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A bathtub ring of light minerals shows the high water line near Hoover Dam on Lake Mead.
Photo: John Locher (AP)
The West is dry and getting drier. Federal officials said this week that a major source of water for the Southwest could face some of its first official water restrictions later this year if water levels keep dropping.
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New projections issued by the Bureau of Reclamation predict that the water levels in Lake Powell and Lake Mead, two manmade reservoirs along the Colorado River, will reach historically low levels in the coming months. The water level at Lake Mead is sitting at just 39%, while Lake Powell is at 36%. The government predicts that Lake Mead’s water level will fall below 1,075 feet (328 meters) by June, the level which triggers official government water shortage procedures for the seven states that get their water from the Colorado River.
What's Up In Climate Change? The unnatural warming of the past 100 years, contrails increase climate heating, and how Canada should tackle the 'nature emergency'.
Critical fire weather hits Arizona paysonroundup.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from paysonroundup.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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Mar. 9, 2021
Who doesn’t want a home with a view of the sea? Well, unless the waves are washing around your living room.
Flooding is an intensifying problem in some parts as climate change bites down, and not only on low-lying coasts. But the coasts are a good place to start worrying because a rising sea level can no longer be prevented. The amount of carbon dioxide we have already added to the atmosphere makes more temperature increases inevitable, based on historical climate patterns, and rising temperatures in turn make a further rise in sea levels unavoidable.
The only question is how much the average sea level will rise by any given point in time. We don’t know exactly, in part due to unknowns about global energy policy and how warm the world will get this century.