Back in August, the USGS released a study on the "Trends in Annual, Seasonal, and Monthly Streamflow Characteristics at 227 Streamgages in the Missouri River Watershed, Water Years 1960-2011."  The Los Angeles Times wrote a story about the report. The headline of the LA Times piece is "Climate change reflected in altered Missouri River flow, report says." Sounds fascinating, given how this is what the USGS report itself said specifically about climate change and any trends the study found for flows in the Missouri River watershed: This study did not examine forcing factors that may explain the observed streamflow trends, such as climate change, climate variability, land- and water-use changes, or groundwater pumping. Seems to be a disconnect between what the source report examined and concluded and what appears in this LA Times article. But even one of the authors of the report itself played up the climate change impacts when quoted by the...(Read Full Post)