Guest Post by Bob Tisdale –
The National Science Foundation press release Cause of California drought linked to climate change found its way into the mainstream media, with science reporters around the globe adding their hype. That press release is based on the recently published study Swain et al. (2014) “The Extraordinary California Drought of 2013/2014: Character, Context and the Role of Climate Change”, which can be found in the Special Supplement to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS report)Vol. 95, No. 9, September 2014, Explaining Extreme Events of 2013 From A Climate Perspective.
I’ll publish a few comments about Swain et al. (2014) in a few days. But this post is not about that paper.
THE CALIFORNIA DROUGHT – WHO’S TO BLAME FOR THE LACK OF PREPAREDNESS?
As I was reading Anthony Watts excellent post about Swain et al. (2014), Claim: Cause of California drought linked to climate change – not one mention of ENSO or El Niño, a number of reoccurring thoughts replayed, thoughts that have struck me numerous times as the Western States drought unfolded last year and intensified this year.
Was California prepared for a drought?
Obviously, California was not prepared for a drought this intense, and the impacts of that lack of preparedness on California residents will grow much worse if the drought continues.
Why wasn’t California prepared for a short-term (multiyear) drought this intense?
The realistic blame should be the focus of climate science in general under the direction of the IPCC. In the opening paragraph of the IPCC’s History webpage, they state (my boldface and caps):
Today the IPCC’s role is as defined in Principles Governing IPCC Work, “…to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of HUMAN-INDUCED climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.
The fact that the IPCC has focused all of their efforts on “understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change” is very important. The IPCC has never realistically tried to determine if natural factors could have caused most of the warming the Earth has experienced over the past century. For decades, they’ve worn blinders that blocked their views of everything other than the possible impacts of carbon dioxide. The role of the IPCC has always been to prepare reports that support the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions caused by the burning of fossil fuels. As a result, that’s where all of the research money goes. The decision to only study human-induced global warming is a political choice, not a scientific one. In efforts to justify agendas, politicians around the world jumped on the climate change stump and funded computer model-based studies of human-induced global warming…to the tune of billions of dollars annually.
Because of that political agenda, the latest and greatest climate models still cannot simulate the basic underlying processes that govern the naturally occurring, coupled ocean-atmosphere processes like ENSO (El Niños and La Niñas), like the Pacific Decadal Oscillation…processes that have strong influences on temperature and precipitation in west coast states. So there is no possible way climate models, as they exist today, could forecast what precipitation might be like in the future there. And that basic problem will persist until there is a redirection of climate-research funding. Yes, funding. Research follows the money.
What value do climate model-based studies provide?
None.
The paper Pierce et al. (2013) The Key Role of Heavy Precipitation Events in Climate Model Disagreements of Future Annual Precipitation Changes in California provides an overview of why the climate models have no value when it comes to forecasts like California drought. In their abstract Pierce et al. write (my boldface and caps):
Of the 25 downscaled model projections examined here, 21 agree that precipitation frequency will DECREASE by the 2060s, with a mean reduction of 6–14 days yr−1. This reduces California’s mean annual precipitation by about 5.7%. Partly offsetting this, 16 of the 25 projections agree that daily precipitation intensity will INCREASE, which accounts for a model average 5.3% increase in annual precipitation. Between these conflicting tendencies, 12 projections show drier annual conditions by the 2060s and 13 show wetter.
[Hat tip to blogger “Jimbo” on the WUWT thread Claim: Cause of California drought linked to climate change – not one mention of ENSO or El Niño.]
So some climate models say that daily precipitation intensity will increase and others say it will decrease. In other words, the climate science community is clueless about what the future might bring for west coast precipitation.
Some might say that climatologists for the State of California and other west coast states have been hampered by climate science. It’s tough to make recommendations to state and local governments for long-term planning when the climate science community provides them with nothing to work with.
Is California prepared for a drought that lasts multiple decades or even centuries?
Anthony Watts’s post included a graph from a paleoclimatological study of West Coast drought that showed past droughts have lasted for hundreds of years. For the original graph and discussion, see Figure 10 of Cook et al. (2007) North American drought: Reconstructions, causes, and consequences. (Note: That’s not the John Cook from SkepticalScience.)
Now I hate to make you think about bad news. But if it’s happened in the past, can it happen again?
Why are mainstream media simply parroting press releases?
Climate-change news reports have become echo chambers of the press releases put out by colleges, universities and government research agencies. Individual reporters might provide a more in-depth report by asking the scientist-authors for a few extra word of wisdom.
But why aren’t the media asking the tough questions, like:
- Why weren’t west-coast residents warned 10 or 15 years ago that a severe drought is just a weather anomaly away?
- Why aren’t there enough desalinization plants in place to supplement rainfall deficits?
- Why are the people of the west coast protesting for, and why are state governments funding, more wind farms and solar arrays when they need something more basic to maintain life there, water?
Seems to me we may very soon be seeing a reversal of Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, with vast flocks of California residents migrating back to the Midwest, which also is subject to periodic droughts.
Poor planning on the parts of a few—based on politically motivated, unsound science—may make for emergencies for millions.
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The mass of air over the surface remains the same. The surface pressure does not change as the atmosphere inflates or deflates due to thermal energy in it changing. pg
as the atmosphere expands there is slightly reduced gravitational force due to increased distance (varies as the square of the distance), and thus reduced pressure at sea level. this should provide a small negative feedback to increased solar radiation.
The Greenie Dingbats and their kowtowing Watermelon DEMO-gogues can try knocking down some more dams and water reservoir impoundments. That has certainly helped.
DEMO-gogues don’t plan ahead. THey run to get ahead of the momentary mindless mob.
California needs outside generation for fully 30% of its electricity supply. A “drought” of electricity is surely coming on the knaves and fools who voted for the DEMO-gogues.
The last company leaving California won’t have to turn off the lights.
California did have a long term plan. But in the 70’s & ’80s the Democrat controlled state cancelled the construction of more reservoirs, etc, in order to Save the Planet. Since then, those wise legislators opened their southern border to millions of illegal immigrants, more than even the Colorado river can supply. So now, bad things are going to happen.
Again, all we have to do to alleviate drought and floods is enact a simple plan- we dig spillways along rivers to take away the threat of floods. We then take that run-off water to reservoirs. From there we can then route water to wherever it is needed. Los Angelas, New York City and Boston all get their water from many miles away. All we have to do is ramp up the scale and the entire country will be covered.
“Poor planning on the parts of a few—based on politically motivated, unsound science—may make for emergencies for millions”.
Great line Bob! I remember Chuck Todd on Meet The Press saying that instead of pointing fingers at who or what was responsible for the weather events that have reeked havok over the years, (I think this was just after Sandy) maybe we should just prepare for such things. I always go back to Katrina….If the levees were taken care of the way they should have been, then maybe 1400 people would still be alive. Just a thought.
This is an excellent article and points to a very real problem. I remember speaking to a climate modeler just a few years ago who denied the existence of the AMO/PDO phenomenon and said that they will go away. The models don’t predict them and so they can’t exist. Remarkably this is even though he admitted the models were poor at predicting anything.
As you point out the resistance of the climate community to accept the PDO/AMO has resulted in them not considering these phenomenon when if we had a less politically motivated group they would have noticed the correlations of AMO/PDO with certain weather patterns and warned that since we were in a negative phase for AMO/PDO that we would likely have less rain in california and drought conditions for the next 15 years or so.
The problem stems from the mindset that the ONLY solution is to reduce CO2. This provides the political excuse for inaction. Since we are powerless to reduce CO2, we are powerless to provide more water. But of course your average 6th grader could see the illogic.
If California wants more water, the solution is surprisingly simple. Spend money and buy water. If you are willing to pay for it, there would be tanker after tanker waiting at San Pedro harbor waiting to offload water.
The problem for California is that they have a shortage of cheap water. There is no shortage of the other kind.
Why not use salt water for irrigation?
http://www.dw.de/growing-veggies-in-the-desert-no-longer-a-mirage/a-17032261
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1350&dat=19861214&id=jkBPAAAAIBAJ&sjid=3wIEAAAAIBAJ&pg=7009,7320178
Pierce et al. (2013) said (my emphasis): Of the 25 downscaled model projections examined here, 21 agree that precipitation FREQUENCY will DECREASE by the 2060s, with a mean reduction of 6–14 days yr−1. This reduces California’s mean annual precipitation by about 5.7%. Partly offsetting this, 16 of the 25 projections agree that daily precipitation INTENSITY will INCREASE, which accounts for a model average 5.3% increase in annual precipitation. Between these conflicting tendencies, 12 projections show drier annual conditions by the 2060s and 13 show wetter.
Bob wrote: “So some climate models say that daily precipitation intensity will increase and others say it will decrease. In other words, the climate science community is clueless about what the future might bring for west coast precipitation.”
Bob, you can do better than this. They are predicting a future with less total rain (down 5.7%) falling less frequently from more intense storms. To exaggerate for example, one storm every two weeks lasting 10 hours producing 1.5 inches rain, rather than one storm every week lasting 10 hours and producing 1.0 inches of rain. That’s a 50% increase precipitation intensity, a 50% decrease in precipitation frequency, and most importantly at 25% decrease in total rainfall.
The interesting question is what meteorology causes this. Does rainfall in general get less frequent and more intensity when it is warmer or is this an artifact of all climate models? The C-C eqn suggests 7% more rainfall somewhere for every degree of warming, but climate models (in conflict with observations) predict less than a 7% increase.
I link the drought to climate change. There are two horizons of said change. The first horizon is multidecadal. The PDO went negative, and definitely changed the climate to a generally cooler and drier climate. Overall, current El Ninito notwithstanding, we have had cooler SSTs. Those factors drive drought. Longer term, there are indicators that there is a secular mullticentury cooling trend in California. That is troubling, given the paleoclimate indicators concerning mega droughts.
Anthony,
A friend and I were up at the Yuba goldfields in August and were surprised at the normal flow of the Yuba River. We’d expected a vastly reduced water level because of the drought but, no it was like any other year. I looked at a map when I got home and found that the south fork is fed by numerous lakes, reservoirs and the river itself. So, if the flow is controlled by the output of dams at the various lakes, WUWT?
Just an observation that doesn’t fit with the term drought. This goes along with keeping the flow up on the American River at Folsom Dam to preserve something downstream. What became of those things prior to there being a dam? They survived somehow then but can’t now for whatever reason.
Davet