The main purpose of this project was illustrated in Figure 1 of the original proposal, which is copied here. In that figure, the projection of water supply for the Colorado River in the 21st century is frequently portrayed as a ‘smeared future’, confused by large uncertainties in the output from the CMIP5 model ensembles (Colorado River Basin Water Supply and Demand Study released by the Bureau of Reclamation in January 2013). As shown in Figure 1, this uncertain, smeared future projection of water supply has clouded water management options, especially in planning for the next decade. By conducting the proposed research as described in the previous quarterly reports, as well as listed in this final report, we are now able to apply two means of climatic data sources to build a prediction model for the water supply; i.e. we will be able to predict the water supply (which ended in 2012 in Figure 1) out to 8 years in advance. This not only extends the record for the estimation of the recent (2013-2015) water supply, but also predicts for the next 5 years.
