One of climatologists’ predictors of whether or not we’re going to have a big monsoon is the date of onset. Early onset generally means a wetter monsoon.[1] We’ve got no crisp definition here in Albuquerque (and, in fact, the monsoon onset isn’t very crisp here), but in Tucson they’ve developed a very precise definition based …
Going through some papers on my desk, I ran across this quote scribbled on a piece of paper: Many droughts will occur; many seasons in a long series will be fruitless; and it may be doubted whether, on the whole, agriculture will prove remunerative. That’s John Wesley Powell describing life in what he called the …
Rio-Grande-after-rain Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. My first visit to Albuquerque, at least the first that I remember, was some time in the mid-1970s. I was a teenager, and we stayed with friends in Dietz Farm, in a house in the shade of the cottonwoods that backed up on the ditch along the east side of …
We got 0.41 inch (1 cm) from that one*, Mark. That brings my rain gauge total to 0.93 inch (2.4 cm) for June. Also 0.93 for the last four days. That makes this the wettest month since October. The water year at my house: Oct. 1.94 inch (4.9 cm) Nov. 0.03 inch (0.1 cm) Dec. …
Back in January, there was a huge debate in the comments here about “flora gains” – the suggestion by one of the regular commenters that we’d benefit from enhanced carbon dioxide because the plants on which we depend for food etc. would do better, with CO2 fertilization more than making up for any negative effects …
Via the magic of technology of some sort, I listened this morning to Harry Shearer’s interview with Ivor van Heerden from Louisiana State University’s Hurricane Center, more commonly known as “the man who saw it coming“. Fascinating conversation. Download it here.
We’ve had rain here the last few days (half an inch in the gauge at my house, much more elsewhere, much less other elsewhere). To wet climate denizens, that might seem like no big deal, but such is our drought that some residents of our community have literally never seen rain before. Coco explains: You’ve …
Via James Hrynyshyn, word of possible budget cuts at the National Climatic Data Center: The center holds the world’s largest collection of climate data and information, which often is used for monitoring long-term trends that might harm lives and property and the nation’s environmental, national, homeland and economic security. A House budget proposal gives the …
From Andy Borowitz: In an attempt to counteract the impact of former Vice President Al Gore’s cautionary film about global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth,” Vice President Dick Cheney is starring in a new film advocating global warming, Mr. Cheney confirmed today. The Cheney film, entitled “A Really Convenient Truth,” will open in theaters nationwide in …
David Parker has published a new, more detailed analysis in the latest Journal of Climate arguing that the urban heat island effect is not responsible for the measured global warming trend. As in his earlier work on this, Parker compared windy to non-windy days: The trends in temperature are almost unaffected by this subsampling, indicating …