Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere

From this morning’s Albuquerque Journal, a piece on Marty Hoerling’s new work using the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report climate models to generate Palmer Drought Severity Index numbers for Western U.S. climate divisions over the next century: Global warming is driving the Southwest toward “a new era for drought,” according to a top federal climate researcher. …

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Environmental History of the Rio Grande

A few years back, the U.S. Forest Service funded historian Dan Scurlock to prepare an environmental history of the middle Rio Grande basin. It’s a treasure, referred to lovingly by researchers and folks in the climate/water/environmental policy community here. But it’s very hard to come by a copy. I recently discovered that the Forest Service …

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Global Dimming and Soil Moisture

Here’s a fascinating bit of business in GRL (I’ve only seen the abstract, haven’t read the paper): Summer soil moisture increased significantly from 1958 to the mid 1990s in Ukraine and Russia. This trend cannot be explained by changes in precipitation and temperature alone. To investigate the possible contribution from solar dimming and upward CO2 …

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