San Juan-Chama Project pipe, Albuquerque, Jan. 7 2007 Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. When I was in Phoenix a couple of years ago, I made a pilgrimage to the Frank Lloyd Wrightish Biltmore. Phoenix is flat-out desert, hot, just 7.5 inches of rain (19 cm) a year. But the Biltmore is an oasis, green, cool and …
Paseo del Nordeste bike trail, 1/7/2006 Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. One of the great things about Albuquerque is that I can ride all winter. It can get cold, but with the right clothing it’s rarely enough to keep me indoors. There’s never enough snow on the ground to keep me cooped up for more than …
The ubiquitous Andy Revkin has a delightful little bit of speculation in this morning’s New York Times regarding the differences between U.S. and European attitudes toward climate change: Some climate experts muse that the innately variegated climate across the country might help explain why it has taken longer for human-caused global warming to rise to …
Continue reading ‘Europe vs. America on Climate: a Hypothesis’ »
I see via Prometheus that David Roberts has taken up my challenge offered in the comments of a previous thread about whether Al Gore is representative of the mainstream consensus or an outlier (as suggested by Andy Revkin in his recent New York Times piece). I argued that Gore’s treatment of hurricanes and sea level …
I don’t know if it’s true or just apocryphal, but someone told me yesterday that the word “albedo” came from Giuseppe Albedo, the 17th century Italian polymath who discovered snow. Whatever, folks in Albuquerque, unaccustomed to a blanket of snow that sticks around, are having a direct personal experience with albedo, which I used this …
From S.J. Holgate, in GRL: The rate of sea level change was found to be larger in the early part of last century (2.03 ± 0.35 mm/yr 1904–1953), in comparison with the latter part (1.45 ± 0.34 mm/yr 1954–2003). On the decadal rates of sea level change during the twentieth century, GRL, Vol. 34, L01602, …
Continue reading ‘I thought sea level rise was accelerating’ »
Charlie Liles at the National Weather Service lays out the factors (sub. or ad req.) that made our winter storm past so special:
Matthew Nisbett chimes in on the Revkin piece.
In the U.S. western water community, John Wesley Powell is a legend for his insight about the difficulties of building a society in an arid land. But we can be a bit parochial here in the states, so until today I’d never heard of his (sort of) Canadian counterpart, John Palliser. Palliser explored the northern …
It looks yesterday’s premise is holding – despite the extraordinary blanket of white in my backyard, the snowpack in the Rio Grande Basin, source of a big chunk of New Mexico’s water supply, didn’t pick up a whole lot from the Great Storm of ’06. Tom Pagano, who does the runoff forecasts for us out …