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THE ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2021
Scientists launch eff ort to
collect water data across West
By FELICIA FONSECA
Associated Press
South County Food Bank board member Maureen Casterline, Seaside Elks past Exalted Ruler Larry Gore, Elks
trustee Marlene Gore, food bank board member Tyler Evans, food bank manager Jenny Knight, food bank board
member Rosemarie Sibley, Elks trustee Jon Bue and Elks treasurer Jan Jackson.
Seaside Elks gives food bank $2,000
The Astorian
The Seaside Elks Lodge presented a check
of $2,000 to the South County Food Bank last
week thanks to a grant from the Elks National
Foundation.
The grant will help the food bank purchase needed
food items to feed local families.
Paws ’N Action club
competes at dog show
the Top Junior Handler for Rally
and placed third overall in the
class with adults. This was Sch-
link’s fi rst time at an AKC dog
show.
Samantha Carlisle picked up
her second qualifying leg toward
Rally Nationals with a score of
95 as well as gaining another
leg in Novice Obedience (which
required off -lead healing).
The Astorian
Paws ’N Action 4-H dog club
members competed in the AKC
venue in Enumclaw, Washing-
ton, at one of the largest dog
shows in the Pacifi c Northwest.
Jeremiah Schlink received
qualifying legs in Beginner
Novice Obedience and Novice
Rally. Schlink was also awarded
Members of the Paws ’N Action 4-H dog club
recently competed at a dog show in Washington.
Fort Stevens holds Fun at the Fort event
to 3 p.m.
All are welcome. The event
will take place at the historic area
of the park, with a bubble sta-
tion, disc golf, corn hole, arts and
The Astorian
Fort Stevens State Park is hold-
ing its third annual Fun at the Fort
Saturday and Sunday from noon
crafts, and a $1 barbecue lunch
(including a hot dog, chips and a
drink).
The event is sponsored by the
Friends of Old Fort Stevens.
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — The
U.S. Department of Energy
recently announced a new kind of
climate observatory near the head-
waters of the Colorado River that
will help scientists better predict
rain and snowfall in the U.S. West
and determine how much of it will
fl ow through the region.
The
multimillion-dollar
eff ort led by Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory launches this
week. The team has set up radar
systems, balloons, cameras and
other equipment in an area of Col-
orado where much of the water in
the river originates as snow. More
than 40 million people depend on
the Colorado River.
Alejandro Flores, an asso-
ciate professor of hydrology at
Boise State University, said the
weather in mountainous areas is
notoriously diffi cult to model and
the observatory will be a “game
changer.”
“We have to think about the
land and the atmosphere as a
linked system that interact with
each other,” he said. “Up until
now, there have been a lack of
observations that help us under-
stand this critical interface.”
The West is in the midst of a
more than 20-year megadrought
that studies link to human-caused
climate change. That, along with
increased demand on the Colorado
River led to the fi rst-ever shortage
declaration last month, and there’s
an increasing threat of deeper,
more widespread water cuts. Ari-
zona, Nevada and Mexico won’t
get their full allocations of river
water next year.
Scientists will use the obser-
vatory to gather data on precip-
itation, wind, clouds, tiny parti-
cles, humidity, soil moisture and
other things. Along with a bet-
ter understanding of the hydrol-
ogy, they hope to learn more about
how wildfi res, forest management,
drought and tree-killing bugs, for
example, play a part in water
availability.
A big issue in predicting
water supply in the West cen-
ters on soil moisture and con-
tent, said Ken Williams, the lead
on-site researcher and Berkeley
Lab scientist. The monsoon sea-
son largely was a dud across the
Southwest for the past two years,
which means more melting snow
soaks into the ground before
reaching streams and rivers when
it does rain, he said.
Climate experts said during
a separate briefi ng Aug. 24 that
southern Arizona and parts of
New Mexico have seen impres-
sive rainfall totals so far this mon-
soon season, with Tucson marking
its wettest July on record. Mike
Crimmins, a professor at the Uni-
versity of Arizona, called it an
“amazing reversal” for the desert
city.
Some parts of the Southwest
have seen as much as four times
their normal precipitation levels.
But Crimmins noted other spots
like Albuquerque, New Mexico,
are either at average levels or still
lagging.
“We have both really wet con-
ditions for the short term, but we
also have longer-term drought still
hanging out there because we have
these longer-term defi cits that we
cannot solve with just one or two
or even three months of precipita-
tion,” he said.
To reverse the longer-term
trends, the region would need to
see back-to-back wet winters and
summers that are hard to come by,
Crimmins said.
The new climate observatory,
called the Surface Atmosphere
Integrated Field Laboratory, brings
together federal scientists, univer-
sity researchers and others to build
on a previous eff ort to study part
of the upper Gunnison River basin
in Colorado that shares character-
istics with the Rocky Mountains.
For the Rio Grande basin, the
data could help water managers
as they juggle longstanding water
sharing agreements among Col-
orado, New Mexico, Texas and
Mexico, Williams said. It also
could help improve weather fore-
casting and experiments to modify
the weather, such as cloud seeding
to produce more precipitation.
The data will be available to
other researchers and provide
a benchmark for any collection
beyond the two-year project, sci-
entists said.
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