As Water Flows Slow, Utahns Wonder About Global Warming - SLT

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BEAR RIVER CITY - Charles Holmgren says it's the little things that he notices. The Box Elder County farmer, who grows a variety of crops on 1,200 acres near here, has seen the spring runoff come down the Corrine Canal from the Bear River flows sooner than it used to. After nearly a lifetime of getting three cuts a season out of his alfalfa crop, Holmgren notes that he's now regularly getting four. And he and fellow members of the irrigation company that feeds the area's farms are paying out more in attorneys fees than they ever have before to settle water rights disputes.

Holmgren can't specifically point to climate change as the culprit; it's all anecdotal at this point. But he does sense that things are different now. And he can't help but wonder what lies ahead. "It's a two-edged sword," he says. "If you have livestock, you like the warmer, drier winters. But when crop time comes around in June and July, you really need that water. It doesn't help when it comes down in February or March. Once it goes down the river, it's gone."

More than any other aspect of global warming, water will likely be what defines the issue in Utah and the rest of the intermountain West in the coming decades. The nation's most arid and sparsely populated region has been transformed by explosive growth and development in recent decades, growth that has been

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Different climate models produced in recent years have spit out a variety of conclusions. Some predict close to normal precipitation, but more of it falling as rain and less as snow, with the rainfall coming at different times of the year. Other models call for more precipitation, which could actually bring some positive effects - anybody up for the Great Basin grasslands? And still others forecast less precipitation, which would be the worst scenario of all. But for the time being, uncertainty is the rule. "It's demonstrable that global warming is happening," says Randy Julander, state snow surveyor for the U.S. Agriculture Department. "Once you get past that, though, you start getting into connectivity issues - things that have happened and are happening right now. How do we separate all the variables to pull out the thread of global warming?

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http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_4149629