… Evaporation is the natural process of liquid water turning into water vapor. As Colorado and Western states heat up, more water evaporates into the atmosphere, leaving less for irrigation and drinking water supplies. It’s a vicious feedback loop: Warmer, drier air triggers more evaporation, which creates warmer air, and so on. Evaporation is a big deal because it eats into our declining water supply, at a time when the entire West is in a record mega-drought. The problem is that the tools historically used to measure evaporation are stuck in the 1900s. “Better understanding [evaporation] as a whole, and how it varies in time and space, is a key need on the Colorado,” said the Desert Research Institute’s Chris Pearson, who studies high-tech techniques to measure evaporation.

Other science/water news releases:

• U.S. Bureau of Reclamation: Reclamation awards $4.2M for science and technology innovations​
• Argonne National Laboratory: New technologies are emerging that can convert CO2 into fuel, but what impact will they have on water resources?