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Unusual summer sizzle may mean water woes

By Sue Vorenberg
Friday, February 23, 2007

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It's an easy bet that New Mexico will have a warmer than normal spring and summer, said Dave Gutzler, a climatologist at the University of New Mexico.

Temperatures have continued to rise across the Southwest during the past century, and those trends don't appear to be slowing down, he said.

So a prediction Wednesday from Climate Assessment for the Southwest that New Mexico and the West will have a warmer than average spring and summer? That's not very surprising, Gutzler said.

"One of the clearest warming trends in the data from anywhere in the country is the Southwest U.S.," Gutzler said. "We always predict warmer than normal summers. That is the standard prediction for most seasons in the Southwest because of global warming trends."

The bigger issue related to that, however, is how rising temperatures will affect water in the West, as snowpack melts earlier in the year and starts to build up later, he said.

"The trends we see in the data and the trends we continue to predict into the future are all connected to reduced stream flows in the main Western rivers," Gutzler said. "We expect snowpack to decrease, to melt earlier, and that makes it difficult to manage reservoirs at low elevation."

This year, despite record snowfall in Albuquerque, mountain snowpack across the state appears to be about average, Gutzler said.

Generally, snowpack starts to melt in New Mexico in March or early April. But as the climate keeps warming up, the melt happens earlier, which can be problematic, he said.

"Water managers like snow because it's a way to store water for usage later in the year," Gutzler said. "It costs us nothing, because nature stores it for us. From a management perspective, having snow melt earlier, the need to store water increases, and that stresses the storage system."

Rising temperatures could also mean an earlier spring, confusing greenery around New Mexico, said Ted Sammis, state climatologist.

"If you look at global warming predictions, in general everything's going to get warmer, but it's also going to get more chaotic," Sammis said. "If the prediction is right, we'd expect maybe the pecan trees to come out of dormancy early. That generally happens in mid-April. Maybe the chile will come out of the ground sooner, too."

But cold temperatures from this winter have also caused some chaos, delaying trees like elm and oak from coming out of dormancy at their usual time, he said.

The chaotic weather makes it hard to figure out what will happen to state reservoir levels, Gutzler added.

The levels are certainly better right now than they were after the drought in the winter of 2005-06, but even with the wetter winter we just had, the levels haven't improved all that dramatically, Gutzler said.

"Of course, we still could see a couple more big snowstorms that could help us out tremendously," Gutzler said.

Whether we'll get those storms is a tough call, said Charlie Liles, chief meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Albuquerque.

The weather system known as El Ni¤o that was sending moisture across the state has essentially stopped, and forecasters are waiting to see what weather patterns develop in its wake, he said.

"The solutions are pretty consistent in showing that we're going to transition into a La Ni¤a pattern, with cold water in the Pacific rising to the surface," Liles said.

Connections between La Ni¤a and rainfall through the spring and summer are highly complex - so predictions based on those patterns are sketchy at best, he said.

For the monsoon season, New Mexico will just have to wait to see who wins the precipitation battle, Liles said.

"It's kind of like two 800-pound gorillas fighting - La Ni¤a and the monsoon," Liles said. "It's hard to tell who will have the greater impact this summer."

The ideal scenario for a wet monsoon appears to be low snowpack, a spring La Ni¤a pattern in the Pacific and cold temperatures off the coast of British Columbia, Gutzler said.

"All that appears to affect ridges and troughs at the jet stream level," Gutzler said.

But if La Ni¤a does take hold and lasts through the summer, it looks like next winter could be dry, which isn't what water managers are hoping for, Liles said.

"With the water we're getting this winter - don't expect that next winter," Liles said. "Next winter is likely to be much drier and warmer."

For now, most of New Mexico is drought-free, except for some areas in the West and Northwest.

But as the climate continues to change, the state could see more droughts - and more heavy rainfall and flash floods, Liles said.

"Most of the models suggest the extremes in weather will increase," Liles said. "The droughts will probably be more intense, but I don't know that we can say they'll be more frequent. Of course, those same models indicate extremes in wet weather may increase as well."

People, he said, will just have to adapt as the changes come.

"I think it's all going to take some adjustments," Liles said.