Drop in Elephant Butte water level no reason for alarm

Laura Paskus’ three-part series on the current drought starts with a question,” Elephant Butte is at 3 percent capacity; what happens next?” Let me introduce measurements missing from Paskus’ series: Elephant Butte Lake levels, temperature, rainfall, and climate patterns. My analysis: nothing in the current meteorological/climatological situation is worse than the past century. History and study show that either water availability must increase, or water costs will increase.

Paskus’ sense of alarm with recent Elephant Butte Reservoir capacity falling to 3% implies impending catastrophe, but historic data show frequent episodes where capacity in the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s fell below 1%, as low as 0.1%, on Aug. 6, 1954. Put another way, the recent capacity was 22 times more than the low reached in 1954. We know our rainfall and snowfall here are controlled by El Nino and La Nina. Data show a 60-year period of increased El Ninos and rainfall, more La Ninas and drought in between; this is the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO).

Paskus’ series makes repeated reference to the wet years of the 1980s and 90s, seemingly as if this was somehow an average, and we are headed into an abyss of drought and increasing temperatures. Records suggest simply a return from PDO-warm of the ‘80s and ‘90s to the current PDO-cold. The current 3% of capacity at Elephant Butte reflects the present PDO-cold regime, which started in the early 2000s, with more frequent La Ninas.

A hundred years of rainfall records at Jornada Range shows precipitation increasing, not decreasing here.

Western Regional Climate Center records for Columbus and Orogrande show maximum temperatures occurred during the dust bowl years, as do Cimarron and Santa Rosa, while Tucumcari’s peaked in 1918. A recently installed USCRN station on Jornada Range shows temperatures falling 3F since 2007. Paskus cites rapidly increasing temperatures in western mountains, but an article in Geophysical Research Letters found a large warm bias in the USDA’S SNOTEL network…sited in western mountains.

Paskus cites climate models for predictions of 4-6F temperature increases by 2100. The “positive feedback” in such models doesn’t exist in the real world. Those models forecast three times the observed current warming for the tropics; and forecast a “hot spot” at 30,000 feet that does not exist. Further, Al Gore’s forecast disappearance of arctic ice in 2007 was a complete failure; the minimum arctic ice volumes have been over 4,900 cubic kilometers with this year’s minimum, 6,000 cubic kilometers of ice.

Paskus attributes massive forest fires such as the Las Conchas fire in the Jemez to climate change, but fails to consider that limiting forest fires caused an over-abundance and crowding of over-ripe pines and the subsequent infestation of pine bark beetles, killing the pines, and providing a huge source of dry fuel.

Between Las Cruces and Los Angeles, I-10 crosses the Central Arizona Project aqueducts and California’s aqueduct system. Phoenix has numerous golf courses, waterfalls, fountains, parks, and other lush areas which seemingly belie the hot Sonoran Desert just a few miles away. Similar features are found in Los Angeles and southern California. The foresight of Stewart and Morris Udall resulted in the CAP providing water for Arizona. Where’s a similar proposal for New Mexico from Stewart Udall’s son, Tom Udall?

Paskus cites EBID’s Gary Esslinger’s idea of diverting water from the Mississippi River, but diverting some spring runoff of the Arkansas River in Colorado might be more practical and appealing. Why not use nuclear power to desalinate Sea of Cortez or Gulf of Mexico water and pump fresh water uphill for use in eastern, central, and southern New Mexico?

Esslinger is right, we need to stop consuming more water than is available from Rio Grande flow and ground water; he calls it a “death spiral.” This case is also made by Neal Ackerly in NMSU Water Resources Research Institute Publication 43. We need to enhance water resources to New Mexico or make water for agricultural use too expensive for farmers here, or wait for a catastrophic event, such as the drought of the late 1600s, during the Little Ice Age, which caused Spaniards to abandon the Abo settlement.

Robert W. Endlich is a resident of Las Cruces