Catastrophic Drought Looms for Capital City of Bolivia
Historical ecology of the Andes indicates desert-like setting on the horizon
Catastrophic drought is on the near-term horizon for the capital city of Bolivia, according to new research into the historical ecology of the Andes.
If temperatures rise more than 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius (3 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit) above those of modern times, parts of Peru and Bolivia will become a desert-like setting.
The change would be disastrous for the water supply and agricultural capacity of the two million inhabitants of La Paz, Bolivia’s capital city, scientists say.
The results, derived from research funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and conducted by scientists affiliated with the Florida Institute of Technology (FIT), appear in the November issue of the journal Global Change Biology.
Climatologist Mark Bush of FIT led a research team investigating a 370,000-year record of climate and vegetation change in Andean ecosystems.
The scientists used fossilized pollen trapped in the sediments of Lake Titicaca, which sits on the border of Peru and Bolivia.
They found that during two of the last three interglacial periods, which occurred between 130,000-115,0000 years ago and 330,000-320,000 years ago, Lake Titicaca shrank by as much as 85 percent.
Adjacent shrubby grasslands were replaced by desert.
Foreshadowing: in many years, nearby Lake Poopo has dried up but for brief periods.
In each case, a steady warming occurred that caused trees to migrate upslope, just as they are doing today.
However, as the climate kept warming, the system suddenly flipped from woodland to desert.
“The evidence is clear that there was a sudden change to a much drier state,” said Bush.
Scientist Sherilyn Fritz at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln showed that during these warm episodes the algae living in Lake Titicaca shifted from freshwater species to ones tolerant of salty water. Paul Baker of Duke University identified peaks of carbonate deposition.
Both point to a sudden shallowing of the lake due to evaporative loss.
An environmental reconstruction demonstrates that with moderate warming, forests moved upslope. But as that warming continued, a climate tipping point was reached.
The system was thrown into a new, drier state that halted forest expansion.
The tipping point is caused by increased evaporative loss from Lake Titicaca.
As the lake contracts, the local climate effects attributable to a large lake–doubling of rainfall, among the most important–would be lost, says Bush.
Such tipping points have been postulated by other studies, but this work allowed the researchers to state when the system will change.
Based on the growth limits of Andean forests, they defined a tipping point that was exceeded within a 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius warming above modern conditions.
Given a rate of warming in the Peruvian Andes of about 0.3-0.5 degrees Celsius per decade, the tipping point ahead would be reached between 2040 and 2050.
“The implications would be profound for some two million people,” says Paul Filmer, program director in NSF’s Division of Earth Sciences. Severe drought, and a loss of stored water in lakes in the region, would reduce yields from important agricultural regions and threaten drinking water supplies.
The research suggests that limiting wildfires would help delay the worst effects of the drought.
-NSF-
Lake Titicaca, and parts of Peru and Bolivia, are on the cusp of a major drought.
This woodland near the lake is similar to those of past times with temperatures like today’s.
Saltbush pollen, the most common type of pollen during times of near-desert conditions.
Lake Titicaca from space. Its outline may look very different in the future.
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“Global Change Biology”??? No chance of observer bias in the science reported there!
Hey that’s great, pick a La Nina year to talk about the drought in Bolivia, that’s like picking an El Nino year to talk about the drought in Australia. Now they can’t film Mad Max 4 because there is too much green in the Australian desert.
4 words for Bolivia; Large pumps and pipes.
Reprinted for my pleasure and yours from a previous thread:
Cassandra King says: wrote
November 12, 2010 at 12:49 am
“There is stupidity, gross stupidity, sublime stupidity, mind boggling stupidity and then there is climate ‘science’ stupidity.
Whoever thought that pumping a harmless trace gas that we drink by the millions of tons every year in the form of CO2 infused drinks into a hole in the ground was a great idea?
I just cannot get my head around how intelligent people can lose their critical faculties/marbles in order to come up with wacky crazy schemes like this, it just does not compute.
Even if you believe that a harmless trace gas essential to life on earth is somehow harmful how on earth does the extra energy required to sequester this gas make sense in an energy conservation equation?
There is a kind of madness in the air affecting humanity, it is sapping reason and sound judgment and reinforcing an unthinking unreasoning emotional response that is somehow bypassing the higher human intellect.
Whom the Gods wish to destroy they first make mad? The quality control of cold logic and Rational common sense is evaporating replaced by a form of incoherent mystical mumbo jumbo. Is there nobody in the chain of planning policy creation who stood up and tried to inject some common sense when some bright spark stood up and said ‘yeah I know lets dig a hole and pour CO2 down it and damn the cost’?
I don’t know about CCS(carbon capture and storage) but it seems that a new scheme of CSCS(common sense capture and storage) has been developed and is working very effectively indeed.”
No one articulates logic like Cassandra
They can’t predict next years rainfall.
2040 is far enough out there, they won’t get busted. Although we are reading of freezing and dangerous cooling predicted 20 years ago. The writings were not erased.
Attention to all WUWT bloggers. Take care of saving this POST and google the News next January,February and March 2011. You will have the unique opportunity to laugh aloud.
Richard S Courtney;
Deforestation, or any major decrease in forest cover, negatively affects rainfall. Less trees/vegetation, less rain, in a pretty general sense. Forest fires rapidly decrease vegetative ground cover including trees. Probably their point… (I suggest reading the original paper if you have access.)
.3 degrees to .5 degrees per decade…. and we are not even given the years that they cherry picked .. err I mean picked for this statistic.
I bet its less scary like our temperature difference between 1850 and today which is roughly 1 degree warmer world-wide…very scary indeed, unless you cherry pick from 1975 to about 10 years ago, and then it gets scary.
Cherry picking data is so much fun, I guess we could just say that in the next 150 years we will see worldwide increases of about 1 more degree if everything stays the same, but that doesn’t provide grant money and/or donations to environmental organizations.
Does anyone know any good environmental organizations that actually care about the environment more then socialism? I would love to know that answer…
This is total horse manure.
I’ve been to Lake Titicaca, and if there is ANYTHING that region needs it is heat. For one thing it will only come about if it is warmer along the coast, and THAT are can use heat even more than Lake Titicaca. But that will allow more convection to get water over the mountains, which means more rain, not less. I also lived in Denver (admittedly lower elevation, of course), and the ONLY rain Denver gets for months on end is what has worked its way from the western slope over successive ridges through convection and rain, convection and rain.
Any rain that comes to Lake Titicaca will have come from the Peruvian side of the system, and more heat there, too, will be a godsend. For a place in the tropics, folks, you’ve never imagined so much cold.
At Lake Titicaca HEAT = GOOD.
Also, projecting it out there 30 years into the future and calling that “near-term horizon” is utter nonsense.
ALSO, any claim of 370,000 year “knowledge” is also horse crap, especially when claiming any variations within tenths of degrees. The uncertainty only a few hundred years ago is in the full degree range, and a thousand years it is probably double that for any single area of the world. They should not let the AVERAGE global flatness mislead them about regional variations, which are higher by a factor of 2 or more. But back 370,000 years? Whatever they CLAIM, it is wrong. And they don’t even know HOW wrong.
Who are they stroking, and what are they smoking?
Yesterday afternoon when I was at the beach it was 21C… this morning the temperature was down to just 13C… therefore the cooling rate in Malaga is currently 8C in only 18 hours… so I will put away my water skis and got out my snowboard… seems sensible based upon the data… roll eyes.
So just as well they are monitoring Bolivia so closely… let me see now: There has not been any thermometer data for Bolivia in GHCN since 1990…. Ooops!
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/01/08/ghcn-gistemp-interactions-the-bolivia-effect/
Next they will be predicting that Lake Eyre will dry out due to AGW…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbYWkegobTU&fs=1&hl=en_US]
IF….Then….Disaster………..OMG
steveta_uk says:
November 12, 2010 at 11:17 am
“In each case, a steady warming occurred that caused trees to migrate upslope, just as they are doing today.”
Have they got a video of that? I’ve love to see it.
Day of the Triffids, 1962 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055894/
The greenies are expecting cooling global temps. They are just laying a foundation for the up and coming AGW caused drought narrative. Reality is, it is either Warm-Wet or Cool-Dry. The greenies have gotten the population conditionsd to think Warm means dry, so matter what the active natural climate regime, the greenies will always have something to blame on AGW.
bob says:
November 12, 2010 at 11:11 am
We have had, in the capital of Peru, the last winter (which does not want to leave us) minimum temperatures of 2 degrees below normal.
We are living “interesting times” while you are living in a different dimension. Good luck next winter…enjoy it praying to your prophet!
It was funded by the NSF …?
They had Not Sufficient Funds … governments soon will be in that situation to continue funding this nonsense.
Anthony,
Have you picked up on this story in today’s Guardian which says discusses a recent study that finds rainforests adapted remarkably well to the temperature rises during the PETM mentioned by Matt Ridley (even if CO2 played only a small part in this rise)?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/nov/11/climate-change-forests-water-amazon?intcmp=122
I have to apologise if I have skipped various comments, but I derived a link with this gem…
George Carlin has entertained me with his wit, wisdom and innate sagacity for several months now. We need more of his ilk to poke fun and a humourous stick at the establishment. Without the humour, that Josh supplies for example, where would we be? Anthony Watts is to be further praised for such inclusion. As long as people such as George, sadly no longer with us (not that it would bother him one iota), can and do question any science then there is still an inkling of hope for the masses, the hoi polloi if you prefer, and make those at the very top of the tree, and they know well who they are (and so do some of us, the unwashed, unwanted folk who believe in the simple expediency of truth) a little concerned . We worry a tad concerning the defence of their trillion dollar funded ivory castle, but can prove nothing, at the moment. We do procreate, and that is yet another problem, or should I say ‘issue’ for our so-called world leaders. I would not mind betting, en passant, that they are of a triumvirate organisation, or triangular, it matters not, that is geared towards total and utter control of us, the people, the folk over the valley, families and societies all across this planet.
The propaganda of the gore stinks, as most of the followers of Anthony’s blog recognise, but we, the real movers & shakers in the climate debate have not convinced the hoi polloi.
Most of these good people do not know the difference between a degree Celsius and a degree Farhenheit (a difficult name to spell, and a difficult physical property to understand). Furthermore, they do not really need to know that 25degC is a bit warm. They know instinctively when they are hot. And so do the rest of us, however much we know about the ‘climate’. However, what the hoi polloi inevitably do is follow the sheep, and those that bleat the loudest are those that are followed.
Perhaps we sc(k)eptics should leave our secure, reasonable and relatively peaceful transmission of climate knowledge (WUWT!!) amongst ourselves, and utilise our wealth of information to comment on the environmentalist blogs, for starters; perhaps then elevating ourselves to mild attacks on the gore’s blog, and his minion’s.
“They found that during two of the last three interglacial periods, which occurred between 130,000-115,0000 years ago and 330,000-320,000 years ago, Lake Titicaca shrank by as much as 85 percent.”
I’ll take those brief interglacials over the glacial periods, when Lake Titicaca was probably pretty solid, i.e. frozen.
Damn,
Should have carried on reading down the posts!
As ever, WUWT is always on the ball.
I have a further comment to add, with regard to education.
Perhaps I should say the word ‘propaganda’.
Enough said, but…
As George postulated, (in my own words), we are heading for the downward spiral of the plug-hole. The US will probably be the first to hit the spot, swiftly followed by their partner, the UK.
Children these days are not educated in the true sense of the word “education”. Instead they are fed a nauseous concoction of half-beliefs, rigmarole, pseudo-science and religious poppycock. Teachers of today are hardly to be blamed, for they too have been tarred with the same ‘world order’ brush – exactly according to plan.
“The research suggests that limiting wildfires would help delay the worst effects of the drought.”
=======
An inferred drought, coupled with imaginary wildfires.
Defined as research.
Cassandra, I do believe that we may have a convert within our midst!
Welcome to the real world where trust and integrity fall hand in hand with what is actually happening in our strange planet. Believe me, I know little or nothing about these phenomena, but there are those that do, and this is the site to maintain one’s knowledge.
So, if this drought condition has happened 2 of the last 3 Interglacials – and we are at the very end of the present Interglacial – what’s the problem?
The journal “Global Change Biology” is dedicated to studies of the biological effects of past changes in climate. Such studies would in no way bear upon the reasons why climate changes, but only report findings relative to changes in biological activity due to differing climatic conditions. In any case the instant study is about changes in micro-climate, which has no bearing in some global phenomenon.
I wonder how many studies have been published there about biological change that occurred during climate change due to approaching ice ages. There have been about a dozen of those, and it seems to me that ice is about as likely as fire, given the contemporary state of climate “science.”
“Catastrophic Drought Looms”
Now where have you heard that before? Enough of these fake-science projections!
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/why_is_flannery_still_taken_seriously
So John Wyndham was right Triffids do exist!
” a steady warming occurred that caused trees to migrate upslope, just as they are doing today”.