There’s a romance about the tree ring lab, and the culture flowing therefrom, that seems to draw writers like me. It’s probably the same reason the sliced and polished slab of a tree’s trunk, marked with little flag markers pointing to moments in history (“Columbus lands”, “Declaration of Independence”) is such a museum of natural …
I confronted a litany of drought when I was making the rounds on my newspaper beat this morning. No doubt this has happened before and I’ve just not noticed it, but the current forecasts are dry at all the basic time scales I watch closely. I lined ’em all up so you could share New …
Continue reading ‘Running the table: dry at all relevant time scales’ »
So it looks like we’ll have solar panels installed by the end of February. How long after that will it take for global warming to stop?
The science accumulates: The more greenhouse gases push up temperatures over the next few decades, the more New Mexico’s water supplies are at risk, according to new research by a team of Columbia University scientists. Using the latest high-resolution global climate simulations, the scientists show evaporation caused by warming temperatures is likely to leave less …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I wrote elsewhere: climate change on the Colorado River’ »
I’ve been keeping rainfall records as a volunteer National Weather Service observer since 1999. 2012 is the 13th calendar year for which I have complete records for my house, in Albuquerque’s near northeast heights, about a mile northeast of the University of New Mexico. It was my driest on record, at 5.08 inches (12.9 cm). …
I first met Christy George a couple of years back on the edge of a lovely lake outside Stockholm, where we spent two glorious days kicking around the joys and struggles of environmental storytelling. Christy is the former president of the Society of Environmental Journalists, a public broadcasting news veteran and a clever teller of …
Continue reading ‘“My Vanishing Hometowns,” a climate change storytelling project’ »
New Mexico’s 2012 weather feels increasingly like a teachable moment, though the lessons must be handled with care. As the folks in the local media-weather complex went into stormpocalypse mode over the possibility that it might actually snow this weekend, I took pause in Saturday’s paper to look back: The storm comes as New Mexico …
We’ve not had much opportunity of late to measure snow here in Albuquerque, so I had to snag this picture from some time ago. But it’s that time of year when thoughts of weather nerds turn to the snow in their backyards, which offers me another chance to flog my book, which would be a …
Richard Seager’s widely cited 2007 paper projecting “an Imminent Transition to a More Arid Climate in Southwestern North America” did not use the Palmer Drought Severity Index. His work relies on a calculation of precipitation minus evaporation (P – E) to determine the extent and trend of drying under a changing climate. In response to …
Continue reading ‘measuring drought – the right tool for the job’ »
From the morning paper, an exploration of what we mean by “drought”, with some stuff on the Sheffield Nature paper so talked recently in drought circles, along with the latest grim outlook: “Drought,” University of Arizona research Gregg Garfin said, “is defined by its impacts.” I realize this is a long-winded way of being very …
Continue reading ‘stuff I wrote elsewhere: “Depends on what you mean by ‘drought.’”’ »