According to frightening new reports, less runoff from snow and rain that usually strengthen the 1,400-mile river caused by human-induced climate change could mean that by 2050 the Colorado River won’t be able to provide all of its allocated water 60 percent to 90 percent of the time, according to two climate researchers at University of California at San Diego.

The more dry the landscape becomes, the more difficult the choices will be for those who rely on the Colorado river’s water and those in charge of allotting it’s resources.

”The dry year scenarios in the future are going to be absolutely brutal,” said Tim Barnett, lead author of the study.

Barnett and scientist David Pierce shocked people last year with a study saying there’s a 50 percent chance that Lake Mead, the reservoir created by the Hoover Dam, could run dry by 2021.

They teamed up again on this latest study of the Colorado River to predict how the river will react under different climate scenarios, predicting 10 percent to 30 percent reductions in runoff will be unable to fully meet all of the demands put on it. Decreases in runoff could short the Colorado River by about 400,000 acre feet of water 40 percent of the time by 2025. That’s equivalent to the amount of water needed to supply 400,000 to 800,000 households.

The results were published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.