Kevin Bradley traveled to Denver from Australia this week with a cautionary tale: Climate change has hit hard Down Under, and water supplies are shrinking as a result.
Australia, like the U.S., had assumed that it had decades to adapt to a warmer world and less water. Now it is scrambling to provide basic supplies in some regions, building wind- powered desalination plants along its coasts and limiting use to conserve the precious resource.
"Climate change is here now," said Bradley, who is manager of infrastructure for the Water Corporation of Western Australia.
"We don't have 30 years to adapt," he said. "The chances are it will hit you harder and sooner than you think."
Bradley's comments came Tuesday at an international forum for water managers hosted by the American Water Works Association Research Foundation.
The two-day conference is a kick-off for cooperative international research programs to help water utilities cope with dramatic variations in annual water supplies and a warmer world in which supplies are likely to shrink.
Australia is considered a bellwether for climate change because effects are showing up there more quickly than they are elsewhere.
Like much of the world, Australia depends primarily on surface supplies drawn from rivers and streams for drinking water. In the 1970s, a series of droughts began and measurable drops in precipitation occurred.
But what shocked the Aussies is that the trend has continued for 30 years, that it appears to be accelerating and that manageable reductions in annual rain and snowfall have translated into catastrophic drops in surface water.
For example, in 2001, Perth, a city of 1.4 million, experienced one of the driest years in nearly a century, with precipitation registering just 21 percent of average. What came next, however, was even more disturbing. Streamflows plummeted 66 percent.
Few U.S. water utilities expect the dry conditions Australia has been experiencing. But Robert Renner, executive director of the Denver-based research foundation, said there's no question that climate change is beginning to show itself locally in thinner mountain snowpacks and earlier spring runoff patterns.
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January 9, 2008
11:35 a.m.
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Wxdano writes:
Where are all the denialists claiming man-made climate change isn't true? Shouldn't they be shouting down Kevin Bradley and his alarmist message?
Best,
D