Hydrology: A Thread About Water and Stuff

[SR71]

New Mexico Snow | Open Mind

The amount of snowpack in New Mexico seems to be declining. Here is a representative location.

It also seems to be melting out earlier in the year.

[SR71]

"Mountains of the Moon" Glaciers Melting in Africa

Also, Africa. There are a lot more glaciers than I thought in Africa! I had to look it up.

It is a span in which "elephants wander at 5,000 feet [1,500 meters], lions prowl near 8,000 [2,400 meters], and the leopard is found at 15,000 feet [4,600 meters]," the historian Robert Collins wrote. Living nearby are the endangered mountain gorillas of Virunga National Park.

"We don't know if they will adapt fast enough to the changes we are seeing today," Languy said.

[BrotherMan]

In my old job we would define this is a downward trend. It would trigger a top down review of product materials and the processes used to make the product as well as the instrument and testing method used to analyze for the parameter being tested. This would take weeks or months. In fact, there was at least a six month continuing investigation regarding the pH value of a certain product by the time I left. "They" were doing everything they could to pin it on the meter and the testing SOP. Joke was on them because the range they were trying to limit for was within the range of error for the probe.

That has nothing to do with water shortage. I was just testing myself to see if I could talk about something sort of technical from a long time ago.

[Dingfod]

RE: New Mexico climate. In the latter half of the 1980s I lived in the Four Corners region and visited Mesa Verde National Park a number of times. They had a series of landscape photos on display taken from the same spot looking south from where the park headquarters sits toward New Mexico since before the park opened in 1906. They purpose of the display was to show how polluted the air had gotten over time, but I noticed something else notable about the pictures. Between 1940 and 1980, the countryside had gotten a lot greener with more vegetation all over, both grass and trees, juniper and pinion. That trend continued on into the 90s. If it is drying up, I think it is returning to some form of normal for the region, the norm for centuries beforehand.

[Angakuk]

The increased vegetation was surely due to the increased levels of carbon dioxide in the polluted air. No other explanation is possible.

[SR71]

This is about a cleanup effort on Chesapeake Bay, and who wants to get in the way of the cleanup. Who would that be? Attorneys General of states that aren't even in the watershed. Because, you know, if it can happen there. It would be absolutely horrible if states sharing water resources were allowed to decide to clean them up, wouldn't it? I mean, where is the representation for people who prefer dirty water. It's not really fair, is it?

Why Are 20 Far-Away States Trying To Block The Cleanup Of The Chesapeake Bay? | ThinkProgress

But to a group of 21 Attorneys General from states almost exclusively outside the Chesapeake Bay region, the plan means only one thing: EPA overreach.
Earlier this year, a group of 21 Attorneys General from states as far away from the Chesapeake Bay as Alaska and Wyoming submitted an amicus brief that aims to strike down the EPA’s Chesapeake cleanup plan. The AGs argue that the cleanup plan raises serious concerns about states’ rights, and they worry that if the plan is left to stand, the EPA could enact similar pollution limits on watersheds such as the Mississippi.

I mean, so what if the fish lips have tumors? We don't really eat the lips.

[Hermit]

Gotta love the social conscience of the fucking libertardians.

[Watser?]

Here's a NYT article about water management and how the US can learn from the Dutch and blahblah but what's important is:

To get a sense of what a Dutch approach to the East Coast of the United States might look like, I stood, one sparkling day last June, at the edge of the Waal River, a tributary of the Rhine, in Nijmegen, a Dutch city on the German border.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/04/13...?from=magazine

Technically the Rhine is a tributary of the Waal I guess, the Waal is the main branch, about twice as wide.

[Hermit]

Originally Posted by Watser?

Technically the Rhine is a tributary of the Waal I guess, the Waal is the main branch, about twice as wide.

Guess again. Try "technically the Waal is the main distributary branch of river Rhine" Approximately 80 km in length, it carries about 65% of the Rhine's water to sea.

[Dingfod]

A huge pisstake, people fail to understand dilution.

[Angakuk]

lol @ "kidney shaped reservoir"

[Dingfod]

Thanks to godfry, I've been by that reservoir. I did not piss in it though.

[Angakuk]

One would not put it past godfry to have done so.

[SR71]

Light snow pack and early melt are a problem for Pakistani farmers.

As mountain snow fails and glaciers melt, Pakistan faces water threats

“I am really perturbed by the astounding change in our weather pattern," said Nia’at Waali, a 50-year-old maize farmer in Thangai village in the Gupis valley. "I have never in my entire life seen the mountain streams flowing with gushing water and the days getting warmer in March, which used to be a snowfall month."

Meteorologist Amin said that his observations show snowfall season now has shrunk to only the months of January and February, down from five months – November to March – in 1994.

Khan, the weather observer at Gupis, suggests "farmers desperately need to adapt to erratic weather patterns and think of preparing their fields in March instead of May and June.”

[Dingfod]

Welcome to California's problems.

[godfry n. glad]

Originally Posted by Angakuk

One would not put it past godfry to have done so.

No, you are!

They just lifted the Boil Order issued four days earlier due to E coli in the reservoir sampling.

Not related to above pisstake, we have been assured.

[Watser?]

Originally Posted by SR71

Light snow pack and early melt are a problem for Pakistani farmers.

As mountain snow fails and glaciers melt, Pakistan faces water threats

Basically the same thing is happening with the Rhine: we get very low water levels in months that used to be months of high water and sometimes flooding. I guess it's a good thing we still get a lot of rain because snow and glaciers in the Alps are withdrawing like they are in the Himalayas.

[Janet]

The Great Lakes have had decreasing water levels for years now. We had quite a bit of snow this year so that might help, but I'm not expecting much.

[SR71]

Biggest Brazil metro area desperate for water - The Washington Post

Brazil is approaching the December start of its summer rainy season with its water supply nearly bare. More than 10 million people across Sao Paulo state, Brazil’s most populous and the nation’s economic engine, have been forced to cut water use over the past six months. A reservoir used by Itu has fallen to 2 percent of capacity and, because its system relies on rain and groundwater rather than rivers, the city is suffering more than others.

I heard about some study that linked the lack of rainfall to the shrinking rain forest.

[Dingfod]

U.S. uses less water than in 1970 despite gaining 100 million in population.
http://www.weather.com/news/science/...-1970-20141106

[Janet]

Gee, I wonder how much of Brazil's water went to keep football fields nice and green? But then, as I recall it was pouring rain during the World Cup, so maybe it wasn't quite so responsible.

[SR71]

Here's a link about how deforestation decreases transpiration, in turn decreasing rainfall. This is the report mentioned a couple of posts ago.

Amazon rainforest losing ability to regulate climate, scientist warns | Environment | The Guardian

The Amazon works as a giant pump, channeling moisture inland via aerial rivers and rainclouds that form over the forest more dramatically than over the sea, the author says. It also provides a buffer against extreme weather events, such as tornados and hurricanes.

In the past 20 years, the author notes that the Amazon has lost 763,000 sq km, an area the size of two Germanys. In addition another 1.2m sq km has been estimated as degraded by cutting below the canopy and fire.

As a result, the report notes, the deterioration of the rainforest – through logging, fires and land clearance – has resulted in a decrease in forest transpiration and a lengthening of dry seasons.

[SR71]

Las Vegas is boring a tunnel that will let them drain Lake Meade to the bottom if it ever comes to that. Did we cover that already? Anyway, this article is about how hard it's been to bore that tunnel. They are pushing the tunnel boring machine very hard. It's really not designed for the conditions they've run into. I'm sure they'll get their tunnel dug regardless of the difficulty.

Pushing TBM design limits under Lake Mead

Right from the start, in 2010, nothing has been simple about the hard-fought 4,500m TBM drive at Lake Mead. This has never been more true than during the last 18 months – a turbulent period marked by spurts of rapid open mode progress, followed by frustratingly slow advances in closed mode through worse than anticipated ground conditions.

Technical difficulties are then described. Then why it matters...

All the while, lake levels have been dropping, and at 1,081ft (25ft lower than when TunnelTalk last reported on the project in 2013) there is now only 31ft of leeway before the existing intake No. 1 and pumping station will cease to operate at 1,050ft. SWNA completed critical remedial measures in 2013 to try to ensure a water supply down to an extra 10ft of lake elevation, from 1,060ft to 1,050ft, but cannot be certain how successful this will be. To put all this into context, lake levels are predicted to reach a critical level of 1,067ft in Summer next year (2015) – just 17ft above the current intake No.1 and at a time when full commissioning of the new deep level tunnel and intake structure is scheduled to be still five months away.

[SR71]

Drought Is Just the Beginning of Our Frightening Water Emergency

or, less scarily

Any of You Guys Can Confirm This? | Alternet

There is now a Third World in the First World. Growing poverty in rich countries has created an underclass that cannot pay rising water rates. As reported by Circle of Blue, the price of water in 30 major US cities is rising faster than most other household staples—41 percent since 2010, with no end in sight. As a result, increasing numbers cannot pay their water bills, and cutoffs are growing across the country. Inner-city Detroit reminds me more of the slums of Bogotá than the North American cities of my childhood.

My water prices have been rising at several percent/year, but much less than is mentioned in the article. Actually, this is probably one of my main local issues as far as caring about it goes. Our local chief actually went to bat against the state to keep us out of the clutches of American Water, who I'm pretty sure would be very happy to monetize the holy hell out of water for us. I am way way way more in favor of public utilities than privatized utilities. Oddly, I think the guy is Republican, but I'm with him on that issue. I say oddly, because I would assume Republicans to be all, okay, let's profit motive that shit, you know? I guess you have to be careful about stereotytpes.

Anyway, does anyone know of places where water bills are shooting up so fast like in the article? If so, would you know if privatization has anything to do with it?

[Dingfod]

Until the footage of rain fell on Oklahoma this Spring and early Summer, Oklahoma has been in a drought for most of the last 15 years. Never saw an increase in water price, it's the same price it was in 2000.