The Texas centered drought versus 1918, 1956 and 1934

As my wife said, a total novice in science, “There seems to be a lot of humidity in this ‘heat wave’ ”
Yup. This is farmers weather.

Mr. Schtick;
Not surprising, since the IPCC focusses on irrelevant variables almost exclusively.
Joseph;
Take a stand. Don’t fudge by spelling “hobbyists” with both an “i” and and “e”. 😉 :p

Global precipitation has also decreased over the past 30 years, but this is at odds with the IPCC refrain that global warming causes increased water vapor/precipitation:
Global Warming has been propped up by the shutdown of rural stations and bad sensor locations/design. Rain guage readings most likely are suffering the same malaise of scarcity. Around here, there are examples of guages that are reported broken for long periods of time. Something to scrutinize. Bet you won’t like what you find.

We in OZ suffered a long drought that has now end in ample rain fall and bellow normal temps.
It is your turn, we will take it back when it is our turn. Weather is always a topic in every day conversation, as in bloody hot ain’t it or jeez it’s cold. Wish this rain would stop, tanks are getting low b@gger we need some rain soon. Weather!!

When I read such posts as this I have the distinct advantage by being an intellectual dimwit of no scientific background whatsoever. However, as a retired Master Mariner who has 60 years of experiencing many of the weather phenomena as reported and analysed, from this site and other sources, my main inference is that there is no such thing as “global” and the constant attempts of climatologists to use the concept of “global” is the elephant in the room which reduces the entire debate to a farce. The above post, for example is precise, centred, meaningful, and interesting but has no relevance to arctic ice loss, (By wind action through the greenland sea mainly it would appear), or to the Russian heatwave, (a deflection of the jet stream allowing a blocking high to remain stationary possibly), or to Australian flooding, (poor use of flood prevention dams and an unusually warm sea area off the coast I am told). So my point is that there is local, coastal, continental, arctic, antarctic, oceanic, tropical, temperate, maritime, desert, etc weather and climate but there is no “global”. The idea of taking a temperature from the Mojave desert in July and averaging it with the coldest temperature from the continental ice sheet at the south pole in July is farcical. This may explain why Weathermen seem to talk sense, Atmospheric physicists seem to talk sense as they talk about the physical properties of the atmosphere not the inferred/invented properties, geologists seem to talk sense about the Earths rebound in the current interglacial, and climate scientists spout complete BS a lot of the time as they try and unify that which has no unity. Einstein managed to draw together many strands to mathematically deduce the theory of relativity, which has yet to be disproved, but he never managed to develop a unified theory. It is my humble opinion that there is no “unified theory” of climate and that we would better spend our time and money building dams to mitigate flooding and drought; sea defenses to mitigate storm surges and Tsumami; reliable nuclear, clean coal and gas power plants to mitigate energy poverty throughout the world and give the climate scientists a wheelbarrow and a pickaxe each and send them off to do something useful like clearing the leaves out of drains in the Autumn and removing chewing gum from the pavements. Once they have been surgically removed from their computer keyboards and experienced a bit of fresh air they may realise that we have roughly the same weather now as we had 60 years ago and will have in 60 years time, with many interesting and some exciting variables on the way.

Hockey Schtick says:
July 23, 2011 at 11:12 pm
Regarding the last graph in this post, a commenter pointed out on my site that The Palmer Drought Severity Index uses an inverse scale in which more negative numbers reflect MORE drought. The post was updated with this correction and I apologize for the misinterpretation. Therefore, the time series shows global drought has instead increased over the past 30 years.

Anthony — Joe’s post is very interesting, but his final graph is evidently upside down. This needs correcting inline!

A few “enlarge” links don’t appear to be working. Please recheck them. Another very good review, helping to put current weather into perspective. I look forward to seeing these reviews.

If the graph is right, then perhaps the language should be changed. Common word usage suggests that a positive “drought severity index” means a more severe level of drought.

Interesting posting and informed comments, as usual. I have to say that I was impressed by the comment of Disko Troop, who summed up the question quite succinctly. He isn’t yet aware, but I’ll either be quoting or paraphrasing him in the future.
IanM

Turn that last figure the right way up and it looks like a hockey stick to me 🙂

Just wanted to add that in parts of East and North Texas where annual rain fall is 40+ inches you can find desert adapted plants and grasses that usually are found in areas with 15 inches of rainfall or less. These plants are ecological oddities and could only be present if in the recent past things were far drier than now and the plants moved in.

Interestingly, in all the analog years, drought extends all the way up Dakotas, if not all the way to the Canadian Border (and probably beyond in some cases, especially the Dust Bowl drought) But Current Drought is restricted to South of Nebraska.
You know, NOAA has drought reconstruction maps, too, allowing for the possibility of identifying even more previous cases throughout the centuries. Working through them, so far 1780 looks similar, 1786, 1789, 1801, 1805, 1806, 1831, 1855, 1859, 1860, 1862, 1886, also 1909 all have Texas centered droughts, along with several other years with droughts widespread throughout the US. 1925 is also pretty bad in Texas, 1967, 1978…all these are years of either reconstructed or observed dry conditions centered on Texas. The reconstructions may or may not be very good at capturing the reality of the extant and precise pattern of droughts, but these were probably all dry in Texas. Most long before AGW could play a role, including the worst ones.
Check it out:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/drought/animation/pdsi_animation.html