Archive of posts filed under the climate variability category.

Stuff I wrote elsewhere: San Juan-Chama supply at risk from climate change

Posted by on

Concerned the current drought will end? No worries, climate change has your back: Climate change is likely to render a key part of the water supply for Santa Fe and Albuquerque increasingly unreliable in coming decades, according to a new analysis by federal scientists. The San Juan-Chama project, which imports water from the mountains of …

Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: San Juan-Chama supply at risk from climate change’ »

I want my atmospheric river!

Posted by on

Ever since I first heard about “atmospheric rivers” from Cliff Dahm, the biologist who until recently headed science efforts for the Delta Stewardship Council, I’ve been asking every scientist who I heard talk about them whether they can make it all the way to New Mexico. AR’s are  these amazing storms that blast California like a …

Continue reading ‘I want my atmospheric river!’ »

Stuff I wrote elsewhere: Powell warned us

Posted by on

In 1889, John Wesley Powell tagged along as a group of US Senators toured the western United States in an effort to understand “the irrigation problem”. What Powell reported looks kinda familiar: “The winds are drifting sands here and there,” John Wesley Powell said of his 1889 visit to the Lower Rio Grande Valley, where …

Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: Powell warned us’ »

stuff I wrote elsewhere: drought hits New Mexico’s famed Hatch Valley

Posted by on

From the morning paper, a look at the effect of drought on farmers in southern New Mexico. It’s a more complex story than simply lack of water, and the impact depends a great deal on where you are: The Franzoys’ problem is not so much the dropping aquifer as the quality of the groundwater. It …

Continue reading ‘stuff I wrote elsewhere: drought hits New Mexico’s famed Hatch Valley’ »

California’s resilience to drought

Posted by on

Given my profession, I’m incentivized to freak out about drought. If I thought it wasn’t a big deal, I’d have to find something else to write about. But in darker moments, I wonder if I’m overdoing the freakout. Chris Austin’s writeup of Ellen Hanak’s comments at this week’s California water bond hearing raise the question …

Continue reading ‘California’s resilience to drought’ »

A New York story: not all the tree rings’ tales are about drought

Posted by on

Andrew Freedman had an interesting piece last month about tree ring research that’s different than the stuff I usually write about: The past several decades have been the wettest in nearly five centuries for the watershed serving the nation’s largest city, New York, according to a new study. But that wet period is deceiving because …

Continue reading ‘A New York story: not all the tree rings’ tales are about drought’ »

In the eastern Mediterranean, tree rings tell of a shift toward stand-replacing fire?

Posted by on

In a Greek forest, tree rings telling a familiar story – a history of surface fire, but a trend toward much more destructive blazes: the size of the area burned as well as the type of fire seem to have changed, with the 2007 event being the most extended crown fire encountered so far. Our …

Continue reading ‘In the eastern Mediterranean, tree rings tell of a shift toward stand-replacing fire?’ »

advice for climate communicators

Posted by on

from Dan Kahan: [W]hen positions on a fact that admits of scientific investigation (“is the earth heating up?”; “does the HPV vaccine promote unsafe sex among teenage girls?”) becomes entangled with the values and outlooks of diverse communities—and becomes, in effect, a symbol of one’s membership and loyalty in one or another group—then people in …

Continue reading ‘advice for climate communicators’ »

Stuff I wrote elsewhere: where the water will run out

Posted by on

2013 has the potential here in New Mexico to be a great laboratory for exploring the question of specifically where and when water supply shortages actually play out during a drought year. I took a crack in this morning’s paper at setting up the problem, highlighting what I see as the four key New Meixco …

Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: where the water will run out’ »