Abstract
The future of the Colorado River water supply (WS) affects millions of people and the US economy. A recent study suggested a cross-basin correlation between the Colorado River and its neighboring Great Salt Lake (GSL). Following that study, the feasibility of using the previously developed multi-year prediction of the GSL water level to forecast the Colorado River WS was tested. Time-series models were developed to predict the changes in WS out to 10 years. Regressive methods and the GSL water level data were used for the depiction of decadal variability of the Colorado River WS. Various time-series models suggest a decline in the 10-year averaged WS since 2013 before starting to increase around 2020. Comparison between this WS prediction and the WS projection published in a 2012 government report (derived from climate models) reveals a widened imbalance between supply and demand by 2020, a tendency that is confirmed by updated WS observation. Such information could aid in management decision-making in the face of near-future water shortages.
Highlights
The Colorado River is one of the largest water resources in the United States, supplying water to about 40 million people in the southeast and intermountain states
The long-term future of the water supply (WS) made by climate model projections showed an upturn in the Colorado River WS into 2020 (BOR 2012) [5]; this is in contradiction to an observed decrease through 2018
We make predictions of water supply for the 10 years (2013–2022) and discuss the results from both the annual and moving-average models we have developed in the previous section
Summary
The Colorado River is one of the largest water resources in the United States, supplying water to about 40 million people in the southeast and intermountain states. The long-term future of the WS made by climate model projections showed an upturn in the Colorado River WS into 2020 (BOR 2012) [5]; this is in contradiction to an observed decrease through 2018. (BOR 2012) [5] anticipates water demand to surpass supply by as much as 3.2 million acre feet through. Such growing imbalance between supply and demand requires a more accurate and longer-term predictions of the Colorado River WS given projected water demand
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