Western USA drought worst in modern era

[WetEV]

I think "the peoples view" doesnt matter, since the science is settled on this.
The problem is that this time around, the predictions take longer time to be noticeable than your average guys memory (< 2 years I think....).
I agree though, that singular events are difficult, especially when we talk about trends. And also , because there is observer bias, i.e. events contrary to ones per-formed hypothesis get ignored and those in favor are amplified, in ones perception.
But that does not change the scientific facts, established on trends, not single events, one bit.

"The people's view" matters a lot. That is how change can happen in a non-totalitarian state. Even in a totalitarian state, "the people's view" must be carefully considered by the ruler, if the ruler wants to stay the ruler for long.

Yet still, a vote to stop the tide from coming in isn't going to matter to the tide one whit.

Humans can deal with issues that happen today or tomorrow fairly easily. We are wired to react to such threats. Next month, not quite so easy, look at all the people spending their last dollar a few days before the next paycheck. Next year is a little harder. Next decade is much harder, look at the state of the average 55 year old's retirement accounts. A threat that is a couple of generations away is going to be very hard for humans to respond to. My parents, both near 80 years old, will very likely never see enough climate change to matter in what remains in their lifetime. My twenty something children are only a little more likely to see climate change large enough to have a significant effect on their lives. My great great great grandchildren (hypothetical), on the other hand, will live in a very different climate, and will likely see major climate change problems if a major reduction in CO2 release doesn't happen before they are born.

 

[klapauzius]

"The people's view" matters a lot. That is how change can happen in a non-totalitarian state. Even in a totalitarian state, "the people's view" must be carefully considered by the ruler, if the ruler wants to stay the ruler for long.

Yet still, a vote to stop the tide from coming in isn't going to matter to the tide one whit.

Humans can deal with issues that happen today or tomorrow fairly easily. We are wired to react to such threats. Next month, not quite so easy, look at all the people spending their last dollar a few days before the next paycheck. Next year is a little harder. Next decade is much harder, look at the state of the average 55 year old's retirement accounts. A threat that is a couple of generations away is going to be very hard for humans to respond to. My parents, both near 80 years old, will very likely never see enough climate change to matter in what remains in their lifetime. My twenty something children are only a little more likely to see climate change large enough to have a significant effect on their lives. My great great great grandchildren (hypothetical), on the other hand, will live in a very different climate, and will likely see major climate change problems if a major reduction in CO2 release doesn't happen before they are born.

You are right, as far as we need everyone to be on board to mitigate the problem. On the other hand, in matters like these, the facts are already established by the experts. Now we need the people to decide what they want to do about it. But instead, the "people" still feel entitled to debate the science and facts.

 

[Weatherman]

You are right, as far as we need everyone to be on board to mitigate the problem. On the other hand, in matters like these, the facts are already established by the experts. Now we need the people to decide what they want to do about it. But instead, the "people" still feel entitled to debate the science and facts.

The problem is that, even though there's a consensus that atmospheric CO2 levels are rising and CO2 absorbs more heat, what it, specifically, means for the weather Debbie and Don Farmer in Des Moines, IA will experience isn't very clear. This isn't simple, like the CFC debate (lower ozone = more UV radiation = more sunburn and skin cancer). When the climate changes, there are going to be winners, there are going to be losers, and people, generally, only think "how will it affect me?" Without a specific answer, they are just going to go about their business.

 

[LTLFTcomposite]

My concern (dare I say prediction) with CO2 is that it starts out with winners and losers, then progresses to all losers.

 

[smkettner]

When we are down to our last 200,000,000 people on earth and the CO2 starts to swing back I bet there will be plenty that predict a cooling planet is going to be a disaster.

 

[WetEV]

The problem is that, even though there's a consensus that atmospheric CO2 levels are rising and CO2 absorbs more heat, what it, specifically, means for the weather Debbie and Don Farmer in Des Moines, IA will experience isn't very clear. This isn't simple, like the CFC debate (lower ozone = more UV radiation = more sunburn and skin cancer). When the climate changes, there are going to be winners, there are going to be losers, and people, generally, only think "how will it affect me?" Without a specific answer, they are just going to go about their business.

The consensus is that each doubling of CO2 will increase global temperature about 3C over 100 years (the "Charney sensitivity") or 5.4F if we are talking to Debbie and Don Farmer. Somewhat more (4 to 5C) on a longer time period(1000's of years), but this is all well beyond a human lifespan.

The consensus is that there is enough fossil fuels to double CO2 more than 4 times and more than 5 times if we include the release of carbon from things like frozen soils and methane clathrates.

The consensus is that the relative humidity will stay about the same, so the dew point will track temperatures.

If there is nothing special about Iowa, then the muggy hot summer days would have a dew point of about 100F. There is a simple world for that. Lethal.

http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/psr/general/safety/heat/heatindex.png" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

At the level of burning all the fossil fuels, there would be very few winners.

Yet you have a very valid point, in that 1C of warming which we now see is fairly subtle in impact on most people. Even a doubling of CO2 might end up with as many winners as losers... Maybe. And the cost is now, while the harm avoided is decades into the future.

The key point is that we need to stop burning fossil fuels long before they are gone.

 

[Weatherman]

The consensus is that the relative humidity will stay about the same, so the dew point will track temperatures.

If there is nothing special about Iowa, then the muggy hot summer days would have a dew point of about 100F. There is a simple world for that. Lethal.

Actually, there is no consensus on this one. It's why the debate on specifics continues.

(btw, a dewpoint of 100F is extremely unlikely. Even the wettest, hottest, rainiest tropical environment we have on the planet, today, has dewpoints in the 80s, at most. Unless the midwest turns into a new tropical rain forest, they won't seen dewpoints anywhere near 100F.)

 

[AndyH]

You forgot Glenn Beck

A lot of people are making a good living working one side of the debate or the other. Some even get trips to Breckenridge.

25 years ago we were being told that in 25 years we were all going to die of skin cancer from freon. Predictions of doom can be counterproductive to raising awareness when they fail to materialize.

I could infer from your post that you think that this didn't happen? Oh, wait, of course it didn't because you seriously stretched the truth by saying "we're all gonna die".

You should take a trip to the Srn Hemisphere. You know, the place where the ozone hole is still floating overhead, and where school kids have to monitor their outside time to manage the increased cancer risk - and will have to until about 2060.

The only reason more people aren't affected is because the Montreal Protocol that banned widespread CFC use was one of the more effective environmental regulations. It took a LOT of work, but finally governments listened.

Unfortunately, people that believe as you do are keeping us from having the same success with climate change treaties and progress. Congrats.


edit...I see Klap already covered this. Ignore the words and look at the picture, I guess.

 

[klapauzius]

Actually, there is no consensus on this one. It's why the debate on specifics continues.

(btw, a dewpoint of 100F is extremely unlikely. Even the wettest, hottest, rainiest tropical environment we have on the planet, today, has dewpoints in the 80s, at most. Unless the midwest turns into a new tropical rain forest, they won't seen dewpoints anywhere near 100F.)

We have become so risk averse in many aspects of our lives...Curious what would be a good reason NOT to act on this risk, even if you believe it is just a faint possibility, not actual reality?

Compare that e.g. to the searches at airports we suffer these days.
Do you think the risk of AGW becoming an unpleasant reality is e.g. higher or lower than a terror attack on an airplane?

On the other hand, premature death by cancer, stroke or heart attack is a real risk for many people, yet they do nothing to avoid it. Even worse, they deny it exists in the most irrational ways, just as with AGW -> We are doomed indeed.

The only difference: In health matters, the damage to others is small (it still costs you and me money if people die slowly and costly of known risk factors that werent properly attended to) and everyone suffers the consequences alone.

Not so here, we all go down together, whether we care or not. :evil:

 

[WetEV]

The consensus is that the relative humidity will stay about the same, so the dew point will track temperatures.

If there is nothing special about Iowa, then the muggy hot summer days would have a dew point of about 100F. There is a simple world for that. Lethal.

Actually, there is no consensus on this one. It's why the debate on specifics continues.

(btw, a dewpoint of 100F is extremely unlikely. Even the wettest, hottest, rainiest tropical environment we have on the planet, today, has dewpoints in the 80s, at most. Unless the midwest turns into a new tropical rain forest, they won't seen dewpoints anywhere near 100F.)

Today, yes, but not in the geologic past. Tropical rainforests reached beyond the Arctic Circle at several points in time. Just exactly why do you think the Midwest can't be a tropical rainforest, again? If there are alligators and palm trees living in Greenland, just how hot do you think Florida would be?

 

[Weatherman]

If there are alligators and palm trees living in Greenland, just how hot do you think Florida would be?

Assuming parts of it were still above water... probably not much different than it is, now. Being surrounded by warm ocean is a powerful moderating influence. Air temp is, rarely, more than ten to fifteen degrees above the water temperature. As soon as it get's hot, clouds form and it rains. Happens just about every day from April through October.

And yes, if we go out far enough in geologic time, mountains will rise and fall, glaciers will advance and retreat and grasslands will turn to forests and back again.

 

[WetEV]

If there are alligators and palm trees living in Greenland, just how hot do you think Florida would be?

Assuming parts of it were still above water... probably not much different than it is, now. Being surrounded by warm ocean is a powerful moderating influence. Air temp is, rarely, more than ten to fifteen degrees above the water temperature. As soon as it get's hot, clouds form and it rains. Happens just about every day from April through October.

And yes, if we go out far enough in geologic time, mountains will rise and fall, glaciers will advance and retreat and grasslands will turn to forests and back again.

Amusing. So you ASSUME that the ocean off Florida is always about the same temperature. Why? How hot would Florida be if the ocean was say, 6C warmer?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


How about during the recent ice maximum? Ocean off Florida was about 2 C cooler.

http://www.clim-past-discuss.net/8/5029/2012/cpd-8-5029-2012.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


What about during the warmer parts of geologic history?

There is a lot of evidence that ocean temperatures have varied over geologic time. The distribution of fossils provides clues to the past temperatures. Coral, for one, needs warm temperatures, but not too hot. 39C seems to be the upper limit. So let us go out to the North Pacific, and look at some dead coral reefs:

"The paradox of drowned carbonate platforms and the origin of Cretaceous Pacific guyots" Nature 392, 889-894 (30 April 1998)


The past might be stranger than you imagine.

"A Neoproterozoic Snowball Earth" Science Vol. 281 no. 5381 1342-1346 28 August 1998.

 

[Weatherman]

There seems to be an assumption that if you warm the mean, global temperature by 6C, all you have to do is take the air and water temperature graph at every location on the earth's surface and just shift it up by 6C.

I wish it was that simple. We could fire all the climate model developers right now, since we already have the answer.

Obviously, to get tropical forests in Greenland, you need to warm their mean temperature by far more than 6C. Therefore, to get a mean, global increase in temperature by 6C, there will have to be places, which warm up a lot less (like locations which already have a tropical climate, for example).

 

[WetEV]

If there are alligators and palm trees living in Greenland, just how hot do you think Florida would be?

... probably not much different than it is, now.

The tropical regions get more solar energy than they radiate. The polar regions get less solar energy than they radiate. For Greenland to be hot enough for alligators, the mid-latitudes and the equator must be far hotter.

As the climate warms, more heat is transported with water vapor, so the difference decreases some. To kill all types of coral takes over 39C. The equator was that hot for quite a bit of geologic history. [edit] Why? Simple, no coral fossils. Coral reefs moved through the equator by plate tectonics die as they move close to the equator. [/edit] So if the water is 39C, how hot would the land be?

 

[edatoakrun]

Back on-topic, after ~50 OFF-TOPIC POSTS, a scholarly comment pointing out the news media has actually underplayed the significance of this drought:

Why state’s water woes could be just beginning

By Steve Hockensmith, NewsCenter | January 21, 2014

BERKELEY —
As 2013 came to a close, the media dutifully reported that the year had been the driest in California since records began to be kept in the 1840s. UC Berkeley paleoclimatologist B. Lynn Ingram didn’t think the news stories captured the seriousness of the situation.

“This could potentially be the driest water year in 500 years,” says Ingram, a professor of earth and planetary science and geography.

Ingram has an especially long-term perspective. As a paleoclimatologist — a scientist who studies changes in climate by teasing data out of rocks, sediments, shells, microfossils, trees and other sources — she’s accustomed to looking back over eons. And according to the width of old tree rings (which can record the coming and going of wet or waterless stretches), California hasn’t been so parched since 1580.

“These extremely dry years are very rare,” she says.

But soon, perhaps, they won’t be as rare as they used to be. The state is facing its third drought year in a row, and Ingram wouldn’t be surprised if that dry stretch continues...

You mentioned global warming. Is what we’re seeing consistent with the predictions that have been made about how climate change could affect California?

"Yes. We’ve already started having a decreased snow pack and increased wild fire frequency. And we’ve been warming, and it’s gotten drier. With Pacific Decadal Oscillation [the ever-changing temperature of surface water in the North Pacific Ocean], every 20 or 30 years we go in and out of these positive and negative shifts that affect precipitation and temperature. But now we’re entering a period where it looks like we’re getting drier even though it doesn’t necessarily correspond to that cycle. It looks like a trend. It’s warming and drying, and that’s definitely a big concern for Western states."...

Unfortunately, the severe droughts we should (IMO) expect to increase in frequency and severity, will not protect California from the threat of catastrophic flooding, which may actually beome more likely as global heating accelerates:

...What’s an “atmospheric river”?

"That’s when corridors of moisture come up from the tropics, traveling across the Pacific Ocean for thousands of miles to the West Coast and bringing the equivalent of, say, 10 Mississippi Rivers of water. There’s a lot of rain within two or three days. Almost all of our major floods in California correspond to these atmospheric river storms. The last one that was really major was the 1861-62 flood. It completely filled the Central Valley with something like 10 feet of water. Sacramento was underwater.

We don’t know why, but we see evidence for these major mega-floods every one to two centuries over the past 2,000 years. It’s been about 150 years now since the last one, and now there are all these major cities in the very places that were submerged. The U.S. Geological Survey created a scenario for this — the ARkStorm, it was called — and it showed that if we repeated the 1861 flood there would be something like $725 billion in damage to the state. It would be a major disaster.

So on the one hand we should be worried about a drought, but on the other hand we should be worried about a flood?

Yes. If you look at the past, you realize that our climate is anything but reliable. We’ve seen these big fluctuations. Extreme droughts and extreme floods. My co-author and I wrote a couple review papers about that, but those weren’t going to be seen by the general public. They were for people in our field. And we thought we should try to bring this message out to the broader public. Because if you’re going to buy a house in the Central Valley, I think you should know about these floods. And we have to start assuming that we could go into one of these longer droughts and maybe start doing some serious conservation and rethinking of agriculture here.

If you look at the archaeological record, you see that the Native American population in the West expanded in the wet years that preceded those long droughts in the Medieval period. Then during the droughts, they were pretty much wiped out. There was the so-called Anasazi collapse in the Southwest about 800 years ago. In some ways, I see that as an analogy to us today. We’ve had this wetter 150 years and we’ve expanded. Now we’re using up all the available water, yet our population is still growing.

We’re vulnerable just like they were, but on an even larger scale.

http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2014/01/21/states-water-woes/?utm_content=buffere2cda&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

 

[smkettner]

As I said before I am more intrigued by the 1861-62 rain and flood than the current drought.
If that rain repetes it would seem we are only marginally prepared. We would want all reservours empty just before right? Who has the guts to make that call....
Anyway I am thinking the storm repete would still somehow be caused by AGW.

In the mean time I will try to use less water.

 

[Weatherman]

I love this quote...

Scientists have not yet linked the California drought directly to climate change, Thomas Karl, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center, said Tuesday in announcing the latest study. "I'm sure there's a way, but we haven't done it yet," he said.

from here:

http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/California-drought-Scientists-to-probe-cause-5163948.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Starting with a conclusion and trying to find a way to get the data match your conclusion?

I guess Mr. Karl forgot about the concept of the null hypothesis.

 

[evnow]

"Yes. We’ve already started having a decreased snow pack and increased wild fire frequency. And we’ve been warming, and it’s gotten drier. With Pacific Decadal Oscillation [the ever-changing temperature of surface water in the North Pacific Ocean], every 20 or 30 years we go in and out of these positive and negative shifts that affect precipitation and temperature. But now we’re entering a period where it looks like we’re getting drier even though it doesn’t necessarily correspond to that cycle. It looks like a trend. It’s warming and drying, and that’s definitely a big concern for Western states."...

This is really the concern. Warmer and drier.

A lot of people don't think of failing rain and water problems as the main consequence of climate change for humans (and other species too).

In the old days (I mean 10s of thousands or millions of years ago), animals and plants would simply move when climate changed. But with the current political boundaries, obviously that presents a big challenge, where freely moving to better places is not possible.

 

[AndyH]

A look back - fascinating.

Book: Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkbebOhnCjA[/youtube]

Full playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL0444F9186975498D&v=hkbebOhnCjA

 

[edatoakrun]

Local weather report in LEAF terms:

99.5 miles, including ~6,000 ft. of total ascent/descent, using "100%" to ~VLBW yesterday.

There is finally some rain and cooler temperatures in the forecast, but long term effects are already significant, as noted in latest update at California Weather Blog:

Ridiculously Resilient Ridge continues to shatter records, but pattern shift may be approaching

Posted on January 25, 2014

Current weather summary

Exceptionally warm, dry, and stable weather conditions have prevailed over California since early December. Precipitation totals over the past 40-60 days have been near zero across most of the state of California, with only very light precipitation observed in the north. Various observing sites have now surpassed their previous all-time records for the greatest number of consecutive dry days during the “rainy” season, and these new records will almost certainly be extended at least a few more days as bone dry conditions continue. Nearly all of California has been experiencing record high temperatures on a daily basis over the past several weeks, including the establishment of new all-time January record high temperatures in a few places (most notably Sacramento, at 79 degrees)...


The increasing impacts of California’s extraordinary dry spell

California Governor Jerry Brown formally declared a Drought Emergency on xxxxJan, and a slew of voluntary or mandatory water restrictions have been rapidly enacted across Northern California since the start of the calendar year. Certain communities dependent on local water sources are facing extreme shortages as supplies are already running dry. While most major urban areas in California have a larger “storage buffer” in the form of shared water supplies in the larger reservoirs around the state, even these water levels are plummeting as runoff approaches zero in most places.

The secondary effects of the drought have also becoming more apparent in January. Extreme fire weather conditions and associated Red Flag Warnings have been issued multiple times for large parts of the state that have not experienced these conditions during mid-winter in living memory. Localized dust storms are starting to occur in the San Joaquin Valley, where powder-dry topsoil from hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland that has gone un-planted and un-irrigated as a result of the drought is being lofted by unusually strong southeasterly winds. Air quality as a result of this stagnant weather pattern has been extremely poor throughout the state, but conditions in the Central Valley have been especially bad, where levels of fine particulate matter (PM-2.5) have reached dangerous levels even for healthy adults...

http://www.weatherwest.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

More on the health effects here:

A menacing air in the Central Valley

From Stockton to Bakersfield, the sky is thick with chemical-laced particles. Residents know there's a risk just being outside.

By Diana Marcum
January 24, 2014, 4:56 p.m.

FRESNO — On bad-air days here in the Central Valley, school officials hoist red flags to warn parents and pupils that being outside is officially deemed “unhealthful for all groups.”

This winter, though, the most polluted on record, schools have not only raised red flags. On several days, they have had to send out notices saying the red flags should really be purple—indicating “very unhealthful” air — if only they had them. But such warnings have been be so rare that schools don't even have the flags designating the most extreme conditions.

Of course, parents could just look at the sky itself.


From Stockton to Bakersfield, a haze of chemical-laced particles has tinted the air a rusty gray all winter. In the evenings there's a charcoal stripe across the horizon. The Sierra Nevada hasn't been visible for more than a month.

A high-pressure ridge, four miles high, sits off the West Coast, blocking Pacific storms from cleaning the air in the Central Valley. Pollution levels have spiked across California, but nowhere is it as bad as in this agricultural region.

With no rain since Dec. 7, fine particles that can embed in lungs and enter the bloodstream build up in an ever-darkening sky. Meteorologists don't expect the weather to shift until at least the end of the month...

http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-central-valley-air-20140125,5,2478930,full.story#axzz2rQJvjmi8" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It is a peculiar that most people seem to think that they are so removed from natural world that the effects of global heating can be alleviated by just building more damns and power plants and cranking up the lawn sprinklers and air conditioning.

Meanwhile, other species are adapting to climate change, and for some diseases, anthropogenic global heating is an immediate opportunity to thrive and spread.

If you live in the (expanding) arid Southwest, it may not be very distant in the future, when you'll want to check the daily dust forecast before you go outside.

We haven't had the large Central Valley dust storms this year like in '77- yet.

Death Dust
The valley-fever menace.

by Dana Goodyear January 20, 2014

In 1977, the San Joaquin Valley—the swath of agricultural land that runs through central California—was designated a disaster area. Record-low runoff and scant rainfall had created drought conditions. At the beginning of Christmas week, the weather was normal in Bakersfield, the city at the Valley’s southern end, but in the early hours of December 20th a strong wind began to blow from the Great Basin through the Tehachapi Mountains. Hitting the ground on the downslope, it lofted a cloud of loose topsoil and mustard-colored dust into the sky.

The plume rose to five thousand feet; dust blotted out the sun four counties away. Traffic on Highway 5, the state’s main artery, stopped. At a certain point, the anemometers failed; the U.S. Geological Survey estimated wind speeds as high as a hundred and ninety-two miles an hour. Windows on houses were sandblasted to paper thinness.

The Tempest from Tehachapi, as one researcher called it, spread dirt over an area the size of Maine. Twenty hours afterward, the dust reached Sacramento, four hundred miles north of Bakersfield, in the form of a murky haze that hung in the air for another day, stinging the eyes and noses of the residents. On the twenty-first, it started raining in Sacramento, which turned the dust to mud, coating the cars and sidewalks, and marked the end of the drought.

Over the next several weeks, Sacramento County recorded more than a hundred cases of coccidioidomycosis, otherwise known as valley fever, or cocci, a disease caused by inhaling the microscopic spores of Coccidioides immitis, a soil-dwelling fungus found in Bakersfield. (In the previous twenty years, there had never been more than half a dozen cases a year.) Six of the victims died...

Cocci is endemic to the desert Southwest—California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Texas—and to the semi-arid parts of Central and South America. Digging—building, drilling, tilling, clearing—stirs it up, and dry, hot, windy conditions, a regional feature intensified by climate change, disperse it. In recent years, infections have risen dramatically. According to the Centers for Disease Control, from 1998 to 2011 there was a tenfold increase in reported cases; officials there call it a “silent epidemic,” far more destructive than had been previously recognized...

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/01/20/140120fa_fact_goodyear?currentPage=all" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;