Climate experts recommend Arizona drought declarations stay in effect
Joe Duhownik
PHOENIX (CN) — Following the Copper State’s hottest summer in modern history, climate experts agreed Monday to recommend the Arizona governor maintain current drought emergency declarations for the foreseeable future.
Members of Arizona’s Drought Interagency Coordinating Group forecasted more hot and dry conditions looming based on recent climate patterns across the Southwest and the onset of a La Niña that typically coincides with Arizona’s warmest winters.
La Niña, a climate pattern triggered by cooling surface temperatures on the equatorial Pacific, brings warm dry air to Arizona every 2-5 years. Of the last six La Niña winters, four were warmer and drier than average across the state.
“The magnitude of dryness is overwhelming on many of these,” National Weather Service meteorologist Mark O’Malley said in an Interagency Coordinating Group meeting Monday morning in Phoenix. “I would be planning on a drier than normal winter coming up.”
Following one of the driest monsoons in modern history, Arizona’s drought conditions aren’t fairing well heading into a winter that likely won’t make up for it. Not only was September 2024 the hottest September in Arizona history, state climatologist Erin Saffell reported in Monday’s meeting, but the late heat wave Arizona endured from Sept. 24 to Oct. 14 was the longest record-breaking heat wave in U.S. history, she said.
O’Malley added that this past month was the driest October in history across the entire Southwest.
Because of the dismal outlook, the Interagency Coordinating Group, led by Arizona Department of Water Resources Director Tom Buschatzke, faced no objection from group members or members of the public in recommending the continuation of two drought action plans, one of which has been in effect for 25 years.
“The trends are definitely going in a hot and dry direction,” Buschatzke said. “We can’t expect much of a turnaround on where this drought is going.”
Republican Governor Jane Hull first declared a drought emergency in 1999, activating the state Emergency Response and Recovery Plan and invoking state statute to provide mutual aid to areas of the state impacted by drought.
Eight years later, Republican Governor Janet Napolitano entered Arizona into a new drought declaration continuing the terms of the first in addition to requesting assistance from federal disaster programs, ordering state agencies to implement waste water reduction plans, urging water facilities to conserve and monitor use and calling on individuals, businesses schools and agencies to increase conservation efforts.
The Interagency Coordinating Group will submit a letter to current Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs by Dec. 5, and she will have until Jan. 1, 2025 to act.
While the state declared a drought emergency in 1999, precipitation data shows the state has been in a drought since 1994. In the last 35 years, Saffell said, at least 21 have been drier than average.
Despite what some believed about the unusually wet winter of 2023, one good year of rainfall won’t put an end to the dry spell.
“Drought didn’t happen overnight. The rebound wouldn’t happen overnight as well,” Arizona Game and Fish Department Marketing Manager Brittany Kearney said Monday.
Kearney said the department is spending millions annually to haul water to affected areas densely populated by wildlife. Not only does long term drought impact human health, but its effect on the state’s diverse wildlife populations becomes clearer each year.
“We’re talking about a bigger fight for survival,” Kearney said. “The amount of water on the landscape is really critical to these wildlife species.”
Kearney said lower water levels mean animals will congregate in larger groups to find what streams are still flowing, increasing chances of predation and spread of disease. She keyed in on the endangered Sonoran Desert Tortoise as an example. When local vegetation retains less moisture, the tortoise consumes less water through its food source. As water sources dry up, it travels further and further for a drink, increasing the odds that it wanders into human developed areas.
While water hauling has helped certain species, the department is looking to increase the landscape’s resilience and decrease its reliance on human assistance. It has implemented satellite sensors and rain gauges to actively monitor which reservoirs need more water and when.
A drier landscape also naturally brings more fires. More than 2,000 individual fires burned across Arizona this year, ravaging more than 277,000 acres of land — nearly equal to the amount of land burned in the last two years combined, Saffell said.
This year’s hot and dry autumn months extended the fire season through October, Forestry and Fires Management spokesperson Tiffany Davila told the group. And because June will see greater highs in 2025 than it did this year, fires will likely start burning earlier in the year, she warned.