Leonardo DiCaprio Instagram – Repost from @nowthisearth • A new analysis published in the journal Water Resources Research found that the Colorado River system lost 40 trillion liters (10 trillion gallons) of water between 2000 and 2021 as the result of the human-caused climate crisis dating back to the 1880s. Due to higher temperatures, the snowpack that feeds the system is drying up. Under present-day weather conditions, the Colorado River basin has approx 10% less water available than it would in a world without greenhouse gas emissions. The Colorado River Basin provides water to more than 40 million people. Although recent winter storms across the West replenished many reservoirs, from 2000 to 2021, the region had been in the worst ‘mega drought’ in at least 1,200 years. Arizona, California, and Nevada reached an agreement in May to stop using as much of the river’s water. ‘Going into the future, we may get some natural variability, wet or dry swings, but this study highlights that there’s been a decreasing trend in runoff,’ said Benjamin Bass, lead author of the study, to the Guardian. ‘In the long run, that’s likely to continue if greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced.’