Natural cycles, sea surface temperatures found to be main drivers in ongoing event
According to a new NOAA-sponsored study, natural oceanic and atmospheric patterns are the primary drivers behind California’s ongoing drought. A high pressure ridge off the West Coast (typical of historic droughts) prevailed for three winters, blocking important wet season storms, with ocean surface temperature patterns making such a ridge much more likely. Typically, the winter season in California provides the state with a majority of its annual snow and rainfall that replenish water supplies for communities and ecosystems.
Further studies on these oceanic conditions and their effect on California’s climate may lead to advances in drought early warning that can help water managers and major industries better prepare for lengthy dry spells in the future.
“It’s important to note that California’s drought, while extreme, is not an uncommon occurrence for the state. In fact, multi-year droughts appear regularly in the state’s climate record, and it’s a safe bet that a similar event will happen again. Thus, preparedness is key,” said Richard Seager, report lead author and professor with Columbia University’s Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory.
This report builds on earlier studies, published in September in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, which found no conclusive evidence linking human-caused climate change and the California drought. The current study notes that the atmospheric ridge over the North Pacific, which has resulted in decreased rain and snowfall since 2011, is almost opposite to what models project to result from human-induced climate change. The report illustrates that mid-winter precipitation is actually projected to increase due to human-induced climate change over most of the state, though warming temperatures may sap much of those benefits for water resources overall, while only spring precipitation is projected to decrease.
Folsom Lake, 2011
(Credit: CA Dept of Water Resources)
Folsom Lake, 2014
(Credit: CA Dept of Water Resources)
The report makes clear that to provide improved drought forecasts for California, scientists will need to fully understand the links between sea surface temperature variations and winter precipitation over the state, discover how these ocean variations are generated, and better characterize their predictability.
This report contributes to a growing field of science-climate attribution-where teams of scientists aim to identify the sources of observed climate and weather patterns.
“There is immense value in examining the causes of this drought from multiple scientific viewpoints,” said Marty Hoerling, report co-author and researcher with NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory. “It’s paramount that we use our collective ability to provide communities and businesses with the environmental intelligence they need to make decisions concerning water resources, which are becoming increasingly strained.”
To view the report, visit: http://cpo.noaa.gov/MAPP/californiadroughtreport
Same old, dependable Kevin Trenberth…
[…Kevin Trenberth, a researcher at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, praised some of the modeling techniques employed in the NOAA report but found the results unsurprising and incomplete.
“I would contend that all droughts are largely natural in the sense that they arise from internal variability in the atmosphere-ocean systems,” Trenberth said. “But this study completely fails to consider what climate change is doing to water in California.”
He continued: “[The report] completely misses any discussion of evapotranspiration and the increased drying associated with global warming. In a drought, where there is an absence of precipitation, it is easily demonstrated that the extra heat from global warming – the increasing heating from increased greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide – enhances drying, increases risk of heat waves, and greatly increases risk of wild fire to a significant degree.”…]
Mann is already having a conniption fit about this study according to a USA Today article I read online.
Yeah, USA Today dragged out both Mann and Trenberth:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2014/12/08/california-drought-cause-noaa/20095869/
Study just in time for California to get hit with buckets of rain. This is going to be flooding from these events.
http://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/models/gfs/2014120818/gfs_mslp_pcpn_frzn_swus.html
Check out the states on graph [own] water and rainfall for the northern and southern Sierra Nevada. The Northern tier is above the 75 year average and climbing. Also note that the 2011-2012 average is not far below the long term average, but is part of the ‘worst drought in 1,200 years’. What does a cherry look like after 1,200 years of drought? Just askin’.
North — http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/products/PLOT_ESI.pdf
South — http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/products/PLOT_FSI.pdf
pbh
California precipitation has been covered earlier in WUWT, for example:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/18/christy-on-sierra-snowfall-over-the-last-130-years-no-trend-no-effect-from-co2/
In the above post, see my full reply, which I have quoted below without the 200+ years of Southern California rainfall data:
Neil Jordan
February 18, 2012 at 1:00 pm
Dr. Christy: Thank you for your effort in bringing old records to light. There is another set of California records going back to 1769 that you might consider, related to the “Lynch Index” that was in the California Weather Sumary CD. Jim Goodridge sent me a California Weather CD in 2002 that contained the file “Lynch Index.xls” that tabulates Southern California rainfall from 1769-1770 to 1999-2000. The CA Weather CD updated to 2009 does not appear to have that file. The state climatologist at http://www.water.ca.gov/floodmgmt/hafoo/csc/ might provide some information.
The Lynch Index was based on the August 1931 report, “Rainfall and Stream Run-Off in Southern California Since 1769″ by H. B. Lynch, for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. The report is available on-line at http://cepsym.info/history/RainfallStreamRunoffSoCA_since1769.pdf
and
http://books.google.com/books/about/Rainfall_and_stream_run_off_in_Southern.html?id=sJMJAQAAIAAJ
The Lynch Index spreadsheet correlates the index from the 1931 report with the rainfall record for Los Angeles. The index stops at 1930, and DWR did an extension to 2000. I did a linear regression analysis on the data, and also an extension (ref Bedient & Huber) of the data to present. Slopes of the regression lines are close to zero.
[end quote]
I might add that the 1931 Lynch Report shows that the water year with the lowest precipitation was 1789-1790.
It’s an interesting report Neil. The report written in Aug 1931 has a wealth of information. A few points I thought were relevant.
“There has been no material change in the mean climatic conditions in Southern California in the last 162 years.”
“About fifty-five per cent of all seasons yield less rainfall than the average rainfall record, and about one-third of the seasons show rainfall of less than eighty per cent of the average amount.”
“The economic structure of Southern California has been tuned to a rainfall of somewhere near the normal amount. But orderly economic advancement is hindered in a thousand ways by periods of varying length in which the rainfall and consequently the recovery of water available for useful purposes decreases to a point below that required for the needs of a community.”
I would surmise that nothing much has changed in the 83 years since this report was written and the current and future population has the same problems and climate conditions to deal with as those before it.
Richard G: You are correct about no change in the hydrologic picture. Dr. Christy’s work on Sierra snowpack supports that. The Lynch Report was prepared for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California as part of its work for constructing the Colorado River Aqueduct a few years later. MWD provides water for most of the populated Southern California area, including part of San Diego’s water supply.
What has changed is the population and the demands on a pioneering water system. That the system is still working successfully is testament to its conservative engineering design. I might add that the latest wrench in the gears is the Quantification Settlement Agreement, which you can look up on line. If you decide to get any deeper into the California or arid West water quagmires, heed the words attributed to Mark Twain: “Whiskey is for drinking. Water is for fighting over.”
Thank you for the link Neil as it was in pdf I saved it for a more proper reading when time permits. I might just have a look see at the QSA. Considering the current state of water affairs, it almost makes me long for the Zanja Hour or the Miners Inch.
The report link given above doesn’t work for me. This one does:
http://r20.rs6.nettn.jsp?f=001e0bxNr7mcmby_ygwavjdbZBRIYPqn72jjSYuxzcn244qoBKOi72ZbLNAF244qLPWv8OwE3xsDIuKAoxjdgwCN2UrOUjCrISc4wRUWgaZSRupv11o3ZAKracKzU6dDChR8i7eP_IGG9epsioPMRHWi5pZTw0V-O0g8WDjLp7GZ06RRBtrl2qBi5gkFuZ4c_PbmlUxYldogGEmE-zcq0u4mg==&c=NiXdGTL8DhXCItGDAPOPWXqgrOTrPgumtqfPxOwBi8juL9mZLVCrFg==&ch=OPmA333qGsPb6Tbg1DZTRbeiF04Q6704oTS4AyoNgo5jUM08oqLW2w==
OK, that one doesn’t work either now I’ve posted it.
Mods?
[Fixed a carriage return in the link, but no r20.rs6.nettn.jsp?f found either … .mod]
Michael Hart: Your post was just below mine with links to the Lynch Report. I tried those, and they worked. I also tried your URL Requested URL: /MAPP/californiadroughtreport.
and got a Server Error in ‘/’ Application.
Anticipating you were looking for the 1200-year drought report, this morning’s Department of Water Resources California Water News carried an article about the 1200-year drought, and linked to this Guardian article:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2014/dec/08/california-just-had-its-worst-drought-in-over-1200-years
The Guardian in turn linked to this GRL paper:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014GL062433/abstract
I also Googled “california drought report” and got a bazillion results. This was on top:
http://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/global-warming-isnt-causing-california-drought-report-triggers-storm-n263941
This excerpt shows that the report drilled into nerves:
[begin excerpt]
“The report is not dismissive of global warming at all,” said Marty Hoerling, a meteorologist at NOAA’s Earth System Research Lab. “At the same time, drought is not a consequence of the warming planet to date.”
But critics included Michael Mann, director of Penn State’s Earth Science Center. He quickly penned a piece online, calling the report “deeply flawed” because of how it interpreted ocean and Arctic sea ice data, and focused on rainfall while paying “only the slightest lip service” to record warm temperatures in California.
Kevin Trenberth, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., criticized the study for not including how higher temperatures aggravate a drought regardless of what causes the reduced rainfall. “It completely misses any discussion of evapotranspiration and the increased drying associated with global warming,” he said in an email to NBCNews.com.
[end excerpt]
Hope this helps.
Try this:
http://cpo.noaa.gov/MAPP/californiadroughtreport
Nature is finally fixing the california drought issue, but Carlsbad, Ca has its own twist after endrunning the environmental roadblocks thrown up for the past 12 years:
http://carlsbaddesal.com/
It gets better. A few miles north in Huntington Beach, another desalination plant is hopefully crawling out of its regulatory quagmire. Re your your link’s statement “six years in the state’s permitting process”, look up “desalination is growth inducing” and browse the arguments that have been put up against desalination. In particular, look at P. Gleick’s Pacific Institute report at:
http://www.pacinst.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/21/2013/02/desal_exec_summ3.pdf
Page 7 includes climate change. Page 6 includes an interesting statement that desalinated water is corrosive and damaging to water distribution systems. My understanding is that desalinated water is what Mother Nature evaporates from the sea surface and drops as rain which is put into water distribution systems. Maybe Gleick is looking at ultra-pure water, but that can be remedied by blending at the desalination plant before distributing to customers.
While pure water is an excellent solvent, I doubt that they would waste the energy to take the desalination to that level. On the other hand I wonder about the author’s motives!
Some witch hunter hacked the links.
Good Lord. So how much of my paycheck supported this piece of kindergarten work? My grandparents, who were the offspring and descendants of Oregon Trail, Civil War, Revolutionary War, and pre-Revolutionary War pilgrims from Ireland are shaking their heads in their plain pine boxes, wondering just how much more stupid these Ivory Tower folks are becoming while they tell us of these [NOT] amazing discoveries. Neanderthals could have figured this one out, and probably did.
It may be common sense to you and not worth your money. However, it is important to have this voice heard. Witness the fits and mudslinging by Mann, Trenberth, et al in response. To have an NOAA-sponsored study take a rational, non-alarmist tone is both refreshing and important.
So to sum up: it’s not the result of Climate Change: just climate.
Pamela, my ancestors (Bristow’s, Cooper’s, Ault’s) arrived to America from England and Germany during various periods in the 1700’s and would probably say it’s much ado about nothing.
Heck, at one point in the early 1900’s they became climate refugee’s from the north and moved to Southern California.
The link to the paper is broken….at least it’s not working for me… “Server Error in ‘/’ Application.
The resource cannot be found.
Description: HTTP 404. The resource you are looking for (or one of its dependencies) could have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable. Please review the following URL and make sure that it is spelled correctly.”
Requested URL: /MAPP/californiadroughtreport.
4TimesAYear, if you go to this link for a SoCal newspaper http://www.dailybulletin.com you can clink on the lead story “Worse drought in 1,200 years” and there is a link marked “new scientific study” that will take you to the report in the AGU journal. It’s in pdf.
http://cpo.noaa.gov/MAPP/californiadroughtreport
HAARP have anything to do with this? See HAARP Status Network site on Dec.5 this year.
You should read the WUWT Policy page: (this will probably be deleted with all these terms included):
“Certain topics are not welcome here and comments concerning them will be deleted. This includes topics on religion, discussions of barycentrism, astrology, aliens, bigfoot, chemtrails, 911 Truthers, Obama’s Birth Certificate, HAARP, UFO’s, Electric Universe, mysticism, and other topics not directly related to the thread.”
” scientists will need to fully understand the links between sea surface temperature variations and winter precipitation over the state, discover how these ocean variations are generated, and better characterize their predictability” – meaning you just can’t get it all from looking at the viewscreen of your video games.
California’s drought is unfortunate, but it is not my fault. The guys that are using this to promote their forecasting and modelling are ambulance chasers. They love it when a disaster comes together.
One of my friends who lives in Folsom (works at Intel in Folsom) told me last winter they were reducing the water levels so they could perform some maintenance work on the dam. Under those conditions, it doesn’t seem right to use it as evidence of drought. Doing a quick search shows that the dam is undergoing renovations to spillways that are expected to conclude in 2017. Upgrades are required to protect against 200 year floods. Maybe draining reservoir during a drought wasn’t the smartest way to do it.(http://www.spk.usace.army.mil/Missions/CivilWorks/FolsomDamAuxiliarySpillway.aspx)
Well that would explain why they used that photo in their P.R. The propaganda that spews out from government agencies is beyond absurd and has been increasing in frequency.
To me it’s a deceptive practice no different than a private company would be subject to civil penalties for doing the same.
Having a bit of a dutch background, my first impression looking at those 2 pics I thought, ” why in the heck are they not dredging the silt “? Thus making the reservoir larger and using the removed soil to help down stream farms that have not seen natural replenishment from annual flooding of deltas etc. ( think Nile river stuff, you know, BEFORE the dumb dam that became useless as a irrigation and hydro experiment in the 60’s and 70’s?? Hey but what do I know or think, it might have even created a few jobs?
Joe Romm (Think Progress) managed to roll Mann, Trenberth and Gleick into one article – all insisting that Hoerling was wrong to question the “worst drought in 1200 years” meme.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/12/08/3600717/california-drought-climate-change-2/