Newswise — Todd Walter, director of the New York State Water Resources Institute at Cornell University, is a professor of biological and environmental engineering who focuses on the interactions between local waterways, watersheds and ecosystems. Walter, also a fellow at Cornell’s Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future, explains why many Central New Yorkers are encountering diminished regional streams this summer.

Bio: https://bee.cals.cornell.edu/people/m-todd-walter

Walter says:

“Until recently, I had been fairly confident that low-flow conditions on local streams were due to a lack of snowpack that would normally have recharged our groundwater. But simulations run by James Knighton, a Ph.D. student in our Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering, show that current low flows can be attributed to the prolonged lack of significant rain, rather than the lack of our usual snowy winter weather.

“In fact, according to Art DeGaetano, director of the Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell, rainfall from March through June of this year is the lowest on record. The winter precipitation was also low, about 75 percent of normal.

“The situation can only get better through the recharging of the groundwater. That will require a period of sustained rainfall as the soil needs to be nearly saturated before water starts leaking out of the root zone into the groundwater. Big rainfalls would help some, but usually these types of events bring too much rain too quickly so that additional water will run off into the streams providing short-term high flows – or even flooding – without necessarily recharging the groundwater.”

“It is difficult, if not impossible, to attribute any one season’s weather to climate change. What we can say is that climate change is setting-up conditions that will make events like this past winter more likely.”

Cornell University has television, ISDN and dedicated Skype/Google+ Hangout studios available for media interviews.- 30 -