From the University of Nebraska-Lincoln , a new record in the 12 year old drought monitor.
US sets drought monitor’s ‘exceptional drought’ record in July
Worst classification for drought in nearly 12 percent of contiguous US
The percent of contiguous U.S. land area experiencing exceptional drought in July reached the highest levels in the history of the U.S. Drought Monitor, an official at the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln said.
Nearly 12 percent of the contiguous United States fell into the “exceptional” classification during the month, peaking at 11.96 percent on July 12. That level of exceptional drought had never before been seen in the monitor’s 12-year history, said Brian Fuchs, UNL assistant geoscientist and climatologist at the NDMC.
The monitor uses a ranking system that begins at D0 (abnormal dryness) and moves through D1 (moderate drought), D2 (severe drought), D3 (extreme drought) and D4 (exceptional drought).
Exceptional drought’s impacts include widespread crop and pasture losses, as well as shortages of water in reservoirs, streams and wells, creating water emergencies.
Currently, 18 percent of the country is classified as under either extreme or exceptional drought, Fuchs said. Much of it is in the south, particularly Texas, where the entire state is experiencing drought — three-fourths considered exceptional.
The most recent drought monitor report, released late last week, indicated that 59 percent of the United States was drought-free, while 41 percent faced some form of abnormal dryness or drought. Two weeks ago, 64 percent of the country was drought-free.
Other states that are at least 85 percent abnormally dry or in drought according to the report include:
- New Mexico (100 percent in drought, 48 percent exceptional)
- Louisiana (100 percent abnormally dry or in drought, 33 percent exceptional)
- Oklahoma (100 percent abnormally dry or in drought, 52 percent exceptional)
- South Carolina (97 percent abnormally dry or in drought, 16 percent extreme to exceptional)
- Georgia (95 percent abnormally dry or in drought, 68 percent extreme to exceptional)
- Arkansas (96 percent abnormally dry or in drought, 6 percent extreme to exceptional)
- Florida (89 percent abnormally dry or in drought, 20 percent extreme to exceptional)
In the next two to three weeks, some affected areas may see some improvement. The wake of Tropical Storm Don should result in rainfall in the central and western Gulf Coast states, but the degree of drought relief will depend upon the storm’s intensity, as well as its track and speed.
“Whenever there is a lot of moisture in a short period of time, the potential exists for rapid improvement,” Fuchs said. “But while that possibility exists, it won’t necessarily mean the end of drought in those areas. It will likely only improve by one drought category for those areas not impacted by any tropical storms or where drought related impacts improve.”
The drought monitor combines numeric measures of drought and experts’ best judgment into a weekly map. It is produced by the NDMC, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and incorporates review from 300 climatologists, extension agents and others across the nation.
Each week the previous map is revised based on rain, snow and other events, observers’ reports of how drought is affecting crops, wildlife and other indicators.
To examine current and archived national, regional and state-by-state drought maps and conditions, go to http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu.
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Rhoda Ramirez says:
August 1, 2011 at 7:42 pm
“I’m living in the Panhandle portion of Florida where it’s supposed to be extreme. I’m not sure where they’re getting that finding.”
I agree. I even had one spat about 5 weeks ago of 2 1/2 inches in thirty minutes. (localized, and also in the Panhandle). Last week I had to go through three different thunderstorms in 120 miles of driving.
Personally, I quit looking at drought monitor five years ago due to the bizarre drought declarations that they make.
Robert of Texas says:
August 1, 2011 at 9:00 pm
Worst drought in 12 years…
That should mean 13 years ago there was a drought far worse than this year.
And if next years is a lesser drought in the same place, then the headlines could be :
“Worst drought since last year”.
Kind of loses it’s meaning, doesn’t it?
Wait, I thought Al Gore said that global warming causes increased moisture in the air and thus more precipitation, not drought? I’m so confused! http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/01/10/al-gore-introduces-the-droughtflood/
After watching this lecture given by a CERN scientist on the CLOUD experiment concerning the effects of cosmic rays on cloud coverage and climate I can´t see how anyone can still claim human CO2 has much to do about global warming/climate change
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNph-bX5iWo (part 1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEKD4tLf0-I (part 2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OulcequIpu8 (part 3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkPd7NjOTIQ (part 4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPWGzZeUdM0 (part 5)
Hilarious article Anthony, thanks.
12 years of records huh? Yeah, thats a great ” proxy”. Throw in some bristlecone proxies while we’re at it and theyve guranteed funding for another decade.
As for LA Guy’s and Brian’s pathetic attempts at ” hit and divert” posting, they arent even worth replying to. Maybe if they can pull some evidence to accompany their attacks then maybe someone will listen. Wouldn’t count on it though.
“…experts’ best judgment”
Sorry but I have developed a “Do Not Trust, Must Verify” attitude to any climate related science. I do no trust that the judgment from these experts is not biased toward AWG.
Well looking at the map Shelby County Tennessee is supposed to be in drought, the small streams are still full of water meaning the water table is still very high and we have lots of rainfall thanks to thunderstorms about once a week or more.
Last year the streams had dried up completely and the water table was lower. Just a personal observation it is hard to be in drought with such high atmospheric water content here in the sub tropics.
Apologies in advance!
rbateman, I remember the CA drought of 1976-77. Everyone was talking about it. I was talking with an “older farmer”, in his late 50s (well, heck! I was 25), who told a story about a REALLY HOT summer in the Central Valley some 20 years before. He said, “It got so hot, my hogs all melted and the rendered fat ran into the fields, popping all my corn!” He thought all the hoopla about drought was silly. He said it would rain again. Sure enough, it did!
Sorry if you’ve heard his story 1000 times before. Still makes me laugh!
This map claims mid-New Hampshire is “abnormally dry” yet the vernal pools in the forest are deeper than normal for this time of year, there is no drying of grass or other ground cover, and temperatures are below normal.
Sure is dry in my location. Looks like there will be no rain at all today, making it the driest day in the last twelve days. Stop the CO2 quick before my tomato plants wither away.
@ur momisugly Rbateman
“We had a bad case of drought in California in 1976-77, and some have never quite gotten over the complex it gave them. So what happened in 1978? Big rains filled up the reservoirs in 6 months.”
LOL.. you guys have it sooo easy over there.. Queensland had a seven year drought, and then rains that filled the reservoirs in 2 days.. and kept filling and filling……and filling !!
You think this is bad? Twelve years ago, when the “drought monitor” first started, everyplace set a record!!!
Smokey: Great chart! We knew, of course, that higher temperatures caused higher CO2 (“Henry’s Law”, innit?), but I had no idea that higher temperatures had such an effect on Postal rates!
Best,
Frank
@Scott
“Still though, I think you’re wrong and the CO2 has had an insignificant effect on drought”
Depends on how you define drought. If drought a shortage of water for plant growth, then, as we know, CO2 allows plant to be more water efficient,. This implies that a rise in CO2 would mean a lessening of a drought effect.
more CO2 = many benefits !!!
Plants LUV CO2. Yet the (so called) Green want to starve plant life, and chop down trees and birds to install wind turbines.. try to figure out that bit of lunacy, I can’t !!
@higley7 August 1, 2011 at 7:22 pm “Drought is not related to global temperatures.”
More precisely, higley7, warming does not cause drought. It’s drought that causes warming. Cycles of droughts and floods are driven by natural conditions linked, for example, to the Southern Oscillation Index.
As hydrologist and climate specialist, Professor Stewart Franks, has explained:
“…this is a confusion of the well known physics of evaporation – as higher air temperatures are driven by the lack of evaporation (as occurs during drought)…
Of course, when there is a deficit of rainfall, this tends to be accompanied by less cloud-cover, hence more sunshine, which does increase the energy available for evaporation, but as soil moisture is low, the bulk of the energy goes into heating the near-surface atmosphere and hence higher air temperatures.”
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/02/droughtgate_study_finds_ipcc_h_1.html
I see. So you can establish a global trend from 12 years of localised drought data but you cannot dismiss a global trend by using 11 years of global satellite data. Got it. Thanks.
At least Brian Fuchs was smart enough to leave off the “since records began” tag. As most have pointed out 12 years is a pretty paltry length of time to make any judgements. 12 years, a history? Puurrrleeeese! It’s all in the headlines folks, “worst storm since records began,” worst drought since whenever”, “the highest wind speeds ever recorded – since………..!”. They always caveat themselves somewhere down the line,shooting that silly gun off again into their poor little feet.
Texas is at the same latitude as the northern Sahara. It has always been a dry area. What makes it worse is there is the population explosion and the very high draw on the low water levels.
RockyRoad says:
August 1, 2011 at 7:29 pm
But on a serious note, the vast majority of Mexico is suffering from the same drought. Check it out here: http://drought.mssl.ucl.ac.uk/drought.html?map=%2Fwww%2Fdrought%2Fweb_pages%2Fdrought.map&program=%2Fcgi-bin%2Fmapserv&root=%2Fwww%2Fdrought2%2F&map_web_imagepath=%2Ftmp%2F&map_web_imageurl=%2Ftmp%2F&map_web_template=%2Fdrought.html
(Sorry for the length of the URL; apparently big droughts warrant big URLs.)
Also play with the D[r]ought Assessment Period option on the left to see the length of impact.
It is kind of interesting that the Global Drought monitor site shows the severity of drought in Mexico and the American Southwest declining as you scan down to the shortest term, with the peak severity and extent on the 9 month map, while the US Drought Monitor’s 12 week animation shows the trend as reversed. I would tend to classify both as sources of information rather than data and not highly reliable information at that. I first came across the GDM site almost 2 years ago and have visited it fairly regularly ever since. Their longest timescale maps are only 36 months, but over the time I’ve been visiting the site which would cover nearly five years in total, the one area of the globe which has consistently had the highest percent in both area and severity of drought has been Greenland, which puts a slightly different spin on all those studies about the accelerating decline in the mass balance of the ice sheet there. Especially since, from what I’ve seen, none of them seem to include this factor in their calculations.
12 years records results in a chicken licken press release.
Things are worse than we thought, just not necessarily with the climate.
La Nina = Drought in GA. I know it was coming when the Pacific got blue in the middle.
Anthony:
Thankyou for this essay. I write to ask a question which it raises, and – to be clear – I state that the question is serious (i.e. not some silly Brian-type rhetoric).
The essay shows the spread of the existing drought over the US but – as several comments in this thread state – it provides no context in which to evaluate this information.
I note that timetochooseagain (at August 1, 2011 at 7:43 pm ) links to graphs of annual precipitation for the contiguous USA, and OK S. provides a link (at August 1, 2011 at 7:27 pm ) to precipitation in Oklahoma over the past century.
But – to the amusement of many – the data set in your essay is only 12 years long.
I understand there have been State Climatologists in the US for decades. So, it seems reasonable to suppose that most (perhaps all) of the drought-affected States each has had a State Climatologist for decades and, therefore, has a record of annual precipitation measured for decades. I note the link to “current and archived national, regional and state-by-state drought maps and conditions” in your essay, but it does not seem to provide State-by-State records of historic precipitation over several decades (if it does then I failed to find those records).
So, my question is:
Is there a link to a collated set of graphs of precipitation for each State now affected by drought similar to that which OK S provides for Oklahoma and, if so, what is it?
Thanking you in advance for an answer.
Richard
We were told we had a drought in the South of England back in May. Since then June and July have been a total washout. Folk are now hoping August will go back to being a drought as they are fed up with the rain!
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/anomacts/2011/6/2011_6_Rainfall_Anomaly_1961-1990.gif
LA Guy says:
August 1, 2011 at 8:28 pm
Ah – so then by your own words anyone that says “but it is cold this month” or “we got a lot of snow” or “the rise in ocean / surface temperature didn’t got up in a straight line each and every year” will all quickly be dismissed then?
Can you say “strawman arguments”, LA?
I knew you could.
Does your Mommy know you’re here?
Uh, ever heard of the Dust Bowl? It may have been edited out of history books because it is inconvenient for the message, but when I was growing up, that was part of my US history lesson. So, since drought has BEEN WORSE IN THE PAST and since this pattern is normal with La Nina, how do you arrive at the conclusion that this is because of us humans?
If it is dry for almost every La Nina, it isn’t humans, it is the effect from La Nina. Conditions are worse because this is a multi-year La Nina. It has lasted longer than ones of the past. So, La Nina makes it dry and hot in the central and eastern US and since it is lasting longer than ones of the recent past, this is to be completely expected. I suggest you become the bane of climate scientists and actually do research. The truth shall set you free.
According to the USDA map, we live smack in the middle of “exceptional” (D4) drought conditions.
Which is… well, not true. This year is actually greener than most.
Why should I believe anything feds say?