The last time we had any measurable precipitation at Albuquerque’s airport weather station, where we keep the records, was Oct. 4. That’s 90 days, the driest start to a water year since 1917-18.
Putting together a lecture for tomorrow for UNM Water Resources Program students on “drought” – how we define, measure, and think about it – I noticed that Donald Trump, during a visit to North Dakota, seems to have brought up the issue, to wit: Trump on North Dakota’s drought: “It’ll disappear, it’ll all go away.” …
Just 5 percent of New Mexico ranked this week as “abnormally dry” in the federal Drought Monitor. That is the least dry the state has been since the monitor began publishing its weekly drought condition reports in January 2000.
Speaking earlier this month at the University of Colorado’s Martz Conference, Brad Udall offered what amounted to a bibliography, both helpful and deeply unnerving, of recent scientific literature documenting what we have learned in recent years about climate change and water in the Western United States, and what it tells us about our future prospects. …
Continue reading ‘Brad Udall’s western water climate change bibliography’ »
We also note that migrants are very strongly attracted to areas experiencing drought. Drought are associated with low precipitation and higher-than-average temperatures, two amenities that attract residents (even if they may be detrimental for local agriculture). That is from The Effect of Natural Disasters on Economic Activity in US Counties: A Century of Data, an NBER paper …
Continue reading ‘US drought migration patterns are not what I expected’ »
78.33 percent of the United States is in “not drought or abnormally dry” conditions in this week’s Drought Monitor. That’s the best we’ve seen since June 2010. In writing this note, I am reminded of the linguistic dilemma posed by our lack of a good word for “not drought”.
The always thoughtful Mike Dettinger: Calling the long term groundwater depletion (overdraft) part of the drought is blaming a thing we've done to ourselves on the weather. https://t.co/bWI6arxSXY — Michael Dettinger (@Mdettinger) February 27, 2017
This is “water year” precipitation in Reno, Nevada, from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30. The brown line is an average years’ accumulation. The pinky-purple line is 1982-83, the all time wettest year on record, going back to the 1890s. The green line is this year. Folks, 2017 has already eclipsed Reno’s wettest year on record …
Scientists have dubbed decades-long periods of aridity in southwestern North America “megadroughts“. We’ve had them in the past, and research has long pointed toward an increasing risk of them as the climate warms. New research published last week by Cornell’s Toby Ault and colleagues has generated a wave of scary headlines – A Mega-Drought Is Coming to …
Continue reading ‘Greenhouse gases and southwest “megadrought”’ »
This is your semi-regular, repetitive reminder that El Niño and La Niña don’t matter a hill of beans, in statistical terms, for the Colorado River Basin as a whole. The Climate Prediction Center has issued a La Niña watch. That means cooler temperatures across the equatorial Pacific, which tends on average to influence the North …