From the University of Pittsburgh, refreshingly, no mention of AGW in this latest paper. Why, it’s almost as if, these extreme climate shifts occurred….naturally.
6,000-year climate record suggests longer droughts, drier climate for Pacific Northwest
Pitt-led team used a sediment core from Washington state’s Castor Lake to unravel regional wet/dry cycles since 4,000 BCE and found longer, more extreme periods have occurred since 1200 AD, possibly associated with changing El Niño/La Niña patterns
PITTSBURGH—University of Pittsburgh-led researchers extracted a 6,000-year climate record from a Washington lake that shows that the famously rain-soaked American Pacific Northwest could not only be in for longer dry seasons, but also is unlikely to see a period as wet as the 20th century any time soon. In a recent report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team linked the longer dry spells to the intensifying El Niño/La Niña climate pattern and concluded that Western states will likely suffer severe water shortages as El Niño/La Niña wields greater influence on the region.
The researchers analyzed a sediment core from Castor Lake in north central Washington to plot the region’s drought history since around 4,000 BCE and found that wet and dry cycles during the past millennium have grown longer. The team attributed this recent deviation to the irregular pressure and temperature changes brought on by El Niño/La Niña. At the same time, they reported, the wet cycle stretching from the 1940s to approximately 2000 was the dampest in 350 years.
Lead researcher Mark Abbott, a Pitt professor of geology and planetary science, said those unusually wet years coincide with the period when western U.S. states developed water-use policies. “Western states happened to build dams and water systems during a period that was unusually wet compared to the past 6,000 years,” he said. “Now the cycle has changed and is trending drier, which is actually normal. It will shift back to wet eventually, but probably not to the extremes seen during most of the 20th century.”
Abbott worked with his former graduate student, lead author and Pitt alumnus Daniel Nelson, as well as Pitt professor of geology and planetary science Michael Rosenmeier; Nathan Stansell, a Pitt PhD graduate now a postdoctoral researcher at Ohio State University; and Pitt geology and planetary science graduate student Byron Steinman. The team also included Pratigya Polissar, an assistant research professor at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory; Joseph Ortiz, associate professor of geology at Kent State University; Bruce Finney, a professor of geology at Idaho State University; and Jon Riedel, a geologist at North Cascades National Park in Washington.
The team produced a climate record from the lake mud by measuring the oxygen isotope ratios of the mineral calcite that precipitates from the lake water every summer and builds up in fine layers on the lake floor. More calcite accumulates in wet years than in dry years. They reproduced their findings by measuring grayscale, or the color of mud based on calcite concentration, with darker mud signifying a drier year.
The record in the sediment core was then compared to the Palmer Drought Severity Index, which uses meteorological and tree-ring data to determine drought cycles dating back 1,500 years, Abbott explained. The Castor Lake core matched the Palmer Index reconstructed with tree-ring data and expanded on it by 4,500 years, suggesting that lakebeds are better records of long-term climate change, the authors contend.
Analysis of the sediment core revealed that the climate of the Pacific Northwest fluctuated more or less evenly between wet and dry periods for thousands of years, the researchers wrote. Droughts tended to be lengthier with 25 percent of dry periods during the past 6,000 years persisting for 30 years or more and the longest lingering for around 75 years. Wet periods tended to be shorter with only 19 percent lasting more than 30 years and the longest spanning 64 years.
But since around 1000 AD, these periods have become longer, shifted less frequently, and, most importantly, ushered in more extreme conditions, Abbott said. The two driest cycles the researchers detected out of the past 6,000 years occurred within only 400 years of each other—the first in the 1500s and the second during the Great Depression. Wet periods showed a similar pattern shift with five very wet eras crammed into the past 900 years. The wettest cycle of the past 6,000 years began around the 1650s, and the second most sodden began a mere 300 years later, in the 1940s.
The change in cycle regularity Abbott and his colleagues found correlates with documented activity of El Niño/La Niña. When the patterns became more intense, wet and dry cycles in the Pacific Northwest became more erratic and lasted longer, Abbott said.
Rhoda R says:
February 22, 2011 at 11:09 am
“BCE (Before Common Era) is a politically correct term from BC (Before Christ). Can’t upset the non-Christians out there, ya know.”
Guess we need a new temperature acronym too … x degrees FATA or CATA (After Team Adjustment).
Also need new acronym for long term temperature increases, for example in degrees FATA/WOMWP (Without Medieval Warm Period).
And sea level rise, like 3 meters by 2100 AGI (Al Gore’s Imagination).
And model outputs, like 3 degrees FATA/GIGO (Garbage In Garbage Out)
Using GISS data inputs for models can require a GISSI fit. And all GISS data is produced by Selective Hansen Information Technology methods.
There is no cause for relief, just because there is no anthropologic global warming mentioned in the article. Policy is still in view. Look sharp. Here is the money quote:
“a 6,000-year climate record from a Washington lake that shows that the famously rain-soaked American Pacific Northwest could not only be in for longer dry seasons, but also is unlikely to see a period as wet as the 20th century any time soon.”
The nonAGW Misery and Shortage Campaign by experts has begun, starting in Washington claiming drought.
(Now you have seen every d*&=%d thing.)
Bob Diaz says:
February 22, 2011 at 10:19 am
> IF our lives were in the range of 10,000 to 100,000 years, we would be able to see the very long term changes that occur in the climate.
And assuming I could remember further back than last night’s dinner. 🙂
I wonder if David Suzuki was wrong when he said AGW caused the snow
to melt at the Vancouver Olympics last year.
“I’ve watched in horror as the snow has just melted away from Cypress Mountain,” Suzuki said, referring to the 2010 Olympic Games snowboarding and freestyle skiing venue.
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/winter-233250-games-olympic.html
Oh the horror , melting snow….
Rhoda R at 11:09 am
“BCE (Before Common Era) is politically correct term from BC (Before Christ).
Can’t upset the non-Christians out there, ya know.”
Thank you Rhoda, your comment is short and up to the point. I spent 23 years of my life in a communist country, and we used BC and AD. Talk about PC brigade.
Joseph Thoma
Oliver, Rhoda and Smokey-
There doesn’t seem to be much difference between political correctness and post normal science. PNS is mostly politics camouflaged as science. Or science with an agenda might be more accurate. The old Soviets understood how that worked.
Interesting finding but extrapolating to global proves it not possible. I know from bitter experience that from 1982 to the year 2000 were extremely dry in Central Queensland, Australia. Water dams that had never been dry since the early 1950’s were dry 3 years in a year from that time (1982) and the seasons turned drier still after that. It was as if the seasons had moved 450 miles inland to the desert country.
the rest of Australia moved into that pattern in the 2000’s decade. In fact I would say the PDO reversal in the late 2000’s changed Australia from a very dry pattern on the east coast back into the wet patterns. Unless you can correlate weather patterns with the PDO, you are extrapolating in the dark.
MattN says:
February 22, 2011 at 9:39 am
Probably why they are also always arguing over water out west.
The big arguments about water are on the eastern side of the Rockies. Low clouds full of water come off the pacific then dump their water west of the Rockies.
A new study that shows their internal temperature remains constant at 21.4deg could challenge the way trees are used to determine historical climate data
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/06/13/surprise-leaves-maintain-temperature-new-findings-may-put-dendroclimatology-as-metric-of-past-temperature-into-question/
That is a very interesting co-incidence because for much of the past 600 million years the earth’s average temperature has been 22C and this is also the same temperature (72F) that most of us set the household thermostat when we are not trying to save $$.
Is it really a co-incidence that trees and human beings find the earth a lot more comfortable when it is 22C than when it is 14.5C like it is now? Certainly if evolution has anything to say in the process it is unlikely to be co-incidence. It is much more likely that trees and humans have evolved along with the earth, and over hundreds of millions of earths we have adapted to match the typical average temperature of the earth.
So, rather than being harmful, it is most likely that humans and plants would benefit from an earth that is approximately 7C (13F) WARMER than it is now and CO2 levels were about 1000 PPM. Interestingly, 1000 PPM CO2 is about the optimum used in greenhouses to promote plant growth.
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html
Doug in Seattle wrote: Mark Abbot’s (et al) work lines up with that of Dr. Tim Patterson at Carleton University off the coast of British Columbia.
I’m sure you are referring to Dr. Tom Pederson of the University of Victoria in Beautiful Victoria, BC.
Dr. Pederson has done extensive work on sediments in fjords along the west coast of BC and has correlated that work with the PDO.
His work contradicts much of the warmist paleoclimate junk science and he works in a den of warmists at UVic.
******************************
Doug-
Some minor corrections and additional information. It’s Pedersen, as in Danish. He’s the Dean of Science at the Univ of Victoria. I found more information on him courtesy of our old friends at Desmog: http://www.desmogblog.com/university-of-victoria-steps-up-climate-research
And, unfortunately, Pedersen is not anti-warmist. I heard him interviewed not so long ago and I had to write in to the local CBC station to point out that he was vehemently (and mistakenly) following the AGW line. See the Desmogblog item for full understanding of what UVic is responsible for.
IanM
“I wonder if David Suzuki was wrong when he said AGW caused the snow
to melt at the Vancouver Olympics last year.”
He was wrong. Right now there is 424 cm (14 FEET) of snow on Cypress.
http://cypressmountain.com/new-conditions.asp
The snow melted due to too much hot air comming from too many gas bags. Once they left, the snow came back. Last year after the Olympics ended, tons of snow fell in Vancouver on the local mountains and they stayed open well into May, an extra month past their regular closing date.
“the famously rain-soaked American Pacific Northwest could not only be in for longer dry seasons, but also is unlikely to see a period as wet as the 20th century any time soon. ”
Outstanding!! That is the sort of climate change that a lot of people in the Pacific Northwest would welcome.
Maybe that is why the press didn’t report this as being caused by AGW. If they did, everyone here except umbrella and gumboot manufacturers would be out voting FOR more AGW. Forget about heating with gas, we’d be switching back to coal.
“I wonder if David Suzuki was wrong when he said AGW caused the snow
to melt at the Vancouver Olympics last year.”
And in any case, Suzuki has a waterfront house in Vancouver right next to the Kits Beach. If he actually believed in global warming and sea level rise, why have waterfront property, especially with the prices of waterfront in Vancouver. Why would you risk it?
Maybe it is time that someone researched the number of AGW supporters in positions of authority that own waterfront property. Given that so few people own waterfront, it seems rather strange that AGW supporters would own waterfront if they truly believed in what they were saying.
Seems part of the skew to more recent years could be attributed to our ability to detect accurately events in the far past, naturally being smoothed as time and erosion washes away the past. Was this considered in those plots?
“it’s almost as if, these extreme climate shifts occurred….naturally.”
It’s almost as if you don’t understand that things that occur naturally can also occur artificially.
How would you determine:
1. If they occurred as part of nature in the past, that they were artificial now.
2. If life benefited from them in the past, that they would harm life now.
@Doug in Seattle says:
February 22, 2011 at 11:52 am
“I’m sure you are referring to Dr. Tom Pederson of the University of Victoria in Beautiful Victoria, BC.”
Check the link I provided. Tim Patterson at Carleton University is the guy.
Given what Ian L. McQueen says February 22, 2011 at 3:35 pm
a Dr. Patterson/Dr. Pedersen tete at tete might be interesting!
Send the data to Mann. He’ll reconfigure those layers toot-sweet cuz he’s the best gall durn layer/ring counter thar iz.
Castor Lake is not the entire Pacific Northwest, and never will be.
Neither does one lake record indicate uniformity throughout the entire region.
It has been, and will be, very common to have small areas go dry or wet, while adjacent areas do the opposite or sympathetic.
Money has been playing with water supplies for decades now, and will continue to maneuver and cajole the unsuspecting into being useful idiots to the end of lining someone’s pockets.
Pressure is being presently applied, right here in California, to precharge for possible drought, year in and year out, irregardless of whether there is a drought in progress. This precharge is the flip side of flood insurance games.
Here sheepie, sheepie. Come hither for your shearing.
Hey, that graph looks like noise to me
Is that an oxygen 18 isotope ratio AND a grayscale hockey stick developing?!
Not mentioned is the vast difference in temps and precip patterns between sites on the east vs. the west side of the Cascade Mountains. Their lake is on the east side. The west is warmer & drier, the east is more affected by summer thunderstorms and is much more likely to have winter snow. Thus it may not be valid to extrapolate results of this study to the entire PNW.
Anthony writes,
“no mention of AGW in this latest paper.”
John Kerr writes,
“Impressive that he didn’t link climate change in there at all.”
However, the researchers themselves write,
“Model projections of global precipitation patterns in the coming century predict an intensification of zonal midlatitude precipitation bands as well an intensification of subtropical aridity, and an accompanying poleward shift of these patterns in response to increased greenhouse gas concentrations (5).
….
Today ENSO has a clear impact on western North American climate and is the dominant control on interannual climate variability worldwide. Improved understanding of the long-term behavior of this system and how it responds to external forcing are among the most important issues in reducing uncertainty
in climate change projections. The data from Castor Lake document changing drought cycles in the PNW over the last 6,000 yr that were likely driven by the evolution of ENSO and its teleconnections with the PNW, thus confirming the long-term sensitivity
of the region to activity in the tropical Pacific. The scale and pace of these changes suggest a large and gradual forcing mechanism such as precessional insolation. Altering the evolution of wet/dry cycles that has operated for the past 6,000 yr would
therefore seem to require a global-scale mechanism. Anthropogenic changes in radiative forcing may be of such a scale, although the specific nature of ENSO response to such changes cannot yet be predicted with confidence (34). However, our data confirm that teleconnections with the PNW are a robust feature of the ENSO system, and therefore that any change in ENSO is likely to have a profound impact on water availability, people and economies in the circum-Pacific region.”
Gniess,
With an apparently straight face you quote “teleconnections”! And then you ratchet it up with another “robust”.
Stop it! You’re killing me!☺☺☺
Teleconnections are as valid as Mann’s treemometer.