This desperate sounding tweet came in a few minutes ago and will be sure to get the peccatogenesists all stirred up with laughable claims of “poisoned weather” etc.
June 11 U.S. Drought Monitor Update: moderate to exceptional #drought covers 44.1% of contiguous U.S. http://t.co/YqslStK35q
— NOAA NCEI Climate (@NOAANCEIclimate) June 14, 2013
Let’s look at what a La Niña pattern actually does for drought, from NOAA’s own archives:
Note the big path of dry area in the southern USA.
Now compare it to the US Drought monitor graphic:
The blocking high from La Niña is a bit further north than the NOAA graphic, so the drought tends to follow it.
This is nothing out of the ordinary for the Western USA, which has seen long term historic droughts before.
But I’m sure the peccatogenesists will find a way to blame “global warming” or #poisonedweather or some similar religious fervor.
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The 30-yr PDO cool phase started in 2008, which will tend to generate more La Niña cycles than El Niño. With this well known phenomenon, it looks like the US Mid-West is looking at drier than “normal” conditions for quite some time to come, and this will have next to nothing to do with CAGW.
ironically, increased CO2 levels enable C3 plants to cope much better under drier conditions as the leaf pores don’t need to open as wide to absorb CO2 as the atmospheric concentration of CO2 is higher, so less water is lost from the plant.
In addition , CO2 fertilization has contributed greatly to an 85% increase in US crop yields since 1980. (About 3,700kg/ha in 1980 to about 7,000kg/ha in 2010). So again, CO2 will lesson the effects of NATURAL drier growing conditions.
I’ve changed the headline to more accurately reflect the history.
Your ENSOMETER signals neutral
REPLY: Yes, that’s called “variance”. It changes from week to week. Check the Enso page: http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/climatic-phenomena-pages/enso/
-Anthony
Texas Drought Timeline
http://stateimpact.npr.org/texas/drought/
El Nino/La Nina Timeline
http://www.climas.arizona.edu/files/climas/images/periodicals/wyir/2012/Oct/06b-elnino.jpg
notice how the texas drought occurred in 2006 and 2008/2009 when we were in an El Nino?
How about the southwestern Drought of 2002 and 2004? both El Nino years those two years combined produced a 500-year drought.
Further west, the 2007 drought was considered a 500 year event
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/5239212/ns/weather-weather_news/t/west-drought-could-be-worst-years/
The drought gripping the West could be the biggest in 500 years, with effects in the Colorado River basin considerably worse than during the Dust Bowl years, according to scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey.
“That we can now say with confidence,” said Robert Webb, lead author of a background paper released Thursday. “Now I’m completely convinced.”
are you saying the 2007 el nino was the worst event in 500 years?
We are all doomed, the western Arctic has highest coverage since 1981..
https://mobile.twitter.com/NJSnowFan/media/grid?idx=1&tid=345576221473640450
Well, we aren’t in a La Niñ now, but were in a long one. I’m not sure what La Nada weather is like in the southwest, but given its history of multi-century long droughts, I’d be loathe to call an “exceptional drought” (determined by fraction of average precip) in that area as exceptional in the dictionary sense.
My daughter watches Phineas and Ferb and Dr. Doofenshmirtz put it the best. He is not evil, he’s greevil.
http://www.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=http://images.wikia.com/phineasandferb/images/d/d4/Doofenshmirtz_going_greevil.jpg&imgrefurl=http://phineasandferb.wikia.com/wiki/File:Doofenshmirtz_going_greevil.jpg&h=661&w=1179&sz=40&tbnid=iOVoBMd_rdiLRM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=161&zoom=1&usg=__U_WS6172wswuyarxR7DNCkSVeG8=&docid=JZoSK_fl65IqxM&sa=X&ei=-2i7UaO9DNGS0QWr5YG4Cg&ved=0CC8Q9QEwAQ&dur=1690
Funny and sad, all in one shot
jai mitchell says:June 14, 2013 at 11:34 am
Ever wonder why they call it the DESERT southwest?
In-so-far as it being the worst drought in 500 years, total BS. That was when the Anasazi called it quits. In Colorado we have had an unusually wet spring, as shown by the proliferation of flowers and berries that get enough water to show themselves every 10-15 years, and they are out now. I’ve been collecting daily precipitation for thirty years, nothing unusual is going on
here.
If a 500 year event is anything like a 500 year or 100 year flood, it does not necessarily mean it happens once every 500/100 years.
A 100 year flood means there is a 1% chance it will happen any given year.
A 500 year flood means there is a 0.2% chance it will happen any given year.
http://www.kcrg.com/news/local/19795649.html
Also defined here. http://definitions.uslegal.com/f/five-hundred-year-floodplain/
The Palmer Drought Severity Index is a great way to look at long term historical droughts back to the beginning of the 20th century. By far, the 1930s and 1950s had the worst droughts in the U.S. as a whole. The recent droughts of the southwest U.S. have been bad, but are very similar to the droughts of the first decade of the 20th century there.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/
@Steve Keohane
“In Colorado we have had an unusually wet spring, as shown by the proliferation of flowers and berries that get enough water to show themselves every 10-15 years, and they are out now.”
You almost certainly live in Denver or somewhere north of there. I was visiting family in Longmont a couple of weeks ago, and I couldn’t believe how green and lush it is there.
Have you ventured south of the Palmer Divide (Monument Hill)? Things are bone dry down here in Colorado Springs and further south on out through the lower Arkansas River basin. It is absolutely the driest I have seen in more than 35 years. Ranchers are selling out and giving up. We’re getting forest fires like never before in the higher elevations (Black Forest, Waldo Canyon) and the land is returning to the desert it was a few thousand years ago when sand dunes covered the ground only a few miles from where my house now sits. If this keeps up, the land here will soon look a lot like Albuquerque, New Mexico or Chaco Canyon. Heck, in some places it looks that way already. We need water badly.
peccatogenesists is such a long name to spell and write. Can we just shorten it to PECCAHEADS?
Thanks, Anthony. Well said.
Again, the ENSO driver proves real.
Critter Junction (my land & home on top of the Ozarks) is now entirely paid for, see sawing weather is gawronteed!! Fortunately I planted wind breaks. Some of the indestructible Leland Cypress planted 8 years ago are 20 ft tall. They work, they are impressive.
http://www.farmtimes.com/articles/2013/04/19/commodities/livestock/lvstk25.txt
Another way of saying what you said…..
Roger Pielke, Sr. described Judith Curry’s presentation to the August, 2011 NOAA workshop on water, which involved showing how drought patterns in the Lower 48 States were largely determined by the long ocean patterns, PDO and AMO. She had noted that the current situation of cool PDO and warm AMO was a repeat of the 1946-1964 years, when drought was a big problem.
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2012/06/27/perspective-on-the-hot-and-dry-continental-usa-for-2012-based-on-the-research-of-judy-curry-and-of-mccabe-et-al-2012/
In Santa Fe, where I am now, it is pretty dry, though today we’ve had some thunderstorms, but in my hometown of San Antonio, there have been floods most of the spring, which is typical El Niño weather for that area. As the old folks say, we get 29 inches of rain a year, and you oughta be here the weekend we get it…
I remember reading some where historical climate records of California droughts lasting several decades and this will be significant because the state will not be able to sustain it’s 30 million population. And we have some nutty environmentalists wanting to tear down the Hetch Hetchy Dam because it would restore the valley to it’s natural state and enhance Yosemite Park. San Fransisco gets nearly all of it’s water from the dam and they have voted against the dam tear down.
There is no sign of el Nino any time soon.
There is a part of the NOAA which deals with weather and/or ocean conditions like the ENSO. You can trust these sections to give you factual information.
Then there is climate change part of the NOAA and climate monitors like the NCDC. This section is not concerned with factual information and is more into the religionist AGW theory. Obviously, you shouldn’t trust these sections.
jai asks “notice how the texas drought occurred in 2006 and 2008/2009 when we were in an El Nino?” Jai, I would not take the storm tracks depicted in the OP as anything more than a rough average; every El Nino and La Nina is different and has different effects on the tropical and polar jets. Also the El Nino shown mostly manifests in winter and there may be no impact at all in the summer. For example in Texas the droughts in 2006 and 2008/2009 were both due to La Nina winters, see http://doublehelixranch.com/FlyGapRainTrends.html for example. It was not El Nino.
If you go to the drought monitor website and click on one of the animations, you’ll notice something surprising. The update from June 4 to June 11 shows almost no change. This only happens in the last week; every other week it changes a lot.
http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/
The weather map in the last week showed a lot of storms moving through the mid-west. I think this is just a data error, nothing nefarious, but expect the drought map to get a lot whiter next Thursday.
Imagine the Hetch Hetchy pipeline that was engineered over 100 years ago going dry. The stupidity of the Left coast is relentless. Well I guess they can tap into one of those delta canals heading for LA basin, in order to keep Crystal Springs Reservoir from reverting to a dry creek but the water won’t taste as sweet.
Here in Australia Nina brings rain and floods, Nino brings drought. That’s why international trade is such a good idea, and ‘food miles’ are rubbish. Want to buy some wheat?
Steve Keohane says:
June 14, 2013 at 12:10 pm
Ever wonder why they call it the DESERT southwest?
In-so-far as it being the worst drought in 500 years, total BS. That was when the Anasazi called it quits.
Steve,
That’s exactly what I was thinking but the timeline is a bit longer than 500 years ago. Apparently, the Anasazi had been experiencing unreliable rainfall for some time before there was a thirty year long drought that started about 1270 AD. That, combined with a simultaneous cooling trend that further reduced crop yields, finally caused them to walk away from their traditional homes in the San Juan County area.
Hmmm…. perhaps AGW actually stands for Anasazi Global Warming, ’cause it was ‘man made’ back then also! /sarc Guess that ‘living with nature’ thing didn’t work out so well for them, eh?
MtK
Any analysis based on just PDO, or just ENSO will not be correct.
You must combine the two, and the analysis will fit the data much better.
There have been a few peer reviewed papers by actual scientists on the issue.