Cross-Basin Decadal Climate Regime Connecting the Colorado River with the Great Salt Lake

Abstract

Abstract The 2013 federal Colorado River Basin Water Supply and Demand Study projected the water imbalance between future supply and demand to increase. The Colorado water supply (WS) exemplifies a pronounced quasi-decadal oscillation (QDO) of 10–20 years throughout its historical record; however, this QDO feature is unaccounted for in the climate models used to project the future WS. Adjacent to the Colorado River, the large watershed of the Great Salt Lake (GSL) in Utah records the hydrologic QDO signal in its water surface, leading previous studies to explore the cause of decadal fluctuations in the lake elevation and assess predictability. This study reports a remarkable coherence between the Colorado WS and the GSL elevation at the 10–20-yr time scale. Analysis of precipitation and terrestrial water storage anomalies suggests a cross-basin connection in the climate and hydrometeorological variations of the Colorado WS and the GSL. The 160-yr-long and well-kept GSL elevation record makes it an effective indicator for the Colorado WS.