Human-Induced Changes in the Hydrology of the Western United States. "The Montana water supply is in trouble!"

Observations have shown the hydrological cycle of the
western U.S. changed significantly over the last half of the
twentieth century.

Here we present a regional,
multivariable climate-change detection and attribution
study, using a high-resolution hydrologic model forced by
global climate models, focusing on the changes that have
already affected this primarily arid region with a large
and growing population. The results show up to 60% of
the climate related trends of river flow, winter air
temperature and snow pack between 1950-1999 are
human-induced.

These results are robust to perturbation
of study variates and methods. They portend, in
conjunction with previous work, a coming crisis in water
supply for the western United States.

Full Report: http://www.matr.net/files/Science-20Western20Water1.pdf

(Many thanks to Steven Running for passing this along. You can hear an interview on climate change with Dr. Running here. http://matr.net/article-27819.html

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Montana Chamber Climate Change Conference Registration, Billings-3/19/08 http://www.montanachamber.net/admin/sites/513/filelib//Climate%20Change%20Conference%20_2_.pdf