By Troy Albert Schulz, Zenger News

A record hot summer has laid bare a stark new reality for many states on America’s West Coast: Amid rising temperatures and worsening droughts, many will need to systematically rethink the way they manage limited water supplies.

“One of the problems with rising temperatures is how it’s going to affect water management,” said Washington state’s official climatologist, Nicholas Bond. “Simply from an agricultural point of view, generally when it is warmer, the demands of crops for water goes up. At higher temperatures, crops need more to be able to thrive.”

Bond told Zenger that rising temperatures were impacting year-round water supply levels by melting the state’s mountain snowpack earlier than in past years.

“There may be the same amount of precipitation [in a given year], but more of it is falling as rain rather than snow,” he said. “The water that would normally be collected uphill just melts and flows down earlier and lower. That means we don’t have as much water in that snowpack bank to get us through the dry season.”

“It’s a bad trend is because it’s virtually certain to continue.”

Record heatwaves have exacerbated existing water shortages in other west coast states like California, which has suffered from worsening droughts for years. Nine Western states are now entirely in drought conditions, with much of California labeled “Extreme” or “Exceptional Drought,” according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s report for June also notes “all-time high temperature records” being broken as well as below-average precipitation — both of which present grim possibilities for the short and long term.

“We’re both getting drier and warmer, over the last few decades, Washington has been getting only about two-thirds of the [summer precipitation] that it should be getting,” said Bond, adding that other states had far more “disturbing” declines.