Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
to a July 2010 report from California-based consultants, Tetra Tech,
for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “More than 400 of
these counties will face extremely high risks of water shortages,” the
report warns.
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Can the doom and gloom be that bad? Perhaps it's simply a mat-
ter of adjusting upward temperature expectations. Consider how
the National Climatic Data Center characterized the 2007 drought
in the context of history:
The most extensive national drought coverage during the
past 110 years (the period of widespread reliable instrumental
records) occurred in July 1934 when 80 percent of the contiguous
United States was in moderate to extreme drought. Although the
current drought and others of the twentieth century have been
widespread and of lengthy duration, tree ring records indicate
that the severity of these droughts was likely surpassed by other
droughts, including that of 1579 and the 1580s over much of the
western U.S. and northern Mexico.
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Check out the USGS WaterWatch site for the current status of water
resources in your area and current drought conditions (http://water
.usgs.gov/waterwatch/).
Strained Water Resources
This kind of climate change strains U.S. water resources. That's
the offi cial assessment of the situation by the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency's (EPA's) Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change. In 2007, that panel used computer models of
Earth's climate system to explore the effects of climate changes.
The bottom line of all this research was that there is less water
of lesser quality for more people to share. The panel's fi ndings
suggest a few of the possible ramifi cations of climate change on
North America.
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