Abstract

Observations have shown the hydrological cycle of the western U.S. changed significantly over the last half of the twentieth century. Here we present a regional, multivariable climate-change detection and attribution study, using a high-resolution hydrologic model forced by global climate models, focusing on the changes that have already affected this primarily arid region with a large and growing population. The results show up to 60% of the climate related trends of river flow, winter air temperature, and snow pack between 1950-1999 are human-induced. These results are robust to perturbation of study variates and methods. They portend, in conjunction with previous work, a coming crisis in water supply for the western United States