Opinion: Drought, heat waves and fires come to New Mexico with the warming climate

Here in New Mexico, our growing season has lengthened since the 1970s, even as stream flows have decreased. Fire season starts earlier, lasts longer, and in some years, ignites the forests into record-breaking blazes, like the gargantuan Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon and Black fires in 2022.

If you look at the last century in New Mexico, stretches of higher temperatures have lengthened; heat waves are hotter and nights, consistently warmer.

Rising heat and expanding aridity harm ecosystems and wildlife, and hotter days are dangerous for anyone outside, especially people working outdoors or without housing or access to cool spaces. Extreme heat even interacts with certain medications people need for their physical and mental health.

It should be no surprise that we’re facing another crackly-dry spring, summer, and fall. Fans watching the March 2 Oscars on Albuquerque TV saw flashing red-flag fire warnings. The next day, high winds and dust storms blasted the state; near Deming, a haboob of fast-moving dust shut down highways.

As of early March, 92% of New Mexico was experiencing drought, with almost 30% of the state in severe to extreme drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

Arizona is in even worse shape: 100% of the state is in drought, with 87% in severe to exceptional drought. And the interior West’s three-month outlook is for warm, dry conditions — especially in Arizona and New Mexico.

Here in New Mexico, the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District — which supplies water for farms — is warning runoff season will be short and river flows, low. The district’s leaders are urging farmers to plan for extended periods between irrigation deliveries and say that without summertime monsoons, they will not meet everyone’s needs this year.

During the 1900s — including during the infamous 1950s drought and earlier in this century — farmers could often still expect full water allocations in a dry year.

Now, when farmers don’t receive water — and the Rio Grande dries for long stretches — it’s not only because there isn’t enough snow melting off the mountains. It’s also because consistently dry soils suck up any moisture, making both forests and croplands thirstier.

Not only that, but decades of persistent drought and warming temperatures have desiccated reservoirs along the Rio Grande and its tributary, the Chama River.

On the Chama River, Heron Reservoir is 14% full; its neighbors, El Vado and Abiquiu, are at 14% and 51%, respectively. Further down the watershed, on the Rio Grande in southern New Mexico, Elephant Butte Reservoir is only 13 percent full, and its neighbor, Caballo, nine percent full.

In New Mexico, some water users, including the irrigation district, rely on water piped from the Colorado River watershed into the Chama and then the Rio Grande. This year, most of that supplemental water won’t be there.

The view upstream on both watersheds is also troubling, especially in Arizona, New Mexico and southern Utah where the snowpack is “below to well-below median.” Last month, the Colorado River’s two largest reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, were 34% full, the lowest they’d been in early February for the last 30 years of records.

I’m alarmed by many things happening right now, including the disappearance of climate data from federal websites and the gutting of federal workforces and budgets. We need wildland firefighters, scientists, and the staffers who keep our parks and public lands functioning.

But as a reporter who has covered climate change and its impacts in my state for more than two decades, I take the long view along with a local view.

We have known for decades that the planet is steadily warming and that the impacts of climate change would intensify. And we must resist focusing solely on the current chaos of the federal government.

There’s never been a better time to become immersed in local politics, to organize, and to hold state and local leaders accountable for action on climate.

We can collaborate on local solutions and work together to better deal with the crises we face. Really, we have no choice.

Laura Paskus is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about Western issues She is longtime reporter based in Albuquerque and the author of At the Precipice: New Mexico’s Changing Climate and Water Bodies.

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