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"Climate change is going to have a big effect on the availability of water in this part of the country, said Doug Kluck, the central region’s climate services director for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He said swings between weather extremes will exacerbate man-made issues that are already in play, like increasing demand from growing communities.

“You're talking about longer periods of drought with more heavy rainfall events kind of stuck in between that don't help as much when it comes to needs,” Kluck said.

Pouring rain isn’t as helpful for recharging soil and groundwater in a drought as slow, steady rainfall. But Kluck said beneficial, orderly precipitation is already shown to be happening less over time.

“So, ‘when it rains, it pours,’ is becoming more the norm, as opposed to the exception,” Kluck said.

On top of drought, Kluck said climate change is messing with the timing and amount of snowmelt that feeds rivers like the Missouri in the middle of the country. The 2,300-mile Missouri River starts in the mountains of southwestern Montana and is fed at first by snow, before taking on water from tributaries that look like a vascular system throughout its basin on the way to St. Louis.

And some research has shown the line that marks the start of the arid west might already be moving east as the climate changes.

As humans increase the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, further warming the planet, these changes could intensify, which Kluck thinks could, unfortunately, make lawsuits over water more likely.

“Whiskey is for drinking, water's for fighting,” Kluck said. “It's an old term, and there's good reason people have said it for years and years and years”...