The news media coverage last week of the NRC “hockey stick” report provides a stark reminder of the point Dan Sarewitz made in his How science makes environmental controversies worse. While everyone prattled on about whether the hockey stick is now really broken, or the handle has been properly taped back together, or whatever, last …
Today’s word of the day is febrifacient: a thing that produces fever. In his 1845 “Emigrants Guide to Oregon and California”, Lansford Hastings noted the obvious of the Great Basin and Rocky Mountain Region: it doesn’t rain much here, while in the winter “snow falls very frequently, though not to a great depth.” Sounds like …
cotton_region_shelter Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. Lissa finished a nice sturdy stand for the cotton region shelter in the backyard. It’s the standard National Weather Service Coop setup. Of course my backyard would be a terrible place for a genuine Coop station – too close to buildings, etc. But this gives me a feel for how …
I don’t know how to tell for sure, but I’ll hazard a guess that this is the first time Donald Rumsfeld has been quoted in the climate literature. It’s a discussion of the latest version of the Hadley global temperature data set, and the team has gone to significant effort to quantify the uncertainties: A …
A new paper (actually came out last month, so not quite “snap snap” new) by Kostas Andreadis and Dennis Lettenmaier[1] looks at trends in drought severity and duration over the 20th century in the continental U.S. In much of the country, drought is getting less severe, but unfortunately not in the places that matter most …
Raymond Bradley has a paper in tomorrow’s Science[1] laying out the significant threats to water supplies in the Andes as a result of global climate change. This is the sort of thing Roger Pielke Sr. wisely argues that we need – a better understanding of climate change effects on a regional scale “focused on regional …
Continue reading ‘Threats to Water Supplies in the Tropical Andes’ »
Nothing charismatic about this, but it’s what we’ve got: The Southwest has been much drier than average since the start of the water year, with many locations experiencing the driest winter and spring on record. That’s from the latest Southwest Outlook from the University of Arizona’s Climate Assessment for the Southwest project. If you’re looking …
Interesting comment from Kevin Vranes that’s worth pulling out onto the front page. The question is whether there’s really an “emerging consensus” on the hurricane-global warming link. Kevin’s privy to discussion not visible to us plebes: I still have to say that after watching the emails fly on the tropical cyclones email list over the …
As a student of drought, I can’t help but feel a little sheepishly overshadowed by hurricanes – I think it was Steve Bloom who coined the description “charismatic megaweather.”So I was happy to see none other than Jeff Masters, the Weather Underground hurricane guy, recognize drought’s importance in his review of the Al Gore movie, …
From the AGU’s Conference of Experts report on hurricanes and the Gulf Coast: The observed trends in SST and hurricane intensity cannot be explained by natural variability alone.