A team of scientists at Utah State University has developed a new tool to forecast drought and water flow in the Colorado River several years in advance. Although the river's headwaters are in landlocked Wyoming and Colorado, water levels are linked to sea surface temperatures in parts of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans and the water's long-term ocean memory. The group's paper, "Colorado River water supply is predictable on multi-year timescales owning to long-term ocean memory" was published October 9 by Communications Earth and Environment, an open-access journal from Nature.
source https://phys.org/news/2020-10-colorado-river-long-term-ocean-memory.html