Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere

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From this morning’s Albuquerque Journal, a piece on Marty Hoerling’s new work using the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report climate models to generate Palmer Drought Severity Index numbers for Western U.S. climate divisions over the next century:

Global warming is driving the Southwest toward “a new era for drought,” according to a top federal climate researcher.

Extreme conditions seen during the worst droughts of the last 50 years could become the norm during the next half century if greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase at their current rate, according to Marty Hoerling of the federal government’s Earth Systems Research Laboratory in Boulder.

Rising temperatures are the reason. Whatever happens to rain and snow patterns, a projected temperature increase of more than 5 degrees Fahrenheit over the next 50 years will create a long-term drying trend, according to Hoerling.

“Temperature is going to become increasingly important,” Hoerling said in an interview.

Environmental History of the Rio Grande

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A few years back, the U.S. Forest Service funded historian Dan Scurlock to prepare an environmental history of the middle Rio Grande basin. It’s a treasure, referred to lovingly by researchers and folks in the climate/water/environmental policy community here. But it’s very hard to come by a copy.

I recently discovered that the Forest Service has made PDF’s of the whole thing available on line:

From the Rio to the Sierra: An Environmental History of the Middle Rio Grande Basin

End Times in New Mexico

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Mayan calendar

The whole Planet X pole shift calamity turned out to be a bust. Sorry, life and civilization as we know it were not destroyed. But not to worry! 2012 is just around the corner. As prophesied by the Mayan calendrical thingamajigs, we’re all pretty much screwed in just six short years.

Not to worry, though, there are folks aligning to bring us “ascension”, which apparently means more than climbing a ladder. As is fitting, apparently, New Mexico is at the center of things, according to James Randi. (Hat tip Dave.)

Global Dimming and Soil Moisture

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Here’s a fascinating bit of business in GRL (I’ve only seen the abstract, haven’t read the paper):

Summer soil moisture increased significantly from 1958 to the mid 1990s in Ukraine and Russia. This trend cannot be explained by changes in precipitation and temperature alone. To investigate the possible contribution from solar dimming and upward CO2 trends, we conducted experiments with a sophisticated land surface model. We demonstrate, by imposing a downward trend in incoming shortwave radiation forcing to mimic the observed dimming, that the observed soil moisture pattern can be well reproduced. On the other hand, the effects of upward CO2 trends were relatively small for the study period. Our results suggest tropospheric air pollution plays an important role in land water storage at the regional scale, and needs to be addressed accurately to study the effects of global warming on water resources.

Solar dimming and CO2 effects on soil moisture trends, by Robock and Li, Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 33, L20708, doi:10.1029/2006GL027585, 2006

Going Hungry

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U.N. rights advocate sees more malnutrition

Jean Ziegler, a U.N. expert on food rights, said that some 852 million people were “gravely, permanently undernourished on this planet” at the end of 2005, an increase of 11 million from the year earlier.

Much of that increase came in Africa, where drought, climate change and poor farming practices are spreading the Sahara Desert farther southward into once-fertile lands, Ziegler told a news conference.

He also charged that unfair trade practices by rich nations hurt food production in Africa, where excess food from rich nations can be dumped in local markets, undercutting local producers.

Drought Update

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Some interesting discussion in today’s drought monitor about the way the early water year is shaping up in the Pacific Northwest:

[T]he 2006-07 wet season is off to a slow start in parts of the Northwest. From October 1 to October 24, Washington rainfall totaled just 2.48 inches (36% of normal) in Quillayute and 1.00 inch (46%) in Seattle. Farther south, abnormal dryness has not yet been introduced in northern and central California and the western Great Basin. However, those areas are being carefully monitored as a result of several factors, including a slow start to the wet season, unusually poor pasture and rangeland conditions, and the threat of late-year wildfire activity.

Similar picture in the University of Washington’s soil moisture model.