Story submitted by WUWT reader “Clyde”
Simulations identify past megadroughts, but at wrong times.
“This would be a fine country if it only had water,” observes a settler looking at the barren west Texas plains. “So would Hell,” replies a despairing farmer.
That old Texas joke probably originated in the 1950s, when the state was baked by its most relentless drought in recorded history.
…
Reliable forecasts of future ‘megadroughts’ would be a boon to farmers and water managers. But results presented last week at the annual assembly of the European Geosciences Union in Vienna suggest that such forecasts are still beyond the reach of current climate models.
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The results were puzzling. Although the simulation produced a number of pronounced droughts lasting several decades each, these did not match the timing of known megadroughts. In fact, drought occurrences were no more in agreement when the model was fed realistic values for variables that influence rainfall than when it ran control simulations in which the values were unrealistically held constant.
“The model seems to miss some of the dynamics that drive large droughts,” says study participant Jason Smerdon, a researcher at Lamont-Doherty who studies historical climate patterns.
http://www.nature.com/news/climate-models-fail-to-predict-us-droughts-1.12810
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Texans could run a pipeline to Lotawata, Oklahoma.
vukcevic says:May 9, 2013 at 4:33 am Not to discount your interesting correlations, but in Colorado we have drought with La Niña and rain otherwise. mpainter says:
May 9, 2013 at 8:13 am Alludes to the same for Texas.
It is my understanding that the migration to the SW America, also known as the Desert Southwest, during the last three decades of the 20th Century, occurred during unusually wet times. Now people who live there are surprised by the lack of water.
droughts & stuff
look here:
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/04/29/the-climate-is-changing/
The standard the models should be judged by is that from just studying history. The US gets drought the years the UK gets very cold and wet. That event can be picked up really easily from the UK rainfall data. It interestingly also appears to match the years the north west passage is deemed right for crossing attempts both successful and otherwise.
Could the Arctic ice melt be the trigger, not the result of climate change, is a question I really would love to see investigated by a real climate scientist with an open mind. Historically it would appear that at least from 1600 literature would seem to back this idea. I know it is not very scientific but it is better quality evidence than much of the so called science actually used.