TREE RINGS PROVIDE INSIGHT INTO COLORADO'S DROUGHT,
NOAA ANNOUNCES
Old trees in Colorado are providing new insight into drought conditions and
helping water management agencies to plan for the future, according to Connie
Woodhouse, a scientist with the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Paleoclimatology Program.
Woodhouse presented the results of a study at the annual meeting of the
American Meteorological Society in Long Beach, Calif., on February 11.
Extended records from tree-ring data, which can be used to reconstruct past
hydroclimatic conditions, provide a longer context from which to assess the 2002
drought and other 20th century droughts. Over the past year, NOAA has formed
working partnerships with a variety of Front Range water management agencies who
have expressed interest in incorporating tree-ring reconstructed flow records in their
planning. These include Denver Water and the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy
District, several municipalities (Boulder, Westminster, Longmont), and a large private
company (Coors Brewing Company), as well as several consulting firms.
Of immediate interest to water management agencies is the assessment of the
unusualness of the 2002 drought, as well as information for managing possible
continuing drought conditions. "The tree-ring reconstructions of streamflow can provide
a 300-500 year context for assessing the frequency of a 2002-magnitude drought,"
Woodhouse said.
"Analyses of streamflow reconstructions for the Upper Colorado and South Platte
River watersheds suggest that the severity of the 2002-year drought has been matched
or exceeded about five times in the past three centuries," Woodhouse said. "When
considered as a three-year drought (2000-2002), this event is much less rare."
The NOAA Paleoclimatology Program is part of the NOAA National
Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NOAA Satellites and
Information), the nation's primary source of space-based meteorological and climate
data. NOAA Satellites and Information operates the nation's environmental satellites,
which are used for weather forecasting, climate monitoring and other environmental
applications such as fire detection, ozone monitoring and sea surface temperature
measurements.
NOAA Satellites and Information also operates three data centers, which house
global data bases in climatology, oceanography, solid earth geophysics, marine geology
and geophysics, solar-terrestrial physics and paleoclimatology. To learn more about
NOAA Satellites and Information, please visit
http://ng.nesdis.noaa.gov.
The Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA) is dedicated to enhancing economic security and national safety through the
prediction and research of weather and climate-related events and providing
environmental stewardship of our nation's coastal and marine resources. To learn
more about NOAA, please visit
http://www.noaa.gov.
