Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Climate Data Manipulation And The Use Of Water To Build Political Power In The Southwest United States, Conrad Moore, Professor Emeritus

Earth, Environmental, and Atmospheric Sciences Faculty Publications

Models utilized by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change indicate a striking trend toward increasing aridity in the Southwest United States. Two landmark articles published in Science magazine have emphasized the critical future consequences of this trend. Data from 59 National Weather Service stations distributed across the region west of the continental divide and south of the 41^stparallel (the northern border of Colorado and northeastern Utah), including 36 stations in the Upper Colorado River Basin and lower Southwest, show that annual and winter precipitation increased over the 60-year period 1950-2010, although the record is impoverished by the deletion …