Thread by @chriscmooney

1. Tucked into this week’s @IPCC_CH report about the changing of the world’s ice regions, it turns out, is a troubling finding about the consequences for some types of farming. report.ipcc.ch/srocc/pdf/SROC…

2. Specifically, the report says that the shrinking of snowpack and glaciers could have big consequences for “irrigated agriculture in and downstream of high-mountain areas,” where water supplies and reservoirs could be threatened. report.ipcc.ch/srocc/pdf/SROC…

3. We have such regions in the southwestern United States.

4. And in a just released new episode of our “Gone in a Generation” series, we visit one of them – southern New Mexico, where farming depends on the Rio Grande, which, in turn, depends on mountain snowpack in the southern Rockies and northern NM.
washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/…

5. I traveled to the Mesilla Valley in southern NM earlier this year with @ZoeannMurphy for this episode, where we met with farmers – especially pecan farmers -- and water experts. This is what the Rio Grande looked like then. (It has more water in it now.)

6. The region has been in a lengthy drought, and at this point, there are reasons to think that this is more than just part of a natural cycle -- that there’s a key contribution from climate change.

7. To be sure, there have been major droughts before in this area, before the climate’s warming was so acute – particularly in the 1950s.

8. Precipitation levels in the current drought actually aren’t as low as they were back then. But what’s different today is the temperature. New Mexico has seen rapid warming in the last 50 years or so – and that shrinks mountain snowpack and increases evaporation.

9. Or as a group of NM climate and water experts recently put it: “Higher temperatures, especially in the late winter and spring snowmelt runoff season, lead to early snowmelt and increased evaporation rates that diminish the total volume of snowmelt runoff in major rivers….”

10. “Because of this temperature effect, it is likely that streamflows in major snow-fed rivers will decline in coming decades even after the demise of the current drought.” nmwaterconference.nmwrri.nmsu.edu/2014/wp-conten…

11. Farming in this region depends on the river, especially for pecan orchards, which need a lot of water.

12. When the river can’t deliver it, farmers turn to groundwater and pump it out of the Earth – but the groundwater, too, is ultimately connected to the river.

13. As the drought advanced, Texas actually sued New Mexico over groundwater withdrawals affecting the Rio Grande, and the case is currently before the Supreme Court.

14. So that gives you some sense of the stakes here and the kinds of conflicts the world could experience more broadly in arid regions, as climate change alters rivers that are fed by mountain snowpack.

15. We met with several farmers in the Mesilla Valley, two of whom we feature in the episode.

16. Laura Harper is an organic pecan farmer who is already convinced that climate change is taking its toll in the region.

17. But other farmers are less sure. They remember the droughts of the 50s. They talk of natural cycles.

18. Jay Hill is a highly successful farmer who manages thousands of acres in New Mexico and Texas.

He is pragmatic about things.

19. If climate change is playing a big role, he says, then the answer is better water conserving technology. And he showed us some pretty impressive work using drip agriculture to grow onions in very dry sand without using much water.

20. The farmers of southern New Mexico are innovative, adaptable – and wealthy compared with farmers in other regions that will face similar problems as climate change advances. To some extent they will indeed be able to find solutions in a water-challenged future.

21. Groundwater pumping is one of them and in 2017, despite the drought, the pecan haul set a record in New Mexico.

Drip irrigation is another.

22. So southern New Mexico farming is not on the brink of crisis or anything like that – but you could say that it is already beginning a process of adaptation.

23. And that includes higher bills for energy when farmers have to operate their groundwater wells -- and so smaller profits. And it may include getting used to a new legal regime governing how water will be allocated across the region (i.e. the Supreme Court case).

24. But what happens if the warming just keeps on coming – and currently, that is precisely what it is set to do?

25. Maybe it’s adapt, adapt, adapt – or maybe it is tougher than that.

26. We include in the piece a quotation from climate scientist @GreatLakesPeck: “They’re talking about getting by with less water, and ignoring the fact that it’s less and less and less as long as it gets warmer and warmer and warmer.”

26. So that is the challenge – and the tension -- at the heart of our story and in this region.

27. And I would invite you to check out our episode, complete with amazing footage from @ZoeannMurphy, here
washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/… /end