Thursday by the Los Angeles Times, Jay Famiglietti, a senior water scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, painted a dire picture of the state's water crisis. California, he writes, has lost around 12 million acre-feet of stored water every year since 2011. In the Sacramento and San Joaquin river basins, the combined water sources of snow, rivers, reservoirs, soil water and groundwater amounted to a volume that was 34 million acre-feet below normal levels in 2014. And there is no relief in sight.
"As our 'wet' season draws to a close, it is clear that the paltry rain and snowfall have done almost nothing to alleviate epic drought conditions. January was the driest in California since record-keeping began in 1895. Groundwater and snowpack levels are at all-time lows" Famiglietti writes. "We're not just up a creek without a paddle in California, we're losing the creek too."
On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that one-third of the monitoring stations in California’s Cascades and Sierra Nevada mountains have recorded the lowest snowpack ever measured.
"Right now the state has only about one year of water supply left in its reservoirs, and our strategic backup supply, groundwater, is rapidly disappearing,” Famiglietti writes.
He criticized Californian officials for their lack of long-term planning for how to cope with this drought, and future droughts, beyond "staying in emergency mode and praying for rain."
Last month, new research by scientists at NASA, Cornell University and Columbia University pointed to abut hey.. "remarkably drier future" for California and other Western states amid a rapidly-changing climate. "Megadroughts," the study's authors wrote, are likely to begin between 2050 and 2099, and could each last between 10 years and several decades.
With that future in mind, Famiglietti says, "immediate mandatory water rationing" should be implemented in the state, accompanied by the swift formation of regulatory agencies to rigorously monitor groundwater and ensure that it is being used in a sustainable way—as opposed to the "excessive and unsustainable" groundwater extraction for agriculture that, he says, is partly responsible for massive groundwater losses that are causing land in the highly irrigated Central Valley to sink by one foot or more every year.
Various local ordinances have curtailed excessive water use for activities like filling fountains and irrigating lawns. But planning for California's "harrowing future" of more and longer droughts "will require major changes in policy and infrastructure that could take decades to identify and act upon," Famiglietti writes. "Today, not tomorrow, is the time to begin."
In an op-ed published Thursday by the Los Angeles Times, Jay Famiglietti, a senior water scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, painted a dire picture of the state's water crisis. California, he writes, has lost around 12 million acre-feet of stored water every year since 2011. In the Sacramento and San Joaquin river basins, the combined water sources of snow, rivers, reservoirs, soil water and groundwater amounted to a volume that was 34 million acre-feet below normal levels in 2014. And there is no relief in sight.
"As our 'wet' season draws to a close, it is clear that the paltry rain and snowfall have done almost nothing to alleviate epic drought conditions. January was the driest in California since record-keeping began in 1895. Groundwater and snowpack levels are at all-time lows" Famiglietti writes. "We're not just up a creek without a paddle in California, we're losing the creek too."
On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that one-third of the monitoring stations in California’s Cascades and Sierra Nevada mountains have recorded the lowest snowpack ever measured.
"Right now the state has only about one year of water supply left in its reservoirs, and our strategic backup supply, groundwater, is rapidly disappearing,” Famiglietti writes.
He criticized Californian officials for their lack of long-term planning for how to cope with this drought, and future droughts, beyond "staying in emergency mode and praying for rain."
Last month, new research by scientists at NASA, Cornell University and Columbia University pointed to abut hey.. "remarkably drier future" for California and other Western states amid a rapidly-changing climate. "Megadroughts," the study's authors wrote, are likely to begin between 2050 and 2099, and could each last between 10 years and several decades.
With that future in mind, Famiglietti says, "immediate mandatory water rationing" should be implemented in the state, accompanied by the swift formation of regulatory agencies to rigorously monitor groundwater and ensure that it is being used in a sustainable way—as opposed to the "excessive and unsustainable" groundwater extraction for agriculture that, he says, is partly responsible for massive groundwater losses that are causing land in the highly irrigated Central Valley to sink by one foot or more every year.
Various local ordinances have curtailed excessive water use for activities like filling fountains and irrigating lawns. But planning for California's "harrowing future" of more and longer droughts "will require major changes in policy and infrastructure that could take decades to identify and act upon," Famiglietti writes. "Today, not tomorrow, is the time to begin."
California is screwed if this really happens.
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Im not a scientist and dont know if this is possible or not, but couldnt they just pump water in from the pacific ocean and do some type of water treatment to remove the salt and bacteria and stuff?
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desalinization is done in some Caribbean islands because they don't have fresh water sources. California could do that too but the main reason that is not a popular option is cost.
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Ten years? This is California! I will NEVER be built. The ONLY way to get costs something like reasonable is to use nuclear electricity generation and they HATE that over there, and then you would have a thousand years of lawsuits to stop the water works. They already stopped people FARMING for a little fish nobody ever cared about except the watermelon "environmentalists". The only way California gets desalinated water is if Washington, Mexico, or maybe NEVADA builds the nuclear plant and water treatment equipment, then pipe the water through to sell to California. Maybe some nuclear powered ship stationed offshore, piping the fresh water in from international waters. Or if they get some grown-ups into the statehouse in California, which looks increasingly unlikely each year.
Criticizing California's government for lack of long-term planning? Pick an issue, and they've not planned for it long term.
Criticizing California's government for lack of long-term planning? Pick an issue, and they've not planned for it long term.
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Lol @ Nevada selling water to anyone.
The article doesn't say there's one year of water left. The article says that reservoirs are currently holding one year's worth of water. That's not the same thing. The water shortage situation in the Southwest is very serious for sure, but the headline is wrong. For one thing that completely discounts groundwater.
If you want to fix California's water problems, stop irrigating massive amounts of arid land. Solved. Grow plants elsewhere and ship them in. Either that or develop saltwater tolerant crops and irrigate with seawater. Literally dumping most of your water on the ground to grow crops when you're terrifyingly close to not having enough water to drink is really stupid.
The article doesn't say there's one year of water left. The article says that reservoirs are currently holding one year's worth of water. That's not the same thing. The water shortage situation in the Southwest is very serious for sure, but the headline is wrong. For one thing that completely discounts groundwater.
If you want to fix California's water problems, stop irrigating massive amounts of arid land. Solved. Grow plants elsewhere and ship them in. Either that or develop saltwater tolerant crops and irrigate with seawater. Literally dumping most of your water on the ground to grow crops when you're terrifyingly close to not having enough water to drink is really stupid.