The study by Cornell University, University of Arizona and U.S. Geological Survey researchers will be published in a forthcoming issue of the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Climate.
“For the southwestern U.S., I’m not optimistic about avoiding real megadroughts,” said Toby Ault, Cornell assistant professor of earth and atmospheric sciences and lead author of the paper. “As we add greenhouse gases into the atmosphere – and we haven’t put the brakes on stopping this – we are weighting the dice for megadrought conditions.”
As of mid-August, most of California sits in a D4 “exceptional drought,” which is in the most severe category. Oregon, Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas also loiter between moderate and exceptional drought. Ault says climatologists don’t know whether the severe western and southwestern drought will continue, but he said, “With ongoing climate change, this is a glimpse of things to come. It’s a preview of our future.”
Ault said that the West and Southwest must look for mitigation strategies to cope with looming long-drought scenarios. “This will be worse than anything seen during the last 2,000 years and would pose unprecedented challenges to water resources in the region,” he said.
In computer models, while California, Arizona and New Mexico will likely face drought, the researchers show the chances for drought in parts of Washington, Montana and Idaho may decrease.
Beyond the United States, southern Africa, Australia and the Amazon basin are also vulnerable to the possibility of a megadrought. With increases in temperatures, drought severity will likely worsen, “implying that our results should be viewed as conservative,” the study reports.
“These results help us take the long view of future drought risk in the Southwest – and the picture is not pretty. We hope this opens up new discussions about how to best use and conserve the precious water that we have,” said Julia Cole, UA professor of geosciences and of atmospheric sciences.
The study, “Assessing the Risk of Persistent Drought Using Climate Model Simulations and Paleoclimate Data,” was also co-authored by Julia E. Cole, David M. Meko and Jonathan T. Overpeck of University of Arizona; and Gregory T. Pederson of the U.S. Geological Survey.
The National Science Foundation, National Center for Atmospheric Research, the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration funded the research.
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The full paper is available here:
https://cornell.app.box.com/Megadrought/1/2369732445/20394648023/1
Check out weather.com for Las Vegas. The monthly reports for July, August & September shows the average rainfall for each month is 0.00 inches. That means the average is less than 0.005 and the total for all 3 months would round to, at most, 0.01 inches. This year so far in July & August they’ve had 0.94 for inches. That’s about a century’s worth of summer rain.
Some drought, eh?
Any paper that emits ocean cycles from its study is worthless regarding climate/weather because they have a large influence on long term temperature and precipitation for USA. The ENSO is mentioned briefly below but the model has no chance of representing future ocean cycle changes, so they emit it.
An obvious limitation of our work is that it is “blind” to certain aspects of dynamically-
397 driven changes in prolonged drought risk. For instance, changes in the magnitude, frequency,
398 or teleconnection patterns of El Ni˜no and La Ni˜na (e.g., Coats et al. 2013) may alter the
399 statistics of interannual variability in ways that are not captured by our simple models. Fur-
400 ther, megadrought statistics over the last millennium may be forcing-dependent, as suggested
401 by Cook et al. (2004), for instance, which shows that megadroughts were more common dur-
402 ing the medieval climate era of 850-1200 CE. Another very serious limitation is imposed by
403 the reliability of the models themselves to make realistic predictions of changes in climato-
404 logical precipitation for the end of the 21st century.
ENSO temperature and precipitation affects on planet.
http://www.knmi.nl/research/global_climate/enso/effects/
They have underestimated oceans cycles without even trying to use their influences in the model.
So they say “This will be worse than anything seen during the last 2,000 years”. Does that mean they have evidence of a megadrought 2,000 years ago? And was that one caused by anthropogenic warming? If not, then apparently this is within the range of natural variation.
Is a megadrought really a million times worse than a run of the mill drought?
Must be decadrought or even hectodrought just doesn’t sound scary enough…
The Southwest has always had megadroughts, some lasting for 200+ years. None of these caused by global warming due to greenhouse gases. They are cyclical and we could be entering one of these periods…. They probably know this and are hoping for coincidental ” proof” by this claim if the drought continues.
what krap. Only if the tropical pacific is cooling and hence the global downturn in temps continues will there be drought. Like last cold PDO this was predictable. How come I got on national TV over 5 years ago talking about the drought set up due to the pdo flip and got reamed by the left, and now that its here they make up yet another krap excuse ITS THE PDO.. THE TROPICAL PACIFIC. You can see what happened this year as the MEI and PDO is spiking its raining again. overall we are in a cooling period the next 10-20 years.
I am astounded people put krap like this out. Seriously that is what it is, headline grabbing hype and krap. Its obvious if one matches up the MEI and rainfall as to what is going on . Just another example of the 165 billion that has been spent on this scam.
I predict somewhere else will have too much rain the next kajillion years and the oceans will remain wet and have some salt in them Wheres my check
Would you care to comment on your forecast that Arctic sea ice would be above normal this summer? Not looking too good right now.
Even NOAA predicted above normal arctic sea ice this year :
http://origin.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/people/wwang/cfsv2fcst/imagesInd3/sieMon.gif
You will have to look through their archives to see that prediction.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/23/sea-ice-news-volume-5-2-noaa-forecasts-above-normal-arctic-ice-extent-for-summer/
The year is not over yet. Do note that the arctic ice is at an 8 year high for the date, and 50%above what it was at this time last year. So much for the arctic being ice free by 2013..or was it 2014? Time to move the goal post back again.
I’m in Tucson AZ. So far this monsoon, we’re very much like the 1976 monsoon at the end of August. which looks a lot like 1944.
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/twc/monsoon/monsoon.php
“Well, we did get some good news here in LA… the mudslides have put out the brush fires.”
-Johnny Carson- mid-1970’s.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
What is really needed is the creation of a flood bureau to parallel and counterbalance the drought bureau. Of course like any government funded bureau, it will predict mega whatever to produce megafunding.
This is complete garbage. They forgot to mention the PDO flip, which is the real cause. Be prepared for an avalanche of stories like this so the elites can ram rod the carbon tax through. Since these so called scientist are worthless in just about any thing they do, and since most have never had to work a hard day in their life, they need to convince the uneducated masses that AGW is real so they can keep taxpayers hard earned money coming in. Huff po had a story yesterday on the sad faces of climate change. Scientist with sad faces…some quite frightening. Pathetic
Drought or rain, doesn’t matter much, the aquifers are still being badly drained, I’ve heard of places that’ll need a thousand years of steady rain to recharge.
http://water.usgs.gov/edu/gwdepletion.html
For all the money blown on “global warming” in the US, we could have set up oceanside desalinization plants and a nationwide pipeline distribution system. As it stands, prepare for shortages and “water migrants”, we are not prepared.
Which is sad, because it would have been so cool to have powered them with nuclear energy plants, suck the seawater through for cooling and send it straight to desalinization pre-warmed. That would have been so efficient.
“Thousand years of steady rains to recharge”?
Please, don’t use hearsay as if it is the factual information.
We lost our well water in 2013 because of the 10-year drought in South Colorado.
This summer, there were “normal” rains, and the aquifer is producing again.
http://www.window.state.tx.us/specialrpt/water/96-1746.pdf
Texas Water Report: Going Deeper for the Solution
Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts
Down more than 300 feet in some areas, only about one inch a year of precipitation reaches the aquifer. You do the math.
Perhaps the researchers should go to Mesa Verde National Park in S.W. Colorado and conjure up the ancient Anasazi that once lived there and ask them if their SUVs, AC, and consumption of fossil fuels caused the drought that forced them to leave those cliff dwellings 700+ years ago.
At MVNP, the NPS in 2010 changed their paper literature to erase the climate change cause (ie. colder, drier) as the assumed reason for the cliff dwelling abandonment and societal collapse. Bad part is there are still metal lithography plaques at many of the visitor sites from pre2009 that still say what is now non-PC in the Obama settled science era.
Aquifer levels over time are an unknown. Grace satellite measurements are worthless. Would you shut down the rice growers in India because Grace says the aquifers are dropping?
As others wrote, some places, like Arkansas, are too large to model and predict statewide. Much of Arkansas experiences the wettest weather April-May as storm fronts running SW to NE, then again around November – barring hurricanes from the coast which carry gulf rain in August-September. But that barely explains the weather patterns since there’s a huge difference between winter snowstorms in the Ozarks and winter floods in the Delta – and related crop failures and economic impacts for either. I suspect many other states may be similarly mis-modeled. Does anybody know of modeling at the state level for Texas and Louisiana? The drought odds there seem ill-conceived based on my rudimentary understanding of the local climates at the Gulf coast and inland into the piney woods.
the problem is the time period. It is likely the 20th century was an anomolous wet period from th e SW US including Texas.
Blimey.
Assessing the risk of persistent drought using climate model simulations and paleoclimate data
https://cornell.app.box.com/Megadrought/1/2369732445/20394648023/1
Basis this – and having lived through the wettest drought in UK history,
[I’m struggling to add the piccy of the red London bus in a cloudburst, with the “WE ARE IN DROUGHT” poster on the Ad Board]
So, may I humbly suggest to all Texans – based on recent climate models – prepare for floods.
Auto
We could use some rain. The reservoirs in west Texas and around Dallas are getting a bit low. It doesn’t help that Dallas Parks and Recreation are watering their grass for four hours in the middle of the afternoon twice a freakin’ week!
Even the swamps in SE Texas are dry. Gators are invading the ‘burbs, skeeters are moving out….but as always they’ll be back…
First of all there has been no global warming for some 18 years. Secondly the global drought index has shown no increase in over all drought going back at least 30 years if not more.
https://twitter.com/BigJoeBastardi/status/469798289852755969/photo/1
Drought index going back some 30 years.
IPCC AR5 TS.6
“There is low confidence in an observed global-scale trend in
drought or dryness (lack of rainfall), due to lack of direct observations,
methodological uncertainties and choice and geographical
inconsistencies in the trends. {2.6.2}”
IPCC admits they can’t connect climate change and drought. They basically don’t know how to measure what’s going on with drought or how to model it.
I think we are facing the same data problems with moisture as we are with temperature. I know that the US drought monitor at http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/ has South Jordan, UT where I live currently “abnormally dry”. Well, HA! We are 5+ inches over our average rainfall for the past year (from http://average-rainfall.findthebest.com/l/24334/South-Jordan-Utah), which is a lot for the Utah desert, and I cannot remember an August with so much rain. Yet we are “abnormally dry”? NOT! The “droughts” will be coming no matter what we do, but we may not be able to tell a real drought from a manufactured one.
Strange they come out with these statements these days. A little trawl of the internet flags up mega- droughts over the last 2000 years in the US . I believe there is one that happens every 700 years or so and we are due one soon, typical – that’s the one report i cannot find again.
Bill 2
August 28, 2014 at 10:54 am
“Well, Phoenix averages 8 inches of rain a year, so if it got 2 inches in a year, that would be considered a drought.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/rescues-underway-arizona-flash-flooding-drops-8-inches-phoenix-area-article-1.1909211
Phoenix got 5-8 inches of rain on Aug 19th – a little over a week ago. With they count this in the yearly totals, or because it’s a “fluke” not put it in the totals?
Will they count this in the yearly totals…
There were three rain gauges in Maricopa county the measure at least 15 inches of rain last year, up on the rim my elk season was a bust because of six inches of rain and eighteen inches of snow on top of that a few days before season cause the elk to leave the rim. We live in a desert, the reason it a desert is it doesn’t rain much, what news about that?
They have established their credibility with the observation
“Beyond the United States, southern Africa, Australia and the Amazon basin are also vulnerable to the possibility of a megadrought.”
Such events may well occur, but not in all those places at the same time.
Ignoring what is happening in adjoining or connected regions labels their study mere scaremongering rather than a serious study of the bigger picture.
Their reference to Australia and southern Africa seems to imply little understanding of the Indian Ocean dipole where generally dry conditions on one side of the Indian Ocean generally coincide with wet conditions on the other side, and that applies to all regions surrounding the ocean, Australia, Indonesia, India, Africa.
Indeed even with those regions bordering the Pacific Ocean, what El Nino means to those on one side is what La Nina means to those on the other side.
No wonder they’re giving it back to Mexico.
The South West US probably has a 50 / 50 chance of floods too.
Models are of no scientific interest until they have a track record of successful predictions.
This scare story s beyond silly, if the Keeling increase in CO2 is due to fossil fuels. But I tell you, most of that rise is due to killing soil organisms. The world’s land masses have less organic matter in them than they used to. Websearch “permaculture,” and you will find out that adding organic matter to desert soils may allow them to grow crops and trees without irrigation. One video I watched showed a year-round stream happen in Jordan. Organic matter holds water. Water has the highest heat capacity of any known substance, I believe, which means temperatures are moderated by water. Organic matter holds water, which reduces both droughts and floods.
So the REAL cause of the CO2 rise can indeed cause both droughts and floods, and no amount of nonsense can help, only the truth.
Besides the truth enables us to grow awesome gardens and that is fun!
Once every 100 years will be the driest in a century. Once every 10 years will be the driest in a decade. If there is a period of abnormally wet seasons then even a wet year can be the driest in a decade. Contrawise dry periods. Dis the Warmista Catastrophists not ever audit a math class?
Anthony, I’m sorry to see Intelliweather links in the sidebar disappear. I was following the almost daily rain across Texas, frequent rain in New Mexico and, despite its neighbour California’s drought, Arizona has had a lot of rain this summer. This has been true of the entire area overlying the much worried about Ogalla aquifer. We may be now recharging the Ogalla (partly because of reduced demand on it) – maybe the hiatus in warming is the ‘culprit’. Gee Anthony, can we have the Intelliweather icons back?