Re my post earlier today about my snowy, muddy backyard, it’s worth pointing out that Albuquerque’s only received a total of 0.05 inch of precip since Jan. 1 at the airport, (0.25 at my house), well below normal for the month. It’s a late December storm that left things so muddy.
David Roberts, who has gotten a lot of leftie blogosphere traction with his dirty hippie post, is at it again. Here’s David, describing the point he made on a conservative talk show (“one of the B-list Limbaughs”) yesterday: The IPCC is one of the most rigorous scientific processes ever developed, and its new report pegs …
One of the difficulties in thinking about drought conditions is the tendency to look out your window. Out mine, there’s a nice little blanket of snow, and I’ve got to kick snow or mud off my feet when I come in out of the backyard. But the West is a big and exquisitely interconnected place, …
Quiet MorningOriginally uploaded by heinemanfleck. It’s quiet Saturday morning in Albuquerque, the sort of quiet you get when a light blanket of snow dampens the sound and keeps everyone inside, including the dogs. We’re going to be in trouble today when the mailman comes. There’ll be no dogs out to protect us. music: Django (the …
It is rare that my two journalistic specialties, climate and the blinding tools of nuclear Armageddon, converge as they have today in Chicago. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has moved up the hands on its famed Doomsday Clock – not just because of those pesky Norks with the nuclear testing and the plutonium and …
Marty Hoerling’s discussion of western U.S. drought in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report model runs (which I wrote about last fall) is out: Our study reveals that a sustained change in moisture conditions is unfolding within the broad range of natural variations. The Southwest is likely past the peak water experienced in the 20th century …
U.S. Precipitation, Last 90 Days Precipitation Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. This is not the U.S. precipitation pattern you expect in an El Niño winter. Here in Albuquerque, we’re living under a bit of an illusion, with the fourth storm since Christmas currently snowing east and north of us and clouds and a threat of rain …
When I wrote a brief squib last month about the new Holland et al. paper on sea ice decline, I made fun of myself for picking the worst-case scenario, suggesting a “a chance of an ice-free late summer arctic by as soon as 2040.” Apparently I was not alone. In her RealClimate post on the …
The monthly ENSO assessment, out today, suggests El Niño may be peaking (the “Kelvin waves” it talks about are essentially big pulses of warmth moving west to east across the equatorial ocean, which are a key feature of El Niño): Most of the statistical and coupled models, including the NCEP Climate Forecast System (CFS), indicate …
weather: Looks like we’re on the El Niño one-storm-a-week track here, with another wet patch headed for New Mexico through the weekend. This’ll be the fourth in a row. book1: Andrew Revkin’s The North Pole Was Here. Don’t be fooled by the whole “children’s book” thing. It’s a ripping good read, and Revkin has clearly …