Water Issues in Utah

Utah State University hosted the Spring Runoff Conference on Tuesday, highlighting water challenges in the western United States and the hurdles the region will face. Alan Rhoades, a hydroclimate specialist from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, spoke at the conference on his work to overcome the uncertainty of the future by assessing the performance of novel climate modeling techniques. For Utah and the West, global climate change is expected to drastically impact our snowpack: the natural water storage reservoir for populations around the Rockies and Sierra Nevadas. One major problem for scientists and stakeholders working to adapt to a new climate is that different carbon emission scenarios and different data analyses techniques provide different projections for the future of snow. “Stakeholders and I are ascending this mountain of information and uncertainty, and we’re trying to do this together,” Rhoades said. There are about 30 global climat...

The Midwest was again caught in the icy grip of the “polar vortex” this winter, resulting in record-low temperatures that nearly rivaled the frigid temperatures in the beginning of Jan. 2014. For many in the Midwest, the bitter cold during these recent polar vortex winters has been frozen into memory. The same is true for trees. New research led by Steve Voelker, a dendroclimatologist from Utah State University, could help scientists understand the history of these chilling events. Voelker said the research, published in the journal Scientific Reports on March 12, demonstrates for the first time, “how scientists can reconstruct winter temperatures from hundreds of years ago with tree rings.” It also “has connections to both local and larger-scale climate issues,” he said. Climate leaves signatures on every living thing, but some trees and conditions retain these better than others. These memories of past climate are stored in the size and composit...