The permanent drought continues in Colorado. The Poudre River broke its all time July 13 flow record at 2530 cfs at 8:45 this morning. The previous record was in 1984 at 1690 cfs. Flow is more than 1000% of normal for mid-July.
The climate models all predicted declining spring snow cover and early melt. Time for the Ministry of Truth to jump into action! They predicted this all along.
Correct, we have all along said that AGW will both cause declining and record high water levels. Since AGW causes both droughts and floods, this is perfect logic. It’s all so simple. AGW equals more extemes. This means extremes at both ends of the spectrum. So, you see, we have said all along that one extreme will be record low water, the other extreme is record high water. One thing we have to work out, if we have more extremes on both ends, well the middle is still average isn’t it? We’ll get our man Hansen on it ASAP.
But … but it is caused by the record snow this past winter, which is caused by global warming, which is caused by CO2, which is exactly what the models predicted, after they predicted that snow was a thing of the past … right?
Went hacking around to find out how man-made global-warming was forecasting the demise of southwestern water supplies and found this:
http://www.azwaterinstitute.org/media/EWSR/Colorado%20river%20fact%20sheet
Their summary:
“Model projections for precipitation in the Lower Basin are in strong agreement that annual precipitation will decrease by the end of the century by about 5% to 10% (Figure 5, bottom panel). There is more certainty about decreases in the winter, than for summer precipitation, as the scale of the monsoon system is not well replicated in the global climate models (GCM’s).
Projections for precipitation in the Upper Basin are less certain because the GCMs used in projecting future climate do not represent the topography that influences mountain precipitation, and because the Upper Basin is in a transition zone between regions to the north that are projected to get wetter and regions to the south that are projected to get drier. A variety of models have been used to project changes in Colorado River runoff, and while the degree of runoff decline published in reports is variable, all show some degree of decrease. Even without changes in precipitation, the Upper Basin snowpacks that are critical for Colorado River supplies will be affected by warming temperatures. Snowpack melting will occur earlier, leading to earlier runoff, and more of the winter precipitation will fall as rain, instead of being “banked” in the seasonal snowpack.”
That’s what the models say. How about reality? Check out Lake Powell, the warmista poster-child: Lake Powell is approaching historic average depths. Snow pack above Lake Powell is 562% of average. Reservoirs above Lake Powell are 91.13% full. River feed is 311.2% of average. These figures are for 07-13-11.
In short:
We will claim decreasing water even though we do not know WTF we are talking about. The models can not replicate weather patterns over the regions.
Uh huh. And if you go to their website, http://www.azwaterinstitute.org…wait for it…they’ve been defunded! Yup. Global Warming wot got ’em.