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New water website to check out, plus: Is air pollution reducing California’s water supply?

Posted by: Maven on May 30, 2009 at 8:19 am

The U.C. San Diego Newsroom has created a website called Water Shortages: The New Normal. The webpage features stories & other resources on water issues, including this story from last month on how air pollution may be affecting California’s water supply:

The Sierra Nevada snowpack that supplies more than 30 million Californians with their water has shown a steady decline over the past century, possibly in part because of the state’s air pollution.

But as drought preparations ramp up across the state, researchers are attempting to verify this hypothesis by analyzing the particles in air pollution and precipitation that descend on the Sierra mountain range. A team including scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego took an unprecedented look in late February and early March at a snowstorm and the chemistry that influenced it in the first of several field studies that will take place where Interstate 80 runs through the Sierras.

“The exciting thing for us is to be able to make coupled aerosol chemistry and state-of-the-art meteorological measurements which should allow us to be better understand the types of air pollution that are impacting cloud and precipitation processes,” said Scripps atmospheric chemistry Professor Kim Prather, who also holds an appointment at UCSD’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Prather is a co-investigator of the CalWater project funded by the California Energy Commission.

Read more from Explorations, an emagazine from Scripps Institution of Oceanography by clicking here. Check out the U.C. San Diego Newsroom webpage, Water Shortage – The New Normal, by clicking here. Hat tip to George for the link!

May 30, 2009 · Filed Under Storage and supply

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