LibertyBell

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/04/16/southwest-megadrought-climate-change/ A vast region of the western United States, extending from California, Arizona and New Mexico north to Oregon and Idaho, is in the grips of the first climate change-induced megadrought observed in the past 1,200 years, a study shows. The finding means the phenomenon is no longer a threat for millions to worry about in the future, but is already here. .... The study, published in the journal Science on Thursday, compares modern soil moisture data with historical records gleaned from tree rings, and finds that when compared with all droughts seen since the year 800 across western North America, the 19-year drought that began in 2000 and continued through 2018 (this drought is still ongoing, though the study’s data is analyzed through 2018) was worse than almost all other megadroughts in this region. The researchers, who painstakingly reconstructed soil moisture records from 1,586 tree-ring chronologies to determine drought severity, found only one megadrought that occurred in the late 1500s was more intense. .... “The megadrought era seems to be reemerging, but for a different reason than the [past] megadroughts,” said Park Williams, the study’s lead author and a researcher at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University. Although many areas in the West had a productive wet season in 2019 and some this year, “you can’t go anywhere in the West without having suffered drought on a millennial scale,” Williams said, noting that megadroughts contain relatively wet periods interspersed between parched years. “I think the important lesson that comes out of this is that climate change is not a future problem,” said Benjamin I. Cook, a NASA climate scientist and co-author of the study. “Climate change is a problem today. The more we look, the more we find this event was worse because of climate change.” from Journal Science: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6488/314 A trend of warming and drying Global warming has pushed what would have been a moderate drought in southwestern North America into megadrought territory. Williams et al. used a combination of hydrological modeling and tree-ring reconstructions of summer soil moisture to show that the period from 2000 to 2018 was the driest 19-year span since the late 1500s and the second driest since 800 CE (see the Perspective by Stahle). This appears to be just the beginning of a more extreme trend toward megadrought as global warming continues. Science, this issue p. 314; see also p. 238 Abstract Severe and persistent 21st-century drought in southwestern North America (SWNA) motivates comparisons to medieval megadroughts and questions about the role of anthropogenic climate change. We use hydrological modeling and new 1200-year tree-ring reconstructions of summer soil moisture to demonstrate that the 2000–2018 SWNA drought was the second driest 19-year period since 800 CE, exceeded only by a late-1500s megadrought. The megadrought-like trajectory of 2000–2018 soil moisture was driven by natural variability superimposed on drying due to anthropogenic warming. Anthropogenic trends in temperature, relative humidity, and precipitation estimated from 31 climate models account for 47% (model interquartiles of 35 to 105%) of the 2000–2018 drought severity, pushing an otherwise moderate drought onto a trajectory comparable to the worst SWNA megadroughts since 800 CE. also see this: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6488/261 Abstract Trees are the living foundations on which most terrestrial biodiversity is built. Central to the success of trees are their woody bodies, which connect their elevated photosynthetic canopies with the essential belowground activities of water and nutrient acquisition. The slow construction of these carbon-dense, woody skeletons leads to a slow generation time, leaving trees and forests highly susceptible to rapid changes in climate. Other long-lived, sessile organisms such as corals appear to be poorly equipped to survive rapid changes, which raises questions about the vulnerability of contemporary forests to future climate change. The emerging view that, similar to corals, tree species have rather inflexible damage thresholds, particularly in terms of water stress, is especially concerning. This Review examines recent progress in our understanding of how the future looks for forests growing in a hotter and drier atmosphere.

My favorite snowstorm of ALL TIME! and it lasted extra long too, when most end early!

mine is give me historic torches or give me historic snowstorms or give me death lol.

Now that the pollution from those wildfires is dissipating I got to see Orion and the Pleaides for the first time since last winter! And last evening's 2 day old crescent moon looked quite pretty.

Thought it was killed by a cat that roamed into its enclosure? Crazy article about geneticists talking about bringing the bird back into existence by the 2030s. https://www.audubon.org/magazine/may-june-2014/why-passenger-pigeon-went-extinct The story about how they were killed is horrendous. I consider this a form of genocide and the people who did this should be punished just as harshly. Too bad none are alive today. Back then conservatives were actually conservationists too. Contemporary environmentalism arrived too late to prevent the passenger pigeon’s demise. But the two phenomena share a historical connection. “The extinction was part of the motivation for the birth of modern 20th century conservation,” says Temple. In 1900, even before Martha’s death in the Cincinnati Zoo, Republican Congressman John F. Lacey of Iowa introduced the nation’s first wildlife-protection law, which banned the interstate shipping of unlawfully killed game. “The wild pigeon, formerly in flocks of millions, has entirely disappeared from the face of the earth,” Lacey said on the House floor. “We have given an awful exhibition of slaughter and destruction, which may serve as a warning to all mankind. Let us now give an example of wise conservation of what remains of the gifts of nature.” That year Congress passed the Lacey Act, followed by the tougher Weeks-McLean Act in 1913 and, five years later, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which protected not just birds but also their eggs, nests, and feathers.

I was watering the very edge of my very dry property about an hour ago and I spied a blackish moving shape out of the corner of my eye. It was a black bear roaming around just beyond my fence line, maybe about 10 feet to my right! You can bet I rapidly finished watering and high tailed it back into my house (making sure no trash was outside first of course.) This is in my other home in NE PA and we're expecting to have frost and maybe even a freeze tonight. When do these creatures go into hibernation? This is the closest I've ever been to a bear encounter.....

cats, dogs and rats have driven several species to extinction....and of course humankind and its evil ways. Wasn't the very last Passenger Pigeon eaten by a cat? And of course the billions before it who were thoughtlessly hunted down by humans.

It's interesting that 1979 was one of our latest minimum ice extents, especially considering that 1979 was one of our coldest winters, almost historic in terms of how widespread the cold was in winter 1979-80! edit that was 1978-79 not 1979-80 lol...I do remember that there was an anomalous early season snow event in the Mid Atlantic in October 1979 though....the area from DC to Philly got around 2-4" of snow? Either way a 9/20 or later min ice extent day seems to be about a once a decade occurrence, except for the notable exception of 1989 and 1990, when it happened in back to back years, the height of our famous snow drought (high solar influence back then?)

It seems like the average minimum is around the first day of fall now?

ha that's true, but I only took a video no images sorry and will post it when I get it up on youtube. I opted for video because the birds looked so adorable splashing around in the water and fighting with each other for room lol.

a college friend of mine was visiting when Floyd hit, he had never experienced a TC before and he asked me...so this is it? It's nothing more than a boring old rainstorm! He wasn't around for Irene or Sandy lol. Speaking of which, wasn't the 1903 Hurricane similar to Sandy with its track?

lol DSLR are ancient history, mirrorless cameras with fully electronic shutters are the new thing. I ditched all my DSLR a few years ago.

It seems to be a lot more this year, this morning I had hundreds of birds mobbing around my backyard pond, of various different species. It was a sight to behold! They were bathing, eating and fighting amongst themselves.

TCs rapidly strengthening as they approach land (and slowing down) in the Gulf has been a pretty strong signal over the last 5 years or so, and can be connected to the abnormally warm waters there.

Questioning everything is a nice trait to have, but if you are going to do that, you must question industry scientists even more- they have a long track record of deceit, across multiple fields.

hold on a sec though, do you at least acknowledge that research performed by the fossil fuel cartel back in the 70s was covered up by them? And if so, why do you think they covered it up? We see this across several industries. I dont understand why some call out scientists that rely on government funding when scientists who work for industry have proven to be way more biased. You see this across several industries- from tobacco to pharma to fossil fuels to the sugar and food industries. If you want to call out funding dependent scientists you must even more vociferously call out industry scientists.

If that's true then a reasonable assumption would be that ENSO may have offered a temporary counterbalance to atmospheric warming. The question then becomes if artificial sources were taken out of the equation, how much would the earth have cooled in that period?

In another piece I read, it stated that 93% of the heat went into the oceans first, that also explains part of the lag that skiier talked about.

It makes a lot of sense that oceanic heat content kept increasing. https://www.noaa.gov/news/global-ocean-is-absorbing-more-carbon-from-fossil-fuel-emissions The global ocean absorbed 34 billion metric tons of carbon from the burning of fossil fuels from 1994 to 2007 — a four-fold increase to 2.6 billion metric tons per year when compared to the period starting from the Industrial Revolution in 1800 to 1994.

We've generally come to the conclusion that the CO2 output went into the oceans first which may partially explain what you pointed out about the lack of warming during the first decade of the millennium (and has resulted in coral bleaching.) The ironic thing about the climate models is that they're now proving to be TOO conservative as far as sea level rise is concerned. I've always been of the philosophy that we need to be proactive and make changes (for a multitude of reasons) BEFORE the science was settled, and there have always been good reasons to do that (regarding air pollution and health, which we've already gone over.) And it's important for us to present a united front to the general public, which either doesn't have access to this data or doesn't have the time to sift through it. There's many reasons to end the consumption of fossil fuels, and climate change is only one of them. On top of that, if you want to wait until everything is 100% settled, it'll be too late. It almost is already. Perfection is the enemy of the good. Regarding Siberia, I think we're now seeing the accelerated temperature rise that has long been predicted. Not only that, we are also seeing it in other northern regions, including Vermont and other parts of Northern New England. A good analogy is that the attic is on fire and the fire is now spreading to other parts of the house.

Well we would have been in a FAR better place had Gore become president rather than the illegitimate "election" of war criminals Bush, Junior and Mercenary Cheney.

Heh yeah I've been wondering about the vulnerability of a democracy in which a large segment of the population isn't properly educated to make smart decisions about existential threats. They are very easy to manipulate without even knowing it's happening.

You used to be a climate change skeptic and had a radio show? I didn't know either of that. I thought climate change had been settled going way back to the 80s. The science is not that difficult (for those of us who love science) and your use of analogies is a handy method for showing people how it works without having to delve into mathematics, charts, etc. We already knew it was happening back then and it turns out that the fossil fuel cartel knew about it even before that. It's just much more obvious now then it was back then. Obviously the cartel had been doing a great job covering their tracks, and now that they can no longer do that (well to most of us anyway) they espouse failed strategies like removing carbon from the atmosphere and "clean coal".

15% slower was the figure I've seen attributed to TC forward speed. Not sure on the strengthening as they near landfall factor, but the SST are abnormally warm near shore. That Siberian megaheatwave sure was something to behold, never heard of anything so anomalous lasting so long.

what about something like rapidly strengthening hurricanes as they approach the Gulf Coast? The water is abnormally warm there and in the last few years we've seen a spate of hurricanes strengthening right to landfall- Harvey, Michael, Laura, and now also Sally? Also much slower moving storms (Harvey, Florence and now Sally).