Many current assessments of future climate and hydrologic change suggest that current drylands around the globe could become drier with continued anthropogenic climate change. In some regions, there is an observed trend in this direction. This is particularly true for the Colorado River and other rivers of the West, where the nature of drought is shifting to a more temperature-dominated climate extreme. This session will explore what the aridification trend may mean for groundwater, the Colorado River, and increasing water demands from communities across the Colorado Plateau.
Resources
- "How is Climate Change Impacting Colorado River Flow?" Article from Colorado Water, June 2021: Climate Change and Adaptation
- Overpeck and Udall, "Climate change and the aridification of North America." PNAS, 2020
Dr. Jonathan Overpeck
Climate Scientist and Dean of the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan | This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Dr. Jonathan Overpeck is an interdisciplinary climate scientist whose research is focused on understanding drought and megadrought dynamics (and risk) the world over. He has also served as the lead investigator of Climate Assessment for the Southwest and the SW Climate Science Center, two major programs focused on regional climate adaptation. Dr. Overpeck also works more broadly on climate and paleoclimate dynamics, ice sheets and sea level, climate-vegetation interaction, conservation biology, legal issues related to climate change, environmental communication, and environmental education. He has written over 220 published works on climate and the environmental sciences, and served as a Working Group 1 Coordinating Lead Author for the Nobel Prize winning IPCC 4th Assessment (2007), and also as a Working Group 2 Lead Author for the IPCC 5th Assessment (2014). He has appeared and testified before Congress multiple times and tweets about climate-related issues @GreatLakesPeck.
Additional Resources
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