First Review
The first review of my book is in, and it’s a good one (albeit less than 140 characters long): great for us non-youths too. Highly recommended. The Tree Rings’ Tale, available now.
Archive of entries posted on November 2009
Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere, Dead Tree Edition
That was a pun. It’s a story about dead trees (ad/sub req.). Printed on paper, which is made of dead trees. The dead piñon trees stretching across northern New Mexico’s Pajarito Plateau stand out, stubborn clumps of gray still standing six years after they died. They were not alone. Craig Allen, the scientist who chronicled …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere, Dead Tree Edition’ »
Climate Change and Southwestern Drought
If we can all avert our eyes for a moment from the CRU emails, the inexorable momentum of climate science hurtles down the track with a new paper in today’s Science using paleo records to suggest (among many interesting things) that a warming world is, for the southwestern US, a drier world. Mike Mann and …
Continue reading ‘Climate Change and Southwestern Drought’ »
Forecasting the Colorado
It’s early days yet in terms of a forecast for 2009-10 flow on the Colorado River. Because it depends on the amount of snow that falls on the Colorado Basin’s mountains, there is great uncertainty this early in the year. But the map below can give us some hint about the probabilities: What you can …
Weart on CRUgate
I’m on vacation this week, with family converging, new binoculars in hand and birds to count, so posting will be light or (I hope) nonexistent other than my continued attempts to sell the book. But the whole climategate fiasco is one of those horrific-looking wrecks that you can’t avoid looking at and wondering if anyone …
John Wesley Powell
When I was a little kid, I thought John Wesley Powell was the coolest, the one-armed adventurer daring the unknown as he ran the rapids of the Grand Canyon – the “Great Unknown” – for the first time. Standing on the Grand Canyon’s south rim, I would stare down at those little glimpses you get …
Will Mead Get an Extra Shot Of Water in 2010?
Given the sturm und drang over Lake Mead’s dropping levels and their implications for the water future of Las Vegas, the preliminary numbers in the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s 2010 Annual Operating Plan are worthy of note. The latest posted version of the plan is marked “final draft”, but I’m told it’s essentially complete, and …
Continue reading ‘Will Mead Get an Extra Shot Of Water in 2010?’ »
Atlanta’s Remarkable Water Conversation
It’s worth noting that the current conversation about Atlanta’s water future has not arisen because of questions about sustainability of water supplies for the various users in Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River Basin. It’s instead the result of a legal issue: Atlanta’s primary source of supply, Lake Lanier, was never authorized by Congress to serve as a water …
Continue reading ‘Atlanta’s Remarkable Water Conversation’ »
Could Global Warming Be Good for Colorado River Flows?
Pasadena, CA, blogger Wayne Lusvardi, who sometimes writes about that city’s water problems, had a post recently suggesting that global warming might lead to increased flows in the Colorado River. This would, of course, be excellent news for Pasadena and others who use Colorado River water (thought it does conflict with some of the literature …
Continue reading ‘Could Global Warming Be Good for Colorado River Flows?’ »
The Drying of Arizona
Drought conditions are getting remarkably bad in our neighbor to the west (that would be Arizona): That’s from this week’s Drought Monitor.