Even more troubling, why does a waste of time study like this get funded by the Department of Defense Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program? I don’t want defense money going to modeling studies on fish and streams that tell us the obvious, especially when some of the worst droughts in the Southwestern United States occurred before “climate change” was even in the lexicon, as seen below:
From the Ohio State University:
Climate Change Will Threaten Fish by Drying Out Southwest U.S. Streams, Study Predicts
Modeling suggests fish will lose habitat as steady flow of surface water is depleted
By: Emily Caldwell
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Fish species native to a major Arizona watershed may lose access to important segments of their habitat by 2050 as surface water flow is reduced by the effects of climate warming, new research suggests.
Most of these fish species, found in the Verde River Basin, are already threatened or endangered. Their survival relies on easy access to various resources throughout the river and its tributary streams. The species include the speckled dace (Rhinichthys osculus), roundtail chub (Gila robusta) and Sonora sucker (Catostomus insignis).
A key component of these streams is hydrologic connectivity – a steady flow of surface water throughout the system that enables fish to make use of the entire watershed as needed for eating, spawning and raising offspring.
Models that researchers produced to gauge the effects of climate change on the watershed suggest that by the mid 21st century, the network will experience a 17 percent increase in the frequency of stream drying events and a 27 percent increase in the frequency of zero-flow days.
“We have portions of the channel that are going to dry more frequently and for longer periods of time,” said lead author Kristin Jaeger, assistant professor in The Ohio State University School of Environment and Natural Resources. “As a result, the network will become fragmented, contracting into isolated, separated pools.
“If water is flowing throughout the network, fish are able to access all parts of it and make use of whatever resources are there. But when systems dry down, temporary fragmented systems develop that force fish into smaller, sometimes isolated channel reaches or pools until dry channels wet up again.”
This study covers climate change’s effects on surface water availability from precipitation and temperature changes. It does not take into account any withdrawals of groundwater that will be needed during droughts to support the estimated 50 percent or more increase in Arizona’s population by 2050.
“These estimates are conservative,” said Jaeger, who conducted the study with co-authors Julian Olden and Noel Pelland of the University of Washington. The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The researchers used a rainfall runoff model, the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), which incorporates the study basin’s elevation, terrain, soil, land use, vegetation coverage, and both current and future climate data, including precipitation and temperature.
“It’s a hydrological model that routes water received from precipitation through the landscape, a portion of which eventually becomes streamflow in the river,” Jaeger said. “We partitioned the watershed into many smaller pieces all linked to each other, with nodes placed 2 kilometers apart throughout the entire river network to evaluate if that portion of the river channel at an individual node supported streamflow for a given day.”
Jaeger describes the river network, as envisioned by this model, as a mosaic of wet and dry patches. Piecing data from all of those nodes together, the researchers established an index of connectivity for the entire watershed, which predicts that the mid-century and late-century climate will reduce connectivity by 6 to 9 percent over the course of a year and by up to 12 to 18 percent during spring spawning months.
“The index decreases that are predicted by the model will affect spawning the most,” said Jaeger, who also holds an appointment with the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center. “During the spring spawning period, fish are more mobile, traveling longer distances to access necessary habitat. Projected decreased connectivity compromises access to different parts of the network.”
Flowing portions of the system will diminish between 8 and 20 percent in spring and early summer, producing lengthier channels that will dry more frequently and over longer periods of time. These changes will reduce available habitat for fish and force them to travel longer distances for resources once channels rewet, Jaeger said.
The fish are already subject to stressors on the system, including both surface and groundwater extraction for irrigation and drinking water, loss of habitat and the introduction of nonnative species that prey on the native fish, Jaeger noted. The overall system’s connectivity is also already compromised, as well, because of existing dry conditions in the American Southwest.
“These fish are important cogs in the wheel of this greater ecosystem,” Jaeger said. “Loss of endemic species is a big deal in and of itself, and native species evaluated in this study are particularly evolved to this watershed. In this river network that currently supports a relatively high level of biodiversity, the suite of endemic fish species are filling different niches in the ecosystem, which allows the system to be more resilient to disturbances such as drought.
“If species are pushed over the edge to extinction, then what they bring to the ecosystem will be lost and potentially very difficult to replace.”
This project was funded by the Department of Defense Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program.
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davidgmills says:
August 18, 2014 at 2:59 pm
… Which helps explain why the senate is the arguably the worst legislative body on the planet.
——————————————————
Personally, I give that credit to Harry Reid.
Mike Maguire says:
August 18, 2014 at 2:14 pm
8. However, global climate models have been correct on projecting more extreme rain events, which does make sense from the beneficial 1 degree of warming over the last 150 years since warmer(more humid) air does hold more moisture.
Please source your data.
Thanks.
Thanks for the link sturgishooper. Interesting!
On general principles — yes, in theory — you might expect a warmer world to be a wetter world because not so much water would be permanently locked up inside glaciers. And I have read accounts of how vast deserts existed during the glacials when ice sheets covered much of N. American and Europe. I have also come across accounts of how the Sahara was much wetter 5000 or so years ago during the Holocene optimum, when the earth’s climate was significantly warmer than it is now. However, that doesn’t mean that, thinking on a global scale of course, regional pockets of land — like the American southwest — couldn’t lose out during the changing weather patterns brought on by a globally warmer climate, ending up much drier than before.
Data and simple physics show evaporation increases with temperature even if water vapor increases to maintain constant relative humidity. Global precipitation will equal global evaporation, but not at a local level which depends on many things. I understand that climate models predict that with global warming present wetter area rainfall will increase more than the global average and present drier areas will actually lose rainfall and get drier yet. Looks like faulty climate models at work again. Sounds familiar. Everthing gets worse. If you get too much rain now, it will get worse. If you don’t get enough now, it will get worse.
Um, it’s only with great reservations that I inform you that the reason the Department of Defense Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program is actually funding a study concerning fish is because these are actually top secret warrior fish, highly trained in underwater covert operations, marksmanship utilizing minnow bullets, and the martial arts. They can literally break bones with lethal ventral fin snaps, and their lightning fast dorsal fin erections can flip opponents. Their tail fin wallops are said to be deadly. Most importantly they are masters of disguise passing themselves off as harmless frogs, tadpoles, and salamanders. It has been leaked (maybe not the best word to use in this context) that aquariums filled with these special ops fish are always present on Air Force One (sometimes affectionately referred to as Air Fish One) to accompany the President and that they provide better security than the Secret Service. They also provide good filets if the situation demands but their security classification does not extend to provide them prior knowledge of that important function.
Anyway, I hope I’ve adequately explained that however mind-bendingly stupid US government grant programs may seem to appear that there obviously must be great genius behind them after all. It’s just that you have to really, and I mean really, use your imagination to figure it out.
Abedee abedee abedee abedee
That’s all folks!
Tom J says:
August 18, 2014 at 7:53 pm
Dolphins, yes. Sea lions, yes.
Fish, not so much.
But then, my clearance for both Area 51 & the Navy’s Marine Mammal Weaponization Institute in San Diego have been revoked.
Tom J, you have forgotten the US Deprtment of the Navy and its trained seagulls and porpoises. The seagulls were trained by smearing edible fish on dummy periscopes. The intent was that these trained seagulls would search out the periscopes of enemy submarines, and when they did not find the desired edible fish smears, they would emit a loud squark, and poop over the lens of the periscope, thus blinding the submarine. Unfortunately the Navy boffins were misled by the term “seagull” into thinking that seagulls actually go to sea. They are in fact land birds, and spend much time around restaurants waiting for scraps, and sitting on lawns, hoping for worms. As a result the project was cancelled.
The other project tried to train porpoises to search out for submarines. It was hoped to train them to go to submarines, and then USN subs would provide them with a bucket of fish offal if they pressed their snouts against the sub’s rudder. It ws intended that in combat situations, they would be fitted with a back pack containing dynamite and fulminate. On arriving at the submarine, a pole extending from the front of the backpack would hit the rudder as the porpoise tried to press its snout against the rudder, set off the fuolminate, which would detonate the dynamite. Unfortuantely the porpoises were were trained on US submarines, which they happily exploded, ignoring the Japanese and German subs which they did not recognize.
Boffins rule!
Hee, hee, hee. Love the warrior fish bit. But not to worry, they will come back when there is more rain to fill the rivers. Possibly, someone is diverting water that would normally fill these natural resources.
Thought of that? Maybe a nuclear plant or some military adventure.
Doesn’t that chart look like it runs along with the Gleissberg cycle?
Need to institute Global Warming Tennis, just lob the paper back over the net with a strong recommendation that both Arizona and California must immediately institute zero population growth, none of the airy fairy 50% expected increase stuff the paper concedes, cut taxes, too and of course absolute zero migration unless the person wants to leave for “someplace else”
I guess that should fix the paper, the models and the University funders that dreamed it up!!
Not a bad method of gaming the gamers, could be called Global Warming Ping Pong, you load the garbage and we bat it back with some alarming extras and a healthy side salad of thinking material!! [smile]
davidgmills says:
August 18, 2014 at 2:59 pm
… Which helps explain why the senate is the arguably the worst legislative body on the planet.
That is, of course why it was designed that way, so that those sparsely populated states would not be run over rough shod by the majority. That’s why it might be the best legislative body in the world.
Jeff L @ur momisugly 6:41 pm.
My observational experience with California has been cooler equals drier and warmer equals wetter. This is probably a regional effect.
In the winter, cold air can settle into the Great Basin like a giant pool and when the wind picks up from the NNE, it drives the cold air into California and coming from land, has a lower moisture content, leaving us cooler/drier. We also get atmospheric rivers of moisture from the Pacific that contain warm air with a higher moisture content, leaving us warmer/wetter.
When it gets real exciting is when these two features get together and gives amazing snow dumps of 10-20 feet from a single system. At times a series of these systems can come through, with cold air intrusions ebbing and flowing into them. This causes heavy snow followed by warm rains substantially increasing the water flows from the mountains.
In the 19th century they had these events, with the winter of 1861-1862 causing the most damage and lesser events in the winter of 1849-1850 and 1846-1847.
But didn’t they read their own paper? The answer is right there.
They say that the water will be needed to service the expected increase in population of 50%. So they just need to make living there so unappealing that people won’t come; maybe they could make things so bad that people and businesses might actually leave.
Problem fixed.
@ur momisugly Ms Jaeger, it is called “evolution” and “adaptation”. Sad to see all these millions wasted, it could go to real education like writing, reading and arithmetic.
I’m in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, essentially near Vancouver.
I think the term we are looking for is the hydrological cycle. Warmer means more energy in the system but keep in mind that you need to use Kelvin not celsius when calculating energy. 1 K ( or C ) of warming is only about 0.35% more energy at an average global temperature of 288 K.
But I thought that ”Climate Change” was supposed to increase rainfall. This would increase hydrologic connectivity.
these fish seemed to survive the past devastating drought periods without problem. They must have just swum downstream as it dried up.
I guess its politically incorrect to note that it seems most of the GW authors in the past few years have been female grad students. It used to be such a mann’s world.
For 420 out of the 470 years from AD 850 to 1320 (AD 850-1090 and 1140 to 1320), California suffered megadroughts. The state ain’t seen nuthin’ yet in its now only 163 year-old rainfall records.
http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_24993601/california-drought-past-dry-periods-have-lasted-more
The treaty with Mexico ensures Mexico gets a piece of the Colorado – they have chosen to sequester their part in Lake Mead, so that allowed the Colorado River to essentially end in the US. The least dim bulbs in water management have chosen to release an occasional pulse of water into the delta to help sustain flora and fauna that have adapted to require a regular flow of river water into the Sea of Cortez. It is largely symbolic given they never expected and were surprised that the pulse of water actually reached the sea. The regenerative effects of silt deposits from the watershed that used to spill into the Sea of Cortez now spills into and remains in Lake Mead. The water from the “pulse” comes from the deeps of the lake and is very much colder and far less nutrient-rich that the natural river flow and so it is as likely to kill through thermal shock that which the least dim bulbs wish to save.
Whenever you take an area as large as the western U.S. the average is going to mask a lot of regional variability. From E.R. Cook et all check out the differences between the historic droughts of 1934 and 1956. Modeled palmer indices from 951 and 1380 also show significant regional variation, so those poor fish will likely still be swimming somewhere in the western U.S. even during an omegadrought.
http://geosciencebigpicture.com/2014/04/27/california-drought-update-4-14/
RayG says:
“Please source your data.”
Here’s one source:
http://gcmd.nasa.gov/records/GCMD_USGCRP_USVeryHeavyPrecipitation1958-2007.html
I find the game of picking papers and studies to support whatever point one wants to make as more often than not, using the unlimited sources to defend whatever cognitive bias exists in the users brain.
In my case, as an operational meteorologist for 33 years that uses global weather/models and observations to predict crop conditions and yields/supply and energy use/demand, my opinions are based on what I’ve observed the last 3 decades. I have weather maps going back to 1948 and data going back over a century.
As you know, the world is littered with papers and studies that are utterly absurd and contradict my own observations.
We have papers that will make a connection for you with today’s climate to 90,000,000 years ago or ones that absurdly project climate and weather a century from now about any aspect you want and everything in between.
The absurdity is that it’s almost never rooted with empirical data/observations in the real world.
I know because that’s what I do 12 hours a day.
I can produce more sources on this if you want, but to be honest, some of the same sources have a bunch of bs on other climate related information and especially their speculative projections.
How does one know what to pick and choose from?
You don’t.
Almost always, if you believe in CAGW, you believe all of it. If you don’t(are a denier of climate model skill, CAGW and increasing extreme weather) then you believe none of it.
………it’s usually all or nothing.
However, I get to pick and choose based on what makes sense meteorologically and backed up by over 30 years of comprehensive observations.
There has clearly been an increase in very heavy rain events over the last 3 decades.
As mentioned initially, in most other realms of weather, that has NOT been the case. Increasing CO2 has been the best thing humans have ever done for this planet, with the known law of photosynthesis and key role of CO2 causing a booming biosphere, increasing vegetative health and big crop yield/world food production increases.
Craig Idso has the “authentic” data from studies to show this if thats what you need:
http://www.co2science.org/
Go to “data”
Garymount,
“keep in mind that you need to use Kelvin not celsius when calculating energy. 1 K ( or C ) of warming is only about 0.35% more energy at an average global temperature of 288 K”
I’ll leave those actual calculations up to those, like the ones that use mathematical equations to represent the physics of a theory that they think can be processed by a super computer to project the next 100 years of climate.
However, my earlier point was not about absolute temperature/energy but about what happens when you create a disparity in temperature.
When you increase(decrease) the meridional temperature gradient, you increase(decrease) the potential energy for synoptic scale features.
When the high latitudes warmed in the 1980’s/90’s, many measures of extreme weather decreased along with the decrease in the meridional temperature gradient.
When the earth experiences global cooling(more at higher latitudes) things like violent tornadoes go up, as one would expect with a bigger “north to south” temperature contrast. This is one reason that the 1970’s was noted for some major tornado outbreaks, along with higher numbers for those kind of tornadoes.
Here is a nice link to show you the math.
http://www.atmosp.physics.utoronto.ca/~isla/8_baroclinic.pdf
One problem, the Verde watershed would most likely have more water as global temps rise. This watershed is fed by Monsoon moister being squeezed out as its pushed against the Mogollon Rim. Another problem, I doubt periodic stream fragmentation will affect species evolved for such conditions. The have weathered much worse in the past. Even those those that do not specialize in desert habitat, like Rhinichthys osculus, are so wide spread and adaptable, that they would not have any problem either. The man REAL reason for current declines in native fish populations are introduced game fishes whose ability to out compete would be severely curtailed by more rigorous desert conditions.
With a warmer world, more water would evaporate from the oceans, and about 30% or so of this increased ocean evaporation would fall as rain on land. I suspect that the
study is referring to the “horse latitudes”- those bands around 30% north and south where it’s pretty dry- thanks to the effects of “Hadley” circulation- maybe they think the horse latitudes would shift poleward with global warming- so it would be an overall wetter climate with local shifts in precipitaiton.
Mike Maguire
The problem I have with the “warmer is wetter” and my experience with warmer is drier in my region is that the north and south hemispheres go through a large swing of temperature as it cycles through the 12 month solar year without a corresponding relationship to amount of precipitation. If the small amount of warming since the LIA can be detected in change of precipitation, why doesn’t the large change in temperature difference from winter to summer per hemisphere show up ?