Climate Change and Water in the West: Complexities, Uncertainties and Strategies for Adaptation

摘要

A rapidly accumulating body of scientific research confirms that the Earth's climate is changing and that anthropogenic global warming is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.1 This warming will inevitably affect the water resources that are the life-blood of the Rocky Mountain West. Water managers and other citizens, however, are often left bewildered by the wide range of available climate model scenarios and the inability of climate models to reliably forecast the regional details of future changes in precipitation and runoff.2