Guest essay by Robert Moore
Is it true that we are in the worst drought in California history? Let’s look at the facts for the last 120 years (1895 to present).
As shown in this chart from the Western Regional Climate Center website (http://www.wrcc.dri.edu) — this is not even the 2nd driest water year for California in the last 120 years.
The driest year was 1924 (9.23 inches, or 40% of normal). The current water year (October 2013 through September 2014) ranks as the 3rd driest in the last 120 years (at 52% of normal).
As for the claim that this is the worst multi-year drought in California history – look at the period of 1910-40 on the WRCC chart. Wow… that was really a dry 30 year period.
Do these facts mean that we are in good shape re California’s water supply? No!
But we shouldn’t be framing the search for a stable California water supply by starting from a wildly incorrect statement that seems focused on creating public panic.
If we begin our search for a solution from reality, it is more likely that we can achieve a realistic long term solution.
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Which is “official” and which is the more accurate depiction of drought severity?
1. NOAA’s “Drought Severity Index by Division” (“Long Term Palmer”)
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/regional_monitoring/palmer.gif
or
2. “US. Drought Monitor”?
http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/
There are significant differences in California, as well as across the country. For example, NOAA’s map shows the northwest quadrant of California as “Near Normal”, with Oregon positively moist, while the “Monitor” map shows essentially all of California at least in “Severe Drought” (and most much worse), and most of Oregon under at least “Moderate” drought.
NOAA shows no drought in Texas, “Monitor” shows some Texas areas as “Exceptional”, i.e., the worst.
(Sorry, but I’m leery of attempting to upload the current images.)
Richard Lewis,
Thanks for that link. ‘Moist’ is one of my favorite words! ☺
2/3rds of the planet is water and we’re building windmills! More desalination plants and how about a few water pipelines and dams?
With abundant inexpensive energy, the life blood of EVERY economy, this is easily doable.
Check out how desal works sometime.
In a nutshell, it’s a pump and filter. Pour money in one end and a little water comes out the other – till it breaks. Then stuff money in faster.
Adjusting the population and land use to suit the climate is the only pong term answer.
Most water use is by Agriculture or industry. Building desal plants isn’t much different than watering your lawn with bottled water (as was mentioned in an earlier post). As to infrastructure cost, considering the state of Cal. and Fed finances, once interest is taken into account it’ll triple the initial estimated cost which will be too low in the first place.
Reblogged this on Public Secrets and commented:
A little needed perspective on California’s drought.
1 Week Ago map showed D3 Extreme Drought in northern California.
After a week of rain in northern CA, why does the “Currently” map show D4 Exceptional Drought??? I think the situation was worse 1 week ago.
What’s going on? No answer from my previous question…
The US drought map is based on conditions as of Tuesday morning. Also, there seems to be a lot of manual labor involved in building these maps and they sometimes seem a bit slow to change conditions. It’s a tough job so I wouldn’t jump on them too hard. Give them another week.
Such a blather of misinformation coming from all sides.
First, real droughts are a result of rainfall deficiency. Period. End of story.
Second, water shortages are a political problem. San Francisco saw the light over a hundred years ago and started laying plans to dam up rivers in the Sierra Nevada mountains in order to ensure and adequate supply, even during droughts. Other large municipalities took the same measures in cities from Los Angeles to Oakland.
Third, emptying our reservoirs to enhance the life of obscure fish is insanity of the highest order. And asking a judge to make the political decision to give water to a fish this year so that there is no water for people or fish next year is so mind bogglingly stupid there is no possible cure. Every fish in the California river and stream system has survived extreme drought and blowout floods. They will again without squandering irreplaceable water in years of drought.
Fourth, all of you who are so cavalier about California’s water use for farming ought to take stock, so to speak, of your grocery store shelves. California still supplies about 25% of the food for the rest of the country. You can go ahead and eat produce from countries who fertilize with human waste and polluted water…but the consequences can be severe. There is, and has been, enough water for crops, but people, and more people and 40 million people, not so much.
I leave with this thought. 1862 saw the worst flooding in California history for both northern and southern Californians. The central valley of California was a lake more than 400 miles long. But the follow up was a drought so severe that there were no cattle left on the ranches of southern California because there was no water and no feed. That is our history and the repeat of that kind of catastrophe has nothing to do with CO2 or any other man made cause.
Floods are a result of rainfall in abundance and droughts are a result of rainfall insufficiency. History! Read and learn what our future will hold regardless of how much influence we kid ourselves about having.
Nuff said,
PBH
Relax. The “official” dataset ignores San Francisco whose records go back another 45 years to 1850 when a couple of very astute doctors, one of whom blew his own glass for nautical instruments, began measuring rainfall. In a sense this is justified because it is a point location, but it is a very good point in my opinion because it falls about midway between the rainforest and the desert. Last year did not make the top ten in the SF dataset. Further analysis of the SF data reveals that very rarely does rainfall go below normal for more that three years (we are there).
So far this year is not looking too bad.
There are 6,000 year old tree trunks preserved at the bottom of Lake Tahoe that began growing there when California droughts and mega-droughts were far more common. The 20th-21st centuries have been “Golden Years” for precipitation.
Reconstructions of California’s Sacramento River during the past 1000 years show the period beginning around 1350 AD was the driest 50-year period and the period beginning around 1140 AD was the driest 20-year period. Read Mensig, S., et al., (2004) A Holocene pollen record of persistent droughts from Pyramid Lake, Nevada, USA. Quaternary Research, vol. 62. P. 29– 38.
Doesn’t California already have two mothballed desalination plants? Well one for sure. High operating costs but new technologies are bringing more on stream:
(From a source y’all love to hate but it’s in other places too)
“California
California has 17 desalination plants in the works, either partially constructed or through exploration and planning phases. The list of locations includes Bay Point, in the Delta, Redwood City, seven in the Santa Cruz / Monterey Bay, Cambria, Oceaneo, Redondo Beach, Huntington Beach, Dana Point, Camp Pendleton, Oceanside and Carlsbad.
Carlsbad: The United States’ largest desalination plant is being constructed by Poseidon Resources and is expected to go online 2016. It is expected to produce 50 million gallons a day to 110,000 customers in San Diego County at an estimated cost of $1b.
Concord: Planned to open in 2020, producing 20 million gallons a day.
Monterey County: Sand City, two miles north of Monterey, with a population of 334, is the only city in California completely supplied with water from a desalination plant.
Santa Barbara: The Charles Meyer Desalination Facility was constructed in Santa Barbara, California, in 1991–92 as a temporary emergency water supply in response to severe drought. While it has a high operating cost, the facility only needs to operate infrequently, allowing Santa Barbara to use its other supplies more extensively.”
Reblogged this on News You May Have Missed and commented:
Worst drought in California history? Not really…
Maybe the affects of drought(s) in California in times long past were mitigated by the presence of the Tulare Lake which was the largest freshwater lake in the USA west of the Great Lakes. It was 13,000+ sq. miles in size, in the San Joaquin Valley. Diversion for municipal and agricultural uses saw it drained and dry by 1899. Taking that much water out of any eco-system must have a detrimental affect on the local environment.
California should prepare for the January – February Pineapple Express. It will come. As surely as the sun rises in the east. (and don’t call me shirley)
Would be interesting, what makes you think it will come this year?
MCourtney November 22, 2014 at 2:14 pm
In fairness, the Ganges is considered holy because the particulates in the river bed seem to clean the water. Although I am not a Brahmin, the cleanliness is next to holiness thing was indigenous to India before the Raj.
****
Say what? Have you ever SEEN the water in that river? It is utterly filthy, at least by the time it reaches Benares where Indians bathe in it by the hundreds of thousands each year.
https://www.facebook.com/notes/wockhardt-foundation/ganga-taking-it-back-to-its-purity-the-human-voice/372740489412403
“The Ganga, a symbol of religious and spiritual faith of India, is one of the most polluted rivers in India today. Not only untreated sewage is dumped but also toxic waste from hospitals and tanneries is thrown into it.
Prof Devendra Swaroop Bhargava, former professor of Environmental Engineering at IIT Roorkee, said that the Ganga, besides being one of the most polluted rivers in the country, is also one of the 10 most threatened river basins of the world.
“On November 4, 2008, the Ganga was officially declared India’s ‘national river. But there is a flip side to the story,” he told The Pioneer. “The quality of Ganga’s water is steadily worsening. Not only it is unfit for drinking, but would also be harmful if used for agricultural purposes,” he said. The level of coliform bacteria, a type of bacteria that indicates the purity of water, should be below 50 for drinking and below 5,000 for agricultural use. The present level of coliform in the Ganga at Hardwar is 5,500.”
If memory serves me I believe they dump thousands of corpses in the Ganges annually?
Once again, industrialization, inexpensive power, technology and common sense, can not only heal this issue, but address the over population issue in relevant areas as well. as well. (Some areas of India are making progress, against the headwinds of those who despise humans.)
the only reliable source of NH ice DMI seesms to have gone kaput LOL
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
A bit off-topic here, but please post that in the “Tip’s and Notes” section. See the link above.
It’s a shame that the media bends facts and distorts data.
About a year ago, or so, we finally came out of a drought here in Georgia.
The worst thing was that it seemed to begin with a flood and big trees fall every time it storms because their root systems can no longer support the top.
I hope that California comes out of their drought pattern soon.
Yeah, just like the Northern ‘Jet Stream’ turned into the evil ‘Arctic Vortex’ like it appeared from nowhere. Looking at that graph, I’d say there is a management problem as it looks like a general upward trend made everyone a little complacent.
Sure glad that I live in Florida. Problem is to many people and farms to support. Keep pumping all that water out of the ground leaving behind big voids in the earth. Then just wait for the next big earthquake, what do you think is going to collapse when it hits. It will be a chain reaction. Same problem in Sou Pablo Brazil, 40 million people running out of water. It’s a sad thing that the government let’s this happen……..
How much water costs in California?
Just as a baseline for you. In Helsinki, Finland, where plenty of fresh water is available via a ~60 mile tunnel carved in bedrock, and raw water is so clean you could drink it as is, water + sewage cost is €3.00/m³, €8,50/hundred ft³, that is $10.50 per HCF.
What I saw LA rates, they appeared to be cheaper. And do you know what, greens in Helsinki want to raise the price telling that there is a draught in California so “we must stop wasting water”.Wow.
ah, dawtgtomis answered already, only that I go mad when I see units like acre-feet.
Err, I get something like $0.50/m³, am I wrong or badly fooled to pay too much? Or both?
Oh, it gets worse than that: Try converting acre-feet to barrels. 8<)
But acre-feet did make sense when areas were (for lakes and ponds) were defined by acres of area, and depths by feet of water. But all of that is under the bridge, and we have to pay the troll for our earlier conveniences and inconsistencies.
First you have to decide what kind of acre-feet you have, then what kind of barrel you want. (British wine? US petroleum? US beer? US liquid? US dry? UK standard liquid – other than wine of course? ) Water rates vary across the country obviously. And they should.
Detroit charges (minimum rate for a household) $21.00 per 1000 ft^3 for near-infinite fresh water drawn from nearby surface sources. (Then again, Detroit has been under EPA and other lawsuits about water since the 1960's, and faces near bankruptcy because of its government-supported poverty programs and low numbers of people actually paying for water, fire, taxes in general, and police services.)
San Antonio TX faces many drought problems in the past, and more in the future, but pumps its water from deep underground up from the Edwards Aquifer. Which is going dry the past twenty-thirty years.)
San Diego CA gets its water from mountain runoff (local and from Colorado and upstate, pumped hundreds of miles over modest hills and long desert stretches. New York gets Catskill Mountain runoff through lakes and aqueducts built a long time ago for near-zero current costs. Atlanta GA gets fresh surface water running off from the Appalachians into lakes – much like NY City, but faces irregular droughts as the southeast rainfall changes. The Atlanta area had almost no water or sewage infrastructure compared to very, very rapid recent population growth, so its water and sewage systems had to be built in much more expensive modern era's of bureaucrats and regulations.
Now, my own city blends water charges with sewer charges for a total charge per month, but then adds many other “fees” (taxes) to that total. Most cities then (deliberately) complicate it further by offering offsets and rebates and even lower rates to the poor or to specially-designated businesses or areas (the rich who have paid off politicians with either voting blocks, selective liberal interest groups or campaign money.
It appears to me that Southern California is heavily subsidizing (not charging enough!) money for its water.
If you like your acre-feet, you will love miner’s inches, and be ecstatic over Zanja-hours. You can look up miners inch and find that each state has its own definition. A Google search for “Zanja-hour” provides one hit, my earlier comment at WUWT. A search for “Zanja hours” provides seven hits. Briefly, a Zanja Hour is the number of hours that the Zanjero (ditch tender) opens the sluice gate from the main ditch to the lateral ditch. Some water rights are enumerated in Zanja-hours. For example, see:
http://books.google.com/books?id=tX8rAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA307&lpg=PA307&dq=%22Zanja+hours%22&source=bl&ots=tbS2vLYM3B&sig=z21kEKkLBchmQJoHILl5ViMA4WM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=SL1yVIa4D8m3iQKIloDIBQ&ved=0CDYQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=%22Zanja%20hours%22&f=false
For information on the Zanjero, look up William Mulholland
http://books.google.com/books?id=iP575do7D48C&pg=PA26&dq=zanjero&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Fb5yVPT4LsrxiAKNyYHoBQ&ved=0CCIQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=zanjero&f=false
Thanks for price details!
Helsinki, on the other hand, is known to supersidize water – it uses the water price as a hidden taxation method.
There little as disgusting as social democrats’ tendency to place tax on taxed value until they halt all economic activity. Then they start to subsidize. To prevent people from avoiding taxes, they are ready to use whatever weaponry – for example, they make it very hard here to use electric cars, because that would help avoiding gas taxes. But they would also like to electronically track each and every car to be able to establish arbitrary taxing grounds – rush hour based, traffic jam based, speed based, usage place based and so on. This is seriously about to happen. Big business and green socialists together are doing it. Greens get more taxes on cars, socialists get tax money to spend and business gets to build the system and sell location information.
Big brother is here, and it is wearing green.
In my IEEE talk I discussed the how badly CO2 driven models simulate droughts and how the worst droughts during the 30s and 50s
If you had been under-investing in your water supply infrastructure for years and avoiding the huge costs of new water supply sources, then blaming climate change is a great way to hide your mistakes – however, this is normally driven by politicians trying to keep rates down and win votes, they compromise infrastructure critical to economic and public health in order to stay in power for another term or win their spot – this is democracy – the politician doesnt understand what effect he is having and the public dont understand either, they just want their rates to stay down – no one ever raises the fact that water is essential to life and worth investing in!
Isn’t it quite interesting that the only times CA had 4 straight years of wetter than normal Sep-Oct was 1940 and in the middle of the 1990s global warming “event”? 1940 was the tail end of the 1930s warming that peaked in 1940, so that 4-year wetness seems to be connected to the 1910-1940 global warming. The 1990s ends with the Super-El-Nióo year 1998, the peak of that warming period. With both “wetnesses” seeming to be connected to global warming, what are we to think? No, correlation does not equal causation. But two correlations must be the beginning of asking about mechanisms.
If I had to posit an answer, I’d guess that it had to do with the Pacific weather patterns having to do with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Color me as a speculator on that, but the weather/wind patterns in the Pacific DO alter during PDO cool and warm regimes, so one IS left with the beginnings of a hypothesis. As Richard Feynman says in his video about the Scientific Method, the first step in the process is to make a GUESS.
And that is my guess.
Also being discussed at More On Miriam O’Brien’s Hot Whopper
http://moreonmiriamobrien.wordpress.com/2014/11/23/miriam-obrian-says-finally-another-wuwt-article-on-the-drought-in-california/
Do you know about this? New Technology Can End California Drought In Months + Save $Billions$: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOALsthpa5A
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 11/24/14
Contact info: David Adelson
Tel: 747-333-8403
Email: david@davidadelson.com
New Technology Can End California Drought In Months
Principles From Quantum Physics & The Origins of Meditation Create Frequency-Based Technology to Restore Reservoirs and Bring Balance to Nature
Beverly Hills, CA, – A new technology has been developed that can end California’s drought in 3-6 months and prevent the loss of billions of dollars. Developer David Adelson spent the last 30+ years studying and perfecting this technology, which is based on ancient Vedic wisdom (the origins of yoga/meditation) and modern quantum physics.
Articles such as, “NASA warns California drought could threaten U.S. food supply” and “no end in sight” abound. The U.S. Drought Monitor categorizes more than 80% of California in “extreme” drought; losses are projected at $2.2 billion this year and $1+ billion each year for the next two years. For a fraction of the drought’s predicted cost, Adelson claims he can restore depleted reservoirs to 83% in 3-6 months using Natural Weather, a new frequency-generating technology that restores balance to Nature. According to Adelson, it’s already been used to avert forest fires in Texas, tornadoes in Oklahoma, and hurricanes in Florida. “It’s not a question of ‘if’ this type of technology to balance the weather will come, it’s a question of ‘when’– we believe we have it now,” says Adelson.
Each unit costs $5.3 million, the state will need six. “Hopefully, brilliant businessmen will see that, although this is a risk, the payoff would more than make it worth it for this 5-year project,” Adelson said. Based on his experience, he’s confident Natural Weather will work. Now he’s ”looking for a number of farmers and business folk who are tired of losing money and willing to share the costs.”
Spiritual healer and developer David Adelson has created 200+ programs and technologies to help restore balance to individuals and nature. They have been used in more than 15 countries, including Japan, Australia, the U.K., and Israel, and 28 states within the U.S..
Come here, we need a heat wave please. However, the method needs to be a Moslim quantum mechanical one, vedic would be a target of suicide attacks.
Spam.
There are essentially no lasting shortages in a free market. If you need something and are willing to pay, someone will get it for you. Assuming they are free to do so.
The earth has roughly 326,000,000,000,000,000,000 gallons. It is rather easily recycled. Free people can and will get what they need.