Lake Mead - courtesy of Dr. Ken Dewey, Applied Climate Sciences, School of Natural Resources, University of Nebraska, Lincoln

Lake Mead could be dry by 2021

There is a 50 percent chance Lake Mead, a key source of water for millions of people in the southwestern United States, will be dry by 2021, according to researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

Without Lake Mead and neighboring Lake Powell, the Colorado River system has no buffer to sustain the population of the Southwest through an unusually dry year or a sustained drought. Marine physicist Tim Barnett and climate scientist David Pierce concluded that human demand, natural forces like evaporation, and human-induced climate change are creating a net deficit of nearly 1 million acre-feet of water per year from the Colorado River system. This amount of water can supply roughly 8 million people.

The researchers estimated that there is a 10 percent chance that Lake Mead could be dry by 2014. They further predict that there is a 50 percent chance that reservoir levels will drop too low to allow hydroelectric power generation by 2017.

The researchers add that even if water agencies follow their current drought contingency plans, it might not be enough to counter natural forces, especially if the region enters a period of sustained drought and/or human-induced climate changes occur as currently predicted.

To obtain an e-mail copy of the paper, contact: pweiss@agu.org