Pumping crap into the air to cool things off has been suggested as a way of countering global warming. A new paper by Kevin Trenberth and Aiguo Dai at NCAR makes this look like a bad idea. They used actual volcanic eruptions as an analog and looked at their effect on the hydrologic cycle: Following …
Watercrunch points out the significant expansion of drought conditions in Alabama in this week’s drought monitor: The Southeast: With scattered rain last week in the Southeast, drought conditions did not improve, but instead expanded in some areas. Even with recent rains, many recording stations were below normal for July. Mississippi is a good example of …
Aquafornia points to a piece about California water that has parallels here in New Mexico: The future for agriculture rests on the availability of water. Plain and simple. Much has been written about the competition for water with the competing interests of farmers pitted against urbanites and food processors vying for water against other “sexier” …
It was pouring rain when I left the office this evening, so I took surface streets rather than the messy freeway. The concrete arroyo by my work was running high as I passed, so I started slowing and watching every time I went over one. They were raging and roiling and doing their best to …
The Value of Water in Alternative UsesOriginally uploaded by heinemanfleck. I recently scored a fascinating volume at the used bookstore: “The Value of Water in Alternative Uses, With Special Application to Water Use in the San Juan and Rio Grande Basins of New Mexico.” Published in 1962, it’s the result of a study of the …
I’m still on the steep lower slopes of the learning curve regarding the relationship between development and water, so I don’t have much to say about this except to say that it’s fascinating: Development of the 6,500-acre Quail Ranch is dead, at least for the time being. Sandia Properties has dropped plans to develop the …
More drought: Farmers have threatened to protest unless they receive more government help in coping with a prolonged drought that has destroyed millions of hectares (acres) of crops. The drought has cost Romania €1.5 billion (US$2 billion) in damages and has affected more than a third of the country’s arable land, an agriculture official said …
From my colleague Sean Olson, on the discovery of brackish water 3,770 feet (1,150 meters) beneath the New Mexico desert: The county started drilling an exploratory well in the Rio Puerco about a month ago on the educated hunch there was a large supply of brackish salt water deep within the surface. It was a …
Via Mike Campana, an interesting essay by Chris Milly about the problem climate change poses for the folks who build dams and such: I would argue, in fact, that changing climate is the new “default hypothesis,” rapidly displacing the assumption of stationarity upon which generations of hydrologists and engineers have built their careers—not to mention …
In the June 19 Eos, Vergana and colleagues itemize the impending costs to Andean communities as glaciers, their source of water for both consumption and electricity generation, disappears as a result of climate change: These consequences are akin to a climate tax imposed by energy-intensive societies on populations that have contributed little to the climate …